to eat alone," he said. "I couldn't face a whole turkey.
You and Jerry come on in and back me up. You set on two more plates."

"Oh, no," said Charlotte, closing the oven door and rising. "I guess
I'll give him a minute longer. No. It's real nice of you, but we
couldn't. Jerry never would in the world."

"Jerry be hanged!" said Raven. He wandered into the pantry and began
helping himself to the celery waiting by the cool window-pane. "Tell him
it's all decided. Jerry's got to do what we say."

"If that ain't just like you," said Charlotte, with what seemed a pride
in his knowing ways. "Eatin' up the celery an' all, the minute 'fore
dinner, too. I wonder you don't pry into the cooky jar."

"I will, now you mention it," said Raven, bending to it where it lurked,
with its secretive look, under the lower shelf. He lifted the cover with
an involuntary care. He had been there so often when he wanted a handful
of cookies and knew, if he clinked the cover, he might hear his father's
voice from the dining-room where he sat reading his paper: "What are you
doing out there?" The cookies were waiting for him, unchanged, as if
there were an everlasting pattern of cookies and you couldn't get away
from it: oak-leaf, discreetly specked with caraway. "Hurry up," said he,
coming out to Charlotte with his clutch of oak-leaves. "Put on your
plate and Jerry's or the turkey'll be done before you know it."

Charlotte glanced round at him, absently took the cookies from his hand,
as if he were a child whose greed must be regulated, and laid them in a
plate on the table.

"Don't you spoil your appetite," she said, still absently, for her mind
was with the turkey. "Well, I'll go an' ask Jerry. I don't believe he'll
feel to. Miss Anne----"

Raven was sure he heard the last two words as she made her light way out
into the shed in a fictitious search for Jerry. He stood staring after
her and wondering. It was inconceivable that Anne, by sheer force of a
mind absolutely convinced of its own rightness, should have had such a
grip on everybody she came in contact with. It had been Anne's house
next door. She had spent her summers in it, and even Charlotte had
imbibed through its walls the pronouncements of a social code. Anne was
dead, but when Charlotte and Jerry were asked to sit down to turkey with
their employer and familiar friend, it was Anne's unforgotten ideal that
rose before her, the illuminated copy of the social code in its rigid
h