turkey," said Minty, attempting to be cheerful.

But this well-meant effort at consolation aroused Jason's wrath.
"That's just like a girl!" he cried. "What do you care if you only
have blue beads and lots of candy?"

Poor Minty's face lengthened again, and her jaw fell. "There's my two
dollars and thirty cents, Jason," she said anxiously.

Jason started; a ray of hope flushed his freckled face.

"We can buy a big turkey over at Jonas Hicks's for all that money,"
continued Minty. And then she drew nearer to Jason, and added a
thrilling whisper, "And we can hide Priscilla!"

Jason stared at her in amazement. He had never expected Minty to come
to the front in an emergency. Perhaps the high forehead meant
something after all. "_She_'ll be after you about the money, you
know," he said, with a significant nod toward the house.

"It's my own. I earned it picking berries and weeding old Mrs.
Jackman's garden. It's in my bank, and the bank won't open till
there's five dollars in it."

Jason's face darkened.

"But we can smash it," said Minty calmly.

_Certainly_ the high forehead meant something.

Priscilla was hidden. The "smashing" was done in extreme privacy
behind the stone wall of the pasture. Cyrus was bound over to secrecy,
as was also Jonas Hicks, who, after some haggling, sold them his
finest turkey for two dollars and thirty cents.

"Cyrus is gettin' real handy and accommodatin'," said Clorinda the
next morning, when they were all in the kitchen, and Jason, ignobly
arrayed in Clorinda's kitchen-belle apron, was chopping, and Minty was
seeding raisins. "I expected nothin' but what I'd got to pick the
white turkey, and he's fetched her in all picked and drawed."

"She don't weigh quite so much as I expected," said Uncle Kittredge,
as he suspended the turkey on the hook of the old steelyards.

Jason and Minty slyly exchanged anxious glances. Neither of them had
looked at the turkey, and Minty's face was suffused with red even to
the roots of her tow-coloured hair.

Mary Ellen and Nahum came that night, and bright and early on the
morning of Thanksgiving Day came Uncle and Aunt Piper with Mirandy and
Augustus and the twins, and the house was full of noise and jollity.
Jason was obliged to go to church in the morning with the grown
people, but Minty stayed at home to help Clorinda, and after much
manoeuvring she found an opportunity to run down to the shanty in
the logging road and feed the white turkey.