Turkeys Turning the Tables
634 Words
Well, you see, the papa began, on Christmas morning, when the little girl had snuggled in his lap into just the right shape for listening, it was the night after Thanksgiving, and you know how everybody feels the night after Thanksgiving.
Yes; but you needn't begin that way, papa, said the little girl; I'm not going to have any moral to it this time.
No, indeed! But it can be a true story, can't it?
I don't know, said the little girl; I like made-up ones.
Well, this is going to be a true one, anyway, and it's no use talking.
Don't mix them all up so! pleaded the little girl. It's perfectly confusing. I can't hardly tell what they had now.
Well, they mixed them up just in the same way, and I suppose that's one of the reasons why it happened.
Oh, shouldn't you like to have been there, papa? sighed the little girl.
You mustn't interrupt. Where was I?
Higgledy-piggledy.
Oh yes!
Papa!
Yes, said the little girl, thoughtfully; I know what papas are.
Yes, they're pretty much all alike.
I don't think they behaved very dignified, said the little girl.
Well, you see, they were just funning, and had got going, and it was Thanksgiving, anyway.
Is it going to be a dream? asked the little girl, with some reluctance.
Didn't I say it was going to be a true story?
Yes.
How can it be a dream, then?
You said everybody was fast asleep and dreaming.
Well, but I hadn't got through. Everybody except one little girl.
Now, papa!
What?
Don't you go and say her name was the same as mine, and her eyes the same color.
What an idea!
Now, papa, if you get to cutting up
Well, I won't, then!
Have bad dreams! Aha! I told you it was going to be a dream.
You wait till I get through.
Turkey gobbler!
No, ma'am. Turkey gobbler's ghost.
Foo! said the little girl, rather uneasily; whoever heard of a turkey's ghost, I should like to know?
Never mind, that, said the papa. If it hadn't been a ghost, could the moonlight have shone through it? No, indeed! The stuffing wouldn't have let it. So you see it must have been a ghost.
It had a red pasteboard placard round its neck, with First Premium printed on it, and so she knew that it was the ghost of the very turkey they had had for dinner. It was perfectly awful when it put up its tail, and dropped its wings, and strutted just the way the grandfather said it used to do. It seemed to be in a wide pasture, like that back of the house, and the children had to cross it to get home, and they were all afraid of the turkey that kept gobbling at them and threatening them, because they had eaten him up. At last one of the boysit was the other little girl's brothersaid he would run across and get his papa to come out and help them, and the first thing she knew the turkey was after him, gaining, gaining, gaining, and all the grass was full of hen-turkeys and turkey chicks, running after him, and gaining, gaining, gaining, and just as he was getting to the wall he tripped and fell over a turkey-pen, and all at once she was in one of the aunties' room, and the aunty was in bed, and the turkeys were walking up and down over her, and stretching out their wings, and blaming her. Two of them carried a platter of chicken pie, and there was a large pumpkin jack-o'-lantern hanging to the bedpost to light the room, and it looked just like the other little girl's brother in the face, only perfectly ridiculous.
- Writer
