Chloe was indignant to think “Miss ’Lisbeth” thought she couldn’t get supper without help, and Miss ’Lisbeth was vexed with Chloe for being cross.  And then, when supper came, the tea seemed to be very unwilling to be swallowed, and the new bread was full of large lumps that choked a person, and the lamps didn’t burn clearly at all,—­and—­and—­when Chloe, still sulky, had cleared the table, Lizzy sat down on a low cricket beside her mother’s stuffed rocking-chair, and had as good a cry as ever she had in her life, and felt much better for it.

So she sat there, with her head on the arm of the chair, rather tired with the cry, rather downhearted for want of the supper she hadn’t eaten, and making pictures in the fire, when all of a sudden it came into her head to wonder what they were doing at Coventry.  There was grandfather, no doubt, in the keeping-room, telling his never-tiring stories of Little Robby, and Old Bose, and the Babes in the Wood; of singing the ever-new ditty of

  “Did you ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,”—­

and so on, ad infinitum, till you got to—­

  “See a man eat a whale?”

to some half dozen children; while sweet Aunt Lizzy, serenely smiling, rocked the fair little baby that fifteen cousins had kissed for welcome that day; and Uncle Boynton trotted the baby’s brother on his knee, inviting him persistently to go to Boston and buy a penny-cake, greatly to little Eben’s aggravation, who would end, Lizzy knew, by crying for the cake, and being sent to bed.  Then there were Sam, and Lucy Peters, and Jim Boynton, up to all sorts of mischief in the kitchen,—­Susan Boynton and Nelly James cracking nuts and their fingers on the hearth,—­father and mother up-stairs in grandmother’s room; for grandmother was bedridden, but kindly, and good, and humorous, and patient, even in her hopeless bed, and nobody was dearer to the whole family than she.  Then, of course, there was a fire in the best parlor, and there were all the older cousins, telling conundrums and stories, and playing grown-up games, and some two, or four, may-be, looking out in couples at the moonshine, from behind the curtains,—­Sue James, perhaps, and John.  Sue was so pretty!

Lizzy’s head bent lower on the arm of the chair; her thoughts travelled back over a great many Thanksgivings,—­years ago, when she wore short frocks, and used to go with John to see the turkeys fed, and be so scared when they gobbled and strutted with rage at her scarlet bombazette;—­how they used to pick up frozen apples and thaw them in the dish-kettle; how she pounded her thumb, cracking butternuts with a flat-iron, and John kissed it to make it well,—­only it didn’t!  And then how they slid down-hill before church, and sat a long two hours thereafter in the square pew, smelling of “meetin’-seed,” and dinted with the kicks of weary boys in new boots; and finally, after the first anthem and the two hymns and the three prayers and the long sermon were over, came home to dinner, where the children had their own table at the end of the grown people’s board, and Lizzy always took the head and John the foot,—­till, exhausted by the good things they had eaten, and tantalized by the good things they couldn’t eat, they crept away to the fire and their picture-books for a quiet hour, winding up the day with all the plays that country and city children alike delight in.