To save himself from making an angry reply, Fielding somewhat viciously commenced operations on the turkey, and attempted to carve off a leg; but in some unaccountable manner the knife came to a sudden halt as soon as it had pierced the dark skin.  This unlooked-for interruption brought a puzzled look into Fielding’s face; but he was a man not easily daunted by anything, and thinking that he had somehow come across a bone hitherto unknown to him in a turkey’s anatomy, he twisted the bird round and confidently began the dissection of the other leg.  The result was equally disheartening; the blade went a little below the skin, and then refused to budge.

Poor Fielding!  His patience was by this time pretty well exhausted, and turning to the now anything but jubilant Ovide, said grimly:  “In the name of all that is good, man, what is the matter with this turkey?”

He had gone however, to the wrong fount, for information this time, as Ovide wonderingly shook his head, and said, “Dat is de queerest ting I’m never see, sir.”

The angry words on Fielding’s lips were prevented by a low comprehensive laugh from old Robbins, who said, as he pointed satirically at his fireman, “Oh, aye; oh, aye; thou knows how to cook; thou does, of course thou does.”  Then turning to Fielding he said, with a side glance at me:  “That bird, sir, has nobbut had its hide cooked, and all beneath it is frozen.”

Even before Fielding, to verify this startling statement, had seized the knife, and, laying open the skin, exposed to view the partly frozen flesh, the whole miserable catastrophe was clear to my mind.  I recalled how I had borne down on Ovide soon after he had put the bird for the first time into the blazing oven; how, in deference to my fears, he had taken it out and stood it on the shelf—­when its skin, of course, could only have been scorched—­where it had remained over an hour while he was superintending the construction and cooking of the pudding; and, finally, how the prevaricating fellow—­whom I knew understood little more about cooking than I did—­must have concluded, from the cinder-like appearance of the skin when he took it out of the oven the second time, after another twenty minutes’ scorching, that it was cooked to the very marrow.

“Well!” ejaculated Fielding, letting his knife and fork fall noisily on the table, and turning to our guilty-looking cook, “of all the pure—­”

But I am sure, the reader will agree with me that under such trying circumstances, my friend should not now have recorded against him, in cold print, every word he uttered on that occasion.

When Fielding had somewhat relieved his feelings and sat down again, Ovide, in his ludicrous English, tried to throw the blame for what had happened upon the stove, which, he explained, burned much more zealously than he wanted it to; but his lame excuses were cut short by Fielding telling him to take the thing away.