At Lanarth, the week of preparation (good old Virginia housekeepers always allowed a week at least, and Mrs. Mason adhered to the time-honored custom) passed busily.  Every thing turned out unusually well, and the store-room was a picture.  Jellies, in slender glasses, glittered in exquisite amber perfection, or glowed warmly crimson, with points of brighter hue where the sun fell on them.  Heaps of old-fashioned “snowballs” hid golden hearts under a pure white frosting, and cakes, baked in fantastic shapes, like Turks’ heads and fluted melons, were rich, warm, brown, or white and gleaming as Christmas snow.  The pastry showed all shades from palest buff to tender delicate brown, and for depth of tone there were their rich interiors of dark mincemeat and golden custards.  Of the pleasures of this beautiful world not the least is the sight of beautiful food.

And it was Christmas eve.

The shadows were gathering, and the sun sending in his resignation to the night, when Pocahontas, tying on her pretty scarlet hood and wrappings, armed herself with a small basket of corn, and proceeded to the poultry yard to house her turkeys for the night.  They usually roosted in an old catalpa tree near the back gate, earlier in the season; but as Christmas approached Pocahontas found it expedient to turn the key upon them, since leaving them out caused weaker brothers to offend.  As she passed the kitchen door she called to little Sawney, whose affection for his grandmother increased at Christmas, to come out and help her.

The little fellow had that morning been invested by a doting parent with a “pa’r o’ sto’ boots” purchased entirely with reference to the requirements of the future.  They were many sizes too large for him:  the legs adorned with flaming scarlet tops, reached nearly to his middle; they flopped up and down at every step, and evinced an evil propensity for wabbling, and bringing their owner with sorrow to the ground.  They were hard-natured, stiff-soled, uncompromising—­but! they were boots!—­“sto’ boots, whar cos’ money!”—­and Sawney’s cup of bliss was full.

Any one who has experience in the ways and wiles of the domestic treasure, must be aware of the painful lack of consideration sometimes evinced by turkeys in this apparently simple matter of allowing themselves to be housed.  Some evenings, they march straight into their apartment with the directness and precision of soldiers filing into barracks; on others the very Prince of Darkness, backed by the three Fates and the three Furies, apparently takes possession of the perverse, shallow-pated birds.  They wander backward and forward, with an air of vacancy as though they knew not what to do; they pass and repass the yawning portal of the turkey house, with heads erect and eyes fixed on futurity, not only as if they did not see the door, but actually as if there were no door there to see.  And when the maddened driver, wrought to desperation, hurls into their midst a stick or stone, hoping fervently and vengefully that it may break a neck or a leg, they leap nimbly into the air with “put-putterings” of surprise and rebuke, and then advance cautiously upon the missile and examine it.