“It’s the first turkey that’s been in this house fer many a day!” said Mrs. Wiggs, delightedly, as she pinched the fat fowl.  “I ’spect Europena’ll be skeered of it, it’s so big.  My, but we’ll have a good dinner to-morrow!  I’ll git Miss Hazy an’ Chris to come over an’ spend the day, and I’ll carry a plate over to Mrs. Schultz, an’ take a little o’ this here tea to ole Mrs. Lawson.”

The cloud had turned inside out for Mrs. Wiggs, and only the silver lining was visible.  Jim was doing a sum on the brown paper that came over the basket, and presently he looked up and said slowly: 

“Ma, I guess we can’t have the turkey this year.  I kin sell it fer a dollar seventy-five, and that would buy us hog-meat fer a good while.”

Mrs. Wiggs’s face fell, and she twisted her apron-string in silence.  She had pictured the joy of a real Christmas dinner, the first the youngest children had ever known; she had already thought of half a dozen neighbors to whom she wanted to send “a little snack.”  But one look at Jim’s anxious face recalled their circumstances.

“Of course we’ll sell it,” she said brightly.  “You have got the longest head fer a boy!  We’ll sell it in the mornin’, an’ buy sausage fer dinner, an’ I’ll cook some of these here nice vegetables an’ put a orange an’ some candy at each plate, an’ the childern’ll never know nothin’ ’bout it.  Besides,” she added, “if you ain’t never et turkey meat you don’t know how good it is.”

But in spite of her philosophy, after Jim had gone to bed she slipped over and took one more look at the turkey.

“I think I wouldn’t ‘a’ minded so much,” she said, wistfully, “ef they hadn’t ‘a’ sent the cramberries, too!”

For ten days the basket of provisions and the extra money made by Jim’s night work and Mrs. Wiggs’s washing supplied the demands of the family; but by the end of January the clouds had gathered thicker than before.

Mrs. Wiggs’s heart was heavy, one night, as she tramped home through the snow after a hard day’s work.  The rent was due, the coal was out, and only a few potatoes were left in the barrel.  But these were mere shadow troubles, compared to Jim’s illness; he had been too sick to go to the factory that morning, and she dared not think what changes the day may have brought.  As she lifted the latch of her rickety door the sobbing of a child greeted her; it was little Europena, crying for food.  For three days there had been no bread in the house, and a scanty supply of potatoes and beans had been their only nourishment.

Mrs. Wiggs hastened to where Jim lay on a cot in the corner; his cheeks were flushed, and his thin, nervous fingers picked at the old shawl that covered him.

“Jim,” she said, kneeling beside him and pressing his hot hand to her cheek, “Jim, darling lemme go fer the doctor.  You’re worser than you was this mornin’, an’—­an’—­I’m so skeered!” Her voice broke in a sob.