OUR BOYS & GIRLS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 745, 11 June 1886, Page 5

OUR BOYS & GIRLS.

By Sophie Swept.

BARTY'S TURKEY. ♦ [A Thanksgiving-day Story.]

(Concluded.) Aunt Doxy was considered by her fellowworkers in Church and Sunday-school as having an especial gift for dealing with transgressors. So she seated herself at her desk, and proceeded to the task of bringing her sinful neighbors to a sense of their great wickedness. She did not hesitate to show them plainly the wrong of which they had been guilty, and she did not even deem it fitting that, as was often the case with her, justice should be tempered with mercy. Aunt Doxy sadly feared that her objectionable neighbors were hardened offenders, whose hearts could not be easily touched. * Here, Thaddy,' she said, as she folded !her note, ' you may carry this to the cottage ; come back just as soon as you have delivered it—do you hear V And Thaddy, overjoyed at this opportunity to enter forbidden ground and have even a few moments of Rupert's society, replied, 'Yes 'm,' with suspicious docility, and ran off Like a flash. . «I hopes nuffin 'll happen to dat boy,' muttured Martha Washington, gloomily, as she went about her Thanksgiving-day preparations, She evidently believed there were no -limits to the enormities of which the cottage people were capable. Half an hour passed by, and then Becky said, looking enviously toward the cottage, with her nose flattened against the window pane : ' I wonder why Thaddy doesn't come back V Aunt Doxy looked up in great alarm. * Hadn't he come back V she asked. How could she have forgotten ■him ? But surely they could not be wicked enough to harm a child. , ■'■ . Tim was despatched in great haste in search of the missing boy. He found him in the grove behind the cottage, playing with Rupert. Thaddy was silent and ashamed under Aunt Doxy's reproof. Rupert had coaxed him to play, and he had played. That was all he would say, except the expression of his opinion that ' Rupert was a good boy, and was going to have a donkey with long ears.' It was evident that, in spite of the melancholy fate of the poor Princess, Thaddy had [a great longing for the society at the cottage. Miss Doxy sat up late, expecting a message of some sort from her neighbors, but none came. Poor Prince Charming was uttering doleful and discordant cries for the lost partner of his joys and sorrows. ' Oh, how truly thankful I could be tomorrow,' thought Aunt Doxy, ' if those people had only gone back to town !' But when she arose in the morning, a bright and jolly Thanksgiving sunwaspeepin<» above the gables of the little red, olive, and yellow cottage, and an ample Thanksgiving smoke was pouring out of its chimney. Aunt Doxy seated herself at the breakfast table sad at heart. The children said little, and the poor peacock recommenced its wailing. Suddenly there came a violent knocking at the back door. * The answer to my letter,' thought Aunt Doxy. But it wasn't. For the next moment there burst into the room a stout Irishwoman with a big basket, dragging in a shamefaced boy Mrs O'Flamgan and Barty! . From the basket arose a voice—muffled and hoarse, but still familiar, and sounding like sweet music to Aunt Doxy's ear. # 'O Miss Appleby, mum,' said Mrs O Flanigan, ' it's kilt infcoirely I am, mum, wid shame, an' the hairt iv me is broke, so it is, thot iver I d see the day whir, me own boy—an' his fayther as sinsible a man a 3 ivver shtepped in two shoes—wudn'fc know the difference betwane a turrkey an' a paycock ! Shure, he sez yerself was away'an the youug leddy guv him lave to pick out a turrkey for himsilf, and he tuk this wan, so he did, for afoine large turrkey, and him athryin' to wring the neck ov it when I hears the quare voice of the craythur. And sez I, " Whativer air ye about, ye spalpane ?" sez I ; " it do be Mis 3 Appleby"s paycock ye have there." An' he havin' the neck of the poor baste half wrung, an' the craythur near kilt, 1 was afeered to bring her home

til ye. An’ shure, I splinthered up the neck ov her and doethered her up with swate ile, an’ last night she d ate a bit, an’ this mornin’ her voice bad grown that swate and nat-chooral 'twould bring tears to the oies ov yer. And, sez I to Barty, sez I, “Come along up to Miss Appleby’s wid me,” sez I, “ an’ if it isn’t bangin’ ye’ll get,” sez I, “ it’s in the cowld jail ve’ll spend yer Thanksgivin’-day,” sez I, ‘ for murtherin ov her poor baste ov a paycock —an’ ye wud have murthered her but for me,” sez I.’ Barty looked as dejected as anything so small' eould well look ; but he lifted up his gruff little voice courageously. ‘Shure, I nivver knew that a craythur could be a paycock widout a tail, at all, at all,’ he said, piteousiy, ‘ an’ seein’ it warn’t manin’ any harrum I was, an’ the hairt of me broke intoirely, an’ me mither’s - an’ we not havin’ anythin’ barrin’ praties for our Thanksgivin’ dinner, shure ye moit lave me off, Miss Appleby, mum, —an’ shure I’ll nivver come where I hear the voice ov a paycock agin.’ Aunt Doxy was so happy to have her dear Princess restored that she could blame no one. ‘ Never mind, Barty, you needn’t feel badly,’ she said. ‘You shall have the turkey I promised you ; a fine, fat one, and all ready for the oven. —But, oh, dear,’ she exclaimed, 'if I only hadn’t written that letter.’ Barty’s woe-begone look gave place to a beam of happiness; but as he and his mother went off with a fine turrkey iu the big basket, he still protested that ‘ shure it was not a right baste at all, that pertinded to be a paycock an’ hadn’t no illigant tailfeathers.’ Aunt Doxy was still bemoaning her sad mistake when Martha Washington, who felt that perhaps she was somewhat to blame in the matter, came in with a letter. ‘ Oh, dear, it’s the answer ?’ said Aunt Doxy. * Reckon not, Miss Doxy, it done come froo de post-offis,’ replied Martha YVashington, scanning it closely. ‘ ’Pears like as if it might be from Miss Sarah Wilhelmina.’ * Oh ! oh !’ cried Aunt Doxy, as she read the letter, * what do you suppose Sarah ( Wilhelmina says ? She says that Mrs Gracey knows the people in the cottage very well, and that she congratulates me on having such delightful neighbors. They are Mr A , the celebrated artist, and his family ; and Mrs A is a daughter of my old minister, Dr. Foristall, who is going to spend Thanksgiving with them !’ dropped the letter in her lap. * Oh, that letter, that dreadful letter !’ she said. ‘ What must they think of me ?’ \ But now Thaddy looked up suddenly from a thoughtful consideration of the yellowlkitten’s eyes. * Are you sorry you wrote it, Aunt Doxy ; true as you live, and never do so again V he asked solemnly, ‘ and would you be a little easy on a fellow if—if—if an accident had happened to that letter ?’ ‘ Why, Thaddeus, what do you mean ? Tell me instantly,’ said Aunt Doxy. ‘Well,’ confessed Thaddy, ‘you see, before I rang the bell at the cottage Rupert asked me to play with him, and we went out to the grove back of the house, and he was making a kazoo on a comb and wanted a piece of paper, and so I pulled that letter out of my pocket, without thinking what it was, and tore it up, and I'm awful sorry, but ’ * Thaddy, it was very, very wrong of you to be so careless and disobedient/ said Aunt Doxy ; but this time I do believe it was an interposition of Providence.’ And soon another letter was despatched to the cottage, and Aunt Doxy followed it with an invitation to dinner. And Mr A —— and Mrs A and Rupert and Marguerite all came up from the cottage, and so did Dr Forristall. And so it came to pass that they had a jolly Thanksgiving at Pine Hill Farm after all. And Barty O'Flanigan had his turkey, too. [The Ekd.]