illed with lights and people, jolly games going on in the
parlour, and candy-pulling in the kitchen. All these delights were
directly before Jason Kittredge as he dangled his legs from the stone
wall and whittled away at the skewers which Clorinda, the "hired
girl," had demanded of him, and yet his heart was as heavy as lead.

[Footnote 17: From _Harper's Young People_, November 22, 1892.]

He did not even look up when his sister Minty came up the hill toward
him. He knew it was Minty, because she was hop-skipping and humming,
and he knew that Aunt Kittredge had sent her to Mrs. Deacon Preble's
to get a recipe for snow pudding; she had said she "must have
something real stylish, because she had invited the new minister and
his daughter to dinner."

"Oh, Jason, don't you wish it was always going to be Thanksgiving Day
after to-morrow?" Minty continued her hop-skipping; she went to and
fro before the dejected figure on the wall. Minty was tall for twelve,
and she had a very high forehead, which made Aunt Kittredge think that
she was going to be "smart." Aunt Kittredge made her comb her hair
straight back from the high forehead, and fasten it with a round comb;
not a vestige of hair showed under Minty's blue hood, and her forehead
looked bleak and cold, and her pale blue eyes were watery, and her new
teeth were large and overlapped each other; but Aunt Kittredge said it
was no matter, if she was only good and "smart."

"Why, Jason, is anything the matter?" Minty stopped, breathless, and
the joy faded out of her face. Jason continued to whittle in gloomy
silence. His hands were almost purple with cold, and the wind flapped
his large pantaloons--they were Uncle Kittredge's old ones, and Aunt
Kittredge never thought it worth the while to consider the fit if they
were turned up so that he could walk in them.

"You don't care because the new minister and his daughter are coming?"
pursued Minty. Jason's tastes, as she well knew, did not incline to
ministers and schoolmasters as companions in merrymaking. "She's a big
girl, almost sixteen, and she will go with Mary Ellen, and we shall
have Mirandy and Augustus and the twins, and the Sedgell girls and
Nehemiah Ham are coming in the evening, and we shall have such fun,
and such lots to eat!"

"That's just like you. You're friv'lous. You don't know what an awful
hard world it is. You haven't got a realizing sense," said Jason
crushingly.

This last accusation was one with wh