--for Mrs. Judy has a raft of young ones, 'all av thim wid
appetites like a famine in ould Ireland,' he told me."

"Oh, Neale!" cried Ruth, with tears in her eyes.

"He's a fine old man," declared Neale, "when you get under the skin.
Mrs. Judy Roach and her brood will get a square meal for once in their
lives--believe me."

So Neale stayed at the cobbler's and helped do the honors of that
Thanksgiving dinner. He reported to the Corner House girls later how it
"went off."

"'For phat we are about to resave,' as Father Dooley says--Aloysius, ye
spalpane! ye have an eye open, squintin' at the tur-r-rkey!--'lit us be
trooly thankful,'" observed Mr. Con Murphy, standing up to carve the
huge, brown bird. "Kape your elbows off the table, Aloysius Roach--ye
air too old ter hev such bad manners. What par-r-rt of the bir-r-d will
ye have, Aloysius?"

"A drumstick," announced Aloysius.

"A drumstick it is--polish that now, ye spalpane, and polish it well.
And Alice, me dear, phat will _youse_ hev?" pursued Mr. Murphy.

"I'll take a leg, too, Mr. Murphy," said the oldest Roach girl.

"Quite right. Iv'ry par-r-rt stringthens a par-r-rt--an' 'tis a
spindle-shanks I notice ye air, Alice. And you, Patrick Sarsfield?" to
the next boy.

"Leg," said Patrick Sarsfield, succinctly.

Mr. Murphy dropped the carver and fork, and made a splotch of gravy on
the table.

"_What?_" he shouted. "Hev ye not hear-r-rd two legs already bespoke,
Patrick Sarsfield, an' ye come back at me for another? Phat for kind of
a baste do ye think this is? I'm not carvin' a cinterpede, I'd hev ye
know!"

At last the swarm of hungry Roaches was satisfied, and, according to
Neale's report, the dinner went off very well indeed, save that his
mother feared she would have to grease and roll Patrick Sarsfield before
the fire to keep him from bursting, he ate so much!

It was shortly after Thanksgiving that Milton suffered from its famous
ice-storm. The trees and foliage in general suffered greatly, and the
_Post_ said there would probably be little fruit the next year. For the
young folk of the town it brought great sport.

The Corner House girls awoke on that Friday morning to see everything
out-of-doors a glare of ice. The shade trees on the Parade were borne
down by the weight of the ice that covered even the tiniest twig on
every tree. Each blade of grass was stiff with an armor of ice. And a
scum of it lay upon all the ground.

The big girls put