was the pig-stye under it, with such lazy great pigs, and
such frisky little ones, with their tails curled up so tight that they
lifted their hind legs right up, jumping round and tumbling heels over
head over their mother, who lay half-buried in a mud-puddle, winking
her pink eyes at the bright sun, and looking just as happy as if there
wasn't a butcher in the world, or as if "the Governor and council"
wouldn't sign her little piggies' death warrant with the Thanksgiving
proclamation.

Thanksgiving! Oh, wasn't _that_ an affair? Grandma Scott would mount
her silver-bowed spectacles, strip her arms to this elbows, tie on a
check apron, pin up her cap strings, and stew pumpkins and squashes and
apples and quinces, and pound spices, and chop meat and suet, and roll
out pie-crust, and heat the oven, and turn out so many pies and tarts
and "pan-dowdies," and loaves of cake, that it would make your apron
strings grow tight just to look at them!

Then, the first thing the hens in the barn-yard knew, _they didn't know
anything_! but lay on the kitchen table with their yellow boots kicked
up in the air, waiting to be singed, stuffed, and skewered. Poor
things, they had laid their last egg, and swallowed their last kernel
of corn, every rooster's daughter of 'em!

What a party of horses stamped their iron shoes in Grandpa Scott's barn
on Thanksgiving morning! What a party of little children in bright
autumn-leaf dresses and white aprons, went scampering through the
house! What a fuss they all made over the littlest baby! What a fire
(big enough to roast an ox whole) blazed in the great, wide,
sitting-room fireplace!

How Grandpa Scott walked round, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry,
patting this one on the head, chucking the other under the chin, and
tossing a third up to the wall. How he looked all round, with his arms
a-kimbo, and said if any grandpa in the United States had a prettier
set of grandchildren than that, he'd like to see them; and how Grandma
said, "Pshaw! Grandpa," because she was so proud of them herself that
she didn't know what else to say!

And how Grandma looked as if she never would grow old, with her nice
lace cap, and her own brown hair, with scarce a silver thread in it,
curling round her happy face; and how Grandpa would whisper slily to
the boys, "After all, your mother is handsomer than any child she ever
had!"

How contented and satisfied Grandmamma looked, sitting at the head of
her Tha