ached the back dining-room
door easy enough, went around to the kitchen, and called Leon softly.
He opened the door at once and I slipped in. He had just got there.
We looked all around and couldn't see where to begin at first. There
was enough cooked food there to load two wagons.

An old pillow-case that had dried sage in it was lying across a chair
and Leon picked it up and poured the sage into the wood-box, and handed
the case to me. He went over and knelt before the oven, while I
followed and held open the case. Leon rolled his eyes to the ceiling
and said so exactly like father when he is serving company that not one
of us could have told the difference: "Which part of the fowl do you
prefer, Brother Lemon?"

It was so funny it made me snigger, but I straightened up and answered
as well as I could: "I'm especially fond of the rump, Brother Stanton."

Leon stirred the heap and piled four or five tails in the case. I
thought that was all I could manage before they would spoil, so I said:
"Do you prefer light or dark meat, Sister Abigail?"

"I wish to choose breast," said Leon, simpering just like that silly
Abigail Webster. He put in six breasts. Then we found them hidden
away back in the oven in a pie pan, for the bride's table, I bet, and
we took two livers apiece; we didn't dare take more for fear they had
been counted. Then he threw in whatever he came to that was a first
choice big piece, until I was really scared, and begged him to stop;
but he repeated what the fox said in the story of the "Quarrelsome
Cocks"--"Poco was very good, but I have not had enough yet," so he
piled in pieces until I ran away with the pillow-case; then he slid in
a whole plateful of bread, another of cake, and put the plates in a tub
of dishes under the table. Then we took some of everything that wasn't
too runny. Just then the silence broke in the front part of the house,
and we scooted from the back door, closing it behind us, ran to the
wood house and climbed the ladder to the loft over the front part.
There we were safe as could be, we could see to the road, hear almost
everything said in the kitchen, and "eat our bites in peace," like
Peter Justice told the Presiding Elder at the church trial that he
wanted his wife to, the time he slapped her. Before very long, they
began calling us, and called, and called. We hadn't an idea what they
wanted, so we ate away. We heard them first while I was holding over a
back