Christmas Every Day | Page 6

little girl, with some reluctance.
"Didn't I say it was going to be a true story?"
"Yes."
"How can it be a dream, then?"
"You said everybody was fast asleep and dreaming."
"Well, but I hadn't got through. Everybody except one little girl."
"Now, papa!"
"What?"
"Don't you go and say her name was the same as mine, and her eyes the
same color."
"What an idea!"
This was a very good little girl, and very respectful to her papa, and
didn't suspect him of tricks, but just believed everything he said. And
she was a very pretty little girl, and had red eyes, and blue cheeks, and
straight hair, and a curly nose--
"Now, papa, if you get to cutting up--"
"Well, I won't, then!"
Well, she was rather a delicate little girl, and whenever she over-ate, or
anything,
"Have bad dreams! Aha! I told you it was going to be a dream."

"You wait till I get through."
She was apt to lie awake thinking, and some of her thinks were pretty
dismal. Well, that night, instead of thinking and tossing and turning,
and counting a thousand, it seemed to this other little girl that she began
to see things as soon as she had got warm in bed, and before, even. And
the first thing she saw was a large, bronze-colored--
"Turkey gobbler!"
"No, ma'am. Turkey gobbler's ghost."
"Foo!" said the little girl, rather uneasily; "whoever heard of a turkey's
ghost, I should like to know?"
"Never mind, that," said the papa. "If it hadn't been a ghost, could the
moonlight have shone through it? No, indeed! The stuffing wouldn't
have let it. So you see it must have been a ghost."
It had a red pasteboard placard round its neck, with FIRST PREMIUM
printed on it, and so she knew that it was the ghost of the very turkey
they had had for dinner. It was perfectly awful when it put up its tail,
and dropped its wings, and strutted just the way the grandfather said it
used to do. It seemed to be in a wide pasture, like that back of the house,
and the children had to cross it to get home, and they were all afraid of
the turkey that kept gobbling at them and threatening them, because
they had eaten him up. At last one of the boys--it was the other little
girl's brother--said he would run across and get his papa to come out
and help them, and the first thing she knew the turkey was after him,
gaining, gaining, gaining, and all the grass was full of hen-turkeys and
turkey chicks, running after him, and gaining, gaining, gaining, and just
as he was getting to the wall he tripped and fell over a turkey-pen, and
all at once she was in one of the aunties' room, and the aunty was in
bed, and the turkeys were walking up and down over her, and
stretching out their wings, and blaming her. Two of them carried a
platter of chicken pie, and there was a large pumpkin jack-o'-lantern
hanging to the bedpost to light the room, and it looked just like the
other little girl's brother in the face, only perfectly ridiculous.

[Illustration: "THE OLD GOBBLER 'FIRST PREMIUM' SAID THEY
WERE GOING TO TURN THE TABLES NOW."]
Then the old gobbler, First Premium, clapped his wings, and said,
"Come on, chick-chickledren!" and then they all seemed to be in her
room, and she was standing in the middle of it in her night-gown, and
tied round and round with ribbons, so she couldn't move hand or foot.
The old gobbler, First Premium, said they were going to turn the tables
now, and she knew what he meant, for they had had that in the reader at
school just before vacation, and the teacher had explained it. He made a
long speech, with his hat on, and kept pointing at her with one of his
wings, while he told the other turkeys that it was her grandfather who
had done it, and now it was their turn. He said that human beings had
been eating turkeys ever since the discovery of America, and it was
time for the turkeys to begin paying them back, if they were ever going
to. He said she was pretty young, but she was as big as he was, and he
had no doubt they would enjoy her.
The other little girl tried to tell him that she was not to blame, and that
she only took a very, very little piece.
"But it was right off the breast," said the gobbler, and he shed tears, so
that the other little girl cried, too. She didn't have much hopes, they all
seemed so spiteful, especially the little turkey chicks; but