Sarah Orne Jewett : Novels and Stories
Chicago Tribune: An incandescence of humanity ... [and] descriptions so sharply etched you want to put them in your pocket like magic pebbles.

They passed a solemn evening together, and the great snow-storm raged about their warm house. Many times the old man reproached his own want of spirit in not going back along the road.

In the morning, very early, there was a loud knocking at the kitchen door. When Mrs. Jones opened it she found a boy standing there with a happy, eager face.

"Are you my grandma?" demanded Johnny. "Mother sent her best respects, and we thank you very much for the turkey, and she hopes you and my grandpa will stop, going home from meeting, and eat dinner. She'd be real glad to have you."

"What's all this?" demanded Mr. Henry Jones, who had heard the message with astonished ears, and stood in the doorway behind his wife, with his spectacles on his forehead like a lighthouse. "Where'd you get your turkey, sir? I'd like to know!"

"Why, right out of your wagon," said Johnny. "That one you brought last night. It's the handsomest one mother ever had in the house; she cried like everything about it." The child's voice faltered, he was so excited with his errand, and so spent with his eager journey through the deep snow.

"Come right in, dear!" cried the grandmother, grateful enough for the sight of him. And when Henry Jones saw her lead him to the fire, and then with a sob take the little fellow right into her arms and hug him, and begin to cry, too, he turned away and looked out of the window. The boy was their very own.

"There, give him some warm breakfast before he goes back; he must have started early," said the grandfather. "I'll put the colt in and take him back myself. She must have meant what she said, to start him up here like that, soon as day broke!"

When Johnny's mother saw the old man and the little boy plowing along in the old sleigh, and saw how they were talking and even laughing together, she thanked Heaven for this sudden blessing. "I wa'n't going to be slow about taking the next step, when an old man like him had taken the first one," she said to herself.

As for the lost turkey, it was already in the oven at that moment; but the true Thanksgiving feast that year was the feast of happiness in all their hearts.

"O my!" exclaimed Johnny early that afternoon, as he leaned back in his chair. "Grandma, aren't you glad this turkey didn't wander in the wet grass and die when it was a chick?"

The End