Page:Hegan Rice--Mrs Wiggs of the cabbage patch.djvu/35

  the brown paper that came over the basket, and presently he looked up and said slowly:

"Ma, I guess we can't have the turkey this year. I kin sell it fer a dollar seventy-five, and that would buy us hog-meat fer a good while."

Mrs. Wiggs's face fell, and she twisted her apron-string in silence. She had pictured the joy of a real Christmas dinner, the first the youngest children had ever known; she had already thought of half a dozen neighbors to whom she wanted to send "a little snack." But one look at Jim's anxious face recalled their circumstances.

"Of course we 'll sell it," she said brightly. "You have got the longest head fer a boy! We 'll sell it in the mornin', an' buy sausage fer dinner, an' I 'll cook some of these here nice vegetables an' put a orange an' some