Page:The American Magazine volume LXIII.djvu/37



IT was the Wilburs' first Thanksgiving day in their new home on Long Island, and the first they had spent away from the old home of one or the other of them, and when they first realized that they were to be unable to go down to Vermont, or out to Ohio, they decided that they must have some lonely city friend out to eat Thanksgiving dinner. Amelia proposed six or eight names, and Arthur suggested eight or ten more, and when they asked these, one after the other, they learned for the first time, how many New Yorkers have old homes where they are accustomed to spend Thanksgiving. The people the Wilburs knew seemed inclined to spend Thanksgiving anywhere but on Long Island. They received nothing but kind and firm refusals of their well-meant invitations, and at last Amelia said:

"Well, Arthur, why don't you invite Mr. Foster? He is all alone. His family is all in Europe and he is too old, I am sure, to have any fathers or mothers in New England, and I think it would be nice to ask him."

"Heavens, Amelia!" her husband exclaimed. " Ask Mr. Foster? Why, he would be the last man I would think of asking."

"And isn't he the last man?" asked Amelia. "Haven't we asked all the rest? Just because he is your employer, and lives in a big hotel, is no reason why you should not take pity on his loneliness, and try to make his Thanksgiving day a happy one. Now, you ask him to-morrow," she continued brightly, "and if he will come he will be sure to enjoy it. And if he will not come he will see that we think something of him besides what we think of him as your employer."

"All right," said Arthur. "If you are not afraid to have him, I am not. But you know he is — well, he is a real New Yorker. I will warrant that he was born and raised right here in New York, and that he knows no more about what a real Thanksgiving day is than a Frenchman would. You will have to bear your own 23