"So've we," retorted John, undaunted by this itemized account. "Your turkey may be bigger'n ours, but it won't taste as good, for my ma (he'd forgotten his assertion regarding Louise) is the best cook in the whole world and there isn't anyone can beat her." Certain empty pangs in nature's alarm clock brought him home half an hour early to inquire about dinner. He was most starved to death. Wouldn't mother hurry it up? Mother couldn't--expert cookery was not to be hurried. He'd better go out again for a while. Instead, he carried the morning paper into the parlor and lounged in the big easy chair. The minutes slipped past as he devoured news items, the fiction supplement, and miraculous patent medicine announcements with amusing impartiality. He turned to an inner page and found a huge advertisement staring him in the face. At the top, floated a streamer with the legend, "You furnish the girl, we furnish the house!" Further down the page were furniture bargains innumerable, for sale on a plan of "One dollar down, seventy-five cents per week," and in the center, between heavy rules, was the announcement, "Four rooms, furnished complete, only ninety-five dollars!" "John," called his father from the dining-room. "Come to dinner!" He threw the paper from him in sudden exultation, and danced in to the dining-table. His eye took in each detail of the evenly browned national bird, the long, slender stalks of celery in the dainty china dish, the deep-red cranberry jelly, the appetizing roasted potatoes, and the golden squash, and he smiled happily. "Jiminy, that looks good, Mother!" He plumped into his seat. "Hurry up, dad, I'm most ready to eat the house!" But through his brain, as he attacked a third helping of turkey and its accessories, there still ran the exultant echo of "Four rooms, furnished complete, only ninety-five dollars!" Thus did the day become a real Thanksgiving to him. CHAPTER X CONCERNS SANTA CLAUS MOSTLY At early dusk of the Friday holiday, he scampered to a hiding place underneath a house porch while Sid DuPree, his face buried in his arms, stood against a tree trunk and counted "Five hundred by five" as rapidly as he could. But as the cry of "Coming" echoed between the closely built houses, John's conscience suddenly robbed him of all the pleasure in the game of "Hide and seek." An afternoon of suitcase jobs had been frittered away, and the paper wagon was due in another fifteen minutes. So he withdrew reluctantly to haunt the walk in front of the delicatessen store and wonder that the work upon which he had entered with such gusto was becoming so irksome.