"This is all our own fault," said old Sylvester, promptly. "We should have remembered this was thanksgiving time, and sent them something to stay their stomachs. Poor creatures, I always wondered how they got along! Send 'em some bread, Mopsey, for they never can do anything with fowls without bread!" "Send 'em some bread!" Mopsey rejoined, growing blacker and more ugly of look as she spoke: "Send 'em whips, and an osifer of the law!--the four fattest of the coop." "Never mind," said old Sylvester. "Six of the ten'drest young'uns!" "Never mind that," said old Sylvester. "I'd have them all in the county jail before sundown," urged Mopsey. "Oliver, we will go in to tea," continued the patriarch. "We have enough for tea, Mopsey?" "Yes, quite enough, Mas'r." "Then," cried the old man, striking his staff on the ground with great violence, rising to his full height, and glowing like a furnace, upon Mopsey, "then, I say, send 'em some bread!" This speech, delivered in a voice of authority, sent Mopsey, shuffling and cowering, away, without a word, and brought the sweat of horror to the brow of Oliver, which he proceeded to remove with a great cotton pocket-handkerchief, produced from his coat behind, on which was displayed in glowing colors, by some cunning artist, the imposing scene of the signers of the Declaration of Independence getting ready to affix their names. Mr. Oliver Peabody was the politician of the family, and always had the immortal Declaration of Independence at his tongue's end, or in hand. CHAPTER FOURTH. THE FORTUNES OF THE FAMILY CONSIDERED. When Oliver and old Sylvester entered the house they found all of the family gathered within, save the children, who loitered about the doors and windows, looking in, anxious-eyed, on the preparations for tea going forward under the direction of the widow Margaret, and Mopsey. The other women of the household were busy with a discussion of the merits of Mrs. Carrack, of Boston, the fashionable lady of the family. "I should like to see Mrs. Carrack above all things," said the Captain's pretty little wife, "she must be a fine woman from all I have heard of her." "Thee will have small chance, I fear, child," said Mrs. Jane Peabody, sitting buxomly in an easy arm chair, which she had quietly assumed, "she is too fine for the company of us plain folks in every point of view." "It's five years since she was here," the widow suggested as she adjusted the chairs around the table, "she said she never would come inside the house again, because the best bed-chamber was not given to her--I am sorry to say it." "She's a heathen and wicked woman," Mopsey said, shuffling at the door, and turning back on her way to the kitchen--"your poor boy was lying low of a fever and how could _she_ expect it."