Jim could hold in no longer. He had become so excited that he kept rubbing one shoe against the other, twisting and squirming like an eel. At last he burst out: "An' one o' gobble-gobble was dat ornery, Mammy Henny shut him up in de coop!" Aunt Nancy turned in astonishment, and Chad, who had come in with some dishes, was about to crush him with a look, when the Colonel said, with a sly twinkle in his eye: "What did he do, Jim?" "Jes' trompled de li'l teeny chickens an' eat up all de corn an' wouldn't let nobody come nigh him. An' he was dat swelled up!" Katy laughed, and turning to the Colonel, said: "Tell me about that one." The Colonel ruminated for a moment, looked at Chad with a half-humorous expression, and motioned to little Jim to come over and stand by his chair so that he could hear the better, his own arm still about Katy, her head on his shoulder. "About that big gobbler, Katy, that was so bad they had to put him in a coop?" "Yes, that very one." "Well, when I fust knew him he was a little teeny turkey--oh, not near so high as Jim; 'bout up to Jim's knees, I reckon. He'd follow 'round after his mammy and go where she wanted him to go and mind her like a nice little turkey as he was. He didn't live on my plantation then--he lived on Judge Barbour's plantation next to mine. Well, one day, Aunt Nancy--that dear lady over there--wanted a fine young turkey, and this little knee-high turkey was growin' to be a big turkey, and so she brought him over and gave him the run of the barnyard. "She was just as good to him as she could be. She made a nice clean place for him to live in, so his feathers wouldn't get dirty any mo', and he didn't have to run 'round lookin' for grasshoppers and beetles and little worms as he did at home, but he had a nice bowl of mush eve'y day and a place to go to sleep in all by himself, and Aunt Nancy did everythin' she could to make him comfo'table. "Well, what do you think happened? Just as soon as that turkey found out he was bein' taken caare of better than the hens and the roosters and all the other little turkeys he had left at home, he began to put on airs. He breshed his feathers out and he strutted around same as if he owned the whole barnyard, and he'd go down to the pond and look at himself in the water; and he got so proud that whenever old Mrs. Hen or old Mr. Rooster would say 'Good-mornin'' to him as kind and as nice as could be, he wouldn't answer politely, but he'd stick up his head and go 'Gobble-gobble-gobble!' and then he'd swell up again and puff out his chest and march himself off. Pretty soon he got so sassy that nobody could live with him. Why, he didn't care what he did and who he stepped on. He trampled on two po' little chicks one day that were just out of the shell and mashed them flat and did all sorts of dreadful things." "What an awful turkey! Poor little chickens," sighed Katy. "Go on." "Next thing he did was to steal off and smoke cigarettes."