When we got home, I climbed down from the wagon and skipped on toward the front porch. Mierd's old Nero came around the corner of the house and met me at the yard gate. When I stopped to pet him, he purred and rubbed his back up against my legs. Mama called to me from the kitchen and told me to run and tell Grandpa and Grandma that we were home from church. "Tell them I'll have Grandma's tray ready in just a little bit—soon as I can warm up the chicken and dumplings." In a few minutes I was back, and I found Mama in the kitchen already setting things on Grandma's dinner tray. "Mama, you know what Grandma Ming said?" "No, there's no telling 'bout your grandma. What'd she tell you this time?" "She said if I stand 'hind the door and eat a chicken foot, it'll make me pretty!" "Goodness me! I'd forgotten that old saying." "Can I do it, Mama?" "You can try it, if you want to. That is, if the old rooster's feet haven't boiled all to pieces." I followed Mama over to the cook stove and watched her lift the cover off the stew pot. White steam whoofed up, but she jerked her head back before it could get on her face. With a big spoon, she started stirring through the hot simmering dumplings. "Here's one foot. Well, here's the other one. You may as well have both of them. But now, Bandershanks, don't be expecting too much." Mama put the chicken feet on a saucer and handed it to me. "Careful now. They're hot." "Which door, Mama?" "It won't matter. Try that one." She pointed to the door between the kitchen and the fireplace room. I slid myself in behind it and squatted down to wait for all the steam to float away from the saucer. Then I happened to remember that Grandma Ming had said if I wanted to get pretty to _stand_ behind the door and eat a chicken foot, so I stood back up again. As I got up, one piece of my chicken slid off the saucer and fell to the floor. That was all right. I just wiped it off good with the tail of my underskirt. When I had finished chewing up every last piece of skin and soft gristle sticking to the bones, I set my saucer on the floor and darted over to the bureau by Mama's bed. But its looking glass had wavy streaks, so I ran across the hall to the big dresser in the front room. After a few minutes I decided I'd have to go back in the kitchen to Mama. "Mama, them chicken bones ain't no good! I got to the looking glass, and it was— It was— It—" "It was what, hon?" "My same face!" "Well, don't cry! You look fine. Sometimes it takes a long time for a girl to get extra pretty. Some need lots of chicken feet." "I wish every chicken had a hundred feet!" Papa called me to come over to the kitchen bench where he was sitting. "Come on, sugar." He took out his pocket handkerchief to wipe my sticky fingers. Then he lifted me up in his arms. "You look real beautiful to me."