Anyway, the guests arrived promptly, and I could see from their faces that they would fight that dinner to a finish. The ladies began to chat pleasantly while they sized up our furniture out of the corners of their eyes, and the men glanced carelessly around to see if I had a box of cigars which would require their attention after dinner. Pretty soon dinner was announced and they all jumped to their feet as though they had stepped on a third rail. I believe in being thrifty, but the way some of those people saved up their hunger for our dinner was too penurious for mine. I took Mrs. Hodge in and she took in my wife's dress to see if it was made over from last year's. Young Communipaw Doane tried hard not to reach the table first, but a plate of Dill-pickles caught his eye and he won from old man Hodge by an arm. The first round was oyster cocktails and everybody drew cards. This was Ollie's maiden attempt at making oyster cocktails and she had original ideas about them, which consisted of salad oil instead of tomato ketchup. The salad oil came from Italy, so the oysters were extremely foreign to the taste. After eating his cocktail Riley Hatch began to turn pale and inquired politely if we raised our own oysters. But just then little Cutey Coyne upset a glass of water and changed the subject, and the complexion of the tablecloth. The next round was mock turtle soup, and it made a deep impression, especially on Charlie Swayne, because little Casanova Golden upset her share in his lap when he least expected it. Charlie was very nice about it, however. He only swore twice, then he remembered once a gentleman always a gentleman and he did not strike the girl. After a while we all convinced Charlie that the laugh was on the soup and not on him, and when the fish came on he forgot his troubles by getting a bone in his throat. When Charlie began to talk like a trout, old man Hodge grabbed the bread knife and begged to be allowed to carve his initials on somebody's wishbone. But Joe Coyne finally pacified him by a second helping of Bermuda onions. I opened a third bottle of Pommery just to show I wasn't stingy. Then came the Thanksgiving turkey, and this is where that Swede cook of ours won the blue ribbon. My wife had told her to stuff it with chestnuts, but Ollie thought chestnuts too much of an old joke, so she stuffed it with peanut brittle. Ollie had noticed some other things about the kitchen which looked lonesome, so she decided to put them in the turkey, too. One of these was the corkscrew. When I went to carve the turkey I found a horseshoe which Ollie had put in for luck. It made my wife extremely nervous to see the can-opener, a pair of scissors, and nine clothes-pins come out of that turkey, but Jack Golden said that their last cook tried to stuff their last turkey with the garden hose, so my wife felt better.