The Thanksgiving dinner which shortly ensued had a solitary merit: it did not last very long. But hurried as it was, Jessica did not sit it out. The three sisters with whom she was not friendly had been quarrelling, it seemed, with Melissa, the heavy-browed and surly girl who worked out at the Fair-child farm, but all four combined in an instant against the new-comers. Lucinda had never shone in repartee, and, though she did not shrink from bearing a part in the conflict to which she suddenly found herself a party, what she was able to say only made matters worse. As for Jessica, she bit her lips in fierce restraint, and for a long time said nothing at all. Melissa had formally shaken hands with her, and had not spoken a word. When the thin turkey was put upon the table, and Mrs. Lawton had with some difficulty mangled it into eight approximately equal portions, a period of silence fell on the party--silence broken only by sounds of the carnivora which are not expected at the banquets of the polite. Even this measly fowl, badly cooked and defiled by worse than tasteless dressing though it was, represented a treat in the Lawton household, and the resident members fell upon it with eager teeth. Melissa sniffed a trifle at her portion, to let it be seen that they were better fed out on the farm, but she ate vigorously none the less. It was only Jessica who could summon no appetite, and who sat silent and sick at heart, wearily striving at the pretence of eating in order not to attract attention. She was conscious of hostile glances being cast upon her from either side, but she kept her eyes as steadily as she could upon her plate or on her father, who sat opposite and who smiled at her encouragingly from time to time. It was one of the ungracious twins who first attained the leisure in which to note Jessica’s failure to eat, and commented audibly upon the difficulty of catering to the palates of “fine ladies.” The phrase was instantly repeated with a sneering emphasis by Samantha, which was the signal for a burst of giggling, in which Melissa joined. Then Samantha, speaking very distinctly and with an ostentatious parade of significance, informed Melissa that young Horace Boyce had returned to Thessaly only the previous day, “on the very train which father went down to meet.” This treatment of Melissa as a vehicle for the introduction of disagreeable topics impressed the twins as a shrewd invention, and one of them promptly added: “Yes, M’liss’, and who do you think called here yesterday? Reuben Tracy the lawyer. He was there in the parlor for half an hour--pretty cold he must have found it--but he wasn’t alone.” “Oh, yes, we’re getting quite fashionable,” put in Samantha. “Father ought to set out a hitching-post and a carriage-block, so that we can receive our callers in style. I hope it will be a stone one, dad.” “And so do I,” broke in Lucinda, angrily, “and then I’d like to see your head pounded on it, for all it was worth.”