[Illustration: I]T was the day before Thanksgiving. Cold weather had come on early. The ground had been frozen solid for several days, and the country roads were “smooth as glass”; so Grandpa Kirke said when he came home from the post-office Tuesday afternoon. “But I shouldn’t wonder if we were to have snow before morning,” he added. And at this the little granddaughter Lucy L. clapped her hands gleefully. The boy Whittier said nothing, but presently a noise was heard up in the wood-house chamber, and Mrs. Kirke said in a startled tone, “What’s that?” Grandpa stepped to the door and called, “Whittier!” [Illustration: “GRANDMA KIRKE MIGHT GIVE YOU A BREAKFAST.”] “Sir?” responded the boy quickly. “Oh! you are there.” “Coming in a minute; do you want anything?” said Whittier, and in less than a minute the boy appeared below stairs with his sled. “Looks pretty well to start on a second winter with!” he said, as he dusted and examined the treasure. “Say, Lucy Larcom, how will you like to ride to school on the Flyaway to-morrow morning?” Grandma laughed, and said, “You seem to be counting on snow, for sure.” “But you know grandpa said maybe it would snow, and when grandpa says maybe, it most always comes so,” said Lucy. Sure enough snow lay on the ground, pure and white, to the depth of several inches when they looked out that morning before Thanksgiving Day. The children could scarcely be prevailed upon to eat their breakfast, so eager were they to get off to school with the Flyaway. Grandma said: “This won’t last long; snow that falls upon frozen ground never stays. It is the snow that comes in the mud that makes sleighing to last.” This somewhat chilled their expectations, but Lucy concluded that the snow would last until recess, anyway. As the two started off grandma, watching them from the window, said with a sigh, “How much Whittier looks like our John at his age!” “God forbid that he should grow up to remind you of John!” replied Mr. Kirke, almost bitterly. Mrs. Kirke washed the dishes and tidied the room in silence, then stepping to her husband’s side she laid her hand upon his shoulder, and said softly, “Joseph, to-morrow is Thanksgiving Day!” “Well?” “I have made the pies and the pudding and the plum cake that John always liked so well, and now if John should come home?” “Well?” this time the monosyllable was spoken a trifle less impatiently. “If he should come home you would receive him? Remember, Joseph, John is our first-born.” “’Tain’t no ways likely he’ll come!” “I don’t know; someway I’ve been thinking lik’sanyway he’ll be thinking about the old home when Thanksgiving comes round. Anyway, I’ve made them things for him, but then,” she added, more to herself than to her husband, “I’m always ready for him. The bed is always made up for him, and there is always something cooked that he likes.”