"Now, mother!" Elizabeth exclaimed, "don't begin to lay out work I can't get done. The tidies are not hard, and I could do the shams, but those curtains are not to be thought of. I'd be so tired if I had to go to work and wash all that, after the washing I put on the line to-day, that I just wouldn't be able to get the dinner on the table Thursday. Talking about the dinner, I think we'd better have two turkeys. I can roast two by putting them in the one big pan." Mrs. Hunter was willing that the younger woman should prove her talent as a cook, but she planned to take some of the necessary things upon her own shoulders, and to take her son into her schemes for brightening things up a bit. Accordingly, the next morning she asked John to help her take the curtains down. Elizabeth had been so full of her own plans that she had forgotten to tell John's mother that she intended to keep them secret till she had all her preparations made. The next morning when she heard the thud of some one stepping down from a chair, and her husband say: "There you are! How do you happen to be taking the curtains down at this time of the week?" she realized as she had never done before how much afraid of him she really was, for her pulses bounded, and her ears boomed like cannon, long before John had time to appear in the door to inquire who was coming, and why they were to do so. With a look very much like guilt, Elizabeth told over the names of her proposed guests, but with Mrs. Hunter in the next room she could not tell him why it meant so much to her to ask these people to dine with them. The customary protest was offered without delay. "I don't believe I'd do it, dear. Thanksgiving is a day for home folks, not neighbours, and, besides, see all the work it will make." "The work is just what we choose to make it. If I'd known mother was going to clean house I wouldn't have said anything about it," Elizabeth answered sullenly. "Sh!" John Hunter said in a low tone and with a look of anger that was direct and full of meaning. Elizabeth was ready to cry. She was angry. In every move she made she was checkmated; not because it was not a good move, but because it was hers. She could readily have given up any one thing as it came along, but the true meaning and spirit of these interferences were beginning to dawn upon her. However, once more she yielded to the unreasonable wishes of her husband and the dinner was given up. She made no attempt to finish the mincemeat they had planned to chop after dinner, but after putting the baby to sleep threw a shawl about her and slipping out of the house ran to the barn and down the creek in the pasture while John was helping his mother rehang the freshly ironed curtains.