Jasper Republican, Volume 2, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1875 — WINNY’S WISH-BONE. [ARTICLE]

WINNY’S WISH-BONE.

a thanksgiving-turkey story. The big brown turkey’s days were numbered. For several weeks Aunt Rhoda had fed him like a prince or a pacha, in view of his anticipated sudden death, and now as she stood by the kitchen table finishing up tbe last touches to the pumpkinpies that were to “ follow his remains” she said to Winny, who sat near her stoning raisins for the mince-meat: “My cup of happiness would be full if Joel could help eat him!” “ Joel eat who, auntie?” and Winny’s brown eyes sparkled and her red lips grew redder with the laugh she was struggling to keep behind the wall of even, perfect, white teeth. Aunt Rhoda had such a curious way of saying things, continuing a train of thought' in her own mind and expecting everybody would know just what the links meant. “ Why, eat old Gobble, to be sure; don’t you bear him singing his last Bong out in the yard ? They say swans sing a death song, why shouldn’t turkeys? He knows he is to be killed shortly. Ah, me! Thanksgiving, and he to be away on sea! —and he’s so fat and nice.” Winny laughed outright now as she cried: “Well, auntie, I suppose you mean Gobble is ‘nice and fat’ and Joel is ‘away on sea;’ but If Joel isn't hero I think we can have just as good a time picking old Gobble’s bones!” and a toss of the head told very plainly that Joel, in its curly estimation, would not be such a very desirable acquisition to the festive board.

Winny WeMen was Aunt Rhoda’s niece’s child. Siifce the death of her parents—not quite a year—Winny had come up country to live with her mother’s aunt, and as the old lady was quite alone now, her only child, Joel, having gone to sea, she was very glad to have the brightfaced, merry girl as a constant companion. Winny had lived in the city all her life before she came to Aunt Rhoda an orphan, and she knew very little of country people and their ways, but 'she liked them now, since she lived among the good, honesthearted folks who made the “ways” pleasant, and they all grew to love the pleasant-faced, bright city girl. Winny had seen very little of her annt before she came to her for a home, and oi Joel she remembered nothing, save that when she was a very little, short girl he was a very tall, awkward boy, who used to bring home the cows and help milk them with his great red hands in the barnyard. Aunt Rhoda talked incessantly of him, and Winny was tired of the sound of his name and the list of his virtues; and im_ agined, besides, he must be a middle-aged man by this time, instead of the “ boy* Aunt Rhoda called him. “ Homely and awkward still, no doubt,” she thought to hdrself, when Aunt Rhoda ended her tales oi his “ goodnesses” with her usual “ and there isn’t another boy like him anywhere round!”

This Thanksgiving Winny expected two of her girl-friends from the city to come out and have an old-fashioned country dinner, and Aunt Rhoda had invited the young doctor from the' village to call in the evening; and besides, the girls were to have two young gentlemen-friendsto'drive out with in the evening and take them home; so that altogether Winny had a pleasant time in prospect without Joel, and was consequently more interested in her thoughts ot them than in Aunt Rhoda’s wishes tor her absent son. Very selfish, no doubt, but very girl-like and natural. Thanksgiving morning dawned clear and cold. Poor Gobble was beginning to turn a pale golden brown in the oven when Winny’s friends drove up to Annt Rhoda’s hospitable door, where Winny stood awaiting them. Such kissing and embracing and laughing and talking as there was in the qniet old house! Annt Rhoda wiped her eyes as she listened to the merry voices, and said to herself as she basted tbe turkey: “If my boy was only here—and he’s roasting so nice and brown, too!” “Who’s coming after you, girlsr* asked Winny, when the overskirts were all pinned back tighter and the crimps pulled out “fluffier.” The three girls came dewn-staira In the parlor, where Aunt Rhoda had had an old-fashioned wood fire bnilt on the hearth. “ Isn’t that gorgeous?” cried the girls toge’ber, girl-fashion, as they entered the room. “ Who is coming, did yon ask?’ 1 continued Katie Grafts, settling herself in •Aunt Rhoda’s big chair.

“Well, Miss Winny, I'll tell you. Two of the splendidest young men you ever saw! We know yon will like them —and one we invited on purpose for you to fall in love with, and vice vena." “Indeed! How kind," said Winny, laughing. “ But I never intend to marry, so I shan’t fall in love. May I ask, however, who the youth is— ‘ what’s his name or where’s his home?” “ No; don’t tell her, Sne,” cried Katie, stopping her companion’s mouth with a dimpled white hand. “ Let’s hang up a wish-bone over the door for Winny, and then see if the right one comes in under it first.” “ But supposing it’s the wrong one —Dr. Gray may come, first —what then?” asked Winny. Why, whoever it is we’ll give up our interest in him. Yon shall have the first man who comes in under the wish-bone—-shan’t she, Sue ?” and the ripples of laughter reached Aunt Rhoda again, and made iter sigh. ; Such a dinner! Old Gobble in state at one end, chicken-pie that melted in one’s mouth at the other, to say nothing oi Aunt Rhoda’s famous canned com and peas and beans; then the mince-pies and pumpkin-pies and plum-pudding! Ah, Aunt Rhoda knew what girls liked, and helped them bountifully; and there wasn’t a merrier table anywhere round the country that day than Aunt Rhoda’s. To be sore, when they first sat down Aunt Rhoda was a trifle pale and looked as though a very little would make her cry instead of laugh; but the girls kept back the tears and, with their happy* faces before her, she put her sad thoughts away. “And now, girls, this is Winny’s wishbone, and we’ll hang it right over the parlor door and we’ll all watch to see who enters firat,” and Katie Crafts, the tallest of the three, mounted a chair and hyng old Gobble’s breast-bone over tbe parlor door. It soon grew dark enough for lights, and they were all sitting round a warm, blazing fire, listening to Aunt Rhoda tell how Joel came to go to sea, when steps were heard coming up the walk aud a knock at the door announced the arrival of some of the expected guests. “ Now, Winny, take a good look at your future husband,” whispered Kate; and, as she spoke, a tall, handsome, sunbrowned man rushed into the room and took Aunt Rhoda in his arms and kissed her again and again. “ And to think it’s Joel, after all!” said Aunt Rhoda, after the excitement of his unexpected return had subsided and she had finished hugging and crying over her boy and had introduced him, twice over, to all three girls. “ Why, who else would it be, mother? Surely you wouldn’t welcome My other man as warmly aa you have me!” and Joel looked at his mother in a very natural sort of surprise. “ No—no—but old Gobble, you know —and Winny’a breast-bone ” Aunt Rhoda began, in her usual bewildering, mixed-up fashion. “Oh, auntie—please!” whispered Winny in a beseeching tone; and then auntie laughed and stopped short, and just then the two young gentlemen and Dr. Gray arrived, and Joel forgot, in the introductions that followed and the merry gamesthat made the evening all too short—forgot his mother’s mysterious half explanation of her strange wonderment that it “ should be him, after all!” “Let us know if it comes true, Winny,” cried the girls as they bade their friend good-by, and Winny shook her curls at them and echoed, “If it comes true!"

That night when she had gone up to her room Winny thought to herself, as she combed oat her long, brown ringlets: “ What an improvement the sea must be to ugly boys. Here is second-cousin Joel a handsome man—and he used to be a hideous boy! Not so old either. He can’t be more than twenty-seven. 1 was five when he used to take me to the barnyard to see him milk. Nine years are a big gap when one is flve*. Wonder if he thinks I have changed?” and Winny held the candle clde to the glass and scrutinized her pretty, dimpled, rosy face very closety.

Strangely enough Joel’s thoughts seemed to ran the same way that night “ What a pretty girl Winny has grown into. How the years change one,” he said to his mother after Win*y had bade them good-night. “ Indeed she is—and as good as pretty. I only wish I had a daughter just like her,” answered Aunt Rhoda warmly. “Would you like a daughter, mother?” asked Joel, taking up Winny’s picture that lay on the table and studying it intently. “ Yes—(me just like Winny, Joel—and if you’ll look on top of the parlor-door maybe you’ll find one,” replied Aunt Rhoda in her rambling, queer mode of speech; and with these words she kissed her boy good night and went to bed. “ What on earth does mother mean? Is she crazy? Look on top of the parlordoor for a daughter! Well, I’ll look!’’ and, reaching up his hand, Joel found Winny’s wish-bone. “Ah, ha! That’s the answer to the riddle, is it? lam agreed! Til keep it for a talisman;” and, with a laugh to himself at the thought, he put old Gobble’s bone in his vest pocket. Joel’s ship had come home quite unexpectedly, bat it stayed a longer time in port than he thought it would—long enough for him to find his mother * daughter and himself a wife, “on top of the parlor door, too*” he declared ever after. When old Gobble’s sons and daughters began to ran round the door-yard that spring, Winny wrote down to her girl friends; v.-. A . && Dear Girls—ln old Gobble's breast-bone a heart beat for me! Come see If ft bas not

“ come true”—lor on Easter Monday a wedding will take place at Aunt Rhode’s, and It is altogether toe result of our eating the Thanksgiving turkey and your hanging up Winny’s wish-bone. —Hearth and Home.