Winterbound by Margery Williams Bianco Page A

apart the wild thing from the tame one, even in death. Not a nice thing to meet, Caroline thought, and remembered the gray fox that had howled behind the barn.
    â€œWant to try a fine warm neckpiece, Caroline?”
    But Caroline shrank back as Neal lifted the dead fox to his shoulder.
    Mary was waiting for them in the doorway. There was a grand smell of roast goose and mince pie, apple sauce and baking sweet potatoes as they crowded into the kitchen where the big table was already set. A happy joking meal, with the box of candy to finish up with and a bottle of Mary’s special three-year-old dandelion wine to drink a toast to the absent ones.
    â€œWhat I call a dinner!” said Jimmie.
    â€œTwo Christmases ago,” Neal said, “I’d been out of work for quite a spell and we were sitting down round this table here to a nice dish of frankfurters and boiled potatoes. I don’t know how come we happened to get the frankfurters, either, but anyway all at once there was a sort of crash outside, right against the woodshed door, and old Sam he started up and near knocked the table over. I went to open the door, and there outside was standing the prettiest two-year-old buck I ever saw, right there in the yard. Some dogs must have been chasing him and he’d come running down the hill, scared nearly to death, and turned right into the dooryard not knowing which way to go. I looked at him, and he looked at me, and then he got his breath and started off again down the pasture, and I said to Mary: ‘Can you beat that! Here comes our Christmas dinner knocking right at the door, and we can’t touch it! ’”
    â€œYou can’t shoot a deer any time?” asked Martin.
    â€œNot any time, not until they make an open season again, and there hasn’t been that in years. Only if it’s on your own land and you can prove to the game warden they’ve been doing damage. I kind of hate to shoot a deer any time, law or no law, but that was one time I did feel sore about it. There he stood, and there was my gun right in the corner, and just frankfurters for Christmas!”
    There was a log fire burning in the parlor and when the dishes were stacked the four older ones gathered there, while the little girls played house with the doll’s bed and tiny table that Jimmie and Martin had made and painted and the new china tea set and shining pots and pans, and the boys went out again to coast by themselves. Mary brought out a hooked rug she had just started and a boxful of rags ready cut and wound into balls for working, and the sight of the soft faded colors set Kay off immediately on suggestions for design. While their two heads were bent over the hooking frame Garry and Neal played checkers by the fire and Tommy, who had been too excited by Christmas to take his usual nap, rolled and unrolled the colored balls all over the floor with the help of the youngest cat.
    It was nearly dusk when they started home, and as Mary stood in the door with them she said: “I’m certainly going to miss you people if you ever go away. I hope you never do!”
    â€œIf we do, we’ll come back here every year for Christmas!”
    Kay had been so fascinated watching the rug pattern grow under Mary’s fingers that she wanted to start one for herself. Like everything that Kay began it was bound to be something ambitious and unusual. Trunks and closets were rummaged for old material that could be dyed, since very little of the Ellis’s discarded wardrobe was of the colors she wanted. Mary had lent her an extra rugging hook, Neal made a frame, and she wrote off to Edna for dyes and burlap. Garry, who never minded staining her hands, mixed and boiled over the kitchen stove, and the insides of the family saucepans and kettles developed strange hues that refused to scour off. Things hung outdoors were frozen stiff this weather, so the woodshed was draped with lines of dripping color, and