"Heigh-ho," whistles Jack, Becca's ten-year-old brother: "that you, Bec? High time you were in the house."
"S'pose I frightened you," said Becca. "Where have you been gone all the afternoon, I'd like to know? stealin' home too, across lots."
He did not deign to answer, but in confidential whispers breathed it into her ears that "he had been down to the Forge. Down to the Valley Forge, where General Washington was going to fetch down lots and lots of soldiers, and build log huts, and stay all Winter." He ended his breathless narration with an allusion that made Becca jump as though she had seen a snake. He said: "It will be bad for your turkeys."
"Why, Jack? General Washington won't steal them."
"Soldiers eat turkey whenever they can get it; and, Bec, this apple-tree isn't above three miles from the Forge. You'd better have 'em all killed for Thanksgiving. Come, I'm hungry as a bear."
"But," said Becca, grasping his jacket sleeve as they went, "I've just promised 'em that they shall not be touched."
Jack's laugh set every turkey into motion, until the tree was all in a flutter of excitement. He laughed again and again, before he could say "What a little goose you are! Just as if turkeys understood a word you said."
"But I understood if they didn't, and I should be telling my own self a lie. No, not a turkey shall die. They shall all have a real good Thanksgiving once in their lives."
Two days later, on the 18th of December, Thanksgiving Day came, the turkeys were yet alive, and Becca Blackstone was happy.
The next day General Washington's eleven thousand men marched into Valley Forge, and went out upon the cold, bleak hillsides, carrying with them almost three thousand poor fellows, too ill to march, too ill to build log huts, ill enough to lie down and die. Such a busy time as there was for days and days. Farmer Blackstone felt a little toryish in his thoughts, but the chance to sell logs and split slabs so near home as Valley Forge was not likely to happen again, and he worked away with strong good will to furnish building material. Jack went every day to the encampment, and grew quite learned in the ways of warlike men.
Becca staid at home with her mother, but secretly wished to see what the great army looked like.