The Talkative Wig

They knocked at Granny Horton's door, and she, in a kind, gentle voice, replied, "Come in!" Willie, pretending to be a girl, told how she and her brother and sister had come from the farther part of the town, where they lived in the woods with a mother who was very old, and had hardly any thing to eat; and how they wanted something good to carry to her for thanksgiving day--a little flour, or a chicken, or any thing; that it was too hard for his dear mother to have nothing but beans on that day; that beans were what they lived on commonly.

He looked so mournful, and spoke in such a mournful tone that the dear old woman, after thinking one moment, said to him, "I have two chickens, a qu