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We
like
babies."
    "I love babies," whispered Felicia Ann. "I hope those triplets wake up so I can hold them."
    "They always smell bad," Malcolm whispered back. He stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes.
    ***
    Mrs. Pidgeon went to the piano at the front of the multipurpose room and played a few chords to make people stop talking. It was what she did in the classroom, and it always worked there. It worked here too, with the grownups. They all became silent.
    Mr. Leroy walked to the front of the room. The multipurpose room didn't have a stage. But he stood in front of the audience, wearing a necktie today with a plump turkey on it, and he spoke in a loud, clear voice, just the way Mrs. Pidgeon had told the children that they should.
    The second-graders listened from behind the cracked-open door to their dressing room.

    "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen," Mr. Leroy said. "I'm delighted to see so many parents here today, and some grandparents, I see, and even a few little brothers and sisters."
    "And an auntie," whispered Keiko.
    "Are your triplets brothers or sisters?" Felicia Ann asked Malcolm.
    "Shhh," Malcolm said. "I'm not saying."
    "And perhaps our new room mother as well?" Mr. Leroy said in a cheerful voice, looking around the audience. "Would the second-grade room mother like to stand?
    "Maybe she's a little shy," he went on when no one stood. "But she certainly did provide wonderful refreshments, which we will enjoy after the performance.
    "Speaking of the performance, I would like to mention that this is the fifth and final Thanksgiving pageant today. I watched the kindergarten children this morning—they did quite a lively dance during which they gobbled like turkeys and flapped imaginary wings. It was a little noisier than we had expected, but we got it under control after a bit, and I think we learned quite a bit about how dangerous wing-flapping can be, actually. For those of you who heard about it and are worried, incidentally, little Chloe McAllister is going to be fine. Nothing more than a fat lip."
    Mr. Leroy straightened his tie. "After that," he went on, "the fourth grade performed quite an impressive play about
Captain Miles Standish, who arrived on the
Mayflower,
and the great Indian Massasoit who became his friend.
    "Unfortunately, Jason Carruthers and Jeffrey Hall, who were to play the roles of Miles Standish and Massasoit, are both absent today because there seems to be a stomach virus making the rounds. The other fourth graders, though, did a great job of explaining what the play would have been like if the leading characters had been available.
    "Next, the first grade had worked very hard on learning all the words of the traditional Thanksgiving song 'We Gather Together,' and they sang it with remarkable enthusiasm for the audience. Unfortunately their teacher had not taken into account how difficult the lines '
He chastens and hastens his will to make known, The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing
...' would be for people whose front teeth had recently fallen out, and I believe that was fourteen of the eighteen first-graders. But their gusto made up for their pronunciation.
    "Then, finally, just an hour ago, we had the third grade's very colorful reenactment of the first Thanksgiving dinner. The third grade is so fortunate that one father provided large cardboard cartons, one for each performer to wear, with their heads of course emerging from the tops of the cartons, and each decorated as a type of food—squash, corn, potatoes, and the like. The third graders got most of the way through a recitation and demonstration of the various courses of that
dinner. I think, actually, that it might have been the food descriptions that brought on an onslaught of the stomach virus mid-performance, so that we had some unfortunate events, during which we had to extricate several children quickly from their cartons, and we ended up with a very slippery floor—"
    "Both of the DeMarco twins