In fifteen minutes Mother turns the lobsters out, red as old-fashioned winter underwear. The family fall to with hammers and forks and fingers to get the meat out of the deep shells. That is, the she-folks fall to with all those irons. Not Peter, not Andrew, not James. Not Father or Uncle Timothy. They fall to with their own pickers and stealers. They use their own bare hands. Their hands know just where to find the right joint and the crucial spots to press with the thumbs to crack the stoutest shells across. The males of the farm crush the tails and the claws in their cupped hands. They put their palms together in the attitude of prayer and out plops the pink meat. The menfolk yield to temptation, but they leave enough meat to fill the ten-quart bowl.
Mother melts two squares of the farms newest butter in the stew kettle's bottom, pours in the sweet Niagara of meat and juice. She sautés the mess five, six, seven minutes, till the petals of meat begin to crinkle up at their edges. Then she pours in six to seven quarts of new milk and a whole quart of half-soured cream from milk that has stood down in the cellarway two days, and she stirs like mad with her iron spoon to keep the milk from curdling. She brings the whole mess just to a fierce boil. The stew begins to “ scum” and turn saffron at its surface. Uncle Timothy's mustaches are quivering like poppy trees in a strong east wind.
The mother of the house ladles the lobster out into her biggest bowls, sends James hot-foot down cellar for the dill pickles, passes out cartwheels of pilot bread and bowls of the best sea chowder known to sinful man to all the farm's hungry crew. They dish op their bellyfuls of fat of the Promised Land. Uncle Timothy's nose glows like the ten lobster tails he has just eaten. Uncle Cephus comes in, on the scent of the lobster stew on the May wind, just in time to clean out the last pint or two.
On the wings of this stew, Peter, who couldn' t be dragged by a yoke of young oxen to dig dandelion greens for his mother, goes straight over to Lucy Brown's farm. In the deep after glow of this day at the high-water mark of dandelion week, guided by the glowing lanterns of dandelions in the grass, Peter digs up enough octopi of edible iron to make a mess for the whole Brown family, including the unfillable twins of eight, Roger and Robin. He takes them to Lucy's mother and turns them out on her pantry shelf. Mrs. Brown is delighted and talks to him as if he were a man as she picks the greens over. This is her first chance of the year to put iron into her small husband. She starts the greens in her iron kettle with a whole half pound of pork in their center, to cook all night long on the back of the stove and till dinner-time next day.
And when Lucy suddenly appears from outdoors with the first of the trilliums in her hands and the evening's stars in her eyes, Lucy's mother gets Peter and Lucy cup custard, and the two of them eat the custards together at the table. Peter's is saffroned with nutmeg all over its golden crust, and he drinks in his regained love with nutmeg in his mind. And doesn' t Mrs. Brown up and force two more of her best baked desserts on Peter! And doesn' t Peter, in spite of the fact that he is welling up with lobster stew and love, eat both cups to the last sliver of yellow!
Suddenly, with the dandelions all turning to white-haired ghosts, with the shad beginning to smack the night waters off the farm, and with all the small birds jumping out of their nests at once and learning to fly or being eaten by the cat, school lets out with a confused tangle of barefooted boys whooping for freedom.
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