Mother Carey's Chickens

"Quit talkin', Pop, will yer?" whispered Digby, nudging his father. "You've kep' us from startin' to eat 'bout five minutes a'ready, an' I'm as holler as a horn!"

It was as cheery, gay, festive, neighborly, and friendly a supper as ever took place in the dining room of the Yellow House, although Governor Weatherby may have had some handsomer banquets in his time. When it was over all made their way into the rosy, bowery, summer parlor. Soon another fire sparkled and snapped on the hearth, and there were songs and poems and choruses and Osh Popham's fiddle, to say nothing of the supreme event of the evening, his rendition of "Fly like a youthful hart or roe, over the hills where spices grow," to Mother Carey's accompaniment. He always slipped up his glasses during this performance and closed his eyes, but neither grey hairs nor "specs" could dim the radiant smile that made him seem about fifteen years old and the junior of both his children.

Mrs. Harmon thought he sang too much, and told her husband privately that if he was a canary bird she should want to keep a table cover over his head most of the time, but he was immensely popular with the rest of his audience.

Last of all the entire company gathered round the old-fashioned piano for a parting hymn. The face of the mahogany shone with delight, and why not, when it was doing everything (almost everything!) within the scope of a piano, and yet the family had enjoyed weeks of good nourishing meals on what had been saved by its exertions. Also, what rational family could mourn the loss of an irregularly shaped instrument standing on three legs and played on one corner? The tall silver candle sticks gleamed in the firelight, the silver dish of polished Baldwins blushed rosier in the glow. Mother Carey played the dear old common metre tune, and the voices rang out in Whittier's hymn. The Careys all sang like thrushes, and even Peter, holding his hymn book upside down, put in little bird notes, always on the key, whenever he caught a familiar strain.

"Once more the liberal year laughs out
O'er richer stores than gems or gold;
Once more, with harvest-song and shout
Is Nature's bloodless triumph told."

"We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on;
We murmur, but the corn-ears fill;
We choose the shadow, but the sun
That casts it shines behind us still."

"O favors every year made new!
O gifts with rain and sunshine sent!
The bounty overruns our due,
The fulness shames our discontent."

XXVIII

"TIBI SPLENDET FOCUS"

There was one watcher of all this, and one listener, outside of the Yellow House, that none of the party suspected, and that was Henry

Lord, Ph.D.

When he left Mrs. Carey at the gate at five o'clock, he went back to his own house and ordered his supper to be brought him on a tray in his study. He particularly liked this, always, as it freed him from all responsibility of serving his children, and making an occasional remark; and as a matter of fact everybody was as pleased as he when he ate alone, the occasional meals Olive and Cyril had by themselves being the only ones they ever enjoyed or digested.

He studied and wrote and consulted heavy tomes, and walked up and down the room, and pulled out colored plates from portfolios, all with great satisfaction until he chanced to look at the clock when it struck ten. He had forgotten to send for the children as he had promised Mother Carey! He went out into the hall and called Mrs. Bangs in a stentorian voice. No answer. Irritated, as he always was when crossed in the slightest degree, he went downstairs and found the kitchen empty.

"Her cub of a nephew has been staying to supper with her, guzzling and cramming himself at my expense," he thought, "and now she has walked home with him! It's perfect nonsense to go after a girl of sixteen and a boy of thirteen. As if they couldn't walk along a country road at ten o'clock! Still, it may look odd if some one doesn't go, and I can't lock the house till they come, anyway."

He drew on his great coat, put on his cap, and started down the lane in no good humor. It was a crisp, starlight night and the ground was freezing fast. He walked along, his hands in his pockets, his head bent. As he went through the gate to the main road he glanced up. The Yellow House, a third of a mile distant, was a blaze of light! There must have been a candle or a lamp in every one of its windows, he thought. The ground rose a little where the house stood, and although it could not be seen in summer because of the dense foliage everywhere, the trees were nearly bare now.

"My handsome neighbor is extravagant," he said to himself with a grim smile. "Is the illumination for Thanksgiving, I wonder? Oh, no, I remember she said the party was in the nature of a housewarming."

As he went up the pathway he saw that the shades were up and no curtains drawn anywhere. The Yellow House had no intention of hiding its lights under bushels that evening, of all others; besides, there were no neighbors within a long distance.

Standing on the lowest of the governor's "circ'lar steps" he could see the corner where the group stood singing, with shining faces:—

"Once more the liberal year laughs out
O'er richer stores than gems or gold."

Mother Carey's fine head rose nobly from her simple black dress, and her throat was as white as the deep lace collar that was her only ornament.

Nancy he knew by sight, and Nancy in a crimson dress was singing her thankful heart out. Who was the dark-haired girl standing by her side, the two with arms round each other's waists,—his own Olive! He had always thought her unattractive, but her hair was smoothly braided and her eyes all aglow. Cyril stood between Gilbert and Mother Carey. Cyril, he knew, could not carry a tune to save his life, but he seemed to be opening his lips and uttering words all the same. Where was the timid eye, the "hangdog look," the shrinking manner, he so disliked in his son? Great Heavens! the boy laid his hand on Mrs. Carey's shoulder and beat time there gently with a finger, as if a mother's shoulder could be used for any nice, necessary sort of purpose.

If he knocked at the door now, he thought, he should interrupt the party; which was seemingly at its height. He, Henry Lord, Ph.D., certainly had no intention of going in to join it, not with Ossian Popham and Bill Harmon as fellow guests.

He made his way curiously around the outside of the house, looking in at all the windows, and by choosing various positions, seeing as much as he could of the different rooms. Finally he went up on the little back piazza, attracted by the firelight in the family sitting room. There was a noble fire, and once, while he was looking, Digby Popham stole quietly in, braced up the logs with a proprietary air, swept up the hearth, replaced the brass wire screen, and stole out again as quickly as possible, so that he might not miss too much of the party.

"They seem to feel pretty much at home," thought Mr. Lord.

The fire blazed higher and brighter. It lighted up certain words painted in dark green and gold on the white panel under the mantelpiece. He pressed his face quite close to the window, thinking that he must be mistaken in seeing such unconnected letters as T-i-b-i, but gradually they looked clearer to him and he read distinctly "Tibi splendet focus."

"Somebody knows his Horace," thought Henry Lord, Ph.D., as he stumbled off the piazza. "'For you the hearth-fire glows,' I shan't go in; not with that crew; let them wait; and if it gets too late, somebody else will walk home with the children."

"For you the hearth-fire glows."

He picked his way along the side of the house to the front, every window sending out its candle gleam.

"For you the hearth-fire glows."

From dozens of windows the welcome shone. Its gleams and sparkles positively pursued him as he turned his face towards the road and his own dark, cheerless house. Perhaps he had better, on the whole, keep one lamp burning in the lower part after this, to show that the place was inhabited?

"For you the hearth-fire glows."

He had "bricked up" the fireplace in his study and put an air-tight stove in, because it was simply impossible to feed an open fire and write a book at the same time. He didn't know that you could write twice as good a book in half the time with an open fire to help you! He didn't know any single one of the myriad aids that can come to you from such cheery, unexpected sources of grace and inspiration!

"For you the hearth-fire glows."

Would the words never stop ringing in his ears? Perhaps, after all, it would look queer to Mrs. Carey (he cared nothing for Popham or Harmon opinion) if he left the children to get home by themselves. Perhaps—

"FOR YOU THE HEARTH-FIRE GLOWS."

Henry Lord, Ph.D., ascended the steps, and plied the knocker. Digby Popham came out of the parlor and opened the front door.

Everybody listened to see who was the late comer at the party.

"Will you kindly tell Miss Olive and Master Cyril Lord that their father has called for them?"

Mr. Lord's cold, severe voice sounded clearly in the parlor, and every word could be distinctly heard.

Gilbert and Nancy were standing together, and Gilbert whispered instantly to his sister: "The old beast has actually called for Olive and Cyril!"

"Hush, Gilly! He must be a 'new beast' or he wouldn't have come at all!" answered Nancy.

XXIX

"TH' ACTION FINE"

December, January, and February passed with a speed that had something of magic in it. The Careys had known nothing heretofore of the rigors of a State o' Maine winter, but as yet they counted it all joy. They were young and hearty and merry, and the air seemed to give them all new energy. Kathleen's delicate throat gave no trouble for the first time in years; Nancy's cheeks bloomed more like roses than ever; Gilbert, growing broader shouldered and deeper chested daily, simply revelled in skating and coasting; even Julia was forced into an activity wholly alien to her nature, because it was impossible for her to keep warm unless she kept busy.

Mother Carey and Peter used to look from a bedroom window of a clear cold morning and see the gay little procession start for the academy. Over the dazzling snow crust Olive and Cyril Lord would be skimming to meet the Careys, always at the same point at the same hour. There were rough red coats and capes, red mittens, squirrel caps pulled well down over curly and smooth heads; glimpses of red woolen stockings; thick shoes with rubbers over them; great parcels of books in straps. They looked like a flock of cardinal birds, Mother Carey thought, as the upturned faces, all aglow with ruddy color, smiled their morning good-bye. Gilbert had "stoked" the great stove in the cellar full of hard wood logs before he left, and Mrs. Carey and Peter had a busy morning before them with the housework. The family had risen at seven. Julia had swept and dusted; Kathleen had opened the bedroom windows, made the washstands tidy, filled the water pitchers, and changed the towels. Gilbert had carried wood and Peter kindlings, for the fires that had to be laid on the hearths here and there. Mother had cooked the plain breakfast while Nancy put the dining room in order and set the table, and at eight o'clock, when they sat down to plates piled high with slices of brown and white bread, to dishes of eggs or picked-up cod fish, or beans warmed over in the pot, with baked potatoes sometimes, and sometimes milk toast, or Nancy's famous corn muffins, no family of young bears ever displayed such appetites! On Saturday mornings there were griddle cakes and maple syrup from their own trees; for Osh Popham had shown them in the spring how to tap their maples, and collect the great pails of sap to boil down into syrup. Mother Carey and Peter made the beds after the departure of the others for school, and it was pretty to see the sturdy Peter-bird, sometimes in his coat and mittens, standing on the easiest side of the beds and helping his mother to spread the blankets and comforters smooth. His fat legs carried him up and downstairs a dozen times on errands, while his sweet piping voice was lifted in a never ending stream of genial conversation, as he told his mother what he had just done, what he was doing at the present moment, how he was doing it, and what he proposed to do in a minute or two. Then there was a lull from half past ten to half past eleven, shortened sometimes on baking days, when the Peter-bird had his lessons. The old-fashioned kitchen was clean and shining by that time. The stove glistened and the fire snapped and crackled. The sun beamed in at the sink window, doing all he could for the climate in the few hours he was permitted to be on duty in a short New England winter day. Peter sat on a cricket beside his mother's chair and clasped his "Reading without Tears" earnestly and rigidly, believing it to be the key to the universe. Oh! what an hour of happiness to Mother Carey when the boy would lift the very copy of his father's face to her own; when the well-remembered smile and the dear twinkle of the eyes in Peter's face would give her heart a stab of pain that was half joy after all, it was so full to the brim of sweet memories. In that warm still hour, when she was filling the Peter-bird's mind and soul with heavenly learning, how much she learned herself! Love poured from her, through voice and lips and eyes, and in return she drank it in thirstily from the little creature who sat there at her knee, a twig growing just as her bending hand inclined it; all the buds of his nature opening out in the mother-sunshine that surrounded him. Eleven thirty came all too soon. Then before long the kettle would begin to sing, the potatoes to bubble in the saucepan, and Mother Carey's spoon to stir the good things that had long been sizzling quietly in an iron pot. Sometimes it was bits of beef, sometimes mutton, but the result was mostly a toothsome mixture of turnips and carrots and onions in a sea of delicious gravy, with surprises of meat here and there to vary any possible monotony. Once or twice a week dumplings appeared, giving an air of excitement to the meal, and there was a delectable "poor man's stew" learned from Mrs. Popham; the ingredients being strips of parsnip, potatoes cut in quarters, a slice or two of sweet browned pork for a flavor, and a quart of rich milk, mixed with the parsnip juices into an appetizing sauce. The after part of the dinner would be a dish of baked apples with warm gingerbread, or sometimes a deep apple pandowdy, or the baked Indian pudding that was a syrupy, fragrant concoction made of corn meal and butter and molasses baked patiently in the oven for hours.