Mother Carey's Chickens
said Mrs. Carey. "The painted one must always have been the guest chamber."
She could only move from bed to chair, and her greatest pleasure was to sit by the sunset window and look at the daisies and buttercups waving in that beautiful sloping stretch of field with the pine woods beyond. After the grass was mown, and that field was always left till the last for her sake, she used to sit there and wait for Queen Anne's lace to come up; its tall stems and delicate white wheels nodding among the grasses.
"Oh! I do like him!" exclaimed Nancy impetuously. "Can't you see him, mother? It's so nice of him to remember that they always mowed the hayfield last for his mother's sake, and so nice of him to think of Queen Anne's lace all these years!"
Now as to business, your Cousin Ann is quite right when she tells you that you ought not to put expensive improvements on another person's property lest you be disturbed in your tenancy. That sort of cousin is always right, whatever she says. Mine was not named Ann; she was Emma, but the principle is the same.
"Nancy!" asked Mrs. Carey, looking away from the letter again, "did you say anything about your Cousin Ann?"
"Yes, some little thing or other; for it was her money that we could n't spend until we knew
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