Mother Carey's Chickens
My son Tom, when he went down to Beulah before starting for China, visited the house and at my request put away my mother's picture safely. He is a clever boy, and instead of placing the thing in an attic where it might be injured, he tucked it away,—where do you think,—in the old brick oven of the room that is now, I suppose, your dining room. It is a capital hiding-place, for there had been no fire there for fifty years, nor ever will be again. I have other portraits of her with me, on this side of the water. Please remove the one I speak of from its wrappings and hang it over the mantel shelf in the west bedroom.
"My bedroom! I shall love to have it there," said Mother Carey.
Then, once a year, on my mother's birthday,—it is the fourth of July and an easy date to remember,—will my little friend Miss Nancy, or any of the other Careys, if she is absent, pick a little nosegay of daisies and buttercups (perhaps there will even be a bit of early Queen Anne's lace) and put it in a vase under my mother's picture? That shall be the annual rent paid for the Yellow House to Lemuel Hamilton by the Careys!
Tears of joy sprang to the eyes of emotional Nancy. She rose to her feet and paced the greensward excitedly.
"Oh, mother, I did n't think there could be another such man after knowing father and the Admiral. Is n't it all as wonderful as a fairy story?"
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