me, children!"
"Every single day, mother!"
"Every single thing that happens."
"A fat letter every morning," they promised in chorus.
"If there is any real trouble remember to telegraph your Uncle Allan—did you write down his address, 11 Broad Street, New York? Don't bother him about little things, for he is not well, you know."
Gilbert displayed a note-book filled with memoranda and addresses.
"And in any small difficulty send for Cousin Ann," Mrs. Carey went on.
"The mere thought of her coming will make me toe the mark, I can tell you that!" was Gilbert's rejoinder.
"Better than any ogre or bug-a-boo, Cousin Ann is, even for Peter!" said
Nancy.
"And will my Peter-bird be good and make Nancy no trouble?" said his mother, lifting him to her lap for one last hug.
"I'll be an angel boy pretty near all the time," he asserted between mouthfuls of apple, "or most pretty near," he added prudently, as if unwilling to promise anything superhuman in the way of behavior. As a matter of fact it required only a tolerable show of virtue for Peter to win encomiums at any time. He would brush his curly mop of hair away from his forehead, lift his eyes, part his lips, showing a row of tiny white teeth; then a dimple would appear in each cheek and a seraphic expression (wholly at variance with the facts) would overspread the baby face, whereupon the beholder—Mother Carey, his sisters, the cook or the chambermaid, everybody indeed but Cousin Ann, who could never be wheedled—would cry "Angel boy!" and kiss him. He was even kissed now, though he had done nothing at all but exist and be an enchanting personage, which is one of the injustices of a world where a large number of virtuous and well-behaved people go unkissed to their graves!
"I know Joanna and Ellen will take good care of the housekeeping," continued Mrs. Carey, "and you will be in school from nine to two, so that the time won't go heavily. For the rest I make Nancy responsible. If she is young, you must remember that you are all younger still, and I trust you to her."
"The last time you did it, it didn't work very well!" And Gilbert gave Nancy a sly wink to recall a little matter of family history when there had been a delinquency on somebody's part.
Nancy's face crimsoned and her lips parted for a quick retort, and none too pleasant a one, apparently.
Her mother intervened quietly. "We'll never speak of 'last times,'
Gilly, or where would any of us be? We'll always think of 'next' times.
I shall trust Nancy next time, and next time and next time, and keep on
trusting till I can trust her forever!"
Nancy's face lighted up with a passion of love and loyalty. She responded to the touch of her mother's faith as a harp to the favoring wind, but she said nothing; she only glowed and breathed hard and put her trembling hand about her mother's neck and under her chin.
"Now it's time! One more kiss all around. Remember you are Mother
Carey's own chickens! There may be gales while I am away, but you must
ride over the crests of the billows as merry as so many flying fish!
Good-by! Good-by! Oh, my littlest Peter-bird, how can mother leave you?"
"I opened the lunch box to see what Ellen gave you, but I only broke off two teenty, weenty corners of sandwiches and one little new-moon bite out of a cookie," said Peter, creating a diversion according to his wont.
Ellen and Joanna came to the front door and the children flocked down the frozen pathway to the gate after their mother, getting a touch of her wherever and whenever they could and jumping up and down between whiles to keep warm. Gilbert closed the door of the carriage, and it turned to go down the street. One window was open, and there was a last glimpse of the beloved face framed in the dark blue velvet bonnet, one last wave of a hand in a brown muff.
"Oh! she is so beautiful!" sobbed Kathleen, "her bonnet is just the color of her eyes; and she was crying!"
"There never was anybody like mother!" said Nancy, leaning on the gate, shivering with cold and emotion. "There never was, and there never will be! We can try and try, Kathleen, and we must try, all of us; but mother wouldn't have to try; mother must have been partly born so!"
II
THE CHICKENS
It was Captain Carey's favorite Admiral who was responsible for the phrase by which mother and children had been known for some years. The Captain (then a Lieutenant) had brought his friend home one Saturday afternoon a little earlier than had been expected, and they went to find the family in the garden.
Laughter and the sound of voices led them to the summer-house, and as they parted the syringa bushes they looked through them and surprised the charming group.
A throng of children like to flowers were sown
About the grass beside, or climbed her knee.
I looked who were that favored company.
That is the way a poet would have described what the Admiral saw, and if you want to see anything truly and beautifully you must generally go to a poet.
Mrs. Carey held Peter, then a crowing baby, in her lap. Gilbert was tickling Peter's chin with a buttercup, Nancy was putting a wreath of leaves on her mother's hair, and Kathleen was swinging from an apple-tree bough, her yellow curls flying.
"Might I inquire what you think of that?" asked the father.
"Well," the Admiral said, "mothers and children make a pretty good picture at any time, but I should say this one couldn't be 'beat.' Two for the Navy, eh?"
"All four for the Navy, perhaps," laughed the young man. "Nancy has already chosen a Rear-Admiral and Kathleen a Commodore; they are modest little girls!"
"They do you credit, Peter!"
"I hope I've given them something—I've tried hard enough, but they are mostly the work of the lady in the chair. Come on and say how d'ye do."
Before many Saturdays the Admiral's lap had superseded all other places as a gathering ground for the little Careys, whom he called the stormy petrels.
"Mother Carey," he explained to them, came from the Latin mater cara, this being not only his personal conviction, but one that had the backing of Brewer's "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable."
"The French call them Les Oiseaux de Notre Dame. That means 'The Birds of our Lady,' Kitty, and they are the sailors' friends. Mother Carey sends them to warn seafarers of approaching storms and bids them go out all over the seas to show the good birds the way home. You'll have your hands full if you're going to be Mother Carey's chickens."
"I'd love to show good birds the way home!" said Gilbert.
"Can a naughty bird show a good bird the way home, Addy?" This bland question came from Nancy, who had a decided talent for sarcasm, considering her years. (Of course the Admiral might have stopped the children from calling him Addy, but they seemed to do it because "Admiral" was difficult, and anyway they loved him so much they simply had to take some liberties with him. Besides, although he was the greatest disciplinarian that ever walked a deck, he was so soft and flexible on land that he was perfectly ridiculous and delightful.)
The day when the children were christened Mother Carey's chickens was Nancy's tenth birthday, a time when the family was striving to give her her proper name, having begun wrong with her at the outset. She was the first, you see, and the first is something of an event, take it how you will.
It is obvious that at the beginning they could