t 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 couldn't
spend until we knew we could stay in the house. I didn't describe her,
of course, to Mr. Hamilton; I just told him she was very businesslike,
and yes, I remember now, I told him you said she was a very fine person;
that's about all. But you see how clever he is! he just has 'instinks,'
as Mr. Popham says, and you don't have to tell him much about anything."

If you are intending to bring the water from the well into the
house and put a large stove in the cellar to warm some of the
upper rooms; if you are papering and painting inside, and
keeping the place in good condition, you are preserving my
property and even adding to its value; so under the
circumstances I could not think of accepting any rent in
money.

"No rent! Not even the sixty dollars!" exclaimed Nancy.

"Look; that is precisely what he says."

"There never was such a dear since the world began!" cried Nancy
joyously. "Oh! do read on; there's a lot more, and the last may
contradict the first."

Shall I tell you what more the Careys may do for me, they who
have done so much already?

"So much!" quoted Nancy with dramatic emphasis. "Oh, he _is_ a dear!"

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