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."