h slices of brown and white bread, to dishes of eggs or picked-up cod
fish, or beans warmed over in the pot, with baked potatoes sometimes,
and sometimes milk toast, or Nancy's famous corn muffins, no family of
young bears ever displayed such appetites! On Saturday mornings there
were griddle cakes and maple syrup from their own trees; for Osh Popham
had shown them in the spring how to tap their maples, and collect the
great pails of sap to boil down into syrup. Mother Carey and Peter made
the beds after the departure of the others for school, and it was pretty
to see the sturdy Peter-bird, sometimes in his coat and mittens,
standing on the easiest side of the beds and helping his mother to
spread the blankets and comforters smooth. His fat legs carried him up
and downstairs a dozen times on errands, while his sweet piping voice
was lifted in a never ending stream of genial conversation, as he told
his mother what he had just done, what he was doing at the present
moment, how he was doing it, and what he proposed to do in a minute or
two. Then there was a lull from half past ten to half past eleven,
shortened sometimes on baking days, when the Peter-bird had his lessons.
The old-fashioned kitchen was clean and shining by that time. The stove
glistened and the fire snapped and crackled. The sun beamed in at the
sink window, doing all he could for the climate in the few hours he was
permitted to be on duty in a short New England winter day. Peter sat on
a cricket beside his mother's chair and clasped his "Reading without
Tears" earnestly and rigidly, believing it to be the key to the
universe. Oh! what an hour of happiness to Mother Carey when the boy
would lift the very copy of his father's face to her own; when the
well-remembered smile and the dear twinkle of the eyes in Peter's face
would give her heart a stab of pain that was half joy after all, it was
so full to the brim of sweet memories. In that warm still hour, when she
was filling the Peter-bird's mind and soul with heavenly learning, how
much she learned herself! Love poured from her, through voice and lips
and eyes, and in return she drank it in thirstily from the little
creature who sat there at her knee, a twig growing just as her bending
hand inclined it; all the buds of his nature opening out in the
mother-sunshine that surrounded him. Eleven thirty came all too soon.
Then before long the kettle would begin to sing, the potatoes to bubble
in the saucepan, an