d Mother Carey's spoon to stir the good things that
had long been sizzling quietly in an iron pot. Sometimes it was bits of
beef, sometimes mutton, but the result was mostly a toothsome mixture of
turnips and carrots and onions in a sea of delicious gravy, with
surprises of meat here and there to vary any possible monotony. Once or
twice a week dumplings appeared, giving an air of excitement to the
meal, and there was a delectable "poor man's stew" learned from Mrs.
Popham; the ingredients being strips of parsnip, potatoes cut in
quarters, a slice or two of sweet browned pork for a flavor, and a quart
of rich milk, mixed with the parsnip juices into an appetizing sauce.
The after part of the dinner would be a dish of baked apples with warm
gingerbread, or sometimes a deep apple pandowdy, or the baked Indian
pudding that was a syrupy, fragrant concoction made of corn meal and
butter and molasses baked patiently in the oven for hours.

Mother had the dishes to wash after she had tucked the Peter-bird under
the afghan on the sitting room sofa for his daily nap, but there was
never any grumbling in her heart over the weary days and the
unaccustomed tasks; she was too busy "making things make themselves." If
only there were a little more money! That was her chief anxiety; for the
unexpected, the outside sources of income were growing fewer, and in a
year's time the little hoard would be woefully small. Was she doing all
that she could, she wondered, as her steps flew over the Yellow House
from attic to cellar. She could play the piano and sing; she could speak
three languages and read four; she had made her curtsy at two foreign
courts; admiration and love had followed her ever since she could
remember, and here she was, a widow at forty, living in a half-deserted
New England village, making parsnip stews for her children's dinner.
Well, it was a time of preparation, and its rigors and self-denials must
be cheer fully faced. She ought to be thankful that she was able to get
a simple dinner that her children could eat; she ought to be thankful
that her beef and parsnip stews and cracker puddings and corn bread were
being transmuted into blood and brawn and brain-tissue, to help the
world along somewhere a little later! She ought to be grateful that it
was her blessed fortune to be sending four rosy, laughing, vigorous
young people down the snowy street to the white-painted academy; that it
was her good luck to see four heads