bending eagerly over their books
around the evening lamp, and have them all turn to her for help and
encouragement in the hard places. Why should she complain, so long as
the stormy petrels were all working and playing in Mother Carey's water
garden where they ought to be; gathering strength to fly over or dive
under the ice-pack and climb Shiny Wall? There is never any gate in the
wall; Tom the Water Baby had found that out for himself; so it is only
the plucky ones who are able to surmount the thousand difficulties they
encounter on their hazardous journey to Peacepool. How else, if they had
not learned themselves, could Mother Carey's chickens go out over the
seas and show good birds the way home? At such moments Mrs. Carey would
look at her image in the glass and say, "No whimpering, madam! You can't
have the joys of motherhood without some of its pangs! Think of your
blessings, and don't be a coward!--

"Who sweeps a room as by God's laws
Makes that and th' action fine."

Then her eyes would turn from blue velvet to blue steel, and strength
would flow into her from some divine, benignant source and transmute her
into father as well as mother!

Was the hearth fire kindled in the Yellow House sending its glow through
the village as well as warming those who sat beside it? There were
Christmas and New Year's and St. Valentine parties, and by that time
Bill Harmon saw the woodpile in the Carey shed grow beautifully less. He
knew the price per cord,--no man better; but he and Osh Popham winked at
each other one windy February day and delivered three cords for two,
knowing that measurement of wood had not been included in Mother Carey's
education. Natty Harmon and Digby Popham, following examples a million
per cent better than parental lectures, asked one afternoon if they
shouldn't saw and chop some big logs for the fireplaces.

Mrs. Carey looked at them searchingly, wondering if they could possibly
guess the state of her finances, concluded they couldn't and said
smilingly: "Indeed I will gladly let you saw for an hour or two if
you'll come and sit by the fire on Saturday night, when we are going to
play spelling games and have doughnuts and root beer."

The Widow Berry, who kept academy boarders, sent in a luscious mince pie
now and then, and Mrs. Popham and Mrs. Harmon brought dried apples or
pumpkins, winter beets and Baldwin apples. It was little enough, they
thought, when the Yellow House, so long vacan