ne last
admiring look, and went home.

It had meant only a few hours' thought and labor, with scarcely a penny
of expense, but you can judge what Ralph Thurston felt when he entered
the door out of the storm outside. To him it looked like a room conjured
up by some magician in a fairy tale. He fell into the rocking-chair and
looked at his own fire; gazed about at the cheerful crimson glow that
radiated from the dazzling drugget, in a state of puzzled ecstasy, till
he caught sight of a card lying near the lamp,--"A birthday present
from three mothers who value your work for their boys and girls."

He knew Mrs. Carey's handwriting, so he sped to the Yellow House as soon
as his supper was over, and now, in the presence of the whole family, he
felt tongue-tied and wholly unable to express his gratitude.

It was bed time, and the young people melted away from the fireside.

"Kiss your mother good-night, sweet Pete," said Nancy, taking the
reluctant cherub by the hand. "'_Hoc opus, hic labor est_,' Mr.
Thurston, to get the Peter-bird upstairs when once he is down. Shake
hands with your future teacher, Peter; no, you mustn't kiss him; little
boys don't kiss great Latin scholars unless they are asked."

Thurston laughed and lifted the gurgling Peter high in the air. "Good
night, old chap!" he said "Hurry up and come to school!"

"I'm 'bout ready now!" piped Peter. "I can read
'Up-up-my-boy-day-is-not-the-time-for-sleep-the-dew-will-soon-be-gone'
with the book upside down,--can't I, Muddy?"

"You can, my son; trot along with sister."

Thurston opened the door for Nancy, and his eye followed her for a
second as she mounted the stairs. She glowed like a ruby to-night in her
old red cashmere. The sparkle of her eye, the gloss of her hair, the
soft red of her lips, the curve and bend of her graceful young body
struck even her mother anew, though she was used to her daughter's
beauty. "She is growing!" thought Mrs. Carey wistfully. "I see it all at
once, and soon others will be seeing it!"

Alas! young Ralph Thurston had seen it for weeks past! He was not
perhaps so much in love with Nancy the girl, as he was with Nancy the
potential woman. Some of the glamour that surrounded the mother had
fallen upon the daughter. One felt the influences that had rained upon
Nancy ever since she had come into the world, One could not look at her,
nor talk with her, without feeling that her mother--like a vine in the
blood, as the old prov