"Oh, he _is_ a dear!"
My son Tom, when he went down to Beulah before starting for
China, visited the house and at my request put away my
mother's picture safely. He is a clever boy, and instead of
placing the thing in an attic where it might be injured, he
tucked it away,--where do you think,--in the old brick oven of
the room that is now, I suppose, your dining room. It is a
capital hiding-place, for there had been no fire there for fifty
years, nor ever will be again. I have other portraits of her
with me, on this side of the water. Please remove the one I
speak of from its wrappings and hang it over the mantel shelf
in the west bedroom.
"My bedroom! I shall love to have it there," said Mother Carey.
Then, once a year, on my mother's birthday,--it is the fourth of
July and an easy date to remember,--will my little friend Miss
Nancy, or any of the other Careys, if she is absent, pick a
little nosegay of daisies and buttercups (perhaps there will
even be a bit of early Queen Anne's lace) and put it in a vase
under my mother's picture? That shall be the annual rent paid
for the Yellow House to Lemuel Hamilton by the Careys!
Tears of joy sprang to the eyes of emotional Nancy. She rose to her feet
and paced the greensward excitedly.
"Oh, mother, I didn't think there could be another such man after
knowing father and the Admiral.
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