The three cats were all nestled cosily in Nancy's lap or snuggled by her side. Mother Carey had demurred at two, and when Nancy appeared one day after school with a third, she spoke, with some firmness, of refusing it a home. "If we must economize on cats," cried Nancy pa.s.sionately, "don't let's begin on this one! She doesn't look it, but she is a heroine. When the Rideout's house burned down, her kittens were in a basket by the kitchen stove. Three times she ran in through the flames and brought out a kitten in her mouth. The tip of her tail is gone, and part of an ear, and she's blind in one eye. Mr. Harmon says she's too homely to live; now what do you think?"

"I think n.o.body pretending to be a mother could turn her back on another mother like that," said Mrs. Carey promptly. "We'll take a pint more milk, and I think you children will have to leave something in your plates now and then, you polish them until it really is indecent."

To-night an impromptu meeting of the Ways and Means Committee was taking place by the sitting room fire, perhaps because the family plates had been polished to a terrifying degree that week.

"Children," said Mother Carey, "we have been as economical as we knew how to be; we have worked to the limit of our strength; we have spent almost nothing on clothing, but the fact remains that we have scarcely money enough in our reserve fund to last another six months. What shall we do?"

Nancy leaped to her feet, scattering cats in every direction.

"Mother Carey!" she exclaimed remorsefully. "You haven't mentioned money since New Year's, and I thought we were rubbing along as usual. The bills are all paid; what's the matter?"

"That is the matter!" answered Mrs. Carey with the suspicion of a tear in her laughing voice, "The bills _are_ paid, and there's too little left! We eat so much, and we burn so much wood, and so many gallons of oil'"

"The back of the winter's broken, mother dear!" said Gilbert, as a terrific blast shook the blinds as a terrier would a rat. "Don't listen to that wind; it 's only a March bluff! Osh Popham says snow is the poor man's manure; he says it's going to be an early season and a grand hay crop. We'll get fifty dollars for our field."

"That will be in July, and this is March," said his mother. "Still, the small reversible Van Twiller will carry us through May, with our other income. But the saving days are over, and the earning days have come, dears! I am the oldest and the biggest, I must begin."

"Never!" cried Nancy. "You slave enough for us, as it is, but you shall never slave for anybody else; shall she, Gilly?"

"Not if I know it!" answered Gilbert with good ringing emphasis.

"Another winter I fear we must close the Yellow House and--"

The rest of Mother Carey's remark was never heard, for at Nancy's given signal the four younger Careys all swooned on the floor. Nancy had secretly trained Peter so that he was the best swooner of the family, and his comical imitation of Nancy was so mirth-compelling that Mother Carey laughed and declared there was no such thing as talking seriously to children like hers.

"But, Muddy dear, you weren't in earnest?" coaxed Nancy, bending her bright head over her mother's shoulder and cuddling up to her side; whereupon Gilbert gave his imitation of a jealous puppy; barking, snarling, and pushing his frowzly pate under his mother's arm to crowd Nancy from her point of vantage, to which she clung valiantly. Of course Kitty found a small vacant s.p.a.ce on which she could festoon herself, and Peter promptly climbed on his mother's lap, so that she was covered with--fairly submerged in--children! A year ago Julia used to creep away and look at such exhibitions of family affection, with a curling lip, but to-night, at Mother Carey's outstretched hand and smothered cry of "Help, Judy!" she felt herself gathered into the heart of the laughing, boisterous group. That hand, had she but known it, was stretched out to her because only that day a letter had come, saying that Allan Carey was much worse and that his mental condition admitted of no cure. He was bright and hopeful and happy, so said Mr. Manson;--forever sounding the praises of the labor-saving device in which he had sunk his last thousands. "We can manufacture it at ten cents and sell it for ten dollars," he would say, rubbing his hands excitedly. "We can pay fifty dollars a month office rent and do a business of fifty thousand dollars a year!" "And I almost believe we could!" added Mr. Manson, "if we had faith enough and capital enough!"

"Of course you know, darlings, I would never leave Beulah save for the coldest months; or only to earn a little money," said Mrs. Carey, smoothing her dress, flattening her collar, and pinning up the braids that Nancy's hugs had loosened.

"I must put my mind on the problem at once," said Nancy, pacing the floor. "I've been so interested in my Virgil, so wrapped up in my rhetoric and composition, that I haven't thought of ways and means for a month, but of course we will never leave the Yellow House, and of course we must contrive to earn money enough to live in it. We must think about it every spare minute till vacation comes; then we'll have nearly four months to ama.s.s a fortune big enough to carry us through the next year.

I have an idea for myself already. I was going to wait till my seventeenth birthday, but that's four months away and it's too long. I'm old enough to begin any time. I feel old enough to write my Reminiscences this minute."

"You might publish your letters to the American Consul in Breslau; they'd make a book!" teased Gilbert.

"Very likely I shall, silly Gilly," retorted Nancy, swinging her mane haughtily. "It isn't every girl who has a monthly letter from an Admiral in China and a Consul in Germany."

"You wouldn't catch me answering the Queen of Sheba's letters or the Empress of India's," exclaimed Gilbert, whose pen was emphatically less mighty than his sword. "Hullo, you two! what are you whispering about?"

he called to Kathleen and Julia, who were huddled together in a far corner of the long room, gesticulating eloquently.

"We've an idea! We've an idea! We've found a way to help!" sang the two girls, pirouetting back into the circle of firelight. "We won't tell till it's all started, but it's perfectly splendid, and practical too."

"And so ladylike!" added Julia triumphantly.

"How much?" asked Gilbert succinctly.

The girls whispered a minute or two, and appeared to be multiplying twenty-five first by fifteen, and then again by twenty.

"From three dollars and seventy-five cents to four dollars and a half a week according to circ.u.mstances!" answered Kathleen proudly.

"Will it take both of you?"

"Yes."

"All your time?"

More nods and whispers and calculation.

"No, indeed; only three hours a day."

"Any of my time?"

"Just a little."

"I thought so!" said Gilbert loftily. "You always want me and my hammer or my saw; but I'll be busy on my own account; you'll have to paddle your own canoe!"

"You'll be paid for what you do for us," said Julia slyly, giving Kathleen a poke, at which they both fell into laughter only possible to the very young.

Then suddenly there came a knock at the front door; a stamping of feet on the circular steps, and a noise of shaking off snow.

"Go to the door, Gilbert; who can that be on a night like this,--although it is only eight o'clock after all! Why, it's Mr.

Thurston!"

Ralph Thurston came in blushing and smiling, glad to be welcomed, fearful of intruding, afraid of showing how much he liked to be there.

"Good-evening, all!" he said. "You see I couldn't wait to thank you, Mrs. Carey! No storm could keep me away to-night."

"What has mother been doing, now?" asked Nancy. "Her right hand is forever busy, and she never tells her left hand a thing, so we children are always in the dark."

"It was nothing much," said Mrs. Carey, pushing the young man gently into the high-backed rocker. "Mrs. Harmon, Mrs. Popham, and I simply tried to show our grat.i.tude to Mr. Thurston for teaching our troublesome children."

"How did you know it was my birthday?" asked Thurston.

"Didn't you write the date in Lallie Joy's book?"

"True, I did; and forgot it long ago; but I have never had my birthday noticed before, and I am twenty-four!"

"It was high time, then!" said Mother Carey with her bright smile.

"But what did mother do?" clamored Nancy, Kathleen and Gilbert in chorus.

"She took my forlorn, cheerless room and made it into a home for me,"

said Thurston. "Perhaps she wanted me to stay in it a little more, and bother her less! At any rate she has created an almost possible rival to the Yellow House!"

Ralph Thurston had a large, rather dreary room over Bill Harmon's store, and took his meals at the Widow Berry's, near by. He was an orphan and had no money to spend on luxuries, because all his earnings went to pay the inevitable debts incurred when a fellow is working his way through college.

Mrs. Carey, with the help of the other two women, had seized upon this stormy Friday, when the teacher always took his luncheon with him to the academy, to convert Ralph's room into something comfortable and cheerful. The old, cracked, air-tight stove had been removed, and Bill Harmon had contributed a second-hand Franklin, left with him for a bad debt. It was of soapstone and had sliding doors in front, so that the blaze could be disclosed when life was very dull or discouraging. The straw matting on the floor had done very well in the autumn, but Mrs.

Carey now covered the centre of the room with a bright red drugget left from the Charlestown house-furnishings, and hung the two windows with curtains of printed muslin. Ossian Popham had taken a clotheshorse and covered it with red felting, so that the screen, so evolved could be made to hide the bed and washstand. Ralph's small, rickety table had been changed for a big, roomy one of pine, hidden by the half of an old crimson piano cloth. When Osh had seen the effect of this he hurried back to his barn chamber and returned with some book shelves that he had hastily glued and riveted into shape. These he nailed to the wall and filled with books that he found in the closet, on the floor, on the foot of the bed, and standing on the long, old-fashioned mantel shelf.