Page:Wiggin--Mother Carey's chickens.djvu/130

 the plough, and succumbed quickly to the music of her good-night song and the comfort of her sheltering arms. Mother Carey had arms to carry, arms to enfold, arms to comfort and caress. She also had a fine, handsome, strong hand admirable for spanking, but she had so many invisible methods of discipline at her command that she never needed a visible spanker for Peter. "Spanking is all very well in its poor way," she used to say, "but a woman who has to fall back on it very often is sadly lacking in ingenuity."

As she lifted Peter into his crib Nancy came softly in at the door with a slip of paper in her hand.

She drew her mother out to the window over the front door. "Listen," she said. "Do you hear the frogs?"

"I've been listening to them for the last half-hour," her mother said. "Is n't everything sweet to-night, with the soft air and the elms all feathered out, and the new moon!"

"Was it ever so green before?" Nancy wondered, leaning over the window-sill by her mother's side. "Were the trees ever so lace-y? Was any river ever so clear, or any moon so yellow? I am so sorry for the city people to-night! Sometimes I think it can't be so beautiful here as it looks, mother. Sometimes I wonder