Page:Wiggin--Mother Carey's chickens.djvu/259

. "It just seemed to come in naturally. The Yellow Peril must be rather nice, as well as his father, even if he is our enemy. That was clever of him, putting his grandmother in the brick oven!" And here Nancy laughed, and laughed again, thinking how her last remark would sound if overheard by a person unacquainted with the circumstances.

"A delightful, warm, kind, friendly letter," said Mother Carey, folding it with a caressing hand. "I wish your father could have read it."

"He does n't say a word about his children," and Nancy took the sheets and scanned them again.

"You evidently gave him the history of your whole family, but he confines himself to his own life."

"He mentions 'my son Tom' frequently enough, but there's not a word of Mrs. Hamilton."

"No, but there's no reason there should be, especially!"

"If he loved her he could n't keep her out," said Nancy shrewdly. "She just is n't in the story at all. Could any of us write a chronicle of any house we ever lived in, and leave you out?"

Mrs. Carey took Nancy's outstretched hands and was pulled up from the greensward. "You