It was the Fourth of July; a hot, still day when one could fairly see
the green peas swelling in their pods and the string beans climbing
their poles like acrobats! Young Beulah had rung the church bell at
midnight, cast its torpedoes to earth in the early morning, flung its
fire-crackers under the horses' feet, and felt somewhat relieved of its
superfluous patriotism by breakfast time. Then there was a parade of
Antiques and Horribles, accompanied by the Beulah Band, which, though
not as antique, was fully as horrible as anything in the procession.
From that time on, the day had been somnolent, enlivened in the Carey
household only by the solemn rite of paying the annual rent of the
Yellow House. The votive nosegay had been carefully made up, and laid
lovingly by Nancy under Mother Hamilton's portrait, in the presence not
only of the entire family, but also of Osh Popham, who had called to
present early radishes and peppergrass.
"I'd like to go upstairs with you when you get your boquet tied up," he
said, "because it's an awful hot day, an' the queer kind o' things you
do 't this house allers makes my backbone cold! I never suspicioned that
Lena Hamilton hed the same kind o' fantasmic notions that you folks
have, but I guess it's like tenant, like landlord, in this case! Anyhow,
I want to see the rent paid, if you don't mind. I wish't you'd asked
that mean old sculpin of a Hen Lord over; he owns my house an' it might
put a few idees into his head!"
In the afternoon Nancy took her writing pad and sat on the circular
steps, where it was cool. The five o'clock train from Boston whistled at
the station a mile away as she gathered her white skirts daintily up and
settled herself in the shadiest corner. She was unconscious of the
passing time, and scarcely looked up until the rattling of wheels caught
her ear. It was the station wagon stopping at the Yellow House gate, and
a strange gentleman was alighting. He had an unmistakable air of the
town. His clothes were not as Beulah clothes and his hat was not as
Beulah hats, for it was a fine Panama with a broad sweeping brim. Nancy
rose from the steps, surprise dawning first in her eyes, then wonder,
then suspicion, then conviction; then two dimples appeared in
her cheeks.
The stranger lifted the foreign-looking hat with a smile and said, "My
little friend and correspondent, Nancy Carey, I think?"
"My American Consul, I do believe!" cried Nancy joyously, as she ran
down the path with both hands outstretched. "Where did you come from?
Why didn't you tell us beforehand? We never even heard that you were in
this country! Oh! I know why you chose the Fourth of July! It's pay day,
and you thought we shouldn't be ready with the rent; but it's all
attended to, beautifully, this morning!"
"May I send my bag to the Mansion House and stay a while with you?"
asked Mr. Hamilton. "Are the rest of you at home? How are Gilbert and
Kathleen and Julia and Peter? How, especially, is Mother Carey?"
"What a memory you have!" exclaimed Nancy. "Take Mr. Hamilton's bag,
please, Mr. Bennett, and tell them at the hotel that he won't be there
until after supper."
It was a pleasant hour that ensued, for Nancy had broken the ice and
there was plenty of conversation. Then too, the whole house had to be
shown, room by room, even to Cousin Ann's stove in the cellar and the
pump in the kitchen sink.
"I never saw anything like it!" exclaimed Hamilton. "It is like magic! I
ought to pay you a thousand dollars on the spot! I ought to try and buy
the place of you for five thousand! Why don't you go into the business
of recreating houses and selling them to poor benighted creatures like
me, who never realize their possibilities?"
"If we show you the painted chamber will you promise not to be too
unhappy?" asked Nancy. "You can't help crying with rage and grief that
it is our painted chamber, not yours; but try to bear up until you get
to the hotel, because mother is so soft-hearted she will be giving it
back to you unless I interfere."
"You must have spent money lavishly when you restored this room," said
the Consul; "it is a real work of art."
"Not a penny," said Mrs. Carey. "It is the work of a great friend of
Nancy's, a seventeen-year-old girl, who, we expect, will make Beulah
famous some day. Now will you go into your mother's room and find your
way downstairs by yourself? Julia, will you show Mr. Hamilton the barn a
little later, while Nancy and I get supper? Kitty must go to the
Pophams' for Peter; he is spending the afternoon with them."
Nancy had enough presence of mind to intercept Kitty and hiss into her
ear: "Borrow a loaf of bread from Mrs. Popham, we are short; and see if
you can find any way to get strawberries from Bill Harmon's; it was to
have been a bread-and-milk supper on the piazza, to-night, and it must
be hurriedly changed into a Consular banquet! _Verb. sap._ Fly!"
Gilbert turned up a little before six o'clock and was introduced proudly
by his mother as a son who had just "gone into business."
"I'm Bill Harmon's summer clerk and delivery boy," he explained. "It's
great fun, and I get two dollars and a half a week."
Nancy and her mother worked like Trojans in the kitchen, for they agreed
it was no time for economy, even if they had less to eat for a week
to come.
"Mr. Hamilton is just as nice as I guessed he was, when his first letter
came," said Nancy. "I went upstairs to get a card for the supper menu,
and he was standing by your mantelpiece with his head bent over his
arms. He had the little bunch of field flowers in his hand, and I know
he had been smelling them, and looking at his mother's picture, and
remembering things!"
What a merry supper it was, with a jug of black-eyed Susans in the
centre of the table and a written bill of fare for Mr. Hamilton,
"because he was a Consul," so Nancy said.
Gilbert sat at the head of the table, and Mr. Hamilton thought he had
never seen anything so beautiful as Mrs. Carey in her lavender challie,
sitting behind the tea cups; unless it was Nancy, flushed like a rose,
changing the plates and waiting on the table between courses. He had
never exerted himself so much at any diplomatic dinner, and he won the
hearts of the entire family before the meal was finished.
"By the way, I have a letter of introduction to you all, but especially
to Miss Nancy here, and I have never thought to deliver it," he said.
"Who do you think sent it,--all the way from China?"
"My son Tom!" exclaimed Nancy irrepressibly; "but no, he couldn't,
because he doesn't know us."
"The Admiral, of course!" cried Gilbert.
"You are both right," Mr. Hamilton answered, drawing a letter from his
coat pocket. "It is a Round Robin from the Admiral and my son Tom, who
have been making acquaintance in Hong Kong. It is addressed:
"FROM THE YELLOW PERIL, IN CHINA
"to
"THE YELLOW HOUSE, IN BEULAH,
"_Greeting_!"
Nancy crimsoned. "Did the Admiral tell your son Tom I called him the
Yellow Peril? It was wicked of him! I did it, you know, because you
wrote me that the only Hamilton who cared anything for the old house, or
would ever want to live in it, was your son Tom. After that I always
called him the Yellow Peril, and I suppose I mentioned it in a letter to
the Admiral."
"I am convinced that Nancy's mind is always empty at bedtime," said her
mother, "because she tells everything in it to somebody during the day.
I hope age will bring discretion, but I doubt it."
"My son Tom is coming home!" said his father, with unmistakable delight
in his voice.
Nancy, who was passing the cake, sat down so heavily in her chair that
everybody laughed.
"Come, come, Miss Nancy! I can't let you make an ogre of the boy," urged
Mr. Hamilton. "He is a fine fellow, and if he comes down here to look at
the old place you are sure to be good friends."
"Is he going back to China after his visit?" asked Mrs. Carey, who felt
a fear of the young man something akin to her daughter's.
"No, I am glad to say. Our family has been too widely separated for the
last ten years. At first it seemed necessary, or at least convenient and
desirable, and I did not think much about it. But lately it has been
continually on my mind that we were leading a cheerless existence, and I
am determined to arrange matters differently."
Mrs. Carey remembered Ossian Popham's description of Mrs. Lemuel
Hamilton and forebore to ask any questions with regard to her
whereabouts, since her husband did not mention her.
"You will all be in Washington then," she said, "and your son Tom with
you, of course?"
"Not quite so near as that," his father replied. "Tom's firm is opening
a Boston office and he will be in charge of that. When do you expect the
Admiral back? Tom talks of their coming together on the Bedouin, if it
can be arranged."
"We haven't heard lately," said Mrs. Carey; "but he should return within
a month or two, should he not, Nancy? My daughter writes all the letters
for the family, Mr. Hamilton, as you know by this time."
"I do, to my great delight and satisfaction. Now there is one thing I
have not seen yet, something about which I have a great deal of
sentiment. May I smoke my cigar under the famous crimson rambler?"
The sun set flaming red, behind the Beulah hills. The frogs sang in the
pond by the House of Lords, and the grasshoppers chirped in the long
grass of Mother Hamilton's favorite hayfield. Then the moon, round and
deep-hued as a great Mandarin orange, came up into the sky from which
the sun had faded, and the little group still sat on the side piazza,
talking. Nothing but their age and size kept the Carey chickens out of
Mr. Hamilton's lap, and Peter finally went to sleep with his head
against the consul's knee. He was a "lappy" man, Nancy said next
morning; and indeed there had been no one like him in the family circle
for many a long month. He was tender, he was gay, he was fatherly, he
was interested in all that concerned them; so no wonder that he heard
all about Gilbert's plans for earning money, and Nancy's accepted story.
No wonder he exclaimed at the check for ten dollars proudly exhibited in
payment, and no wonder he marvelled at the Summer Vacation School in the
barn, where fourteen little scholars were already enrolled under the
tutelage of the Carey Faculty. "I never wanted to go to anything in my
life as much as I want to go to that school!" he asserted. "If I could
write a circular as enticing as that, I should be a rich man. I wish
you'd let me have some new ones printed, girls, and put me down for
three evening lectures; I'd do almost anything to get into that
Faculty." "I wish you'd give the lectures for the benefit of the
Faculty, that would be better still," said Kitty. "Nancy's coming-out
party was to be in the barn this summer; that's one of the things we're
earning money for; or at least we make believe that it is, because it's
so much more fun to work for a party than for coal or flour or meat!"
A look from Mrs. Carey prevented the children from making any further
allusions to economy, and Gilbert skillfully turned the subject by
giving a dramatic description of the rise and fall of The Dirty Boy,
from its first appearance at his mother's wedding breakfast to its last,
at the house-warming supper.
After Lemuel Hamilton had gone back to the little country hotel he sat
by the open window for another hour, watching the moonbeams shimmering
on the river and bathing the tip of the white meeting-house steeple in a
flood of light. The air was still and the fireflies were rising above
the thick grass and carrying their fairy lamps into the lower branches
of the feathery elms. "Haying" would begin next morning, and he would be
wakened by the sharpening of scythes and the click of mowing machines.
He would like to work in the Hamilton fields, he thought, knee-deep in
daisies,--fields on whose grass he had not stepped since he was a boy
just big enough to go behind the cart and "rake after." What an
evening it had been! None of them had known it, but as a matter of fact
they had all scaled Shiny Wall and had been sitting with Mother Carey in
Peacepool; that was what had made everything so beautiful! Mr.
Hamilton's last glimpse of the Careys had been the group at the Yellow
House gate. Mrs. Carey, with her brown hair shining in the moonlight
leaned against Gilbert, the girls stood beside her, their arms locked in
hers, while Peter clung sleepily to her hand.
"I believe they are having hard times!" he thought, "and I can't think
of anything I can safely do to make things easier. Still, one cannot
pity, one can only envy them! That is the sort of mother I would have
made had I been Nature and given a free hand! I would have put a label
on Mrs. Carey, saying: 'This is what I meant a woman to be!'"