came to the front door and the children flocked down
the frozen pathway to the gate after their mother, getting a touch of
her wherever and whenever they could and jumping up and down between
whiles to keep warm. Gilbert closed the door of the carriage, and it
turned to go down the street. One window was open, and there was a last
glimpse of the beloved face framed in the dark blue velvet bonnet, one
last wave of a hand in a brown muff.

"Oh! she is so beautiful!" sobbed Kathleen, "her bonnet is just the
color of her eyes; and she was crying!"

"There never was anybody like mother!" said Nancy, leaning on the gate,
shivering with cold and emotion. "There never was, and there never will
be! We can try and try, Kathleen, and we _must_ try, all of us; but
mother wouldn't have to try; mother must have been partly born so!"

II

THE CHICKENS

It was Captain Carey's favorite Admiral who was responsible for the
phrase by which mother and children had been known for some years. The
Captain (then a Lieutenant) had brought his friend home one Saturday
afternoon a little earlier than had been expected, and they went to find
the family in the garden.

Laughter and the sound of voices led them to the summer-house, and as
they parted the syringa bushes they looked through them and surprised
the charming group.

A throng of children like to flowers were sown
About the grass beside, or climbed her knee.
I looked who were that favored company.

That is the way a poet would have described what the Admiral saw, and if
you want to see anything truly and beautifully you must generally go
to a poet.

Mrs. Carey held Peter, then a crowing baby, in her lap. Gilbert was
tickling Peter's chin with a buttercup, Nancy was putting a wreath of
leaves on her mother's hair, and Kathleen was swinging from an
apple-tree bough, her yellow curls flying.

"Might I inquire what you think of that?" asked the father.

"Well," the Admiral said, "mothers and children make a pretty good
picture at any time, but I should say this one couldn't be 'beat.' Two
for the Navy, eh?"

"All four for the Navy, perhaps," laughed the young man. "Nancy has
already chosen a Rear-Admiral and Kathleen a Commodore; they are modest
little girls!"

"They do you credit, Peter!"

"I hope I've given them something,--I've tried hard enough, but they are
mostly the work of the lady in the chair. Come on and say how d'ye do."

Before many Saturdays the A