to plates piled high with slices of brown and white
bread, to dishes of eggs or picked-up cod fish, or
beans warmed over in the pot, with baked potatoes sometimes,
and sometimes milk toast, or Nancy’s famous corn
muffins, no family of young bears ever displayed such
appetites! On Saturday mornings there were griddle
cakes and maple syrup from their own trees; for Osh
Popham had shown them in the spring how to tap their
maples, and collect the great pails of sap to boil
down into syrup. Mother Carey and Peter made
the beds after the departure of the others for school,
and it was pretty to see the sturdy Peter-bird, sometimes
in his coat and mittens, standing on the easiest side
of the beds and helping his mother to spread the blankets
and comforters smooth. His fat legs carried him
up and downstairs a dozen times on errands, while
his sweet piping voice was lifted in a never ending
stream of genial conversation, as he told his mother
what he had just done, what he was doing at the present
moment, how he was doing it, and what he proposed to
do in a minute or two. Then there was a lull
from half past ten to half past eleven, shortened
sometimes on baking days, when the Peter-bird had his
lessons. The old-fashioned kitchen was clean
and shining by that time. The stove glistened
and the fire snapped and crackled. The sun beamed
in at the sink window, doing all he could for the
climate in the few hours he was permitted to be on
duty in a short New England winter day. Peter
sat on a cricket beside his mother’s chair and
clasped his “Reading without Tears” earnestly
and rigidly, believing it to be the key to the universe.
Oh! what an hour of happiness to Mother Carey when
the boy would lift the very copy of his father’s
face to her own; when the well-remembered smile and
the dear twinkle of the eyes in Peter’s face
would give her heart a stab of pain that was half joy
after all, it was so full to the brim of sweet memories.
In that warm still hour, when she was filling the
Peter-bird’s mind and soul with heavenly learning,
how much she learned herself! Love poured from
her, through voice and lips and eyes, and in return
she drank it in thirstily from the little creature
who sat there at her knee, a twig growing just as her
bending hand inclined it; all the buds of his nature
opening out in the mother-sunshine that surrounded
him. Eleven thirty came all too soon. Then
before long the kettle would begin to sing, the potatoes
to bubble in the saucepan, and Mother Carey’s
spoon to stir the good things that had long been sizzling
quietly in an iron pot. Sometimes it was bits
of beef, sometimes mutton, but the result was mostly
a toothsome mixture of turnips and carrots and onions
in a sea of delicious gravy, with surprises of meat
here and there to vary any possible monotony.
Once or twice a week dumplings appeared, giving an
air of excitement to the meal, and there was a delectable
“poor man’s stew” learned from Mrs.
Popham; the ingredients being strips of parsnip, potatoes