He knew Mrs. Carey's handwriting, so he sped to the Yellow House as soon as his supper was over, and now, in the presence of the whole family, he felt tongue-tied and wholly unable to express his gratitude.
It was bed time, and the young people melted away from the fireside.
"Kiss your mother good-night, sweet Pete," said Nancy, taking the reluctant cherub by the hand. "'Hoc opus, hic labor est,' Mr. Thurston, to get the Peter-bird upstairs when once he is down. Shake hands with your future teacher, Peter; no, you mustn't kiss him; little boys don't kiss great Latin scholars unless they are asked."
Thurston laughed and lifted the gurgling Peter high in the air. "Good night, old chap!" he said "Hurry up and come to school!"
"I'm 'bout ready now!" piped Peter. "I can read 'Up-up-my-boy-day-is-not-the-time-for-sleep-the-dew-will-soon-be-gone' with the book upside down,—can't I, Muddy?"
"You can, my son; trot along with sister."
Thurston opened the door for Nancy, and his eye followed her for a second as she mounted the stairs. She glowed like a ruby to-night in her old red cashmere. The sparkle of her eye, the gloss of her hair, the soft red of her lips, the curve and bend of her graceful young body struck even her mother anew, though she was used to her daughter's beauty. "She is growing!" thought Mrs. Carey wistfully. "I see it all at once, and soon others will be seeing it!"
Alas! young Ralph Thurston had seen it for weeks past! He was not perhaps so much in love with Nancy the girl, as he was with Nancy the potential woman. Some of the glamour that surrounded the mother had fallen upon the daughter. One felt the influences that had rained upon Nancy ever since she had come into the world, One could not look at her, nor talk with her, without feeling that her mother—like a vine in the blood, as the old proverb says—was breathing, growing, budding, blossoming in her day by day.
The young teacher came back to the fireplace, where Mother Carey was standing in a momentary brown study.
"I've never had you alone before," he stammered, "and now is my chance to tell you what you've been to me ever since I came to Beulah."