through voice and lips and eyes

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 cut in quarters, a slice or two of sweet browned pork for a flavor, and a quart of rich milk, mixed with the parsnip juices into an appetizing sauce. The after part of the dinner would be a dish of baked apples with warm gingerbread, or sometimes a deep apple pandowdy, or the baked Indian pudding that was a syrupy, fragrant concoction made of corn meal and butter and molasses baked patiently in the oven for hours. Mother had the dishes to wash after she had tucked the Peter-bird under the afghan on the sitting room sofa for his daily nap, but there was never any grumbling in her heart over the weary days and the unaccustomed tasks; she was too busy "making things make themselves." If only there were a little more money! That was her chief anxiety; for the unexpected, the outside sources of income were growing fewer, and in a year's time the little hoard would be woefully small. Was she doing all that she could, she wondered, as her steps flew over the Yellow House from attic to cellar. She could play the piano and sing; she could speak three languages and read four; she had made her curtsy at two foreign courts; admiration and love had followed her ever since she could remember, and here she was, a widow at forty, living in a half-deserted New England village, making parsnip stews for her children's dinner. Well, it was a time of preparation, and its rigors and self-denials must be cheer fully faced.