Mother Carey's Chickens eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 276 pages of information about Mother Carey's Chickens.

Mother Carey's Chickens eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 276 pages of information about Mother Carey's Chickens.

“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Before many Saturdays the Admiral’s lap had superseded all other places as a gathering ground for the little Careys, whom he called the stormy petrels.

“Mother Carey,” he explained to them, came from the Latin mater cara, this being not only his personal conviction, but one that had the backing of Brewer’s “Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.”

“The French call them Les Oiseaux de Notre Dame.  That means ’The Birds of our Lady,’ Kitty, and they are the sailors’ friends.  Mother Carey sends them to warn seafarers of approaching storms and bids them go out all over the seas to show the good birds the way home.  You’ll have your hands full if you’re going to be Mother Carey’s chickens.”

“I’d love to show good birds the way home!” said Gilbert.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Mother Carey's Chickens from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.