“What a nice girl this Nancy Carey must be!” thought the American Consul.  “This is such a jolly, confidential, gossipy, winsome little letter!  Her first ‘business letter’ she calls it!  Alas! when she learns how, a few years later, there will be no charming little confidences; no details of family income and expenditures; no tell-tale glimpses of ‘mother’ and ‘Julia.’  I believe I should know the whole family even without this photograph!—­The lady sitting in the chair, to whom the photographer’s snapshot has not done justice, is worthy of Nancy’s praise,—­and Bill Harmon’s.  What a pretty, piquant, curly head Nancy has!  What a gay, vivacious, alert, spirited expression.  The boy is handsome and gentlemanly, but he’ll have to wake up, or Nancy will be the man of the family.  The girl sitting down is less attractive.  She’s Uncle Allan’s daughter, and” (consulting the letter) “Uncle Allan has nervous prostration and all of mother’s money.”  Here Mr. Hamilton gave vent to audible laughter for the third time in a quarter of an hour.  “Nancy doesn’t realize with what perfection her somewhat imperfect English states the case,” he thought.  “I know Uncle Allan like a book, from his resemblance to certain other unfortunate gentlemen who have nervous prostration in combination with other people’s money.  Let’s see!  I know Nancy; friendly little Nancy, about fifteen or sixteen, I should judge; I know Uncle Allan’s ‘Julia,’ who hems in photographs, but not otherwise; I know Gilbert, who is depressed at having to make his own way; the small boy, who ‘is the nicest of us all’; Kitty, who beat all the others in getting to mother’s shoulder; and the mother herself, who is beautiful, and doesn’t say ‘Bosh’ to her children’s ideas, and refuses to touch the insurance money, and wants Gilbert to show what ‘father’s son’ can do without anybody’s help, and who revels in the color and joy of a yellow wall paper at twenty cents a roll!  Bless their simple hearts!  They mustn’t pay any rent while they are bringing water into the kitchen and making expensive improvements!  And what Hamilton could be persuaded to live in the yellow house?  To think of any one’s wanting to settle down in that little deserted spot, Beulah, where the only sound that ever strikes one’s ear is Osh Popham’s laugh or the tinkle of a cow bell!  Oh! if my own girls would write me letters like this, letting me see how their minds are growing, how they are taking hold of life, above all what is in their hearts!  Well, little Miss Nancy Carey! honest, outspoken, confidential, clever little Nancy, who calls me her ‘dearest Mr. Hamilton’ and thanks me for letting her live in my yellow house, you shall never be disturbed, and if you and Gilbert ever earn enough money to buy it, it shall go to you cheap!  There’s not one of my brood that would live in it—­except Tom, perhaps—­for after spending three hundred dollars, they even got tired of dancing in the barn on Saturday nights; so if it can fall into the hands of some one who will bring a blessing on it, good old Granny Hamilton will rest peacefully in her grave!”