It was only lately that Mrs. Carey had talked over matters with the three eldest children, but the present house was too expensive to be longer possible as a home, and the question of moving was a matter of general concern.  Joanna had been, up to the present moment, the only economy, but alas!  Joanna was but a drop in the necessary bucket.

On a certain morning in March Mrs. Carey sat in her room with a letter in her lap, the children surrounding her.  It was from Mr. Manson, Allan Carey’s younger partner; the sort of letter that dazed her, opening up as it did so many questions of expediency, duty, and responsibility.  The gist of it was this:  that Allan Carey was a broken man in mind and body; that both for the climate and for treatment he was to be sent to a rest cure in the Adirondacks; that sometime or other, in Mr. Manson’s opinion, the firm’s investments might be profitable if kept long enough, and there was no difficulty in keeping them, for nobody in the universe wanted them at the present moment; that Allan’s little daughter Julia had no source of income whatever after her father’s monthly bills were paid, and that her only relative outside of the Careys, a certain Miss Ann Chadwick, had refused to admit her into her house.  “Mr. Carey only asked Miss Chadwick as a last resort,” wrote Mr. Manson, “for his very soul quailed at the thought of letting you, his brother’s widow, suffer any more by his losses than was necessary, and he studiously refused to let you know the nature and extent of his need.  Miss Chadwick’s only response to his request was, that she believed in every tub standing on its own bottom, and if he had harbored the same convictions he would not have been in his present extremity.  I am telling you this, my dear Mrs. Carey,” the writer went on, “just to get your advice about the child.  I well know that your income will not support your own children; what therefore shall we do with Julia?  I am a poor young bachelor, with two sisters to support.  I shall find a position, of course, and I shall never cease nursing Carey’s various affairs and projects during the time of his exile, but I cannot assume an ounce more of financial responsibility.”

There had been quite a council over the letter, and parts of it had been read more than once by Mrs. Carey, but the children, though very sympathetic with Uncle Allan and loud in their exclamations of “Poor Julia!” had not suggested any remedy for the situation.

“Well,” said Mrs. Carey, folding the letter, “there seems to be but one thing for us to do.”

“Do you mean that you are going to have Julia come and live with us,—­be one of the family?” exclaimed Gilbert.

“That is what I want to discuss,” she replied.  “You three are the family as well as I.—­Come in!” she called, for she heard the swift feet of the youngest petrel ascending the stairs.  “Come in!  Where is there a sweeter Peter, a fleeter Peter, a neater Peter, than ours, I should like to know, and where a better adviser for the council?”