Nancy was making herself busily these days, and the offending Julia was directly responsible for such self-control and gains in general virtue as poor impetuous Nancy achieved.  Kathleen was growing stronger and steadier and less self-conscious.  Gilbert was doing better at school, and his letters showed more consideration and thought for the family than they had done heretofore.  Even the Peter-bird was a little sweeter and more self-helpful just now, thought Mother Carey fondly, as she rocked him to sleep.  He was worn out with following Natty Harmon at the plough, and succumbed quickly to the music of her good-night song and the comfort of her sheltering arms.  Mother Carey had arms to carry, arms to enfold, arms to comfort and caress.  She also had a fine, handsome, strong hand admirable for spanking, but she had so many invisible methods of discipline at her command that she never needed a visible spanker for Peter.  “Spanking is all very well in its poor way,” she used to say, “but a woman who has to fall back on it very often is sadly lacking in ingenuity.”

As she lifted Peter into his crib Nancy came softly in at the door with a slip of paper in her hand.

She drew her mother out to the window over the front door.  “Listen,” she said.  “Do you hear the frogs?”

“I’ve been listening to them for the last half-hour,” her mother said.  “Isn’t everything sweet to-night, with the soft air and the elms all feathered out, and the new moon!”

“Was it ever so green before?” Nancy wondered, leaning over the window-sill by her mother’s side.  “Were the trees ever so lace-y?  Was any river ever so clear, or any moon so yellow?  I am so sorry for the city people tonight!  Sometimes I think it can’t be so beautiful here as it looks, mother.  Sometimes I wonder if part of the beauty isn’t inside of us!” said Nancy.

“Part of all beauty is in the eyes that look at, it,” her mother answered.

“And I’ve been reading Mrs. Harmon’s new reference Bible,” Nancy continued, “and here is what it says about Beulah.”

She held the paper to the waning light and read:  “Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken, neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate ... but it shall be called Beulah, for the Lord delighteth in thee.

“I think father would be comforted if he could see us all in the Yellow House at Beulah!” Nancy went on softly as the two leaned out of the window together.  “He was so loving, so careful of us, so afraid that anything should trouble us, that for months I couldn’t think of him, even in heaven, as anything but worried.  But now it seems just as if we were over the hardest time and could learn to live here in Beulah; and so he must be comforted if he can see us or think about us at all;—­don’t you feel like that, mother?”

Yes, her mother agreed gently, and her heart was grateful and full of hope.  She had lost the father of her children and the dear companion of her life, and that loss could never be made good.  Still her mind acknowledged the riches she possessed in her children, so she confessed herself neither desolate nor forsaken, but something in a humble human way that the Lord could take delight in.