Letter from Miss Nancy Carey to the Hon. Lemuel Hamilton.

    BEULAH, June 27th.

DEAR MR. HAMILTON,—­I am Nancy, the oldest of the Carey children, who live in your house.  When father was alive, he took us on a driving trip, and we stopped and had luncheon under your big maple and fell in love with your empty house.  Father (he was a Captain in the Navy and there was never anybody like him in the world!)—­Father leaned over the gate and said if he was only rich he would drive the horse into the barn and buy the place that very day; and mother said it would be a beautiful spot to bring up a family.  We children had wriggled under the fence, and were climbing the apple trees by that time, and we wanted to be brought up there that very minute.  We all of us look back to that day as the happiest one that we can remember.  Mother laughs when I talk of looking back, because I am not sixteen yet, but I think, although we did not know it, God knew that father was going to die and we were going to live in that very spot afterwards.  Father asked us what we could do for the place that had been so hospitable to us, and I remembered a box of plants in the carryall, that we had bought at a wayside nursery, for the flower beds in Charlestown.  “Plant something!” I said, and father thought it was a good idea and took a little crimson rambler rose bush from the box.  Each of us helped make the place for it by taking a turn with the luncheon knives and spoons; then I planted the rose and father took off his hat and said, “Three cheers for the Yellow House!” and mother added, “God bless it, and the children who come to live in it!”—­There is surely something strange in that, don’t you think so?  Then when father died last year we had to find a cheap and quiet place to live, and I remembered the Yellow House in Beulah and told mother my idea.  She does not say “Bosh!” like some mothers, but if our ideas sound like anything she tries them; so she sent Gilbert to see if the house was still vacant, and when we found it was, we took it.  The rent is sixty dollars a year, as I suppose Bill Harmon told you when he sent you mother’s check for fifteen dollars for the first quarter.  We think it is very reasonable, and do not wonder you don’t like to spend anything on repairs or improvements for us, as you have to pay taxes and insurance.  We hope you will have a good deal over for your own use out of our rent, as we shouldn’t like to feel under obligation.  If we had a million we’d spend it all on the Yellow House, because we are fond of it in the way you are fond of a person; it’s not only that we want to paint it and paper it, but we would like to pat it and squeeze it.  If you can’t live in it yourself, even in the summer, perhaps you will be glad to know we love it so much and want to take good care of it always.  What troubles us is the fear that you will take it away or sell it to somebody before Gilbert and I are grown up and have earned money