“You go to the Congregational church, don’t you, Mrs. Popham?” asked Mrs. Carey.  “I’ve seen Lallie and Digby at Sunday-school.”

“Yes, Mr. Popham is a Methodist and I’m a Congregationalist, but I say let the children go where they like, so I always take them with me.”

Mrs. Carey was just struggling to conceal her amusement at this religious flexibility on Mrs. Popham’s part, when she espied Nancy flying down the street, bareheaded, waving a bit of paper in the air.

“Are you ’most ready to come home, Muddy?” she called, without coming any nearer.

“Yes, quite ready, now Lallie has brought the milk.  Good morning, Mrs. Popham; the children want me for some new enterprise.”

“You give yourself most too much to ’em,” expostulated Mrs. Popham; “you don’t take no vacations.”

“Ah, well, you see ‘myself’ is all I have to give them,” answered Mrs. Carey, taking Peter and going to meet Nancy.

“Mother,” said that young person breathlessly, “I must tell you what I didn’t tell at the time, for fear of troubling you.  I wrote to Mr. Hamilton by the same post that Mr. Harmon did.  Bill is so busy and such a poor writer I thought he wouldn’t put the matter nicely at all, and I didn’t want you, with all your worries, brought into it, so I wrote to the Consul myself, and kept a copy to show you exactly what I said.  I have been waiting at the gate for the letters every day for a week, but this morning Gilbert happened to be there and shouted, ’A letter from Germany for you, Nancy!’ So all of them are wild with curiosity; Olive and Cyril too, but I wanted you to open and read it first because it may be full of awful blows.”

Mrs. Carey sat down on the side of a green bank between the Pophams’ corner and the Yellow House and opened the letter,—­with some misgivings, it must be confessed.  Nancy sat close beside her and held one edge of the wide sheets, closely filled.

“Why, he has written you a volume, Nancy!” exclaimed Mrs. Carey.  “It must be the complete story of his life!  How long was yours to him?” “I don’t remember; pretty long; because there seemed to be so much to tell, to show him how we loved the house, and why we couldn’t spend Cousin Ann’s money and move out in a year or two, and a lot about ourselves, to let him see we were nice and agreeable and respectable.”

“I’m not sure all that was strictly necessary,” commented Mrs. Carey with some trepidation.

This was Lemuel Hamilton’s letter, dated from the office of the American Consul in Breslau, Germany.

MY DEAR MISS NANCY,—­As your letter to me was a purely “business” communication I suppose I ought to begin my reply:  “Dear Madam, Your esteemed favor was received on the sixth inst. and contents noted,” but I shall do nothing of the sort.  I think you must have guessed that I have two girls of my own, for you wrote to me just as if we were sitting together side by side, like two friends, not a bit as landlord and tenant.

Mother Carey’s eyes twinkled.  She well knew Nancy’s informal epistolary style, and her facile, instantaneous friendliness!