Mother Carey's Chickens
And crowd your canvas,
And, ere it vanishes
Over the margin,
After it, follow it,
Follow the Gleam.
Kathleen's last year's brown velveteen disclosed bronze slippers and stockings,—a novelty in Beulah,—her hair fell in such curls as Beulah had rarely beheld, and her voice was as sweet as a thrush's note; so perhaps it is not strange that the poem set a kind of fashion at the academy, and "following the gleam" became a sort of text by which to study and grow and live.
Thanksgiving Day approached, and everybody was praying for a flurry of snow, just enough to give a zest to turkey and cranberry sauce. On the twentieth it suddenly occurred to Mother Carey that this typical New England feast day would be just the proper time for the housewarming, so the Lord children, the Pophams, and the Harmons were all bidden to come at seven o'clock in the evening. Great preparations ensued. Rows of Jack o' Lanterns decorated the piazza, and the Careys had fewer pumpkin pies in November than their neighbors, in consequence of their extravagant inroads upon the golden treasures of the aft garden. Inside were a few late asters and branches of evergreen, and
248
