were like tendrils; but they grew so fast that by morning they held the
yellow house fast and refused to let it go.

She looked from its windows onto the gardens "fore and aft," and they
seemed, like the rest of little Beulah village, full of sweet promise.
In the back were all sorts of good things to eat growing in profusion,
but modestly out of sight; and in front, where passers-by could see
their beauty and sniff their fragrance, old-fashioned posies bloomed and
rioted and tossed gay, perfumed heads in the sunshine.

She awoke refreshed and strong and brave, not the same woman who took
Nancy's idea to bed with her; for this woman's heart and hope had
somehow flown from the brick house in Charlestown and had built itself a
new nest in Beulah's green trees, the elms and willows that overhung the
shining river.

An idea of her own ran out and met Nancy's half way. Instead of going
herself to spy out the land of Beulah, why not send Gilbert? It was a
short, inexpensive railway journey, with no change of cars. Gilbert was
nearly fourteen, and thus far seemed to have no notion of life as a
difficult enterprise. No mother who respects her boy, or respects
herself, can ask him flatly, "Do you intend to grow up with the idea of
taking care of me; of having an eye to your sisters; or do you consider
that, since I brought you into the world, I must provide both for myself
and you until you are a man,--or forever and a day after, if you feel
inclined to shirk your part in the affair?"

Gilbert talked of his college course as confidently as he had before his
father's death. It was Nancy who as the eldest seemed the head of the
family, but Gilbert, only a year or so her junior, ought to grow into