"Some of it will happen!" exclaimed Peter. "I shall dig every single day
till I find the gold-pots."

"You are a pot of gold yourself, filled full and running over!"

"Now, Nancy, run and write down your fairy tale while you remember it!"
said Mother Carey.

"It is as good an exercise as any other, and you still tell a story far
better than you write it!"

Nancy did this sort of improvising every now and then, and had done it
from earliest childhood; and sometimes, of late, Mother Carey looked at
her eldest chicken and wondered if after all she had hatched in her a
bird of brighter plumage or rarer song than the rest, or a young eagle
whose strong wings would bear her to a higher flight!



IX

GILBERT'S EMBASSY


The new station had just been built in Boston, and it seemed a great
enterprise to Gilbert to be threading his way through the enormous
spaces, getting his information by his own wits and not asking questions
like a stupid schoolboy. Like all children of naval officers, the Careys
had travelled ever since their birth; still, this was Gilbert's first
journey alone, and nobody was ever more conscious of the situation, nor