Sarah thought a few minutes.

"Well, I will," she sighed reluctantly. "Worms are awfully nasty things, anyway, Hugh. I had to pick some of them out of the can with my fingers, because they wouldn't come out."

"Then we're all serene again," said her brother cheerfully. "And now it is after eleven and high time you were asleep."

Sarah gave him a quick, shy kiss at the head of the stairs and vanished into her room. She was always chary of caresses and her mother declared that she could count the times Sarah had voluntarily kissed her.

The last two weeks of July were an unbroken "hot spell." Eastshore was ordinarily comfortable in the summer time but the heat wave that gripped the country made itself felt and not all the pleasant effect of wide lawns and old shade trees could counteract the hot, humid nights and the blazing, parched days. An occasional thunder shower did its best to bring comfort, but the heat closed in again after each gust, seemingly more intense than ever. It was a trying test for tempers and dispositions and the Willis household began to develop "nerves."

"I should think you children could manage to remember to shut the screens doors behind you," remarked Doctor Hugh one morning at the breakfast table. "If there is one thing positively unendurable, it is flies in the house!"

Winnie put down the cream pitcher beside his cup of coffee with an emphasis that threatened to spray him with its contents.

"You'd better be speaking to Sarah," she said grimly. "I'm about wore out, arguing with her. She won't let me use the fly-batter at all and why? Because it is cruel to kill the dear darling little flies that tramp all over our food with their filthy feet!"

Rosemary giggled. She sat in Aunt Trudy's place, cool and neat in a blue gingham dress, her charming bobbed head making a pretty picture silhouetted against the light of the window behind her. The warm weather had reconciled Rosemary to the loss of her hair. Aunt Trudy often pleaded a headache mornings and Rosemary took her place at the silver tray and poured her brother's coffee.

"Don't let me hear any more such nonsense," said he sternly now. "Keep the screens closed, Winnie, and kill any flies that get in. Sarah, you are not to interfere in any way—and don't scowl like that."

For reply Sarah kicked the table leg to the peril of her glass of milk and Shirley's.

"You'll find yourself sent away from the table in another minute," her brother warned her. "Eat your breakfast and behave yourself."

"You'll be sorry when I'm dead," said Sarah, her voice plaintive with self-pity.

Shirley thought the moment auspicious to make a reach for a hot biscuit. Over went her glass of milk and her fat little hand landed in the butter dish. The telephone bell saved her, as far as Doctor Hugh was concerned, and when he came back to tell Rosemary that he would not be home till dinner time and to give her a list of the time and places when he could be reached during the day, Winnie had removed all traces of the accident.

"I guess you must think I'm a washing machine," she grumbled after the doctor had gone. "That's the tenth clean runner we've had on the table this week. If we were using table cloths every meal I'd have to give up—no living woman could keep this family in table cloths!"

"Sarah, are you going to make the beds this morning?" asked Rosemary, on her way to sweep the porch, a duty she had assumed.

"No, I'm not," returned Sarah with characteristic candor. "It's too hot. Let 'em air till night. I want to play in the sand-box."

"Ray Anderson and me's going to play in the sand-box," said Shirley. "You can't come—you take all the toys."

"Oh, Shirley, how cross you are!" cried Rosemary, aghast at the frown on Shirley's pretty forehead. "Don't be so cranky, darling. Sarah will play in one end of the box and you play in the other."

But Sarah, her nose in the air, announced that she wouldn't "have a thing to do with the old sand-box," and she departed to sit in the swing and read, leaving Rosemary to make the beds or "let them air" as she decided.

Rosemary finished sweeping the porch and had just begun to make her own bed, when her aunt called her.

"Shirley and that little Anderson boy are making so much noise, I can't rest," Aunt Trudy complained. "I should think you could tell them to play quietly, Rosemary. And I wish you wouldn't practise this morning, dearie; my head is splitting and the piano does annoy me so. This afternoon I'll take my sewing out under the tree and you may have two hours to yourself, if you like."

Rosemary went down and suggested to Shirley and Ray that they make sand pies instead of building a railroad, knowing from experience that sand pies was a comparatively quiet play. Then she dusted her beloved piano with a little lump in her throat. Mother had loved to hear her practise and had liked to sit on summer mornings in a chair close by, sewing and listening. Mother was an accomplished musician and she knew and noted her little daughter's enthusiastic progress. One reason that Rosemary practised so steadily through the warm weather in spite of discouragement was her determination to surprise her mother by her improvement when that dear lady came back to them.

"It's a shame you have all the beds to do, Rosemary," said Winnie, coming up for a salve from the medicine closet in the bathroom and discovering Rosemary wearily putting the bedrooms to rights. "I've burned my finger on that silly hot water heater again. I've told the doctor and told him to have the plumber stop in and fix it, but he forgets every time."

"I'll telephone Mr. Mertz," said Rosemary absently.

"You ought to make Sarah do her part," went on Winnie, spreading salve on a piece of gauze and binding it around her finger. "I'm tired trying to get any help from her. And Miss Trudy wants ice-water every minute of the day and if I don't get it for her she comes out to the refrigerator and wastes half a block, hacking it. Shirley wants nothing but hot breads and meat and first thing we know she'll be sick on our hands."

Winnie sat on the edge of the bath-tub and let her mind dwell on her woes. Rosemary tried to listen sympathetically, but she was warm and tired and if Winnie would only go perhaps she could finish the rooms in time to read a little before lunch. The afternoon would have to be given over to her delayed practising.

"Well, I'm going down stairs," said Winnie, putting the salve jar back on its shelf, "and all we're going to have for lunch is tomato salad and bread and butter. If any one doesn't like it, they can leave it; I'm not going to spend any time fussing with special dishes this kind of weather."

Rosemary's practising that afternoon was interrupted several times by the telephone, twice for the wrong number. Aunt Trudy, with the air of a martyr, took her sewing out under the horse chestnut tree, Sarah and Shirley went to a neighbor's to play and Winnie announced that she intended to take a nap. So there was no one to answer the bells except Rosemary. By the time she had jumped up to be asked "Is this the grocery store?" once or twice, had admitted the butcher boy with fresh meat which must be put on the ice and had been summoned three times by Aunt Trudy to thread her needle—for glasses, declared her aunt made her warmer in summer and she would not wear them—Rosemary's temper was fraying sadly.

"Rosemary," said Aunt Trudy, coming into the living room as the practise hour was about over (not allowing for time wasted, Rosemary told herself resentfully), "Rosemary, where is Sarah?"

"I don't care where she is!" cried Rosemary, whirling around on the piano bench. "I'm tired of always being asked where Sarah and Shirley are. I don't care!"

Aunt Trudy burst into tears.

"I don't think you ought to speak to me like that," she sobbed.



CHAPTER X

THE LAST STRAW

Jack Welles' cheerful whistle sounded outside.

"Coming!" answered Rosemary.

She flung her arms about Aunt Trudy and gave her a penitent hug.

"I'm sorry I was cross, Auntie," she whispered. "You know I didn't mean it."

Then she sped out the front door and joined Jack who was waiting on the walk outside the hedge.

"Come on uptown and have a soda," he suggested. "Perhaps it will cool you off—you look slightly wild."

"I feel wild," admitted Rosemary, falling into step beside him. "This has been the most dreadful day!"

"Weather's enough to make anyone cross," said the boy quickly. "I'll bet the trouble is you're doing everyone's work. Hugh ought to make Sarah stir around. She's lazy."

"No, I don't think she is lazy," protested Rosemary, "Only, well you know Jack, it was more fun doing the things you have to do when Mother was home. I can't explain it very well, but I remember last summer Sarah thought she'd wash the upstairs windows to surprise Mother—Winnie was sick and Mother happened to say she didn't know when in the world the windows would get cleaned. Sarah heard her and the next day she lugged up a pail of water and a cloth and tried to wash them. She splashed water all over the wall paper and made an awful mess of it, but Mother kissed her and praised her and said she was glad she had such a helpful little daughter. Aunt Trudy isn't like that and Sarah likes to be praised for what she does. Aunt Trudy never tells her she makes a bed well, but if there is a wrinkle in the spread she shows her that. Sarah made the beds all right for a long time, but now she goes off mornings and plays."

"I knew it," nodded Jack, "and Winnie has a list of troubles a mile long waiting for you every night."

"Morning," corrected Rosemary, laughing. "Oh, Jack how do you know so much? I don't see how I could get along without you, because you're the only one who listens to my troubles. Hugh is a dear, but he is so busy, and we're forbidden to write anything that will bother Mother."

"Fire into me any time you feel like it," invited Jack, steering her toward the drug-store steps and the soda fountain therein. "I'm always ready to listen and if you want any punching done, just let me know."

But the next hard day, when everything seemed to go wrong from breakfast time to the dinner hour, no Jack was at hand to listen to Rosemary's recital. He had gone away for a week's fishing trip with his father.

The day started with a pitched battle between Winnie and Sarah after breakfast, over the question of feeding the cat the top of the milk. Sarah declared passionately that she would starve herself before she would feed a defenseless cat skimmed milk and Winnie, with equal fervor, had announced that when she saw herself handing over the top milk to a cat they might send her to the insane asylum without delay.

"You're a mean, hateful woman!" shouted Sarah, rushing out of the kitchen and shutting the door on Shirley's finger which was too near the crack.

Shirley screamed with pain and after Rosemary had bathed the poor bruised finger and Winnie had comforted the child with a cookie, Aunt Trudy declared that her nerves were too unstrung to spend the day in such a house and that she would go to town and shop.

"That means I'll have to answer the telephone while I'm practising," grumbled Rosemary. "Oh, dear, how selfish everyone is! I've a good mind to sit down and read on the porch while it is shady. All the others do as they please and I will, too."

Her book was interesting, and there was a blessed freedom from interruptions. Rosemary was amazed when Sarah, warm and dirty from grubbing in the rabbit house appeared at the foot of the steps and demanded to know if lunch was ready.

"Oh well, I'll make the beds and pick up after lunch," said Rosemary to herself.

Shirley assumed the airs of an invalid at the lunch table and secured large portions of meat and dessert as a concession to her hurt finger. She ignored the vegetables entirely though the meal was supposed to be her dinner and Doctor Hugh had given orders that she was to be fed after certain rules.

Winnie was put out because the iceman was late and her dinner supplies threatened to spoil and Sarah insisted on the hot-water heater being lit so that she might have hot water in which to wash her cat. The wrangle with Winnie over this continued throughout the meal.

"I don't care whether you wash the cat or not," said Rosemary, when Sarah followed her to the corner of the living-room where the piano stood. "I'm going to practise, and don't bother me."

"Silly old music," grumbled Sarah, "come on, Shirley, let's go sail boats in the bath-tub."

Rosemary spent the afternoon at the piano, having promised herself that she would put in a full two hours over her music. The numerous interruptions spun out the time so that when she finally closed the lid the little clock on the mantelpiece chimed five.

"Good gracious, the beds aren't made!" thought Rosemary and flew up the stairs.

One glance into the bathroom halted her and cooled her energy. Shirley and Sarah had spent a busy afternoon, sailing boats in the tub. They had used every clean towel in sight to mop up the puddles on the floor and they were wet to their chins. Rosemary hustled them off to get into clean dry clothes and then worked feverishly to restore the room to a semblance of order. Aunt Trudy came home before she had finished and when she saw the unmade beds and the morning's disorder still untouched, she spoke her mind in no uncertain terms.

"Everybody has a grouch," observed Sarah cheerfully when they sat down to dinner. Doctor Hugh had not come in.

"Don't use that word, Sarah," reproved her aunt, sugaring a bowl of boiled rice for Shirley.

"Don't want rice, want cutylet," said Shirley, pointing to the veal cutlet.

"She's had enough meat to-day," interposed Winnie. "The doctor says she shouldn't have it at all at night."

Shirley refused to touch the rice and was sitting in stately aloofness when Doctor Hugh came in looking warm and tired.

"What's the matter?" he asked, dropping into his chair and testing the soup Winnie instantly placed before him. Hugh was her idol and she always managed not to keep him waiting. "Heat too much for you?" he added.

"Grouches is what ails 'em," volunteered Sarah.

"I've asked her not to use that word, but no one pays any attention to my wishes," sighed Aunt Trudy.

"All right, drop it, Sarah," said Doctor Hugh shortly. "Aren't you eating to-night, sweetheart?" he asked Shirley.

"I want some cutylet," said Shirley wistfully. "I don't like rice."

"She ate nothing for her dinner but beef loaf and two helps of date pudding," announced Winnie. "I don't know when she expects to learn to eat sensible and like a Christian."

"Well, if Rosemary would take a little interest in the child and coax her, she would soon learn to like vegetables," said Aunt Trudy. "I think Shirley is left too much to herself."

Rosemary flushed, but her brother spoke before she could reply.

"You eat your rice, Shirley, or not one other thing can you have to-night," he announced, with unusual severity, for Shirley was his pet. "No, crying won't do you any good—eat your rice and stop whining."

"I think you ought to know how things go when I'm not here, Hugh," began Aunt Trudy while Shirley ate her rice sulkily. "I was so upset this morning that I thought I should fly if I stayed in the house, so I went up to the city and shopped. I came in about half past five and not one bed was made! The children's clothes lay just where they had flung them last night. That's a nice way, isn't it? Apparently I can not leave home for a few hours without finding everything shirked on my return."

Rosemary's blue eyes blazed with quick anger and an unlovely look came into her face.

"I don't care if I didn't make the beds!" she cried hotly. "I'm sick and tired of beds and dusting and answering the telephone. You never expect anyone in this house to do a single thing, but me!"

"Rosemary!" said Doctor Hugh.

"I don't think you should speak to me like that," asserted Aunt Trudy on the verge of tears.

"I won't speak to you at all!" jerked Rosemary. "That's the only way to please you."

Aunt Trudy began to cry and Doctor Hugh pushed back his plate.

"Please leave the table, Rosemary," he said distinctly. "Go into the office and wait for me."

Rosemary rushed from the table like a whirlwind and the house shook as she banged the office door.

"I don't care!" she raged, in the depths of the comfortable shabby arm-chair that had been her father's. "I don't care! Aunt Trudy always cries and it isn't fair. I suppose Hugh will be furious, but let him. I'm so tired and so hot and so miserable—" and Rosemary gave herself up to a passion of angry tears.

She had been crying in the dark and when the door opened and someone switched on the light she knew it was Doctor Hugh. She slipped down from the chair and walked around back of the desk. He took the swivel chair and glanced at her half-averted face gravely.

"Rosemary," he said gently, "how would you like to ride over to Bennington with me to-morrow? They're opening the new hospital and I half promised to go. We'll be gone all the morning and it will make a little change for you."

Bennington was the county seat, twenty miles away. It should be delightful not to have anything to do the next morning but put on a clean frock and go with Hugh. He might even let her drive the car a few minutes at a time on a straight stretch of road—Rosemary found her tongue.

"Oh, Hugh, I'd love it!" she said enthusiastically.

"All right, so should I," he smiled. "I think you need a bit of pleasure. Things going rather hard for you, dear?"

Rosemary nodded, a lump in her throat surprising her. She had expected Hugh to be angry and to scold. Instead he was very gentle.

"I'm sorry," he said, "Very sorry. You miss Mother, I know; we all do. But I think you are learning a good deal this summer without her. I've been watching you, and you are more self-reliant and capable every day. Several people have spoken to me about the way you answer the 'phone and the intelligent answers you give them. I don't know what I should do without you."

Rosemary flushed with pleasure. Then, being Rosemary, she flung herself headlong at her brother, narrowly missing his glasses.

"Oh, Hugh! Hugh dear, I am sorry I acted so to-night!" she wept.

"There, there," he patted her gently. "You didn't mean to be cross, we all know that. You were tired and so was Aunt Trudy. I guess this heat has about worn everybody out. I tried to warn you, but the fireworks had to blaze up. Now kiss me, like my sweet girl, for I'm going out again, and then make your peace with Aunt Trudy. And to-morrow morning we'll leave dull care behind us and enjoy ourselves for a few hours."

"Shirley would love to go," suggested Rosemary.

"All right, I thought you ought to leave the cares behind, but we'll take Shirley if you say so," was the answer.



CHAPTER XI

A CHAIN OF PROMISES

The "hot spell" broke that night and the morning was deliciously cool and fresh. This delightful state of weather continued for several days and was immediately reflected in the changed temper of the Willis household and, it is safe to say, in many other Eastshore households since we are all more or less affected by weather conditions.

Aunt Trudy, who really was miserable under excessive heat revived and insisted on giving a birthday party for Shirley who was six years old on the third of August, and Rosemary and Sarah pleased and touched the good lady by their assurances that it was the nicest child's party ever given in the town. Shirley took her good fortune complacently and was heard to remark that she wished school would open the next day because now she was old enough to go.

The day after the party Aunt Trudy decided to "run into the city" for her new glasses and some special errands. She left soon after breakfast and would, she informed Winnie, return on the 5:48 train that afternoon.

It was the day for Rosemary's music lesson and she went, at two o'clock, to her teacher's house. The lesson over, she took a book back to the Library for Aunt Trudy, bought some clothespins for Winnie and meeting Jack Welles, brown and freckled from his fishing trip, accepted his invitation to stop at the hardware store and see the prize trout his father had caught and which was mounted and on exhibition in the window. So it was nearly half past four when she reached home.

"Rosemary!" a shrill whisper came down to her over the bannisters, as she went upstairs to leave the book she had selected for Aunt Trudy on the table in her room. "Rosemary, come up here, quick!"

Rosemary, vaguely frightened, ran up to Sarah's room. Shirley was there and both little girls looked as though they had been crying.

"What's the matter—did Shirley hurt herself?" asked Rosemary in alarm.

Sarah shut the door and looked at her older sister queerly.

"Promise you won't tell? Cross-your-heart-hope-to-die?" she urged.

Rosemary sat down on the bed.

"Is it good or bad?" she asked cautiously.

"Bad!" cried Shirley in an awe-struck tone. "Awfully bad. Isn't it, Sarah?"

Sarah nodded hopelessly.

"It's so bad," she declared, "that you never heard anything as bad. And if you tell, Rosemary, I'll run away, as far off as I can run away, and never, never come back."

Sarah's dark eyes were red-rimmed and she seemed so desperately unhappy that Rosemary's kind heart was touched.

"Oh, Sarah darling, you know I won't tell!" she exclaimed. "I don't care what it is, I won't tell anyone. I promise."

Sarah drew a long breath of relief. She sat down on the floor, her favorite resting place, and Shirley scrambled down beside her.

"Well then," said Sarah more calmly, "I've lost Aunt Trudy's turquoise ring!"

"You've lost Aunt Trudy's turquoise ring!" repeated Rosemary. "How on earth could you lose her ring?"

"We were playing with the jewel case," murmured Sarah, a dark red flush rising under her brown skin.

"Sarah Eaton Willis! And after what Hugh told you!" Rosemary stared at the culprit in astonishment.

For Aunt Trudy's jewel case, containing numerous rings and pins of no inconsiderable value and for which she cared little beyond the pleasure of possession seldom, if ever, wearing any of the pieces, had delighted Sarah and Shirley from the first moment they discovered it. Their aunt had indulgently allowed them to deck themselves out and play "lady" and apparently the idea that anything could happen to a valuable brooch or ring or a string of pearls, or cut amber beads be lost, never occurred to her. It occurred to Doctor Hugh, however, when he came home unexpectedly one afternoon and met Sarah and Shirley arrayed in barbaric splendor. He had immediately forbidden further play with the jewelry and, at his orders, Aunt Trudy had placed the case among the list of things on her dresser which must not be touched.

"I didn't think Aunt Trudy would care if we played with her rings a little while this afternoon," said Sarah uneasily, "We were going to put everything back, weren't we, Shirley? I had the ring on and Winnie called me to go get a cake of yeast—she's always wanting me to run errands. And when I came back the ring was gone off my finger and we hunted everywhere and we couldn't find it. So it must be lost," wound up the small sinner.

"I don't believe you have half looked," protested Rosemary. "Where did you go after you bought the yeast cake? Straight home? Well, I'll go look all the way to the store and back, and you and Shirley look everywhere in the house you can think of."

"You won't tell, will you, Rosemary?" coaxed Sarah. "Hugh will be so mad, but Aunt Trudy won't mind. She never wears any of her rings."

"Of course I won't tell," said Rosemary impatiently. "I promised. But you hurry and put the rest of the things back in the case and put it on Aunt Trudy's dresser, Sarah. And then look all over the house."

Rosemary searched every step of the way to the grocery store where Sarah had gone to buy the yeast cake, and all the way back, but with no result. The two little girls reported that they had looked "everywhere" in the house, but no ring had obligingly turned up. Aunt Trudy came home, apparently saw nothing wrong with the orderly array of articles on her dresser, and dinner was a comfortable meal if three of the five present were a little more silent than usual.

That night, when they were getting ready for bed, Rosemary announced that she had a plan. She had offered to go to bed when Sarah went and the surprised and pleased Aunt Trudy had told Doctor Hugh that she was sure the girls were learning to like an early bedtime hour.

"If the ring is lost, it is lost, and that is all there is to it," said Rosemary, sitting on Sarah's bed to brush her hair, a habit she still clung to though the bobbed locks were quickly made ready for the night. "And there is only one thing to do, that I can see: buy Aunt Trudy another."

"Buy her a ring!" gasped Sarah. "We can't—we haven't any money. And Hugh won't give it to us, unless we tell him what it's for. How much does a turquoise ring cost, Rosemary?"

"I don't know," admitted Rosemary. "A great deal, I suppose. I'll have to earn it, because I am the oldest. And Sarah you'll have to let me tell Jack Welles, because I want to ask him how I can earn some money."

"Aunt Trudy won't know the ring is lost," argued Sarah. "She never looks at 'em—she says she doesn't."

"That has nothing to do with it," replied Rosemary earnestly. "When you lose a thing, you try to replace it—that's what Mother says. Do you care if I tell Jack, Sarah?"

"No, but he mustn't tell Hugh," Sarah insisted.

The next morning Rosemary seized an opportunity while Jack was trimming the dividing hedge, to confide the story of the lost ring, first swearing him to secrecy.

"And now you have to tell me how I can earn money to buy Aunt Trudy another ring," she said anxiously.

Jack whistled in perplexity.

"I think you ought to tell Hugh," he said at once. "A ring like that must cost a lot—Aunt Trudy wouldn't have any make-believe stones. You can't earn money without he finds it out and then there will be a pretty row. Hasn't Sarah enough backbone to face the music?"

"Well, you see if she had only played with the jewel case after Hugh told her not to, that would be bad enough," explained Rosemary. "But she played with it and lost a ring and Hugh will scold dreadfully if he finds that out. I promised not to tell and so did you, Jack."

"Yes, I did, and I'm sorry I ever made such a fool promise," said Jack crossly. "I don't see how you can earn any money, Rosemary. There is nothing for you to do."

Rosemary was sure she could think of something and that afternoon she hailed Jack triumphantly.

"I've got it!" she called, running down to the hedge where he was raking out the trimmings left from the morning's work. "I know what I can do, Jack. I heard Mrs. Dunning tell Aunt Trudy the other day that she would give anything if she could get someone to stay with her baby while she went to the card club meetings Tuesday afternoons. I can take care of the baby!"

"What do you know about taking care of people's babies?" demanded Jack with scorn.

"I know how, if they are not very little ones," Rosemary assured him. "The Dunning baby is old enough to walk. I am going to get a baby to take care of every afternoon and that will be a whole lot of money every week!"

"What will Aunt Trudy say?" asked Jack pointedly.

"She won't know—she takes a nap half the afternoon, and I'll ask the babies' mothers to keep it a secret," planned Rosemary. "I won't say I am going to surprise Aunt Trudy with a present, but they'll think I am saving up for her birthday or something, perhaps."

"You see, you've started to deceive folks already," argued Jack, "and you know if Hugh ever finds out what you are doing he will be raging. Hadn't you better tell him, Rosemary, or get Sarah to own up?"

"She won't—I did try," admitted Rosemary. "Sarah is scared to death of what Hugh will say. No, I have to get another ring for Aunt Trudy and then, maybe, we can let her know the old one is lost."

In spite of Jack's opposition, Rosemary persisted in carrying out her plan for earning money. As she had said, she had nearly the whole of every afternoon to herself for Aunt Trudy took a long nap and Doctor Hugh rarely came home between one and six. She called on the mothers of young babies and in many instances was eagerly welcomed. A great many women wanted to leave their youngsters with some one for an hour or two in the afternoon and Rosemary had a "natural way" with children, to quote Winnie. The babies took to her at first sight and in a few days Rosemary was able to announce to the disgruntled Jack that she had "work" for every afternoon in the week.

"They think I'm earning money for Christmas," she said, "I didn't say that, honestly I didn't, Jack. But whenever I told any one I wanted to earn some money and did they want me to take care of their baby for fifteen cents an hour, they always said, 'Oh, I suppose you want to earn some money for Christmas, before school opens'!"

"Bet you'll give it up after the first day," prophesied Jack. "Taking care of cranky babies isn't what it is cracked up to be."

There were many afternoons when Rosemary recalled his words. She would have liked to give up, often. The babies were as good and sweet-tempered as babies usually are, but no child is angelic and the hot weather and their teeth troubles fretted the small people sadly. Rosemary was sometimes at her wits' end to keep her charges amused and there were days when she longed to fly home and rest her tired head on the cool pillow on her own little bed. She had never been forced to do anything steadily for long after she tired of it, and to be obliged to smile and play with a wailing, discontented baby on a hot, muggy afternoon did seem more than she could stand. But she had plenty of perseverance, had Rosemary, and when she once made up her mind to do a thing she stuck it out. Sarah and Shirley had ceased to worry about the ring. Rosemary would make it all right again for them—of that they had no doubt.

But if Aunt Trudy slept long hours and did not interfere with the goings and comings of her young nieces, she was not quite so unobservant as they sometimes thought.

"It seems to me that Rosemary is out of the house a good deal," she remarked one morning to Winnie. "She ought to take more of an interest in things here at the house."

"Well, I suppose it's only natural she should find a good deal to do outside," answered Winnie, who had not been blind to Rosemary's frequent absences, cautiously. "She's young, you know, and doing your duty gets tiresome after a bit."

But to herself, Winnie admitted that Rosemary seemed to have absolved herself from any responsibility toward her sisters. "Left them to shift for themselves," was the way Winnie put it. She was puzzled and also disappointed in her favorite, for indifference of any kind had never been a Rosemary trait.

"She ought to be looking after Sarah and Shirley some of the time," grumbled Winnie. "Those young ones are under my feet continually. The least Rosemary can do is to read to 'em now and then to keep them quiet."

That very afternoon Miss Mason, Rosemary's music teacher called to see Aunt Trudy. Rosemary's music was falling below its usual standard and that was a pity. Was she practising as faithfully as usual?

"I think it is a shame to waste all that money on music lessons, if you won't practise, Rosemary," announced her aunt at the dinner table that night.



CHAPTER XII

ONE DISASTROUS AFTERNOON

"I do practise," said Rosemary desperately.

"Well not enough, or Miss Mason wouldn't say your work was falling below your usual standard," Aunt Trudy insisted. "She was here this afternoon, Hugh, and she asked me whether Rosemary was giving as much time as usual to the piano."

"Oh, let her slow up this kind of weather, if she wants to," responded the doctor lazily. "I think she's stuck pretty faithfully to the scales and finger exercises myself."

Rosemary flashed him a grateful look.

"Of course I don't want to find fault," said Aunt Trudy to this, "but you know I feel responsible. And Winnie was saying this morning that Sarah and Shirley are left too much to themselves."

"Oh, that's all right," declared Sarah hastily and Shirley echoed, "Yes, that's all right."

Doctor Hugh laughed and even Rosemary smiled faintly. How could she explain that she had no time left from the babies in the afternoon to spend with the little sisters, or that the reason her music was showing neglect was because her morning practise hours were given over to the odds and ends of duties she dared not leave undone for fear of comment and question and now had no other time to do?

"I imagine Sarah and Shirley amuse themselves," said the doctor, smiling, "but Rosemary dear, I don't want you to get in the habit of being out of the house too much. Three afternoons I've called you up and you weren't home."

Doctor Hugh wondered if Nina Edmonds was absorbing Rosemary's attention again, but he thought it wiser not to ask. As a matter of fact, had he but known it, the voluble Nina had been away at the seashore for several weeks.

"Well, all I can say," remarked Aunt Trudy after a pause, "is that I hope, Rosemary, your sense of duty will be strong enough to cause you to pay a little attention to the children while I am away. I am going to-morrow morning to spend two days with my cousin, you know, Hugh. She is sailing for London, Wednesday."

"Yes, you told me," acknowledged the doctor. "We'll manage all right, Aunt Trudy. Rosemary will keep us all in order."

But in spite of his cheerful faith, Aunt Trudy departed the next morning "worried to death" as she confided to Winnie.

"I have a feeling that Sarah and Shirley will get into some mischief, the minute my back is turned," declared the good lady. "And Rosemary will be mooning around and not catch them until it is too late."

Aunt Trudy's doleful prediction proved only too true. That very afternoon, when Rosemary left to take care of the Simmons baby while his proud mother attended the fortnightly meeting of her card club, Sarah and Shirley decided to sail boats in the bath-tub. Unfortunately, when the tub was half filled, Ray Anderson called them to come and see his new kiddie car and when that was duly inspected, Sarah pressed Shirley into service to help her feed the rabbits.

"Let's go up to the store and buy 'em some fresh carrots," Sarah suggested. "I'll get the money out of the tin bank—Rosemary won't mind, 'cause I'll pay her back soon as I can."

Rosemary was putting the money she earned into the little tin chimney bank which stood on the mantel shelf in her room. She called it the "ring fund" and to Sarah it seemed that there must be money enough already in it to buy several rings. But Rosemary was positive she still needed a great deal more.

Sarah and Shirley, by dint of much shaking and banging the bank against the shelf edge, succeeded in extracting ten cents and with this they purchased fresh young carrots, a delicacy much beloved by the pampered rabbits. They had fed the rabbits and were swinging in the porch swing, when they heard a cry from Winnie.

"For mercy's sake, where is the water coming from!" she shrieked. "Look at it, leaking down through the ceiling and dripping on my clean tablecloth—have the pipes sprung a leak?"

She dashed madly upstairs, Sarah and Shirley at her heels. The bath-tub was overflowing and the floor was a lake.

"Don't ever let me hear of you sailing boats again, as long as I live in this house!" Winnie scolded, as she rolled up her sleeves and pulled out the plug. "Sarah, go down and get me the mop—quick! It'll be a wonder if the plaster doesn't fall in the dining-room, it's that soaked!"

Dinner was delayed because of the catastrophe and when Doctor Hugh came in, hungry and tired, it was to find Winnie spreading a fresh cloth on the table and scolding Rosemary vigorously.

"The time to be helping me is before such a thing happens," announced Winnie, twitching the linen angrily. "Is that you, Hughie? Heaven alone knows when dinner will be ready to-night—I've been made to set the table twice over and the potatoes boiled dry while I was mopping up the bathroom."

In a few words she sketched the incident.

"Rosemary, can't you look after the children a little better, just till your aunt gets back?" asked the doctor wearily. "Where were you when they were letting the water run?"

"I was—out," said Rosemary lamely. "Just around," she added hastily, seeing a question forming on his lips.

"Well you'll have to stay in to-morrow," he said decisively. "Aunt Trudy will be home to-morrow night, and I want you to be with Sarah and Shirley till then. That isn't asking too much—one day. And we'll see if we can get along without any more accidents. No eclairs to-night, Winnie, for Shirley and Sarah."

The two culprits, deprived of dessert, were excused early, but Rosemary left alone with Hugh was too busy with her own thoughts to talk much though ordinarily she loved an opportunity for a chat with him.

"I simply have to go to Mrs. Hepburn's to-morrow," she thought panic-stricken. "I promised faithfully to come, rain or shine. She is going somewhere with her husband and that's the only day he has off. I'll have to go—that is all there is about it. If Hugh finds it out, he will be furious, but perhaps he won't know. Anyway, I'm going! I promised."

Sarah and Shirley playing their favorite game of dominoes on the porch after dinner, were startled by a sudden rush from Rosemary. She whirled through the doorway and demanded of her sister, "Sarah, have you been meddling with my tin bank?"

Sarah got up from the floor slowly.

"I borrowed ten cents," she admitted, trying to back away and backing into a rocking chair.

"You 'borrowed' ten cents!" cried Rosemary, advancing upon her. "And you know I want to save every cent! Of all the selfish, mean girls I ever knew, you're the worst!"

She clutched the unhappy Sarah by her broad sailor collar and proceeded to shake her fiercely. Sarah retaliated by kicking viciously and they were in eminent danger of upsetting the wicker table and porch lamp when Doctor Hugh strode out and separated them.

"Rosemary!" he said in surprise. "What do you call it you are doing? And Sarah, too—kicking and fighting like two small boys! What ails you, anyway?"

"She took ten cents out of my bank—it's just the same as stealing, because she never pays back anything she borrows," panted Rosemary, almost crying. "I found a penny on the floor where she dropped it. And she knows how hard I'm trying to save every cent, too."

"Well, Sarah, I think robbing a bank is a pretty mean trick," pronounced Doctor Hugh judiciously. "Where is this bank, Rosemary? I've never seen it. Seems to me you're beginning to get ready for Christmas rather far in advance."

Rosemary looked at Sarah who gazed at her imploringly. Both girls had forgotten for the moment the ring fund and its object.

"I'll pay you back to-morrow Rosemary, honestly I will," said Sarah hurriedly. "Aunt Trudy owes me ten cents for not melting her letter sealing wax. She will pay me to-morrow night and I'll give it to you."

"Sarah, Sarah," groaned her brother, half in amusement, half in despair, "I'm afraid your ethics are pretty wobbly. So Aunt Trudy has to bribe you, does she, to let her desk alone? Well, see that you turn the bribe over to Rosemary, though I should call it robbing Peter to pay Paul, with a vengeance."

"Goodness, suppose he had made you tell why you were saving the money!" whispered Sarah, when the doctor had gone back to his office. "I was just shaking in my shoes."

"Sarah, wouldn't you rather tell, anyway?" said Rosemary suddenly. "I don't believe Hugh would be so very cross, because you didn't mean to lose the ring. And I am afraid it will take me a perfect age to earn enough money to buy another."

"I won't tell, ever!" declared Sarah, shaking her dark head obstinately. "And if you tell, Rosemary Willis, I'll never speak to you as long as I live! You don't have to buy another ring—that's silly. Aunt Trudy doesn't even know this one is lost."

"I don't care if she doesn't," insisted Rosemary. "You lost it, and we have to get another one for her; that's all there is to it."

The next afternoon Doctor Hugh repeated his request that Rosemary should stay with Sarah and Shirley till Aunt Trudy came home on the 5:46 train. Then he left on a long round of calls and Rosemary, not without many regrets and a thrill of fear when she thought what her brother would say if he found her out, sped up the street to the pleasant house where Mrs. Hepburn, hatted and gloved eagerly waited her coming.

"I was so afraid you wouldn't come," she greeted the little girl. "Baby is asleep, and I want to get away before he wakes up and sees me go. I'll be back at half-past five, sharp, but of course you won't go till I come. You mustn't leave Baby alone in the house."

As luck would have it, Aunt Trudy decided to come home on an earlier train and found herself in the midst of bundle-laden Eastshore shoppers who had spent the day in the city and were returning with their spoils. Motherly Mrs. Dunning occupied a seat with Aunt Trudy and what more natural than that she should speak of how much help Rosemary had been to her that summer? The wonder was that Aunt Trudy had so long escaped hearing but she went about very little in the town and had met comparatively few of the neighbors even those living on her own street.

"Yes indeed I've been able to go away an afternoon or two a week," babbled Mrs. Dunning, "something I haven't done since Baby came. Your niece is such a nice child and so reliable. I wanted her this afternoon, but Mrs. Hepburn had engaged her first."

"My niece? Mrs. Hepburn engaged her?" repeated Aunt Trudy faintly.

Mrs. Dunning explained and Aunt Trudy managed to keep from fainting though as she told Doctor Hugh afterward, she would never know how the strength was given her. She looked nearer to apoplexy than fainting when she walked into the house a half hour later and, purple-faced and choking, demanded to be told the instant the doctor came in.

Doctor Hugh and his car rolled up a few moments later and Aunt Trudy sobbed out the "miserable story" as she characterized it.

"To think of Rosemary, acting as a nurse-maid, and we never knew it!" she wailed. "What would her mother say? What must the neighbors think?"

"Bother the neighbors!" said Doctor Hugh testily. "When Rosemary comes home tell her I want to see her."

Though his aunt did not suspect it, he had seldom been as angry in his life. Not only had Rosemary deliberately defied him and gone off that afternoon, but she had most certainly furnished topic for gossip in Eastshore for it was not possible in so small a town that her occupation had been unnoticed. And Doctor Hugh was very proud of his pretty sister. What could have possessed the child to do such a wild thing?

He had himself in hand by the time Rosemary came running in, late, for Mrs. Hepburn had been delayed and nothing could have induced the young worker to desert her charge.

"Your brother wants you—he's in the office," said Aunt Trudy stiffly.

And as soon as she saw Hugh the most awful sinking sensation went through Rosemary. He had found out, how, she could not guess, but somehow, that was plain.



CHAPTER XIII

JACK STRAIGHTENS THINGS OUT

"You—you wanted to see me Hugh?" Rosemary faltered.

"Please come in and close the door," he said quietly. Then as she obeyed, "Now what is this Mrs. Dunning has been telling Aunt Trudy, Rosemary? Have you been taking care of babies in the neighborhood for fifteen cents an hour?"

Rosemary nodded.

"How long has this been going on?" asked her brother.

"A—a couple of weeks," answered Rosemary faintly.

"What was the idea?"

Rosemary said nothing.

"I asked you a question, Rosemary. Please answer me. What made you do a thing like this without consulting some one? Did Winnie know?"

"No," said Rosemary reluctantly, "Winnie didn't know. No one did. I wanted to earn some money, Hugh."

Then came the question she had been dreading.

"What for?"

Rosemary nervously knotted and unknotted her handkerchief. Her blue eyes roved around the familiar room and came back to the grim face and the dark eyes which watched her relentlessly.

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried desperately, "PLEASE!"

Her brother picked up a paper weight and studied it intently.

"Look here, Rosemary," he began more gently, "you deliberately disobeyed this afternoon when I asked you to stay in the house—"

"Because I had absolutely promised Mrs. Hepburn, Hugh," Rosemary broke in eagerly. "I'd promised! She was depending on me and I had to go."

"Very well, a promise is a promise," admitted the doctor, "though when wrongly given sometimes they must be broken. We'll set aside the fact that you disobeyed and consider only this wild scheme apparently undertaken because you wanted to earn money. I want you to tell me why you thought you needed money and why you couldn't come to me and ask for it."

"Because," whispered Rosemary unhappily, "Because."

"That's no reason," said the doctor brusquely. "Come, 'fess up, Rosemary, and I'll help you out of the scrape, whatever it is. My dear little girl, you can't go around among the neighbors like this—families help each other and stand by each other. I don't care a hoot what other people may think—as Aunt Trudy seems to believe I should—but I care a great deal that my little sister should go to outsiders instead of coming to me."

Rosemary touched his sleeve timidly. She longed to throw herself in his arms, cry that she was tired of taking care of silly, uninteresting babies (though as a matter of fact when she wasn't tired she loved them all, the cross as well as the good-natured ones), and tell him the whole story about the lost ring. But there was her promise to Sarah. A promise was a promise—Hugh himself had said so. And families were to stand by each other, and she must stand by Sarah and Shirley.

"I can't tell you, Hugh," said Rosemary earnestly. "I just can't."

"You mean you won't," said the doctor sternly. "Well, go up and bring me down this bank—I suppose that was the one you and Sarah were quarreling over the other night? And you put the money you earned in that? I thought so; bring it down to me."

Wondering what he meant to do, Rosemary went up to her room and returned with the bank. Doctor Hugh dropped it into one of the lower drawers of his desk and turned the key.

"I want you to bring me a list of the women for whom you have taken care of children," he said, pushing a block of paper and a pencil toward Rosemary, "and, as nearly as you can remember, the number of hours you worked for each. Then we'll count out this money and you will have to return it. I want that list by to-morrow night."

Winnie sounded the dinner gong just then and Rosemary went silently to the table. Aunt Trudy's eyes were red from crying and Sarah and Shirley looked frightened. Their aunt had told them the "awful thing" Rosemary had been doing and Sarah was in terror lest Hugh already knew her part in it. But dinner, uncomfortable meal as it was, reassured Sarah. Hugh would not have allowed her to leave the table without a word if he had known about the ring.

Rosemary went to her room directly after dinner and Sarah and Shirley followed.

"Was he mad?" asked Shirley, her eyes round with excitement.

"Aunt Trudy was crying and wringing her hands," volunteered Sarah. "She says the family is disgraced and Hugh will be ashamed to show his face in Eastshore."

"What a silly thing to say!" cried Rosemary. "Thank goodness, Hugh is no snob. But he is furious because I can't tell him why I wanted the money. And, oh, girls, I have to take it all back. How can I ever buy the ring now, and what will the people say when I bring back the money they paid me?"

She hurriedly outlined what Doctor Hugh had said, and Sarah immediately suggested that they get hold of the bank and bury it.

"Hugh would only punish us again," said Rosemary practically. "Let's tell him about the ring, Sarah. He said he'd help me out of the scrape, no matter what it was, if I'd tell him."

But Sarah set her chin obstinately and refused to go to her brother. She reminded Rosemary of her promise and Shirley, too, began to cry and say that she was afraid of Hugh. So it ended by Rosemary renewing her promise not to tell and then crying herself to sleep because she remembered how patient Hugh had been and she knew she had both hurt and disappointed him.

"And I can't go around and give the money back," she wept, tossing about on her wet pillow, "What will people think? But Hugh will make me, if he goes along to see me do it. Oh, dear, the Willis will makes all the trouble in this family!"

But in the morning the Willis will helped Rosemary to remain unshaken in her determination not to tell any more than she had told. Doctor Hugh called her into the office before breakfast—he had had his early and was ready to leave when the girls came down stairs—and asked her again why she wanted the money, patiently at first and then, as Rosemary stubbornly refused to give a reason, he lost his temper and began to storm. Rosemary finally flew out of the office and banged the door and the morning was unhappily begun.

Winnie, who had heard the story from Aunt Trudy, thought it her duty to lecture Rosemary during breakfast—at which Aunt Trudy did not appear—and Rosemary, whose nerves were already strained to the breaking point, answered snappishly.

"I should think you'd be ashamed to speak to me like that before your little sisters," said Winnie indignantly. "Shirley wouldn't talk to Winnie like that, would you dear?"

"Oh, my no," said Shirley angelically.

This was too much for Rosemary. She fled from the table to indulge in a good cry up in her mother's room. Doctor Hugh had trusted the key to her, after he had locked the room and Rosemary sometimes went there when she wanted to be quiet and think. The room was in perfect order, sweet and clean and well-aired and the things on the dresser and shelves were exactly as her mother usually kept them. Rosemary had arranged them so because she thought her mother would like to find them ready for her when she came home.

After the tears had stopped, Rosemary sat quietly for a few minutes in the little low white rocker. Something of the peace and stillness of the room stole into her troubled mind. Presently she rose and went out, locking the door carefully behind her.

"Anything the matter, Rosemary—you look a little woozy," said Jack Welles with neighborly frankness, seeing her across the hedge later that morning as she was spreading out handkerchiefs to bleach for Winnie.

In a rush of words, Rosemary told him the "matter."

"Well, you do have a merry time," Jack commented when she had finished. "But the solution is simple after all."

"I can't take back that money," said Rosemary miserably. "But what can I do? Hugh will never give in."

"Do? There's nothing for you to do," answered Jack vigorously. "Sarah and Shirley have the next act on the program and it's up to me to see that they realize it, if you can't show them their duty. Where's Sarah now?"

"Teaching the cat to sit up," said Rosemary without interest. "It won't do you any good to argue with her, Jack. She's afraid of Hugh and she won't ever tell him. Besides, you know, I only told you if you would promise not to tell."

"Oh, I haven't forgotten that you nailed me firmly before you would say a word," Jack replied grimly. "But I still think I can persuade Sarah to confess her share and if she will, Shirley will admit that she also was present. I'll go begin my good work now."

He was gone half an hour and when he came back he was smiling.

"Everything's all fixed," he announced. "Sarah and Shirley are going to march up to the guns like good soldiers to-night, and I'm going to do the talking for them. Sarah, sensibly enough, wants to get it over before dinner, so I've promised to come over right after lunch and sit on your porch so I'll be here no matter how early Hugh gets home. You and I have to bolster up the weak spots in their courage."

"I don't see how you ever persuaded Sarah," marveled Rosemary. "I argued and argued, and she wouldn't listen to me."

Jack looked very wise.

"I used moral suasion," he declared. "Told her if she didn't own up to-night, I'd go to Doctor Hugh and tell him everything myself."

"Is that moral suasion?" asked Rosemary doubtfully.

"Of course it is," said Jack with confidence. "If it isn't it ought to be. I've never broken a promise yet and I'm mighty glad Sarah didn't make me, but I'll be jiggered if I don't think there are times when it is worse to keep a promise than to break it."

A promise "wrongly given"—Doctor Hugh's words came back to Rosemary. Had she given her promise wrongly?

Doctor Hugh did not come home till nearly five o'clock and the four solemn young people on the front porch were getting decidedly fidgety before his roadster appeared at the curb and he jumped out and hurried up the walk. He said "Hello" to the four as he passed them and he was surprised, therefore, when he turned from his desk to see them enter the office and advance toward him.

"Hugh," said Jack clearly, "I've something to tell you. Sarah really ought to, but she asked me to do it."

"Suppose you sit down," said the doctor gravely.

Sarah sat down gingerly on a chair near the door, ready for instant flight, and the others ranged themselves near the desk. Jack began with the loss of the ring and told everything that had happened since. He spoke rapidly, but without excitement, and he was not interrupted once.

"I am really to blame, as much as anyone," he declared, when he had reached the point where Rosemary had confided in him about the missing ring and her determination to replace it. "I had no business to promise not to tell before I heard what I was not to tell. That's a fool stunt."

"Yes, I think it is," agreed Doctor Hugh, but smilingly.

"Rosemary thought she had to go on taking care of cranky babies till she could buy another ring. If I'd had any money of my own—and I don't know why I never do—" Jack paused for a moment to consider this new idea—"I would have bought a ring myself and helped her out of the hole."

Doctor Hugh listened silently to the remainder of the recital, his eyes studying the four expressive faces before him.

"So Rosemary really couldn't tell you what she wanted the money for, because she had promised," finished Jack. "And Sarah was afraid, and so was Shirley."

"I see," the doctor said. "I'm sorry they were afraid. Sarah dear, do you really think you have saved yourself anything by not telling me when you lost the ring?" he went on, turning to Sarah. "Haven't you had more trouble and worry and unhappiness trying to keep me from finding out and don't you think it is better to own up right away and take your punishment and have it all over?"

"Yes," admitted Sarah in a very small voice.

"Well, then, next time tell me at once," said Doctor Hugh earnestly. "And don't ever let me hear of four of you making a chain of promises like this. We'll see what can be done about the ring to-morrow, Sarah, and you and I will talk it over with Aunt Trudy."

He held out his hand to Jack and put an arm around Rosemary, whose face was radiant with relief and happiness.

"I wish you had spoken up a little sooner, Jack," growled the doctor. "I find that keeping track of three girls isn't the easiest task in the world."

"But we won't lose any more rings," said the practical Sarah.

"No, we won't lose any more rings, Hugh," whispered Rosemary, standing on tip-toe to kiss him.



CHAPTER XIV

A NEW SCHOOL TERM

The next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, the unwilling Sarah was called into conference in the office with her brother and Aunt Trudy. The latter was much surprised to learn that she had lost a ring, and insisted that Sarah, who was rather a favorite of hers, should not be punished.

"I never did care anything about the ring, Hugh," said Aunt Trudy earnestly, "and there's been trouble enough about it. It's just like Rosemary to want to buy me another, but I'd never wear it, so why should she? I'm glad enough that this ridiculous idea of hers has been stopped before it went on any longer. Don't, for pity's sake, say another word about that unfortunate ring."

"Well, Sarah, that let's you out," said Doctor Hugh cheerfully. "I must say I think you've shirked all the way through, first in not owning up and again in letting Rosemary take the responsibility of replacing the ring. And you kept her from telling me, simply to shield yourself. However, I really understand that you were afraid and fear often keeps us from doing what we know to be right. You're going to fight that little 'I'm-afraid'"—for he had had a brief talk with his little sister the night before after the others had left the office and felt that he was just beginning to understand Sarah—"and put him in his place, which is behind you, and so we'll start all over as long as Aunt Trudy is willing. Shall we?"

"Let's," said Sarah laconically, but she slipped a confiding small hand in the doctor's larger one. He squeezed it affectionately.

"Now I must be off," he said, glancing at his watch. "Where is Rosemary? I thought I'd take her with me this morning—the ride will do her good. Practising?" he repeated as Sarah called his attention to the sound of finger exercises. "Let her practise this afternoon—she needs to get away from a fixed schedule now and then."

Rosemary enjoyed this ride and the others that followed in quick succession. Doctor Hugh, unknown to her, was realizing that every one had been expecting too much of the oldest daughter of the house, had looked to her, in fact, to grow up in one summer.

"Poor little kid!" thought the doctor one morning, as he allowed Rosemary to take the wheel of the car on a level stretch of clear road and the color came into her face from the excitement and delight. "Poor little kid, we've been expecting her to have the patience and wisdom and experience Mother has. She's only twelve years old and we ask her to act like a woman. She's bound to make mistakes, but she won't make the same one twice—I'll bank on that. Temper and will, rightly directed, make for strength, and Rosemary will be as lovely within some day as she is to the eye—and my sister is going to be a beauty, or I miss my guess."

Aloud he said, "Watch the road, Rosemary. Never mind what is behind you, watch the road ahead."

Coming in at noon from one of these rides with Doctor Hugh, Rosemary found a small box, wrapped in white tissue paper and tied with pink string, at her plate.

"It looks like a jeweler's box," she said jokingly as she opened it. "Why it is!" she added in surprise.

Sarah and Shirley crowded around her as she opened it. A little gold "friendship" circle pin, set with a single turquoise, lay on a bed of blue cotton.

"How perfectly lovely!" cried Rosemary. "Is it mine?"

"Of course it is," said Sarah. "Jack and Shirley and I went to Mr. Evans and bought it for you. Do you like it?"

"Why it's darling," the enthusiastic Rosemary assured her. "I never saw a prettier pin. Look, Hugh, look Aunt Trudy," she said eagerly, holding out the pin to them as they came in from the hall.

"Why don't you ask where we got the money to buy it?" suggested Sarah and at that Doctor Hugh shouted with laughter.

"You'll be the death of me yet, Sarah," he protested. "Sit down, people, do, and we'll begin luncheon while Sarah reveals her dark secret."

"'Tisn't a secret," announced Sarah with dignity. "Hugh said we might take the ring-fund money, Rosemary, and buy you something nice with it, and if we saw anything we thought you'd like, to tell him, and he'd give us as much more money as we needed. Then Aunt Trudy said she wanted to put some money with the ring-fund money, and so did Winnie and so did Jack, so everybody did. Oh, yes, Hugh did, too. And we saw this pin and Shirley and I thought it would be nice because it had the turquoise in it like Aunt Trudy's ring, and Jack said it was a 'friendship circle' and that meant we were all friends of yours. So we bought it and it was seven dollars and a half," concluded Sarah who was nothing if not thorough.

"It's just beautiful," said Rosemary, with an April face of smiles and tears. "I'll always keep it and love you all for thinking so much of me."

She had wondered several times about the ring money, but the doctor had made no motion to give her back the bank. Neither had he mentioned returning the money again. Rosemary supposed that he would bring the subject up some time, but until he did she was content to forget about it. She did not know till weeks afterward that it was Jack Welles who had dissuaded the doctor from his plan to have the "fund" returned to those who had paid it.

"Rosemary earned the money fairly and squarely," he argued. "She earned it by the hardest kind of work and it seems mean to make her feel cheap. Those women were paying for service and they got it, and they don't think any the less of Rosemary, either, if Aunt Trudy does moan along about 'degrading' the family. You're forever preaching that there is no disgrace in any kind of honest work, Hugh—"

"Oh, quit, I'm licked!" surrendered the doctor, laughing. "I won't mention the money to Rosemary, Jack. Though when I think of that child spending long, hot afternoons amusing cranky kids for pay—Still, it's pluck like that that makes the backbone of our country. What do you say if we take this money and buy her some little personal gimcrack? Girls like things to wear, I've always heard."

So Jack gained his point and the pretty pin was the result.

The days of vacation, "like the hairs of our heads" as Jack observed, were numbered now and the week before school was to open, Doctor Hugh made a flying trip to the sanatorium to see the little mother.

"You wouldn't know her, girls!" he told the three sisters, when he returned. "Her cheeks are actually a bit pink and though she is still awfully thin, her eyes are clear and bright. If three months can do her that much good, a year will set her on her feet. She says she lives on your letters, and you mustn't let a week go past without writing. Rosemary must be a good censor, for Mother doesn't seem to worry about the house at all; I told her we were pulling together famously."

"Well, we are," said Rosemary contentedly. "I wish you'd look at Sarah, though, Hugh."

"I am looking at her," said the doctor. "She seems to have torn her dress."

"That's the one decent dress she has," responded Rosemary severely, "and now she hasn't a single thing to wear to school Monday."

"What does Mother do when you need clothes?" asked Doctor Hugh helplessly. "I suppose you'll all need dresses for school, won't you?"

"Mother has Miss Henry come and sew the first week in September," said Rosemary, "but Aunt Trudy says the sanatorium is expensive and she thinks we ought to try and cut down living expenses."

"I think we can still afford some new frocks," replied her brother, smiling. "Ask Aunt Trudy to engage Miss Henry, Rosemary, and to get her whatever she needs to outfit you sensibly for school. You'll have to remind me about shoes and hats and dresses, you know; an old bachelor isn't expected to notice when these things wear shabby."

Miss Henry came and sewed a week, making new dresses and contriving and turning to make the best of several old ones. Monday morning, when school opened, the three Willis girls started off brave in new ginghams and Doctor Hugh assured them that he was proud of them.

"I wish I was in high school," said Rosemary wistfully, as Jack Welles joined them at the first corner.

"Two more years, and you will be," he consoled her. "I'll be a senior then, and I'll see that no one steps on you, Rosemary."

"Oh, nobody will," said Rosemary confidently.

And indeed she looked quite capable of taking care of herself. There was little of dependency about Rosemary and her lovely soft eyes were balanced by the firm white chin. "She is easily hurt, but her pride helps her to hide that," Winnie was fond of saying, "and don't be after forgetting that there's red in her hair, under the gold!"

The Eastshore school was a splendid type of the modern school, housing in one building the primary, grammar and high school grades. Built on the extreme edge of the town, it faced an acre play-ground, evenly divided among the three schools. Principals and teachers were the best obtainable and indeed the State Board of education was fond of using Eastshore school as a model for others to follow. Mrs. Willis had often declared that she would never have sent her son to boarding school had the public school then been as excellent as that which Rosemary and her sisters attended.

This morning Rosemary was to enter the seventh grade in the grammar school, Sarah would be in the fourth primary and Shirley, having "graduated" from the kindergarten the year before, would attain the dignity of a seat in the first grade. Separating at the broad door, they were swept into the different streams that carried them up different stairways and into different classrooms and it was noon before they saw each other again. Few of the pupils went home to lunch and a large, light airy room on the third floor was set aside for their use as a lunch room. A corner table was reserved for teachers and here a small group usually gathered not only to eat and exchange comment, but to keep an eye on the lunchers and subdue the noise when it rose to a shout. The high school students had their own lunch room, but the grammar and primary grades shared a room together.

"Well, what kind of people are in your room?" demanded Sarah, as she and Shirley met Rosemary at the little corner table the latter had secured and held for them. Rosemary had spread out the lunch Winnie had put up for them, and Shirley was already beginning on a sandwich.

"Oh, I like the girl who sits in front of me ever so much," returned Rosemary, cutting an apple into quarters for Shirley. "Her name is Elsie Stevens and they haven't lived in Eastshore long. Last year she went to the Port Reading school. Elsie Mears sits in back of me; she wasn't promoted. And Nina Edmonds is across the aisle."

"I don't think much of our teacher," announced Sarah, with deplorable frankness. "She doesn't look very bright and she says she is afraid of snakes."

"Well so am I," declared Rosemary. "I don't think any one is very bright who isn't."

"That's because you don't know anything about snakes," said Sarah, salting a boiled egg hurriedly. "Snakes are the best friends the farmer has."

"My teacher's name is Miss Farmer," chirped Shirley sunnily. "And we have pink and red and blue crayons to draw on the blackboard with."

"Take another sandwich, darling," Rosemary urged her. "You're sure you won't get tired this afternoon? You went home at noon every day last year, you know."

"Yes, but I'm six now," Shirley reminded her sister. "Will we have home work in our room, Rosemary?"

It was one of Shirley's ambitions to have "home work" to do, and she longed to take a book home at night as Rosemary and Sarah did.

"I don't know—I shouldn't think so," answered Rosemary absently. "Sarah, Nina Edmonds wears her hair pinned up and no hair-ribbon."

"Well she looks crazy anyway, so what difference does it make?" was Sarah's comment on this news. "You can't go without a hair-ribbon, Rosemary, because your hair will all be in your eyes. Hugh said Nina was trying to be grown up and I guess she is."

But that night Rosemary spent half an hour before her mirror, trying to coax her bobbed curls into a knot like Nina Edmonds'. Rosemary's hair was growing very fast and she had promised Doctor Hugh not to have it cut again. Just now it was an awkward length, but its curliness redeemed even that. Nina's straight blond locks were strained into a tortuous knot at the nape of her neck, for she, too, had decided not to bob her hair again. It was the absence of hair-ribbon that particularly appealed to Rosemary, for she had "spells" as Winnie called them, of wishing to appear grown up. At other times she was satisfied to be what Doctor Hugh insisted she should be content to be for several more years, "just a little girl."



CHAPTER XV

TOO MUCH NATURAL HISTORY

When the girls of the Eastshore school reached the seventh grade, they entered the cooking class. The white aprons and caps were much coveted and whatever other study might be neglected, each girl usually put her best into the weekly cooking lesson. There was a small stove for each and every young cook was responsible for the order and cleanliness in which her pots and pans and utensils were kept. Woe betide her, if Miss Parsons, the teacher, found an unwashed pan thrust under the sink in a moment of hurry.

"She's very particular," reported Rosemary, the evening after her first lesson in cooking. "She made Nina Edmonds take off her rings and she scolded Elsie Mears because she put her hands up to her hair just once, to tuck it back under her cap."

"And right she is," announced Winnie from the dining-room where she was setting the table for breakfast. "A cook has got no business wearing rings, and I can't abide a girl who is always fussing with her hair when she is handling food."

"Winnie's a member of the sanitary squad," put in Doctor Hugh, smiling behind his newspaper. It was one of the rare times when he had an evening at home.

"Nina Edmonds makes me sick!" said Sarah vehemently. "She screamed when I showed her a darling little spotted snake I found to-day."

Sarah and Shirley had brought out the box of dominoes and were playing in the center of the floor. No amount of persuasion had ever induced them to play on a table.

"Don't talk about snakes, dearie," pleaded Aunt Trudy, shuddering over her knitting. "They are such ugly, horrid squirmy things."

"Oh, no they're not Aunt Trudy," said Sarah earnestly. "That's because you're not used to them. Let me show you the one I've got in my pocket—"

To her aunt's horror, Sarah unbuttoned the pocket of her middy blouse and pulled out a little dangling dark object.

"Hugh!" shrieked Aunt Trudy, knocking over her chair as she rose hastily. "Hugh make her stop! Ow! Rosemary, Winnie, take that awful thing away, quick!"

In spite of her sympathy for Aunt Trudy who was white to the lips with fright, Rosemary wanted to laugh, as Sarah, not realizing that her aunt was really in terror, and intent only on winning understanding for her snake, continued to advance on the unhappy lady, the spotted snake dangling from her hand.

"Sarah!" Doctor Hugh managed to halt the march of his determined small sister. "Sarah, take that snake away at once. At once, do you hear me? Aunt Trudy is afraid of snakes."

"Well, she wouldn't be, if she knew about 'em," insisted Sarah. "I only want to show her."

"You can't show her—lots of people are frightened by the sight of snakes," replied the doctor. "Take your snake out of the room this minute."

Still Sarah lingered.

"It's dead," she offered humbly. "A dead snake won't hurt Aunt Trudy will it?"

Doctor Hugh caught Rosemary's eye, and they went off into peals of laughter while poor Aunt Trudy wept and Shirley implored Rosemary to tell her what was "funny."

"Take your snake away and bury it, Sarah," said the doctor, when he could speak.

"And don't try to educate your relatives and friends to recognize the virtues of the reptile family; a person either likes snakes or can't abide 'em, and you and Aunt Trudy will never agree on that subject."

"I think you ought to forbid her to ever touch one, or carry one around with her," said Aunt Trudy when Sarah had gone out of the room sorrowfully to borrow a match box from Winnie to serve as a snake-coffin. "The idea of having a snake in one's pocket!"

"You can't separate Sarah and animals," returned Sarah's brother with conviction. "No use trying, Aunt Trudy. All this summer she was crazy on the subject of rabbits and cats and now she seems to have switched to snakes. About all we can do is to keep her within reasonable bounds and trust to luck that before the winter is over she will take up canary birds or something equally pleasing."

Aunt Trudy did not know Sarah's teacher, Miss Ames, but if she had they would have found a common bond of sympathy and interest in their horror of snakes and other unpleasant forms of animal life to which Sarah was devoted. Eleanor Ames was a nervous young woman and she found it distinctly trying to be obliged to divide the interests of her class with a shoe-box of baby mice, or to soothe the ruffled feelings of timid little girls who had seen the bright eyes and wriggling slim body of a live snake peeping out of Sarah Willis' coat in the cloak room. Punishment seemed to have no effect on the culprit who stayed after school and cleaned blackboards with disconcerting cheerfulness and Miss Ames was considering the advisability of sending Sarah home with a note asking the co-operation of Doctor Hugh's authority, when something happened that took the matter out of her hands.

Late in October, one frosty morning on her way to school, Sarah made what was to her a great and lucky discovery. Shirley and Rosemary had gone on ahead of her, but Winnie had called her back to pick up the clothes she had strewn about her room with her customary careless abandon. Since the opening of school, Aunt Trudy had patiently made beds and put the rooms in order and she would never mention to her favorite Sarah a little matter like slippers in the middle of the rug, bath-robe flung down on the bed and every separate bureau drawer wide open and yawning. This morning Aunt Trudy was going to the city to shop, and the task of bed-making would devolve upon Winnie who had no intention of having her duty complicated by others' neglect. A hasty glance into the room shared by Sarah and Shirley, and Winnie had summoned the former, in no uncertain voice, to "come up here and put your clothes away this instant." Sarah, complaining that she would certainly be late for school, had obeyed and if she had hurried could easily have reached the school before the assembly bell rang.

But crossing a vacant lot, Sarah came upon that which could make her forget school and time. A faint rustle under the dead leaves caught her quick ear and, stooping down, she uncovered a little snake, languid from the cold. Perhaps he had been on his way to winter quarters and the frost had caught him unaware. Anyway, he was numb and Sarah, murmuring affectionate nothings to him, slipped him into her pocket and then spent a valuable ten minutes poking about among the leaves in the hopes of discovering another, believing implicitly that snakes "always go in pairs." However, if the snake had a companion, diligent search failed to uncover it and Sarah was forced to take her reluctant way to school with only one snake to comfort and love. While she was still some distance from the gate she heard the bell ring, and as she reasoned, she was late then, so why should she hurry when it would not save her a tardy mark? Morning exercises were in progress in the auditorium when Sarah entered the building, and she had her class room to herself. She hung up her hat and coat and took another peep at the snake. He seemed to be feeling better, but some fresh wave of sympathy led her to regret the necessity for leaving him to spend a lonely morning in the cloak room. With Sarah to think was to act, and she popped the snake into the pocket of her middy blouse, pinning it with a safety pin in lieu of a button and button hole. When the class returned from the auditorium, she was sitting sedately in her seat and appeared only mildly interested in the lecture on tardiness which followed.

"We'll have the papers distributed on which you worked during the last drawing lesson," announced Miss Ames unexpectedly. "The drawing supervisor will be around next week and we are a lesson or two late, here in our room. Instead of spelling this morning, I'll have you paint the leaves you drew. George Wright, you distribute the papers and Sarah Willis, you know where the paint boxes are."

Sarah was monitor for the drawing materials and she went up and down the aisles, giving each pupil a small paint box and two brushes, while George Wright gave out the papers on which the pencil sketches of autumn leaves had been drawn.

The warmth of the pocket evidently revived the chilled snake and, as Sarah was bending over the desk of Annabel Warde, a dainty little girl about her own age, a lithe green body shot from out Sarah's blouse, wriggled across the desk and dropped to the floor. The safety pin had left too large a loop-hole.

"A snake!" screamed Annabel, flinging her box of paints in one direction and the brushes Sarah had just given her, in the other. "I saw it! I saw it! Miss Ames, I saw a snake, and it's right here in this room. It'll bite us, I know it will and we'll die! Catch it, somebody, Oh, please hurry!"

Jumping up and down and shrieking, Annabel was beside herself with fright. Several other little girls began to scream, too, and the boys rushed around the room shouting that they would catch it and kill it, whatever "it" might be. None of them thought that Annabel had really seen a snake.

"Don't hurt it!" warned Sarah, down on her hands and knees and hunting under the desks for her lost pet. "This kind of snake won't bite any one, and you mustn't hurt it. I want to keep it all winter and watch it grow."

Miss Ames was trying to calm Annabel who persisted in sitting on top of her desk with her feet curled under her, apparently under the delusion that a snake always attacks the ankles first, when George Wright whooped triumphantly.

"I see it—gee, it really is a snake!" he shouted. "Look out, Peter, let me shy this paper-weight at him—there, I'll bet that mashed him into jelly!"

There was a crash as the heavy paper-weight struck the floor and then a small whirlwind landed on the astonished George.

"How dare you try to kill my snake!" panted Sarah, crying with rage. "He never did anything to you! You're a great, cruel, cowardly boy, that's what you are!"

She was pummeling George unmercifully and he retaliated with interest, forgetting in the excitement and confusion that his antagonist was a girl. But while snakes might temporarily cow Miss Ames, a fight in her room was a situation she knew how to deal with.

"George! Sarah!" she descended upon the combatants and pulled them apart with no gentle hand. "I'm ashamed of you! What can you be thinking of! George, you must know better than to strike a girl, and Sarah, what would your mother say if she knew you were fighting with a boy? Why I never heard of such a thing—never!" and Miss Ames looked as though she never had.

Sarah darted over to the space behind the atlas table where George had thrown the paper weight. She lifted the glass cube and picked up the little mashed object under it.

"He's killed it!" she sobbed. "He went and killed my little snake!"

Miss Ames lost her patience which is not to be wondered at, considering the trying half hour she had endured.

"Sarah Willis you march down to the principal's office," she said severely. "And throw that disgusting object in the trash can on your way down. Don't you ever bring another snake, alive or dead, into this room as long as I am the teacher. I want you to tell Mr. Oliver exactly what has occurred here this morning and be sure you explain to him that you fought George simply because he killed that wretched reptile."

Sarah's heart beat uncomfortably fast as she walked down the broad stone steps to the first floor where the principal's office was. Her class room was on the third floor. On the second floor she stopped and wrapped the dead snake in her handkerchief—for a wonder she had one—and when she reached the first floor she studied the pictures hung in the corridor with minutest care. For once in her short life Sarah was anxious to have time to stand still. Usually exasperatingly indifferent to rebuke or reproval, Miss Ames had hit upon the one punishment that Sarah could be fairly said to dread—an interview with the principal.

She approached the glass door marked "office" slowly. The door was closed. All the stories she had ever heard of the boys who had been "sent to the office," flashed through her mind. Few girls were ever thus punished and it was a fourth grade tradition that a girl bad enough to need an interview with the principal was always expelled. Sarah wondered what her brother would say if she came home and said she was expelled. Rosemary would feel the disgrace keenly—no one in the Willis family had even been expelled from school, Sarah was quite sure.

Did you knock, or did you go right in? Was the principal always there? Perhaps he might be away for the day—Sarah devoutly hoped he would be. She shut her eyes tightly, took a firmer grip on the handkerchief containing the dead snake, and knocked on the glass panel.

"Come in," called a pleasant voice, a woman's voice.

Sarah opened the door and stepped in. She saw a large, sunny room with a desk in the center, and a smaller desk over by the window where a young woman was typing busily.

"Mr. Oliver isn't in, is he?" said Sarah speaking at a gallop. A swift glance had shown her that the young woman was the only person in the room.

"Just go right into the next office, and you'll find him," said Mr. Oliver's secretary, smiling.



CHAPTER XVI

MR. OLIVER AND SARAH

The door into the next office stood open. Sarah walked in, that is, she stepped just inside the doorway and stood there as though glued to the floor. The thin, gray-haired man who was stooping over the flat-topped desk, looking at a card file, glanced up at her and smiled. This was the principal, Mr. Oliver.

"Good morning," he said. "Did you wish to see me?"

"No-o," stammered Sarah, "I didn't. But Miss Ames sent me."

Mr. Oliver sat down and pointed to a chair drawn up beside the desk.

"Suppose you come and sit down and tell me all about it," he suggested.

His secretary in the next room stepped over and closed the connecting door noiselessly as Sarah seated herself on the edge of the chair and stared unhappily at the floor.

"If you're in Miss Ames' room, you are a fourth grader," said Mr. Oliver pleasantly. "What is your name?"