Rosemary | Page 7

to meet the 4:10 train, but nothing was ever casual to her; she met each hour expectantly on tip-toe and, as her mother had once observed, laughed and wept her way around the clock. Sarah smiled broadly--going to the station to meet Aunt Trudy had, for some inexplicable reason, resolved itself into a joke for her. Sarah was not excited and she represented solid common-sense from her straight Dutch-cut hair to her square-toed sandals, for no amount of argument from Rosemary could induce her to put on her best patent leather slippers. And Shirley--well Winnie picked up Shirley and hugged her fervently, which was the emotion Shirley generally inspired in all beholders. She was a young person, all yellow curls and fluffy white skirts and tiny perfect teeth and distracting dimples.
"Miss Wright's room is in perfect order," reported Winnie, setting Shirley down and straightening her pink sash. "I put on the embroidered bureau scarf and the best linen sheets and pillow cases, just as you said, Rosemary."
"And I put a bowl of lilacs on her table this morning," said Rosemary happily, "so I guess everything has been attended to. Do you want us to get anything up town? We're going to the station, Winnie."
"No, my dinner's all planned," answered Winnie with pride. "What train's Miss Wright coming on--the 4:10?"
"Yes, and Hugh said to have Bernard Coyle bring us up to the house with his jitney," said Rosemary. "I suppose Aunt Trudy will have some bags and parcels. You'll be round when we get back, won't you, Winnie? I don't know exactly what to say to her."
"Bless you, child, you'll do all right," Winnie encouraged her. "Doctor Hugh will be home to dinner and 'tisn't as if your aunt was a total stranger."
"But she really is a total stranger," commented Rosemary, as they began their walk to the station. "Of course she has been here a couple of days last summer and she spent New Year's with us; but Mother entertained her and we only saw her now and then, mostly at the table."
"Well, we have to make the best of it now, because Hugh says we can't upset Mother," said Sarah. "I know she will be an awful lot of trouble and she won't know the first thing about animals."
"Maybe she'll read all the time," offered Shirley in her soft, baby voice. "Dora Ellis has an aunt who reads books all the time and Dora can do just as she pleases. She told me so."
"Well, don't you listen to everything Dora Ellis tells you," said Rosemary severely. "Mother doesn't like you to play with her and Hugh said you were not to go across the street without asking permission; doesn't Dora Ellis live on the other side of the street?"
"Yes, she does, but I didn't go over in her yard, not for weeks and weeks," explained Shirley earnestly. "She told me 'bout her aunt last year, in kindergarten."
"All right, honey, I'm not scolding," declared Rosemary, giving her a kiss. "There's the station clock and it says half-past four. But, pshaw, that clock never keeps time."
It was not half-past four they found, when they consulted the clock in the ticket office, but it was close to ten minutes past and when the three girls stepped out on the platform the smoke of the train was already visible far up the track.
There were several people waiting, most of them Eastshore people, and these came up and asked about Mrs. Willis. Rosemary, assuring them that her mother was definitely declared to be out of danger, was fairly radiant.
"Rosemary!" a girl about her own age hailed her. "I'm so glad to see you. Daddy told us last night your mother is better, but I didn't like to call you up because I thought perhaps you still had the phone muffled. Mother and I are going down to the beach to stay till after Labor Day."
"How lovely!" cried Rosemary. "You have the nicest things happen to you, Harriet. Are you going on this train?"
"Yes, and don't I wish you were coming!" responded Harriet warmly. "Couldn't you come down next month, if your mother is well enough to leave?"
"Oh, goodness, Mother has gone away, to be gone a year," said Rosemary hurriedly. "I can't go anywhere, you see. Besides Aunt Trudy Wright is coming on this train, and Hugh is going to be home all summer. There's your mother beckoning--run, Harriet, and be sure you write to me."
They kissed each other and Harriet ran back to her mother and was lost in the anxious pushing group that surrounded the steps of the slowly stopping train.
"Hang on to Shirley, while I try to find Aunt Trudy," directed Rosemary, with a sudden panicky feeling that she couldn't remember what her aunt looked like.
But, as soon as she saw