Rosemary | Page 7

"I'll go up and get Shirley
now and we'll go without you."
She ran upstairs, coaxed the protesting Shirley from her play of sailing
boats in the bath-tub, and was buttoning her into a clean frock when
Sarah came tramping through the hall. She occupied a room with
Shirley, while Rosemary had a room to herself connected with the
younger girls' room by a rather narrow door.
"Wait a minute and I'll go," said Sarah, jerking down her tan linen dress
from its hook in the closet.
"Is Aunt Trudy's room all ready, Winnie?" asked Rosemary, as the
three sisters stopped in the kitchen to notify that faithful individual of
their departure. "Do we look nice?"
It was impossible to look at the three faces without an answering smile.
Rosemary glowed, pink-cheeked, star-eyed, in a frock of dull blue linen
made with wide white piqué collar and cuffs. Her hair waved and
rippled and curled, despite its loose braiding, almost to her waist.
Rosemary was simply going to the station 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,