Rosemary | Page 8

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 her, she recognized her.
"Well, Rosemary darling, you came to meet me--that's lovely I'm sure,"
cried Aunt Trudy, panting slightly from her leap off the last step of the
car, to the conductor's unconcealed amazement. "And Mother is much
better, the telegram said. As soon as I heard, I resolved nothing should
keep me from you--Oh, there's Shirley and Sarah, the dears!"
Shirley responded affectionately to her aunt's caresses, but Sarah stood
like a wooden image and submitted to being kissed with bad grace.
Aunt Trudy was too excited to be critical.
"What do I do about my trunks?" she fluttered. "And these bags are
both heavy--I've brought you girls each a little something. Is Hugh
home? And Winnie is still with you, of course?"
Rosemary wisely did not attempt to answer all these questions and,
considering that Winnie had been in the Willis family for twenty-eight
years and Aunt Trudy had unfailingly put this question to some
member of the family at every meeting for the last twenty-seven, this

particular query might be said to be more a comment than a question.
"We'll go up to the house in Bernard Coyle's jitney," said Rosemary,
leading the way around to the side platform. "He will take your trunk
checks, Aunt Trudy, and the express man will deliver them."
Bernard Coyle ran two of the three Eastshore jitneys and personally
conducted the least ancient of his two cars. He welcomed the prospect
of four passengers with a glad smile and swung Aunt Trudy's bags to a
safe place under the seat at a nod from Rosemary. While they climbed
in, he departed with the trunk checks and returned in a few minutes to
report that the three trunks would be in the front hall of the Willis home
within an hour.
Then he took the wheel of his wheezy little car and without another
word drove frenziedly and rackingly through the quiet streets till the
Willis house was reached. Winnie, mindful of Rosemary's plea, came
out to the curb to meet them.
"Well, Winnie, I'm glad to see you again," was Miss Wright's greeting.
"You and I are to keep house and look after these flighty young folks, I
understand."
"Yes'm," nodded Winnie. "Your room's all ready, Miss Wright--the one
you always have, next to Mrs. Willis'. And Doctor Hugh said to tell you
he'd be home at quarter of six."
Aunt Trudy Wright was a rather short, dumpy woman and inclined to
be stout and short of breath. She had iron-gray hair, near-sighted dark
eyes and very pretty, very plump small hands. She exclaimed over her
room when she saw it, said that everything was lovely and insisted on
kissing the three girls again. Sarah promptly left at this point and was
discovered by her brother when he came home, lying flat on the porch
rug and absorbed in a book which dealt, in detail, with the health and
welfare of rabbits.
"Well you look comfortable," he said good-humoredly. "Aunt Trudy
come? Who went to meet her? Where are the other girls?"

"Uh-huh," grunted Sarah, interested at that moment in a description of a
balanced diet for her pets.
Dr. Hugh laughed and went on. The house seemed strangely quiet to
him, though he could hear Winnie humming in the kitchen and
appetizing odors promised a dinner on time. In the upstairs hall,
Rosemary tip-toed to meet him, her eyes dark with mystery.
"Hello, where is everyone?" asked her brother, giving her a kiss. "What
has happened to Aunt Trudy?"
"She's getting ready for dinner," explained Rosemary. "She's been
crying in Mother's room for almost an hour and then her trunks came
and she thought