The Girl Scouts at Home | Page 4

with. How happy you must make everybody with your lovely garden and things! My mother says that is what things are for: to share with people. She says it is just like having two big red apples. If you eat them both, why, you don't feel good in your tummy; but if you give one to some one, you feel good everywhere, and you have a good time while you are eating them and get better acquainted, and it just does you good. Do little girls come to see you every day?"
"No," said Rosanna, "I don't know any little girls. My grandmother won't let me."
"Won't let you?" said the girl in the tree in a shocked tone. "Why won't she let you?"
"She says I would learn to speak bad grammar and use slang, and grow up to be vulgar."
"Goodness me!" said the stranger. She sat rocking on her bough for a few minutes. Then: "Why would you have to learn bad things of other girls?" she demanded. "I wouldn't let anybody teach me anything I didn't want to know. I should think it would be nice to have you teach them good grammar if you know it, and not to use slang, and all that. She must think you are soft! My mother says if you are made of putty, you will get dented all over and never be more than an unshapely lump, but if you are made of good stone, you can be carved into something lovely and lasting. But that is just your grandmother," said the girl. "Where is your mother? Is she off visiting?"
"She is dead," said Rosanna. A wave of unspeakable longing for the lost young mother swept over her and her lip trembled as she spoke.
"Oh, poor, poor Rosanna!" said the little tree girl softly. "Oh, Rosanna, I feel so sorry! If you ever want to borrow mine, I wish you would. I wish you would! My mother says that when a woman has even just one child in her heart, it grows so big that it can hold and love all the children in the world. You borrow her any time you need her, Rosanna!" Then feeling that perhaps the conversation ought to take a livelier strain, she did not wait for Rosanna to answer, but continued, "I wish somebody hadn't built this apartment over your garage so that none of the windows look out on your garden. We are going to hate that, aren't we?"
"Grandmother had it built that way so we would not see the people living there," Rosanna explained.
"Oh!" said the tree girl. "Well, of course you know that I live there now. We came two days ago, and my name is Helen Culver. We would love to play together, wouldn't we?"
"Oh, indeed we would!" said Rosanna.
"Well, then we will," said Helen joyfully. "I must go now. I think it is practice time. I will see you after luncheon. Good-bye!" and she slid down the tree and disappeared.
Rosanna went skipping to the house. She was so happy. It was not her practice time, but she was going to practice because Helen was so engaged. Her mind was full of Helen as she sat doing finger exercises and scales. How lovely and clean and bright she looked with her big, blue eyes and blond docked hair! Her teeth were so white and pretty and her voice was so soft and low. And she had a dimple! It was Rosanna's dream to have a dimple in her thin little cheek.
Rosanna commenced to play scales. She took the C scale--it was so easy that she could think. She was so happy that she played it in a very prancy way, up and down, up and down. Then it commenced to stumble and go ve-ry, v-e-r-y slowly. Rosanna had had an awful thought. The same thought had really been there all the time, but her heart was making such a happy noise that she wouldn't let herself hear it. Now, however, it made such a racket she just had to listen. Over and over with the scales it said loudly and harshly, "Will your grandmother let you play with that little girl who lives over the garage? Will your grandmother even let you know that little girl who lives over the garage? Will she? Will she?"
Rosanna Horton knew the answer perfectly well.
CHAPTER III
The only thing to do, Rosanna decided, was to talk to her grandmother after luncheon when they usually sat in the rose arbor. Rosanna, playing scales, felt quite brave. She would explain everything: how Helen Culver used the best of grammar, and no slang, and climbed trees in rompers and did not scream. Then when she had assured her grandmother of all this, she would tell her quite firmly that she, Rosanna,