Rosemary
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Josephine Lawrence >> Rosemary
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"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.
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