Rosemary Part 3

"Then you can stay home," she said crossly. "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 b.u.t.toning 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 pique 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 Eastsh.o.r.e people, and these came up and asked about Mrs. Willis. Rosemary, a.s.suring 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 m.u.f.fled. 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 Eastsh.o.r.e jitneys and personally conducted the least ancient of his two cars. He welcomed the prospect of four pa.s.sengers 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.

"h.e.l.lo, 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 she'd change her dress."

"Crying in Mother's room--what for?" demanded Doctor Hugh quickly.

"Oh, because memories were too much for her," quoted Rosemary solemnly. "She made Shirley and me cry, too, but Sarah went down stairs when she tried to kiss her, so she didn't hear her talk."

"I'll give Sarah credit for good sense," said Doctor Hugh grimly.

He strode down the hall to his mother's room, took the key from the inside and locked the door and dropped the key in his pocket.

"And that's that," he announced, smiling a little at Rosemary's puzzled face.