Rosemary Part 30

"It's Sarah, then," announced Winnie, putting down the gla.s.s of milk. "Something has got to be done about her, Hughie."

"Sarah?" inquired the doctor meditatively. "Why I thought she was conducting herself in an exemplary manner these last few weeks."

Winnie sniffed.

"I'm always the one that has to tell you," she complained. "I'm after asking Miss Trudy these three nights running to speak to you, but does she? She does not. She speaks to Sarah who minds her about as well as the wind does. And Rosemary won't be doing her duty, either; she says 'twould be telling tales and she's got Shirley around to the same way of thinking."

"A conspiracy, eh?" smiled Doctor Hugh.

"Well, Winnie, what should I know that I don't know about my small sister Sarah?"

Winnie was not to be hurried. She dearly loved a chat with her idol, the doctor, and she had the born story-teller's art of prolonging the climax.

"I'm not one to be going out of my way to find something to babble,"

she declared now. "There's plenty of things goes on I could be running to you with every day in the week, did I so mind; but I believe in letting folks have their own heads, as long as they don't go too far."

The doctor sampled the cake appreciatively.

"Sarah, I take it, has gone too far?" he suggested.

"I don't know as you'd call it that," said Winnie with a faint suspicion of sarcasm. "I may be too finicky and if I am, may I be forgiven for troubling you. But when it comes to sleeping in the same room with six sore-eyed kittens and in the same bed with a mangy street dog, I think something should be done about it. 'Tisn't Christian-like."

"Do you mean to tell me Sarah has got a mess like that up in her room?" demanded Doctor Hugh.

"She has that," said Winnie firmly. "That and worse. She has rabbits in her clothes closet and this morning I had to carry out two dead chickens. She lugs them all up every night to keep 'em warm, she says."

"Is everyone in the house crazy?" asked the bewildered doctor.

"What's the matter with you, Winnie? Ordinarily you can make the world take orders from you--couldn't you put a stop to this?"

"I've argued and I've scolded and I've threatened to chloroform every animal on the place," said Winnie impressively, "but Sarah is like cement. Where the Willis will is going to lead her, I'm sure I don't know; but she's too much for me."

"Nonsense!" the doctor pushed back his chair sharply. "At least you could have come to me and told me the first night she tried to keep an animal in her room."

"I'm as weak as the rest of 'em," admitted Winnie. "Miss Trudy cried and Shirley grumbled because she had to go in and sleep with Rosemary; but none of us liked to say a word to you. I don't suppose I'd be after telling you now if I wasn't afraid Sarah would catch something from that dog she brought home to-night."

"I'll go up and read the riot act to her, even if it is late," said Doctor Hugh, frowning. "Such a state of affairs is beyond belief.

Shirley is sleeping with Rosemary, you say, and Sarah has the menagerie in the bed with her?"

"Well, she has the dog--I saw him under the blanket. But you're not going to bother her to-night, are you?" asked Winnie anxiously.

"Do you suppose I'm going to have her sleeping with a dog that came from Heaven alone knows where?" was the impatient answer. "If I can get the animals out of her room without waking her, well and good; but in any case, out they come."

Sarah woke up the moment the light was switched on. So did the touseled little yellow dog who thrust his head out from under the covers, close to Sarah's face, and barked sharply at the tall figure standing in the center of the room. The rabbits could be heard scampering about behind the closet door and the kittens set up a hungry mewing from their basket under the bed. A faint scratching came from beneath the inverted waste-basket where a dejected-looking rooster drooped in lonely melancholy.

"Go away!" said Sarah.

"Give me that dog, Sarah," said Doctor Hugh sternly, hoping that he would not laugh. "What do you mean by this kind of performance?"

"He's a nice dog and he hasn't any home, he followed me all the way from the grocery store," said Sarah, her dark eyes regarding her brother suspiciously. "Leave him alone."

For answer the doctor, with a quick movement, lifted the dog clear of the bed clothes.

"You'll hurt him!" cried Sarah in anguish. "You don't know how to be nice to animals. Give him back to me, Hugh."

"Look here, Sarah, this is no time for argument," said Doctor Hugh crisply. "It is out of the question for you to sleep with your barnyard friends. Everyone of them must go down cellar for the rest of the night and we'll talk about what is to be done with them in the morning."

Sarah wept and protested and even tried to fight for her pets, but Winnie and the doctor were deaf to her pleas. Between them, they carried down every forlorn animal--Sarah's tastes ran to the lame and the halt and the blind,--and then Doctor Hugh opened the window wide (Sarah had insisted on keeping both windows closed lest a draft strike the sick kittens), kissed the back of his small sister's head, for she persistently refused to turn her face toward him, and snapped off the light, leaving Sarah to cry herself to sleep.

Rosemary and Shirley, in the next room, had slept peacefully through the racket.

Unfortunately the next morning a call came for the doctor before eight o'clock and s.n.a.t.c.hing a hasty breakfast, he was out of the house before the girls came down. He had no opportunity for the talk with Sarah that day for although he came home to lunch, she was, of course in school, and he did not get home in time for dinner. In fact, it was nearly nine o'clock before his car rolled into the drive.

Aunt Trudy and Rosemary, Winnie told him, had gone to the movies as a Friday night treat, and Sarah and Shirley had gone to bed promptly at eight o'clock.

"I was setting bread, and didn't see 'em go," Winnie added significantly.

Doctor Hugh went upstairs to the third floor. A light shone under Sarah's door. He knocked, then tried the k.n.o.b. It was locked.

"Open the door, Sarah," he said quietly.

"Go away!" quavered Sarah, tears in her voice.

Doctor Hugh remembered the communicating door and strode through Rosemary's room. Shirley was fast asleep in her older sister's bed.

Sarah had not thought to fasten the door between the rooms and she looked up startled, as her brother came in. She had not undressed, and she sat on the floor, the kittens in her lap. The dog and the rabbits and the rooster were all back in their places.

"This settles it!" said the doctor adamantly. "There's only one way to deal with you, Sarah, and that is to come down like a ton of bricks. You can't keep any pets for two months--that's final."

"Any more pets?" suggested Sarah.

"I said any pets," was the reply. "If you can find homes for these, well and good; if you can't, I'll try to dispose of them for you.

But to-morrow morning, they go away. And now you'll have to help me get them down cellar."

When Sarah finally understood that she was to be deprived of all her pets at once, she wept miserably. No amount of tears or storming or wheedling or pleading, however, could alter Doctor Hugh's decision.

Even Winnie suggested that one kitten be kept, but to no avail.

"Sarah must learn she can not do as she pleases and escape the consequences," he said to Rosemary, who came to him on Sarah's behalf. "Half way measures don't go with her, I find, so I've had to be drastic. I'm sorry, too, Rosemary, but I believe I am making the future easier for one strong-willed little girl."

He found homes among his farm patients for all the animals and saw to it that Sarah went with him to carry the pets to their new abodes. She felt much better when she saw that they were to be well cared for, but it was a long time before she would go near the empty rabbit hutch in the side yard. Jack, who discovered that she avoided it, chopped it up at last for kindling wood for Winnie and Sarah was silently grateful. She missed her pets inexpressibly, but the rest of the household, it must be confessed, enjoyed their absence thoroughly. Sarah and her animals had absorbed the foreground for many hectic weeks.

CHAPTER XXIV

A MYSTERY SOLVED

The brief month of February was starred for the Willis family by the little mother's birthday. She was steadily improving, according to her own letters and the reports from the doctors, and Doctor Hugh, who spent at least one week-end each month with her, brought back glowing accounts of her progress along the road to health. He managed to get away to spend her birthday with her and personally carried her the gifts and notes and loving wishes of the three girls, Aunt Trudy, Winnie and close friends who also remembered.