Rosemary Part 5

Aunt Trudy put down her book and surveyed her youngest niece sympathetically.

"What's the matter with my sweetheart?" she asked, her voice tender.

"Is she afraid of the big dark?"

The doctor made an impatient exclamation.

"That's nonsense, Aunt Trudy," he said curtly. "No child of my mother has ever been frightened of the dark; we were not brought up that way. Every one of us has been trained to go up to bed alone at the right time, as a matter of course. Sarah, put away those dominoes and go upstairs to bed with Shirley."

Sarah tumbled the game into the box and stalked from the room without a word to any one. Shirley simply threw herself flat on the floor and cried with anger. She was sleepy and tired and she resented this summary curtailment of her privileges. For the last two weeks she had been going to bed when Rosemary did and she liked the plan.

"I hope you will excuse us, Aunt Trudy," said the hara.s.sed Doctor Hugh, scooping his small sister up from the floor and carrying her toward the door. "We're in sad need of a little discipline, I'm afraid."

"And you're not going to enforce it," he said grimly to himself as he marched upstairs with the screaming Shirley. "I seem to have my work cut out for me--I wonder how about Rosemary?"

When he came downstairs again, having seen both Shirley and Sarah quiet and asleep, he found his sister and aunt deep in the problem of "narrowing off."

"I just waited to say good-night to you, Hugh," said Aunt Trudy brightly. "I'm tired from the trip and I want to start the day well to-morrow."

She kissed him and rustled out of the room, and Rosemary folded up her work as the deep chime of the hall clock sounded nine.

"Shirley was tired, Hugh," she said, a little timidly. "She hardly ever acts that way. And Sarah doesn't mean to be obstinate, but she just can't help it."

"Well, I'm glad you think to-night isn't an average performance,"

declared her brother humorously. "You're a sweet older sister, Rosemary. The girls couldn't do better than to pattern after you."

"Oh, Hugh! You are nice--" Rosemary's voice rose in a crescendo of pure pleasure. "But I'm not a good example--you won't say that when you know me. I get as mad, as mad--as--Shirley."

"The more shame to you," said the doctor unbelievingly, kissing her vivid little face. "Go to bed, child, and don't talk to me about losing your temper."

At eleven o'clock the light was still burning in the office and Winnie knocked lightly on the door.

"I brought you a gla.s.s of milk and a sandwich, Hughie," she said, using the old pet name she had given him when a little lad.

"Well that's mighty thoughtful of you, Winnie dear," he said, smiling at her. "I've been doing a little thinking this evening and that's hungry work."

Winnie regarded him, wisdom and pride in her eyes.

"I'm thinking that healthy folks is more of a problem than sick ones," she observed sagely. "But you're enough like your mother, to be able to manage all right, never fear. You've her understanding and the endurance and will of your father, Hughie, and you'll be needing it all, but you'll work it out. Shirley is spoiled and we're all to blame--it wasn't all done in these two weeks, either; your mother gave in a little at a time for she was tired and her illness has been long coming. 'Tis nothing to set right a little wrong when the heart is pure gold like Shirley's. And you'll soon set Sarah in her place--she needs to be set frequent-like, though if you find the way to her liking, she'll be fond enough of you in time. It's Rosemary I'd speak to you about at the risk of seeming to meddle."

The doctor stirred a little, but his face encouraged Winnie to go on.

"A rose in the bud--that's Rosemary," said Winnie who scorned to read poetry and often employed poetical fancies in her rather quaint phrasing. "A rose in the bud and a flower of a girl. A temper that blazes, a quick pride that bleeds at a word and a pa.s.sion for loving that sometimes frightens me. The sick and the helpless and the young--Rosemary would mother 'em all. And she's hurt so easy, and she dashes herself against the stone wall so blindly--you'll be careful and patient, won't you, Hughie? For she has the Willis will, has Rosemary and times there is no holding her."

Doctor Hugh smiled into the anxious eyes, dim with the loving anxiety of many years.

"I'll be careful, Winnie," he promised. "And you'll help me. Thank you for telling me--what you have."

CHAPTER V

WINNIE'S VOLUNTEERS

For the first few days after Miss Wright's arrival it seemed that the proverb, "Many hands make light work" was to be the household motto. Winnie was fairly swamped with offers of help and "Miss Trudy" as she had asked Winnie to call her, and the three girls vied with each other as to which should be the most industrious.

"For I want to be useful, Winnie," said Aunt Trudy, a winning sincerity in her kind voice. "Only tell me what to do, because I don't want to interfere with your daily schedule."

"And Sarah and I will make the beds and dust," promised Rosemary, looking up from copying music.

"I'll run all your errands," chirped Shirley and was promptly rewarded with a hug.

Winnie was a shrewd and practical general, as her answers proved. A less experienced person would have made a vague reply, put off the offers with a promise to "let you know when I need you" or politely told them "not to bother." Not so Winnie.

"Well, I'll tell you, Miss Trudy," she said capably, "I don't mind saying if you'll plan the meals, you'll be taking a load off my shoulders. I can cook and I can serve and I can keep things hot when the doctor is late as he'll be many a time; but unless I can have the three meals a day printed right out and hung on my kitchen door, I'm lost-like. It drives me wild to have to figure out what we should eat, when it's nothing at all, to my way of thinking, to cook it."

"I'll be glad to plan the menus," Aunt Trudy a.s.sured her. "Home I write out the meals for the whole week every Sat.u.r.day morning; I'll do that for you without fail, Winnie."

"Thank you ma'am," Winnie replied. "Now Rosemary, if you want to help, you answer the telephone. I can't abide to be called away from my baking and sweeping to tell folks where the doctor is, or why he isn't here. I don't always get messages straight, so you take 'em and when you're not home, let Sarah do it."

"I like to answer the telephone," beamed Rosemary.

Winnie, orderly soul, proceeded to clinch the remaining two offers of a.s.sistance.

"Sarah, there's no one can beat you making beds, when you put your mind to it," she announced diplomatically. "You make the beds mornings, when Rosemary is doing her practising and I won't ask you to do another thing."

"But me?" urged Shirley. "What can I do, Winnie?"

"Bless your little heart, you run to the store for Winnie, and help her make cookies," cried Winnie, "that's enough for one little girl, dearie."

"I don't think any of us has much to do," observed Rosemary. "I can do lots more to help, Winnie. And so can Sarah."

"If you'll do just one thing and do it every day, I won't be complaining," Winnie returned. "You'll find it's easy to get tired and it's then you'll want to skip a day."

The girls were sure that nothing would induce them to "skip" a day, and Winnie went back to her kitchen well-pleased with her bestowal of commissions.

The house seemed strangely empty without the gentle little mother and at first time hung heavy on the three pairs of young hands.

Doctor Hugh was very busy adjusting his work to run smoothly and his hours were irregular so that he did not see much of his sisters.

Then, as the mother's absence became an established fact, gradually old interests and friends absorbed their attention and normal life was resumed with the difference that a great gap was always present and unfilled. Aunt Trudy was kindness itself and overflowing with affection for her nieces, but her att.i.tude toward them was that of a placid outsider, gently watching them from a little distance. Aunt Trudy did their mending exquisitely, because she liked to sew, but she would not leave the mending and come down stairs to meet Nina Edmonds, a new-comer to the neighborhood, though Rosemary was anxious to have every social courtesy shown the rather critical young person who seemed older than her thirteen years.

"I don't want to drop my work now, dearie," said Aunt Trudy in response to her niece's appeal. "I always lose my needle when I get up; I'll meet your little friend some other time. Ask her to dinner to-night if you wish--Winnie is going to have veal loaf and egg salad."

Rosemary acted on this suggestion, and Doctor Hugh, coming in late, was surprised to find a fourth girl at the table, a freckle-faced little girl with light bobbed hair and incredibly thin arms and hands. Nina Edmonds talked incessantly and, after a few ineffectual attempts to carry on a conversation with his aunt, the young doctor devoted himself to his dinner, keeping, however, an observant eye on the guest and on Rosemary who listened in evident fascination to the steady stream of words. He had a call to make, immediately after dinner and was surprised and distinctly annoyed when he returned at half-past ten to find Nina and Rosemary still talking animatedly, their arms around each other, in the window seat. Aunt Trudy was placidly reading, and the younger girls had gone to bed.

"Is it late?" Rosemary started up as her brother came in.

"Half-past ten," he answered briefly. "I'll take you home, Miss Edmonds, if you'll tell me where you live. I'm afraid your mother will be worried about you."