Rosemary

etched in luxurious comfort on the porch rug, r

o to the statio

with some impatience. "Aunt Trudy is coming

said Sarah calmly. "I want

thought would please her. Come on and meet Aunt Trudy-we'll all go, you

asked Sarah who usually exhauste

ill dinner time," replied Rosemary. "Mother would w

re she kept the larger part of her dilapidated library. "I'll go to the station if I can go as I am-I have to

praisingly. "Your face is black and your dress has a greas

I won't go at all," r

her half-finished sweater and hung he

crossly. "I'll go up and get Shir

buttoning her into a clean frock when Sarah came tramping through the hall. She occupied a room with Shi

Sarah, jerking down her tan linen

as the three sisters stopped in the kitchen to notify that

al 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 s

down and straightening her pink sash. "I put on the embroidered bureau sc

ary happily, "so I guess everything has been attended to. Do you w

ered Winnie with pride. "What train

" said Rosemary. "I suppose Aunt Trudy will have some bags and parcels. You'll be r

couraged her. "Doctor Hugh will be home to dinner

tation. "Of course she has been here a couple of days last summer and she spent New Year's

can't upset Mother," said Sarah. "I know she will be an awful

t, baby voice. "Dora Ellis has an aunt who reads books all t

other doesn't like you to play with her and Hugh said you were not to go across the str

for weeks and weeks," explained Shirley earnestly. "

giving her a kiss. "There's the station clock and it says

t office, but it was close to ten minutes past and when the three girls stepped

ese came up and asked about Mrs. Willis. Rosemary, assuring them that he

ght your mother is better, but I didn't like to call you up because I thought perhaps you still

ve the nicest things happen to you, H

ded Harriet warmly. "Couldn't you come down nex

o anywhere, you see. Besides Aunt Trudy Wright is coming on this train, and Hugh is going to

mother and was lost in the anxious pushing group th

" directed Rosemary, with a sudden panicky feeling t

she saw her, she

leap off the last step of the car, to the conductor's unconcealed amazement. "And Mother is much better, the teleg

Sarah stood like a wooden image and submitted to being kiss

gs are both heavy-I've brought you girls each a little somet

family for twenty-eight years and Aunt Trudy had unfailingly put this question to some member of the family at e

y, leading the way around to the side platform. "He will take your

passengers 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

frenziedly and rackingly through the quiet streets till the Willis house was

Wright's greeting. "You and I are to keep house and

ht-the one you always have, next to Mrs. Willis'. And Doc

p 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 po

d-humoredly. "Aunt Trudy come? Who went

ed at that moment in a descriptio

uld hear Winnie humming in the kitchen and appetizing odors promised a dinner on ti

her brother, giving her a kiss.

's been crying in Mother's room for almost an hour and the

oom-what for?" demand

olemnly. "She made Shirley and me cry, too, but Sarah went down

it for good sense," s

m, took the key from the inside and locked

ounced, smiling a little