Rosemary

Excerpt

GOOD NEWS

HE Willis house was very quiet. The comfortable screened porch was deserted, though a sweater in the hammock and a box of gay paper dolls on the floor showed that it had served as a play-space recently. Inside, not a door banged, not a footfall sounded.

The late afternoon June sunshine streamed in through the hall window and made a broad band to the stairway which was in the shadow. The light touched the heads of three girls huddled closely together in the cushioned window-seat and turned the hair of one to gleaming, burnished golden red, another to a fairy web of spun yellow silk and searched out the faint copper tint in the dark locks of the third. The girls sat motionless, their faces turned toward the stairs, as silent as everything else in that silent house.

"Rosemary!" whispered the dark-haired one suddenly, "Rosemary, you don't think—"

The girl with the gold-red hair, who sat between the other two, started nervously. Her violet blue eyes transferred their anxious gaze from the shadowy staircase to her sister's face.

"Oh, no!" she said passionately. "No! Do you hear me, Sarah? That couldn't happen to us. Why do you say such things?"

"I didn't say anything," protested Sarah sullenly. "Did I, Shirley?"

The little girl with the fairy-web of yellow hair did not answer. She started from her seat and ran toward the stairs.

"Hugh's coming!" she cried.

Quick, even steps sounded on the hardwood treads and a young man with dark hair, darker eyes behind eye-glasses and a keen, intelligent face, descended rapidly. He picked up the child and strode across the hall to the window-seat.

"Poor children!" he said compassionately, sitting down beside Rosemary and holding the younger girl in his lap. "Has the time seemed long? I came as quickly as I could."

Rosemary looked at him piteously.

"All right, dear," he said instantly. "Mother is going to get well. Dr. Hurlbut and I have decided that all she needs is a long rest. I am going to take her to a quiet place in the country day after to-morrow and she is to stay until she is entirely recovered. Why Rosemary!"

The gold-red head was on his shoulder and Rosemary was crying as though her heart would break.

"That's the way she is," said the dark and placid Sarah. "She jumps on me if I say anything and then she cries herself sick thinking things. I would rather," she declared with peculiar distinctness, "have folks talk than think, wouldn't you, Hugh?"

"I'm sorry to say I can't agree with you," replied the young man briefly. "Here, Shirley, I didn't know you were such a heavy-weight—you run off with Sarah and tell Winnie what I have told you about Mother. Quietly now, and no shouting. Rosemary, dear," he put a protecting arm around the weeping girl, "you will feel better now—we have all been under a strain and the worst is over. Here comes Miss Graham with Dr. Hurlbut and I must see him off. Don't run—he'll probably go right out without seeing you."

But the famous specialist stopped squarely in the hall and the pleasant-faced middle-aged nurse, standing respectfully on the lower step, nodded reassuringly to Rosemary who was frantically mopping her eyes....