Y

OU—you wanted to see me Hugh?" Rosemary faltered.

"Please come in and close the door," he said quietly. Then as she obeyed, "Now what is this Mrs. Dunning has been telling Aunt Trudy, Rosemary? Have you been taking care of babies in the neighborhood for fifteen cents an hour?"

Rosemary nodded.

"How long has this been going on?" asked her brother.

"A—a couple of weeks," answered Rosemary faintly.

"What was the idea?"

Rosemary said nothing.

"I asked you a question, Rosemary. Please answer me. What made you do a thing like this without consulting some one? Did Winnie know?""No," said Rosemary reluctantly, "Winnie didn't know. No one did. I wanted to earn some money, Hugh."

Then came the question she had been dreading.

"What for?"

Rosemary nervously knotted and unknotted her handkerchief. Her blue eyes roved around the familiar room and came back to the grim face and the dark eyes which watched her relentlessly.

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried desperately, "PLEASE!"

Her brother picked up a paper weight and studied it intently.

"Look here, Rosemary," he began more gently, "you deliberately disobeyed this afternoon when I asked you to stay in the house—"

"Because I had absolutely promised Mrs. Hepburn, Hugh," Rosemary broke in eagerly. "I'd promised! She was depending on me and I had to go."

"Very well, a promise is a promise," admitted the doctor, "though when wrongly given sometimes they must be broken. We'll set aside the fact that you disobeyed and consider only this wild scheme apparently undertaken because you wanted to earn money. I want you to tell me why you thought you needed money and why you couldn't come to me and ask for it."

"Because," whispered Rosemary unhappily, "Because."

"That's no reason," said the doctor brusquely. "Come, 'fess up, Rosemary, and I'll help you out of the scrape, whatever it is. My dear little girl, you can't go around among the neighbors like this—families help each other and stand by each other. I don't care a hoot what other people may think—as Aunt Trudy seems to believe I should—but I care a great deal that my little sister should go to outsiders instead of coming to me."

Rosemary touched his sleeve timidly. She longed to throw herself in his arms, cry that she was tired of taking care of silly, uninteresting babies (though as a matter of fact when she wasn't tired she loved them all, the cross as well as the good-natured ones), and tell him the whole story about the lost ring. But there was her promise to Sarah. A promise was a promise—Hugh himself had said so. And families were to stand by each other, and she must stand by Sarah and Shirley.

"I can't tell you, Hugh," said Rosemary earnestly. "I just can't.""You mean you won't," said the doctor sternly. "Well, go up and bring me down this bank—I suppose that was the one you and Sarah were quarreling over the other night? And you put the money you earned in that? I thought so; bring it down to me."

Wondering what he meant to do, Rosemary went up to her room and returned with the bank. Doctor Hugh dropped it into one of the lower drawers of his desk and turned the key.

"I want you to bring me a list of the women for whom you have taken care of children," he said, pushing a block of paper and a pencil toward Rosemary, "and, as nearly as you can remember, the number of hours you worked for each. Then we'll count out this money and you will have to return it. I want that list by to-morrow night."

Winnie sounded the dinner gong just then and Rosemary went silently to the table. Aunt Trudy's eyes were red from crying and Sarah and Shirley looked frightened. Their aunt had told them the "awful thing" Rosemary had been doing and Sarah was in terror lest Hugh already knew her part in it. But dinner, uncomfortable meal as it was, reassured Sarah. Hugh would not have allowed her to leave the table without a word if he had known about the ring.

Rosemary went to her room directly after dinner and Sarah and Shirley followed.

"Was he mad?" asked Shirley, her eyes round with excitement.

"Aunt Trudy was crying and wringing her hands," volunteered Sarah. "She says the family is disgraced and Hugh will be ashamed to show his face in Eastshore."

"What a silly thing to say!" cried Rosemary. "Thank goodness, Hugh is no snob. But he is furious because I can't tell him why I wanted the money. And, oh, girls, I have to take it all back. How can I ever buy the ring now, and what will the people say when I bring back the money they paid me?"

She hurriedly outlined what Doctor Hugh had said, and Sarah immediately suggested that they get hold of the bank and bury it.

"Hugh would only punish us again," said Rosemary practically. "Let's tell him about the ring, Sarah. He said he'd help me out of the scrape, no matter what it was, if I'd tell him."

But Sarah set her chin obstinately and refused to go to her brother. She reminded Rosemary of her promise and Shirley, too, began to cry and say that she was afraid of Hugh. So it ended by Rosemary renewing her promise not to tell and then crying herself to sleep because she remembered how patient Hugh had been and she knew she had both hurt and disappointed him.

"And I can't go around and give the money back," she wept, tossing about on her wet pillow, "What will people think? But Hugh will make me, if he goes along to see me do it. Oh, dear, the Willis will makes all the trouble in this family!"

But in the morning the Willis will helped Rosemary to remain unshaken in her determination not to tell any more than she had told. Doctor Hugh called her into the office before breakfast—he had had his early and was ready to leave when the girls came down stairs—and asked her again why she wanted the money, patiently at first and then, as Rosemary stubbornly refused to give a reason, he lost his temper and began to storm. Rosemary finally flew out of the office and banged the door and the morning was unhappily begun.

Winnie, who had heard the story from Aunt Trudy, thought it her duty to lecture Rosemary during breakfast—at which Aunt Trudy did not appear—and Rosemary, whose nerves were already strained to the breaking point, answered snappishly.

"I should think you'd be ashamed to speak to me like that before your little sisters," said Winnie indignantly. "Shirley wouldn't talk to Winnie like that, would you dear?"

"Oh, my no," said Shirley angelically.

This was too much for Rosemary. She fled from the table to indulge in a good cry up in her mother's room. Doctor Hugh had trusted the key to her, after he had locked the room and Rosemary sometimes went there when she wanted to be quiet and think. The room was in perfect order, sweet and clean and well-aired and the things on the dresser and shelves were exactly as her mother usually kept them. Rosemary had arranged them so because she thought her mother would like to find them ready for her when she came home.

After the tears had stopped, Rosemary sat quietly for a few minutes in the little low white rocker. Something of the peace and stillness of the room stole into her troubled mind. Presently she rose and went out, locking the door carefully behind her."Anything the matter, Rosemary—you look a little woozy," said Jack Welles with neighborly frankness, seeing her across the hedge later that morning as she was spreading out handkerchiefs to bleach for Winnie.

In a rush of words, Rosemary told him the "matter."

"Well, you do have a merry time," Jack commented when she had finished. "But the solution is simple after all."

"I can't take back that money," said Rosemary miserably. "But what can I do? Hugh will never give in."

"Do? There's nothing for you to do," answered Jack vigorously. "Sarah and Shirley have the next act on the program and it's up to me to see that they realize it, if you can't show them their duty. Where's Sarah now?"

"Teaching the cat to sit up," said Rosemary without interest. "It won't do you any good to argue with her, Jack. She's afraid of Hugh and she won't ever tell him. Besides, you know, I only told you if you would promise not to tell."

"Oh, I haven't forgotten that you nailed me firmly before you would say a word," Jack replied grimly. "But I still think I can persuade Sarah to confess her share and if she will, Shirley will admit that she also was present. I'll go begin my good work now."

He was gone half an hour and when he came back he was smiling.

"Everything's all fixed," he announced. "Sarah and Shirley are going to march up to the guns like good soldiers to-night, and I'm going to do the talking for them. Sarah, sensibly enough, wants to get it over before dinner, so I've promised to come over right after lunch and sit on your porch so I'll be here no matter how early Hugh gets home. You and I have to bolster up the weak spots in their courage."

"I don't see how you ever persuaded Sarah," marveled Rosemary. "I argued and argued, and she wouldn't listen to me."

Jack looked very wise.

"I used moral suasion," he declared. "Told her if she didn't own up to-night, I'd go to Doctor Hugh and tell him everything myself."

"Is that moral suasion?" asked Rosemary doubtfully.

"Of course it is," said Jack with confidence. "If it isn't it ought to be. I've never broken a promise yet and I'm mighty glad Sarah didn't make me, but I'll be jiggered if I don't think there are times when it is worse to keep a promise than to break it."

A promise "wrongly given"—Doctor Hugh's words came back to Rosemary. Had she given her promise wrongly?

Doctor Hugh did not come home till nearly five o'clock and the four solemn young people on the front porch were getting decidedly fidgety before his roadster appeared at the curb and he jumped out and hurried up the walk. He said "Hello" to the four as he passed them and he was surprised, therefore, when he turned from his desk to see them enter the office and advance toward him.

"Hugh," said Jack clearly, "I've something to tell you. Sarah really ought to, but she asked me to do it."

"Suppose you sit down," said the doctor gravely.

Sarah sat down gingerly on a chair near the door, ready for instant flight, and the others ranged themselves near the desk. Jack began with the loss of the ring and told everything that had happened since. He spoke rapidly, but without excitement, and he was not interrupted once.

"I am really to blame, as much as anyone," he declared, when he had reached the point where Rosemary had confided in him about the missing ring and her determination to replace it. "I had no business to promise not to tell before I heard what I was not to tell. That's a fool stunt."

"Yes, I think it is," agreed Doctor Hugh, but smilingly.

"Rosemary thought she had to go on taking care of cranky babies till she could buy another ring. If I'd had any money of my own—and I don't know why I never do—" Jack paused for a moment to consider this new idea—"I would have bought a ring myself and helped her out of the hole."

Doctor Hugh listened silently to the remainder of the recital, his eyes studying the four expressive faces before him.

"So Rosemary really couldn't tell you what she wanted the money for, because she had promised," finished Jack. "And Sarah was afraid, and so was Shirley."

"I see," the doctor said. "I'm sorry they were afraid. Sarah dear, do you really think you have saved yourself anything by not telling me when you lost the ring?" he went on, turning to Sarah. "Haven't you had more trouble and worry and unhappiness trying to keep me from finding out and don't you think it is better to own up right away and take your punishment and have it all over?"

"Yes," admitted Sarah in a very small voice.

"Well, then, next time tell me at once," said Doctor Hugh earnestly. "And don't ever let me hear of four of you making a chain of promises like this. We'll see what can be done about the ring to-morrow, Sarah, and you and I will talk it over with Aunt Trudy."

He held out his hand to Jack and put an arm around Rosemary, whose face was radiant with relief and happiness.

"I wish you had spoken up a little sooner, Jack," growled the doctor. "I find that keeping track of three girls isn't the easiest task in the world."

"But we won't lose any more rings," said the practical Sarah.

"No, we won't lose any more rings, Hugh," whispered Rosemary, standing on tip-toe to kiss him.