T

HE next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, the unwilling Sarah was called into conference in the office with her brother and Aunt Trudy. The latter was much surprised to learn that she had lost a ring, and insisted that Sarah, who was rather a favorite of hers, should not be punished.

"I never did care anything about the ring, Hugh," said Aunt Trudy earnestly, "and there's been trouble enough about it. It's just like Rosemary to want to buy me another, but I'd never wear it, so why should she? I'm glad enough that this ridiculous idea of hers has been stopped before it went on any longer. Don't, for pity's sake, say another word about that unfortunate ring."

"Well, Sarah, that let's you out," said Doctor Hugh cheerfully. "I must say I think you've shirked all the way through, first in not owning up and again in letting Rosemary take the responsibility of replacing the ring. And you kept her from telling me, simply to shield yourself. However, I really understand that you were afraid and fear often keeps us from doing what we know to be right. You're going to fight that little 'I'm-afraid'"—for he had had a brief talk with his little sister the night before after the others had left the office and felt that he was just beginning to understand Sarah—"and put him in his place, which is behind you, and so we'll start all over as long as Aunt Trudy is willing. Shall we?"

"Let's," said Sarah laconically, but she slipped a confiding small hand in the doctor's larger one. He squeezed it affectionately.

"Now I must be off," he said, glancing at his watch. "Where is Rosemary? I thought I'd take her with me this morning—the ride will do her good. Practising?" he repeated as Sarah called his attention to the sound of finger exercises. "Let her practise this afternoon—she needs to get away from a fixed schedule now and then."

Rosemary enjoyed this ride and the others that followed in quick succession. Doctor Hugh, unknown to her, was realizing that every one had been expecting too much of the oldest daughter of the house, had looked to her, in fact, to grow up in one summer.

"Poor little kid!" thought the doctor one morning, as he allowed Rosemary to take the wheel of the car on a level stretch of clear road and the color came into her face from the excitement and delight. "Poor little kid, we've been expecting her to have the patience and wisdom and experience Mother has. She's only twelve years old and we ask her to act like a woman. She's bound to make mistakes, but she won't make the same one twice—I'll bank on that. Temper and will, rightly directed, make for strength, and Rosemary will be as lovely within some day as she is to the eye—and my sister is going to be a beauty, or I miss my guess."

Aloud he said, "Watch the road, Rosemary. Never mind what is behind you, watch the road ahead."

Coming in at noon from one of these rides with Doctor Hugh, Rosemary found a small box, wrapped in white tissue paper and tied with pink string, at her plate.

"It looks like a jeweler's box," she said jokingly as she opened it. "Why it is!" she added in surprise.

Sarah and Shirley crowded around her as she opened it. A little gold "friendship" circle pin, set with a single turquoise, lay on a bed of blue cotton.

"How perfectly lovely!" cried Rosemary. "Is it mine?"

"Of course it is," said Sarah. "Jack and Shirley and I went to Mr. Evans and bought it for you. Do you like it?"

"Why it's darling," the enthusiastic Rosemary assured her. "I never saw a prettier pin. Look, Hugh, look Aunt Trudy," she said eagerly, holding out the pin to them as they came in from the hall.

"Why don't you ask where we got the money to buy it?" suggested Sarah and at that Doctor Hugh shouted with laughter.

"You'll be the death of me yet, Sarah," he protested. "Sit down, people, do, and we'll begin luncheon while Sarah reveals her dark secret."

"'Tisn't a secret," announced Sarah with dignity. "Hugh said we might take the ring-fund money, Rosemary, and buy you something nice with it, and if we saw anything we thought you'd like, to tell him, and he'd give us as much more money as we needed. Then Aunt Trudy said she wanted to put some money with the ring-fund money, and so did Winnie and so did Jack, so everybody did. Oh, yes, Hugh did, too. And we saw this pin and Shirley and I thought it would be nice because it had the turquoise in it like Aunt Trudy's ring, and Jack said it was a 'friendship circle' and that meant we were all friends of yours. So we bought it and it was seven dollars and a half," concluded Sarah who was nothing if not thorough.

"It's just beautiful," said Rosemary, with an April face of smiles and tears. "I'll always keep it and love you all for thinking so much of me."

She had wondered several times about the ring money, but the doctor had made no motion to give her back the bank. Neither had he mentioned returning the money again. Rosemary supposed that he would bring the subject up some time, but until he did she was content to forget about it. She did not know till weeks afterward that it was Jack Welles who had dissuaded the doctor from his plan to have the "fund" returned to those who had paid it.

"Rosemary earned the money fairly and squarely," he argued. "She earned it by the hardest kind of work and it seems mean to make her feel cheap. Those women were paying for service and they got it, and they don't think any the less of Rosemary, either, if Aunt Trudy does moan along about 'degrading' the family. You're forever preaching that there is no disgrace in any kind of honest work, Hugh—"

"Oh, quit, I'm licked!" surrendered the doctor, laughing. "I won't mention the money to Rosemary, Jack. Though when I think of that child spending long, hot afternoons amusing cranky kids for pay—Still, it's pluck like that that makes the backbone of our country. What do you say if we take this money and buy her some little personal gimcrack? Girls like things to wear, I've always heard."

So Jack gained his point and the pretty pin was the result.

The days of vacation, "like the hairs of our heads" as Jack observed, were numbered now and the week before school was to open, Doctor Hugh made a flying trip to the sanatorium to see the little mother.

"You wouldn't know her, girls!" he told the three sisters, when he returned. "Her cheeks are actually a bit pink and though she is still awfully thin, her eyes are clear and bright. If three months can do her that much good, a year will set her on her feet. She says she lives on your letters, and you mustn't let a week go past without writing. Rosemary must be a good censor, for Mother doesn't seem to worry about the house at all; I told her we were pulling together famously."

"Well, we are," said Rosemary contentedly. "I wish you'd look at Sarah, though, Hugh."

"I am looking at her," said the doctor. "She seems to have torn her dress."

"That's the one decent dress she has," responded Rosemary severely, "and now she hasn't a single thing to wear to school Monday."

"What does Mother do when you need clothes?" asked Doctor Hugh helplessly. "I suppose you'll all need dresses for school, won't you?"

"Mother has Miss Henry come and sew the first week in September," said Rosemary, "but Aunt Trudy says the sanatorium is expensive and she thinks we ought to try and cut down living expenses."

"I think we can still afford some new frocks," replied her brother, smiling. "Ask Aunt Trudy to engage Miss Henry, Rosemary, and to get her whatever she needs to outfit you sensibly for school. You'll have to remind me about shoes and hats and dresses, you know; an old bachelor isn't expected to notice when these things wear shabby."

Miss Henry came and sewed a week, making new dresses and contriving and turning to make the best of several old ones. Monday morning, when school opened, the three Willis girls started off brave in new ginghams and Doctor Hugh assured them that he was proud of them.

"I wish I was in high school," said Rosemary wistfully, as Jack Welles joined them at the first corner.

"Two more years, and you will be," he consoled her. "I'll be a senior then, and I'll see that no one steps on you, Rosemary."

"Oh, nobody will," said Rosemary confidently.

And indeed she looked quite capable of taking care of herself. There was little of dependency about Rosemary and her lovely soft eyes were balanced by the firm white chin. "She is easily hurt, but her pride helps her to hide that," Winnie was fond of saying, "and don't be after forgetting that there's red in her hair, under the gold!"

The Eastshore school was a splendid type of the modern school, housing in one building the primary, grammar and high school grades. Built on the extreme edge of the town, it faced an acre play-ground, evenly divided among the three schools. Principals and teachers were the best obtainable and indeed the State Board of education was fond of using Eastshore school as a model for others to follow. Mrs. Willis had often declared that she would never have sent her son to boarding school had the public school then been as excellent as that which Rosemary and her sisters attended.

This morning Rosemary was to enter the seventh grade in the grammar school, Sarah would be in the fourth primary and Shirley, having "graduated" from the kindergarten the year before, would attain the dignity of a seat in the first grade. Separating at the broad door, they were swept into the different streams that carried them up different stairways and into different classrooms and it was noon before they saw each other again. Few of the pupils went home to lunch and a large, light airy room on the third floor was set aside for their use as a lunch room. A corner table was reserved for teachers and here a small group usually gathered not only to eat and exchange comment, but to keep an eye on the lunchers and subdue the noise when it rose to a shout. The high school students had their own lunch room, but the grammar and primary grades shared a room together.

"Well, what kind of people are in your room?" demanded Sarah, as she and Shirley met Rosemary at the little corner table the latter had secured and held for them. Rosemary had spread out the lunch Winnie had put up for them, and Shirley was already beginning on a sandwich.

"Oh, I like the girl who sits in front of me ever so much," returned Rosemary, cutting an apple into quarters for Shirley. "Her name is Elsie Stevens and they haven't lived in Eastshore long. Last year she went to the Port Reading school. Elsie Mears sits in back of me; she wasn't promoted. And Nina Edmonds is across the aisle."

"I don't think much of our teacher," announced Sarah, with deplorable frankness. "She doesn't look very bright and she says she is afraid of snakes."

"Well so am I," declared Rosemary. "I don't think any one is very bright who isn't."

"That's because you don't know anything about snakes," said Sarah, salting a boiled egg hurriedly. "Snakes are the best friends the farmer has."

"My teacher's name is Miss Farmer," chirped Shirley sunnily. "And we have pink and red and blue crayons to draw on the blackboard with."

"Take another sandwich, darling," Rosemary urged her. "You're sure you won't get tired this afternoon? You went home at noon every day last year, you know."

"Yes, but I'm six now," Shirley reminded her sister. "Will we have home work in our room, Rosemary?"

It was one of Shirley's ambitions to have "home work" to do, and she longed to take a book home at night as Rosemary and Sarah did.

"I don't know—I shouldn't think so," answered Rosemary absently. "Sarah, Nina Edmonds wears her hair pinned up and no hair-ribbon."

"Well she looks crazy anyway, so what difference does it make?" was Sarah's comment on this news. "You can't go without a hair-ribbon, Rosemary, because your hair will all be in your eyes. Hugh said Nina was trying to be grown up and I guess she is."

But that night Rosemary spent half an hour before her mirror, trying to coax her bobbed curls into a knot like Nina Edmonds'. Rosemary's hair was growing very fast and she had promised Doctor Hugh not to have it cut again. Just now it was an awkward length, but its curliness redeemed even that. Nina's straight blond locks were strained into a tortuous knot at the nape of her neck, for she, too, had decided not to bob her hair again. It was the absence of hair-ribbon that particularly appealed to Rosemary, for she had "spells" as Winnie called them, of wishing to appear grown up. At other times she was satisfied to be what Doctor Hugh insisted she should be content to be for several more years, "just a little girl."