I

'M an old man," announced Jack Welles that night, dropping into a chair in Doctor Hugh's office, while he waited for the latter to prepare a bottle of medicine for his father's cough.

"Back broken, I suppose?" suggested the doctor cheerfully. "The first ten years are always the hardest, my boy."

Jack groaned and Rosemary, patiently holding a bleary-eyed cat for Sarah, looked at him anxiously.

"Ten years!" complained Jack. "Another afternoon like this and I won't live to see ten years. Ye gods, who would have thought a little snow shoveling could break me up like this!"

"You're out of practice," replied the doctor, busily writing a label. "Don't try to clean all the streets in one day, Jack; I came through Main street to-night and I must say the boys have made a good job of it, though, of course, it was fairly well tramped down. It's the side streets that are blocked. Where are you working?"

"Plummers Lane," said Jack dryly. "The Juniors have uptown and Main street. We're providing a side show for the unemployed and if we don't get any fun out of our job, they at least can laugh their heads off."

"I told Hugh about the Student Council and the way they acted," said Rosemary hotly. "Don't you think they are too hateful for anything, Hugh?"

The doctor looked at Jack who managed a grin.

"Jack isn't hurt yet," said Doctor Hugh, smiling, "and I don't know but digging out Plummers Lane is a man-sized job and one to be proud of. Certainly if you get the streets in passable condition so that we don't have to carry a sick woman through snow drifts to get her to the ambulance—which happened last week—you'll have the thanks of the doctors if not of the Student Council."

"We're going to stick," declared Jack, taking the bottle the doctor held out to him. "If there should ever be a fire down there, with the snow piled over the hydrants and kerosene oil cans mixed up with packing boxes and kindling wood in the front yards, after the happy-go-lucky housekeeping methods followed by Plummers Lane housekeepers, I should say three blocks would go like tinder. Bill McCormack was down to see us, just as we were knocking off, and he was pleased as Punch at what we'd done."

"I'm coming down to see you," announced Rosemary.

"So 'm I," cried Sarah. "I can shovel snow, too."

"Come on, if you want to," said Jack, "but don't expect us to have much time to talk to you. We're being paid by the hour and business is business."

He went off whistling, leaving Rosemary with an odd expression on her face. It was the first time Jack had ever hinted he could possibly be too busy to talk to her.

"Hugh," she said seriously, when the doctor had prescribed for Sarah's sick pussy cat and the anxious mistress had gone off to tuck the patient in bed down cellar. "Hugh, couldn't I take hot coffee and doughnuts to the boys while they are working in the snow afternoons? I know they must get hungry and it is so cold and windy down Plummers Lane—the wind comes across the marsh.""Go ahead," her brother encouraged her. "Get Sarah to help you. I imagine Jack is having a tough time and he'll appreciate a little unspoken sympathy. I'll give you a testimonial for your coffee, Rosemary, if you think you need one; where are the doughnuts coming from?"

"They're all made, a stone crock full," dimpled Rosemary. "That was what made me think of doing it. We'll come home from school and get the big tin pail with the lid and a pan of doughnuts. But I can't carry twelve cups."

"Paper ones will do," the doctor assured her. "The boys will gulp the coffee before it can possibly seep through. Make Sarah do her share, and don't stay late, either one of you."

The next afternoon, as Jack straightened his aching back to answer the questions of Frank Fenton, who was serving as time-keeper for the four squads, he looked across the street and saw two little figures who waved gloved hands at him and beckoned in a mysterious manner.

"Isn't that Rosemary Willis?" asked Frank, "stunning kid, isn't she?"

Rosemary, rosy from the cold and with her eyes dark and starry, left Sarah on the curb and crossed over.

"Oh, Jack," she began before she reached him, "Sarah and I have brought you some hot coffee and doughnuts. There's enough for everyone."

Frank had his data, but he still lingered, and the other boys at Jack's shout, crowded around. Rosemary knew most of them and Jack hurriedly performed the few necessary introductions leaving Frank till the last. Norman Cox and Eustice Gray had hastened across the street and returned with Sarah and the supplies just as Jack said, "Rosemary, this is Frank Fenton."

"He can't have any," said Sarah with blunt distinctness.

Rosemary flushed scarlet and then, with the quickness characteristic of her, jerked the lid from the coffee can and filled one of the paper cups with the steamy, fragrant, liquid.

"Please," she said gravely, holding it out to the astonished president of the Student Council. "The sugar and cream are already in. And these are fresh doughnuts."

Mechanically Frank drank the hot coffee and ate a doughnut, while Rosemary poured out the remainder of the coffee and Jack passed the cups around, Sarah serving the doughnuts.

"That is the best coffee I ever drank," declared Frank, when he had finished. "And now, couldn't I take you home? I have my car down the street a ways and I go right past your house."

Jack choked over his coffee, but Rosemary thanked the senior politely and said that she and Sarah had planned to stay and watch the shovelers a while.

"This isn't a very nice neighborhood, especially after dark you know," said Frank.

"We're not going to stay long," Rosemary was beginning, but Jack cut her short.

"I live next door to Rosemary, and I'll see that she and Sarah get home all right," he said brusquely. "I know all about Plummers Lane, too, Frank."

The Student Council president lifted his cap and went back to his car.

"I don't like him," said Sarah decidedly.

"I shouldn't wonder if he was faintly aware of your dislike," grinned Jack. "Any more coffee left, Rosemary? You certainly had a bright idea when you thought of this."

Rosemary and Sarah were more than repaid for their long, cold walk, by the evident pleasure the boys took in their warm drink and the two fat doughnuts apiece they had brought them. They knocked off work fifteen or twenty minutes earlier in order to see the girls home before dark, but the next afternoon the doctor's car came and picked up the sisters and the empty coffee can so that the workers lost no time.

For nearly a week, the boys shoveled steadily after school hours, sticking to the job long after the first novelty had worn away. Bill McCormack declared that they were the best "gang" he had ever hired and the Plummers Lane residents ceased to regard them as a joke and began to exchange sociable comments and quips with them, though never descending to the plane of familiarity that included a shovel. Rosemary and Sarah, and now and then Shirley, carried coffee and doughnuts, or hot cocoa and cakes, each afternoon and Doctor Hugh willingly stopped for them in his car. Even the weather ceased to consent to co-operate for after one heavy snow, it cleared and the streets made passable, remained that way till after Christmas.

The most important subject of discussion in the Willis household, along the lines of Christmas preparations, was the box to be sent the little mother in the sanatorium.

"I think we ought to make her something!" announced Rosemary.

"Well, what?" asked Sarah. "I most know she'd love to have one of Tootles' kittens, but I don't suppose we could mail that, could we?"

"Praise be, you can't," said Winnie who had overheard. "Those kittens will be the death of me yet, and what they'd do to sick folks in a sanatorium, I'm sure I don't know and don't want to."

"What'll we make Mother?" urged Shirley, pulling Rosemary's belt.

"I know—a kimona," said Rosemary triumphantly. "That won't be hard, because we'll have only two seams. Mother will love to have something we made her, instead of a gift we just went down town and bought. What color do you think would be pretty, Sarah?"

"Red," said Sarah promptly.

"Pink," begged Shirley. "Make it pink, Rosemary."

"I like blue," said Rosemary wistfully.

"Let's ask Aunt Trudy," suggested Sarah.

"I think you're awfully foolish to try to make anything," pronounced Aunt Trudy when they consulted her. "But I suppose, if you have set your hearts on it, why nothing will dissuade you. Why don't you make your mother a white kimona, and bind it with pink ribbon? White was always her favorite."

So it was decided the kimona should be white eiderdown and bound with pink satin ribbon and Rosemary and Sarah and Shirley went shopping one afternoon after school and bought the materials. Their purchase included a pattern, the first in their joint experience and when they had spread it out on Rosemary's bed the three girls looked at it helplessly.

"We'll put it on paper, till we learn how to cut it," said Rosemary, secretly wondering how anyone ever learned to understand such complicated directions as were printed on the pattern envelope.

They had decided that neither Aunt Trudy nor Winnie could be allowed to help them and since Rosemary had a working knowledge of the sewing machine's mysteries and could sew neatly by hand, they had not anticipated any trouble.

"But how could we know a pattern was such a silly thing?" wailed Rosemary, tired and cross when the dinner gong sounded and they had made no progress. The floor of the room was littered with paper and the top of the bed resembled a pincushion for Shirley had amused herself by sticking the contents of the entire paper of pins in orderly rows on the counterpane.

"Aren't you coming down to dinner?" asked Sarah, moving toward the door."No, I'm not," retorted Rosemary. "I'm not hungry and I don't want anything to eat. Don't let Winnie come up here making a fuss; you tell Aunt Trudy I don't want any dinner to-night. I'm not going to do a thing till I get this kimona cut out."

"Hugh will be mad," said Sarah, half way down the hall.

"Let him," called Rosemary recklessly, shutting the door of her room with a bang.

She was deep in the pattern directions for the tenth time, when someone rapped on her door.

"I'm not hungry—don't bother me," she called, frowning.

The door knob turned and Doctor Hugh smiled in at her.

"Heard you were having trouble with the dressmaking," he announced. "Can't I help? I'm not Winnie or Aunt Trudy, you know. I'd like to have a finger in this, if I could."

Rosemary drew a long breath.

"You do understand, don't you?" she said, standing on the foot that had not gone to sleep and trying to rouse the circulation in the other one. "We didn't want anyone to touch our present for Mother, except us; but you're us, too, aren't you?""Surest thing," agreed the doctor, approaching the terrible pattern with grave interest. "What's the matter with this—aren't you sure how it should be cut?"

Rosemary shook her head hopelessly.

"I'm afraid to cut it before I know and I've tried it every way I can think of," she confessed.

"Well, if this is wrong, I'll buy you some more goods to-morrow," promised the doctor, twitching the pattern to his liking.

He took up the scissors and cut around the outline with what seemed to Rosemary, reckless abandon. But when he had finished and she took up the two pieces, they fitted together like parts of a picture puzzle.

"It's right!" she cried in delight. "Hugh, you darling, it's all right! And I can baste it to-night and sew it on the machine to-morrow and put the ribbon on by hand. Won't Mother love it!"

"No more sewing to-night," said her brother firmly. "Dressmakers always make mistakes when they're tired. Come down and eat your dinner now, and then put this truck away till after school to-morrow afternoon."

Rosemary followed him downstairs meekly, though her fingers itched to get at the basting. Sarah looked up at them in surprise as they entered the dining-room.

"I thought Rosemary was going to be cross!" she said frankly.

"You were mistaken," retorted Doctor Hugh, smiling so infectiously at Rosemary that she could do no less than twinkle back at him.