Rosemary and the Princess

Contents

Comine Events Cast— Sarau Is DELayEp

More ApJUSTMENTS

Two Cousins Fatt Our Too Many Sweets

Chapter II

INNER that night in the Willis home 1) was a rather hilarious affair. Gentle

Mrs. Willis had gone in with the doctor while he made one of his calls and the dry and caustic wit of the grandmother in the patient’s family had delighted her and given her several stories to tell. Shirley was bubbling over with sheer good spirits from the hours spent in the open air and Doctor Hugh himself was inclined to effervescence, due to the feeling of extraordinary leisure conferred by the blankness of the call pad on his desk telephone. —

Sarah, to be sure, was somewhat silent, but then Sarah’s contribution to the table conversation was always spasmodic and, unless restrained, more forcible than polite. Rosemary, aided by Winnie now and then (Winnie could not forbear to drop a word or two in “edgewise”’ as she was fond of remarking) gave them the story of the preparations carried out in the guest room.

“She took something out of every room,” explained Rosemary—“Mother’s silver brush and comb and my cut glass cologne bottle and Shirley’s handkerchief box—the blue one—and your ebony clothes brush, Hugh

“Not my clothes brush!” begged Doctor Hugh, but his eyes were twinkling behind his glasses. |

“Don’t forget my electric curling iron,”’ Winnie contributed grimly, as she brought in the salad.

“Well, we heard a crash,” went on Rosemary, “and of course we thought something was broken, especially as Sarah called down to ask Winnie how many years of bad luck a broken mirror meant.”

The canny Sarah sensed a hint of apprehension in the air.

“T didn’t break a thing,” she announced virtuously.

“No, she didn’t,” Rosemary hastened to agree. “It was the rocking chair going over backward, that we heard; and she only wanted to know about the bad luck because she had promised to find out for one of the girls in school.”

Doctor Hugh chuckled.

“T haven’t been able to find out, Sarah,” he told his small sister, “whether your sense of the © dramatic is instinctive and unconscious, or deliberate and meditated. What do you think about it?”

“Huh!” was Sarah’s reply, while Shirley stared in thralled fascination.

“Tt’s lovely of you to try and help us be ready for Aunt Trudy, Sarah,” said Mrs. Willis, leaning over to pat the small brown hand nearest her. “Only another time ask Mother or Winnie what is needed to be done—please, dear.”

The telephone called Doctor Hugh from his dessert and though he came back and finished his pudding, he went out immediately afterward.

“TI don’t believe he even saw the curtains!” said Rosemary sadly, that is as sadly as she could, in view of the extra portion of whipped cream Winnie had spread on her pudding top.

“Oh, he saw them, dearest, but he hasn’t had time to mention them—that’s all,” her mother assured her. “He’s worried about something at the hospital and his mind wasn’t on curtains.”

The brief evening passed swiftly, Rosemary pasting recipes on index cards for the cooking class file and the two younger children absorbed in their favorite game of dominoes. Though it was early in the school term, the home work exacted by the primary and grammar grades of the Eastshore schools was never heavy and frequently non-existent. The teachers and Mr. Oliver, the principal, did not believe in much night study. Jack Welles was fond of assuring Rosemary that this leniency was more than balanced by the amount of home preparation required by the Eastshore High School. Jack was a Junior.

“Aunt Trudy coming to-morrow?” asked Rosemary, looking up from her pasting as the clock struck eight and Mrs. Willis reminded Sarah of her bedtime.

“She'll be here when you come home from school,” Mrs. Willis smiled. “I want her to have a pleasant visit; she was so good to you girls during my illness.”

“T don’t mind her visiting,’’ announced Sarah, tumbling the dominoes into the box after her usual custom and cramming down the lid regardless of the protruding corners, “but I’d rather have Rosemary housekeep next time you're sick, Mother.”

“Let’s hope there won’t be any next time,” Mrs. Willis suggested cheerfully. “Come, Shirley, you’ve had an extra half hour to-night; don’t dawdle, but run along like a good girl. Mother will be up presently.”

Sarah and Shirley departed with the inevitable reluctance they displayed each evening, and Rosemary and her mother were left alone in the pretty living-room. The floor lamp shone on the dark hair of Mrs. Willis, her soft gray silk gown and the small black beaded slippers and caught the flash of her few rings as her nimble fingers worked at her sewing.

The light on the table fell on Rosemary’s supple hands and the white surface of the cards and left her face in shadow, but its delicacy of outline and the soft coloring were merely subdued, not hidden. Lovely, was the word that usually came to mind when strangers saw Rosemary for the first time. “Such an alive face,” some one had once said to Mrs. Willis. And that, for all the charm of perfect features, beautiful eyes and the wonderful mass of hair that was gold under-

COMING EVENTS CAST— iv laid with red, really explained Rosemary’s chief claim to beauty. All the warm sincerity of a responsive nature, all the quick sympathy of a sweet and tender compassion, and yes, all the storm and stress of a very positive and not at all firmly controlled young temper, was mirrored in Rosemary’s face as the hours moved her.

“Nobody ever gets bored, living in the same house with Rosemary,” Winnie often stated.

Neither, it should be noted, was Rosemary ever known to be bored. She lived intensely, which may not be always wise, and when things did not please her, generally insisted on trying to change them. On the few and painful occasions when she had been forced to conclude that what she wanted was something she could not have, she at least had the satisfaction of knowing that she had exhausted all possible resources at her command before her final surrender. In many instances, she succeeded in exhausting most of her opponents.

Always excepting two—her mother and Doctor Hugh. In the latter the famous “Willis will,” disciplined, seasoned, was proof against all attacks which might be brought to bear. And in

Mrs. Willis, frail, gentle, never physically strong, was a force that was all-conquering and against which everything unworthy in the end crumbled to defeat. This force was love and though her children took it for granted, its richness and sweetness never failed.

“Almost nine, dear,” said Mrs. Willis presently.

Rosemary began to pick up her cards and sort them into the file box.

“How long will Aunt Trudy stay, Mother?” she asked.

“Why, I don’t know—she hasn’t said,’ returned Mrs. Willis. “I think she is going South and she may stay with us till colder weather. She wanted us all to go down with her—take a cottage and spend the winter.”

Rosemary paused, paste-pot in hand.

““Wouldn’t that be sport!’ she twinkled. “Is —is it expensive, Mother?”

“Rather expensive,” her mother smiled, “and not to be thought of with three girls in school and a son with a busy practice.”

“I suppose we do have to go to school,” conceded Rosemary, “and Hugh is so in love with

COMING EVENTS CAST— 19 rn his new office that you couldn’t drag him away unless you promised him a hospital full of people who needed patching up. But it would be nice for you.”

A little flush stained Mrs. Willis’ smooth skin.

“Mother! I'll bet Aunt Trudy wants you to go with her—and you won’t. And you could . stay outdoors all winter and you know you hate snow’ —Rosemary’s voice was reproachful now.

The front door closed with a cheerful crash and some one whistled in the hall.

“TI didn’t hear the car!” Mrs. Willis raised her face—Doctor Hugh always kissed his mother when he left her and when he came home—“are you hungry, Hugh?”

“A little—doughnut hungry, I think,” he answered. ‘“What’s Rosemary doing with the paste? She looks like the statue of Liberty.”

Rosemary laughed and lowered the paste-pot in some confusion. |

“Don’t let her boss you, Mother,” continued Doctor Hugh, ducking cautiously around one end of the davenport. “I’m on your side.”

“T wasn’t bossing any one,” Rosemary said with dignity. “I was talking about Aunt Trudy;

I’m most sure she wants Mother to go South with her and she won’t because she has us. And she could have such a wonderful time!”

Doctor Hugh sat down on the davenport with a contented sigh.

“Seems to me you’re very willing to shove Mother off with Aunt Trudy,” he observed. “I haven’t seen any signs of great enthusiasm over her proposed visit and here you are cheerfully urging Mother to take a journey with her.”

Mrs. Willis laughed, but shook her head.

“This is the most disrespectful family I ever heard,” she reproved. “You're all fond of Aunt Trudy, but if an outsider should overhear you, he would certainly gain a different impression.”

“Well, I only thought it would be lovely for Mother to go to Florida,” Rosemary murmured, on her knees before the drawer in the old-fashioned secretary where she kept her cards and recipes. “I don’t suppose the climate would make up for Aunt Trudy, after all.”

Doctor Hugh’s eyes, as she kissed him good-night, were slightly mischievous and Rosemary, halfway up the stairs, was sure she heard him say to her mother, “You haven’t told her, then?”

but as Rosemary frequently told Sarah, she never tried to listen, and she marched resolutely on, up to her own room.

Sarah, she could not help reflecting, would have listened. Sarah saw no reason for not doing anything she wished to do and her principles were more famous for their elasticity than for their observance.

“T wonder what Mother didn’t tell me?” speculated Rosemary, brushing the red-gold hair. “There’s the telephone—if Hugh has to go out, I hope he’ll get his doughnut before he goes.”

“Ts Aunt Trudy’s room ready for her?” asked Sarah at the breakfast table the next morning.

This apparently innocent remark caused Winnie to pause midway between the kitchen and the serving table.

“Tt’s ready and the key’s in your mother’s . pocket,” she announced firmly. “I put it there; what makes you take such an interest, all of a sudden, in that room, Sarah?”

Winnie was a member of the Willis family and she felt it not only her privilege, but her duty, to lend a hand now and then in keeping the younger members straight.

“T like things nice,” said Sarah. “Aunt Trudy doesn’t know much about animals, but I’m glad she’s coming. She brings us candy.”

Shirley brightened perceptibly. She remembered the candy.

“There’s Jack whistling,” said Rosemary, pushing back her chair. “Are you coming now, Sarah, or do you want to wait?”

Sarah said she wasn’t ready, but Shirley favored an early start, and she went off with Rosemary, each taking a lunch box from the table in the hall, for they did not come home at noon.

Sarah began to arrange her place, preparatory for departure. She seemed to be making a ceremony of it, though as a rule she left in such haste she had to be called back to pick up her napkin or handkerchief dropped in flight. This morning she put her knife and fork gently on her plate, moved the salt to a point directly opposite the egg cup, and put her napkin in its ring, all in utmost silence.

“Tl take you in the car, Sarah,” offered Doctor Hugh, buttering a second roll and watching his stolid sister with twinkling eyes.

Sarah glanced at him distrustfully.

“I’m going to walk,” she said briefly. “Mother, would you mind if I didn’t come right home from school?”

“Why, dear, what do you want to do?” asked Mrs. Willis, from behind the silver coffee pot. “Aunt Trudy will be here, you know, and I should like you to come home as soon as you can.”

“Oh—I thought Id go to the station to meet her,” Sarah announced. “I didn’t know she was going to be here.”

Doctor Hugh folded his napkin and stood up.

“There are some things worse than indifference,” he remarked rather cryptically.

Chapter III

Gti peculiar eagerness to greet her aunt lasted until the hour of realization was at hand. Then, being Sarah, she dawdled on the way home from school in a manner that drove Rosemary frantic and provoked the sunny-tempered Shirley to unusual wrath.

Not that Eastshore, on a September afternoon, didn’t offer inducements to linger on its shaded streets. It was a pretty town and old enough to have the charm of atmosphere—and old trees and shrubbery—without being in the least “sleepy.” astshore had its commuters which kept it in constant touch with the city, the Interurban trolley made it the center of attraction for the country folk and its really excellent schools kept the best of the old residents from moving to larger places on the pretext of securing educational advantages.

The Willis girls knew practically the entire population of the town by sight, if not by name. The few families they didn’t know, knew them, for the “doctor’s sisters” frequently went with him in his car, to the hospital at Bennington, twenty miles away, and on his calls to his country patients. This afternoon nothing would please Sarah but that they should go home by _ way of the “haunted house,” though this necessitated a detour of several blocks.

“Come on,” said Shirley fretfully, stamping

her foot. ‘Come on, Sarah, Mother said to come right home. You know she did.” . Shirley in a rage always rather paralyzed the onlooker. She was so little and so exquisitely pretty that when she lost her temper and stormed ’ it was rather as though a butterfly had turned into a yellow-jacket. That was Winnie’s simile and the Willis family had made it theirs.

“You can go on,” Sarah said calmly, sitting down on the curb. “I want to see the haunted house.”

Rosemary was seized with a strong desire to take firm hold of Sarah’s broad sailor collar and drag her home by force. She was sure she could manage that, but not the screaming that was sure to accompany the attempt.

“You’re the queerest acting girl I ever saw,”

announced Rosemary with some justice. “First you can’t wait to see Aunt Trudy and then, when you know she is home and waiting for you, nothing will make you go home. You must have been doing something you’re ashamed of.”

“Here comes Hugh!” Shirley cried, her frown disappearing as if by magic.

Rosemary glanced up the street and saw the familiar car. Sarah continued to sit on the curb and refused to draw in her feet, though the front wheel stopped within six inches of her tan shoe.

“Hello!” said Doctor Hugh cheerfully. “What seems to be the difficulty?”

“Did Aunt Trudy come?” Shirley demanded. “Did she bring us any candy?”

Rosemary laughed and the doctor joined her.

“Our manners are not our strong point,” he complained. “Aunt Trudy arrived safe and sound, on the 1.39 train, Sweetheart, but she didn’t mention the candy and I didn’t ask.”

“Oh, you mustn’t ask—Mother says that isn’t polite, “Shirley informed him in quick alarm. “I thought perhaps you saw the box or something.”

Doctor Hugh glanced at Sarah. That small person was, in outline, almost as unyielding as the stone curb on which she sat.

“Want a lift home, Sarah?” offered the doctor.

“She wants to go home by way of the haunted house and it’s almost four blocks longer,” Rosemary explained. ‘Mother asked us to come right home this afternoon.”

Sarah said nothing. She could be the most absolutely silent person on the face of the earth —again quoting Winnie—when she chose.

“T think you’d better all pile in and I'll take you—I have time,” Doctor Hugh decided. “Hurry up, Sarah—hop in.”

“You take the others—I want to walk,” said Sarah firmly.

Rosemary and Shirley stepped in, but Sarah did not move.

“Come on, Sarah,” Doctor Hugh urged impatiently. “I’m in a hurry.”

Sarah leaped to her feet, her dark eyes blazing. Her voice was choked with rage.

“I wish to walk!” she announced magnificently and, turning, fled.

Doctor Hugh gazed after the small flying figure and shook his head.

“Why don’t you chase her?” asked Shirley, rather conscious of her own virtuousness. —

Rosemary giggled at the picture thus presented and Doctor Hugh started the car.

“Teave her alone and she’ll come home,” he hummed under his breath. “Well, Shirley, I still have you under my thumb, haven’t I? It’s when sisters get as big as Rosemary here, or Sarah, that they’re difficult to manage.”

But Rosemary, giving him a swift, side glance, knew that he was annoyed. Sarah, left to her own way, was likely to do almost anything.

“Darlings!” said a lady in flowing black silk descending upon the two girls as they came up the porch steps. “Are you glad to see your Aunt Trudy again?” :

They were glad and admitted it, less effusively, to be sure, but, none the less, sincerely. Aunt Trudy was short and stout and her irongray hair was elaborately marcelled. She was by nature demonstrative, and Sarah, who hated demonstrations of any kind, had frequently objected to her numerous kisses. Aunt Trudy immediately noticed the absence of her third niece.

““Where’s dear little Sarah?” she demanded.

Shirley, who was trying to locate the possible candy boxes without appearing to be searching, said nothing and Rosemary explained, a little vaguely, that her sister was “coming.”

“Well, let’s go in and see what I brought you,” said Aunt Trudy, who had blocked the doorway up to this point. “Your mother is sitting in the office so she can hear the telephone, but I left my bag in the living-room.”

Doctor Hugh had driven on without coming in and Rosemary and Shirley followed Aunt Trudy to the living-room, where a smart leather traveling bag reposed on the davenport.

“IT thought I’d try to please Hugh and not bring you candy this time,” Aunt Trudy announced and Rosemary tried not to look at Shirley. “So instead I chose something for each of you that you may keep—here you are,” and she dropped a box in the two little hands held out to her and kissed each girl affectionately again.

Shirley, whose heart—and tongue—had been set on chocolates, though she knew she would not be allowed to handle the box herself—opened her package quite calmly. When she saw the string of pretty blue beads on the yellow velvet cushion, she gave a shriek of delight which Rosemary felt like echoing. Her gift proved to be a delicately carved ivory rose, suspended from a thin silver chain.

“Come on and show Mother!” said Shirley, making for the office where Mrs. Willis often sat to answer the doctor’s telephone or take care of the patients who might come after office hours.

“TY have a wrist watch for Sarah,’ remarked Aunt Trudy, following more slowly. “I thought she would like it.”

Sarah was Aunt Trudy’s favorite, though the girls did not suspect it. That a wrist watch would probably last the energetic child about one day was something Aunt Trudy had not taken into consideration. Doctor Hugh, coming in as the gifts were being shown his mother, forbore to mention it.

“Though I think no nine-year-old girl needs a watch,” he said to Mrs. Willis as he sat down at his desk and the others scattered to make preparations for dinner.

“T’ll put it away and keep it for her—Sarah doesn’t care for jewelry anyway,” Mrs. Willis replied. “She ought to be home by this time— the girls said she went around by the haunted house.” F

But it was ten minutes of dinner time—six o'clock in the Willis household—before Sarah appeared. ‘Then she chose to enter by the office door—which opened on the side of the house and was separate from the main entrance. The deadlatch was on and Doctor Hugh heard her fumbling with the latch.

“Well, you are a sight!” he greeted her as he swung open the door and Sarah blinked in the strong rays of the light.

She carried an exceedingly limp cat in her arms and the poor creature’s soft fur was wet and matted. Sarah herself was scratched and muddy as to face and arms and knees and her dress was torn in several places. She had lost her comb and her hair straggled into her eyes—she kept tossing it out of the way by shaking her head impatiently.

“T wish you'd look at this cat, Hugh,” she demanded with characteristic aplomb. “I don’t think it’s sick, but you never can tell.”

She placed the cat'on top of the desk and stood looking down at it anxiously.

“Just hungry,” diagnosed the doctor expertly.

“Where have you been, Sarah? Mother expected you home long ago.”

“I’m not so very late,’ Sarah parried. “I found the cat in the haunted house—some boys must have shut her up in there to starve. I think boys can be too hateful!”

“Take her down cellar and let her sleep on a piece of old carpet—she’s too dirty to have around,” said Doctor Hugh, taking a clean towel out of his desk. “And you’d better wait till after dinner to feed her; Winnie will be too busy to have you in the kitchen just now.”

Sarah scooped up her cat and started for the door. Doctor Hugh, letting the water run in the lavatory basin noticed that she walked with a peculiar rocking step. She was using only the heel of her left foot.

“What’s the matter with your foot, Sarah?” he asked sharply.

“Nothing,” Sarah answered, stopping short, her weight on the right foot.

Sarah, as her brother had often admitted, was no testimonial for a doctor and his healing powers. She would endure an unbelievable amount of pain or discomfort rather than confess to any accident or ailment and as she was forever getting hurt in the pursuit of her active interests, it was necessary to keep a watch on her in order to determine when she needed medical attention.

Doctor Hugh now crossed over and lifted her, cat and all, to the leather couch which stood between the two windows.

“Sit still,’ he commanded as he swiftly unlaced her shoe. “Why, Sarah!”

A great jagged hole had been torn in the foot of the little tan stocking and a clot of dried blood showed, not unmixed with dirt.

“It’s all right,” Sarah said quickly. “I just hurt it a little.”

Doctor Hugh regarded his small sister speculatively.

“You and I will be late for dinner,” he informed her. “I'll take the cat down cellar for you and tell Mother you’re home; then, when you're washed up, you can make your bow to Aunt Trudy.”

Sarah had been climbing down from the couch, the light of rebellion in her eye, but now she seemed to change her mind and scrambled back.

“Stay exactly where you are till I come back,” said the doctor and he picked up the cat rather gingerly and departed for the cellar.

Sarah had not moved, he saw when he returned. She eyed him fearfully as he filled a basin with warm water and stood before the cabinet of instruments with his back to her.

“What did you do to your foot, Sarah?” he asked conversationally.

“YT ran a splinter in it,’ Sarah confessed reluctantly. “I took off my shoes and the porch of the haunted house is awfully rough.”

To her relief, Doctor Hugh had nothing in his hands but the basin of clear warm water when he came toward her. Sarah, who could enter a haunted house alone to rescue a defenseless cat, had an intense fear of being “hurt.”

She was quite willing to put her foot in the basin as directed and, later, looking very white and small and clean, on the heavy white towel folded on Doctor Hugh’s knee. But when he examined it with skillful fingers, she winced.

“It feels all right,” she insisted and then, as a short sharp throb of pain stabbed her like a flame of fire, she burst into tears.

CHAPTER IV mi LL over!” said Doctor Hugh cheerfully. A Sarah continued to sob. She felt she had been tricked. She had not been

told it was going to hurt.

“You had a splinter two inches long in there,” Doctor Hugh announced, busily bandaging the injured foot. “I suppose you would have waited till it had festered and then mentioned it. There you are, Sally—don’t cry; if I can mop you up sufficiently to be presentable, we might go in to dinner without going upstairs first.”

He kissed her soundly, knowing she rather resented caresses, and slipped the torn stocking over the bandage. From a closet he brought out a fresh face cloth and towel and washed her face and hands, Sarah submitting passively. Indeed, as Doctor Hugh proceeded with her toilet, finishing with her hair, which he made tidy with his pocket comb, he wondered at her unusual docility. 35

“Hugh!” Sarah broke her silence for the first time as they started for the other part of the house. “Hugh, has Aunt Trudy been up to her room yet?”

“Why, I suppose so—she must have gone up when she came,” the doctor answered, surprised. “Look here, Sarah, is anything the matter?”

“No,” said Sarah, opening the office door.

Her appearance in the dining-room, limping slightly, was the signal for a mild demonstration. Aunt Trudy insisted that she come and kiss her —Sarah shut her eyes tightly and endured rather than gave the required kiss of greeting—and Rosemary and Shirley were much concerned about her possible accident.

“Why, I wouldn’t want to go in the haunted house alone,” said Rosemary, when Sarah had told her experiences. “And whatever made you take off your shoes before you went in?”

“T didn’t want to hear my feet walking on the floor,” Sarah explained, and though Shirley stared, Rosemary nodded. She knew how footfalls will echo through an empty house.

Doctor Hugh had office hours from seven to eight and Shirley’s bedtime was half past seven.

She had gone sleepily upstairs and her mother had gone with her and was still on the upper floor, when, a few minutes before eight, the doctor saw the last patient out of the door and strolled across the hall. He found only Rosemary and Sarah, deep in the last game of parcheesi—Sarah’s departure coinciding with the striking of the clock.

“How about a tune, Rosemary—when that’s done?” suggested Doctor Hugh, settling on the davenport and reaching for a magazine.

Tap-tap, the sound of high heels sounded on the stairs. Breathlessly Aunt Trudy swept into the room and the waves of her hair were no crisper than the tone of her voice.

“Look!” she cried dramatically. “Look at what I found in my muff box!”

The clock chimed musically and up rose Sarah precipitately.

“T have to go to bed,” she announced, “‘it’s eight o’clock.”’

Doctor Hugh reached out automatically and took a firm grip on the little red belt of her frock. He as well as Rosemary was staring at the object dangling in Aunt Trudy’s hand. That lady held it fastidiously, as far from her as she could and she kept her head turned delicately to one side.

“What—what is it?” faltered Rosemary.

“Tt’s my muff!’ Aunt Trudy shuddered. “My seal muff. I had it relined this summer and asked the furrier to send it on here. And [I find it in this condition, in the box, on the top shelf of the closet in my room.”

Rosemary touched the muff daintily.

“It’s matted and dirty,” she said doubtfully. “And—it doesn’t smell very good, does it?”

Now Rosemary and Doctor Hugh were only too familiar with that special and distinct odor. Winnie, too, had she been present, could have been trusted to identify it. They had, as Winnie would have observed, “lived with it.”

“Rabbits!” said Doctor Hugh, for Rosemary seemed disinclined to speak further.

Aunt Trudy let another notch out of her arm and tried to back away from the muff without relinquishing her grip.

“Rabbits! she almost shrieked. “Do you mean to tell me there have been rabbits in my muff box?”

Doctor Hugh glanced at Sarah. She had not opened her mouth. She stood stolidly beside him, but there was more color in her cheeks than usual.

“Do you know anything about Aunt Trudy’s muff, Sarah?” asked the doctor calmly.

Light dawned for Aunt Trudy and Rosemary could see, she told her mother later, a thought flash into her mind.

“Why, Sarah has rabbits!” Aunt Trudy gasped.

“Do you know anything about the muff, Sarah?” asked Doctor Hugh a second time, taking a firmer hold of the little red belt.

Sarah nodded sullenly.

“But you didn’t have rabbits upstairs—did you?” Rosemary put in, aware that Sarah could go indefinitely without speech.

“Elinor had rabbits,” said Sarah, stating a melancholy fact and one which gave her family much food for thought.

Elinor indeed did have rabbits—Sarah was in a fair way to supply the juvenile population of Eastshore with these desirable pets and indications were that the supply would shortly exceed the demand.

“In the muff box—rabbits in the muff box?” Rosemary and Aunt Trudy chorused incredulously.

“T took the muff out to her,” said Sarah wearily, as one bored by this tiresome insistence on detail. “She had to have a soft bed, didn’t she? And I thought maybe rabbit fur would kind of appeal to her.”