The entire household was startled to be awakened at three o'clock the next morning by the mad ringing of an alarm clock. Shirley wept, Mrs. Willis and Rosemary were sure it was the telephone and Winnie scolded vigorously and, still scolding, traced the noise to Sarah's bed.
Sure enough, the clock was there and Sarah admitted that she had set it.
"I wanted to be sure and get up early," she explained. "I have to get my pig and go and see the Gay family."
But she further conceded that she had not meant to rise at the witching hour of three A. M. Her intention had been to set the alarm for half-past five and her mistake was due to the fact that she had not set an alarm clock before.
"And never will again," commented Winnie, bearing the offending clock away with her for safe-keeping. "Not if I have anything to say, will you ever touch an alarm clock."
Breakfast was half an hour later than usual, in consequence of this performance, and Sarah was in a fever of impatience to reach the pig pens. When finally excused from the table, she shot through the door and was back before her mother and sisters had left the dining-room.
Loud sounds of altercation in the kitchen proclaimed her return.
"You can't bring that in here—go away, Sarah Willis!" came Winnie's voice. "Where did you get that dirty beast?"
"He's mine—he's a pig," countered Sarah, who always assumed that Winnie was intensely ignorant in matters of natural history. "Mr. Hildreth gave him to me."
There was the noise of a scuffle, the slam of a door and then Sarah's wail:
"Oh, you've hurt him! And he's sick—you're the most cruel woman I ever knew and I'll tell Mother so!"
Mrs. Willis opened the swinging door into the kitchen and Rosemary and Shirley pressed close behind her. Sarah stood on the back porch, a young pig in her arms, and Winnie occupied the center of the kitchen floor.
"We don't keep our pigs in the parlor—not in this house," said Winnie firmly. "Nor yet in the kitchen—as long as I'm in it."
Rosemary thought then, as she had often thought before, how easily her mother settled differences and with how few words. It took scarcely five minutes for Mrs. Willis to examine the pig and praise his possibilities to Sarah; to suggest a comfortable box in the woodshed as his logical home—where he might have fresh air in abundance and yet be close to Sarah if he needed her attention; and to enlist the sympathies of Winnie—whose bark was always loud and whose bite had never materialized yet—to the extent that she provided a piece of soft flannel to line the box and warm milk to comfort the interior of the little pig.
His pigship was a runt, as Mr. Hildreth had said, and deprived of his fair share of nourishment was bony and far from prepossessing. Rosemary had no desire to touch him, but Shirley was fascinated and she and Sarah put him to bed in the box and covered him up with all the care and devotion they had hitherto showered on dolls. As Richard observed, when he came to tell them he was starting for the Gay farm, even a pig could be killed by kindness.
"Mother said she'd get me a bottle for him," babbled Sarah as she emerged clean and damp from Winnie's polishing and joined Richard on the step. "Hugh is going to take her to Bennington this morning and she'll buy it then. And I can bring him up by hand and teach him tricks. His name is—what is a good name for him, Richard?"
"Napoleon Bonaparte," supplied Richard with mischievous promptness. "You can call him 'Bony' for short, you know."
The practicality of this suggestion charmed Sarah beyond words, and the pig was immediately christened. "Bony" he became in that hour and "Bony" he remained, with the use of his full name on state occasions, long after he was as plump as any of his more fortunate brothers and sisters.
"Where do the Gays live?" asked Rosemary, when she and Shirley had joined the two sponsors and they were all walking over the field that led to the back road.
"Their land joins Rainbow Hill," returned Richard, "and if I had my way, we'd be better neighbors. The Gays are hard up and proud and the Hildreths are busy and like to keep to themselves. I don't know now whether Louisa and Alec will be glad to see me bringing three strangers to meet 'em, but my honest opinion is they need someone to say 'Hello' and be friendly without prying."
Rosemary looked at him speculatively.
"Perhaps Mother had better go to see Mrs. Gay first," she suggested, with a little touch of her mother's own generalship.
"There isn't any Mrs. Gay," said Richard soberly. "They're orphans—all six of 'em. And Warren and I have it figured out that grown people frighten them—Louisa and Alec shut up like clams when they meet anyone in town. They won't think you and Sarah and Shirley mean to boss their affairs. Maybe they'll be friends with you."
The three girls drew closer to Richard as they approached a tumbled-down fence. Six year old Shirley expressed, in a measure, their feelings when she stopped Richard as he attempted to lift her over, with the observation that she had never seen an orphan.
"An orphan hasn't any mother or father, you know, Shirley," said Richard, smiling. "You'll find Kitty Gay a little girl very much like yourself. Show her how lovely a little girl named Shirley Willis can be."
"We'll know eight orphans then, in a minute," declared Sarah, her statistical mind functioning even as she helped to replace the fence bars. "The Gays are six and you and Warren are two; so you did see an orphan before, Shirley."
"For mercy's sake, forget the orphan part of it," begged poor Richard. "Don't say 'orphan' once—I didn't bring you up here to look at the Gays. They're no side show."
Rosemary laughed, then sobered instantly as a turn in the lane brought them face to face with a tow-headed lad, carrying two pails of water. He was about the age of Jack Welles, she decided, but infinitely thinner and lacking Jack's solid build.
"'Lo, Dick!" he said cordially. "Want me?"
Richard introduced the three girls with more ease than Rosemary had expected. Alec Gay was undeniably shy, but he asked them to come to the house and meet his sister, Louisa. Richard took one pail and Alec the other, and they went on.
"Louisa!" shouted Alec as they came in sight of a weather-beaten house set in a fenced enclosure of rank grass where a cow grazed peacefully.
A girl appeared in the doorway, a tow-headed girl with blue eyes like her brother's, and thin shoulders, like his, too. She wore a faded blue dress and a black apron and looked clean and neat.
This was Louisa Gay and noting that she glanced uncertainly into the doorway, after Richard had introduced them, Rosemary tactfully suggested that they sit on the stoop.
"We can't stay long and it is too nice to go indoors," she said sincerely.
"The house doesn't look very nice this morning," apologized Louisa, "to tell the truth, everything is in a mess; but if we stay out here, the children will come hunting for me and they're a mess, too. There isn't much choice, either way."
She sat down beside Rosemary who kept fast hold of Shirley lest she start an exploring tour of her own.
"Where's the Kitty girl?" asked Shirley frankly.
As she spoke a stream of children poured out of the house—or it seemed like a stream, though when they were counted they were but four. Each and every one of them had light hair and blue eyes like Alec and Louisa, all were tanned and freckled and all were shouting madly. The youngest was a baby, the oldest a year or so older than Sarah. Two were boys and two girls.
"Jim, Ken, Kitty and June," said Alec glibly. "For goodness' sake, do keep still," he admonished the children. "Can't you see we have company?"
Richard, who evidently felt at home, had gone on into the kitchen with the pail of water and came out in time to hear Alec's remark.
"We're not company," he said quickly. "We're neighbors."
Shirley, after staring a few seconds at Kitty, began to talk to her as though she were an old friend. Sarah went over to look at the cow and Jim and Ken followed her. The baby, June, climbed into Rosemary's lap and sat quietly there.
"She never goes to strangers," marveled Louisa, leaning over to straighten out the crumpled little skirts. "Look Alec, she likes her."
Alec was looking and so was Richard. Rosemary made a pretty picture there in the sunlight, her lovely vivid face turned to Louisa, her arms about the tousled little figure on her knees.
"It's so nice to have a girl of my own age to talk to," Louisa said appreciatively. "I never have time to go down to town any more and I don't see the girls I used to know."
"But in the winter?" suggested Rosemary, "You go to school, winters, don't you?"
Louisa's lips tightened.
"I didn't last winter and I don't intend to this," she announced with curious defiance. "There's no one to take care of the children except Alec and me. We tried taking turns staying home, but neither one of us could learn much that way so we gave it up."
Richard had come over, so he said, to borrow a file and presently he declared he must get back to work. June was handed back to Louisa, Sarah summoned from her lecture on pigs—to which the boys were giving rapt attention, and Shirley, with difficulty, detached from Kitty and a dilapidated rope swing.
"You'll come over and see us, won't you?" said Rosemary eagerly.
"No," interposed Alec, standing straight and tall beside his sister.
The monosyllable sounded ungracious but Rosemary, looking at Alec, saw that he did not mean to be discourteous. He looked a little unhappy, a little shy, a bit afraid, even. And Louisa's blue eyes were wistful.
"Then we'll come see you," promised Rosemary gravely.
"I'm glad you said that," approved Richard, leading the way down the road. "Alec never goes anywhere that he doesn't have to and Louisa is getting to be just like him. First thing those kids know, they'll be queer."
"Am I queer?" asked Sarah in sudden alarm.
"Not yet, but you want to be mighty careful," Richard warned her. "Lots of people get queer, thinking too much about pigs, I've heard."
"I won't talk about any pig but my darling Bony," declared Sarah. "I won't get queer talking about him."
As Richard had foreseen, the Willis girls formed the habit of wandering over to the Gay farm nearly every day. Rosemary liked Louisa and the taciturn Alec, and the younger children were companionable in age and tastes for Sarah and Shirley.
It was Warren who explained something of the conditions under which the Gay children worked and lived, one evening when the girls were in bed and Winnie was busy setting bread in the kitchen. Warren treasured these rare half hours on the porch with Mrs. Willis and he had once declared to Richard that ten minutes' uninterrupted conversation with "Rosemary's mother" could make him forget the hardest and longest day.
"The way I figure it out," said Warren, his lean, brown face showing earnest lines even in the shaded light from the porch lamp, "the way I figure it, Mrs. Willis, the Gays will help Rosemary and Sarah and Shirley and they will certainly help them. Alec is fifteen and Louisa is just Rosemary's age—and yet they have the burden of supporting and bringing up four younger children."
"And my girls have such a happy, sheltered life," struck in Mrs. Willis. "Yes, Warren, I can see what you mean; it won't hurt them to learn of the existence of poverty and hard work. But what happened to the parents of these children?"
"They died a couple of years ago—within three months of each other, I believe," said Warren. "All they left was these few acres—sixty, I think Alec told me. There's a mortgage and most of the stock has been sold off—Alec does wonders for his age, but he can't get the work done alone. I helped him some last year and I'd help him more, but he is too proud to take much."
"But they can't go on like this," Mrs. Willis protested. "It is unthinkable—to allow six children to struggle alone for a living on a barren little farm. Doesn't anyone take an interest in them—the Hildreths or any of the people who live near and who knew their father and mother?"
Warren settled deeper into his comfortable chair.
"If the house burned down, I suppose they'd be taken in by some of the neighbors," he said a trifle bitterly. "Or if they all came down with the plague, someone might drop in to offer advice. But either of these calamities would have to happen in winter at that, to attract attention; the farmers of this community can't be disturbed in summer when they're up to their elbows in work."
"You don't mean that, Warren," the little lady opposite him smiled confidently.
"I mean at least half of it," asserted Warren doggedly. "Of course when Mr. and Mrs. Gay died, everyone pitched in and helped the children; I suppose they did, though I wasn't here to see. But I do know that now when they need advice and practical help, they're apparently forgotten. Their attendance at school last winter was a farce and yet the authorities let an investigation slide; Mr. Hildreth promises vaguely to 'look after them' in the fall—and there they are, six fine American children left to bring themselves up."
"Someone must be responsible," said Mrs. Willis firmly. "I'll speak to Hugh—he will know what to do."
Warren shook his head.
"I wouldn't—that is not yet," he declared. "It is rather difficult to explain and—well, I suppose I haven't been quite fair in my statements, either. Alec and Louisa do not invite friendship—they are extremely proud and shy and so reserved as to be almost repellant to strangers. I think every allowance should be made, under the circumstances, for them, but the neighbors who tried to do for them at first were miffed, I suppose, and take the attitude that if they want to keep to themselves, they may.
"Alec is close-mouthed, too, and I fancy he has resented attempts to publicly discuss their financial affairs. There is a mortgage on the farm, of course—what would a farm be without a mortgage?" Warren digressed for a moment but was instantly serious—"and I suppose the interest keeps Alec awake nights figuring. Both he and Louisa have given up going anywhere—they send one of the children to the Center for the few things they have to buy. It's simmered right down to this—they're avoiding everyone and if they don't look out they'll be as queer as—as the dickens!"
"Like some of those mountaineers I saw when Hugh took me over the back road to that little settlement at the foot of the hills," said Mrs. Willis. "The women peep out of the windows furtively and the children run if they see a stranger—all because they have lost the habit of meeting folk."
"That's it," agreed Warren eagerly. "That's what I mean. And I think it is a shame, for the Gays are nice kids—clean and honest and wholesome. You know I would never have taken the girls over there if there was the slightest possibility of the Gays setting them a bad example in any way. I have a cousin who is a teacher and she is always preaching that children pick up the bad traits they see in others quicker than they do the good ones."
"I'm not so sure of that," smiled Mrs. Willis. "But I am glad you are so thoughtful, Warren. They are very precious to me—my three daughters."
"If I had three sisters like them—" Warren's voice faltered.
He began again, hurriedly.
"What the Gays need," he said earnestly, "is human contacts—I think that's the phrase I want. They need to know normal, happy children their own age. It isn't the poverty that will hurt them—Rich and I have been as poor as church mice and are still; but we have battled our way through school and mixed with fellows and met people. In some ways Louisa and Alec are ten years beyond their time—they run the farm and train and punish those four youngsters and figure out expenses like a couple of old stagers. Give 'em one more year and they'll forget how to laugh and be hopelessly mixed on the true values."
"I think I know what you are trying to bring about," observed Mrs. Willis sagely. "You think they'll trust the girls and make friends with them and, later, an older person will be able to gain their confidence. An older head will be needed soon, if that farm is the only source of income. Well, Warren, I believe you are right and it will work out nicely in the end. I'm glad to have the girls see something of lives that are different from theirs and I know they will all three learn a great deal that will be helpful to them. I did plan to go over and see the Gays but now I'll wait, for a time at least."
"She's a wonder!" said Warren to himself, walking back to the bungalow a few minutes later. "She can see just what is in a fellow's mind and sort it out for him. Funny how Rich and I puzzled over what made those three girls so different from any girls we ever knew—they do just as many crazy things and Winnie says they have tempers and wills of their own, but they have something that sets them apart—Rich said it was ideals and I called it fine standards and, in a measure, I suppose we're both right. But just two words will explain everything—their mother!"
It must be confessed that Bony, the pig, claimed a large share of Sarah's time and attention. She let Rosemary and Shirley go over to see the Gays very often without her. There were the pig's meals to be served, his toilet to be made and his manners and training carefully considered.
"My conscience, Sarah Willis, you're not going to wash that pig, are you?" demanded Winnie the first morning Sarah made known her ideas on the question of cleanliness in connection with Bony.
"I certainly am," announced Sarah with appalling firmness. "Hugh says you can't be well, 'less you are clean. I don't suppose I can wash Bony in the bathtub?"
"Now Sarah, if I didn't love you, you would have driven me crazy years ago," said Winnie, who was a famous general when she minded to be. "You know washing a pig in the bathtub is out of the question. I wouldn't wash him in the laundry tubs, either; we have to be nice to Mrs. Pritchard for if she deserts us like as not there'll be no more clean clothes this summer; you can't pick and choose your washwoman in the country."
"Where'll I wash him then?" asked Sarah.
"Take him out to the barns—there must be tubs there," directed Winnie. "I'll give you a piece of soap and an old towel. Don't bring the towel back, either."
"I'll hang it on a bush to dry," promised Sarah amiably. "But I have to have some hot water, Winnie; Bony is delicate and I can't give him a cold bath."
"Then he'll have to wait till to-morrow for his bath," said the wily Winnie. "The tea kettle is empty and I can't be lighting the stove to heat water just now."
"Well, I'll try the cold water," Sarah decided reluctantly, "but if Bony catches cold, you'll be sorry—that's all."
The pig under one arm and the towel and soap under the other, Sarah made for the barn and reached the big tub where the horses were watered, when Warren saw her.
"What are you going to do with that pig, Sarah?" he asked suspiciously.
"Wash him," said Sarah, beginning to weary of being questioned.
"Not in that horse tub," declared Warren. "I've just filled it for the team. That's a drinking trough, not a bathtub."
Brief experience had already taught Sarah, as it had Rosemary and Shirley, that while Richard might be cajoled or persuaded, Warren was firmness itself. If he said that pigs could not be washed in the watering tub, that settled the matter.
"The brook is the best place to wash a pig, anyway, Sarah," suggested Warren helpfully. "You take this stiff brush and put Bony in the middle of the brook and scrub his back and he'll be the happiest little pig you ever saw. But if that is a good dress you have on, take my advice and stay away from water," he added.
"I won't get wet," said Sarah indifferently. "Well, I guess I'll have to wash Bony in the brook. I never saw such a fussy bunch of people."
She scrubbed the pig thoroughly, soaking herself to the skin in the process, and dried him neatly with the towel. Then she took him back to his box, fed him a nursing bottle of warm milk—he had readily learned to take the bottle—covered him up and hung the soiled wet towel on the rose bush by the front door. Leaving the scrubbing brush in the porch swing and the jellied remains of the soap on a gingham pillow, Sarah retired to put on a dry frock, feeling that she had accomplished one task successfully.
"That pig," said Winnie, when she came upon the soapy trail of his bath, "that pig will drive us crazy yet. You mark my words!"
Sarah continued to bathe her pig every day. In fact she omitted no slightest detail that could contribute to his health and comfort; and the amount of care and affection she lavished on "that porker," as Mr. Hildreth referred to Bony, would have amazed anyone unacquainted with Sarah's trait of exceeding thoroughness. Whatever she found to do—providing it was to her liking—this small girl did with all her might.
But naturally the most interesting of pigs could not occupy all her time. Bony was young and he craved sleep. It was during his rest periods that Sarah would consent to accompany her sisters to the Gay farm. Once there, she was like the boy who, led protestingly to the party, had to be dragged home.
"Oh, dear, I'm sorry you have to find the house in such a mess," Louisa Gay apologized one morning, across the table filled with dirty dishes and pots and pans piled high in confusion. "I was helping Alec in the field all day yesterday and just let the dishes pile up. This morning I meant to wash everything in sight—I was too tired to touch a plate last night."
"We'll help," said Rosemary sympathetically. She knew that the four younger Gays were forbidden to light a fire in Louisa's absence—she and Alec were most strict about this—and that, for this reason, they could not heat water and wash the dishes for their sister.
"We'll help," repeated Rosemary cheerfully. "I have washed tons of dishes in cooking class; and Sarah will dry them for us."
"I will, if Kitty will," qualified Sarah, hastily, having no mind to be tied down to domestic duties while someone else played.
"Kitty is in bed," said Louisa severely. "I told her to make the beds yesterday and she never touched one. She said she forgot. So now she has to stay in bed till dinner time to make her remember."
"I'm going to get up now, Louisa!" shrilled the wrathful voice of Kitty from the upstairs hall.
"You go back to bed and stay there, till I tell you you can get up," directed Louisa. "Unless you want to be locked in your room and your dinner."
Kitty retreated—they heard the door of room slam—and Louisa went on with her plate scraping.
"There's the baby!" Louisa started nervously. "Kenneth must have stopped rocking her."
At that moment Kenneth appeared in the kitchen doorway, looking distinctly cross.
"I don't see why I always have to rock the baby!" he grumbled. "Alec wants me to stake Dora down by the brook and when am I going to get any time to help him if I have to keep June quiet?"
"Let me rock her," said Shirley. "I can rock just as nice—can't I, Rosemary?"
"Well, I think you could," admitted Rosemary, smiling. "You must touch the cradle very gently, you know, Shirley—don't rock June as though she were in a boat at sea."
She went in to the darkened room off the kitchen with Shirley and showed her how to sway the old-fashioned cradle with a soothing motion. When she came back to Louisa, Kenneth had disappeared and Sarah with him.
"I declare, sometimes I get so discouraged, I don't know what to do," confided Louisa, filling the heavy tea kettle at the sink and lifting it to the stove. "We do everything the wrong way and yet I don't see where we can take time to do them any better.
"For instance, there's June. I know she shouldn't be rocked to sleep—but the one day I tried to break her of the habit and make her go to sleep quietly by herself, I didn't get a thing done. The other children got into mischief, Alec was hurt trying to pitch hay and manage the team without help and, after all, June didn't learn a thing. She acted worse the next day, so I had to give it up and go back to the cradle rocking."
"I suppose it is hard because she is used to the cradle now," said Rosemary, busily clearing a place on the table for the clean dishes.
"Yes, that's the reason," agreed Louisa. "And we spend a lot of time staking Dora around in different places—she was in the front yard that day you came over with Richard. She was there because the front yard has the one decent piece of fencing left on the farm. She would give more milk if we could let her go free in the pasture—but Kenneth has to stake her with a staple and rope because the fences are so poor—where there are any—that the only way to keep her home is to tie her."
"You're tired," said Rosemary quickly. "You worked too hard yesterday, Louisa. I wish you'd go off somewhere—find a nice, cool place—and rest; I'll do these dishes."
Louisa did look tired. More than that, she looked discouraged. She had not taken pains to brush her hair as carefully as usual and it was "slicked back" in the tightest possible knot. Her dress was perfectly clean, but so faded and mended that it would have taken a merry-hearted girl to have been quite happy in it. Louisa was far from merry-hearted.
"But the potatoes will bring in some money, won't they?" urged Rosemary, who now knew a great deal about the Gay finances.
"They will, if they're not all sunburned, before Alec gets them into the barn," responded Louisa gloomily, pouring hot water over a pan of dishes. "Last year the yield was poor, too. Ken and Jim try to help, but neither Alec nor I can bear to keep such little boys working in the hot sun all day long. It isn't right."
Louisa was not given to complaint and Rosemary guessed something of the pressure the slender shoulders must be enduring.
"I wish I had a million dollars!" burst out Rosemary, putting her arm about Louisa. "I'd give it all to you!"
To her distress, Louisa began to cry. She was standing near the kitchen table and she just put her head down on her arms and "let go" as Rosemary later told her brother. Shirley, who had ventured to leave the cradle, after several cautious tests to determine the depth of June's slumbers, peered in aghast. Rosemary motioned to her to go on and Shirley dashed out into the sunshine, glad to escape.
"You're so sweet to me!" choked Louisa, raising her tear-stained face. "And you're so pretty—I never saw a girl as pretty as you are. I wish I could look the way you do and have the clothes you do!"
So the faded dress had had something to do with it, after all.
Rosemary had always taken her pretty summer frocks for granted. Now she looked from her own blue and white gingham to Louisa's old dress and remembered the freshly-ironed linens and ginghams hanging in her closet. Not many, perhaps, but dainty and pretty, every one, and neither old-fashioned nor faded.
"I wish you'd let me give you a couple of mine," said Rosemary impulsively. "We're almost the same size and you would look so nice in blue, Louisa. I wouldn't tell a single soul."
Louisa dried her eyes and reached for the dish mop.
"I'm ashamed of myself," she declared briskly. "I don't know what made me cry like that—Alec and the boys would think I had lost my mind. No, I couldn't take a dress from you, Rosemary—I don't really need it, anyway. Thank you, just the same. We need so many things that I vow there is no place to begin to replenish; a dress would be a drop in the bucket."
They both laughed a little at Louisa's mixed metaphor and the laughter cleared away the last trace of the tears. As they washed and dried the mountains of dishes, Louisa explained that what was really troubling her, was the interest.
"The interest on the mortgage, you know," she said earnestly. "It is due the first of September. Mr. Greenleaf holds the mortgage and Alec is desperately afraid he will foreclose."
Rosemary's experience with mortgages dated from that minute, but she sensed the importance of the interest.
"Perhaps the potatoes—" she suggested hopefully, having great faith in Alec's main crop.
"We owe for the seed and the fertilizer," answered Louisa. "And last year's taxes are not paid; and if we do manage to scrape together enough to pay the interest, I don't see what we're going to live on the rest of the year."
Rosemary had to admit that the outlook was discouraging. She scoured a paring knife thoughtfully and polished it off before she ventured a new suggestion.
"Why doesn't Alec go to this Mr. Greenleaf, and tell him that he is having a hard time?" Rosemary proposed. "Ask him to wait a little longer for his money. Hugh waits when people can not pay him; I heard Winnie say that he never collects a bill, but waits for the money."
Louisa looked graver than ever.
"The one thing we must never do, and you must never, never tell," she said impressively, "is to go to Mr. Greenleaf. Just as soon as it is known in town that we are having a hard time to get along, do you know what will happen? They'll take the farm away from us and send us to the poor farm—probably bind Alec and me out and separate the family for good and all. My father and mother would rather have us dead than paupers."
"Could anyone take the farm away from you and do that?" asked Rosemary, much shocked.
"Of course—it's often done," said Louisa, her light blue eyes gazing intensely at her friend. "They'd take us to the poor farm in a minute, if they knew we couldn't hold the farm."
"Perhaps it is pleasant at the poor farm," Rosemary was trying to find the cloud's silver lining. "You might like it there; did you ever see it?"
"No, and I never want to," retorted Louisa with finality.
Then Rosemary asked what it was to be "bound out" and Louisa told her that children old enough to work were bound out to families who agreed to give them their board and clothes and send them to school in return for their services.
"It would mean that until we are eighteen we'd never have a cent to call our own," declared Louisa. "We couldn't do a thing for the younger children and, worst of all, we should be separated."
It was a very sober Rosemary who helped with the remainder of the work that morning. She spread dish towels to bleach, she swept the porch, made the beds—visiting for a brief moment with the unrepentant Kitty who clamored to be allowed to get up and finally was released a half hour ahead of time on her promise to pick the "greens" for dinner—and, at Louisa's request, showed her how a simple soup was made in cooking class at the Eastshore school. But she was unusually silent while she did all this.
Walking home across the fields at noon—they steadfastly refused to burden the harassed family with three extra mouths to feed—Sarah noticed her sister's abstraction.
"What's the matter, Rosemary?" she asked curiously and Shirley echoed the question.
"Oh—I'm thinking," said Rosemary.
Rosemary thought a great deal about the Gays in the days that followed. Louisa had asked her to promise that she would tell no one the precarious state of their finances—"no one can help and I won't be discussed like the 'cases' they bring up at the sewing circle," said Louisa passionately.
"They'd be 'running up' clothes for June and Kitty," she said another time, "and fitting us out to go to the poor farm looking respectable. I'd rather stay here and look any old way."
Sarah was extremely observant for her years and she surprised Rosemary and Louisa with a shrewd comment or two, until the latter deemed it expedient to take her into the inner circle of confidence. Sarah could be loyal and she could be silent. From that day she and Rosemary were leagued with Louisa and Alec to circumvent the town authorities.
Not that authority, in any guise, was ever manifested. At least it had not been so far. Rosemary, on the beautiful moonlight nights when "Old Fiddlestrings" wandered again up and down the road, playing the "Serenade" with his soul in his fingers, found it hard to believe that there could be such ugly things in the world as poverty and fear. She was sure that Louisa and Alec must be mistaken—or else the money would come from somewhere—it must. There could not be such music and such moonlight and such heavenly scented breezes on an earth that was anything but wholly lovely, wholly kind.
"My dear child, you must go to bed," Mrs. Willis remonstrated on the third night when she came in to find Rosemary's room flooded with moonlight and Rosemary herself kneeling at the window. "You can hear the music just as well in bed and I don't like to have you lose so much sleep."
And then she brought a light comfortable from the bed and, wrapped in that, knelt with Rosemary at the window till the player and his violin walked wearily away out of sight. After all, what was the loss of a little sleep as compared with such playing?
"Heard Old Fiddlestrings again last night," said Mr. Hildreth, drawing up before the kitchen door the next morning while Richard carried in the piece of ice they had brought from the creamery for Winnie. "I declare it's a mercy we don't have full moon more than once a month; no one would get a fair night's sleep. Does he bother you?"
"Botherus?" echoed Rosemary in astonishment. "Bother us? Why, it is the loveliest playing we have ever heard!"
Richard judged this an excellent time to ask a question.
"How would you like to go over to the poor farm?" he suggested, pulling Shirley back from the dusty wheel and taking a firm grip on Sarah with the other hand to prevent her from crawling under the horse—for what reason she alone knew.
"The poor farm?" Rosemary's mind immediately leaped to the Gays.
"Oh, Richard, do let's go!" she cried, her enthusiasm kindling. "I've always wanted to see the poor farm."
"Well, your brother goes there often enough," said Mr. Hildreth drily. "It's thanks to him that the new Board of Freeholders put in decent plumbing all through the place."
Richard climbed back into his seat and took the reins.
"Well, be ready in about fifteen minutes," he directed. "It's thanks to Mr. Hildreth that the poor-farm folks are going to get some early tomatoes."
"I've a good mind to cuff you," said the exasperated Mr. Hildreth who had never been known to raise his hand against anyone. (Warren had once remarked that when he raised his voice he needed no further reinforcements.) "It's a pity when we have the first tomatoes and more than we can use, not to send those poor creatures a few."
The "few" tomatoes proved to be six peach baskets full and they made a crimson splash in the back of the light spring wagon Warren presently drove around harnessed to the useful Solomon.
"Mother says do you want to take us all?" cried Shirley, balancing herself on the lowest step and eyeing Richard anxiously. "I hope you want all of us, Richard, because no one wants to stay home."
Her mother, coming out in time to hear this speech, laughed.
"Have you room for three, Richard?" she asked. "The girls have had a great many rides lately and I'm sure one or two will stay home without grumbling, if necessary."
"Room for everybody," Richard assured her. "Don't you want to go, Mrs. Willis? I'll tip the girls over with the tomatoes and you may have the whole front seat, if you'll come."
"Thank you no," she answered him smiling. "Winnie and I have a busy day ahead of us. You know the doctor and Jack Welles are coming up next week to stay two weeks and Winnie and I want to have as much done ahead as we can. Have a good time and bring me home some wild flowers if you pass any growing along the road."
It was a warm morning, but no one minds that in July. Besides, as Sarah pointed out, there was now and then a breeze. Sarah and Shirley were seated in the middle of the single long seat with Richard at one end and Rosemary the other.
As usual Sarah and Shirley both wanted to drive and, also as usual, Richard settled the argument diplomatically by allowing each to hold the reins in turn, stipulating fixed distances for each, using the trees which could be seen ahead as boundary marks.
Rosemary was less interested in the driving than in their destination. She plied Richard with questions about the poor farm. Who lived there? How many people? How poor did one have to be before he was compelled to live on the poor farm? Did one, once sent there, ever save enough money to go somewhere else? Were there any children and what did they do?
"Good grief!" ejaculated the harassed Richard, at last rebelling. "I never lived on a poor farm, Rosemary. I don't know a great deal more about it than you do."
"Is it a nice place?" persisted Rosemary.
"Depends on what you call nice," answered Richard. "It is a large farm and the house looks comfortable. I'll tell you one thing—if I had to be a county charge, I'd rather be sent to a country poor farm than to a city almshouse; in the country you at least have something green to look at."
"Would you like to live at this poor farm?" said Rosemary.
Louisa and Alec, Kitty, Ken, Jim and June—they were in her mind. She would, perhaps, have some comforting news to take them about the poor farm. She was totally unprepared for the violence of Richard's reply.
"Like to live at the poor farm?" thundered he. "Not if it was the most magnificent place on earth! Do you think for one moment that I'd have charity handed out to me? I'd rather wash dishes for a living—what do you take me for, anyway?"
Three pairs of astonished eyes stared at him. Then Rosemary laughed and, after a moment, Richard laughed with her.
"Guess I got too eloquent," he admitted a little shamefacedly. "But honestly, Rosemary, I pity those poor souls who have to live at the poor farm, more than I pity any other people of whom I've ever heard. There is nothing worse, to my mind, than to be deprived of your independence and ability to work."
"How do you come to live in the poor house?" inquired Rosemary. "Sit still, Sarah; no, it isn't your turn to drive yet."
"Oh, sometimes you're old and haven't saved any money," said Richard absently. "Sometimes you're old and sick and have to stop earning. Lots of people lose those who would have supported them—say their children. And now and then parents die and leave a family of kids who must be brought up as wards of charity."
Rosemary hardly noticed when he took the reins from Shirley and turned Solomon into a beautiful tree-lined road in perfect condition. She was thinking that "wards of charity" did not sound half as happy as when one said "the Gay children."
"Here we are!" announced Richard, stopping before a handsome red brick building with a great white front porch and a fine stretch of lawn before it. "How do you do, Mrs. Carson? Mr. Hildreth thought you might like some early tomatoes for supper."
A stout gray-haired woman had come out from the beautifully paneled door and Richard performed the introductions. Mrs. Carson was voluble in her thanks and suggested that the "young ladies" might like to go through the buildings.
"If you'll come, too," whispered Rosemary to Richard, pressing closer to him.
Mrs. Carson was a rather handsome woman and there was efficiency and competency in every crisp fold of her immaculate gingham dress and every neat coil of her iron-gray hair. No doubt the Board of Freeholders was to be congratulated on its choice of a matron for the poor farm—but it was awe she inspired in the minds of the three girls before her. Not for worlds would they have left the safe companionship of sunny, kind-hearted Richard and gone on a tour alone with this formidable personage.
"Where are the people who live here?" whispered Sarah, when they had been led through spotless corridors, glistening with varnish and covered with bright linoleum, into orderly rooms stiffly furnished and showing no signs of use and out again on to the porch tiled in red and supported with white columns.
It was a question Rosemary had been debating, too.
"Oh, they're out back—there's a porch there they can use," said Mrs. Carson carelessly. "Some of 'em spend the time in their dormitories—just puttering around. The old ones are so messy I can't have them out here or it would never be clean; and the young ones work in the kitchen, mornings. Now if you'll come upstairs, I'll show you the bathrooms your brother had installed for us."
Richard had explained that they were Doctor Hugh's sisters and Mrs. Carson was determined to show them every courtesy. They saw the large kitchen at last, with three young girls, in blue dresses made exactly alike, scraping carrots, and four old women peeling potatoes, and then went out to the back lawn where half a dozen old people dozed in the glare of the hot sun.
"You needn't bother to speak to them," said Mrs. Carson. "Most of them are deaf."
But Rosemary, catching several indignant glances darted at the speaker, doubted this.
"I hope you'll come over again," Mrs. Carson said, walking with them to the wagon after they had, as she expressed it, "seen everything."
"Tell Mr. Hildreth he'll be a popular man tonight when we have those tomatoes for supper," she added. "The old folks would rather have something they like to eat than any other kind of gift; and our tomatoes are late this year."
Yes, she meant to be kind—one could see that, thought Rosemary, mechanically holding on to Shirley as Solomon speeded up in his haste to reach the home barn.
She was very silent during the return drive and busied with her own thoughts. Richard's quizzical announcement, "This car doesn't go any further—end of the line, lady," woke her from her dreaming to find that they were home.
As she lightly jumped to the ground, she put the gist of her meditations into words:
"No," said Rosemary with conviction. "No, I wouldn't want to live at the poor farm!"
Sarah remained untroubled by any idea of living at the poor farm, but at the supper table that night she had an individual announcement to make.
"All those people weren't deaf," she said placidly.
"How do you know?" Rosemary asked in astonishment.
"I found out," Sarah answered, buttering her mashed potato lavishly.
"But how?" insisted Rosemary, not without anxiety. One never knew what Sarah would do next.
That small girl grinned impishly.
"I asked one old lady," she replied. "She said she wasn't. And that's how I know."