WHEN PATIENCE SLIPS
"If I ever catch you touching my can of worms again, I'll--I'll--"
words apparently failed Jack and he began to sputter.
"Got him, Jack?" the doctor leaped the hedge lightly and ran
diagonally across the lawn to the back of the Welles's house.
"Him?" growled Jack in disgust. "Him! Look at this--" and he flashed
a pocket light that revealed to the astonished Doctor Hugh the
tear-streaked face of Sarah.
"For the love of Mike!" gasped her brother. "Have you been taking
Jack's worms?"
"Yes she has," Jack answered for her. "She's been dumping the can
out every night. And if she does it again I'll shake her if she is a
girl."
"Hold on, hold on," said Doctor Hugh pacifically. "Let's get the
hang of this; why did you empty Jack's can of worms, Sarah?"
"It--it hurts them to be jabbed with a hook," wept Sarah.
"Like fun it does," retorted Jack scornfully. "Worms haven't any
feelings, hardly."
"Well fishes have and if you haven't any worms you can't catch
fishes," stormed Sarah. "I will too throw away your worms."
"You will not!" flashed Jack, taking a step toward her.
Sarah, the defiant, turned and fled toward her brother. He put his
arm about her and found that she was shaking with nervous sobbing.
"I'll see you to-morrow, Jack," he said quietly. "There is no use in
rousing the whole neighborhood. Come on, Sarah, we're going home."
He lifted the little girl in his arms and strode across the grass,
entering the door of the house noiselessly and depositing her in a
large arm chair in the office. Then he went into the kitchen, warmed
a glass of milk and made her drink it.
"Now tell me all about it," he said, sitting down at his desk to
face her. Sarah, he knew, had a horror of being "fussed over" and he
did not dare pet her though he wished his mother were there to
cuddle the pathetic little figure in her arms.
"I emptied the can every night, after Jack went to bed," said
Sarah. "That's all. He doesn't care how much he hurts them, but I
do."
"But how could you stay awake from eight till ten o'clock?" asked
the doctor curiously, "and how could you come down stairs without
waking Shirley or being seen by Aunt Trudy or Winnie?"
"I didn't go to bed, that is not really," confided Sarah. "I lay
down with all my clothes on, because Rosemary always comes in to see
that our light is out before she goes to bed. But after nine o'clock
I stayed up till I saw Jack shut the kitchen door of his house and
then I knew he was through digging worms."
"Didn't you ever go to sleep before Rosemary came in to look at
you?" asked her brother. "Not once?"
"Not once," said Sarah firmly. "I put three of Shirley's building
blocks under my back so I couldn't. And when I got up I sat on the
window sill so if I went to sleep I'd wake up when I fell out."
"Well you are thorough," admitted the doctor. "Weren't you afraid
Aunt Trudy would come in and find you sitting up? Or hear you
falling out of the window?"
"I didn't fall," declared Sarah, matter-of-factly. "And Aunt Trudy
never comes to see if we are in bed. Mother used to, every night."
"I see," the doctor frowned a little. "Well, Sarah, you'll have to
let Jack's worms alone after this. I'm not going to argue with you
about the feelings of the worms or the fish (you'll get that point
better when you are a little older) but I'll put it to you this way;
they're Jack's worms and you mustn't touch what belongs to him. And,
also, you can't go about making people think as you do. If you don't
believe in fishing, all right; you are at perfect liberty not to
fish. But you have no call to try to stop other people from fishing.
Jack may not approve of the way you keep your rabbits. He may think
they should be turned loose and allowed to destroy the garden. If he
came over here night after night and let your rabbits out, think how
angry you would be. Do you see, dear? You do what you feel to be
right and let the other fellow keep tabs on his own conscience."
Sarah thought a few minutes.
"Well, I will," she sighed reluctantly. "Worms are awfully nasty
things, anyway, Hugh. I had to pick some of them out of the can
with my fingers, because they wouldn't come out."
"Then we're all serene again," said her brother cheerfully. "And now
it is after eleven and high time you were asleep."
Sarah gave him a quick, shy kiss at the head of the stairs and
vanished into her room. She was always chary of caresses and her
mother declared that she could count the times Sarah had voluntarily
kissed her.
The last two weeks of July were an unbroken "hot spell." Eastshore
was ordinarily comfortable in the summer time but the heat wave that
gripped the country made itself felt and not all the pleasant effect
of wide lawns and old shade trees could counteract the hot, humid
nights and the blazing, parched days. An occasional thunder shower
did its best to bring comfort, but the heat closed in again after
each gust, seemingly more intense than ever. It was a trying test
for tempers and dispositions and the Willis household began to
develop "nerves."
"I should think you children could manage to remember to shut the
screens doors behind you," remarked Doctor Hugh one morning at the
breakfast table. "If there is one thing positively unendurable, it
is flies in the house!"
Winnie put down the cream pitcher beside his cup of coffee with an
emphasis that threatened to spray him with its contents.
"You'd better be speaking to Sarah," she said grimly. "I'm about
wore out, arguing with her. She won't let me use the fly-batter at
all and why? Because it is cruel to kill the dear darling little
flies that tramp all over our food with their filthy feet!"
Rosemary giggled. She sat in Aunt Trudy's place, cool and neat in a
blue gingham dress, her charming bobbed head making a pretty picture
silhouetted against the light of the window behind her. The warm
weather had reconciled Rosemary to the loss of her hair. Aunt Trudy
often pleaded a headache mornings and Rosemary took her place at the
silver tray and poured her brother's coffee.
"Don't let me hear any more such nonsense," said he sternly now.
"Keep the screens closed, Winnie, and kill any flies that get in.
Sarah, you are not to interfere in any way--and don't scowl like
that."
For reply Sarah kicked the table leg to the peril of her glass of
milk and Shirley's.
"You'll find yourself sent away from the table in another minute,"
her brother warned her. "Eat your breakfast and behave yourself."
"You'll be sorry when I'm dead," said Sarah, her voice plaintive
with self-pity.
Shirley thought the moment auspicious to make a reach for a hot
biscuit. Over went her glass of milk and her fat little hand landed
in the butter dish. The telephone bell saved her, as far as Doctor
Hugh was concerned, and when he came back to tell Rosemary that he
would not be home till dinner time and to give her a list of the
time and places when he could be reached during the day, Winnie had
removed all traces of the accident.
"I guess you must think I'm a washing machine," she grumbled after
the doctor had gone. "That's the tenth clean runner we've had on the
table this week. If we were using table cloths every meal I'd have
to give up--no living woman could keep this family in table cloths!"
"Sarah, are you going to make the beds this morning?" asked
Rosemary, on her way to sweep the porch, a duty she had assumed.
"No, I'm not," returned Sarah with characteristic candor. "It's too
hot. Let 'em air till night. I want to play in the sand-box."
"Ray Anderson and me's going to play in the sand-box," said Shirley.
"You can't come--you take all the toys."
"Oh, Shirley, how cross you are!" cried Rosemary, aghast at the
frown on Shirley's pretty forehead. "Don't be so cranky, darling.
Sarah will play in one end of the box and you play in the other."
But Sarah, her nose in the air, announced that she wouldn't "have a
thing to do with the old sand-box," and she departed to sit in the
swing and read, leaving Rosemary to make the beds or "let them air"
as she decided.
Rosemary finished sweeping the porch and had just begun to make her
own bed, when her aunt called her.
"Shirley and that little Anderson boy are making so much noise, I
can't rest," Aunt Trudy complained. "I should think you could tell
them to play quietly, Rosemary. And I wish you wouldn't practise
this morning, dearie; my head is splitting and the piano does annoy
me so. This afternoon I'll take my sewing out under the tree and you
may have two hours to yourself, if you like."
Rosemary went down and suggested to Shirley and Ray that they make
sand pies instead of building a railroad, knowing from experience
that sand pies was a comparatively quiet play. Then she dusted her
beloved piano with a little lump in her throat. Mother had loved to
hear her practise and had liked to sit on summer mornings in a chair
close by, sewing and listening. Mother was an accomplished musician
and she knew and noted her little daughter's enthusiastic progress.
One reason that Rosemary practised so steadily through the warm
weather in spite of discouragement was her determination to surprise
her mother by her improvement when that dear lady came back to them.
"It's a shame you have all the beds to do, Rosemary," said Winnie,
coming up for a salve from the medicine closet in the bathroom and
discovering Rosemary wearily putting the bedrooms to rights. "I've
burned my finger on that silly hot water heater again. I've told the
doctor and told him to have the plumber stop in and fix it, but he
forgets every time."
"I'll telephone Mr. Mertz," said Rosemary absently.
"You ought to make Sarah do her part," went on Winnie, spreading
salve on a piece of gauze and binding it around her finger. "I'm
tired trying to get any help from her. And Miss Trudy wants
ice-water every minute of the day and if I don't get it for her she
comes out to the refrigerator and wastes half a block, hacking it.
Shirley wants nothing but hot breads and meat and first thing we
know she'll be sick on our hands."
Winnie sat on the edge of the bath-tub and let her mind dwell on her
woes. Rosemary tried to listen sympathetically, but she was warm and
tired and if Winnie would only go perhaps she could finish the rooms
in time to read a little before lunch. The afternoon would have to
be given over to her delayed practising.
"Well, I'm going down stairs," said Winnie, putting the salve jar
back on its shelf, "and all we're going to have for lunch is tomato
salad and bread and butter. If any one doesn't like it, they can
leave it; I'm not going to spend any time fussing with special
dishes this kind of weather."
Rosemary's practising that afternoon was interrupted several times
by the telephone, twice for the wrong number. Aunt Trudy, with the
air of a martyr, took her sewing out under the horse chestnut tree,
Sarah and Shirley went to a neighbor's to play and Winnie announced
that she intended to take a nap. So there was no one to answer the
bells except Rosemary. By the time she had jumped up to be asked "Is
this the grocery store?" once or twice, had admitted the butcher boy
with fresh meat which must be put on the ice and had been summoned
three times by Aunt Trudy to thread her needle--for glasses,
declared her aunt made her warmer in summer and she would not wear
them--Rosemary's temper was fraying sadly.
"Rosemary," said Aunt Trudy, coming into the living room as the
practise hour was about over (not allowing for time wasted, Rosemary
told herself resentfully), "Rosemary, where is Sarah?"
"I don't care where she is!" cried Rosemary, whirling around on the
piano bench. "I'm tired of always being asked where Sarah and
Shirley are. I don't care!"
Aunt Trudy burst into tears.
"I don't think you ought to speak to me like that," she sobbed.