DRESSMAKER ROSEMARY
"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.