A LONG YEAR'S END
As Bessie obediently started in the direction of the ball-players,
Nina Edmonds uttered a shocked exclamation.
"Oh, Rosemary, I don't think you should have done that," she said
reprovingly. "We haven't our shoes and stockings on, you know."
"I suppose we should let Fannie bleed to death, then?" suggested
Rosemary, her great eyes snapping fire. "Fannie won't hold still
herself and not one of you has the nerve to hold her steady and yet
you stand there and make a fuss because a boy may see you without
your shoes and stockings on. If you're going to be ashamed of
anything, Nina Edmonds, be ashamed of being a coward!"
Nina flushed angrily, but Rosemary was trying to pull Fannie back on
the bank and paid no further attention to her. Fannie fought off any
attempt to touch her and she cried and groaned without a moment's
pause. Rosemary, straightening up after a hard and ineffectual
tussle, was relieved to see Bessie running toward them, followed by
a string of boys, Jack Welles in advance. Bessie's cries had reached
them long before she came to the field and they had correctly
interpreted her frantic appeals for help.
"Oh, Jack, I'm so glad you've come!" cried Rosemary. "Help me get
Fannie out on the bank. She's cut her foot badly and she won't let
me touch her, to tie it up."
Will Mears, Fannie's brother, panted up and when he saw his sister
and understood that she was hurt, he bent down and lifted her out
with one swift, strong pull.
"Gee, you _have_ cut yourself!" he said in distress as he saw the
injured foot.
"Hush up!" said Jack sternly, as the girls began to shriek again.
"Go away, if you're afraid to look. Rosemary knows what to do, don't
you, Rosemary? Tell us how to help you."
"Hold her still," directed Rosemary, frantically calling on her
memory for Doctor Hugh's first-aid lessons. "I'll have to wash it
out the best way I can, but I think I can stop the bleeding. Then
we'll have to get her to a doctor."
"I'll hold her," said Will Mears grimly. "You go ahead."
Fannie could not twist and squirm in his strong arms, and Rosemary
deftly washed out the great jagged cut that had slashed across the
slim instep, and then, further scandalizing Nina, tore a wide
bandage from the bottom of her petticoat, brought the edges of the
cut closely together and bound it tightly.
"I think you ought to carry her to the truck," she said, when she
had finished. "Look out, Will, she's fainted. Lay her on the grass."
The sight of Fannie, white and motionless, frightened the girls, and
it must be confessed the boys, too, far more than her steady
screaming. Rosemary did not appear to be alarmed, but borrowing
Jack's handkerchief, dipped it in the water and gently bathed
Fannie's forehead. Then she took her head in her lap and waited a
few minutes. Presently Fannie opened her eyes.
"She's better now," said Rosemary.
"I'll carry her to the truck," declared Will Mears, looking with
respect on the young nurse. "As you say, I think we'd better get her
to a doctor. Some of you run on ahead and explain what has happened
and tell them we want to start back right away."
The girls sped on ahead and in a few minutes the picnic had broken
up hastily. A sort of bed was made in one of the trucks, using the
sweaters and wraps of the other girls, and Fannie was laid on this,
with her head in Rosemary's lap. Will Mears had no confidence in any
one else's ability to take care of his sister.
"She would have bled to death, if it hadn't been for Rosemary," he
said to Jack, as the truck started, the driver carefully avoiding
the bad places in the road in order to spare the patient any
unnecessary jar. "I never saw a girl before who could do up cuts and
not scream at the sight of blood. I suppose it's because her brother
is a doctor."
"Not altogether," replied Jack curtly. "Rosemary doesn't happen to
be the screaming kind of girl."
Will Mears directed that the truck be driven to Doctor Hugh's office
where, by good fortune, they found him just in from a call, and
Fannie, quiet and spent now, with no breath left for screaming, had
her wound washed with an antiseptic and dressed. Then she was taken
home and put to bed. She was weak from the loss of blood and the
consequences might have been serious, the doctor admitted, if the
cut had not been tied in time. But to Will Mears' glowing praise of
Rosemary, he replied that she had only used her knowledge of
first-aid treatment.
"Then all girls ought to learn it," burst out the high school
junior. "Those other girls stood around like perfect dubs. Fannie
could have bled to death, for all they did."
"All girls ought to know first-aid," affirmed the doctor. "My
sisters are not going to be left helpless when an accident happens."
"But you can't say it's altogether the first aid," persisted Will
Mears. "Look at Nina Edmonds; she might learn the whole programme,
and then, when something did happen, she'd run around like a chicken
with its head off! First-aid doesn't teach you to keep your wits
about you and not to scream and act like a lunatic generally, Doctor
Willis."
"Well, of course, one needs character as well as first-aid
knowledge," admitted Doctor Hugh, smiling a little, "but if one
knows what to do, there's no temptation to wring the hands and
scream, Will. Rosemary knew what to do, therefore she did it."
But Will Mears refused to give all the credit to first-aid and
indeed all the boys and girls who had seen Rosemary care for Fannie,
were loud in their praise of her fearlessness and skill. Mrs. Mears
sent for her to come and see Fannie, as soon as the patient grew
stronger, and though Rosemary rather dreaded the visit, she came
away feeling that next term in school she and Fannie would be, if
not close friends, at least on amiable terms instead of irritatingly
hostile which had been their covert attitude this last year.
For it was time to think of school as "next year," since this term
was so nearly over. The Eastshore schools closed the middle of June
and the week after the picnic the pupils were plunged into the
throes of the final examinations. Even Shirley went about anxiously
wondering if she would "pass" and asking each of her sisters if they
thought she had had good marks during the year.
"I just have to be promoted," she would say over and over. "I just
have to be promoted, 'cause my mother is coming home."
"When's Mother coming home?" was Sarah's cry. "You said in a year,
Hugh, and it's a year this month."
"I think we may look for her home sometime this month," said the
doctor one day when Sarah had asked him for the twentieth time. "You
mustn't expect her to keep a calendar, Sarah and come back on the
exact day she went away. It may be a few days longer, dear."
"She went away a year ago this Wednesday," said Rosemary, half to
herself.
"Has it been a long year, Rosemary?" asked her brother, quickly.
"In spots," answered Rosemary, the tears rushing to her eyes. "It
has been ever so long, sometimes, Hugh."
"Well, let's all get promoted," suggested Shirley, in her little
chirpy voice. "Mother would like us all promoted, wouldn't she,
Hugh?"
"She'll about eat you up, promoted or not," he answered, swinging
Shirley to the top of his desk the better to hug her. "But by all
means be promoted; that will be fine news to tell her."
The dreaded examinations approached relentlessly, engulfed each
fearful class and released them, after a few days, to wait their
fates. Shirley was sure she had "passed in everything," Sarah was
superbly indifferent, and Rosemary had secret qualms about history.
Jack Welles confided that he didn't care so much whether or not he
passed, but the uncertainty was driving him mad.
"If I pass, I get my choice of three dandy fishing rods," he
explained to Rosemary. "And if I flunk, I have to work in the
garden all summer without a single fishing trip."
This state of suspense extended to the last day of the term. The
senior classes, in the high and grammar schools, were given their
ratings earlier, to allow them to prepare for the graduating
exercises. Rosemary, Sarah, Shirley and Aunt Trudy went to the
exercises and all through the hot June night Rosemary sat, wide-eyed
and delighted, wondering if the day would ever come when she could
sit on the platform in a white frock with her arms filled with
roses, and perhaps be called on to read an essay.
The day after the graduation, the cards were handed out among the
other grades. Jack Welles waited to walk home with the Willis girls
and though his patience was sorely tried by the prolonged farewells,
he managed to keep fairly good-humored.
"Why was Bessie Kent kissing you as though she never expected to see
you again?" he asked Rosemary curiously. "Doesn't she live near you
and won't you see her nearly every day this summer?"
"Oh, that's just because it was the last day of school," explained
Rosemary.
"Silly, I call it," declared Sarah, voicing Jack's sentiments. "I
got promoted, Jack. And I'm going to hunt specimens all summer for
the biology teacher. He asked me to."
"I got promoted, too," cried Shirley proudly. "I got a silver star
on my card. And now I'm in the second grade."
Jack looked at Rosemary. She nodded happily.
"Passed in everything," she said. "Even history. Won't it be fun to
be in the grammar graduating class next term!"
"Well I passed, myself," announced Jack. "Watch me pick out that
fishing rod. And the garden won't see much of me this summer, I can
tell you that."
"Mother will be so pleased," said Rosemary, as Jack went on to his
house, and the three girls mounted the steps of the Willis home.
"She likes us to do well in school, and Hugh was never kept back a
single year. She would like us to follow his record, I know."
"The house looks kind of nice, doesn't it?" said Sarah unexpectedly.
Comment of that kind was unusual with her.
The house did look "nice," its rich cream color showing up the vivid
green of the shrubbery and the velvety surface of the well-kept
lawn. The new rose bushes were bearing well and Doctor Hugh had
managed new green and white striped awnings for the porch.
"I wish Mother could see the roses," said Rosemary as they went in.
The late afternoon June sunshine streamed in through the hall window
and made a broad band to the stairway which was in shadow. Voices
sounded in the living room.
"Hugh's home!" cried Sarah, her quick eyes darting to the hall table
where a man's hat and a light leather bag lay together with a
woman's hat and veil.
Rosemary saw the hat and veil. They were not Aunt Trudy's. Her heart
gave a sudden leap.
They went forward across the hall to the doorway of the living-room.
There, in the large arm-chair, facing the door, sat a little woman
with eyes like Rosemary's and dark hair like Sarah, but faintly
streaked with gray across its ripples. She was thin, as though from
a recent illness, but a clear pink glowed in her cheeks and her soft
voice was firm and strong. Her lovely mouth smiled at the girls and
she held out her arms. Doctor Hugh, standing behind her chair,
laughed a little, to keep from crying he afterward said, as Sarah
and Shirley hurled themselves upon their mother, both shrieking,
while they waved their report cards, "We're promoted! We're
promoted! We passed in every single thing!"
She took them both in her lap at once and their arms were about her
neck. Across the yellow and dark head, her eyes met those of her
oldest daughter. Doctor Hugh, too, looked at Rosemary.
She had not moved from the doorway since Sarah and Shirley had
brushed past her in their mad rush. Standing motionless and
speechless, a slender hand on either side of the doorframe, she
watched her sisters claim the mother's first kiss. Then, as the
beautiful eyes were raised to hers, she made an effort to speak. All
the love and longing and loneliness of the past year, not fully felt
till now, rushed to her voice. She took a step forward.
"_Mother!_" said Rosemary.
THE END