"There is your breakfast," said Mrs. Horton, looking at Rosanna with her
steely eyes. "Bread and water will be part of your punishment."
"I am not hungry," said Rosanna in a low tone.
"Then you may leave it there until you are," said her grandmother.
"Bread and water will be your fare until you have apologized to me and
have proved that you regret your disgraceful conduct while I was away."
"I don't think that I did anything that was disgraceful, grandmother,"
said Rosanna gently.
"You will when I get through with you," said her grandmother grimly. "I
hope I may be able to bring you to your senses. I am only sorry you are
too big a girl to punish as I would like to punish you."
"Have you seen Mrs. Hargrave?" asked Rosanna.
"She is away. I suppose that is one reason that you went wild."
"I did nothing without asking her if it would be all right," said
Rosanna.
"That seems impossible," said Mrs. Horton.
"It is true," asserted Rosanna.
"Rosanna, be careful what you say!" exclaimed her grandmother angrily.
Remembering what Minnie had advised, Rosanna said nothing.
Her grandmother continued, "I have thought this all over and you know as
well as I do what you have done, and how you have offended me, and I see
no use in talking about it at all. You will stay here on a diet of bread
and water until you are in a different frame of mind. I don't need to
have you tell me how you feel, or what you think. A look at your face is
quite sufficient. You are stubborn and unrepentant. Perhaps after a week
or two spent thinking, you will see things in a different light. You
will not be allowed any privileges at all. You will not even have your
lessons. When your Uncle Robert comes home, you will not see him unless
you have repented enough to be allowed to come down to your meals. Do
you understand?"
Something queer and hard and grown-up came into Rosanna's soul. She
looked her angry grandmother straight in the eye.
"Grandmother," she said very gently, "I hope you will not say anything
that you will be sorry for."
"Don't be impertinent!" said Mrs. Horton.
"I don't mean to be," said Rosanna.
"You are!" said Mrs. Horton.
Rosanna turned around. "Oh, grandmother!" she commenced, then stopped.
"Oh, grandmother what?" asked Mrs. Horton.
"Nothing. Excuse me," said Rosanna.
"Then that's all," said Mrs. Horton. "You understand me?"
"I think I do," said Rosanna. She did not look up, and Mrs. Horton,
unable to catch her eye, left the room.
Lunch time came, and with it her grandmother with a fresh glass of water
and another slice of bread. Immediately after, Hannah appeared with a
tray of luncheon.
Rosanna was really not hungry, but she was wise enough to know that it
was a very bad thing to go without eating, especially when one has
decided on a very serious and terrifying step. The afternoon dragged
away.
At five her grandmother came in and offered her still another glass of
water and slice of bread. Rosanna thanked her.
"Have you anything to say to me?" asked Mrs. Horton.
"No, grandmother," replied Rosanna, "only that I am very sorry that you
are angry with me, and I hope some day you will be sorry too that you
did not love me when I was here to love."
"Do you think of leaving?" said Mrs. Horton sneeringly. "You had better
tell me where you are going so I can send your clothes. I believe that
is the way they do with the sort of people you have been making friends
with."
Rosanna did not reply:
"Let me catch you leaving this room!" said Mrs. Horton. She went out and
closed the door. Rosanna nodded her head. Her mind was made up. She
crossed to the dainty dresser, and switching on the lights did something
she had never done in her life. Rosanna was not vain in the least, but
if you could have seen her then, turning this way and that, lifting her
long, heavy curls, wadding them on top of her head, or trying them in a
long braid, you would have said that she seemed to be a very vain little
girl indeed.
She appeared satisfied at last with what she saw in the glass, and
noticed that it was growing quite dark.
She went over to her little bed, and knelt.
"Please, dear Lord," she whispered, "I don't want to do anything wrong.
Please help me because I am so afraid. And now that Minnie is gone and
Helen, please give me somebody to love me. Amen."
She felt better after that, and sat down by the window. It was almost
dark....
When Mrs. Horton left Rosanna, she went down to the big, dim library
and, seating herself at her desk, commenced to write letters. She found
it difficult to collect her thoughts and there was a bad feeling in her
heart, as though she was wrong, as though she was doing something
unwise, unkind, and perhaps really wicked. But she thrust it out of her
thoughts because she didn't think that she ever _could_ do anything
really wrong.
Something pressed hard on her heart, and she grew very restless. Some
impulse led her to go to the telephone and call Mrs. Hargrave on the
long distance line.
Mrs. Hargrave, who was very much bored by Cousin Hendy, was delighted to
hear her old friend's voice. She did not let Mrs. Horton get a word in
edgewise for the first two minutes. She seemed to think Mrs. Horton
didn't care how much that telephone call was going to cost. She asked
how she was, and how Robert was, and had he found his lost friend, and
she certainly hoped he had, and when had they returned, and oh, wasn't
it too bad Robert had been unable to come with his mother?
Then like a person who saves the best to the last, she asked with a note
of triumph in her voice:
"Well, how do you think your darling Rosanna looks? I suppose you know
she has gained five pounds while you were away. I think she is vastly
improved. And so happy! My dear, of course, it is hard for us to realize
it, but I think once in awhile it is a good thing to get right out and
let the home people do for themselves and learn to depend on themselves
a little. Don't you?"
Mrs. Horton smiled grimly. "It has certainly not worked out here to any
great advantage, during my absence," she said.
"What?" asked Mrs. Hargrave. "I don't believe I hear you."
Mrs. Horton spoke into the telephone with careful distinctness. "If you
do not know what has happened during my absence," she said, "I will tell
you the state of affairs existing here in my home now, and you may be
able to guess that something serious has occurred. In the first place
Rosanna is in her room on a diet of bread and water. My chauffeur, with
his pushing wife and ordinary child, has been discharged, and told to
vacate to-morrow. Rosanna's maid, Minnie, had been discharged and is
gone. All the servants have had severe scoldings."
There was a long silence, then Mrs. Hargrave said, "Are you crazy?"
"Not at all!" said Mrs. Horton.
"I will be home to-morrow morning," said Mrs. Hargrave. "I'll have to
get there as soon as I can to keep you from making more of your dreadful
mistakes. In the meantime, I am ashamed of you. Don't you go near
Rosanna with your cutting speeches until I see you. Oh, I can't talk to
you! Good-night!"
She rang off and Mrs. Horton slowly replaced the receiver. No, she did
not intend to go near Rosanna. Rosanna was settled for the night so far
as she was concerned. On her way up to bed, she opened the door of
Rosanna's room, and listened. The child was sleeping so calmly that her
grandmother could not even hear her breathe. She could see the little
mound that Rosanna's body made on the bed, but she did not go into the
room. She went on to her own room and sat down to think. The light was
dim; just one small night light burning, and Mrs. Horton sat down in her
favorite lounging chair and gave herself up to her unhappy thoughts. She
was conscious of a feeling of wrongdoing yet she did not recognize it as
such. Instead, she was sure that she had been very deeply wronged. After
all her teaching, after all the years she had spent guarding Rosanna, on
the first chance the child had slipped away from all she had been told.
She shuddered when she thought of it, remembering her own young sister
and her unhappy fate. She did not realize that she was judging all
humanity by the commonplace young scamp her sister had unfortunately
married. It did not occur to her to ask herself if all the fine young
men and women her son knew were also of that type.
The next thing she knew, the cold woke her. It was dawn, and she had
slept in her chair all night. She was chilled to the bone. She slowly
undressed, and feeling sore and stiff, took a hot bath and wrapped up in
a warm kimono. She was about to lie down and finish the night when she
thought of Rosanna.
Mrs. Horton stepped into a pair of slippers and crossed the room. As
she passed her desk, she looked up full at the picture of her dead son
and his wife, Rosanna's father and mother. She stopped. Somehow those
faces would not let her pass. They held her with sad, questioning eyes.
"What are you doing with our little child?" they seemed to say. "Have
you loved her, mother? Have you been tender with her? Have you tried to
understand her? Have you remembered that she is just a baby?"
Mrs. Horton thought of Rosanna in her beautiful, lonely room way down
the corridor. She commenced to have a very guilty feeling.
"Have you loved her?" asked the two sad faces. "Have you been tender
with her, mother?"
"I have done my duty by the child," answered Mrs. Horton. She went down
the corridor to Rosanna's room, her head held high. The cold, pallid
light of the hour just before day filled the house.
Mrs. Horton opened Rosanna's door and went in. She looked long at the
little bed as though she could not believe her eyes. Then crossing, she
opened the bathroom door, and then the clothespress, calling Rosanna's
name sharply. There was no reply. The little dog followed her into the
room and went sniffing and whining about. Mrs. Horton rushed back to the
bed and saw that the little mound she had thought in the dark the night
before was Rosanna was only a neat pile of little dresses.
Rosanna was gone!
Mrs. Horton remembered that the child was very fond of a wide seat in
the library. She hurried down the broad stairs, expecting to find that
the lonely child had crept down there to sit awhile and, like herself,
had dropped to sleep, but the big room was empty. Mrs. Horton's heart
commenced to hammer in a very strange way. Of course Rosanna must be in
the house somewhere, and although she felt it was a very undignified
thing to do, she went from room to room making a close and careful
search of every nook where a child could hide. There was not a single
sign of the little girl. Mrs. Horton had hoped to find Rosanna without
calling the servants, but as she looked and looked, and the knowledge
came to her that perhaps Rosanna was not in the house at all, she was
filled with terror. She commenced to press the electric buttons
frantically and, wide-eyed and half dressed, the household commenced to
gather from the servants' wing.
She managed somehow to let them know that Rosanna had disappeared, and
everyone commenced a search that stretched to the playhouse, the pony
stable and the garden.
She staggered up to her room and with shaking hands commenced to dress
herself. The two sad faces on the wall stared at her.
"Oh, mother, mother, where is our baby?" they asked.
"Gone--gone--" said Mrs. Horton.