Rosemary Part 25

"If you had only put some one else in my place--" began Eustice Gray uncomfortably, but seven voices immediately shouted to him, in friendly chorus to "dry up."

"We'll make Plummers Lane look sick," declared Jack. "From the looks of it, I don't think there's been a shovel down here since the first snow. If the S. C. thinks they have marked more off for us than we can clean up, we'll show them! Here goes for the first shovel--out of the way, Mike!"

The grinning driver reined in his team and dodged as Jack hurled a heavy shovelful over the side of the cart. The other boys followed suit and twelve strong, st.u.r.dy backs bent to their task. The population of Plummers Lane, that part of it visible by day, draped itself along the curb to watch operations and hand out advice, but any more practical help was not offered or expected.

CHAPTER XX

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 G.o.ds, 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 pa.s.sable 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 p.u.s.s.y 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 a.s.sured 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 c.o.x 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+rley, 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 pa.s.sable, 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 s.h.i.+rley, pulling Rosemary's belt.