Rosemary Part 26

"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 s.h.i.+rley. "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," p.r.o.nounced 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 s.h.i.+rley 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 pincus.h.i.+on for s.h.i.+rley 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 k.n.o.b 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.

CHAPTER XXI

MR. JORDAN LEARNS SOMETHING

The kimona was finished without further mishap and packed away in the Christmas box.

"And no one was more surprised than I when the thing proved to be cut right," Doctor Hugh confided to Winnie. "I never looked at a pattern before, but I took a chance. I could see Rosemary was just on the edge of 'nerves' and I figured out that if I did make a mess of it, she might not find it out till the next day, and by that time she might be able to see the humor in the situation."

"You're a wise lad, Hughie, and I'm proud of you," said Winnie fondly. She had guessed something of the cost of the fur lined coat that the doctor had proudly displayed as his Christmas gift for the little mother, now well enough to take short tramps through the pine woods daily. Winnie did not know that a set of sorely needed medical books had gone into the coat, but she suspected something of the kind.

The box was packed and sent and the Willis family settled down to the first Christmas they had known without the gentle spirit who had tirelessly planned for every holiday. But they had the dear knowledge that she was coming home again to them, well and strong, and they hung the wreaths in the windows and wound greens about the lights and trimmed a tree for s.h.i.+rley with thankful and merry hearts. Doctor Hugh had missed so many home Christmas Days that he in particular, enjoyed the preparations and his attempts at secrets and his insistence on tasting all of Winnie's dishes drove the girls into fits of laughter. A pile of packages surrounded every place on Christmas morning and there was something pretty and practical and purely nonsensical for each one from the doctor. He, in turn, declared that for once in his life he had everything he wanted. Aunt Trudy's gift to her nephew and each of her nieces was a cheque and the announcements that followed were characteristic.

"What are you going to get, Hugh?" asked Sarah curiously, when the nature of her slip of paper had been explained to her.

"Books," said Doctor Hugh, promptly, smiling at his aunt.

"Music and a new music case, a leather one," declared Rosemary, her eyes s.h.i.+ning.

"I'd like to buy a dog," said Sarah, and grinned good-naturedly at the groan which greeted her modest wish.

"You'd better buy an electric heater for the cats," suggested Winnie. "I'm forever taking 'em out of the oven; some day I'll forget to look, and there will be baked cats when you come down."

s.h.i.+rley was distressed at this dismal prediction, but Sarah did not take it to heart.

"I think, after all," she said meditatively, "I'll buy a hen and keep chickens."

"What are you going to buy with your money, s.h.i.+rley lamb?" asked Rosemary, as Sarah fell to planning a chicken yard.

"A doll I guess," said s.h.i.+rley who had had three that morning.

When Sarah reminded her of that fact, Aunt Trudy protested.

"No one is to attempt to dictate in any way," she said with unaccustomed firmness. "When I was a child I was never allowed to spend a cent as I wanted to and I gave you each this money to do with exactly as you please. If you spend it foolishly, all right, I don't care. But I want each one of you to get what you want, whether or not it pleases some one else. I could have bought you what I thought you ought to have, but that's the kind of presents I had as a child and the only kind. And my goodness, didn't I hate 'em!"