reflectively. "How many years has he been away from Eastshore?"

"Counting from the time he went away to school, about twelve years," answered Winnie. "He came home vacations, of course, but the last two years he wasn't home at all. He's been studying abroad and Mrs. Willis was so happy to think he'd be home with her this summer. She was pleased as could be that he wanted to settle in Eastshore. She's talked a lot to me, since Mr. Willis died, about what she hoped the children would do and when Dr. Hugh wrote her that he didn't want to be a fashionable city doctor and hoped he could do as much good in a quiet, industrious, uncomplaining way as Doctor Jordan had done during the forty-five years he's lived in Eastshore, why Mrs. Willis just about cried she was so happy."

"Well, we never know what's going to happen, do we?" sighed Mrs. Hollister, beginning to pull on her gloves as she noted that the plain-faced kitchen clock said quarter of nine. "I'm sure I hope she'll get the rest she deserves and come home to find nothing bad has happened."

"Of course she will," Winnie's voice held a faint trace of indignation. "What do you think is going to happen while she is gone? With Doctor Hugh and Miss Trudy Wright, to say nothing of me, around to see to everything, what else do you expect but smooth sailing?"

"Winnie!"

The kitchen door opened a crack and a dark head poked itself in.

"Winnie, do you care if I take a piece of the chocolate cake from the buffet closet?" asked Sarah politely. "I'm hungry."

"Your brother says you eat too much cake—go to bed and you'll fall asleep again and forget that you're hungry," commanded Winnie.

"Can't I have just one piece?" insisted Sarah.

"You can not," said Winnie firmly.

"Well, I thought you'd say that," announced Sarah calmly, "so I took it first, before I asked you."

"Give it to me this instant," cried Winnie, swooping upon the small girl.

"Oh, I've eaten it," declared Sarah pleasantly. "I thought you'd make a fuss."

Winnie looked at Mrs. Hollister, who was moving toward the door.

"All I have to say," said the visitor majestically, "is Heaven help the young doctor."

CHAPTER III

AUNT TRUDY COMES

RE you going to the station, Sarah?" Sarah, stretched in luxurious comfort on the porch rug, raised a rumpled head above her book and frowned.

"Why should I go to the station?" she drawled.

"You know perfectly well," answered Rosemary with some impatience. "Aunt Trudy is coming on the 4:10 and Hugh asked us to meet her."

"You go—you're the oldest," said Sarah calmly. "I want to read about sick rabbits."

"Sarah, you know you promised mother to be good and to do the things you thought would please her. Come on and meet Aunt Trudy—we'll all go, you and I and Shirley," wheedled Rosemary, beginning to roll up her knitting.

"Where's Hugh—why doesn't he go?" asked Sarah who usually exhausted all arguments before giving in.

"Hugh's down at Dr. Jordan's and he won't be home till dinner time," replied Rosemary. "Mother would want us to be nice to Aunt Trudy, you know she would."

"Well, I'm going to be nice," insisted Sarah, scrambling to her feet and hurling the book under the swing where she kept the larger part of her dilapidated library. "I'll go to the station if I can go as I am—I have to clean the rabbit hutch when I get back and I won't have time to be dressing and undressing all the afternoon."

"You can't go as you are!" Rosemary surveyed her sister appraisingly. "Your face is black and your dress has a grease spot across the front. And you haven't any hair ribbon."

"I'll go as I am, or I won't go at all," repeated Sarah coolly.

Rosemary stabbed her long needles into her half-finished sweater and hung her knitting bag on the back of her chair.

"Then you can stay home," she said crossly. "I'll go up and get Shirley now and we'll go without you."

She ran upstairs, coaxed the protesting Shirley from her play of sailing boats in the bath-tub, and was buttoning her into a clean frock when Sarah came tramping through the hall. She occupied a room with Shirley, while Rosemary had a room to herself connected with the younger girls' room by a rather narrow door.

"Wait a minute and I'll go," said Sarah, jerking down her tan linen dress from its hook in the closet.

"Is Aunt Trudy's room all ready, Winnie?" asked Rosemary, as the three sisters stopped in the kitchen to notify that faithful individual of their departure. "Do we look nice?"

It was impossible to look at the three faces without an answering smile. Rosemary glowed, pink-cheeked, star-eyed, in a frock of dull blue linen made with wide white piqué collar and cuffs. Her hair waved and rippled and curled, despite its loose braiding, almost to her waist. Rosemary was simply going to the station to meet the 4:10 train, but nothing was ever casual to her; she met each hour expectantly on tip-toe and, as her mother had once observed, laughed and wept her way around the clock. Sarah smiled broadly—going to the station to meet Aunt Trudy had, for some inexplicable reason, resolved itself into a joke for her. Sarah was not excited and she represented solid common-sense from her straight Dutch-cut hair to her square-toed sandals, for no amount of argument from Rosemary could induce her to put on her best patent leather slippers. And Shirley—well Winnie picked up Shirley and hugged her fervently, which was the emotion Shirley generally inspired in all beholders. She was a young person, all yellow curls and fluffy white skirts and tiny perfect teeth and distracting dimples.

"Miss Wright's room is in perfect order," reported Winnie, setting Shirley down and straightening her pink sash. "I put on the embroidered bureau scarf and the best linen sheets and pillow cases, just as you said, Rosemary."

"And I put a bowl of lilacs on her table this morning," said Rosemary happily, "so I guess everything has been attended to. Do you want us to get anything up town? We're going to the station, Winnie."

"No, my dinner's all planned," answered Winnie with pride. "What train's Miss Wright coming on—the 4:10?"

"Yes, and Hugh said to have Bernard Coyle bring us up to the house with his jitney," said Rosemary. "I suppose Aunt Trudy will have some bags and parcels. You'll be round when we get back, won't you, Winnie? I don't know exactly what to say to her."

"Bless you, child, you'll do all right," Winnie encouraged her. "Doctor Hugh will be home to dinner and 'tisn't as if your aunt was a total stranger."

"But she really is a total stranger," commented Rosemary, as they began their walk to the station. "Of course she has been here a couple of days last summer and she spent New Year's with us; but Mother entertained her and we only saw her now and then, mostly at the table."

"Well, we have to make the best of it now, because Hugh says we can't upset Mother," said Sarah. "I know she will be an awful lot of trouble and she won't know the first thing about animals."

"Maybe she'll read all the time," offered Shirley in her soft, baby voice. "Dora Ellis has an aunt who reads books all the time and Dora can do just as she pleases. She told me so."

"Well, don't you listen to everything Dora Ellis tells you," said Rosemary severely. "Mother doesn't like you to play