hurriedly. "Aunt Trudy owes me ten cents for not melting her letter
sealing wax. She will pay me to-morrow night and I'll give it to
you."

"Sarah, Sarah," groaned her brother, half in amusement, half in
despair, "I'm afraid your ethics are pretty wobbly. So Aunt Trudy
has to bribe you, does she, to let her desk alone? Well, see that
you turn the bribe over to Rosemary, though I should call it robbing
Peter to pay Paul, with a vengeance."

"Goodness, suppose he had made you tell why you were saving the
money!" whispered Sarah, when the doctor had gone back to his
office. "I was just shaking in my shoes."

"Sarah, wouldn't you rather tell, anyway?" said Rosemary suddenly.
"I don't believe Hugh would be so very cross, because you didn't
mean to lose the ring. And I am afraid it will take me a perfect age
to earn enough money to buy another."

"I won't tell, ever!" declared Sarah, shaking her dark head
obstinately. "And if you tell, Rosemary Willis, I'll never speak to
you as long as I live! You don't have to buy another ring--that's
silly. Aunt Trudy doesn't even know this one is lost."

"I don't care if she doesn't," insisted Rosemary. "You lost it, and
we have to get another one for her; that's all there is to it."

The next afternoon Doctor Hugh repeated his request that Rosemary
should stay with Sarah and Shirley till Aunt Trudy came home on the
5:46 train. Then he left on a long round of calls and Rosemary, not
without many regrets and a thrill of fear when she thought what her
brother would say if he found her out, sped up the street to the
pleasant house where Mrs. Hepburn, hatted and gloved eagerly waited
her coming.

"I was so afraid you wouldn't come," she greeted the little girl.
"Baby is asleep, and I want to get away before he wakes up and sees
me go. I'll be back at half-past five, sharp, but of course you
won't go till I come. You mustn't leave Baby alone in the house."

As luck would have it, Aunt Trudy decided to come home on an earlier
train and found herself in the midst of bundle-laden Eastshore
shoppers who had spent the day in the city and were returning with
their spoils. Motherly Mrs. Dunning occupied a seat with Aunt Trudy
and what more natural than that she should speak of how much help
Rosemary had been to her that summer? The wonder was that Aunt Trudy
had so long escaped hearing but she went about very little in the
town and had met comparatively few of the neighbors even those
livi