Alice was a sweet little doll, and was quite willing to share her flowers. So as soon as the front door was opened Rose ran upstairs to the play-room with the May Queen on one arm and the basket of flowers on the other. There she found poor Matilda lying face downward on the carpet.
SHE LIFTED POOR MATILDA AND SET HER UP ON THE WINDOW SEAT
“Oh, you poor, poor dollie!” cried Rose. “Did you feel so badly as that? Well, don’t cry any more. Here is your dear little sister, the May Queen, who has come to share her lovely flowers with you. We both love you so much that we are going to make you our Play-Room Queen. See!”
Then she lifted poor Matilda and set her up on the window seat, as if she were on a throne. And she took the beautiful flowers out of Alice’s basket and made a wreath which she placed on the old doll’s scraggly hair. And she pinned a lovely rose on Matilda’s dress.
“Now you look very nice and dear,” said Rose, as she kissed her on her battered cheek. “Good-night, Queen Matilda of the play-room. Isn’t this almost as good as being May Queen?”
And Matilda looked as if she thought it was. She seemed to be smiling with her ugly mouth. And when Rose softly shut the door of the play-room the old doll looked almost pretty,—in spite of her one eye and broken nose,—sitting there on the window seat, with Alice, the beautiful May Queen, at her feet.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DARK ROOM
IN the middle of June Kenneth came down with the scarlet fever. This was very unpleasant for Kenneth, and for Kenneth’s papa and mamma, who were just making ready to move the family down to the Island for the summer. It was very hard for Rose, too; for of course she could not play with Kenneth nor even see him for fear lest she too should catch the fever. It was a terrible thing for Rose not to see Kenneth for days and weeks.
They decided to send her away into the country, to the farm where Aunt Mary and Uncle John with Rose’s cousin Charlie Carroll had gone to live. Aunt Mary said that she would be glad to play for a while that Rose was her own little girl, for poor Aunt Mary had no little girl of her own. And Charlie thought that it would be great fun to have a little sister; for you see he had never had one. And that is why he did not make a very good kind of brother at first.