"Do hurry," pleaded frightened Mabel. "I don't like it here."
It was anything but an easy task for Mabel to drag the sleeping child to her feet, but she did it. Rosa Marie, however, immediately dropped to earth again. During the day she had seemed stiff; but now, unfortunately, she proved most distressingly limber. She seemed, in fact, to possess more than the usual number of joints, and discouraged Mabel began to fear that each joint was reversible.
"Goodness!" breathed Mabel, when Rosa Marie's knees failed for the seventh time, "it seems wicked to shake you very hard, but I've got to."
Even with vigorous and prolonged shakings it took time to get Rosa Marie firmly established on her feet, and the children had walked more than a block of the homeward way before Rosa Marie opened one blinking eye under the street lamp.
If it had been difficult to make the uphill journey in broad daylight with Rosa Marie wide awake and moderately willing, it was now a doubly difficult matter with that young person half or three-quarters asleep and most decidedly unwilling.
"I wish to goodness," grumbled Mabel, stumbling along in the dark, "that I'd borrowed a real baby and not a heathen."
The longest journey has an end. The children reached Dandelion Cottage at last. Mabel found the key, unlocked the door, tumbled Rosa Marie, clothes and all, into the middle of the spare-room bed; waited just long enough to make certain that the Indian baby slept; then, reassured by gentle, half-breed snores, Mabel, still supposing the time to be midnight, ran home, climbed into her own bed nearly an hour earlier than usual and was soon sound asleep. Her mind was too full of other matters to wonder why the front door was unlocked at so late an hour.
Mrs. Bennett, dressing to go to a party, heard her daughter come in.
"How fortunate!" said she. "Now I shan't have to go to Jean's and Marjory's and Bettie's to hunt for Mabel. She must be tired to-night—she doesn't often go to bed so early."