"She is awfully thick," admitted Mabel.
Yet, after all, dressing Rosa Marie was not exactly a hardship. Indeed, it is probable that the difficulties that stood in the way made the task only so much the more interesting; then, of course, dressing a real child was much more exciting than making garments for a mere doll.
Whenever the Cottagers spoke of Rosa Marie outside the Cottage they referred to her as the D. S. D. S. stood for "Dark Secret." This seemed singularly appropriate, for Rosa Marie was certainly dark and quite as certainly a most tremendous secret—a far larger and darker secret than the troubled girls cared to keep, but there seemed to be no immediate way out of it.
Fortunately, the stolid little "D. S." was amiable to an astonishing degree. She never cried. Also, she "stayed put." If Mabel stood her in the corner she stayed there. If she were tucked into bed, there she remained until some one dragged her out. She spent her days rolling contentedly about the Cottage floor, her nights in deep, calm slumber. Never was there a youngster with fewer wants. Teaching Rosa Marie to talk furnished the Cottagers with great amusement. The round brown damsel very evidently preferred grunts to words; but she was always willing to grunt obligingly when Mabel or the others insisted.
"Say, 'This little pig went to market,'" Mabel would prompt.
"Eigh, ugh, ugh, ee, ee, ee, hee!" Rosa Marie would grunt.
Then, when everybody else laughed her very hardest, Rosa Marie's grim little mouth would relax to show for an instant the row of white teeth that Mabel scrubbed industriously many times a day. This rare smile made the borrowed baby almost attractive. But not to Marjory. From the first, Marjory regarded her with strong disapproval.
Fortunately for Mabel's secret, little Anne Halliday, the Marcotte twins and the two Tucker babies were too small to tell tales out of school, so in spite of sundry narrow escapes, Rosa Marie remained as dark a secret as one's heart could desire.