Rosalie settled herself, Turk fashion, on the window seat, disposed the folds of her pink kimono in graceful billows about her knees, and allowed two braids of curly yellow hair to hang picturesquely over her shoulders. She was ready for bed and could extend her call until the last stroke of the "Lights-out" bell.
"What kind of a book?" asked Patty with a slightly perfunctory note in her voice.
Rosalie was apt to burst into one's room with a startling announcement and then, having engaged everybody's attention, settle down to an endless, meandering recital sprinkled with anti-climaxes.
"It's about a sweet young English girl whose father owned a tea estate in Asia—or maybe Africa. But anyway, where it was hot, and there were a lot of natives and snakes and centipedes. Her mother died and she was sent back home to boarding-school when she was a tiny little thing. Her father was quite bad. He drank and swore and smoked. The only thing that kept him from being awfully bad, was the thought of his sweet little golden-haired daughter in England."
"Well, what of it?" Patty inquired, politely suppressing a yawn. Rosalie had a way of trailing off into golden-haired sentiment if one didn't haul her up sharp.
"Just wait! I'm coming to it. When she was seventeen she went back to India to take care of her father, but almost right off he got a sunstroke and died. And in his death-bed he entrusted Rosamond—that was her name—to his best friend to finish bringing up. So when Rosamond went to live with her guardian, and took charge of his bungalow and made it beautiful and homelike and comfortable—she wouldn't let him drink or smoke or swear any more. And as he looked back over the past—"
"He was eaten with remorse at the thought of the wasted years," Patty glibly supplied, "and wished that he had lived so as to be more worthy of the sweet, womanly influence that had come into his wicked life."
"You've read it!" said Rosalie.
"Not that I know of," said Patty.
"Anyway," said Rosalie, with an air of challenge, "they fell in love and were married—"