"You go—you're the oldest," said Sarah calmly. "I want to read about sick rabbits."
"Sarah, you know you promised mother to be good and to do the things you thought would please her. Come on and meet Aunt Trudy—we'll all go, you and I and Shirley," wheedled Rosemary, beginning to roll up her knitting.
"Where's Hugh—why doesn't he go?" asked Sarah who usually exhausted all arguments before giving in.
"Hugh's down at Dr. Jordan's and he won't be home till dinner time," replied Rosemary. "Mother would want us to be nice to Aunt Trudy, you know she would."
"Well, I'm going to be nice," insisted Sarah, scrambling to her feet and hurling the book under the swing where she kept the larger part of her dilapidated library. "I'll go to the station if I can go as I am—I have to clean the rabbit hutch when I get back and I won't have time to be dressing and undressing all the afternoon."
"You can't go as you are!" Rosemary surveyed her sister appraisingly. "Your face is black and your dress has a grease spot across the front. And you haven't any hair ribbon."
"I'll go as I am, or I won't go at all," repeated Sarah coolly.
Rosemary stabbed her long needles into her half-finished sweater and hung her knitting bag on the back of her chair.
"Then you can stay home," she said crossly. "I'll go up and get Shirley now and we'll go without you."
She ran upstairs, coaxed the protesting Shirley from her play of sailing boats in the bath-tub, and was buttoning her into a clean frock when Sarah came tramping through the hall. She occupied a room with Shirley, while Rosemary had a room to herself connected with the younger girls' room by a rather narrow door.