The little girl with the fairy-web of yellow hair did not answer. She started from her seat and ran toward the stairs.
"Hugh's coming!" she cried.
Quick, even steps sounded on the hardwood treads and a young man with dark hair, darker eyes behind eye-glasses and a keen, intelligent face, descended rapidly. He picked up the child and strode across the hall to the window-seat.
"Poor children!" he said compassionately, sitting down beside Rosemary and holding the younger girl in his lap. "Has the time seemed long? I came as quickly as I could."
Rosemary looked at him piteously.
"All right, dear," he said instantly. "Mother is going to get well. Dr. Hurlbut and I have decided that all she needs is a long rest. I am going to take her to a quiet place in the country day after to-morrow and she is to stay until she is entirely recovered. Why Rosemary!"
The gold-red head was on his shoulder and Rosemary was crying as though her heart would break.
"That's the way she is," said the dark and placid Sarah. "She jumps on me if I say anything and then she cries herself sick thinking things. I would rather," she declared with peculiar distinctness, "have folks talk than think, wouldn't you, Hugh?"
"I'm sorry to say I can't agree with you," replied the young man briefly. "Here, Shirley, I didn't know you were such a heavy-weight—you run off with Sarah and tell Winnie what I have told you about Mother. Quietly now, and no shouting. Rosemary, dear," he put a protecting arm around the weeping girl, "you will feel better now—we have all been under a strain and the worst is over. Here comes Miss Graham with Dr. Hurlbut and I must see him off. Don't run—he'll probably go right out without seeing you."
But the famous specialist stopped squarely in the hall and the pleasant-faced middle-aged nurse, standing respectfully on the lower step, nodded reassuringly to Rosemary who was frantically mopping her eyes.