Rose, having been regaled with an excellent meal, was taken home by nurse herself. Mrs. Latimer received her little girl with scant favor.
"A fine mess you have got into!" she said.
"Don't scold her, poor child!" said nurse. "I am going, if I possibly can, to have her to live with me in the coming winter. She did what she did because she's so took up with Miss Christian; and, bad as the whole affair was, it was a blessed thing for Miss Christian that she had Rosy with her."
"Then if you are going to look after Rose, aunt," said Mrs. Latimer, "she needn't go on learning the dressmaking."
"No, that she needn't, for I'm going to train her to be a proper lady's-maid. Miss Christian will want someone whom she can really trust when she is grown up. You must remember, Mary, that our Miss Christian is the daughter of very rich people, and very important people too, and will be quite a great lady in her own way by and by."
So Rose's home-coming was not nearly so bad as she had feared, for her mother was not going to be too cross with a little girl whom her aunt was, to all practical purposes, going to adopt.
"Sit down, child," she said; "or, if you have had enough to eat, do for goodness' sake take yourself off to bed. You look half-dazed."
"That's about true, mother," said Rosy.
In Christian's room a bright fire was blazing, and nurse herself, the moment she came back, began to attend to her nursling.
"To think of where we slept last night," mused Christian.