"And you are doing your own work yet!" exclaimed the visitor. "I heard you wasn't use to doin' nothin'. It's bad enough to be strangers without takin' all the hard jobs to once, yet! I wouldn't care if I was to help you a while; I've got time."
"Do you mean that you would stay here?" cried Mrs. Scollard, eagerly.
"Yes; I don't care if I do," answered the woman. "You just say so once, and I'll stay."
"Are you a losted Bippenbender? Happie said so," Penny cried shrilly and unexpectedly.
"A Bittenbender? What do you know about the Bittenbenders? No, I hain't a Bittenbender. I'm poor enough in money without bein' poor truck yet. My name's Rosie Gruber," said the stranger with an air of forever setting at rest any possible doubt as to her desirability.
Margery and Happie exchanged a sly glance of amusement; anything less like a rose than their caller would have been hard to find. But the important point was that she was willing to stay and do housework.
Mrs. Scollard, feeling that Miss Keren-happuch's quest was more than uncertain, and that almost any risk was better than their certain troubles, engaged her on the spot, and was as delighted as she was amused to see their new-bloomed Rose take off her wet hat, remove her long overshoes, produce from under the skirt of her own gown a blue checked gingham apron, and go down on her knees, instanter, to rake the ashes out from the stove.
"This fire's pretty near out," she remarked. "If you want to eat at twelve—you do, don't you?—you've got to get your potatoes over pretty soon, and this fire'll need an hour to get up. Your wood's almost all; hadn't you ought to git some?"
"Almost all what?" asked Bob. "Isn't it right; anything wrong with it?"
"It's almost all," repeated Rose firmly. "All—don't you know what that is? How many sticks do you see there? Isn't it almost all? Nothin' wrong with the wood if they was more of it. Say, there hain't nothin' wrong with the boy, is they? He looks so sorter dumb at a body yet!"