d Aunt Trudy.
"I think Shirley is left too much to herself."

Rosemary flushed, but her brother spoke before she could reply.

"You eat your rice, Shirley, or not one other thing can you have
to-night," he announced, with unusual severity, for Shirley was his
pet. "No, crying won't do you any good--eat your rice and stop
whining."

"I think you ought to know how things go when I'm not here, Hugh,"
began Aunt Trudy while Shirley ate her rice sulkily. "I was so upset
this morning that I thought I should fly if I stayed in the house,
so I went up to the city and shopped. I came in about half past five
and not one bed was made! The children's clothes lay just where
they had flung them last night. That's a nice way, isn't it?
Apparently I can not leave home for a few hours without finding
everything shirked on my return."

Rosemary's blue eyes blazed with quick anger and an unlovely look
came into her face.

"I don't care if I didn't make the beds!" she cried hotly. "I'm sick
and tired of beds and dusting and answering the telephone. You never
expect anyone in this house to do a single thing, but me!"

"Rosemary!" said Doctor Hugh.

"I don't think you should speak to me like that," asserted Aunt
Trudy on the verge of tears.

"I won't speak to you at all!" jerked Rosemary. "That's the only way
to please you."

Aunt Trudy began to cry and Doctor Hugh pushed back his plate.

"Please leave the table, Rosemary," he said distinctly. "Go into the
office and wait for me."

Rosemary rushed from the table like a whirlwind and the house shook
as she banged the office door.

"I don't care!" she raged, in the depths of the comfortable shabby
arm-chair that had been her father's. "I don't care! Aunt Trudy
always cries and it isn't fair. I suppose Hugh will be furious, but
let him. I'm so tired and so hot and so miserable--" and Rosemary
gave herself up to a passion of angry tears.

She had been crying in the dark and when the door opened and someone
switched on the light she knew it was Doctor Hugh. She slipped down
from the chair and walked around back of the desk. He took the
swivel chair and glanced at her half-averted face gravely.

"Rosemary," he said gently, "how would you like to ride over to
Bennington with me to-morrow? They're opening the new hospital and I
half promised to go. We'll be gone all the morning and it will make
a little change for you."

Bennington was the county seat, twenty miles away. It shou