CHAPTER V
Returning Rosa Marie
EARLY the next morning, Jean, needing her thimble to sew on a vitallynecessary button, ran to the supposedly empty cottage to get it. Takingthe short cut through the Tuckers' back yard she found Bettie feedingBilly, the seagull, one of Bob's numerous pets.
"Billy always wakes everybody up crying for his breakfast," explainedthoughtful little Bettie. "Bob's spending a week at the Ormsbees' camp,so I have to get up to feed Billy so father can sleep."
"Why don't the other boys do it?"
"Mercy! _They'd_ sleep through anything. Going to the Cottage?"
"Yes, come with me," returned Jean, "while I get my thimble. It's sobig that it almost takes two to carry it."
"All right," laughed Bettie, crawling through the hole in the fence.
Jean's thimble was a standing joke. A stout and prudent godmother hadbestowed a very large one on the little girl so that Jean would bein no danger of outgrowing the gift. Jean was now living in hopes ofsometime growing big enough to fit the thimble.
"Why!" exclaimed Jean, after a brief search, "the key isn't under thedoormat! Where do you s'pose it's gone?"
"Here it is in the door. But how in the world did it get there? Ilocked that door myself last night and tucked the key under the mat. I_know_ I did."
"I saw you do it," corroborated Jean.
"Perhaps Marjory's inside."
"It isn't Mabel, anyway. She's always the last one up."
"Mercy me!" cried Bettie, who had been peeking into the different roomsto see if Marjory were inside. "Come here, Jean. Just look at this!"
"This" was brown little Rosa Marie sitting up in the middle of thepink and white spare-room bed, like, as Bettie put it, a brown beein the heart of a rose. Her small dark countenance was absolutelyexpressionless, so there was no way of discovering what _she_ thoughtabout it all.
"My sakes!" exclaimed Jean, with indignation, "that lazy Mabel nevertook her home, after all! Why! We'll have a whole band of wild Indianscoming to scalp us right after breakfast! How _could_ she have been socareless. This is the worst she's done yet."
"But it's just like Mabel," said Bettie, giving vent, for once, to herdisapproval of Mabel's thoughtlessness. "She likes things ever so muchat first. Then she simply forgets that they ever existed."
"Who forgets?" demanded Mabel, bouncing in at the front door.
"You," returned Jean and Bettie, with one accusing voice.
"Prove it."
"You forgot to take Rosa Marie home last night."
"I never did. I took her every inch of the way home, stayed with herall alone in the dark for pretty nearly a _year_, and then had to bringher all the way back again, walking in her sleep. So there, now!"
"But why in the world didn't you leave her with her own folks?"
"Her horrid mother wasn't there. And between 'em, I didn't get anysupper and only a little sleep."
"But what are you going to do?" queried astonished Jean.
"After she drinks this quart of milk," explained Mabel, "I'm going totake her home again."
"Where did you get so much milk?" asked Bettie, suspiciously.
Mabel colored furiously. "I begged it from the milkman," she confessed."That's why I'm up so early. I've been sitting on our kitchen doorstepfor two hours, waiting for him to come."
Mabel spent all that day industriously returning Rosa Marie to a homethat had locked its doors against her. No pretty, dark, French motherstood in the doorway. No tall, dark man wandered about the yard. Noneighbor came from the tumbling houses across the street to explain thewoman's puzzling absence.
It proved a most tiresome day. Mabel was not only mentally weary fromtrying to solve the mystery, but physically tired also from draggingRosa Marie up and down the hill between Dandelion Cottage and thechild's deserted home. The girls went with her once, but, havingsatisfied their curiosity as to Rosa Marie's abiding-place, turnedtheir attention to pleasanter tasks. Walking with Rosa Marie was toomuch like traveling with a snail. One such journey was enough.
Moreover, Mabel's pride had suffered. A grinning boy, looking fromplump Mabel's ruddy countenance to fat Rosa Marie's expressionlessbrown one, had asked wickedly:
"Is that your sister? You look enough alike to be twins."
After that, Mabel feared that other persons might mistake the smallbrown person for a relative of hers, or, worse yet, mistake her for anIndian.
"Goodness me!" groaned Mabel, toiling homeward from her second trip,"it was hard enough to borrow a baby, but it's enough sight worsegetting rid of one afterwards. There's one thing certain; I'll _never_borrow another."
Late in the day Mabel thought of Mrs. Malony, the egg-woman. Perhapsshe would know what had become of Rosa Marie's vanished mother.Dropping Rosa Marie inside the gate, Mabel knocked at Mrs. Malony'sdoor.
"The folks that lived in the shanty beyant?" asked Mrs. Malony. "Sure,darlint, nobody's lived there for years and years save gipsies andtramps and such like."
"But day before yesterday--no, yesterday morning--I saw a youngFrenchwoman----"
"A black-eyed gal wid two long braids and wan small Injin? Sure, Oiknow the wan you mane. Her man, Injin Pete, died a month ago, some twodays after they come to the shack."
"But where is she now?" asked Mabel.
"Lord love ye," returned Mrs. Malony, "how wud Oi be after knowin'? Shecame and she wint, like the rest av thim."
"There was a man--not a gentleman and not exactly a tramp--talkingto her yesterday. Perhaps you know where _he_ is. I couldn't find_anybody_."
"Depind upon it," said Mrs. Malony, easily, "she's gone wid him. She'sMrs. Somebody Else by now, and good riddance to the pair av thim."
"But," objected Mabel, drawing the branches of a small shrub aside anddisclosing Rosa Marie sprawling on the ground behind it, "she left herbaby."
"The Nation, she did!" gasped Mrs. Malony, for once surprised out ofher serenity. "Wud ye think of thot, now!"
"I've _been_ thinking of it," returned Mabel, miserably. "And I don'tknow what in the world to do. You see, she left the baby with _me_."
"Take her home wid ye," advised Mrs. Malony, hastily; so hastily thatit looked as if the Irishwoman feared that _she_ might be asked tomother Rosa Marie. "I'll kape an eye on the shack for ye. If thatgood-for-nothin' black-haired wan comes back, Oi'll be up wid the newsin two shakes of a dead lamb's tail, so Oi will. In the mane toime, bea mother to thot innocent babe yourself. She needs wan if iver a choilddid."
"I've been that for two whole days now," groaned Mabel.
"Thot's right, thot's right," encouraged Mrs. Malony. "Ye were justcut out for thot same. Good luck go wid ye."
Rosa Marie spent a second night in the spare room of Dandelion Cottage.She, at least, seemed utterly indifferent as to her fate.
The Adopting of Rosa Marie Page 6