Part 6

Aunt Matilda muttered something about "beggars being choosers," and Rosemary pushed her plate away wearily. She had not tasted her breakfast.

Grandmother arose and noisily blew out the lamp, regardless of the fact that Matilda had not finished eating. "Now, Rosemary," she said, briskly, "after you get the dishes done and the kitchen cleaned up, I want you should go to the post-office and get my paper. When you come back, you can do the sweepin' and dustin' down here and I can set in the kitchen while you're doin' it. Then you can make the beds and do the up-stairs work and then go to the store. By the time you're ready to go to the store, I'll have decided what you're to get."

"And," continued Aunt Matilda, pushing back her chair, "this afternoon you can help me cut out some underclothes and get 'em basted together." She never attempted any sort of housework, being pathetically vain of her one beauty--her small, white hands. Even the family sewing she did under protest.

"Is the alpaca all gone?" asked Grandmother.

"Yes," Matilda replied. "I used the last of it patchin' Rosemary's dress under the arms. It beats all how hard she is on her clothes."

"I'll have to order more," sighed the old lady. "I suppose the price has gone up again."

Rosemary's breath came and went quickly; her heart fluttered with a sudden wildness. "Grandmother," she pleaded, hesitatingly, "oh, Aunt Matilda--just for this once, couldn't I have grey alpaca instead of brown? I hate brown so!"

Both women stared at her as though she had all at once gone mad. The silence became intense, painful.

"I mean," faltered the girl, "if it's the same price. I wouldn't ask you to pay any more. Perhaps grey might be cheaper now--even cheaper than brown!"

"I was married in brown alpaca," said Grandmother. She used the tone in which royalty may possibly allude to coronation.

"I was wearing brown alpaca," observed Aunt Matilda, "the night the minister came to call."

"Made just like this," they said, together.

"If brown alpaca's good enough for weddin's and ministers, I reckon it'll do for orphans that don't half earn their keep," resumed Grandmother, with her keen eyes fixed upon Rosemary.

"What put the notion into your head?" queried Aunt Matilda, with the air of one athirst for knowledge.

"Why--nothing," the girl stammered, "except that--when I was looking at mother's things the other day, up in the attic, I found some pink ribbon, and I thought it would be pretty with grey, and if I had a grey dress----"

The other two exchanged glances. "Ain't it wonderful," asked Matilda of her mother, "how blood will tell?"

"It certainly is," responded Grandmother, polishing her spectacles vigorously with a corner of the plaid shawl. "Your ma," she went on, to Rosemary, "was wearin' grey when your pa brought her here to visit us. They was a surprise party--both of 'em. We didn't even know he was plannin' marriage and I don't believe he was, either. We've always thought your ma roped him into it, somehow."

Rosemary's eyes filled with mist and she bit her lips.

"She was wearin' grey," continued Aunt Matilda; "light grey that would show every spot. I told her it wasn't a very serviceable colour and she had the impudence to laugh at me. 'It'll clean, won't it?' she says, just like that, and Frank says, right after her, 'Yes, it'll clean.' He knew a lot about it, he did. She had psychologised him."

"You mean hypnotised," interrupted Grandmother. "There ain't no such word as 'psychologised.'"

"Well, if there ain't, there ought to be."

"The pink has come out in the blood, too," Grandmother remarked, adjusting her spectacles firmly upon the ever-useful and unfailing wart. "She was wearin' pink roses on her bonnet and pink ribbon strings. It wouldn't surprise me if it was the very strings what Rosemary has found in the trunk and is layin' out to wear."

"Me neither," Matilda chimed in.

"She was wearin' lace on her petticoats and high-heeled shoes, and all her handkerchiefs was fine linen," Grandmother continued. "Maybe you'd like some lace ruffles under your grey alpaca, wouldn't you, Rosemary?"

The girl got to her feet blindly. She gathered up the dishes with cold hands that trembled, took them out into the kitchen, and noiselessly closed the door. Her heart was hot with resentment, even though she had heard the story, with variations, ever since she was old enough to understand it.

"Poor little mother," said Rosemary, to herself. "Dear little mother! Why couldn't you have taken me with you!"

As Grandmother had said, for the hundredth time and more, Frank Starr had brought home his young wife unexpectedly. The surprise, in itself, was a shock from which she and Matilda had never recovered. Even now, they were fond of alluding to the years of ill-health directly caused by it, and of subtly blaming Rosemary for it.

At the end of the third day, the young couple had departed hastily, the bride in tears. A year or so afterward, when Rosemary was born, the little mother died, having lived only long enough to ask that the baby be named "Rosemary"--Rose for her own mother and Mary for Grandmother Starr.