"If I don't get the rose I'm afraid I'll forgit it," she soliloquized. So she went out the back door and around to the front of the house to a great rock under whose lee some rosebushes cuddled out of the wind. The minute she felt herself out of sight of Linda's window, however, she panted back for fear by some tragic mischance her fairy godmother might call, and receiving no answer imagine that she had gone home for an hour as Miss Barry sometimes gave her permission to do. Finally, after much darting back and forth, Blanche Aurora secured the rose, and returning to the house, placed it as usual in a glass in her own room to wait for the morning. As she emerged she heard her name called at the head of the back stairs. She landed on the lower step in two leaps. "Yes, Miss Linda," she answered, the heart under the outgrown gingham going like a triphammer. "I want you now." It was as the voice of an angel in the yearning ears. "Yes, ma'am," and Blanche Aurora ascended, two steps at a time. Her dingy sneakers would not have bent daisies had they been growing upon the staircase. CHAPTER XIX THE WILD ROSE As the panting little figure approached and hesitated in her doorway, Linda turned from some white stuff she had been piling on the bed and met the round, expectant eyes, "Come here, Blanche Aurora," she said. "I want to show you something." With long steps the beneficiary was beside her. "Here are some things I found for you in Portland yesterday." Blanche Aurora dragged her gaze from the pink and blue dresses that were lying there, finished, and beheld white underclothing, and large enveloping aprons--a pink-and-white checked one, a blue-and-white checked one, and one all white in a satiny-looking plaid. There was also a pile of stockings and some black low shoes and white sneakers. A bride, inspecting a complete trousseau just arrived from Paris, might experience in faint degree the elation that choked Blanche Aurora now. "For me?" she uttered mechanically. "For you, you good little thing," said Linda. "Now take these, and go into the bathroom and put them on." Like one in a dream, Blanche Aurora accepted the underclothing, stockings, and sneakers put into her arms, and marched toward the bathroom, her head held high and the fishhook braids quivering down her gingham back. She went in and closed the door. Linda smiled, and seating herself in her wicker rocker clasped her hands behind her head. Mrs. Porter came to the door. "What did she say?" she asked, smiling. "Oh, nothing. She's far beyond speech. What did you do with Aunt Belinda?" "Mrs. Lindsay arrived and Miss Barry is showing her her rockery and the ferns, so I thought she was safe and I'd come up for the fun."