Family -- Juvenile fiction; Sisters -- Juvenile fiction
The touch of his skilled fingers seemed to slow down her hammering
pulse. Rosemary's troubled gaze swept the circle of faces surrounding
her, Sarah's and Shirley's expressive of their anxiety lest she be
"sick," Warren's baffled and worried, and came back to the steady,
understanding dark eyes behind the doctor's glasses. In that moment
Hugh became a tower of refuge to her and she suddenly knew what she
would do.
"I don't know what made me act like this," she apologized, a little
tinge of color creeping into her white face. "I'm sorry, because I am
afraid I have made you think it is worse than it is."
She stopped and looked at Sarah who stared at her in a puzzled way.
"You won't want me to tell, Sarah dear," went on Rosemary, still
calmly, "but this time I think I'd better; because--well, because if
there should be a next time and you should hurt yourself, I should be
to blame. Besides, there is Shirley."
Warren drew a deep breath and Doctor Hugh sent a look toward Sarah that
made that young person decidedly uncomfortable though she pretended to
be absorbed in the antics of a beetle and sat down, cross-legged, to
consider it.
"Then it was the windmill?" asked Warren.
"Yes, it was the windmill," nodded Rosemary, putting her arm around
Shirley who was beginning to feel that her adored older sister had for
once deserted her.
And then she told them, graphically and in detail, how she had found
the two children on the platform and of the climbs she had made to
bring them down safely.
"That part wasn't so bad, really it wasn't," she explained earnestly.
"Though when Sarah's foot slipped--"
Warren looked at Doctor Hugh.
"But I keep thinking of that awful platform!" cried Rosemary, hiding
her face against her brother's shoulder and tightening her arm about
Shirley. "Every time I close my eyes I can see them there--and it is
such a narrow space and they could have fallen off so easily--"
"Stop!" said Doctor Hugh sternly. "Stop that at once, Rosemary. You
are letting your imagination run away with you. Closing your eyes and
thinking what might have happened, will not do at all. You'll get the
better of your nerves, if you try. Don't think what has happened and,
above all, don't talk about it. Tag around after Warren and Rich
to-day and keep so busy you haven't time to think--you'll find the
worst is over now that you have told us."
Rosemary lifted her head. She was quite herself, her blue eyes told
Warren. Under her arm, Shirley peeped uncertainly at her brother.
"Come around here where I can see you, Shirley," he commanded.
She obeyed disconsolately.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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