"Perhaps it is pleasant at the poor farm," Rosemary was trying to find the cloud's silver lining. "You might like it there; did you ever see it?" "No, and I never want to," retorted Louisa with finality. Then Rosemary asked what it was to be "bound out" and Louisa told her that children old enough to work were bound out to families who agreed to give them their board and clothes and send them to school in return for their services. "It would mean that until we are eighteen we'd never have a cent to call our own," declared Louisa. "We couldn't do a thing for the younger children and, worst of all, we should be separated." It was a very sober Rosemary who helped with the remainder of the work that morning. She spread dish towels to bleach, she swept the porch, made the beds--visiting for a brief moment with the unrepentant Kitty who clamored to be allowed to get up and finally was released a half hour ahead of time on her promise to pick the "greens" for dinner--and, at Louisa's request, showed her how a simple soup was made in cooking class at the Eastshore school. But she was unusually silent while she did all this. Walking home across the fields at noon--they steadfastly refused to burden the harassed family with three extra mouths to feed--Sarah noticed her sister's abstraction. "What's the matter, Rosemary?" she asked curiously and Shirley echoed the question. "Oh--I'm thinking," said Rosemary. CHAPTER XV THE POOR FARM Rosemary thought a great deal about the Gays in the days that followed. Louisa had asked her to promise that she would tell no one the precarious state of their finances--"no one can help and I won't be discussed like the 'cases' they bring up at the sewing circle," said Louisa passionately. "They'd be 'running up' clothes for June and Kitty," she said another time, "and fitting us out to go to the poor farm looking respectable. I'd rather stay here and look any old way." Sarah was extremely observant for her years and she surprised Rosemary and Louisa with a shrewd comment or two, until the latter deemed it expedient to take her into the inner circle of confidence. Sarah could be loyal and she could be silent. From that day she and Rosemary were leagued with Louisa and Alec to circumvent the town authorities. Not that authority, in any guise, was ever manifested. At least it had not been so far. Rosemary, on the beautiful moonlight nights when "Old Fiddlestrings" wandered again up and down the road, playing the "Serenade" with his soul in his fingers, found it hard to believe that there could be such ugly things in the world as poverty and fear. She was sure that Louisa and Alec must be mistaken--or else the money would come from somewhere--it must. There could not be such music and such moonlight and such heavenly scented breezes on an earth that was anything but wholly lovely, wholly kind.