The next afternoon Doctor Hugh repeated his request that Rosemary should stay with Sarah and Shirley till Aunt Trudy came home on the 5:46 train. Then he left on a long round of calls and Rosemary, not without many regrets and a thrill of fear when she thought what her brother would say if he found her out, sped up the street to the pleasant house where Mrs. Hepburn, hatted and gloved eagerly waited her coming. "I was so afraid you wouldn't come," she greeted the little girl. "Baby is asleep, and I want to get away before he wakes up and sees me go. I'll be back at half-past five, sharp, but of course you won't go till I come. You mustn't leave Baby alone in the house." As luck would have it, Aunt Trudy decided to come home on an earlier train and found herself in the midst of bundle-laden Eastshore shoppers who had spent the day in the city and were returning with their spoils. Motherly Mrs. Dunning occupied a seat with Aunt Trudy and what more natural than that she should speak of how much help Rosemary had been to her that summer? The wonder was that Aunt Trudy had so long escaped hearing but she went about very little in the town and had met comparatively few of the neighbors even those living on her own street. "Yes indeed I've been able to go away an afternoon or two a week," babbled Mrs. Dunning, "something I haven't done since Baby came. Your niece is such a nice child and so reliable. I wanted her this afternoon, but Mrs. Hepburn had engaged her first." "My niece? Mrs. Hepburn engaged her?" repeated Aunt Trudy faintly. Mrs. Dunning explained and Aunt Trudy managed to keep from fainting though as she told Doctor Hugh afterward, she would never know how the strength was given her. She looked nearer to apoplexy than fainting when she walked into the house a half hour later and, purple-faced and choking, demanded to be told the instant the doctor came in. Doctor Hugh and his car rolled up a few moments later and Aunt Trudy sobbed out the "miserable story" as she characterized it. "To think of Rosemary, acting as a nurse-maid, and we never knew it!" she wailed. "What would her mother say? What must the neighbors think?" "Bother the neighbors!" said Doctor Hugh testily. "When Rosemary comes home tell her I want to see her." Though his aunt did not suspect it, he had seldom been as angry in his life. Not only had Rosemary deliberately defied him and gone off that afternoon, but she had most certainly furnished topic for gossip in Eastshore for it was not possible in so small a town that her occupation had been unnoticed. And Doctor Hugh was very proud of his pretty sister. What could have possessed the child to do such a wild thing? He had himself in hand by the time Rosemary came running in, late, for Mrs. Hepburn had been delayed and nothing could have induced the young worker to desert her charge. "Your brother wants you--he's in the office," said Aunt Trudy stiffly.