So she went on alone, while Alden returned to the living-room. Edith was saying to Madame: "Poor little brown mouse! How one longs to take a girl like that and give her all the pretty things she needs!"
Edith's Desire for Rosemary
Madame took the crystal ball, wrapped it in its bit of velvet, and put it on the highest shelf of the bookcase, rolling it back behind the books, out of sight.
"Why do you do that, Mother?" asked Alden, curiously. "Because," returned Madame, grimly, "it's all nonsense. I won't have it around any more."
Alden laughed, but Edith went on, thoughtfully: "I'd like to do her hair for her, and see that all her under-things were right, and then put her into a crêpe gown of dull blue--a sort of Chinese blue, with a great deal of deep-toned lace for trimming, and give her a topaz pendant set in dull silver, and a big picture hat of ecru net, with a good deal of the lace on it, and one long plume, a little lighter than the gown."
"I would, too," said Alden, smiling at Edith. He did not in the least know what she was talking about, but he knew that she felt kindly toward Rosemary, and was grateful for it.
Rosemary, at home, went about her duties mechanically. There was a far-away look in her eyes which did not escape the notice of Grandmother and Aunt Matilda, but they forebore to comment upon it as long as she performed her tasks acceptably. At supper she ate very little, and that little was as dust and ashes in her mouth.
Heartburns
Before her, continually, was a heart-breaking contrast. She, awkward, ugly, ill at ease in brown alpaca made according to the fashion of ten or fifteen years ago, and Mrs. Lee, beautiful, exquisite, dainty to her finger-tips, richly dowered with every conceivable thing that she herself lacked.
"Mother," said Rosemary, to herself. "Oh, Mother!" She did not mean Mrs. Marsh, but the pretty, girlish mother who had died in giving birth to her. She would have been like Mrs. Lee, or prettier, and she would have understood.
Her heart smarted and burned and ached, but she got through the evening somehow, and, at the appointed time, stumbled up to her own room.
Why should she care because another woman was prettier than she, knew more, and had more? Were there not many such in the world, and had she not Alden? Accidentally, Rosemary came upon the cause of her pain.