So the two happy days passed, and on the third arrived the other anxiously expected guests, Rose Red and little Rose.

They came early in the morning, when no one was particularly looking for them, which made it all the pleasanter.  Clover was on the porch twisting the honeysuckle tendrils upon the trellis when the carriage drove up to the gate, and Rose’s sunny face popped out of the window.  Clover recognized her at once, and with a shriek which brought all the others downstairs, flew down the path, and had little Rose in her arms before any one else could get there.

“You see before you a deserted wife,” was Rose’s first salutation.  “Deniston has just dumped us on the wharf, and gone on to Chicago in that abominable boat, leaving me to your tender mercies.  O Business, Business! what crimes are committed in thy name, as Madame Roland would say!”

“Never mind Deniston,” cried Clover, with a rapturous squeeze.  “Let us play that he doesn’t exist, for a little while.  We have got you now, and we mean to keep you.”

“How pleasant you look!” said Rose, glancing up the locust walk toward the house, which wore a most inviting and hospitable air, with doors and windows wide open, and the soft wind fluttering the vines and the white curtains.  “Ah, there comes Katy now.”  She ran forward to meet her while Clover followed with little Rose.

“Let me det down, pease,” said that young lady,—­the first remark she had made.  “I tan walk all by myself.  I am not a baby any more.”

“Will you hear her talk?” cried Katy, catching her up.  “Isn’t it wonderful?  Rosebud, who am I, do you think?”

“My Aunt Taty, I dess, betause you is so big.  Is you mawwied yet?”

“No, indeed.  Did you think I would get ‘mawwied’ without you?  I have been waiting for you and mamma to come and help me.”

“Well, we is here,” in a tone of immense satisfaction.  “Now you tan.”

The larger Rose meanwhile was making acquaintance with the others.  She needed no introductions, but seemed to know by instinct which was each boy and each girl, and to fit the right names to them all.  In five minutes she seemed as much at home as though she had spent her life in Burnet.  They bore her into the house in a sort of triumph, and upstairs to the blue bedroom, which Katy and Clover had vacated for her; and such a hubbub of talk and laughter presently issued therefrom that Cousin Helen, on the other side the entry, asked Jane to set her door open that she might enjoy the sounds,—­they were so merry.

Rose’s bright, rather high-pitched voice was easily distinguishable above the rest.  She was evidently relating some experience of her journey, with an occasional splash by way of accompaniment, which suggested that she might be washing her hands.

“Yes, she really has grown awfully pretty; and she had on the loveliest dark-brown suit you ever saw, with a fawn-colored hat, and was altogether dazzling; and, do you know, I was really quite glad to see her.  I can’t imagine why, but I was!  I didn’t stay glad long, however.”