“She has got to eat somewhere.  Where is she going to eat?” asked Sylvia, pressing the question.

Rose got up and kissed her.  “Oh, well, I won’t bother about it for a while, anyway,” said she.  “Now I think of it, Betty is sure to be off to Newport by now, and Sally must be about to sail for Paris to buy her trousseau.  She is going to marry Dicky van Snyde in the autumn (whatever she sees in him)!  So I doubt if either of them could do anything about a maid for me.  I won’t bother at all now, but I am not going to let you wait upon me.  I am going to help you.”

Sylvia took one of Rose’s little hands and looked at it.  “I guess you can’t do much with hands like yours,” said she, admiringly, and with an odd tone of resentment, as if she were indignant at the mere suggestion of life’s demanding service from this dainty little creature, for whom she was ready to immolate herself.

However, Rose had in her a vein of persistency.  She insisted upon wiping the dishes and dusting.  She did it all very badly, but Sylvia found the oddest amusement in chiding her for her mistakes and in setting them right herself.  She would not have been nearly as well pleased had Rose been handy about the house.  One evening Henry caught Sylvia wiping over all the dishes which Rose had wiped, and which were still damp, the while she was fairly doubled up with suppressed mirth.

“What in creation ails you, Sylvia?” asked Henry.

She extended towards him a plate on which the water stood in drops.  “Just see this plate that dear child thinks she has wiped,” she chuckled.

“You women do beat the Dutch,” said Henry.

However, Rose did prove herself an adept in one respect.  She had never sewed much, but she had an inventive genius in dress, and, when she once took up her needle, used it deftly.

When Sylvia confided to her her aspiration concerning the pink silk which she had found among Abrahama’s possessions, Rose did not laugh at all, but she looked at her thoughtfully.

“Don’t you think it would be suitable if I had it made with some black lace?” asked Sylvia, wistfully.  “Henry thinks it is too young for me, but—­”

“Not black,” Rose said, decisively.  The two were up in the attic beside the old chest of finery.  Rose took out an old barege of an ashes-of-roses color.  She laid a fold of the barege over the pink silk, then she looked radiantly at Sylvia.

“It will make a perfectly lovely gown for you if you use the pink for a petticoat,” said she, “and have the gown made of this delicious old stuff.”

“The pink for a petticoat?” gasped Sylvia.

“It is the only way,” said Rose; “and you must have gray gloves, and a bonnet of gray with just one pale-pink rose in it.  Don’t you understand?  Then you will harmonize with your dress.  Your hair is gray, and there is pink in your cheeks.  You will be lovely in it.  There must be a very high collar and some soft creamy lace, because there is still some yellow left in your hair.”