"You know that I can," said Claire quietly. "Come, dad!"
They left the room and Rosanna, forgotten, clasped her hands passionately. "Oh, _please_ save her! _Please_ make her well! Claire _needs_ her mother," she prayed over and over.
In the silent room upstairs Claire caught a blurred impression of whiteness and watchfulness. Her mother's bloodless hand lay on the counterpane and a doctor watched the fluttering pulse. Another doctor stood ready to administer an injection in case the feeble heart should fail. A couple of nurses moved swiftly but noiselessly here and there.
They made way for the man and girl and beckoned them close to the bed.
Colonel Maslin dropped on one knee and standing with her arm around his neck, Claire looked at her mother whom she had not seen for so long.
Her head was closely bandaged, but oh, how beautiful and how dear she was! After what seemed an endless time there was a flutter of the white eye-lids, and they lifted slowly. For a moment the beautiful eyes stared blankly. Hope died in Claire's heart. Then the weary eyes found them, looked at the Colonel, studied Claire in a curious way, and then seemed to embrace them both. A faint smile flickered across the face, and a faint whisper trembled on the air.
"My two sweethearts!" Mrs. Maslin said, and as though even that was too great a tax drifted off into unconsciousness again.
"She is all right," said Doctor Branshaw. "Better go now, Maslin. I will see you downstairs."
Tears were pouring down the Colonel's face as he rose and with a long, adoring look at his wife, left the room, Claire clinging to his hand.
But out in the long corridor, the door safely closed behind them, Claire gave a deep sigh and quietly fainted.
The Colonel picked his daughter up, turned into the first unoccupied room and laid her on the bed. Then he hurried after a nurse. When Claire came to herself, Rosanna, rather pale, was holding her hand. She was trying to swallow something bitter, and her father stood near her, looking as though he was to blame.
"Oh, I am _so_ sorry, daddy!" she said as soon as she could speak. "I feel all right. What a silly thing for me to do! How is mother?"
"If you are going to behave yourself now, dear, I will go and see," said Colonel Maslin. He kissed her and hurried off. Claire, feeling strangely weak but so happy, turned to Rosanna.
"She knew us!" she said. "She knew us both, and now, even if she dies, I will always have that to remember."
"She will not die!" Rosanna declared for the hundredth time.
"There are worse cases than your mother's," said the nurse comfortingly.
"If she stands the shock, she will be all right, and I am sure she will.
Don't you worry or think she is not going to be well. You want to send thoughts of courage and strength to her instead of thinking that she must die."
"That sounds like some of the new religions," said Rosanna.
"It is not," said the nurse. "It is just plain common sense. Just you try it!"
"I don't need to," said Rosanna. "I know Mrs. Maslin will get well, and Claire will know so, too, when she gets over being frightened."
Claire did get over being frightened, although for many days her mother's life hung by a thread. They stayed at the nearest hotel, and as Colonel Maslin had been given leave of absence they had the comfort of his presence.
As time went on and it became a certainty that Mrs. Maslin would live and be her own self again, Claire was allowed to see her mother. At first her visits were limited to a skimpy five minutes once a day, spent under the eyes of a stern nurse who watched the time and put her out without mercy. But as the days wore by and the invalid grew stronger, Claire was allowed to spend many happy hours with her mother.
Came a day when the Colonel was obliged to return to duty. And after a talk with her mother Claire went with him, Rosanna of course accompanying them. Rosanna had had a good time after the first period of worry, during which she never left Claire for a half hour. And Claire was grateful. Rosanna did not guess how grateful. She did not guess how often Claire talked to her mother and father about the Girl Scout's loyalty and devotion. And Claire was naturally so quiet that it was hard for her to tell Rosanna just what she thought about it all. But Rosanna did not mind. She knew without words what her companionship had meant to Claire during her time of trial.
Rosanna knew from that strange inner source that tells us so much and leads us so unerringly that she had done right to give up the chance to see the Ports of the World. And she was glad. Her sacrifice had proved to her, at least, that being a Girl Scout meant more than the happy companionship along the woodland ways in summer, or the friendly striving for merits in winter.
One little thing worried her: her task was to be finished sooner than she had thought. When Claire's mother came home, Rosanna did not want to be there. For one thing, she wisely felt that Mrs. Maslin would want Claire all to herself, and she knew that Claire would have no time or thought to give anyone else, even a friend as well loved as Rosanna knew herself to be.
Rosanna did not know where to go. The Hargraves had gone down to the old home in Lexington; Mrs. Culver and Helen were visiting in Akron, Ohio.
Rosanna thought harder and harder as the days passed, and the bulletins from the hospital grew better and more encouraging. At last the doctor actually set a date. In three days Claire could have her mother. She was to come home slowly and carefully in the limousine. And there must be weeks and weeks of unbroken rest in her own home, with her devoted husband and loving child and the adoring Chang to anticipate every wish.
Then Rosanna had an inspiration. Her old nurse and maid, Minnie, was married and living with her nice, hard-working young husband in a rose-covered cottage in the Highlands. Rosanna knew that they would both be perfectly delighted to receive her.
She closed the book she was reading and went to the telephone. As she reached it, the bell jingled.
"Hello!" she said listlessly.
A voice vaguely familiar answered, "Is Miss Rosanna Horton there?"
"This is Rosanna," said she.
There was a slight pause, then the voice said in a queer _mincy_ way, "Oh, yes, Miss Rosanna Horton. Well, can you tell me, please, where Mr.
Robert Horton is?"
"He is in France," said Rosanna.
"Are you _sure_?" said the voice. "I heard that he had returned to this country on business and was here in Louisville. I heard he had come to see a niece of his."
Rosanna had heard enough. She commenced to jump up and down.
"Oh, Uncle Robert, Uncle Bobby, where are you? Oh, hurry, hurry!"
"All right, sweetness," said Uncle Bob in his own voice. "I am right behind the house in the garage. I thought I would let you down easy."
Rosanna did not hear anything after "garage." She dropped the receiver, went through the house like a whirlwind, and was clasped in Uncle Robert's arms, where it must be confessed she shed some real and comforting tears.
Rosanna's sacrifice had not been so very easy, you know.
CHAPTER XV
Uncle Bob had very little to say until Colonel Maslin came in and they gathered around the dinner table. Then, with a smile, he commenced his little story.
"Rosanna has been asking me about a million questions. It would take a week or so, hard labor, to answer them all, and then Colonel Maslin and Claire would want to hear about things, so I will make my little speech now.
"We were all settled for the summer in a beautiful old place in the older part of Paris. Just the sort of a place you would love, Rosanna--high walls, and a park with sheep cropping the grass, and woods, and all that. Deer, too. It's too bad you are not there."
Rosanna flushed. "I don't mind, Uncle Bob," she said, and Claire squeezed her hand.
"Well," continued Uncle Bob, "Culver's invention is a bigger thing than we thought, and we thought it was pretty big. I was being worked to death with meetings and presentations and contracts, and all that. It is the one thing that commercial Europe needs today, and there was more work than I could carry.
"Besides that, there was a lot of blueprints, material and so on that I needed, and I wanted to get a look at Rosanna here. I'll say, sweetness, that your poor old Uncle Bob missed you something scandalous! So as long as I had to come as far as New York I thought I would run along and see you all.
"Culver is going back with me. He is the one man to help out over there, and it is too much for me. Besides," he added abruptly, "I thought if she didn't have any pressing engagement on hand, I would take Rosanna back with me."
"Oh, Uncle Bob!" cried Rosanna. "It is too good to be true! Are you truly in earnest?" It was almost what Rosanna had said months before when Mr. Robert had first announced the trip, and he must have remembered it, because with a smile he answered, "Hope to live and _haf_ to die, Rosanna!" and Rosanna seemed satisfied.