Rosemary walked home slowly. Louisa, worn out by worry and work, had yielded to the luxury of a good cry and though, when she had wiped her eyes, she declared she felt much better and more cheerful than for a week. Rosemary was not convinced. A glimpse of Alec, thin and brown, with the same worried look in his nice clear eyes, had not helped to convince her. It was plain that both Louisa and Alec were expecting the foreclosure of the mortgage on the farm and anticipating the separation of the family.  
"I couldn't stand it," said Rosemary earnestly to a chipmunk¹, who shook his head in sympathy. "I couldn't stand it, if Sarah and Shirley and I had to go live in different houses. Suppose we didn't have Mother and Hugh and Winnie!"
 
The realization² of her own blessings³ only emphasized the hard position of the Gays without a father or mother. By the time she had come to the Rainbow Hill orchard⁴, Rosemary was feeling very blue indeed.
 
"Come on up!" two sweet little voices called to her. "Come on up, Rosemary!"
 
Rosemary peered at the trees, and giggles⁵ floating from one gnarled old apple tree revealed where Sarah and Shirley were hidden.
 
"What's the matter?" asked Shirley instantly, when Rosemary had swung herself up to a seat beside them.
 
"I've been to see Louisa Gay," explained Rosemary, "and they haven't a cent of money for the interest on that awful mortgage. It's due the first of September and Louisa says the man will take the farm and they'll all be on the town!"
 
"I thought you had to go and live in the poor house, if folks took your farm," objected Sarah.
 
"It's all the same," said Rosemary impatiently. "Louisa says so. When you're 'on the town' that means the town supports you and you live at the poor farm. Girls, we just have to get some money for the Gays!"
 
"Ask Hugh," suggested Shirley, as her favorite way out of money difficulties.
 
"We can't," Rosemary told her. "Louisa and Alec don't like strangers and Hugh is a stranger to them. We mustn't even tell grown-up people about them, because if they know the Gays are poor, they'll come and take them to the poor farm, anyway. Alec says they don't even go to the Center any more because he doesn't want people to ask him questions."
 
When Winnie rang the bell to signal that lunch was ready, the three girls had not succeeded in forming any definite plan to help the Gays. They had made up their minds that money must be obtained, but the way was anything but clear.
 
"You see," said Rosemary, taking up the question again after lunch, "we can't ask Warren or Richard for any money. They are saving all they earn to get them through agricultural college and Hugh told me they have to do some work in the winter to get enough. Jack⁶ never has any money of his own—he will have some at the end of the month, but he's set his heart on buying his mother something lovely with the first money he has ever really earned. There doesn't seem to be anybody to help Louisa and Alec, except us."
 
"And we haven't a cent, except the five-dollar gold pieces Aunt Trudy sent us Fourth of July," said Sarah practically.
 
"We must think," declared Rosemary solemnly. "You think hard, Sarah, and you, too, Shirley. And I'll think with all my might."
 
Such concentration of thought should have produced some result, but the next morning each had failure to report. Then Richard announced that Solomon must be shod and offered to take anyone over who felt free to spend the morning in Bennington.
 
"I have to make up my lost practising," said Rosemary, "and Hugh is going to take Mother and Shirley with him—he telephoned he'd stop for them. Sarah would like to go—she was wailing⁷ that everyone went to places and left her home."
 
Sarah climbed happily into her place by Richard and they drove off to Bennington, at a slower pace than usual for Richard wished to "favor" the shoeless foot.
 
"Ph, look!" the rather silent Sarah kindled⁸ into animation⁹ at the sight of a gay-colored poster tacked¹⁰ to a telegraph pole along the road. "What's that, Richard?"
 
"Circus!" he answered smilingly. "Coming next month. See the lions, Sarah? How would you like one of those to play with, eh?"
 
He obligingly pulled in the willing Solomon, and Sarah studied the poster with intent, serious dark eyes. Driving on, Richard found her curiously¹¹ self-absorbed. She answered him in monosyllables and was apparently¹² deep in a brown study.
 
"A penny for your thoughts?" he offered, wondering what she could be pondering over.
 
But Sarah refused to sell and continued to be silent.
 
Richard would have been surprised indeed, could he have seen what was going on in that active little brain. The circus poster had shown Sarah, besides the wonderful lions, a marvelous performing bear, dancing on his hind¹³ legs. A crowd of people laughed at him and applauded.
 
"Bony can do that!" Sarah had thought with pride, and then, like a flash, followed the thought: "I could sell Bony to the circus and give the money to Louisa!"
 
The rest of the way to Bennington was occupied, as far as Sarah was concerned, in selling Bony to the owner of the bear, who promised to give the pig a kind home and explain to him frequently why his mistress had consented to let him leave Rainbow Hill.
 
Sarah had reached the moment when she put her precious pig into the bear man's hands (she innocently assumed that he must have charge of all the circus animals) just as Richard drew up before the blacksmith's shop.
 
"You don't want to hang around here," said Richard authoritatively¹⁴, lifting her down from the seat. "I'll have to give some orders about shoeing Solomon and you wait for me on the side porch of the hotel. I won't be long."
 
He led Sarah unprotestingly—though at any other time she would have teased to be allowed to stay and watch the fascinating work of the smithy—across the street and to the steep little flight of steps that led to the pleasant, vine-covered side porch of the country hotel.
 
"Good morning, Mrs. King," he said, lifting his hat as a gray-haired woman peered over the railing at them. "This is Sarah Willis—I want to have her wait here while I'm over at the shop."
 
"She'll be all right," answered Mrs. King kindly¹⁵. "She can sit here and rest; it's nice and shady."
 
Mrs. King was shelling peas, and Sarah sat down in the cretonne-covered rocking chair next to her. There was one other person on the porch—a stout¹⁶ gentleman, stretched out in an arm chair, sound asleep. His face was covered with a white silk handkerchief which partially¹⁷ hid his round, bald head.
 
"Do you like the country?" asked Mrs. King, glancing toward her small visitor while her clever, quick fingers sent a continuous shower of peas rattling¹⁸ into the pan in her lap.
 
"Oh, yes, I like it," nodded Sarah with enthusiasm. "I like it lots better than Eastshore and going to school. I wouldn't mind living in the country for always."
 
"But you'd have to go to school if you lived in the country," said Mrs. King mildly. "You can't get away from lesson-books, no matter where you go."
 
"Not in Africa?" suggested Sarah who never disdained¹⁹ an argument.
 
"I've never been in Africa," Mrs. King replied, "so I can't tell you positively²⁰. But my guess is all the children who aren't natives, have to be educated."
 
"What do the children who are natives do?" asked Sarah.
 
Mrs. King considered.
 
"I imagine they go around without any clothes on and the tigers eat them," she decided²¹, recalling to mind several doleful pictures she had seen in an old geography.
 
Sarah shivered, not in sympathy with the scantily^............