Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1874-03-13
The Leisure Hour.
ROSlMOND AND HER LOVERS

BY HARRIET PRESCOTT sPoFFoRD.
1t was dreadful day and night we pass
ed. My husband had been on the spot.
Rosamond was helpless in Mysteries, and
though the kilograms came every hour,
there was no good word in them; and
Rosamond only came out of one attack
long enough to ask and hear that there was
nothing certain yet before she went Off in
another; and of course neither her sister
Emma, nor the house-maids, nor | could
AT first spare time for hope or fear, so busy
were we about the poor child who, to our
unpractced senses, looked in as much
danger of death as any body.
R0samond and Emma were not relations
of ours, but their parents had been our
dear friends and when they died VIC had
begged that the children might come to us,
and so they had spent all their long vaca-
tions under our roof, and Buttons, our page
had waited on them as a little heather
would wait on his idols if he could, and his
face turned as pink as though he were boil
ed, and all the hair on his round baldish
head bristled with pleasure, whenever
they looked at him or spoke TO him. Poor
Buttons he was a standing joke among us,
and we never could think of hun, even
when tue school-days were over and the
girls had come home permanently, and
there was no longer any Buttons IN the
house, without laugh.
OF course We had no authority over the
girls but that ofaflection, but it was pleas
ure to have the dear things round us-only
when Rosam1nd, the brightest and pref
tier OF the two, began to have her lovers,
we saw that it was a little while we should
be able to keep her, and congratulated our
selves that at any rate we should still re-
| tain Emma.
Rosamond was nothing like a beauty,
and yet she had all the effect of one she
| had that rich skin which any color becomes
and her eyes were always bcaming, and
her unruly hair was always turning up in
| little curls, and she had the sweetest mouth
in the world, and the prettiest pearls in it
only her nose was any thing but what she
wanted it. l suppose she would have gone
to extremes, and have had as keen an
aquilne on any hawk -beaked Roman la
| dy's, could she haN @ had her way, for, as i
was, she had 10 make the est of what she
called pug. As for Emma, she was sim
| ply Rosamonds shadow-not qui.e so tall
not quite so plump, not quite so fresh-col-
ored or curly-headed, and not by any
means so charming. For Rosamond, will
her vivacity, her quick temper and hel
good heart, her obliging ways, her confid,
ing air, and her singing, certainly wa
charming; and after she came home tht
number of bouquets in compliment of he
singing, that were thrown into our ground
| floor windows by her feeble e-minded younl
lovers, with courage overwhelmed by in
Gatuation, kept us supplied with flowers.
Well, the truth is that Rosamond was
1irt. Emma wasn't; she never had th,
chance, as Rosamond told her once, in an
swer 10 the accusation, instantly kissing
her and crying over her and begging al
the pardons that there were, and from
that moment making over to Emma, S
formally as TO render it laughable to u
who saw it all, the best beau she had
proceeding that the beau took in such dud
geon that he ceased to come to the house q
all. But as was saying, Rosamond wa
pronounced fllrt she had fiirted with th
serious head-master at school, and with th
frivolous music-master, and had given tn
dancing-master 10 understand that she bC
lleved him one of the old noblesse in di:
guise; she had tried her arts on the minis
ter; and when the doctor was called to he
dlphtheria, of course she tried them on hin
Not that they were arts at all-they WEI
part of the child's nature; 1t was a nj