For the Roses Read Online Free PDF

immediately knew what he was thinking. "You can quit smiling that know-it-all smile of yours, Cole. I will admit that my first year at school didn't go well. I had a little trouble adjusting. I realize now I was simply homesick and was trying to get thrown out so you'd have to come and get me. However," she hastily added, "I have had a perfect record ever since, and that should count for something."
    "Tell me about the man waiting in the office," he said.
    "He was a lawyer," she said. "He asked me all sorts of questions about our family. He wanted to know how long we'd lived in Montana and why our mother didn't live with us. He wanted me to describe to him what my brothers looked like too. I wouldn't answer any of his questions. I didn't think it was any of his business. He was a complete stranger, after all. I didn't like him at all." Cole didn't like him either. "Did he explain why he was asking all these questions?"
    "He told me there was a large inheritance at issue. I think he went away convinced I wasn't a long-lost relative. I've made you worry, haven't I?"
    "A little," he admitted. "I don't like the idea of anyone asking about us." She tried to lighten his mood. "It wasn't all bad," she said. "I hadn't studied for my English exam because Eleanor kept me up half the night complaining about some latest slight. Since I was in the office, I got to wait until the following day to take the test."
    "I thought you weren't going to put up with Eleanor again."
    "I swear to you I wasn't," Mary Rose replied. "No one else would take her for a roommate though, and the mistress practically got down on her hands and knees begging me to take Eleanor in. Poor Eleanor. She has a good heart, honest she does, but she keeps it hidden most of the time. She's still a trial of endurance."
    Cole smiled. Eleanor had been the one wrinkle in his sister's otherwise perfect life. Mary Rose was the only student at school who would suffer the young woman's presence. The brothers loved hearing Eleanor stories. They found the woman's antics hysterically funny, and when any of them needed a good laugh, an Eleanor story had to be dredged up.
    "Was she as ornery as ever?" he asked, hoping his sister had a new story to tell.
    "She was," Mary Rose admitted. "I used to feel guilty telling all of you about her, but then Travis convinced me that since no harm was done and she'd never find out, it was all right. She really can be outrageous. Do you know she left school a full week before everyone else? She didn't even say good-bye. Something was wrong with her father, but she wouldn't tell me what it was. She cried herself to sleep five nights in a row, then she left. I wish she'd confided in me. I would have helped if I could. Her father wasn't ill. I asked the headmistress after Eleanor took off. She wouldn't tell me anything, but she
    puckered her lips, and she only does that when she is really disgusted about something. Eleanor's father was going to donate a large sum of money so the mistress could build another dormitory. She told me it was all off now. Do you know what she said?"
    "No, what?"
    "She said she'd been duped. What do you suppose she meant by that?"
    "Could be anything."
    "Just the night before Eleanor left, I told her that if she ever needed me, all she had to do was come to Rosehill."
    "Why'd you go and tell her that?" Cole asked.
    "She was being pitiful, crying like a baby," Mary Rose explained. "I wouldn't worry about her showing up at the ranch though. It's too uncivilized out here for her. She's very sophisticated. But she hurt my feelings when she didn't say good-bye. I was her only friend, after all. I wasn't a very good friend though, was I?"
    "Why do you think you weren't?"
    "You know why," she replied. "I tell stories about her and that isn't at all nice. Friends shouldn't talk about each other."
    "You only told us about incidents that really happened, and you defended her to everyone at school. You never talked about her there, did