Rose Galbraith
© 2014 by Grace Livingston Hill
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.
All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
Published by Barbour Books, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.barbourbooks.com
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
About the Author
Chapter 1
1940s
Rose Galbraith folded her work dress and apron neatly and laid them in the top of the packing box. With a trembling and determined hand she drove in the nails that were already stabbed through the missing board, then she cast a quick desolate glance about the room. How empty it looked! How different from a few days before!
In imagination, for an instant, the dear old furnishings came back. The muslin curtains at the windows, terribly worn in places, but delicately darned so that their defects became adornments. The faded old rugs, one of them a hooked rug her mother had made when Rose was a little girl.
And over at the far side of the room, the fine old bed and bureau and wardrobe that had been her mother’s wedding present from her father’s side of the house and on that other side, the corner cupboard with the frail lovely china that dated back a whole century. In the middle, the leaved table that was their dining table by day and their sitting room table around which she and her mother had gathered evenings. Oh, those days, and those precious evenings, gone now forever! But she would never forget them! Her whole life would center about them as long as she lived.
She turned away from gazing at those empty places. She could not bear it. A great tear slid out and rolled down her cheek, falling with a splash on top of the box that now held so many of the things that had made up the background of her life. Curtains and pillows and blankets and quilts, several of which her grandmother, her father’s mother in the “auld country,” had pieced and quilted. Tucked in between things there were pictures and dishes and a few cherished books and trinkets.
They had sold the little gas hot plate with its tiny oven that had served them so well during the lean years since her father died, sold it to a secondhand man for a dollar and seventy-five cents!
“If I should ever be able to come back, perhaps we could get a more modern one,” her mother had said with a brave smile as they made the decision, for even a dollar and seventy-five cents meant a lot to them just now.
And that was only ten days ago!
Rose drew a deep quivering sigh and then shut her lips with firm determination. She must not break down!
The cheap upright piano that her mother and she had prized so much had been sold to a little music pupil of hers. Her mother had always hoped that someday they would be able to get a better one. But now all those hopes were over. Her mother would never get any more meals in this scant little room that had been a home to them for four long beautiful years. She would never bring any more music for the dear old piano! She had gone to spend all her days in the bright eternal home where she would go out no more forever! She would not even take this trip to Scotland for which they had planned so long, to see the old home, and the old folk who were left back in the old country. The trip for which the tickets were all purchased and tucked away in the pretty little handbag that had been her mother’s last gift to Rose, her birthday gift! And now Rose was going to have to take that trip alone! It seemed appalling to her!
It was too late to change her mind. The tickets might be returned perhaps, but where would she go? The tiny apartment had been definitely given up. The dear old furniture had gone to storage in the house of a friend. This box of leftovers was to follow in an hour. There would be only her own two suitcases left, and they were now packed and ready to leave.
Her coat and hat were hanging in the closet, the pretty coat and hat that matched her suit. Such a pretty suit, and Mother had loved it so, and insisted on buying it for her, because she said she wanted her family to see her girl looking the best she could. That blue suit was the kind she had always wanted to get for her child. But Mother hadn’t been willing to get anything much for herself. Somehow it seemed as if she must have known even when she had bought the gray tweed suit for herself, that she wasn’t to stay here long, for when Rose begged her to get a few more things that she needed, she shook her head determinedly.
“No, dear! No! Just the suit will do for me, and when we get over there I can buy some more. We’ll get what we like cheaper.
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