Mrs. Gibbs and her sixteen-year-old daughter Rosemary arrived in Paris on a hot morning in July. They had been on a vacation and now were returning home. Mrs. Gibbs did not feel well. So they decided to rest in Paris for a few days before going on. The city was crowded with tourists. Still, they found a place to stay at a good hotel. They had a lovely room overlooking a park. It had yellow walls, a blue carpet and white furniture.As soon as they unpacked, Mrs. Gibbs went to bed. She looked s palethatRosemary asked to have the hotel's doctor examine her. Rosemary did not speak French but fortunately the doctor spoke English. He took one look at Mrs. Gibbs and said, "Your mother is too sick to travel. Tomorrow I will move her to a hospital but she needs a certain medicine. If you go to my home for it, it will save time." The doctor said he did not have a phone right now. Instead, he would give Rosemary a note for his wife. The hotel manager put Rosemary in a taxi and, in French, told the driver how to find the doctor's house. "It will take only a little while," he told her "and the taxi will bring you back." As the driver slowly drove up one street and down another, it seemed to take forever. At one point Rosemary was sure they had gone down the same street twice. It took almost as long for the doctor's wife to answer the door, then get the medicine ready. As Rosemary sat on a bench in the empty waiting room, she kept thinking, "Why can't you hurry? Please hurry." Then she heard a phone ring some place in the house. The doctor had said he didn't have a phone right now. What was going on? They drove back as slowly as they had come, crawling up one street and down another. Rosemary sat in the backseat filled with dread, her mother's medicine clutched in her hand. Why was everything taking so long? She was sure the taxi driver was going in the wrong direction. "Are you going to the right hotel?" She asked. He didn't answer. She asked again but still he didn't reply. When he stopped for a traffic light, she threw open the door and ran from the cab. She stopped a woman on the street. The woman did not speak English but she knew someone who did. Rosemary was right. The
