When Larry Donovan saw his niece she had changed her shabby boy's suit of blue serge for the clothes that Ella Murphy had outgrown. Ella had astonished and disgusted her mother by lengthening herself, in a single night, it seemed to the outraged Mrs. Murphy, to such an extent that a new outfit was necessary.
"It may be well enough for asparagus and tulips to grow like that, but it's all wrong for a girl," she had said resentfully. "I just wish the Power that lengthened her had to find her dresses and petticoats and things to make her decent to go to the grandmother that's never seen her. Here I am, all but ready to start, an' I have to get her new clothes. Childern may be a blessing, there's folks that say they are, but there's times I can't see anything but the worry and the expense of 'em."
So the lengthened Ella's discarded garments had been left behind for Mrs. Donovan to dispose of. They had been packed away and forgotten until Mary Rose arrived and reminded her Aunt Kate that a perfectly good outfit for a girl of fourteen was in one of her closets.
Fortunately Ella had been slim as well as tall and the middy blouse that Mrs. Donovan tried on Mary Rose did not look too much as if it had been made for her grandmother. The bright plaid skirt trailed on the floor but Aunt Kate turned back the hem which still left the skirt hanging considerably below Mary Rose's shabby shoe tops, much to her delight.
She hung over the machine, her tongue clattering an unwearied accompaniment to the whir of the wheel, as Mrs. Donovan sewed the basted hem.
"Did you know there was an enchanted princess in your house, Aunt Kate?" she demanded excitedly.
Mrs. Donovan had not known it and her surprise made her break her thread. When Mary Rose had explained she grunted something.
"You mean the girl that Mr. Longworthy's crazy about? She's up above an' won't have nothin' to do with men. 'I don't want nothin' in my life but my work,' says she to me, herself. That's all very well for now but let her wait a few years an' she'll sing a different tune or I miss my guess. She ain't enchanted, Mary Rose, she's just pig-headed an' young."
Mary Rose was disappointed. "Mr. Jerry said she was under the spell of the wicked witch, Independence," she insisted. "Wasn't it good of him to take George Washington to board? It's such a relief to have found a pleasant place so near. I'm sure they'll be friendly to him."
Mrs. Donovan mentally planned to slip across the alley and see Mr. Jerry and his Aunt Mary herself about George Washington's board as she looked into the earnest little face so near her own.
"Sure, they will," she said above the whir of the machine. "But you mustn't make friends of everyone you meet, Mary Rose. A city isn't like the country. I suppose you knew everyone in Mifflin?"
"Everyone," with an emphatic shake of her head. "Animals and vegetables as well as people. And everyone knew me."
"Well, it won't be that way in Waloo," Mrs. Donovan explained. "No one knows you an' you don't know anyone. You mustn't go makin' up to strangers. A little girl can't tell who's good an' who's bad."
"She can if she has the right kind of an eye," Mary Rose told her eagerly. "Daddy said so over and over again. He said the good Lord never made bad people because it would be a waste of time and dust when he could just as well make them good. And if you had the right kind of an eye you could see that there was good in every single person. Daddy said I had the right kind. Mine's blue but it isn't in the color, for his eyes were brown and they were right, too. It's something," she hesitated as she tried to explain what was so very dear and simple to her. "It's something to do with the inside and your heart. I shouldn't wonder, Aunt Kate, if you had the right kind. Isn't it easier for you to see that people are kind and good than it is to see them bad?"
It wasn't for Aunt Kate. A two-years' residence in the basement of the Washington had about convinced her that all human nature was sour but she disliked to tell Mary Rose so when Mary Rose so plainly expected her to agree that the world was inhabited by a superior sort of angel. She snipped her threads and drew the plaid skirt from under the needle.
Mary Rose fairly squealed with delight when she was in the white middy blouse and the skirt flapped about her ankles in such a very grown-up manner. Mary Rose's yellow hair had always been bobbed but no one had seen that it was trimmed before she left Mifflin and it hung in rather straight lanky locks about her elfish face. Some of the locks were long enough to be drawn under one of Ella's discarded red hair ribbons and Aunt Kate pinned back the others. The result was a very different Mary Rose from the one who had jumped out of the taxicab a few hours ago. She climbed on a chair and looked at her reflection in the mirror of her aunt's bureau.
"I do think it's too lovely!" she cried rapturously. "You can't ever know, Aunt Kate, how splendid it is to wear skirts. Sometimes," she whispered confidentially, "I used to wonder if I really was a girl. You don't think it will make too much washing?" anxiously. "I shouldn't want to be a burden to you. But I do love this skirt! I wish Gladys Evans could see me!"
"'You can't ever know, Aunt Kate, how splendid it is to wear skirts.'""'You can't ever know, Aunt Kate, how splendid it is to wear skirts.'"
"'You can't ever know, Aunt Kate, how splendid it is to wear skirts.'""'You can't ever know, Aunt Kate, how splendid it is to wear skirts.'"
She was still admiring her new clothes in the mirror when her Uncle Larry came in.
"Hullo," he said in a loud cheery voice. "Who's this? Kate, Mrs. Bracken wants to see you."
Mary Rose tore her eyes from the fascinating reflection in the mirror that she could scarcely believe was herself, and looked at the big broad-shouldered man in the doorway. He had been frowning but the frown slipped away from his forehead when he gazed into Mary Rose's blue eyes, so that he looked very kind and friendly. Mary Rose jumped from the chair and ran over to him.
"I'm Mary Rose," she said a bit shyly. This unknown uncle was so big and strong and he was janitor of this strange two-faced palace. A janitor sounded powerful and important even if Aunt Kate had explained that he wasn't, so that Mary Rose felt a little shy with him.
"Mary Rose, eh?" He picked her up and raised her in his arms until her face was on a level with his. "Sure, I think you're more of a Rose than a Mary," he added as he kissed the face that was as pink as any flower.
Her arms met around his neck. "That's because I'm so happy to be with you and Aunt Kate," she whispered. "You know, after daddy went to Heaven there wasn't anyone in the whole world that belonged to me in Mifflin but George Washington, and my dog that Jimmie Bronson borrowed, and Jenny Lind, and now to have a great big uncle and a beautiful aunt of my very own m-makes me very happy."
"Who's George Washington?" asked Uncle Larry as he found a chair and sat down with her in his arms.
Mary Rose told him about her cat, which was boarding across the alley, and Uncle Larry thought to himself that he would go over and make sure that the cat was all right. It was a thundering shame the child couldn't have her pet with her. He'd like to tell the owner of the Washington a few things if he knew who he was and if there was no fear of losing his job.
"And Jenny Lind," Mary Rose was saying eagerly. "I must show you Jenny Lind." She slipped down and ran into the next room to come back with a birdcage. "Aunt Kate says I may keep her here because there isn't one word in that law about canary birds."
"No, thank God, there isn't," said Uncle Larry. "The old grouch must have forgotten about them." He admired Jenny Lind as much as Mary Rose could wish.
"The real Jenny Lind was a girl with a bird in her throat," Mary Rose explained as she leaned against his knee. "My own grandfather heard it and he told daddy and daddy told me that to hear her sing made a man think he was in Heaven. So when Mrs. Lenox gave me this beautiful bird for my very own, of course, I named her Jenny Lind. Mrs. Lenox called her Cleopatra. Wasn't that a silly name for a bird? Mrs. Lenox must have liked it or she wouldn't have given it to anything. Isn't it the luckiest thing that everyone hasn't the same likes? Just suppose everyone had been like my father and my mother and all the little girls were named Mary Rose? I think it's the most beautiful name in the entire dictionary, but Gladys Evans in Mifflin said it was common. She counted up and she knew seven Marys, with her grandmother and old Mrs. Wilcox, who's deaf and half blind, and four Roses. But there wasn't one Mary Rose!" triumphantly. "And that made all the difference in the world. My daddy chose the Mary because he said there wasn't a better name for a little girl to have for her own and my little mother chose the Rose because she said I was just like a flower when she saw me first. Don't you like it, Uncle Larry?"
"I do!" Uncle Larry could not have told her how much he liked it, but as he listened to her chatter he wondered how on earth Kate was going to make the tenants of the Washington think the child was fourteen.
"And I like your name," Mary Rose was kind enough to say. "And Aunt Kate's, too," she added, as Aunt Kate came back from her interview with Mrs. Bracken.
"Her girl's gone," she said in answer to Uncle Larry's question. "I don't wonder. That's the fourth in three weeks. Seems if she only stays home long enough to hire an' discharge 'em. She heard I had a niece with me an' she wants her to go up every mornin' an' wash the dishes till she gets another girl. So, Mary Rose, if you really want to earn money to pay for George Washington's board, here's a chance."
"Oh!" Mary Rose slid to the floor and clapped her hands. "I do think this is the most wonderful world that ever was. I just wish for something and then I have it."
"That'll happen just so long as you wish for what you can get," Aunt Kate told her.
When Mary Rose was tucked in bed, where she told Aunt Kate she felt like a long green pickle in a glass jar because she never had slept in a cellar—a basement—before, and they always had pickles in their cellar, Aunt Kate explained to her husband about Mrs. Bracken.
"I couldn't say anythin', but, of course, she'd come. Mrs. Bracken had the nerve to tell me she knew Mary Rose wasn't a child for childern weren't allowed in the buildin'. What was I to do, Larry Donovan, but say she'd wash her dirty old dishes? It won't hurt Mary Rose an' I'll give her a hand if she needs it. Isn't it a pity though that Mary Rose couldn't have taken more after her mother's fam'ly? Seems if I never saw such a small eleven-year-old as she is."
Enveloped in a blue and white checked gingham apron of her aunt's, Mary Rose washed Mrs. Bracken's dishes. Mrs. Donovan had brought her up to the apartment and Mary Rose had looked curiously around the rather bare and empty halls. There was something in the atmosphere of them that made her catch Mrs. Donovan by the hand.
"It feels like the Presbyterian Church in the middle of the week," she whispered. "It doesn't seem as if anyone really lived here, Aunt Kate."
"You'll find folks live here," Mrs. Donovan said grimly as she unlocked the Bracken door. "We don't ever get a chance to forget 'em."
Mrs. Bracken had gone out with her husband and there was no one in the apartment that seemed so big and grand to Mary Rose's unsophisticated eyes. But Aunt Kate sniffed at the untidy kitchen and living-room.
"Seems if it was just about as important for a woman to make a home as a club," she said under her breath as she picked up papers and straightened chairs in the living-room. She found the dish pan and showed Mary Rose what to do.
"I know how to wash dishes, Aunt Kate." Mary Rose was in a fever to begin. "I washed them for Lena and no one could be more particular than she was. We got our hot water out of a kettle instead of a pipe." She watched with interest the water run steaming from the faucet. "Wouldn't it be grand if Mrs. Bracken had a little girl so we could wash dishes together? I don't mind doing them all by myself a bit, Aunt Kate. I'm glad to do it. I know there's nothing so splendid as a girl being useful. Daddy told me that and Mr. Mann, the minister, and Gladys Evans' grandmother and all the other grown-uppers. But I think the grandest part is to earn George Washington's board. It's splendid to have someone besides yourself to work for," she added with a very adult air.
She sang to herself as she worked, after Aunt Kate had left her.
"Where have you been, Billie boy, Billie boy?Where have you been, charming Billie?I've been to see my wife, she's the treasure of my life,She's a young thing and can't leave her mother."
It was Lena's favorite song and it had many verses. Mary Rose sang them all with gusto.
"If I didn't make a noise I'd be scared of the quiet," she thought. "I never was in a home that was so little like a home. It's because there isn't anything alive in it. There isn't even a Lady Washington geranium." She was astonished that there wasn't, for in Mifflin pots of geraniums and other plants were always to be seen in sunny windows. "It gives you a hollow feeling—not empty for bread and butter but for people," she decided.
Mary Rose had never lived where there were no live things. "Dogs and cats and birds help to make you feel friendly toward all the world. And so do plants. I guess that's true of all the things God made," she thought as she hung up the dish pan on the nail Aunt Kate had pointed out.
She stood in the doorway, looking back at the clean and tidy kitchen with considerable satisfaction. She had done it all herself and it would have pleased even the critical Lena.
A door across the hall opened suddenly and Mary Rose swung around and looked into the curious face of an elderly woman who was almost as broad as she was tall. Her round face wore a scowl and the corners of her mouth turned straight down.
"Good morning," Mary Rose said in the neighborly fashion that was in vogue in Mifflin.
"H-m." The fat lady eyed her over gold spectacles. "Can't Mrs. Bracken get a full-grown girl to do her work? I thought she was against child labor."
She laughed unpleasantly.
"I'm not working regular," Mary Rose said quickly, with a blush because she was not so large as the fat lady thought she should be. "I'm Mrs. Donovan's niece and I've just come from Mifflin. I'm only washing Mrs. Bracken's dishes until she gets another girl, so I can earn money to pay for George Washington's board."
"George Washington's board?" echoed the fat lady. "Come here, Mina," she called over her shoulder, "and listen to this child. Who's George Washington?" She was frankly curious and so was the maid, who had joined her.
"He's my cat. I've had him ever since I had tonsilitis. Aunt Kate says the law won't let him live here with me, so I'm boarding him over there." And she nodded in the direction of the alley and the hospitable Mr. Jerry.
"Cats here? I should say not!" exclaimed Mrs. Schuneman. She watched Mary Rose as she carefully locked the door of the Bracken apartment. The child puzzled her and when Mrs. Schuneman was puzzled over anything or anyone she had to find out all about them. She had nothing else to do. Once she had been an active harassed woman, busy with the problem of how she was to support herself and her two daughters, but just when the problem seemed about to be too much for her to solve a brother died and left her money enough to live comfortably for the remainder of her life. She had moved from the crowded downtown rooms to the more pretentious Washington and tried to think that she was happier for the change, but really she was very lonely and discontented. Miss Louise Schuneman was too busy with church work and Miss Lottie Schuneman had a bridge club four afternoons a week and went to the matinee and the moving picture shows the other afternoons, so that neither of them was a companion for their mother. Mrs. Schuneman had nothing to do but wonder about the neighbors she did not know and tell her maid how much admired her daughters were and how hard she had worked herself until the good God had seen fit to take her brother from his packing plant. "If you're the janitor's niece you can come in and clean up the mess the plumber made on my floor. It isn't the place of the girl I pay wages to, to clean up the dirt the workmen make."
"Isn't it?" Mary Rose did not know and she followed Mrs. Schuneman into the living-room. "What a pleasant room," she said, when she crossed the threshold, for the sun streamed in through the windows in a way that made even a rather garish decoration seem attractive.
Mrs. Schuneman's grim face relaxed a trifle. "It ought to be pretty," she grumbled. "It cost enough but it don't suit Louise. And Lottie don't like the rug. She says it's too red. But I like red," she snapped. "It's a thankless task to try and please girls who think they know more than their old mother."
"There is a lot of red in it." Mary Rose had to admit that much. "But red is a cheerful color. It makes you feel very warm and comfortable."
"It isn't cheerful to my girls. They won't stay at home, always away, and their old mother left alone. When they were little I gave them all the time I could spare from my work and now they leave me by myself. They think because I have a girl to cook and wash I don't need them."
Mary Rose did not understand and she stood there, just beyond the threshold, uncertainly. But if she did not understand why Mrs. Schuneman's daughters did not stay in the room with the red tug, she realized that Mrs. Schuneman was lonely.
"It's too bad you haven't a pet," she suggested. "A dog or a cat is a lot of company. Why—" a sudden thought came to her. "Just wait a minute. I'll be right back," she called as she ran out of the room.
Before Mrs. Schuneman fairly realized that she had gone she was back with Jenny Lind in her cage.
"I thought perhaps you might like to have Jenny Lind spend the day with you," she said breathlessly. "She isn't just the same as a grown up daughter, but she's lots of company and she sings—she sings," she was rather at a loss to tell how well Jenny Lind could sing, "like a seraphim! They sing in the Bible and sound so grand I've always wanted to hear one though I know there isn't a seraphim that could sing sweeter than Jenny Lind. You can put the cage in that window. She loves the sunshine and she'll sing and sing until you forget you are lonely."
"My gracious me!" murmured Mrs. Schuneman, staring from the eager face to the sleek yellow bird. "I haven't had a canary since I was a girl in my father's house."
"Uncle Larry said the law doesn't say you can't have birds here. It's cats and dogs and children."
"Yes, yes. I know." Mrs. Schuneman walked up to the cage and looked at Jenny Lind, who looked at her with her bright bead-like eyes before she burst into joyous song. "Now, why didn't I think of a canary?" Mrs. Schuneman demanded sharply. "There isn't any reason why I shouldn't have one."
"You're perfectly welcome to Jenny Lind until you get one of your own." Mary Rose was delighted to have Jenny Lind received so cordially. "She'll be glad to spend the day with you. She's a very friendly bird."
"I'll be glad to have her. Perhaps you'll stay, too." Mrs. Schuneman surprised herself more than she did Mary Rose by the invitation that popped so suddenly from her mouth. She had never asked anyone in the Washington to spend the day with her before. "Tell me where you came from and what's your name and how old you are?"
"I came from Mifflin and my name's Mary Rose Crocker and I'm almost el—I mean I'm going on fourteen." She remembered the secret she had with Aunt Kate just in time. A second more and it would have been too late.
Mrs. Schuneman regarded her over the gold spectacles. "Going on fourteen?" she repeated. "You're very small for your age. Why, when my Lottie was fourteen she would have made two of you."
Mary Rose squirmed. The unjust criticism was very hard to bear. She just had to murmur faintly that it would be some time before she would reach fourteen.
"H-m, I thought so." Mrs. Schuneman looked very wise, as if she understood perfectly and there is no doubt that she understood more than Mary Rose. "Well, well," she said, while Mary Rose, scarlet and mortified, stood twisting the corner of Aunt Kate's apron.
"I—I hope you won't tell," she said hurriedly, her eyes on the red rug, "because it's something of a secret on account of the law for this house. I don't understand exactly but Aunt Kate does."
"I've no doubt she does." The corners of Mrs. Schuneman's mouth were pulled down farther than they had been and she looked very, very stern until Jenny Lind broke into joyous song again, when the corners of Mrs. Schuneman's mouth tilted up, slightly. "Well, well," she said again, but not quite so crossly. "So long as you behave yourself and aren't a nuisance I shan't say a word. Where I lived before my brother left me his money there were more children than a body could count. Such a noise and confusion all the time. I was glad to get away from them and come up here where there couldn't be any children——"
"Nor any dogs nor cats," murmured Mary Rose sadly.
"But maybe that's why the place hasn't seemed like home to me."
"Of course it is." Mary Rose knew. "I never heard of a home without children. There wasn't one in all Mifflin." She tried to imagine such a thing but she couldn't do it. "It wouldn't be a home," she decided emphatically.
Mrs. Schuneman regarded her curiously before she gave herself another surprise. "Suppose you go and ask your aunt if you can go out with me and find a bird? I believe you would choose a good one. Louise and Lottie can make a fuss if they want to but I never said a word when they bought a phonograph and a bird will be more company for an old lady than a machine."
They had a wonderful time finding a canary. They visited several shops where birds of many kinds were offered for sale. Mary Rose quite lost her heart to a great red and green poll parrot with fierce red-rimmed eyes.
"You'd never be lonesome if you had him," she whispered. "He could really talk to you."
"Damn! Damn! Damn!" remarked Poll Parrot pleasantly, as if to show that he really could talk. "Polly wants a cracker. Oh, damn! Damn! Fools and idiots! Damn!"
"It isn't conversation I care for. It's too much like having a man around again." Mrs. Schuneman was quite shocked.
After they had made their choice and had a bird in a neat little wooden cage and had bought a fine brass cage for a permanent home they stopped at a confectioner's for a sundae. Mary Rose's cheeks were as pink as pink as they sat at the little table and ate ice cream and discussed a name for the new member of the Schuneman family. They finally agreed on Germania in deference to Mrs. Schuneman's love for her native country and Mary Rose's firm belief that a bird's name should be suggestive of music. "And I've heard that lots of music was made in Germany," she said.
Altogether it was a very pleasant afternoon and they went back to the Washington very happily. Mrs. Schuneman carried Germania in the temporary wooden cage and Mary Rose proudly bore the brass cage. As they went up the steps a man brushed past them. He was tall and thin and had a nervous irritable manner that one felt as well as saw. Mary Rose locked up and smiled politely.
"Good afternoon," she said.
The tall thin man did not answer her. He did not even look at her but hurried on up the stairs.
"That's Mr. Wells," Mrs. Schuneman explained in a hoarse whisper that must have followed Mr. Wells up the stairs and caught him at the first landing. "He's an awful grouch. He's over the Brackens, but if Lottie is entertaining one of her bridge clubs and he's at home he's sure to send his Jap man down to ask her to make less noise. I've never spoken to him in my life. I don't see how you dared."
"I always spoke to people in Mifflin." Mary Rose couldn't understand why she shouldn't speak to people in Waloo.
"Folks don't speak to folks in Waloo unless they've been introduced," Mrs. Schuneman told her gloomily. "The good God knows I've had to learn that. And you're too young to know good from bad," she began, as Aunt Kate had, but Mary Rose interrupted her to explain that she could, that she had the right kind of an eye, and he tried to tell her what the right kind of an eye was.
"You look through your heart with it," vaguely. "I don't understand just how for your eyes are here," she touched her face, "and your heart's here," and her hand tapped her small chest. "But that's what daddy said. He called it the friendly eye. Being friendly to people, he said, was as if you had a candle in your heart and the light shines through your eyes. Oh, Mrs. Schuneman, I do believe Germania is going to like it here." For Germania was twittering as if she did find her new home to her liking.
They had scarcely transferred Germania from the wooden cage to the shining brass one and hung it in the window when Miss Lottie Schuneman came in. Mary Rose looked at her eagerly. Could she be the enchanted princess Mr. Jerry had spoken of? But Miss Lottie was short and plump like her mother and her face was round and rosy. She did not bear the faintest resemblance to any princess Mary Rose had ever read of. It was disappointing.
"What have you there?" Miss Lottie asked at once. "You can't have pets in this flat, you know."
"You can have canary birds," Mary Rose told her quickly. "Uncle Larry said the law never spoke of them."
"Uncle Larry said that, did he?" Miss Lottie began but her mother broke in with an eagerness that was very different from the querulous way in which she usually spoke:
"I've got to have something alive here to keep me company. You don't know how lonesome it is for a woman to have nothing to do when she's been as busy as I was. There isn't anyone for me to talk to but Mina, and she's paid to work, not to listen. You and Louise bought a phonograph. I guess I can have a bird if I want one."
"My word!" Miss Lottie put her hands on her hips and stared at her mother. She laughed softly, indulgently. "Sure, you can have a bird if you want one. But don't let it wake me up mornings."
"Wouldn't you just as soon be wakened by a bird singing as a steam radiator sizzling?" asked Mary Rose. "Unless you live all by yourself on a desert island you've got to be wakened by some kind of a noise. I think a bird singing is just about the most beautiful noise that ever was."
"So do I," agreed Mrs. Schuneman. "And you needn't worry, Lottie Schuneman. I don't complain of your phonograph nights, I leave that to Mr. Wells, and you needn't find fault with my bird mornings."
"I'm not finding fault, far be it from me; only when Mr. Wells sends down word that your new pet is a nuisance you can answer him yourself."
"How could anyone say a bird was a nuisance?" Mary Rose was shocked. "Why, it can't be that late!" for the dock on the mantel called out five times and she looked at it in wide-eyed amazement. Never had an afternoon run away any faster. "I must go. I've had a perfectly wonderful time, Mrs. Schuneman, and I hope that Germania will be happy with you in her new home."
There was a wistful note in her voice that reminded Mrs. Schuneman that Mary Rose had recently come to a new home. She patted Mary Rose on the shoulder and told her to come again.
"Come whenever you like. I'm alone most of the time and you can be free with me," meaningly. "My tongue isn't hung in the middle to wag at both ends."
"You can't have a kid running in and out all the time," objected Miss Lottie, when Mary Rose had gone.
Mrs. Schuneman stopped snapping her fingers at Germania and looked at her daughter. "There isn't much about this house that you let me have as I want it. You took me away from my old friends and brought me up here where it's so stylish I don't know a soul. I wonder I haven't lost my voice, I've so little chance to use it. We've been here for seven months now and though there's dozens and dozens of people pass my door every night and morning, there's not one of them ever stops. The janitor and his wife are the only ones I can talk to and I have to find fault to get them up here. You and Louise are out all day. You don't stay here."
"You don't have to stay here, either," yawned Miss Lottie. She had heard all that before, very, very often. "We've told you a million times to go out."
"Where'll I go?" asked her mother sharply. "Where'll I go? I can't run about the streets and the stores six days in the week. A woman's got to be home some time and if I find that child amuses me I'm going to have her here when I want her. You needn't say another word, Lottie Schuneman. So long as I pay the bills I'll have something to say about my own house."
"I was only telling you the kid might be a nuisance," muttered Miss Lottie.
"And I was telling you I'd do as you do, choose my own friends. That child's the only soul that has ever looked at me in a friendly way since I came to this house and I'm going to see her when I want to."
Mrs. Donovan could scarcely believe her ears when Mary Rose poured out the story of the afternoon.
"Old Lady Schuneman's been crosser than two sticks ever since she came here. Maybe it is because she's lonesome, I dunno. Seems if a canary won't do much for her but, for the land's sakes, Mary Rose, don't put one in every flat."
"Wouldn't that be grand!" Mary Rose stopped paring potatoes for supper to look at her aunt with admiration. "It would be like living inside an organ, wouldn't it. I think it would be perfectly lovely."
When Mary Rose went up to Mrs. Bracken's the next morning she took Jenny Lind with her and placed the cage on the kitchen table.
"I can't bear to be alone," she had explained to Aunt Kate. "If I don't have a friend with me I feel as if I was shut up in a dark closet."
First Mary Rose went into the big living-room and picked up papers, straightened the chairs and raised the shades as she had seen her aunt do the day before. It was a very splendid room to Mary Rose but there was something about it that made her frown as she stood in the doorway.
"It needs something. Even the chairs don't look as if they really knew each other. It doesn't feel as if people ever had a good time in it." She shook her head and thought of the shabby sitting-room in Mifflin—not big enough to swing a cat in, daddy had said—where she and daddy and Jenny Lind and George Washington and Solomon and Lena had been crowded together. Everyone had had good times there.
She winked back a tear as she went down the hall. She glanced in at an open door and stopped short as she found that she was looking into the black eyes of a woman on the bed.
"Are you Mrs. Donovan's niece?" the woman said faintly. "Come in. Gracious, but you're small for your age! You washed up very nicely yesterday. I didn't close my eyes last night and I'm not feeling well today, so I'm not going to get up for a while. I wish you would tell your uncle that Mrs. Matchan can't practice this morning. I must get some sleep. What's that in the kitchen?" she demanded as she heard a happy chirp-chirp.
"That's Jenny Lind." Mary Rose was all sympathy for this lovely lady who could not sleep. For a moment she had thought that she might be the enchanted princess but if she was Mrs. Bracken she was a married lady and Mary Rose had never heard of a married princess. All the princesses she knew ceased to exist when they began to live happily ever after.
"Jenny Lind?" asked Mrs. Bracken.
"My canary. I brought her for company. I never was in a house by myself and it's lonely if you're only going on fourteen," faltered Mary Rose, fully conscious that Mrs. Bracken did not care for canaries.
"Well, I can't have her in my kitchen. She makes me nervous. Put her out in the hall and shut the bedroom door. When you have washed the dishes I may let you make a cup of tea." And she closed the black eyes which had looked at Mary Rose in such a chilly way.
Mary Rose went out on tiptoe. She meant to close the door softly but she was so indignant that it would slam. Put her Jenny Lind out in the hall where cats could get her? She would not. Even if cats were forbidden to enter the Washington some cat might not know the law and slip in. She would take no risk. She nodded encouragingly at the bird as she looked about the kitchen. Near the sink was an open cupboard with three shelves, broad and high enough to hold a birdcage. She would put the cage on the lowest shelf and then if Mrs. Bracken came out, she would push the door shut.
"You'd better go to sleep too, Jenny Lind," she cautioned in a low voice. "The lady doesn't like you. She thinks you're noisy." She did not tell Jenny Lind what she thought of the lady, but shut her lips firmly and began her work. She did not sing that morning. She did not even look up to smile and nod to Jenny Lind, but kept her eyes on her dishes, her lips pressed into an indignant red button.
Suddenly there was a whir—a rattle—and she did look up to see that the cupboard had vanished. Shelves and birdcage had all disappeared. Nothing was left but a vacant space and an open door. Mary Rose dropped the dish she held. Fortunately it was a kitchen bowl, but it would have been the same if it had been one of the best cups.
"Shelves and birdcage had all disappeared.""Shelves and birdcage had all disappeared."
"Shelves and birdcage had all disappeared.""Shelves and birdcage had all disappeared."
"Why—why!" gasped Mary Rose. She tried to put her head in the space where the shelves had been to see where Jenny Lind had gone.
"Jenny Lind!" she shrieked suddenly. She could not help it. If your pet canary was suddenly snatched from you by some mysterious power, I rather fancy you would shriek, too. "Jenny Lind!"
The crash of the kitchen bowl or Mary Rose's astonished shriek brought Mrs. Bracken from her bed. She stood in the doorway, one hand clutching the kimono she had thrown around her.
"You must be more quiet," she said crossly. "How can I sleep when you are making such a noise? And if you break any more dishes I shall have to charge you for them. It's pure carelessness."
"It's Jenny Lind," gulped Mary Rose, too frightened to think of dishes. And she tried to make Mrs. Bracken understand that Jenny Lind had been there, in that hole in the wall, and that now—Oh, where was she?
Mrs. Bracken shrugged her shoulders. "It's the dumbwaiter," she yawned. "Your bird has gone up to Mr. Wells or possibly higher. If it's Mr. Wells I don't suppose you'll see the bird again. He's a very peculiar man."
Mary Rose did not wait to hear another word. With Aunt Kate's big blue and white checked apron on, the dish mop in her hand, and a great fear in her heart, she dashed up the stairs and pounded on the door of the apartment above. Mr. Wells came himself and if he had looked cross and forbidding the night before he looked a thousand times crosser and more forbidding now. Indeed, he exactly fulfilled Mary Rose's idea of an ogre.
"Please don't hurt Jenny Lind," sobbed Mary Rose, as soon as she could gather breath to speak. "I'll take her right away."
"Hurt who? Who's Jenny Lind?" growled the ogre.
"My bird! my Jenny Lind! She came up to your house with a dumbwaiter." Mary Rose hadn't the faintest idea of what a dumbwaiter was and it sounded horrible to her. "Please, please, give her to me at once!" She fairly danced in her impatience. She would have rushed into the apartment but Mr. Wells stood in the doorway.
"The dumbwaiter?" Mary Rose had never heard a more unfriendly voice. He called to someone behind him and a Japanese man came and peered under Mr. Wells' arm as he held it against the frame of the door.
"Sako has taken nothing from the dumbwaiter this morning," Mr. Wells said very coldly after he had exchanged a few words with his servant. "But if you have lost your bird it is only what you must expect. Pets are not allowed in this house." And he scowled fiercely enough to frighten anyone but the owner of a lost canary.
"They are if they're not children nor cats nor dogs," insisted tearful Mary Rose. "Uncle Larry said the law never says one word about birds. Oh, are you quite sure Jenny Lind isn't in your house?" she wailed.
"I told you we have taken nothing from the dumbwaiter," impatiently. He thought he was wonderfully patient with the child. He could have ordered her out of the building at once. "Your bird may have gone up to the next floor."
"Perhaps she has." Mary Rose was on the stairs before he finished the sentence. "I'm sorry for bothering you," she called back, "but if one of your family was lost I rather think you'd try to find her."
Her voice rang out shrill and clear and it was such an unexpected sound in the Washington, where children's voices were forbidden, that old Mrs. Johnson opened her door in a spasm of curiosity. She closed it abruptly when she met the cold unfriendly glance of Mr. Wells' black eyes, and shook in her shoes.
Four doors faced Mary Rose when she reached the third floor. She knocked on all of them not to waste time. Two doors remained firmly closed. The other two opened simultaneously. In one stood a girl with yellow hair and blue eyes and in the other was a young man who promptly changed the morose expression he had put on when he rose for a pleasanter one as he glanced across at Miss Blanche Carter before he even looked at Mary Rose. Miss Carter looked at Mary Rose first and then at Mr. Robert Strahan.
"Oh, please," Mary Rose was almost, if not quite, in tears, "have you seen Jenny Lind?"
They stared at her. The only Jenny Lind they had ever heard of had been quietly in her grave for many years. They looked at each other. Mr. Strahan added a satisfied grin to his pleasant expression, for he had wished to know Miss Carter ever since he had met her on the stairs the day after he had moved into the Washington, but Fate had refused to bring them together. He determined to make the most of this rare opportunity as he kindly questioned Mary Rose.
"Who is Jenny Lind?"
"My canary," sobbed Mary Rose. "I put her on the shelf in Mrs. Bracken's kitchen and she—she disappeared!"
"Cats," suggested Mr. Strahan with a very knowing glance for Miss Carter.
Mary Rose shook her head. "Cats aren't allowed here. It was a dumbwaiter, Mrs. Bracken said." Her voice was filled with anguish. How hateful city life was!
"Oh! I thought it was the milkman." Miss Carter turned and ran into her flat, Mary Rose at her heels. After a moment's hesitation, in which he called himself a bashful idiot, Mr. Strahan deserted his doorway for his neighbor's. On the top shelf of a cupboard like that which had been in Mrs. Bracken's kitchen Mary Rose saw a bottle of milk. She groaned. But Miss Carter gave a pull somewhere and sent it higher. There on the lower shelf, swinging unconcernedly in her cage, was Jenny Lind. Mary Rose gave a joyous shriek.
"I thought I'd never see her again. I can't thank you, but I'll remember you as long as I live. I—I feel as if you'd saved her life." She shivered as she remembered the snap of Mr. Wells' black eyes, the click of his heavy jaw, when he had said that pets were not allowed in the building.
"What is all this excitement?" questioned a soft voice behind them, and Mary Rose whirled around and stared at another girl.
Now that her anxiety in regard to Jenny Lind was relieved, Mary Rose had time to think of other things. She brushed the tears from her eyes, and her face was wreathed with a dewy smile as she asked eagerly:
"Please, which—which of you is the enchanted princess?" One of them must be. She knew it by a funny prickle down her back.
Both girls laughed, the yellow-haired one and the brown.
"Princesses aren't enchanted now." Miss Carter pulled a lock of Mary Rose's yellow hair. "They have their eyes too wide open."
"But Mr. Jerry said there was, that in this very house was a most beautiful princess who was under the spell of a wicked witch. He said the old witch's name was Independence." Her words fairly ran over each other, she was so afraid something would happen before she could deliver Mr. Jerry's message to the princess. "And he said to tell the princess that the prince wasn't ever going to Jericho, but was going to stay right here on the job."
Miss Carter looked significantly at the brown-haired girl. "That message isn't for me," she told Mary Rose. "Independence and I are strangers. I can't bear the thing. I quite agree with Mr. Jerry that she is an old witch. Isn't someone a picture, Bess," she asked, "with her birdcage and checked apron?"
"She surely is." The impatient frown that had marred Miss Thorley's face at the mere mention of Mr. Jerry's name slipped away. "I must paint her. She'll make a fine ad. Who are you, honey?"
And Mary Rose told them who she was and how she had come from Mifflin to make her home with Aunt Kate and Uncle Larry in the cellar-basement, she meant; and how she had had to board out George Washington and had taken Jenny Lind to Mrs. Bracken's for company while she earned money to pay for George Washington's board.
"By jinks, what a jolly story," murmured Mr. Strahan who still clung to his neighbor's doorway and his opportunity. The two girls looked at him and the three smiled involuntarily.
"I must go back and finish the dishes," Mary Rose announced suddenly. "Mrs. Bracken won't like it if I stay away any longer. I'm sorry I bothered you," she smiled tremulously. "But I just had to find Jenny Lind. Thank you for your trouble. Good-by."
"Come and see us again?" The invitation came in a chorus.
Mary Rose stopped abruptly. "Is that an honest and true invitation?" she asked doubtfully. "Aunt Kate said I mustn't ever be a nuisance to the tenements because children aren't allowed here. I'm not a child, she said, because I'm going on fourteen, but I had to promise to be careful of the tenements."
"Bless the baby," murmured Miss Carter as she and Mr. Strahan stood in the hall and watched Mary Rose's head go down, down.
"I thought children were barred?" asked Mr. Strahan quickly, he was so afraid that Miss Carter would disappear also.
"I thought pets were barred, too. She's a quaint little thing. I suppose she is homesick. A city apartment house is not like a home in a small town," she said, as if she knew, and she sighed.
"It is not!" He agreed with her emphatically. He had come from a small town himself and he knew. "I think I'll make a little story out of this. I'm a newspaper man, you know, and there isn't anything a city editor likes better than he does a human interest story. I have a hunch that there is a lot of human interest in that kid."
"I fancy you are right. I'm a librarian myself, and I should be at my library this blessed moment. I'd far rather go down and help Mary Rose," and she laughed scornfully because she had such simple tastes.
He looked as if he admired them. "If you feel that way you surely aren't under the spell of that wicked witch Independence that Mary Rose talks of." There was nothing scornful in his laugh. It held so little scorn and so much admiration that she flushed.
"Independence!" she shrugged her shoulders. "I learned long ago that independence is just another word for loneliness. My friend, Miss Thorley, doesn't agree with me. We have very warm arguments over it."
"They haven't been warm enough to disturb me. You're very quiet neighbors. Doesn't the very quiet get on your nerves sometimes? It's something just to hear people, when you are alone and have no one to talk to."
"Lonely! You?" She was astonished. "I don't see how a young man could be lonely." Evidently her idea of masculine life was a merry round of social pleasure.
His laugh was a trifle bitter. "A man can be lonely for exactly the same reason a girl can," he asserted. "I've lived here for three months, and this is the first time I've spoken to you."
The color deepened in her cheeks. "I suppose I shouldn't be talking to you now but—Mary Rose—and we are neighbors. One does get so suspicious living with suspicious people," apologetically.
"Please don't be suspicious of me. I'm the most harmless man in Waloo. I'm too busy hanging on to my job to be dangerous. I propose a vote of thanks to Mary Rose for bringing us together. All in favor say aye. The ayes have it." He held out his hand.
She laughed consciously, but after a second she gave him her fingers. "It is pleasant to be able to speak to one's neighbors," she admitted with a hint of formality that in some way pleased Mr. Strahan.
Mary Rose stopped at Mr. Wells' door as she went downstairs. It would be but friendly to tell him that Jenny Lind was found, he must be anxious. But she hesitated before she rapped on the door, very gently this time.
Mr. Wells had not lost any of his grimness when he opened it. He had on his hat and he looked to Mary Rose's startled eyes as tall as the steeple of the Presbyterian Church in Mifflin.
"Well, what now?" he snapped.
Mary Rose caught her breath. "I thought you would like to know that Jenny Lind is safe." She lifted the cage so that he could see for himself how safe and comfortable Jenny Lind was. "She was on the lowest shelf of the dumbwaiter. The enchanted princess's milk bottle was on the top shelf." And she chuckled. Now that she was no longer frightened, Jenny Lind's adventure seemed a joke.
It was not a joke to Mr. Wells. "A city apartment house is no place for pets—or children," he said and shut the door.
Mary Rose stared at the mahogany panels. "Crosspatch," she whispered. And then she said it louder, "Crosspatch!"
The door opened as if by magic and Mr. Wells came out and shut it behind him.
"Did you say anything?" he asked coldly.
Mary Rose was too startled and too honest not to tell the truth.
"I said crosspatch," she faltered and waited bravely for the deluge.
The two looked at each other. The tall man with the nervous, irritable face and the little girl with the birdcage in her hand. She did not say that she had called him a crosspatch, and kindly Discretion whispered in Mr. Wells' ear that it would be wise to leave well enough alone. Without another word he stalked by Mary Rose down the stairs.
Mary Rose followed meekly. "It's a lucky thing, Jenny Lind, that you were not on his dumbwaiter. He's not what I call a very friendly man," she murmured.
She told Mr. Jerry all about it that afternoon when she ran over to see how George Washington was doing as a boarder. Mr. Jerry watched her curiously.
"Poor little kid," he thought. "She's up against it for fair with a cold-blooded bunch like that." He was very sympathetic and kind and quite enthusiastic over his new boarder. He cheered Mary Rose amazingly and lifted her to the seventh heaven of delight when he suggested that she should ride downtown with him in the automobile when he went for his Aunt Mary.
"You may take Jenny Lind and George Washington with you," he was good enough to say.
Mary Rose's dancing feet moved in a more sedate measure. "I think Jenny Lind has had ride enough for one day. And George Washington likes his four feet better than he does an automobile. He won't mind if we leave him behind."
"Then you may sit on the front seat with me," Mr. Jerry promised.
"It's very exciting living in the city," sighed Mary Rose, when she was on the front seat beside him. "I've been here only three days and see all that's happened. Oh, there's the lady who found Jenny Lind—and the enchanted princess, too!" she cried as they passed Miss Thorley and Miss Carter. "Isn't that the enchanted princess, Mr. Jerry?" She twisted around so that she could look into his face. He colored and his eyes seemed to darken as he spoke to the two girls. Miss Thorley nodded curtly, but Miss Carter waved a friendly hand. "My," sighed Mary Rose, "if I were a prince I wouldn't let any old witch Independence keep her enchanted."
"I wonder how you would prevent it," muttered Mr. Jerry under his breath. "Saying and doing, Mary Rose, are two very separate and distinct things."
"I know." Mary Rose felt quite capable of discussing the subject. "Mr. Mann, the Presbyterian minister in Mifflin, preached a whole sermon about that. He said the Lord didn't ever give you what you want right off quick. You had to work for it, and the more precious it was the harder you had to work. I should think that a beautiful princess would be the most precious thing a prince could work for, shouldn't you?"
Mr. Jerry took his hand from the wheel to squeeze Mary Rose's brown fingers. "I should!" he said solemnly. "I do, Mary Rose, I do!"