Strange as the Washington seemed to Mary Rose, it was not very different from any other large city apartment house where people lived side by side for months, for years, sometimes, without becoming acquainted. It was not worth while, some said; neighbors change too often. You don't know who people are, others thought. In such close quarters one cannot afford to know undesirable people. The advantage of an apartment house is that you don't have to know your neighbors, murmured a third group. Consequently the tenants came and went and one could count on a hand and have fingers to spare, the few who exchanged greetings when they met on the stairs.
This was an appalling state of affairs to country-bred Mary Rose, who had been brought up in a friendly atmosphere. In Mifflin everyone knew everyone and was interested in what happened. When joy came to a neighbor there was general rejoicing, and when sorrow touched a family there was a universal sympathy, while the little between pleasures and perplexities lost nothing and gained considerably by the knowledge that they were shared with others. Mary Rose was intensely interested in this new phase of life, if she could not understand it. It amazed her when she counted how many people were over her small head.
"In Mifflin I didn't have anyone but God and the angels," she told Aunt Kate, "but here there's the Schunemans and the Rawsons and the Blakes and Mr. Jarvis and Miss Adams and Mrs. Matchan and Miss Proctor and Mr. Wilcox and his friend. In Mifflin we lived side by side, you know, and not up and down. We ought all to be friends when we live so close together, shouldn't we?" wistfully.
Aunt Kate tried her best to tell her that they were all friends, but she couldn't do it.
"What's the good of tellin' her folks are friendly when they don't look friendly? Seems if a body can't frown with her face an' smile with her heart at the same time. An' frowns are just as catchin' as germs. You naturally don't pat a growlin' dog an' so you don't smile at a frownin' person. I've al'ys seen more frowns 'n smiles in the Washington."
But Mary Rose did her best to make friends, because that was what she had done always and because that was the only way she knew how to live. And one by one her unconscious little efforts to unlock the gates of reserve that suspicion and indifference and consciousness had placed over the hearts and lips of the people she was thrown with began to make some impression.
Even Mrs. Willoughby, who had wept ever since her mother died, smiled when she saw the little girl in the checked apron that was so much too big for her, with her birdcage in her hand, and forgot to complain of the unusual noise in the hall. Mary Rose smiled, too, and when Mrs. Willoughby spoke of Jenny Lind, Mary Rose offered to loan her bird.
"She'll make you feel happier," she said. "She did me, when my daddy went to be with my little mother in Heaven. Jenny Lind can't talk," she admitted regretfully, "but she can sing and she's—she's so friendly!"
And Mr. Willoughby came down that very night and thanked the Donovans for the loan of Jenny Lind and for what Mary Rose had said and done. Larry Donovan and his wife looked at each other after he had gone. It was not often that they were thanked by a tenant.
Miss Adams would have died before she would have confessed to anyone but Mary Rose that she hated Waloo, she hated the Washington. Mary Rose looked at her with wide open eyes, too astonished to be shocked that anyone could hate a world that was as beautiful and as full of wonderful surprises as Mary Rose found this world to be.
"I don't see how you can be lonesome when there are people above you and below you and in front of you and behind you and right across from you. Why, you're almost entirely surrounded by neighbors," she cried, as if Miss Adams could not be almost entirely surrounded by anything more desirable. "There are almost as many people in this house as there are in the Presbyterian Church in Mifflin and no one was ever lonely there except on week days. Don't you like your neighbors?"
"I don't know them," confessed Miss Adams, mournfully.
"You don't know the people who live right next door to you!" Mary Rose had never heard of such a situation. "Why, when the Jenkses moved from Prairieville Mrs. Mullins, who'd never set eyes on one of them before, took over a pan of hot gingerbread so she could get acquainted right away. Of course the people here are all moved in, but you could borrow an egg or a cup of molasses, couldn't you? And take it back right away. That would give you two excuses to call."
"I couldn't do that." Miss Adams shivered at the mere thought. "It isn't that I care to know any of them, Mary Rose, only—it makes me so mad that I don't!" with a sudden burst of honesty.
"Couldn't you ask about a pattern or what to do for a cold in the head or how to get red ants off of a plant? But you haven't any plants. Wouldn't you feel more friendly if you had a beautiful pink geranium growing in your window?"
"There isn't sun enough in this flat to keep a geranium alive," grumbled Miss Adams, who seemed determined to be lonely and faultfinding.
Mary Rose sighed. "Of course, no one can have the sun all the time," she said gently, as if to excuse old Sol for not lingering longer in Miss Adams' small apartment. "I'll let you have Jenny Lind for a while tomorrow," she suggested after a moment of frowning thought. "She'll cheer you up."
Miss Adams wanted to refuse to be cheered by Jenny Lind, but she had not the courage, and when Mary Rose brought the bird the next morning she brought also a small glass dish filled with pebbles on which rested a little green bulb.
"Inside it is a Japanese lily," she said, and there was both pride and awe in her voice. "Don't you wonder how God ever folded it up in such a small package? Mr. Jerry's Aunt Mary was going to throw it away. She said it was too late, that it ought to have been planted months ago, but I said wouldn't she please give it a chance. My daddy used to say that was all people needed, just a chance. Mrs. Mullins had one in Mifflin, I mean a lily, and it didn't need hardly any sun. It just grew and grew. You can sit beside it in the window and pretend you're a Japanese queen. Don't you think it's fun to pretend? And imagine? It's almost the same as having everything you want. I've imagined I was a queen on a throne and the whale that swallowed Jonah—he must have been so surprised—and a circus rider and an angel with a harp and a pussy willow. I don't know which I liked the best. It helps a lot when things go wrong to imagine they're right. You'll like to see the Japanese lily come out of its bulb, won't you?"
Miss Adams was polite enough to say she would, although she frowned at the glass dish as she set it in the window. If Mary Rose had seen as much of the world as she had, she wouldn't think that to imagine a thing was the same as having it.
"I'll tell Mr. Jerry's Aunt Mary you're much obliged," Mary Rose suggested when she left.
Another day Miss Proctor found her leaning against the door of the apartment she shared with Mrs. Matchan, listening entranced to the music that Mrs. Matchan was making with her ten fingers and her piano.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Mary Rose looked up with shining eyes, not at all abashed at being discovered listening. "It's better than any circus band I ever heard. It's like Jenny Lind when the sun is shining and she has had a leaf of fresh lettuce. It makes me feel in my heart like soda water feels in my nose, all prickly and light," vaguely. "It's—it's wonderful! Take this place," she moved generously away from the crack that Miss Proctor might put her ear to it. "You can hear better. When I grow up I want to play just like that." Mary Rose always wanted to do what other people could do.
"Do you?" Miss Proctor looked at her and forgot that she had considered children unmitigated nuisances. She actually opened the door. "Come in," she said, "and tell Mrs. Matchan that you like her music."
And the result of Mary Rose's attempt to put in words the feeling she had in her heart that was like soda water in her nose, was that Mrs. Matchan went down to the Donovans' and asked if she might be permitted—permitted—to give Mary Rose music lessons.
"You could have knocked me down with the pin feather of a chicken," Aunt Kate told Uncle Larry. "I supposed, of course, she'd come tearin' down to find fault with Mrs. Rawson for runnin' her sewin' machine last night an' I was all ready to tell her that each of us has some rights, but no, it was to offer to give Mary Rose lessons on her piano. She says the child's got talent an' feelin' an' she'd like to see how she'd express them. She had to tell me twice before I could take it in. It isn't often that folks come down here to give a favor. Seems if they only find the way when they want to complain. I never knew Mrs. Matchan to do anythin' for anybody before an' we've lived under the same roof for most two years now."
She had another surprise when Bob Strahan tramped down the basement stairs with a big box of Annie Keller chocolates under his arm. He solemnly presented the candy to Mary Rose.
"In payment of a debt," he explained gravely when Aunt Kate and Uncle Larry stared and Mary Rose giggled. "She helped me with a very important bit of work," he added, although the addition did not make the matter any clearer to the Donovans nor to Mary Rose.
"You bet she helped me," he told Miss Carter when he went up and met her in the lower hall. They had encountered each other on the stairs several times since the day of Jenny Lind's adventure and had made the amazing discovery that they had formerly lived within fifteen miles of each other and had many mutual friends. "If it hadn't been for Mary Rose, I wouldn't be on the staff of the WalooGazettetoday. They're cutting off heads down there, and I'm sure mine was slated to go, but the chief's strong for human interest stuff, especially kid stuff. He says that every living being, however hard his outside shell is now, was once a kid, and sometime the kid stuff will get to him for the sake of old times. Mary Rose and the cat she's boarding out saved my neck and I'm still a man with a job."
"That's splendid." Miss Carter tried to speak with enthusiasm, but she could not look enthusiastic. She was tired and discontented with life; all the sparkle had gone out of her face.
Bob Strahan saw it and was sorry. "Say," he said impulsively. "I've two tickets for a show in my pocket this minute. You've known me over forty-eight hours. Is that long enough to make it proper for you to go with me? I'll give you the names of the banker and the minister in my old home town and you can call them up on the long distance for references."
"The idea!" A bit of sparkle crept back into Miss Carter's face and she laughed. "Louis Blodgett's chum doesn't need any reference. Louis has told me quite a little about you," significantly. "It seems perfectly ridiculous that you were living right next door and I never knew it."
"And you might not know it now if it hadn't been for Mary Rose and that canary of hers. Gee! I'm glad I took her that box of chocolates."
With Jenny Lind's cage in her hand, Mary Rose knocked at Miss Thorley's door.
"We've come to have our pictures taken," she told Miss Carter, when she opened it. "The princess, I mean the other lady," she colored pinkly as Miss Carter laughed, "said we were to advertise Mr. Bingham Henderson's jam." Mary Rose always made a careful explanation. "If she would like two birds I'm almost sure that Mrs. Schuneman would loan her Germania."
"Do you want two birds, Bess?" called Miss Carter, and Miss Thorley came in.
She wore a faded blue smock over her crash gown and looked more beautiful than before to Mary Rose's admiring eyes.
"I think I have two birds," she laughed, and patted Mary Rose's head and snapped her fingers at Jenny Lind. "But don't tell me old Lady Grouch is so human as to have a canary."
"Old Lady Grouch?" Mary Rose did not know whom she meant.
"Schuneman, is that her name?" absently. Miss Thorley was studying Mary Rose from behind half shut eyes. Just how should she pose her?
"Oh, but she isn't grouchy!" Mary Rose flew to the defense of her new friend. "She was just lonesome. Now that she has Germania for company, she is very, very pleasant. I go to see her every day."
Miss Thorley shrugged her shoulders. "Every one to their taste. Stand here, Mary Rose, so that the sun will fall on that yellow mop of yours. Would your heart break if I took off that hair ribbon? I'd rather your hair was loose."
"Aunt Kate put it there," doubtfully.
"I'll put it back before Aunt Kate sees you. Now, just hold Jenny Lind's cage under one arm and these under the other." She handed her a couple of blue and white jars, labeled with big letters—"Henderson-Bingham. Jam Manufacturers." "Can you hold another? Don't say yes if you can't, for it is tiresome to pose when you're not used to it. Now then, how is that, Blanche? Isn't she ducky? You know it's moving day, Mary Rose, and you won't trust anyone but yourself to move what you like best, your bird and your jam."
"I just did move," proudly, "from Mifflin to Waloo."
"Exactly. Quaint, isn't she?" Miss Thorley murmured to Miss Carter. "How old are you, Mary Rose?"
Before Mary Rose could stammer that she was going on fourteen Miss Carter broke in to say that she was off.
"Be good to Mary Rose," she begged. "And, Mary Rose, when you are tired, say so. Miss Thorley will forget all about you when she is interested in the picture and she'll let you stand there until you drop. I know. You have a hard pose with your arms like that and when you are tired be sure and say so."
"Oh, run along, Blanche, and leave us alone," Miss Thorley said impatiently as she got her drawing board and brushes and sat down beside the little table that held her paints.
Miss Carter only waited to make a face at Mary Rose before she shut the door and left the artist and her model together. Neither spoke for a few moments. Mary Rose was too interested in watching Miss Thorley's wonderful fingers and Miss Thorley was too intent on her work for conversation. At last Mary Rose could keep still no longer.
"Are you really an enchanted princess?" she asked eagerly.
"I should scarcely call myself that, Mary Rose. A working woman is the way I say it."
"Then what did Mr. Jerry mean? Don't you think he is an awfully nice man? He makes me think of Alvin Lewis in Mifflin, only Alvin isn't quite so stylish. He is a clerk in the drug store in Mifflin and he was real pleasant. When Gladys and I only had a nickel he'd let us have a glass of ice cream soda with two spoons. He was such a pleasant man. But what did Mr. Jerry mean," she returned to her mutton with a suddenness that made Miss Thorley blur a line, "when he said you were under the spell of the wicked witch Independence?"
"How should I know?" And Miss Thorley frowned in a way that made Mary Rose wish she wouldn't. It quite spoiled her face to frown with it.
"What is Independence?" Mary Rose frowned, too. As Aunt Kate had said, frowns were contagious. Mary Rose had caught one now in a flash.
Miss Thorley took up a handful of brushes and regarded them intently before she said slowly: "Independence is the greatest thing in the world, Mary Rose. It means that I can live as I choose, where I choose, that I can pay my own bills, buy my own clothes and food, that I can do exactly as I please and as I think best. The independence of women is the most wonderful thing in this wonderful age."
Mary Rose looked puzzled. Mr. Jerry had not spoken of it as if it were such a wonderful thing. She looked around the pretty room with its simple furnishings and then at Miss Thorley.
"Does it mean you aren't ever going to be married?" she asked doubtfully. In Mifflin all the girls as big as Miss Thorley meant to be married.
"It means exactly that." Miss Thorley's pretty lips were pressed closer together. "Work, Mary Rose, is the most important thing in life."
But Mary Rose was horrified. "Aren't you ever going to make a home for a family?" she cried. She couldn't believe that was what Miss Thorley meant and she dropped a jam jar. "You don't have to stop work to do it," she cried eagerly and helpfully after she had retrieved the jar. "Mrs. Evans, she's Gladys' mother, says she'd think the millennium was here if she didn't have any work to do. She has five children at home and three in the cemetery." Miss Thorley shuddered. "She can cook and sew and sweep and play the piano and she belongs to the Woman's Club and the Missionary Society and the Revolution Daughters and the Presbyterian Church. You don't ever have to stop working to make a home for a family," she repeated with a nod of encouragement to Miss Thorley who looked disgusted instead of pleased as Mary Rose had expected she would look.
"That isn't the kind of work I care for," and she shrugged her shoulders. "I should think your Mrs. Evans would die."
"She hasn't time to die," Mary Rose told her seriously. "She's too busy taking care of Mr. Evans and her family and helping other people. She's a fine woman, everyone said in Mifflin. When I grow up I want to be just like her," emphatically.
"Oh, Mary Rose! You want to be something besides a drudge. Women have other things to do now but cook and sew and look after crying babies."
"Babies don't cry unless there's a pin sticking into them or they have the colic, and, anyway, I think babies are the dearest things God ever made. I'd like to have twelve when I grow up, six boys and six girls. I don't ever want an only child. It's too lonesome. Don't you ever get lonesome, Miss Thorley?"
"I have my work," Miss Thorley told her briefly.
Mary Rose watched her at her work. She admired Miss Thorley's swift, sure strokes, but she drew a sigh that came from the tips of her shabby shoes as she murmured: "All the same I don't understand just what Mr. Jerry meant."
Miss Thorley did not answer, unless a frown could be considered an answer. She painted for perhaps five minutes longer, but her strokes were not so swift nor so sure. At last she threw down her brushes as if she hated herself for doing it, but realized she could do nothing else.
"Mary Rose," she said crossly. Even Mary Rose could see that she was not pleased with something. "I don't feel like painting today. It's too warm or something. If I could find a little girl about," she looked critically at Mary Rose, "about ten years old, I think I'd ask her to go out to the lake with me."
"Oh!" Mary Rose forgot that she was posing and dropped both jam jars. She almost dropped Jenny Lind, too. She remembered Aunt Kate's request as she clung to the cage. "Would one going on fourteen be too old?" Her voice trembled and her heart beat fast for fear Miss Thorley would say that was far too old. "If she should be a long, long time, perhaps three years, before she got to fourteen?"
Miss Thorley's face was as sober as a judge's as she considered this. "Well," she said at last very slowly, "one going on fourteen might do. Run and ask your aunt and I'll meet you downstairs."
Mary Rose obeyed after she had hugged Miss Thorley. "You're an angel," she exclaimed fervently, "a regular seraphim and cherubim angel, if you are independent."
She almost fell down the stairs and made such a racket that a door on the second floor opened promptly. Mary Rose caught her breath. She was afraid to see whose door was ajar. If that cross Mr. Wells should catch her she was afraid to think what he might do. But it was not Mr. Wells' door that had opened, nor Mr. Wells' face that looked at her. An elderly woman stood staring at her impatiently.
"Dearie me!" she was saying, "I thought the house was falling down."
"No, ma'am." Mary Rose was very apologetic. "I just stumbled a teeny bit. You see I'm in such a hurry because Miss Thorley's going to take me to the lake and I must carry Jenny Lind downstairs and tell Aunt Kate and be at the front door in a jiffy." She would have darted on but the elderly lady put out a wrinkled hand and caught Mary Rose's blue and white checked apron.
"Who's Jenny Lind?" she demanded.
"This is Jenny Lind." Mary Rose held up the cage. "The best bird that ever had feathers. She came with me from Mifflin and Miss Thorley's painting our picture for Mr. Henderson Bingham."
The old lady looked at Jenny Lind in a strange way. "I haven't seen a canary bird for years," she murmured, more to herself than to Mary Rose.
"'I haven't seen a canary bird for years,' she murmured.""'I haven't seen a canary bird for years,' she murmured."
"'I haven't seen a canary bird for years,' she murmured.""'I haven't seen a canary bird for years,' she murmured."
Mary Rose answered her impulsively as she usually answered people. "Would you like to have her visit you until I come back? I'm not going to take her with us. She wouldn't be any trouble. She's used to visiting. All you have to do is to let her have a chair or a table to sit on." She offered the cage generously.
The old lady seemed to hesitate. She looked like Gladys' grandmother, only not so comfortable, Mary Rose thought. At last she held out her hand.
"I declare I don't know but I will let you leave it with me. I'm all alone, and even a bird is company."
"Jenny Lind's splendid company. Shall I put her on the table for you? There! I'll run up before supper and get her. And don't you worry, because Uncle Larry said the law doesn't say one word about birds." And before startled Mother Johnson could ask her what she meant by the law, she ran off, stumbling down the two flights of stairs to the basement. Only the special Providence that looks after children saved her.
Aunt Kate was in the kitchen and she exclaimed in surprise when she heard that Mary Rose was going to the lake with Miss Thorley and had left Jenny Lind to spend the afternoon with the grandmother on the second floor.
"My soul an' body!" she said. "Whatever will you do next!"
Mary Rose saw Mr. Jerry in his car in the alley and ran to the open window to tell him of the pleasure that was in store for her.
"Mr. Jerry! Oh, Mr. Jerry! I'm going to the lake with the enchanted princess. Don't you wish you were me?"
Mr. Jerry waved his hand as he smiled and nodded, but Mary Rose did not wait to hear whether he would like to change places with her, for she had to slip out of the plaid skirt and middy blouse into a white frock that Aunt Kate had shortened.
"Isn't it the luckiest thing that Ella had so many beautiful clothes!" she said breathlessly. "I shouldn't want to go out with Miss Thorley in that horrid boys' suit."
She was ready first, and as she waited in the lower hall she talked to Mrs. Schuneman about Germania. Miss Thorley found them together when she came down, looking exactly like a princess to Mary Rose, in her white linen skirt and lingerie blouse and with a big black hat all a-bloom with pink roses on her red-brown head.
"I was ready first," Mary Rose cried happily, "but I didn't mind waiting, for I was talking to a friend, to Mrs. Schuneman. She has Germania, you know. This is my friend, Miss Thorley, Mrs. Schuneman." She introduced them politely.
Miss Thorley nodded carelessly, but even a careless glance told her that there was not the sign of a grouch on Mrs. Schuneman's fat red face that day. Indeed, it quite beamed with friendliness as she hoped that they would have a good time.
"You see, she's very pleasant when you know her," Mary Rose explained as they walked over to the street car. "That's why it's so important to know people. If you don't really know them, you might often think they were grouchy when they aren't."
Lake Nokomis was on the outskirts of Waloo and was a popular pleasure resort for Waloo people from June until September. A band played in the pavilion, there was a moving picture show, a merry-go-round with a wheezy organ, a roller coaster and many other amusement features, as well as several ice-cream parlors. There was always a crowd drifting from one place to another, and Mary Rose fairly danced with delight when she and Miss Thorley became a part of the good-natured throng.
They were standing beside the enclosure in which the fat Shetland ponies waited for the children who were fortunate enough to possess a nickel to pay for a ride on their broad backs or a drive in a roomy carriage, when Mary Rose saw Mr. Jerry. She had sadly refused Miss Thorley's invitation to ride because she did not wish to leave her alone, and Miss Thorley would not ride one of the ponies nor drive in one of the carriages.
"There's Mr. Jerry!" squealed Mary Rose when she saw him. She could scarcely believe her eyes, but she waved her hand. "He's the man who boards my cat, you know," she explained to Miss Thorley. "And he's very pleasant and friendly, just like a Mifflin man."
Miss Thorley looked first surprised and then displeased and then she frowned and shrugged her shoulders as if she did not really care whether Mr. Jerry was there or not. She gave him rather a curt greeting when he joined them with a cheery:
"Hullo, Mary Rose. Are you thinking of a canter in the park?"
There was nothing curt in the greeting Mary Rose gave him. She smiled enchantingly and slipped her hand into his. "We're just watching the ponies. Aren't they loves? Miss Thorley thinks they are too small for her to ride, but I don't see how she can be sure unless she tries. Do you know Mr. Jerry, Miss Thorley? He's making such a comfortable home for George Washington. She didn't feel like painting today," she explained to Mr. Jerry, "so we came out for a change. Oh, I do just love that blackest pony, but no one seems to choose him!" She pointed an eager finger to the corner where the blackest and fattest pony stood neglected.
"Suppose you choose him. I've money to treat a lady friend to a ride." And he made a pleasant jingle with the coins in his pocket.
"Miss Thorley invited me, but I didn't like to leave her alone. Would you stay with her, Mr. Jerry? It would be real friendly of you to me and the pony, for if I don't take him I'm afraid no one will, and he'll feel so sad when he goes home tonight. Will you take good care of Miss Thorley, Mr. Jerry?"
"I will," promised Mr. Jerry emphatically, although Miss Thorley exclaimed hurriedly that she could take care of herself. He found a bench from which they could watch Mary Rose as she made the black pony happy and rode around the ring, prouder than any peacock.
"Funny kid, isn't she?" remarked Mr. Jerry, realizing that if there was to be any conversation between them he would have to begin. "I wish you could have seen her when she came over with her cat to ask if we would take the beast to board. Who's the owner of that joint of yours? I'd like to tell him what I think of him for separating a homesick little girl from her pet."
"It would be rather a nuisance if the place was overrun with cats and dogs and children," Miss Thorley said coldly. "There wouldn't be much peace or comfort in the house."
"The peace and comfort you've had don't seem to agree with all of you," remarked Mr. Jerry pleasantly. "I've seen some of your neighbors who look as if they needed a big dose of noise and discomfort."
"You must mean Mr. Wells. He does have rather a touch-me-not, speak-to-me-never manner. And the fuss he makes if there is any noise in the place after ten o'clock! Imagine him with a cat or a bird." The picture her imagination made was so impossible that she laughed.
Mr. Jerry drew a contented sigh and ventured to move a trifle nearer. He started to say something and then changed his mind. He wouldn't say anything just then that might bring back that distant expression to her face. He knew very well how cold and forbidding she could be. So instead of saying what he wished to say he talked of Mary Rose and George Washington, and she listened and smiled and made holes in the turf with her parasol, but never once did she speak of the conversation she had had with Mary Rose which had caused her to throw down her brushes and treat herself to a holiday.
Mary Rose's face was an incandescent light as, with a good-by pat for the blackest pony, she ran back to them.
"I felt like a queen!" she cried. "It was splendid. Oh, won't you have a ride?" She looked from one to the other. "I'll pay. I'm making lots of money. You needn't worry another minute about George Washington's board," she told Mr. Jerry. "It's as good as paid."
He laughed. "I won't worry and I shan't ride the ponies. My legs are too long. I'd have to tie double knots in them to keep them off the ground. But I'll take a turn on the merry-go-round with you." He nodded toward that attractive circle of animals as it went around and around to the accompaniment of the wheezy organ. "I dare you to come with us." He looked straight at Miss Thorley.
"Oh, please!" Mary Rose clapped her hands. "You will, won't you, Miss Thorley? You needn't be afraid," she whispered. "I'm sure he's strong enough to hold you on."
Miss Thorley looked anything but afraid as she frowned at the merry-go-round and at Mr. Jerry impartially. But when she met Mary Rose's eyes, filled with a great hunger for merry-go-rounds, she laughed softly and told Mr. Jerry that, of course, she wouldn't take a dare, she never had and she never would, and she thought she'd choose the giraffe because his long neck gave a rider so much to cling to.
It was not easy for Mary Rose to choose a mount. Each animal seemed so very desirable that she sighed as she finally selected an ostrich for the same reason that she had taken the black pony. "I haven't seen a single person ride him and I expect he feels neglected."
But when they mounted the merry-go-round Miss Thorley stepped into a gay little sleigh drawn by two fat polar bears. After he had seen Mary Rose properly astride the neglected ostrich Mr. Jerry took the seat beside Miss Thorley.
"I promised Mary Rose that I wouldn't let you fall out," he said, as if that could be the only reason he would ride beside her.
Much to Mary Rose's amazement, Miss Thorley was satisfied with one ride, although Mr. Jerry very handsomely offered them a turn on each animal. Mary Rose could not resist such an invitation and one by one she rode on a giraffe, a camel, and a lion.
"Mercy, mercy, Mary Rose!" Miss Thorley said at last. "You must stop. Your head will be completely turned. And we must go home."
"Won't you ride back with me?" asked Mr. Jerry. "I have the car. If you will, we have time for a sundae first."
Mary Rose's heart all but stopped beating as she waited for Miss Thorley to say they would. It didn't seem possible that anyone, even an independent woman, could refuse such an alluring invitation. But grown-ups were queer. Mary Rose had found that out long, long ago. She did not hesitate for even the fraction of a second when Miss Thorley turned and left the decision to her. A moment later they were in the ice cream parlor that was like a cool green cave after the heat and the light outside.
Mary Rose chose a chocolate sundae and she giggled as she looked at the rich brown sauce. "When I was little, nothing but a baby," she said, "I thought that it was the yellow in the eggs I ate that made my hair yellow. Do you suppose if I ate lots and lots of chocolate, I'd ever have hair as brown as Miss Thorley's. Isn't it beautiful, Mr. Jerry?"
"Very beautiful!" Mr. Jerry agreed as heartily as she could wish.
Miss Thorley flushed uncomfortably under the admiration of Mr. Jerry and Mary Rose. "Mary Rose," she said hurriedly, "don't you know you shouldn't make personal remarks?"
"Eh?" Mary Rose's attention was centered in the well she was making in her ice cream for the chocolate syrup.
"You shouldn't talk of people's hair and eyes." The rebuke was far more feeble than Miss Thorley had meant it to be.
"You shouldn't!" Mary Rose was so surprised that she left the well half made. "Why, in Mifflin when we liked the way a friend looked we always told them."
Miss Thorley pushed away her sundae. "Mary Rose, if you say Mifflin again, I'll scream."
Mary Rose's cheeks turned as pink as Miss Thorley's cheeks had turned. "That's what Aunt Kate says sometimes, but if you like a place the way I like Mifflin you just have to talk about it. It's—it's in your heart."
"Talk about it to me, Mary Rose," Mr. Jerry offered kindly. "It doesn't make me cross to hear of a place where people are kind and friendly. My conscience is perfectly clear." He spoke as if he were very proud of his clear conscience.
Miss Thorley pushed back her chair. "It doesn't make me cross," she said, "only——"
They waited courteously to hear what would follow "only," but nothing ever did. Miss Thorley just jumped up and said instead that really they must go. Mr. Jerry's eyes twinkled as he agreed with her.
It was far more pleasant riding to town in Mr. Jerry's automobile than it would have been in the crowded street car. Mary Rose called Miss Thorley's attention to the crowd as she snuggled close to her in the spacious tonneau.
"I'm playing it's mine," she whispered, "and that Mr. Jerry is my own driver. Wouldn't it be fun to drive with him forever and ever?"
Mr. Jerry heard her and sharpened his ears for the answer.
"You'd get tired riding forever with anyone, Mary Rose. There is only one thing that people never get tired of."
"What's that?" Mary Rose hungered to hear.
"Work." Mr. Jerry sniffed. They could hear him in the tonneau.
Mary Rose shook her head. "Gladys' mother did. She said she had never had enough fun to know whether she would get tired of it or not, but she'd had plenty of chance to know there were some things she never wanted to see again, and one of them was work and the other was the red and black plaid silk dress that the dressmaker spoiled."
Mr. Jerry chuckled on the front seat and after a second Miss Thorley laughed, too.
"Mary Rose," she said very distinctly, "I'll have to give you a broader vision. You have entirely too narrow an outlook."
"What's that, Miss Thorley? What's a broader vision?" Mary Rose couldn't imagine.
It was Mr. Jerry who answered. "In this particular case, Mary Rose, it's seeing far too much for one and not enough for two."
As they rolled up to the Washington Miss Carter came down the street with Bob Strahan whom she had met on the car. It was amazing, now that they were on speaking terms, how often they met. Bob Strahan stopped to open the door of the automobile and help Miss Thorley out, and Mary Rose proudly introduced Mr. Jerry who boarded her cat. They all laughed and talked together for a few minutes and then Mary Rose hopped from the back seat to the front.
"I'll go around and see George Washington, if you don't mind," she said. "Hasn't it been just the loveliest afternoon, the kind you're always hoping for but never really expect to have," with a sigh of rapture. She patted Mr. Jerry's arm lovingly. "Isn't Miss Thorley a darling! She told me all about that Independence. It isn't a witch as you thought, Mr. Jerry, it's something about wanting to pay her own bills and live alone. I don't understand it," she frowned, "but that's what she said."
Mr. Jerry frowned too, as he turned into the alley. "She doesn't know," he said briefly. "Take it from me, Mary Rose, that Independence is an old witch, and she's enchanted more girls than you could count."
Mary Rose looked doubtful. "If Miss Thorley really is enchanted," she suggested, "we must find something to break the spell. I told her she wouldn't have to stop work to make a home for a family, Mr. Jerry," she whispered encouragingly.
"Did you?" Mr. Jerry laughed. "What did she say?"
Mary Rose knit her small brows before she answered. "I don't think she just agreed with me, but I'll explain it to her again."
When Mary Rose ran up to get Jenny Lind young Mrs. Johnson met her at the door and smiled pleasantly.
"You're the little girl for the canary?" she said. "I was wondering—Mother Johnson seems to have taken a fancy to you—and I wondered if you would go out for a little walk with her every morning. I'll pay you ten cents a day."
Mary Rose's eyes popped open. In Mifflin little girls were expected to do what they were asked to do and were never paid for such tasks.
"Why, of course, I'd be glad to," she said promptly.
"That will be splendid. You see she won't go by herself and I have my own engagements. The doctor said she must have some exercise," sighed Mrs. Johnson, as if the doctor had made a most unreasonable demand. "Suppose you come up tomorrow about eleven? That will give you time for a good walk before lunch."
"I'll soon be making money enough to send for Solomon," Mary Rose told Mrs. Donovan, her voice trembling with excitement. "There's ten cents a day from Grandma Johnson and ten cents from Mrs. Bracken for washing the breakfast dishes and a quarter from Miss Thorley. Why, Aunt Kate, I never thought there was so much money in the world as what I'm going to earn by myself!"
Aunt Kate laughed as she hugged her. "There's no one in the house can be cross to her," she told Uncle Larry proudly.
Promptly at eleven o'clock the next morning Mary Rose was waiting for Mother Johnson who grumbled and fussed before she could be persuaded to take the walk the doctor had recommended. But, once outside, the sky was so blue, the air so pleasant, and Mary Rose so sociable that her face grew less peevish.
"Where shall we go?" Mary Rose paused at the corner. "You see I'm a stranger here. In Mifflin I knew the way everywhere. Aunt Kate said there was a little park over this street. Perhaps it would be pleasant there?"
Mother Johnson said grumpily that it made little difference to her, all she wanted was to have her walk over and be home again.
"But you'll feel better after your exercise," promised Mary Rose. "I should think you'd love to be outdoors. Your home is very pretty, but it isn't like the outdoors, you know. Did you ever see the sky so blue? It looks as if it was made out of the very silk that was in Miss Lucy Miller's bridesmaid's dress. It was the most beautiful dress Miss Lena Carlson ever made. Miss Lena goes out sewing for a dollar and a half a day." And she described the wedding at which Miss Lucy Miller had worn the frock made by the dollar and a half a day seamstress with an enthusiasm that was undimmed by Mother Johnson's lack of interest. From the wedding and Miss Lucy it was but a step to other Mifflin happenings. They found themselves in the park before they knew it.
"It's something like the cemetery in Mifflin," Mary Rose said after she had looked about. "Of course, there aren't any graves but there is a monument and seats. Do you want to sit down? Oh, do look, grandma! Do look," and she pulled the black sleeve beside her.
Since she had come to Waloo Mother Johnson had not been called grandma and she had missed the grandchildren she had left behind more than she realized. Mary Rose had called most of the older women in Mifflin grandma—Grandma Robinson and Grandma Smith. It was a friendly little custom that was in vogue there and so she had unhesitatingly called old Mrs. Johnson grandma. Mrs. Johnson was so surprised that she had nothing to say when Mary Rose pulled her to a bench and pointed a trembling finger at a little brownish-grayish animal which stood up in the grass and looked at them with bright eyes.
"Do you see what that is?" Mary Rose's voice shook. "It's a squirrel! A really truly squirrel in this big city! Here, squirrelly, squirrelly," she snapped her fingers. "I wish I had something to feed you!" despairingly as the squirrel ran away.
"'It's a squirrel! A really truly squirrel in this big city!'""'It's a squirrel! A really truly squirrel in this big city!'"
"'It's a squirrel! A really truly squirrel in this big city!'""'It's a squirrel! A really truly squirrel in this big city!'"
Grandma Johnson had her purse in the bag she carried and she opened it and took out five cents. "Here," she said crossly, "go and get something to feed him with if that's what you're crying for."
Mary Rose straightened herself and threw her arms around Grandma Johnson's knees. "Why—why!" she gasped, "I do think you are a regular fairy godmother!"
Grandma Johnson had been called several names since she had been in the Washington. Once she had heard Hilda in the kitchen speak of her as "the old hen" and had almost had apoplexy. And Larry Donovan had muttered that she was "an old crank" which was what one might expect of a mannerless janitor but no one had ever called her a fairy godmother. It sounded rather pleasant. She actually smiled as Mary Rose ran over to the popcorn wagon on the corner and came back with a bag of peanuts.
"What wouldn't I give if Tom had a girl like that!" she sighed. "But then he'd have to move. Children aren't allowed in the Washington."
Mary Rose insisted on an exact division of the nuts. "You want to feed them just as much as I do." She hadn't a doubt of that. "So you must have half. When the squirrel sees how many we have perhaps he'll bring his brothers and sisters and have a squirrel party," she giggled.
Indeed, it did seem as if the squirrel had sent out invitations when he saw the heap of nuts that Mary Rose and Grandma Johnson had beside them for, one after another, other squirrels came until half a dozen clustered around them. They were very tame. One even climbed up Mary Rose's arm for the nut she held between her lips and Grandma Johnson lured another to her shoulder.
"Aren't they ducks?" Mary Rose demanded. A red poppy blossomed in each of her cheeks and her eyes were lit with candles. "I do believe the Lord sent them here to be pets for people who live in houses where there's a law against dogs and cats and children. I think it was—it was wonderful in Him! Don't you? Shall we come every day and feed them? Then they'll really get acquainted with us and we'll be friends. Oh, I'm so glad that I know you—that we know each other!" She threw her arms around the startled Grandma Johnson and gave her another hug.
They met Mrs. Schuneman on the steps when they went home and Mary Rose had to stop and tell her the wonderful news, that the Lord had put pets in the park for people who couldn't have them in their homes. She introduced Grandma Johnson and Mrs. Schuneman, who had looked at each other furtively when they had met in the halls but who had never spoken until now.
"It's just as well not to make friends with the people who live in the same apartment house you do," young Mrs. Johnson had told Grandma when she came to make her home with her son. "You can't tell who they are."
"You can tell they are human beings," Mother Johnson had muttered but that was not enough for her daughter-in-law and the older woman had been too depressed by the strangeness of everything about her to make friends for herself.
She even hesitated now when Mary Rose's inquiry after the health of Germania brought an invitation to step in and see how much at home Germania was. But in Mary Rose's opinion one could not refuse such an invitation and she drew Grandma Johnson in to admire and to exclaim over Germania, who did seem very contented. They had a very pleasant little visit and Mrs. Schuneman eagerly asked them both to come again. Mother Johnson gathered courage to say she would, she'd be glad to.
"Haven't we had a gorgeous time?" Mary Rose asked as they went up the stairs. "I think it's very kind of you to let me go walking with you. I'm so glad the doctor said you needed exercise."
And Grandma Johnson smiled and patted the small shoulder. There was not a trace of the old peevishness on her face which was like a withered apple. "I don't know but I'm glad, too, Mary Rose. I'll see you tomorrow."
"You certainly will. Won't the squirrels be glad to see us? Good-by." She ran down the stairs with the ten cents in her hand. The coin dropped on the landing and rolled away. She was looking for it when Mr. Wells came up and almost walked over her. Mary Rose was on her feet in a flash.
"Good morning," she said politely. "I'm looking for the dime I dropped. I earned it walking with Grandma Johnson. We had the grandest time in the park. Did you know that there are pets there for people who can't have them in their homes? They're squirrels and the Lord put them there. Oh, here's my dime. Good-by." And she ran on while Mr. Wells stood and stared after her as if he thought he or she had lost their wits and he was not sure which.
He went on up and met Larry Donovan.
"Donovan," he said sharply. "I thought children were not allowed in this building?"
"No more they are, Mr. Wells," Larry tried to speak pleasantly. "There's a clause in every lease that says so."
"Then why do you allow a child to run all over the place?" Mr. Wells wanted to know and he scowled fiercely.
Larry straightened himself and a dull red crept up into his face. "If you mean my niece by your remarks," he said stiffly, "she isn't a child. She's—she's," he stumbled, "she's goin' on fourteen."
"She has a long time to go before she ever reaches fourteen," grimly. "Do Brown and Lawson know you have a child living with you?"
"They do not." Larry's tone was as short and crisp as pie crust.
"H-m," was all Mr. Wells said to that but he looked at Larry before he went into his apartment and slammed the door.
"The ol' chimpanzee 'll tell Brown an' Lawson," Uncle Larry told Aunt Kate when he came down and found her in the bedroom. "That's what he'll do. He's goin' to complain about Mary Rose."
Aunt Kate stared at him. "An' what'll you do, Larry Donovan? What'll you do then?"
"I'll tell them they know what they can do if they don't like it," he answered gruffly. "I've been a good man for the place. I've kept the peace with the tenants though, God knows, it's been no easy job. I've kept the bills down an' made a lot of the repairs myself an' if Brown an' Lawson want to fire me just because my niece, my wife's niece, an inoffensive little kid, is livin' with us why they can fire. That's what they can do. I'd be ashamed to stay an' work for them."
"Larry," Mrs. Donovan put her arms around her husband and kissed him. "Larry Donovan, I'm that proud of you I can't see!" And she put her hand over her wet eyes. "Then you like to have Mary Rose here?"
"I'll tell you the truth, Kate, dear. The little thing has made herself necessary to me. That's what she's done. We got along all right without her but that was because we didn't know what it was to have a kid in the house. No, sir, Mary Rose is one of the fam'ly and she stays with the fam'ly. She's good for the tenants, too. See what she's done for Mrs. Willoughby an' Mrs. Schuneman. The ol' lady called me in to hear her bird sing this very morning. An' Mrs. Bracken, who's so busy club workin' for other folks she hasn't any time for her home, tells me Mary Rose is the biggest kind of a help to her. I thought she was goin' to jaw me about fixin' that back window 't sticks a bit. I should have fixed it before but it clean slipped my mind, an' I up an' asked her how Mary Rose was doing. She forgot the window to talk about the kid. 'Ain't she small for her age?' says she. 'I guess you don't know much about childern,' says I. 'Mary Rose's as big as she should be!' 'When I was fourteen,' says she, 'I weighed a hunderd an' ten poun's.' 'That's a good weight for a growing girl,' says I. 'I don't believe you weigh much more'n that now, Mrs. Bracken,' says I. And that ended it. She weighs a hunderd an' thirty if she weighs a pound. An' then there's the Johnsons. Young Mrs. Johnson said this morning that it would be a blessed relief if Mary Rose'd get the ol' lady out every day. I guess there's a place for her here all right, whether ol' Wells sees it or not."
"Wouldn't it be just as well for you to tell Brown an' Lawson your story first?" asked Mrs. Donovan. "Of course, when it's a tenant again' a janitor the janitor don't stand much show. But if you tell the agents that your wife's niece, a girl goin' on fourteen, is staying with you an' makin' herself useful to the tenants they won't come here with a lot of confusin' questions when Mr. Wells has had his say. Seems if it was the one who spoke first who gets the mos' attention. Haven't you any errand that could take you down there the first thing in the mornin'?"
Larry laughed scornfully. "I have that. I can al'ys find a complaint to carry if I'm so minded. I guess you're right an' it won't do no harm to get our side in first. Where's Mary Rose now?"
"She's gone over to Mr. Jerry's. The cat's board's overdue." Evidently Aunt Kate thought that overdue board was a laughing matter for she chuckled. "Mary Rose was horrified when she remembered she'd forgotten to pay but I said Mr. Jerry 'd understand that she wasn't used to business. So long as she paid in the end a little waiting wouldn't matter."