Mary Rose of Mifflin Part 7

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 s.h.i.+vered 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 p.r.i.c.kle 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 ap.r.o.n?"

"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-bas.e.m.e.nt, she meant; and how she had had to board out George Was.h.i.+ngton and had taken Jenny Lind to Mrs. Bracken's for company while she earned money to pay for George Was.h.i.+ngton'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 a.s.serted. "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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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.