Mary Rose of Mifflin Part 15

"I locked myself in," Mary Rose explained with a shamed face. "I was careless and left the key on the outside. Mr. Bracken should have scolded me but he didn't. We've been the best friends and had the nicest time together and now it's going to be nicer because you're here."

She beamed on first one and then the other as she bustled about finding a plate and a knife and fork, making the toast that Mrs. Bracken thought she would prefer to bread and all the time talking in a friendly fashion. She never doubted that what interested her would interest others.

At first Mrs. Bracken regarded her helplessly, as Mr. Bracken had done, but gradually the look of irritation disappeared and at last a smile took its place. It was strange to share a lunch of boiled eggs and tea on the kitchen table with Joseph Bracken. She had not done that since they were first married and were moving into their first home. She hadn't thought of it for years but now it was oddly pleasant to remember the little details of a time before she had been absorbed by clubs and he by business. Neither she nor Mr. Bracken had much to say but Mary Rose talked enough for three. She waited on them with a solicitude that forced them to eat and when they had finished she sent them into the other room.

"I'll wash up. It won't take me a minute."

So, because she told them to, Mr. and Mrs. Bracken drifted into the other room and left her alone with Jenny Lind. Mr. Bracken did not take his hat and mutter that he would be back for dinner. He walked over to the window and stood looking down the street. At last he turned around and looked at his wife who was sitting on the davenport as if she were tired.

"Elsie," he said abruptly, "what ever became of your niece?"

She looked up in surprise. "You mean Harriet White? She's living with the Norrises in Prairieville."

"Wouldn't you like to have her here?" he asked suddenly. "It doesn't seem just right--decent--to let strangers look after your own relations."

Her eyes opened wider. He had never seemed to think whether it was decent or not until now. "But we can't have her here. That was the trouble after her mother died. Children aren't allowed in the house and we didn't want to move."

"How old is she?"

"Thirteen or fourteen. I'm not just sure which."

"A girl of thirteen isn't a child. Send for her, Elsie, and if anyone objects, we can move. But I guess a tenant means something to a landlord and there won't be any objections. We need her, Elsie, as much as she needs us. We need someone young with us. That kid," he nodded toward the kitchen where Mary Rose was l.u.s.tily singing the many verses of "Where Have You Been, Billy Boy?" "has made me realize what we are missing. Why she fussed around me as if--as if," he colored slightly, "as if I were her father. No, it isn't anything new. I've been thinking for some time that we aren't getting all we should out of life. You give your time and strength to clubs and I give mine to business and what does it amount to? What are we working for?

Abstract people aren't the same as your own flesh and blood. What we need is something to bring us together and if Hattie White is anything like that kid she'll keep us good and busy."

Mrs. Bracken slipped across the room and put her hand on his arm.

"I'll be glad to send for her, Joe. I haven't felt just right to leave her with the Whites but I thought you didn't want her and I told myself that my first duty was to you. I'll write today. No, I'll go for her, if you don't mind."

"That's a good girl." His arm slipped around her waist.

Out in the kitchen Mary Rose brought her song to an abrupt close. She thrust her head in the doorway. "I'm all through. Didn't I say it wouldn't take a jiffy? It's been very pleasant but Aunt Kate'll be wondering where I am and so will Grandma Johnson. Good-by."

"Good-by," they chorused. "Come again," they added, as if they couldn't help but speak the hospitable words.

"I shall," Mary Rose called back. "Sure, I'll come again."

CHAPTER XIII

"And Mr. Jerry said that if you weren't so much of an angel you'd be a splendid artist or if you weren't so much of an artist you'd be a splendid angel. It sounds queer the way I say it but I know he meant it for a compliment." Mary Rose and Jenny Lind were posing for the jam poster. It was almost finished and Mary Rose was sinfully proud of it.

Miss Thorley frowned and refused to say what she thought of Mr. Jerry's compliment. Mary Rose frowned, also.

"You don't like Mr. Jerry very much, do you?" she ventured to ask.

"I'm too busy to know whether I do or not." Miss Thorley half closed her eyes and looked at Mary Rose in the funny way she did when she was painting. "My work takes all of my time. Chin up, Mary Rose."

"Yes'm." Mary Rose tilted her chin a little higher. "You aren't under any obligation to think of him, of course, but if your cat was boarding with him and he had borrowed your dog you'd just have to keep him in your mind and heart. And he's worth thinking of. He's a very fine young man. Everyone says so. Jimmie adores him and he hasn't known him a week. You've known him lots longer than that, haven't you?" She spoke as if she could not understand how Jimmie could be so much more clever. It must be on account of the spell that old Independence had put upon Miss Thorley. There couldn't be any other reason for not liking Mr. Jerry. He was so altogether likeable. Mary Rose sighed at life's complications. "I just love Mr. Jerry myself. I can't help it," she went on more slowly. "I wish you did, too," wistfully. "It's much more pleasant when the people you love will love each other. It gives you such a comfortable feeling as if you didn't care if Heaven was so far away. I do think this world would be almost as wonderful as Heaven if everyone would love everyone else."

"There is no doubt of that," Miss Thorley absently agreed with her.

"Then will you try and love my friends?" eagerly. She almost lost her pose in her eagerness. "I'll love yours. Every one! I will! I can because I have a big heart. Did you know that the more you put into a heart the more it will hold? It's the hearts that haven't anyone in them that are so little and hard. I think hearts must be like balloons. You can blow and blow and blow into balloons and there's always room for some more breath."

"Unless they break. Balloons break, Mary Rose, and so do hearts."

Mary Rose looked incredulous. "Mine never did. And anyway I'd rather have my heart break from being too full than get hard because it didn't have anyone in it. I'd like to have the very biggest heart in the whole world!" she cried ambitiously.

"Big enough to hold Mr. Wells? Did you know he was ill, Mary Rose?

His j.a.p came up last night and asked Miss Carter not to play on the piano because Mr. Wells wasn't well and didn't wish to be disturbed."

Miss Thorley's lip curled disdainfully.

"Mr. Wells sick?" Mary Rose was much concerned. "What's the matter?"

Miss Thorley shook her head.

"Haven't you been down to ask?" Mary Rose always had been sent to ask in Mifflin.

"Gracious, no! I shouldn't dare. He'd probably bite my head off."

"He couldn't bite your head off if he was sick. It doesn't seem real neighborly, Miss Thorley. And you are neighbors. You live right over his head. I expect he has dyspepsia and that's the reason he looked so--" she hesitated over a word, "unfriendly. Why when Mr. Lewis, he's the postmaster in Mifflin, had dyspepsia Mrs. Lewis didn't dare say her soul was her own. Mr. Lewis couldn't be cross to people when they came for their mail so he saved it all for Mrs. Lewis. That doesn't seem quite fair, does it, for people to be pleasant to outsiders and save their bad temper for their homes?"

"It isn't fair but I rather think it's human."

Mary Rose shook her head. "Sometimes I think that human and disagreeable mean the same thing because people all say the bad things we do are human. Where did we learn them, Miss Thorley? The Lord made us all good because it wouldn't have paid him to make us bad. Where do you suppose Mr. Lewis learned to snap and Mr. Wells to scold and you to frown?"

Miss Thorley certainly did have a frown. It ran right across her pretty forehead when she said: "Bless me! child, how do I know? That's enough for one day." She put the drawing board on the table and stretched herself luxuriously. "Try and be on time tomorrow, Mary Rose, and I think we can finish it."

"Yes'm." Mary Rose stared at the drawing which was a very wonderful thing to her. "Don't you believe Mr. Bingham Henderson 'll be pleased with it? It's a beautiful picture of Jenny Lind."

"It's a beautiful picture of you, if I do say it," laughed the artist.

Mary Rose drew closer until she could whisper into Miss Thorley's ear.

"I wish Mr. Jerry could see it."

Miss Thorley rose abruptly and pushed her away. "He can. He'll have lots of opportunity to see it when it is on the back of a magazine.

Run along, now. Skip!" She fairly pushed Mary Rose out of the door before she could say anything more about Mr. Jerry. Sometimes it seemed to Mary Rose that Miss Thorley was afraid to hear about Mr.

Jerry.

She went down the stairs slowly and hesitated when she came to Mr.

Wells' door. She knew she should stop and inquire how he was. It would have been a terrible breach of good manners in Mifflin not to ask after a sick neighbor, but Mr. Wells had not been like any neighbor Mary Rose had ever known. Nevertheless he was a neighbor. She tossed her head and ventured closer to the door. There was no answer when she knocked timidly and she tried again. The door was slightly ajar and when her second knock brought no response she ventured to push it open an inch. Mr. Wells might be all alone and need someone. She would just slip in and see. If he didn't she could slip out again.

There was a chilly deserted feeling in the hall that made Mary Rose shiver. She hurried through softly as if in the presence of something that oppressed her. When she reached the door of the living-room she stopped and looked across into the amazed eyes of Mr. Wells, who was lying on the broad couch.

"Oh!" Mary Rose refused to be frightened away by his scowl. "I'm so glad you're able to be up. You are better, aren't you? I was worried when Miss Thorley said you were sick and I just stopped to inquire. In Mifflin when anyone was sick we always went with chicken broth or cup custard or a new magazine. Why, when Lily Thompson had tonsilitis she had eleven different things sent in one day. I helped her eat the eating ones."

"How did you get in?" growled Mr. Wells for all the world like the Big Bear in the story of Goldilocks. Mary Rose had to think what a splendid Big Bear he would make.

"The door was open. I knocked but no one came. I was afraid you might want something. Has your j.a.panese gentleman gone to the drug store?