Mary Rose of Mifflin Part 4

"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 G.o.d, 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.

Wilc.o.x, 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 gla.s.s jar because she never had slept in a cellar--a bas.e.m.e.nt--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."

CHAPTER V

Enveloped in a blue and white checked gingham ap.r.o.n 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 b.u.t.ter 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 G.o.d 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 hara.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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.