Mary Rose of Mifflin Part 6

"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."

CHAPTER VI

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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 b.u.t.ton.

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 s.p.a.ce 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Shelves and birdcage had all disappeared."]

"Why--why!" gasped Mary Rose. She tried to put her head in the s.p.a.ce 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 ap.r.o.n 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 j.a.panese 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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.