Mary Rose of Mifflin Part 2

"They don't care to hear about any but the fourteen. Don't you ever forget."

"I won't," promised Mary Rose solemnly, too puzzled just then to think it out. "But what about George Was.h.i.+ngton? He's just a cat." She looked dubiously at George Was.h.i.+ngton and shook her head. Nothing could be made of him but a cat. "An orphan cat!" she added firmly.

"I know, dearie." Aunt Kate's arms tightened around her. "An' I hate to ask you to give him up. I know you love him but if you keep him here it may mean that your uncle will lose his job an' if he did that there wouldn't be any roof over our heads nor bread for our stomachs."

"Oh!" Mary Rose stared at her. "Would that cross old bachelor owner make him not be janitor?"

Her aunt nodded. "We'll have to find someone to take care of him--just for a while," she added quickly as she saw two big tears in Mary Rose's blue eyes. "Some day, please G.o.d, we'll have a home where we can have him with us."

Mary Rose stood very still, trying in vain to understand this strange world to which she had come, a world where children and cats and dogs were not considered precious and desirable. Suddenly a bell rang.

"That's Mrs. Rawson," murmured Aunt Kate. "I'll bet she wants me to run up an' look at her windows again. I'll be right back, Mary Rose,"

she promised as she hurried away to answer the insistent jangle of Mrs.

Rawson's bell.

CHAPTER III

Left alone, Mary Rose caught George Was.h.i.+ngton to her heart and stood staring about the room. She shook her head. This might be a beautiful palace but she was very much afraid that she was not going to like it.

She walked slowly into the next room and then to the kitchen, whose windows faced the alley.

Across the driveway she could see a broad open s.p.a.ce, the yard of a rambling old-fas.h.i.+oned house. A man was cleaning an automobile and through the open window Mary Rose could hear his cheery whistle. There was something about the old-fas.h.i.+oned house and the s.p.a.cious yard that reminded Mary Rose of Mifflin, where people loved children and had pets. The puzzled frown left her face, and clutching George Was.h.i.+ngton closer she went out of the back door and across the alley.

"If you please," she said, her heart beating so fast that she was almost choked, "would you take a cat to board?"

She had to say it a second time before the man heard her. He looked up in surprise. He had a frank, pleasant face with twinkling eyes and Mary Rose liked him at once.

"Hullo, brother," he said, quite as cordially as a Mifflin man would have spoken. "And where did you drop from?"

"I didn't drop," answered literal Mary Rose. "I came across the alley," and she nodded toward the big apartment house. It now turned a white brick face to her. Mary Rose almost forgot her errand when she saw that. In Mifflin houses were the same color all the way around.

"Why--why, it's two-faced!" she cried. "The front is all red and now the back is all white. It's just like an enchanted palace."

"It is an enchanted palace," grumbled the man.

Mary Rose flew to his side. "Oh, is there a princess there? A beautiful princess?" she begged.

The man colored under the tan the sun and wind had spread over his face. "There is," he admitted, "a most beautiful princess."

"And a witch?" insisted Mary Rose. "A wicked witch?" The color flew into her face also.

"The wickedest witch that could ever enslave a beautiful princess. Her darned old name is Independence!"

Mary Rose did not understand and she thought it was an odd name for a witch but she wished to know more. "And is the prince there?" she demanded thirstily.

The man's face turned redder than before. "The prince is here," he said sadly. "Right here. And he might as well be in Jericho," he added under his breath.

"I've heard the Presbyterian minister speak of Jericho but I never read of it in any fairy-tale. Oh, dear! I hope the prince won't go there.

I want him to stay here and rescue the pretty princess from that wicked witch In-independence," she stumbled over the unfamiliar word.

The man looked at her. He had to look away down to find her, for he was tall, over six feet, and Mary Rose was not much more than half that, but when he finally did find her Mary Rose was amazed to see the look of determination that came into his sunburned face.

"He'll do it," he said, half under his breath. "It's all very well for a girl to be independent, but she needn't be so darned independent that she won't listen to a word a man says."

"I don't think I understand," Mary Rose ventured to say when there was a long pause.

Her new friend laughed. "No, of course, you don't." He put his hands on her shoulders. "As man to man," he said, "the modern girl is getting to be almost too much of a problem for the modern man. I don't suppose you understand that, either. But wait ten or fifteen years and you will. G.o.dfrey! I feel sorry for you. If they keep on as they've started what will they be in ten years? Did you say you were living over there?" He looked toward the white wall.

Mary Rose nodded her yellow head. "I thought perhaps you might like to take a cat to board. An orphan cat," she explained pityingly.

Jerry Longworthy swallowed a laugh when he saw that there was real trouble in her face. "Suppose you climb into the car and tell me why you're looking for a boarding place for an orphan cat?"

Mary Rose smiled radiantly as she obeyed and, with George Was.h.i.+ngton cuddled against her, she told him all about it.

"My Uncle Larry," she began very importantly, "is the janitor of that wonderful two-faced palace."

"Is he, indeed," remarked Jerry Longworthy, lighting his pipe.

"But he doesn't own it. At first I thought he did. I used to live in Mifflin, where there aren't any houses like that. Every family has its own house. Some of them are little but Mrs. Black's is as big as yours. She brought me to Waloo and we had a taxicab all the way."

"All the way!" Mr. Jerry showed a proper amount of astonishment. "That was a treat."

"It was to me," simply. "There aren't any taxicabs in Mifflin, just one old hack that was made before the war, Mr. Day said, and that's a very long time ago."

"It is," agreed Mr. Jerry. "Longer than either you or I can remember.

I expect you are all of ten years old?"

"I'm older than that." She would have told him how much older but she remembered what Aunt Kate had said. "I'm going on fourteen." It sounded so aged that she felt quite important. "And my name is Mary Rose Crocker."

"Mary Rose?" He lifted his eyebrows, and Mary Rose knew at once that he was thinking that boys' clothes and girls' names do not usually go together. She flushed.

"I wear them to save was.h.i.+ng," she said with a certain dignity as she touched the shrunken knickerbockers. "Girls' clothes are a lot of trouble. Lena said they weren't worth it."

"I'm sure she's right. You're only a little ahead of the style. All girls'll be wearing them soon, no doubt. They're that independent.

How old is the orphan George?" He changed a subject that was evidently so painful to Mary Rose.

"He's 'most five. I got him when I had tonsilitis, when I was six,"

unconsciously betraying to anyone who could add five to six the secret Aunt Kate had begged her to keep. "And we've never been separated a whole day. But now," she swallowed the lump in her throat and went on bravely, "you see the owner of that palace won't have any children nor any dogs nor any cats in it."

"I know." Mr. Jerry seemed to know everything. "What are you going to do?"

"If we kept him Uncle Larry would lose the janitor and we wouldn't have a roof over our heads nor bread for our stomachs, so I thought if I could find a pleasant place for him to board near by I could see him often. I couldn't give him away, for Aunt Kate says perhaps the Lord'll give us a real home some day where we can all be together.

When I saw your house it made me think of Mifflin and I wondered if you had a cat and if you hadn't if you would like to board one?" Her face was painfully serious as she lifted It to Jerry Longworthy.

"Well," he considered the question gravely. "Can you pay his board?"

"I've a dollar and forty-three cents. The forty-three cents I saved and the dollar Mr. Black gave me when he took me to the train in Mifflin. How much should a cat's board be?" anxiously.