"This is better," Miss Thorley told him with pleasing promptness.

"Mifflin would have reminded her of Jenny Lind. You can take her there some other day."

"Will you go, too?" eagerly. "I'll go any day you say."

But she only smiled over her shoulder as she went up the steps and into the meetinghouse. A quiet peaceful hour followed and when the service was over Mary Rose slipped one hand around Mr. Jerry's fingers and gave the other to Miss Thorley.

"I feel a lot better," she said. "I think it was awfully kind of that minister to preach about sparrows. Jenny Lind isn't a sparrow but she's a bird and when the Lord looks after sparrows so carefully I'm sure he'd keep an eye on a canary."

She was more like her old self as they went on, faster now, because, as Mr. Jerry explained, they had to make up the time they had spent in church and if they didn't reach the hotel at Blue Heron Lake in time for dinner all the chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s and legs would be eaten and there would be nothing left for them but backbones and necks.

"That's all Gladys ever has," Mary Rose told him importantly. "You see they have such a big family that all the other pieces are gone before it is her turn to be helped. She used to love to come to dinner at our house so she could have a wishbone. When her grandmother dies she'll have a leg."

"My gracious!" murmured Mr. Jerry's Aunt Mary.

"My word!" giggled Miss Thorley.

Fortunately they reached the hotel in time to have their choice of chicken and everyone was glad to see that Mary Rose was hungry and seemed to enjoy her dinner. After dinner they went for a ride on the lake in a launch and then they sat in the shade of a dump of linden trees and watched the bathers.

"Why didn't I tell you to bring your bathing suits?" Mr. Jerry asked suddenly. "What a dolt I was not to think of it."

"You're not a dolt!" Mary Rose said indignantly, although she hadn't the faintest idea what a dolt was. "And I couldn't have brought one for I haven't one. And anyway I wouldn't care to make too merry today." Her face clouded as she remembered why she did not wish to be too merry.

It was long, long after her bedtime when the car stopped in front of the Washington and it was a very sleepy tired little girl who was taken into Uncle Larry's strong arms.

"I've had such a wonderful time," she murmured, half asleep. "Uncle Larry, have you found Jenny Lind? We don't have to worry About her any more because I know now the Lord has his eye on her."

Uncle Larry looked over her head to Mr. Jerry. "I can't thank you, sir," he said in a hushed voice, "but you've been a kind friend to the little girl today."

"She's such a darling one has to be kind to her." Miss Thorley answered for Mr. Jerry and blushed when she realized it. "Don't you bother, Mr. Donovan. I'm like Mary Rose, I know everything will be all right."

"I hope so, Miss Thorley. Thank you again, sir." And he went in with Mary Rose asleep in his arms.

"I can't thank you, either." Miss Thorley held out her hand to Mr.

Jerry after she had said good night to his Aunt Mary. "I've had a perfect day and it was mighty good of you to plan it for Mary Rose."

He took her hand in both of his. "It was mighty good of you to come with Mary Rose and me. And we're going to be friends, now, real friends?" he asked gently.

She caught her breath and looked at him quickly. "Y-es," she said slowly. "Of course, we'll be friends. I--I'm glad you are willing to be friends."

Mr. Jerry laughed oddly. "I've learned about the value of that half loaf. Good night."

CHAPTER XIX

Nothing had been heard of Jenny Lind. Jimmie Bronson had made a surrept.i.tious visit to Mr. Wells' apartment and had escaped only "by the skin of his teeth," he a.s.sured Mr. Jerry.

"I didn't get any further than the window before that j.a.p caught me and I didn't see any birdcage. But I shan't give up, Mr. Longworthy. I'll find that canary yet!"

Everybody seemed more anxious now than Mary Rose. She was so confident that the Lord had his eye on the missing Jenny Lind that she almost stopped worrying. Aunt Kate resolutely refused to allow her to go to the Lincoln School in the blue serge suit.

"You'll wear proper clothes or you don't stir a step," she said sternly. "An' if you don't go to school the truant officer'll come here an' like enough I'll be arrested for not sendin' you. If you don't want your poor aunt to go to jail you'll stand up an' put on this dress I bought 'specially for you."

She had not been able to resist a sale of children's clothes at the Big Store and had bought three dresses for an eleven-year-old girl. She brought one out that morning, a blue and green and red plaid gingham with a white collar and a black patent leather belt. Mary Rose was speechless with admiration when she saw it. But if she had been so proud of Ella's old clothes that she had to be punished, what would she be in this ducky dress?

"I can't trust myself in it, Aunt Kate. It's too beautiful. It's fine enough for a princess."

But after Aunt Kate had explained that if Mary Rose did not wear the dress she might have to go to jail Mary Rose had no choice. She would have to wear the frock and go to school and try her very hardest not to be proud. She had only to think of Jenny Lind to humble her spirit.

She was very sedate as she walked with Aunt Kate. It did not seem possible that at last she was going to enter the big school building with towers and battlements enough for a fortress.

"It is like a castle. I don't care what Mr. Jerry said," she told Aunt Kate as they went up the steps and into the princ.i.p.al's office where a pleasant-faced middle-aged lady looked questioningly at Mary Rose and asked how old she was.

From force of habit Aunt Kate said hastily: "Goin' on fourteen."

"Fourteen!" The princ.i.p.al was plainly astonished. "She's very small for her age. And backward if she is only in the sixth grade. She should be in high school at fourteen. Has she been ill?"

Backward! It was bad enough to be called small for her age, but to be told that she was stupid was more than Mary Rose could bear in silence.

She opened her mouth to explain and then she remembered that she had promised she would mortify her pride so she said never a word, although she thought she would burst at having to keep quiet. But Aunt Kate's pride was also touched and she stammered hurriedly that she should have said her niece was going on eleven.

"That sounds more normal." And the princ.i.p.al smiled as she led the way into a big sunny room full of children. Mary Rose drew a sigh of relief when she saw the teacher. Mr. Jerry was all wrong about her, for she was not an old witch. She was as pretty a young woman as any child could wish to have for a teacher. She smiled at Mary Rose in a very friendly fashion and found her a seat beside a little girl with wonderful long yellow curls. It was delightful to be with children again and Mary Rose's face rivaled the sun.

Aunt Kate had a strange ache in her heart as she watched her. Mary Rose would make friends here, friends of her own age, and she would miss her. But that was the way of the world, she thought philosophically. When she was quite convinced that Mary Rose was happy and contented and could find her way home alone she left the school.

Mrs. Bracken called to her from her window as she pa.s.sed and she went in to be introduced to Mrs. Bracken's niece, Harriet White.

"She is going to live with us," Mrs. Bracken explained, her arm around Harriet's waist. "Isn't she a big girl for thirteen? I meant to be back yesterday so she could start in school today, but we were delayed.

I was just telling her there was another little girl, Mary Rose, in the building."

Mrs. Donovan looked almost enviously at Harriet White who was thirteen and who appeared at least two years older. How easy everything would have been if Mary Rose had been as large. She sighed and then smiled, for she knew that she would not change small Mary Rose for big Harriet White if she had the chance. She gazed pleasantly at Mrs. Bracken, whose face seemed to have found a new expression in Prairieville, and said from the very depths of her heart:

"If you enjoy her half as much as we enjoy our niece you'll consider yourself a lucky woman to have her."

"I know I'm a lucky woman," Mrs. Bracken answered heartily. "I never realized what made this building seem almost depressing until Mary Rose came into it. What is this Mrs. Schuneman tells me about Mary Rose's bird? I'm so sorry. She was so attached to Jenny Lind. Do you really think that Mr. Wells had anything to do with it?"

"Oh, Mrs. Bracken, how could any man with a heart steal a child's pet bird!" Mrs. Donovan tried her best to be discreet as she told the story.

"Of course, we all know that Mr. Wells is queer," Mrs. Bracken remarked when she finished. "Mrs. Schuneman said she understood that he had complained to Brown and Lawson, but don't you worry, Mrs. Donovan. Mr.

Wells is not the only tenant and I rather think the rest of us will have something to say. If he objects to Harriet Mr. Bracken will tell him quite plainly what he thinks. And there are others. We all like Mr. Donovan. He's a good janitor, willing and pleasant, and we won't let him be discharged without a protest. Perhaps I shouldn't tell you, but Mr. Strahan has written out a pet.i.tion to send to the owner and everyone in the building will sign it, I know, except perhaps Mr.

Wells." And she laughed as if Mr. Wells' not signing the pet.i.tion was a joke. "One against twenty won't have much influence."

Mrs. Donovan put out her hand and touched Mrs. Bracken's white fingers, something she would not have dared to do two months earlier. "Thank you for telling me that. Larry's tried, I know, and it isn't easy to please so many people. We don't know who the owner is so we can only talk to the agents, but a pet.i.tion signed by everybody ought to prove to them that Mary Rose isn't a nuisance."

"Anything but a nuisance!" insisted Mrs. Bracken.