Mary Rose of Mifflin | Page 4

incredulously.
Mrs. Donovan looked at him sadly. "Why should I tell lies?" she asked sweetly. "Sure, it's no lie to say Mary Rose is goin' on fourteen. I ain't denyin' it'll be some time before she gets to fourteen but she's goin' on fourteen more'n she is on ten. If the tenants take a wrong meaning from my words is it my fault? No, Larry," firmly. "I wouldn't tell lies for nobody an' I wouldn't let Mary Rose tell lies. We al'ys had our mouths well scoured out with soft soap when we didn't tell the truth. But it ain't no lie to say a child's goin' on fourteen when she is."
CHAPTER II
A taxicab stopped before the Washington Apartment House and a slim boyish little figure hopped out and stared up at the roof of the long red brick building that towered so far above.
"It's an e-normous house, isn't it!" she said in surprise.
"Here, Mary Rose." A hand reached out a basket and then a birdcage. "I'll go in with you."
"You're awfully good, Mrs. Black." Mary Rose looked at her with loving admiration. "Of course, I'd have come here all right by myself for daddy always said there was a special Providence to look after children and fools and that was why we were so well taken care of, but it certainly did make it pleasant for me to have you come all the way."
"It certainly made it pleasant for me," Mrs. Black said, and it had. Mary Rose was so enthusiastic on this, her first trip away from Mifflin, that she had amused Mrs. Black, who had made the journey to Waloo so many times that it had become nothing but a necessary bore. She was sorry that they had arrived at Mary Rose's destination. "Now, where do we find your aunt?" She, too, looked up at the red brick building that faced them so proudly.
"My Uncle Larry's the janitor of this splendid mansion!" Mary Rose told her joyously, although there was a trace of awe in her birdlike voice. The mansion seemed so very, very large to her. "Is janitor the same as owner, Mrs. Black? It's--it's----" she drew a deep breath as if she found it difficult to say what it was. "It's wonderful! There isn't one house in all Mifflin so big and grand, is there? It looks more," she cocked her head on one side, "like the new Masonic Temple on Main Street than anybody's home."
"So it does," agreed Mrs. Black, leading the way into the vestibule, where she found a bell labeled "Janitor."
When Kate Donovan answered it she saw a pleasant-faced, smartly clad woman with a child in a neat, if shabby, boy's suit of blue serge, belted blouse over shrunken knickerbockers. She knew at once that they had come to look at the vacant apartment on the second floor.
"An I'll have to tell her we don't have no childern here," she said to herself, and she sighed. "I wish Larry had a place in a house that was overrun with childern. Seems if I hate to tell her how it is."
But the pleasant-faced smartly clad woman smiled at her as no prospective tenant had ever smiled and asked sweetly: "Is this Mrs. Donovan?"
Before Kate Donovan could admit it the boyish little figure ran to her.
"My Aunt Kate! I know it is. It's my Aunt Kate!"
"My soul an' body!" murmured the startled Mrs. Donovan, staring stupidly at the child embracing her knees.
"I brought your little niece," began Mrs. Black.
"Niece!" gasped Mrs. Donovan in astonishment, for the figure at her knees did not look like any niece she had ever seen. "Sure, it's a boy!"
The little face upturned to her broke into a radiant smile. "That's what everyone says. But I'm not a boy, I'm not! Am I, Mrs. Black? I'm a girl and my name's Mary Rose and I'm almost eleven----"
"H-sh, h-sh, dearie!" Mrs. Donovan's hand slipped over the red lips and she sent a quick glance over her shoulder. Bewildered and surprised as she was she realized that her niece's age was not to be shouted out in the vestibule of the Washington in any such joyous fashion. "My soul an' body," she murmured again as she looked at the sturdy little figure in knickerbockers. "You're Mary Rose Crocker?" she asked doubtfully. She almost hoped she wasn't.
"Mary Rose Crocker," repeated the red lips and the knickerbockered legs jumped up and down.
"My soul an' body!" Mrs. Donovan murmured helplessly. "Will you come down to my rooms, ma'am," she said to Mrs. Black, as she tried to remember her manners and not think how she was to tell Larry the truth. Why, this child was undersized rather than over. Her mother might have weighed a hundred and twenty-five pounds when she was twelve but Mary Rose