CHAPTER XIII
"And Mr. Jerry said that if you weren't so much of an angel you'd be a splendid artist or if you weren't so much of an artist you'd be a splendid angel. It sounds queer the way I say it but I know he meant it for a compliment." Mary Rose and Jenny Lind were posing for the jam poster. It was almost finished and Mary Rose was sinfully proud of it.
Miss Thorley frowned and refused to say what she thought of Mr. Jerry's compliment. Mary Rose frowned, also.
"You don't like Mr. Jerry very much, do you?" she ventured to ask.
"I'm too busy to know whether I do or not." Miss Thorley half closed her eyes and looked at Mary Rose in the funny way she did when she was painting. "My work takes all of my time. Chin up, Mary Rose."
"Yes'm." Mary Rose tilted her chin a little higher. "You aren't under any obligation to think of him, of course, but if your cat was boarding with him and he had borrowed your dog you'd just have to keep him in your mind and heart. And he's worth thinking of. He's a very fine young man. Everyone says so. Jimmie adores him and he hasn't known him a week. You've known him lots longer than that, haven't you?" She spoke as if she could not understand how Jimmie could be so much more clever. It must be on account of the spell that old Independence had put upon Miss Thorley. There couldn't be any other reason for not liking Mr. Jerry. He was so altogether likeable. Mary Rose sighed at life's complications. "I just love Mr. Jerry myself. I can't help it," she went on more slowly. "I wish you did, too," wistfully. "It's much more pleasant when the people you love will love each other. It gives you such a comfortable feeling as if you didn't care if Heaven was so far away. I do think this world would be almost as wonderful as Heaven if everyone would love everyone else."
"There is no doubt of that," Miss Thorley absently agreed with her.
"Then will you try and love my friends?" eagerly. She almost lost her pose in her eagerness. "I'll love yours. Every one! I will! I can because I have a big heart. Did you know that the more you put into a heart the more it will hold? It's the hearts that haven't anyone in them that are so little and hard. I think hearts must be like balloons. You can blow and blow and blow into balloons and there's always room for some more breath."
"Unless they break. Balloons break, Mary Rose, and so do hearts."
Mary Rose looked incredulous. "Mine never did. And anyway I'd rather have my heart break from being too full than get hard because it didn't have anyone in it. I'd like to have the very biggest heart in the whole world!" she cried ambitiously.
"Big enough to hold Mr. Wells? Did you know he was ill, Mary Rose? His Jap came up last night and asked Miss Carter not to play on the piano because Mr. Wells wasn't well and didn't wish to be disturbed." Miss Thorley's lip curled disdainfully.
"Mr. Wells sick?" Mary Rose was much concerned. "What's the matter?"
Miss Thorley shook her head.
"Haven't you been down to ask?" Mary Rose always had been sent to ask in Mifflin.
"Gracious, no! I shouldn't dare. He'd probably bite my head off."
"He couldn't bite your head off if he was sick. It doesn't seem real neighborly, Miss Thorley. And you are neighbors. You live right over his head. I expect he has dyspepsia and that's the reason he looked so—" she hesitated over a word, "unfriendly. Why when Mr. Lewis, he's the postmaster in Mifflin, had dyspepsia Mrs. Lewis didn't dare say her soul was her own. Mr. Lewis couldn't be cross to people when they came for their mail so he saved it all for Mrs. Lewis. That doesn't seem quite fair, does it, for people to be pleasant to outsiders and save their bad temper for their homes?"
"It isn't fair but I rather think it's human."
Mary Rose shook her head. "Sometimes I think that human and disagreeable mean the same thing because people all say the bad things we do are human. Where did we learn them, Miss Thorley? The Lord made us all good because it wouldn't have paid him to make us bad. Where do you suppose Mr. Lewis learned to snap and Mr. Wells to scold and you to frown?"
Miss Thorley certainly did have a frown. It ran right across her pretty forehead when she said: "Bless me! child, how do I know? That's enough for one day." She put the drawing board on the table and stretched herself luxuriously. "Try and be on time tomorrow, Mary Rose, and I think we can finish it."
"Yes'm." Mary Rose stared at the drawing which was a very wonderful thing to her. "Don't you believe Mr. Bingham Henderson 'll be pleased with it? It's a beautiful picture of Jenny Lind."
"It's a beautiful picture of you, if I do say it," laughed the artist.
Mary Rose drew closer until she could whisper into Miss Thorley's ear. "I wish Mr. Jerry could see it."
Miss Thorley rose abruptly and pushed her away. "He can. He'll have lots of opportunity to see it when it is on the back of a magazine. Run along, now. Skip!" She fairly pushed Mary Rose out of the door before she could say anything more about Mr. Jerry. Sometimes it seemed to Mary Rose that Miss Thorley was afraid to hear about Mr. Jerry.
She went down the stairs slowly and hesitated when she came to Mr. Wells' door. She knew she should stop and inquire how he was. It would have been a terrible breach of good manners in Mifflin not to ask after a sick neighbor, but Mr. Wells had not been like any neighbor Mary Rose had ever known. Nevertheless he was a neighbor. She tossed her head and ventured closer to the door. There was no answer when she knocked timidly and she tried again. The door was slightly ajar and when her second knock brought no response she ventured to push it open an inch. Mr. Wells might be all alone and need someone. She would just slip in and see. If he didn't she could slip out again.
There was a chilly deserted feeling in the hall that made Mary Rose shiver. She hurried through softly as if in the presence of something that oppressed her. When she reached the door of the living-room she stopped and looked across into the amazed eyes of Mr. Wells, who was lying on the broad couch.
"Oh!" Mary Rose refused to be frightened away by his scowl. "I'm so glad you're able to be up. You are better, aren't you? I was worried when Miss Thorley said you were sick and I just stopped to inquire. In Mifflin when anyone was sick we always went with chicken broth or cup custard or a new magazine. Why, when Lily Thompson had tonsilitis she had eleven different things sent in one day. I helped her eat the eating ones."
"How did you get in?" growled Mr. Wells for all the world like the Big Bear in the story of Goldilocks. Mary Rose had to think what a splendid Big Bear he would make.
"The door was open. I knocked but no one came. I was afraid you might want something. Has your Japanese gentleman gone to the drug store? Isn't it lonely for you all by yourself? I was going to ask Aunt Kate to make you some beef tea but perhaps you'd rather have Jenny Lind stay with you. She's splendid company and I'd be glad to loan her to you." She crossed the room to put the cage down beside Mr. Wells. Jenny Lind began to sing immediately as if to show Mr. Wells what splendid company she could be.
Mr. Wells raised himself on his elbow and shook a threatening fist at the canary.
"Take that damn bird away!" he shouted. His face was red and Mary Rose was sure she could see flames darting from his eyes.
"Yes, sir! Yes, sir!" She snatched Jenny Lind at once. "I s-suppose she is too noisy for you yet. Mrs. Mason didn't like her when she had the nerves. But you shouldn't be alone. It's bad for you. I'm sure you need friendly company. Oh, I know the very thing!" And before the astonished and indignant invalid could say a word she had dashed out of the room.
He could hear her stumble in the hall but he did not hear her exclaim hurriedly when a door across the way opened: "Oh, Mrs. Rawson, will you take Jenny Lind for a minute? I'll be right back for her." She pushed the hook of the cage into the hands of the startled Mrs. Rawson and flew down the stairs.
She was back in an incredibly short time with a small glass globe that she carried very carefully. Her face shone as she tiptoed in and placed it on the table beside the invalid.
"There!" she said proudly. "There! The perfect pets for the sickroom. When you said Jenny Lind was too disturbing I remembered that Mr. Jerry's Aunt Mary had these two little goldfish. Wasn't it lucky? She was glad to loan them to you and hopes you'll find them pleasant friends. They won't be any care at all. I'll come up every day and feed them if you don't feel well enough. I'd like to. Aren't they beautiful? Do you suppose all the fish in Heaven are like that, all gold and glisteny? Won't you just love to watch them? They can't sing or make any noise to annoy you. They'll be splendid company."
"God bless my soul!" murmured Mr. Wells helplessly, when he could find breath to murmur anything. He stared at her as if he really had never seen her before.
An exclamation, like the pop of a gun, made them look at the doorway where Sako was staring at them as if he could not believe his eyes.
"Sako!" shouted Mr. Wells, angrily. "Why did you leave the door open when you went out?"
"Wasn't it lucky he did?" asked Mary Rose, standing before him and rocking on her heels and toes as she often did when she was pleased. "I might never have come in, if he hadn't. If there's anything I can do for you, Mr. Wells, any time, don't you hesitate to ask me. Just send the Japanese gentleman right down. I live in the cellar, I mean the basement, with Aunt Kate and Uncle Larry and we'll all be only too glad to do anything to help you get well. It's horrid to be sick. You look better, I think," critically, and indeed he was not at all pale how. He had so much color in his face that he was almost purple. "I must go now and get Jenny Lind. I left her with Mrs. Rawson. I expect she thought I was crazy," with a giggle as she remembered Mrs. Rawson's amazed face.
"I'll bet she did!" Mr. Wells stared after her as if he, too, thought Mary Rose was crazy. She turned in the doorway to wave her hand to him and he watched her out of sight. Then he looked at the goldfish. He had half a mind to tell Sako to throw them out. What did he want with a couple of damned goldfish? The child was a nuisance, an unmitigated nuisance. Children always were. That was why he lived in the Washington where they were forbidden. He would have to ask the agents what they meant by letting the place be overrun with children when there was a clause in every lease forbidding it. Mary Rose might be a friendly little soul, she might mean well, but she was an unmitigated nuisance. The Lord only knew what she would do next if she remained in the building. And she had dared to talk back to him in front of people. No, he would see that the lease was lived up to. It was his right. If he demanded protection against Mary Rose, an impudent interfering chit, he fumed, the agents would have to protect him.
"Sako!" he called sharply. "Take these damned goldfish down to the Donovans. And tell Donovan to keep his niece at home. I won't have her here!"