"'You can't ever know, Aunt Kate, how splendid it is to wear skirts.'"
She was still admiring her new clothes in the mirror when her Uncle Larry came in.
"Hullo," he said in a loud cheery voice. "Who's this? Kate, Mrs. Bracken wants to see you."
Mary Rose tore her eyes from the fascinating reflection in the mirror that she could scarcely believe was herself, and looked at the big broad-shouldered man in the doorway. He had been frowning but the frown slipped away from his forehead when he gazed into Mary Rose's blue eyes, so that he looked very kind and friendly. Mary Rose jumped from the chair and ran over to him.
"I'm Mary Rose," she said a bit shyly. This unknown uncle was so big and strong and he was janitor of this strange two-faced palace. A janitor sounded powerful and important even if Aunt Kate had explained that he wasn't, so that Mary Rose felt a little shy with him.
"Mary Rose, eh?" He picked her up and raised her in his arms until her face was on a level with his. "Sure, I think you're more of a Rose than a Mary," he added as he kissed the face that was as pink as any flower.
Her arms met around his neck. "That's because I'm so happy to be with you and Aunt Kate," she whispered. "You know, after daddy went to Heaven there wasn't anyone in the whole world that belonged to me in Mifflin but George Washington, and my dog that Jimmie Bronson borrowed, and Jenny Lind, and now to have a great big uncle and a beautiful aunt of my very own m-makes me very happy."
"Who's George Washington?" asked Uncle Larry as he found a chair and sat down with her in his arms.
Mary Rose told him about her cat, which was boarding across the alley, and Uncle Larry thought to himself that he would go over and make sure that the cat was all right. It was a thundering shame the child couldn't have her pet with her. He'd like to tell the owner of the Washington a few things if he knew who he was and if there was no fear of losing his job.
"And Jenny Lind," Mary Rose was saying eagerly. "I must show you Jenny Lind." She slipped down and ran into the next room to come back with a birdcage. "Aunt Kate says I may keep her here because there isn't one word in that law about canary birds."
"No, thank God, there isn't," said Uncle Larry. "The old grouch must have forgotten about them." He admired Jenny Lind as much as Mary Rose could wish.
"The real Jenny Lind was a girl with a bird in her throat," Mary Rose explained as she leaned against his knee. "My own grandfather heard it and he told daddy and daddy told me that to hear her sing made a man think he was in Heaven. So when Mrs. Lenox gave me this beautiful bird for my very own, of course, I named her Jenny Lind. Mrs. Lenox called her Cleopatra. Wasn't that a silly name for a bird? Mrs. Lenox must have liked it or she wouldn't have given it to anything. Isn't it the luckiest thing that everyone hasn't the same likes? Just suppose everyone had been like my father and my mother and all the little girls were named Mary Rose? I think it's the most beautiful name in the entire dictionary, but Gladys Evans in Mifflin said it was common. She counted up and she knew seven Marys, with her grandmother and old Mrs. Wilcox, who's deaf and half blind, and four Roses. But there wasn't one Mary Rose!" triumphantly. "And that made all the difference in the world. My daddy chose the Mary because he said there wasn't a better name for a little girl to have for her own and my little mother chose the Rose because she said I was just like a flower when she saw me first. Don't you like it, Uncle Larry?"
"I do!" Uncle Larry could not have told her how much he liked it, but as he listened to her chatter he wondered how on earth Kate was going to make the tenants of the Washington think the child was fourteen.
"And I like your name," Mary Rose was kind enough to say. "And Aunt Kate's, too," she added, as Aunt Kate came back from her interview with Mrs. Bracken.
"Her girl's gone," she said in answer to Uncle Larry's question. "I don't wonder. That's the fourth in three weeks. Seems if she only stays home long enough to hire an' discharge 'em. She heard I had a niece with me an' she wants her to go up every mornin' an' wash the dishes till she gets another girl. So, Mary Rose, if you really want to earn money to pay for George Washington's board, here's a chance."
"Oh!" Mary Rose slid to the floor and clapped her hands. "I do think this is the most wonderful world that ever was. I just wish for something and then I have it."
"That'll happen just so long as you wish for what you can get," Aunt Kate told her.
When Mary Rose was tucked in bed, where she told Aunt Kate she felt like a long green pickle in a glass jar because she never had slept in a cellar—a basement—before, and they always had pickles in their cellar, Aunt Kate explained to her husband about Mrs. Bracken.
"I couldn't say anythin', but, of course, she'd come. Mrs. Bracken had the nerve to tell me she knew Mary Rose wasn't a child for childern weren't allowed in the buildin'. What was I to do, Larry Donovan, but say she'd wash her dirty old dishes? It won't hurt Mary Rose an' I'll give her a hand if she needs it. Isn't it a pity though that Mary Rose couldn't have taken more after her mother's fam'ly? Seems if I never saw such a small eleven-year-old as she is."