"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. Godfrey! 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 Washington 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."