"It was to me," simply. "There aren't any taxicabs in Mifflin, just one old hack that was made before the war, Mr. Day said, and that's a very long time ago."
"It is," agreed Mr. Jerry. "Longer than either you or I can remember. I expect you are all of ten years old?"
"I'm older than that." She would have told him how much older but she remembered what Aunt Kate had said. "I'm going on fourteen." It sounded so aged that she felt quite important. "And my name is Mary Rose Crocker."
"Mary Rose?" He lifted his eyebrows, and Mary Rose knew at once that he was thinking that boys' clothes and girls' names do not usually go together. She flushed.
"I wear them to save washing," she said with a certain dignity as she touched the shrunken knickerbockers. "Girls' clothes are a lot of trouble. Lena said they weren't worth it."
"I'm sure she's right. You're only a little ahead of the style. All girls'll be wearing them soon, no doubt. They're that independent. How old is the orphan George?" He changed a subject that was evidently so painful to Mary Rose.
"He's 'most five. I got him when I had tonsilitis, when I was six," unconsciously betraying to anyone who could add five to six the secret Aunt Kate had begged her to keep. "And we've never been separated a whole day. But now," she swallowed the lump in her throat and went on bravely, "you see the owner of that palace won't have any children nor any dogs nor any cats in it."
"I know." Mr. Jerry seemed to know everything. "What are you going to do?"
"If we kept him Uncle Larry would lose the janitor and we wouldn't have a roof over our heads nor bread for our stomachs, so I thought if I could find a pleasant place for him to board near by I could see him often. I couldn't give him away, for Aunt Kate says perhaps the Lord'll give us a real home some day where we can all be together. When I saw your house it made me think of Mifflin and I wondered if you had a cat and if you hadn't if you would like to board one?" Her face was painfully serious as she lifted It to Jerry Longworthy.
"Well," he considered the question gravely. "Can you pay his board?"