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."