"Sako has taken nothing from the dumbwaiter this morning," Mr. Wells said very coldly after he had exchanged a few words with his servant. "But if you have lost your bird it is only what you must expect. Pets are not allowed in this house." And he scowled fiercely enough to frighten anyone but the owner of a lost canary.
"They are if they're not children nor cats nor dogs," insisted tearful Mary Rose. "Uncle Larry said the law never says one word about birds. Oh, are you quite sure Jenny Lind isn't in your house?" she wailed.
"I told you we have taken nothing from the dumbwaiter," impatiently. He thought he was wonderfully patient with the child. He could have ordered her out of the building at once. "Your bird may have gone up to the next floor."
"Perhaps she has." Mary Rose was on the stairs before he finished the sentence. "I'm sorry for bothering you," she called back, "but if one of your family was lost I rather think you'd try to find her."
Her voice rang out shrill and clear and it was such an unexpected sound in the Washington, where children's voices were forbidden, that old Mrs. Johnson opened her door in a spasm of curiosity. She closed it abruptly when she met the cold unfriendly glance of Mr. Wells' black eyes, and shook in her shoes.
Four doors faced Mary Rose when she reached the third floor. She knocked on all of them not to waste time. Two doors remained firmly closed. The other two opened simultaneously. In one stood a girl with yellow hair and blue eyes and in the other was a young man who promptly changed the morose expression he had put on when he rose for a pleasanter one as he glanced across at Miss Blanche Carter before he even looked at Mary Rose. Miss Carter looked at Mary Rose first and then at Mr. Robert Strahan.
"Oh, please," Mary Rose was almost, if not quite, in tears, "have you seen Jenny Lind?"
They stared at her. The only Jenny Lind they had ever heard of had been quietly in her grave for many years. They looked at each other. Mr. Strahan added a satisfied grin to his pleasant expression, for he had wished to know Miss Carter ever since he had met her on the stairs the day after he had moved into the Washington, but Fate had refused to bring them together. He determined to make the most of this rare opportunity as he kindly questioned Mary Rose.
"Who is Jenny Lind?"
"My canary," sobbed Mary Rose. "I put her on the shelf in Mrs. Bracken's kitchen and she—she disappeared!"