Mr. Jerry took his hand from the wheel to squeeze Mary Rose's brown fingers. "I should!" he said solemnly. "I do, Mary Rose, I do!"
CHAPTER VII
Strange as the Washington seemed to Mary Rose, it was not very different from any other large city apartment house where people lived side by side for months, for years, sometimes, without becoming acquainted. It was not worth while, some said; neighbors change too often. You don't know who people are, others thought. In such close quarters one cannot afford to know undesirable people. The advantage of an apartment house is that you don't have to know your neighbors, murmured a third group. Consequently the tenants came and went and one could count on a hand and have fingers to spare, the few who exchanged greetings when they met on the stairs.
This was an appalling state of affairs to country-bred Mary Rose, who had been brought up in a friendly atmosphere. In Mifflin everyone knew everyone and was interested in what happened. When joy came to a neighbor there was general rejoicing, and when sorrow touched a family there was a universal sympathy, while the little between pleasures and perplexities lost nothing and gained considerably by the knowledge that they were shared with others. Mary Rose was intensely interested in this new phase of life, if she could not understand it. It amazed her when she counted how many people were over her small head.
"In Mifflin I didn't have anyone but God and the angels," she told Aunt Kate, "but here there's the Schunemans and the Rawsons and the Blakes and Mr. Jarvis and Miss Adams and Mrs. Matchan and Miss Proctor and Mr. Wilcox and his friend. In Mifflin we lived side by side, you know, and not up and down. We ought all to be friends when we live so close together, shouldn't we?" wistfully.
Aunt Kate tried her best to tell her that they were all friends, but she couldn't do it.
"What's the good of tellin' her folks are friendly when they don't look friendly? Seems if a body can't frown with her face an' smile with her heart at the same time. An' frowns are just as catchin' as germs. You naturally don't pat a growlin' dog an' so you don't smile at a frownin' person. I've al'ys seen more frowns 'n smiles in the Washington."
But Mary Rose did her best to make friends, because that was what she had done always and because that was the only way she knew how to live. And one by one her unconscious little efforts to unlock the gates of reserve that suspicion and indifference and consciousness had placed over the hearts and lips of the people she was thrown with began to make some impression.
Even Mrs. Willoughby, who had wept ever since her mother died, smiled when she saw the little girl in the checked apron that was so much too big for her, with her birdcage in her hand, and forgot to complain of the unusual noise in the hall. Mary Rose smiled, too, and when Mrs. Willoughby spoke of Jenny Lind, Mary Rose offered to loan her bird.