"She'll make you feel happier," she said. "She did me, when my daddy went to be with my little mother in Heaven. Jenny Lind can't talk," she admitted regretfully, "but she can sing and she's—she's so friendly!"
And Mr. Willoughby came down that very night and thanked the Donovans for the loan of Jenny Lind and for what Mary Rose had said and done. Larry Donovan and his wife looked at each other after he had gone. It was not often that they were thanked by a tenant.
Miss Adams would have died before she would have confessed to anyone but Mary Rose that she hated Waloo, she hated the Washington. Mary Rose looked at her with wide open eyes, too astonished to be shocked that anyone could hate a world that was as beautiful and as full of wonderful surprises as Mary Rose found this world to be.
"I don't see how you can be lonesome when there are people above you and below you and in front of you and behind you and right across from you. Why, you're almost entirely surrounded by neighbors," she cried, as if Miss Adams could not be almost entirely surrounded by anything more desirable. "There are almost as many people in this house as there are in the Presbyterian Church in Mifflin and no one was ever lonely there except on week days. Don't you like your neighbors?"
"I don't know them," confessed Miss Adams, mournfully.
"You don't know the people who live right next door to you!" Mary Rose had never heard of such a situation. "Why, when the Jenkses moved from Prairieville Mrs. Mullins, who'd never set eyes on one of them before, took over a pan of hot gingerbread so she could get acquainted right away. Of course the people here are all moved in, but you could borrow an egg or a cup of molasses, couldn't you? And take it back right away. That would give you two excuses to call."
"I couldn't do that." Miss Adams shivered at the mere thought. "It isn't that I care to know any of them, Mary Rose, only—it makes me so mad that I don't!" with a sudden burst of honesty.
"Couldn't you ask about a pattern or what to do for a cold in the head or how to get red ants off of a plant? But you haven't any plants. Wouldn't you feel more friendly if you had a beautiful pink geranium growing in your window?"
"There isn't sun enough in this flat to keep a geranium alive," grumbled Miss Adams, who seemed determined to be lonely and faultfinding.
Mary Rose sighed. "Of course, no one can have the sun all the time," she said gently, as if to excuse old Sol for not lingering longer in Miss Adams' small apartment. "I'll let you have Jenny Lind for a while tomorrow," she suggested after a moment of frowning thought. "She'll cheer you up."