Mary Rose watched her at her work. She admired Miss Thorley's swift, sure strokes, but she drew a sigh that came from the tips of her shabby shoes as she murmured: "All the same I don't understand just what Mr. Jerry meant."
Miss Thorley did not answer, unless a frown could be considered an answer. She painted for perhaps five minutes longer, but her strokes were not so swift nor so sure. At last she threw down her brushes as if she hated herself for doing it, but realized she could do nothing else.
"Mary Rose," she said crossly. Even Mary Rose could see that she was not pleased with something. "I don't feel like painting today. It's too warm or something. If I could find a little girl about," she looked critically at Mary Rose, "about ten years old, I think I'd ask her to go out to the lake with me."
"Oh!" Mary Rose forgot that she was posing and dropped both jam jars. She almost dropped Jenny Lind, too. She remembered Aunt Kate's request as she clung to the cage. "Would one going on fourteen be too old?" Her voice trembled and her heart beat fast for fear Miss Thorley would say that was far too old. "If she should be a long, long time, perhaps three years, before she got to fourteen?"
Miss Thorley's face was as sober as a judge's as she considered this. "Well," she said at last very slowly, "one going on fourteen might do. Run and ask your aunt and I'll meet you downstairs."
Mary Rose obeyed after she had hugged Miss Thorley. "You're an angel," she exclaimed fervently, "a regular seraphim and cherubim angel, if you are independent."
She almost fell down the stairs and made such a racket that a door on the second floor opened promptly. Mary Rose caught her breath. She was afraid to see whose door was ajar. If that cross Mr. Wells should catch her she was afraid to think what he might do. But it was not Mr. Wells' door that had opened, nor Mr. Wells' face that looked at her. An elderly woman stood staring at her impatiently.
"Dearie me!" she was saying, "I thought the house was falling down."
"No, ma'am." Mary Rose was very apologetic. "I just stumbled a teeny bit. You see I'm in such a hurry because Miss Thorley's going to take me to the lake and I must carry Jenny Lind downstairs and tell Aunt Kate and be at the front door in a jiffy." She would have darted on but the elderly lady put out a wrinkled hand and caught Mary Rose's blue and white checked apron.
"Who's Jenny Lind?" she demanded.