"Do you see what that is?" Mary Rose's voice shook. "It's a squirrel! A really truly squirrel in this big city! Here, squirrelly, squirrelly," she snapped her fingers. "I wish I had something to feed you!" despairingly as the squirrel ran away.
"'It's a squirrel! A really truly squirrel in this big city!'"
Grandma Johnson had her purse in the bag she carried and she opened it and took out five cents. "Here," she said crossly, "go and get something to feed him with if that's what you're crying for."
Mary Rose straightened herself and threw her arms around Grandma Johnson's knees. "Why—why!" she gasped, "I do think you are a regular fairy godmother!"
Grandma Johnson had been called several names since she had been in the Washington. Once she had heard Hilda in the kitchen speak of her as "the old hen" and had almost had apoplexy. And Larry Donovan had muttered that she was "an old crank" which was what one might expect of a mannerless janitor but no one had ever called her a fairy godmother. It sounded rather pleasant. She actually smiled as Mary Rose ran over to the popcorn wagon on the corner and came back with a bag of peanuts.
"What wouldn't I give if Tom had a girl like that!" she sighed. "But then he'd have to move. Children aren't allowed in the Washington."
Mary Rose insisted on an exact division of the nuts. "You want to feed them just as much as I do." She hadn't a doubt of that. "So you must have half. When the squirrel sees how many we have perhaps he'll bring his brothers and sisters and have a squirrel party," she giggled.
Indeed, it did seem as if the squirrel had sent out invitations when he saw the heap of nuts that Mary Rose and Grandma Johnson had beside them for, one after another, other squirrels came until half a dozen clustered around them. They were very tame. One even climbed up Mary Rose's arm for the nut she held between her lips and Grandma Johnson lured another to her shoulder.