"Sure, there is," Mr. Jerry told her heartily. He asked for further particulars. Just what would Jimmie like to do? Had he any plans?
Jimmie hadn't any plans just at present beyond food and shelter but in ten years or so he hoped to be an electrician. Of course, that couldn't be until he was a man. In the meantime he'd take anything and if he could get a job that would let him go to school he'd be about the happiest kid in the world.
"You can get that kind of job," Bob Strahan told him easily. "I'll write a little story about your trip and your arrest for the Gazette and I'll bet you'll have a lot of jobs offered you."
"And until you do you can stay here. There's a little room up there," Mr. Jerry nodded toward his attic, "that would just about fit a boy of your size. Do you know anything about autos? Have you ever met a lawn mower? I guess I can find work for you until you get a regular job."
Every freckle on Jimmie's freckled face glowed gratefully. Mary Rose jumped up and down.
"Mr. Jerry!" she began in a choked voice. She ran to him and hid her face against his hand. "First you took my cat," she gasped chokingly, "and then you took my dog and now my friend from Mifflin. I—I don't believe a friendlier man ever lived!"
"Mary Rose!" It was Aunt Kate's voice from the back door of the Washington. "Bring your friend in to supper." Aunt Kate knew that, under the circumstances, she had no business to ask a boy into the house but she felt desperately that now it did not matter what she did and it would please Mary Rose.
"Well, Mary Rose," Bob Strahan pulled her hair as they trooped back to the Washington, leaving Solomon jumping frantically at Mr. Jerry's snapping fingers, "are you happy now?"
Mary Rose's face clouded. "Half of me's happy and half of me isn't," she confessed in a low voice. "It makes me mad not to be friends with everybody and I can't honestly feel that Mr. Wells and I are friends."