"You don't like Mr. Jerry very much, do you?" she ventured to ask.
"I'm too busy to know whether I do or not." Miss Thorley half closed her eyes and looked at Mary Rose in the funny way she did when she was painting. "My work takes all of my time. Chin up, Mary Rose."
"Yes'm." Mary Rose tilted her chin a little higher. "You aren't under any obligation to think of him, of course, but if your cat was boarding with him and he had borrowed your dog you'd just have to keep him in your mind and heart. And he's worth thinking of. He's a very fine young man. Everyone says so. Jimmie adores him and he hasn't known him a week. You've known him lots longer than that, haven't you?" She spoke as if she could not understand how Jimmie could be so much more clever. It must be on account of the spell that old Independence had put upon Miss Thorley. There couldn't be any other reason for not liking Mr. Jerry. He was so altogether likeable. Mary Rose sighed at life's complications. "I just love Mr. Jerry myself. I can't help it," she went on more slowly. "I wish you did, too," wistfully. "It's much more pleasant when the people you love will love each other. It gives you such a comfortable feeling as if you didn't care if Heaven was so far away. I do think this world would be almost as wonderful as Heaven if everyone would love everyone else."
"There is no doubt of that," Miss Thorley absently agreed with her.
"Then will you try and love my friends?" eagerly. She almost lost her pose in her eagerness. "I'll love yours. Every one! I will! I can because I have a big heart. Did you know that the more you put into a heart the more it will hold? It's the hearts that haven't anyone in them that are so little and hard. I think hearts must be like balloons. You can blow and blow and blow into balloons and there's always room for some more breath."
"Unless they break. Balloons break, Mary Rose, and so do hearts."
Mary Rose looked incredulous. "Mine never did. And anyway I'd rather have my heart break from being too full than get hard because it didn't have anyone in it. I'd like to have the very biggest heart in the whole world!" she cried ambitiously.
"Big enough to hold Mr. Wells? Did you know he was ill, Mary Rose? His Jap came up last night and asked Miss Carter not to play on the piano because Mr. Wells wasn't well and didn't wish to be disturbed." Miss Thorley's lip curled disdainfully.
"Mr. Wells sick?" Mary Rose was much concerned. "What's the matter?"
Miss Thorley shook her head.