Читать книгу Mary Rose of Mifflin - Frances R. Sterrett - Страница 7

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Left alone, Mary Rose caught George Washington to her heart and stood staring about the room. She shook her head. This might be a beautiful palace but she was very much afraid that she was not going to like it. She walked slowly into the next room and then to the kitchen, whose windows faced the alley.

Across the driveway she could see a broad open space, the yard of a rambling old-fashioned house. A man was cleaning an automobile and through the open window Mary Rose could hear his cheery whistle. There was something about the old-fashioned house and the spacious yard that reminded Mary Rose of Mifflin, where people loved children and had pets. The puzzled frown left her face, and clutching George Washington closer she went out of the back door and across the alley.

"If you please," she said, her heart beating so fast that she was almost choked, "would you take a cat to board?"

She had to say it a second time before the man heard her. He looked up in surprise. He had a frank, pleasant face with twinkling eyes and Mary Rose liked him at once.

"Hullo, brother," he said, quite as cordially as a Mifflin man would have spoken. "And where did you drop from?"

"I didn't drop," answered literal Mary Rose. "I came across the alley," and she nodded toward the big apartment house. It now turned a white brick face to her. Mary Rose almost forgot her errand when she saw that. In Mifflin houses were the same color all the way around. "Why—why, it's two-faced!" she cried. "The front is all red and now the back is all white. It's just like an enchanted palace."

"It is an enchanted palace," grumbled the man.

Mary Rose flew to his side. "Oh, is there a princess there? A beautiful princess?" she begged.

The man colored under the tan the sun and wind had spread over his face. "There is," he admitted, "a most beautiful princess."

"And a witch?" insisted Mary Rose. "A wicked witch?" The color flew into her face also.

"The wickedest witch that could ever enslave a beautiful princess. Her darned old name is Independence!"

Mary Rose did not understand and she thought it was an odd name for a witch but she wished to know more. "And is the prince there?" she demanded thirstily.

The man's face turned redder than before. "The prince is here," he said sadly. "Right here. And he might as well be in Jericho," he added under his breath.

"I've heard the Presbyterian minister speak of Jericho but I never read of it in any fairy-tale. Oh, dear! I hope the prince won't go there. I want him to stay here and rescue the pretty princess from that wicked witch In-independence," she stumbled over the unfamiliar word.

The man looked at her. He had to look away down to find her, for he was tall, over six feet, and Mary Rose was not much more than half that, but when he finally did find her Mary Rose was amazed to see the look of determination that came into his sunburned face.

"He'll do it," he said, half under his breath. "It's all very well for a girl to be independent, but she needn't be so darned independent that she won't listen to a word a man says."

"I don't think I understand," Mary Rose ventured to say when there was a long pause.

Her new friend laughed. "No, of course, you don't." He put his hands on her shoulders. "As man to man," he said, "the modern girl is getting to be almost too much of a problem for the modern man. I don't suppose you understand that, either. But wait ten or fifteen years and you will. Godfrey! I feel sorry for you. If they keep on as they've started what will they be in ten years? Did you say you were living over there?" He looked toward the white wall.

Mary Rose nodded her yellow head. "I thought perhaps you might like to take a cat to board. An orphan cat," she explained pityingly.

Jerry Longworthy swallowed a laugh when he saw that there was real trouble in her face. "Suppose you climb into the car and tell me why you're looking for a boarding place for an orphan cat?"

Mary Rose smiled radiantly as she obeyed and, with George Washington cuddled against her, she told him all about it.

"My Uncle Larry," she began very importantly, "is the janitor of that wonderful two-faced palace."

"Is he, indeed," remarked Jerry Longworthy, lighting his pipe.

"But he doesn't own it. At first I thought he did. I used to live in Mifflin, where there aren't any houses like that. Every family has its own house. Some of them are little but Mrs. Black's is as big as yours. She brought me to Waloo and we had a taxicab all the way."

"All the way!" Mr. Jerry showed a proper amount of astonishment. "That was a treat."

"It was to me," simply. "There aren't any taxicabs in Mifflin, just one old hack that was made before the war, Mr. Day said, and that's a very long time ago."

"It is," agreed Mr. Jerry. "Longer than either you or I can remember. I expect you are all of ten years old?"

"I'm older than that." She would have told him how much older but she remembered what Aunt Kate had said. "I'm going on fourteen." It sounded so aged that she felt quite important. "And my name is Mary Rose Crocker."

"Mary Rose?" He lifted his eyebrows, and Mary Rose knew at once that he was thinking that boys' clothes and girls' names do not usually go together. She flushed.

"I wear them to save washing," she said with a certain dignity as she touched the shrunken knickerbockers. "Girls' clothes are a lot of trouble. Lena said they weren't worth it."

"I'm sure she's right. You're only a little ahead of the style. All girls'll be wearing them soon, no doubt. They're that independent. How old is the orphan George?" He changed a subject that was evidently so painful to Mary Rose.

"He's 'most five. I got him when I had tonsilitis, when I was six," unconsciously betraying to anyone who could add five to six the secret Aunt Kate had begged her to keep. "And we've never been separated a whole day. But now," she swallowed the lump in her throat and went on bravely, "you see the owner of that palace won't have any children nor any dogs nor any cats in it."

"I know." Mr. Jerry seemed to know everything. "What are you going to do?"

"If we kept him Uncle Larry would lose the janitor and we wouldn't have a roof over our heads nor bread for our stomachs, so I thought if I could find a pleasant place for him to board near by I could see him often. I couldn't give him away, for Aunt Kate says perhaps the Lord'll give us a real home some day where we can all be together. When I saw your house it made me think of Mifflin and I wondered if you had a cat and if you hadn't if you would like to board one?" Her face was painfully serious as she lifted It to Jerry Longworthy.

"Well," he considered the question gravely. "Can you pay his board?"

"I've a dollar and forty-three cents. The forty-three cents I saved and the dollar Mr. Black gave me when he took me to the train in Mifflin. How much should a cat's board be?" anxiously.

"How much milk does he drink? Milk's seven cents a quart in Waloo."

"Oh, not more than a quart a day," eagerly. "And he's almost too fat now."

"A quart a day would be seven times seven——"

"I know. I know all my tables up to twelve times twelve. That would be forty-nine cents. Do you think fifty cents would be enough?"

"I should think fifty cents a week very good board for a cat. Suppose we go in and see what my Aunt Mary has to say."

His Aunt Mary proved to be a plump lady with a round rosy face, who agreed with Mary Rose that children and cats and dogs were most desirable additions to a family. She seemed quite glad to take George Washington as a boarder and thought that fifty cents a week was enough to charge as long as Mary Rose solemnly promised to come over every day and help take care of him. Mary Rose promised most solemnly.

"I'm so glad." She beamed on Mr. Jerry and his Aunt Mary and hugged George Washington. "It's a great relief to find a pleasant boarding place. I can pay for two weeks, almost three weeks now," she offered.

Mr. Jerry started to speak but his Aunt Mary shook her head and he shut his mouth with the words inside.

"We don't take board in advance for a cat," said his Aunt Mary in a way that told Mary Rose such a thing was never done. "In fact, we've never taken a cat to board before. I think it will be more satisfactory if we wait until the end of the week, when we can tell just how much milk he will drink," she added soberly.

"He's awfully greedy." Mary Rose looked sadly at the greedy George Washington. "But he's always had all he wanted. I can't tell you how much obliged I am and I'll come over every day. It's awfully good of you to take him when you haven't any other boarders."

"I'd take you, too, if I could," Mr. Jerry's Aunt Mary murmured as she went to get a ginger cooky.

"I'm going to find the beautiful princess," Mary Rose told Mr. Jerry, when she said good-by to him a few minutes later. "And when I do shall I tell her that the prince is not going to Jericho?"

"Do," he said and his face went all red again. "Tell her that he's going to stay right here on the job, that he will never give her up."

"Never give her up," repeated Mary Rose. She tried to say it as firmly as he had said it and she waved her hand as she went across the alley and into the back door of the Washington, with a most delicious thrill at entering such a two-faced building.

Mr. Jerry looked after her and frowned. Then he shook his fist at the Washington.

"You are an enchanted palace," he told it sternly. "If it weren't for doggone places like you, girls would have to stay at home. They couldn't go out in the world and grow so independent that they think work is the biggest thing in creation. Oh, Godfrey! it isn't normal for any girl to like a job better than a perfectly good man. When I think of Elizabeth Thorley wasting herself on advertisements for Bingham and Henderson's sickening jams when she might be making a Heaven for me it sends my temperature up until I'm afraid of spontaneous combustion. She wouldn't care if I did blow up and turn to ashes. She wouldn't care what happened to me so long as she could send out a new poster for peach marmalade. She wants to live her own life and not be tied down to a man or a home," he groaned. "Darn these feministic ideas, anyway! I wish I had been my own grandfather. The girl he wanted wasn't on any old factory payroll."

He had been in love with Elizabeth Thorley ever since one night, almost a year ago, when he had looked across a room and seen her red-brown hair, her oval face with its uplifted pointed chin, and met her laughing eyes. He had held her gaze for the fraction of a moment and in that time his heart had stopped beating. When it began again the world was a very different place to him. But, alas, it was not a different place to her. She had suffered no magical change by the short interchange of glances.

They had been the best of friends. They had a certain similarity of tastes and interests, for he was an architect and she was an advertising artist. But when he asked for more than friendship she tilted her white chin a bit higher and told him frankly that she was not the type of girl to want or think of marriage; that all she wished was her work and she thanked her lucky stars every night of her life that she had enough of it to be independent.

"Marriage to me is a many-headed dragon," she said. "It eats up a girl's individuality, her ambitions, her talents. Oh, yes, it does! I've seen it too many times not to know, and I want to keep Elizabeth Thorley's personality for her as long as she lives. I shan't merge it in that of any man."

She valued his friendship; she would like to keep it always, she added, but she did not want his love. She did not want any man's love. That was why Mr. Jerry shook his fist at the white face of the Washington and swore that he loathed the idea of feminine independence, loathed it from the very bottom of his heart.

"Why, Mary Rose, wherever have you been?" demanded startled Mrs. Donovan, when Mary Rose, a trifle breathless and minus George Washington, slipped into the basement flat. "I've been lookin' everywhere for you."

"I'm sorry but I just had to find a boarding place for George Washington. Oh, Aunt Kate, do you suppose there's any way a girl like me can earn fifty cents every week?"