Strange as the Washington seemed to Mary Rose, it was not very
different from any other large city apartment house where people lived
side by side for months, for years, sometimes, without becoming
acquainted. It was not worth while, some said; neighbors change too
often. You don't know who people are, others thought. In such close
quarters one cannot afford to know undesirable people. The advantage
of an apartment house is that you don't have to know your neighbors,
murmured a third group. Consequently the tenants came and went and one
could count on a hand and have fingers to spare, the few who exchanged
greetings when they met on the stairs.
This was an appalling state of affairs to country-bred Mary Rose, who
had been brought up in a friendly atmosphere. In Mifflin everyone knew
everyone and was interested in what happened. When joy came to a
neighbor there was general rejoicing, and when sorrow touched a family
there was a universal sympathy, while the little between pleasures and
perplexities lost nothing and gained considerably by the knowledge that
they were shared with others. Mary Rose was intensely interested in
this new phase of life, if she could not understand it. It amazed her
when she counted how many people were over her small head.
"In Mifflin I didn't have anyone but God and the angels," she told Aunt
Kate, "but here there's the Schunemans and the Rawsons and the Blakes
and Mr. Jarvis and Miss Adams and Mrs. Matchan and Miss Proctor and Mr.
Wilcox and his friend. In Mifflin we lived side by side, you know, and
not up and down. We ought all to be friends when we live so close
together, shouldn't we?" wistfully.
Aunt Kate tried her best to tell her that they were all friends, but
she couldn't do it.
"What's the good of tellin' her folks are friendly when they don't look
friendly? Seems if a body can't frown with her face an' smile with her
heart at the same time. An' frowns are just as catchin' as germs. You
naturally don't pat a growlin' dog an' so you don't smile at a frownin'
person. I've al'ys seen more frowns 'n smiles in the Washington."
But Mary Rose did her best to make friends, because that was what she
had done always and because that was the only way she knew how to live.
And one by one her unconscious little efforts to unlock the gates of
reserve that suspicion and indifference and consciousness had placed
over the hearts and lips of the people she was thrown with began to
make some impression.
Even Mrs. Willoughby, who had wept ever since her mother died, smiled
when she saw the little girl in the checked apron that was so much too
big for her, with her birdcage in her hand, and forgot to complain of
the unusual noise in the hall. Mary Rose smiled, too, and when Mrs.
Willoughby spoke of Jenny Lind, Mary Rose offered to loan her bird.
"She'll make you feel happier," she said. "She did me, when my daddy
went to be with my little mother in Heaven. Jenny Lind can't talk,"
she admitted regretfully, "but she can sing and she's--she's so
friendly!"
And Mr. Willoughby came down that very night and thanked the Donovans
for the loan of Jenny Lind and for what Mary Rose had said and done.
Larry Donovan and his wife looked at each other after he had gone. It
was not often that they were thanked by a tenant.
Miss Adams would have died before she would have confessed to anyone
but Mary Rose that she hated Waloo, she hated the Washington. Mary
Rose looked at her with wide open eyes, too astonished to be shocked
that anyone could hate a world that was as beautiful and as full of
wonderful surprises as Mary Rose found this world to be.
"I don't see how you can be lonesome when there are people above you
and below you and in front of you and behind you and right across from
you. Why, you're almost entirely surrounded by neighbors," she cried,
as if Miss Adams could not be almost entirely surrounded by anything
more desirable. "There are almost as many people in this house as
there are in the Presbyterian Church in Mifflin and no one was ever
lonely there except on week days. Don't you like your neighbors?"
"I don't know them," confessed Miss Adams, mournfully.
"You don't know the people who live right next door to you!" Mary Rose
had never heard of such a situation. "Why, when the Jenkses moved from
Prairieville Mrs. Mullins, who'd never set eyes on one of them before,
took over a pan of hot gingerbread so she could get acquainted right
away. Of course the people here are all moved in, but you could borrow
an egg or a cup of molasses, couldn't you? And take it back right
away. That would give you two excuses to call."
"I couldn't do that." Miss Adams shivered at the mere thought. "It
isn't that I care to know any of them, Mary Rose, only--it makes me so
mad that I don't!" with a sudden burst of honesty.
"Couldn't you ask about a pattern or what to do for a cold in the head
or how to get red ants off of a plant? But you haven't any plants.
Wouldn't you feel more friendly if you had a beautiful pink geranium
growing in your window?"
"There isn't sun enough in this flat to keep a geranium alive,"
grumbled Miss Adams, who seemed determined to be lonely and
faultfinding.
Mary Rose sighed. "Of course, no one can have the sun all the time,"
she said gently, as if to excuse old Sol for not lingering longer in
Miss Adams' small apartment. "I'll let you have Jenny Lind for a while
tomorrow," she suggested after a moment of frowning thought. "She'll
cheer you up."
Miss Adams wanted to refuse to be cheered by Jenny Lind, but she had
not the courage, and when Mary Rose brought the bird the next morning
she brought also a small glass dish filled with pebbles on which rested
a little green bulb.
"Inside it is a Japanese lily," she said, and there was both pride and
awe in her voice. "Don't you wonder how God ever folded it up in such
a small package? Mr. Jerry's Aunt Mary was going to throw it away.
She said it was too late, that it ought to have been planted months
ago, but I said wouldn't she please give it a chance. My daddy used to
say that was all people needed, just a chance. Mrs. Mullins had one in
Mifflin, I mean a lily, and it didn't need hardly any sun. It just
grew and grew. You can sit beside it in the window and pretend you're
a Japanese queen. Don't you think it's fun to pretend? And imagine?
It's almost the same as having everything you want. I've imagined I
was a queen on a throne and the whale that swallowed Jonah--he must
have been so surprised--and a circus rider and an angel with a harp and
a pussy willow. I don't know which I liked the best. It helps a lot
when things go wrong to imagine they're right. You'll like to see the
Japanese lily come out of its bulb, won't you?"
Miss Adams was polite enough to say she would, although she frowned at
the glass dish as she set it in the window. If Mary Rose had seen as
much of the world as she had, she wouldn't think that to imagine a
thing was the same as having it.
"I'll tell Mr. Jerry's Aunt Mary you're much obliged," Mary Rose
suggested when she left.
Another day Miss Proctor found her leaning against the door of the
apartment she shared with Mrs. Matchan, listening entranced to the
music that Mrs. Matchan was making with her ten fingers and her piano.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Mary Rose looked up with shining eyes, not at
all abashed at being discovered listening. "It's better than any
circus band I ever heard. It's like Jenny Lind when the sun is shining
and she has had a leaf of fresh lettuce. It makes me feel in my heart
like soda water feels in my nose, all prickly and light," vaguely.
"It's--it's wonderful! Take this place," she moved generously away
from the crack that Miss Proctor might put her ear to it. "You can
hear better. When I grow up I want to play just like that." Mary Rose
always wanted to do what other people could do.
"Do you?" Miss Proctor looked at her and forgot that she had
considered children unmitigated nuisances. She actually opened the
door. "Come in," she said, "and tell Mrs. Matchan that you like her
music."
And the result of Mary Rose's attempt to put in words the feeling she
had in her heart that was like soda water in her nose, was that Mrs.
Matchan went down to the Donovans' and asked if she might be
permitted--permitted--to give Mary Rose music lessons.
"You could have knocked me down with the pin feather of a chicken,"
Aunt Kate told Uncle Larry. "I supposed, of course, she'd come tearin'
down to find fault with Mrs. Rawson for runnin' her sewin' machine last
night an' I was all ready to tell her that each of us has some rights,
but no, it was to offer to give Mary Rose lessons on her piano. She
says the child's got talent an' feelin' an' she'd like to see how she'd
express them. She had to tell me twice before I could take it in. It
isn't often that folks come down here to give a favor. Seems if they
only find the way when they want to complain. I never knew Mrs.
Matchan to do anythin' for anybody before an' we've lived under the
same roof for most two years now."
She had another surprise when Bob Strahan tramped down the basement
stairs with a big box of Annie Keller chocolates under his arm. He
solemnly presented the candy to Mary Rose.
"In payment of a debt," he explained gravely when Aunt Kate and Uncle
Larry stared and Mary Rose giggled. "She helped me with a very
important bit of work," he added, although the addition did not make
the matter any clearer to the Donovans nor to Mary Rose.
"You bet she helped me," he told Miss Carter when he went up and met
her in the lower hall. They had encountered each other on the stairs
several times since the day of Jenny Lind's adventure and had made the
amazing discovery that they had formerly lived within fifteen miles of
each other and had many mutual friends. "If it hadn't been for Mary
Rose, I wouldn't be on the staff of the Waloo _Gazette_ today. They're
cutting off heads down there, and I'm sure mine was slated to go, but
the chief's strong for human interest stuff, especially kid stuff. He
says that every living being, however hard his outside shell is now,
was once a kid, and sometime the kid stuff will get to him for the sake
of old times. Mary Rose and the cat she's boarding out saved my neck
and I'm still a man with a job."
"That's splendid." Miss Carter tried to speak with enthusiasm, but she
could not look enthusiastic. She was tired and discontented with life;
all the sparkle had gone out of her face.
Bob Strahan saw it and was sorry. "Say," he said impulsively. "I've
two tickets for a show in my pocket this minute. You've known me over
forty-eight hours. Is that long enough to make it proper for you to go
with me? I'll give you the names of the banker and the minister in my
old home town and you can call them up on the long distance for
references."
"The idea!" A bit of sparkle crept back into Miss Carter's face and
she laughed. "Louis Blodgett's chum doesn't need any reference. Louis
has told me quite a little about you," significantly. "It seems
perfectly ridiculous that you were living right next door and I never
knew it."
"And you might not know it now if it hadn't been for Mary Rose and that
canary of hers. Gee! I'm glad I took her that box of chocolates."