le room
heard every word.

She stood and looked about her bewildered. It wasn't possible that
anyone, even the owner of the Washington, would take her Uncle Larry's
work from him just because a little girl was living with him? Aunt
Kate must be mistaken or perhaps she had misunderstood. She often
found herself mistaken in her ideas of what grown people meant. She
tried to think she was now as she took the globe and carried it
carefully into the dining-room and placed it on the table where the
sunlight fell on the fish and polished their golden scales.

"That's what I call a han'some present," admired Uncle Larry in the
same hearty voice Mary Rose usually heard from him.

She looked up quickly. He wouldn't speak like that if he were going to
lose his work. She hadn't understood. That was it. Children often
didn't understand grown people.

"They are beautiful," she said softly. "I wasn't very welcoming to
them at first because I was afraid Mr. Jerry meant them to take the
place of darling Jenny Lind and nothing can do that--fish nor dogs nor
cats nor squirrels nor anything. But when I watched them swim I found
they could have a place of their very own and so I'm very glad now to
have them."

"Of course you are. But eat your breakfas', child, or Mr. Jerry'll be
callin' for you before you're ready."

That was a wonderful Sunday to Mary Rose. She sat on the front seat
beside Mr. Jerry and as neither of them felt much like talking they
enjoyed the silence. Mile after mile was left behind them and when
they began to pass through small towns and villages Mary Rose sat up
straighter.

"They're like Mifflin, only different," she murmured vaguely.

When they came to a little white meetinghouse standing all by itself
near the road Mr. Jerry's Aunt Mary asked him to stop and let them go
to church.

"It seems as if it would be rather pleasant to go to a simple service
such as they must have here," she suggested.

"I'll put it to a vote," Mr. Jerry offered obligingly. "Mary Rose,
what do you say?"

"Oh, let's!" she begged. "And I'll pretend I'm sitting with Gladys in
the Evans pew and that Mr. Mann is preaching."

Mr. Jerry stopped the car by the roadside and they all stepped out.

"What a doggone idiot I was," Mr. Jerry whispered to Miss Thorley as
they followed his Aunt Mary and Mary Rose; "I might just as well have
taken the kid to Mifflin as to Blue Heron Lake, but I never thought of
it."

"This