e 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