iles 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."

CHAPTER VIII

With Jenny Lind's cage in her hand, Mary Rose knocked at Miss Thorley's
door.

"We've come to have our pictures taken," she told Miss Carter, when she
opened it. "The princess, I mean the other lady," she colored pinkly as
Miss Carter laughed, "said we were to advertise Mr. Bingham Henderson's
jam." Mary Rose always made a careful explanation. "If she would like
two birds I'm almost sure that Mrs. Schuneman would loan her Germania."

"Do you want two birds, Bess?" called Miss Carter, and Miss Thorley came
in.

She wore a faded blue smock over her crash gown and looked more beautiful
than before to Mary Rose's admiring eyes.

"I think I have two birds," she laughed, and patted Mary Rose's head and
snapped her fingers at Jenny Lind. "But don't tell me old Lady Grouch is
so human as to have a canary."

"Old Lady Grouch?" Mary Rose did not know whom she meant.

"Schuneman, is that her name?" absently.