after children
and fools and that was why we were so well taken care of, but it
certainly did make it pleasant for me to have you come all the way."

"It certainly made it pleasant for me," Mrs. Black said, and it had.
Mary Rose was so enthusiastic on this, her first trip away from
Mifflin, that she had amused Mrs. Black, who had made the journey to
Waloo so many times that it had become nothing but a necessary bore.
She was sorry that they had arrived at Mary Rose's destination. "Now,
where do we find your aunt?" She, too, looked up at the red brick
building that faced them so proudly.

"My Uncle Larry's the janitor of this splendid mansion!" Mary Rose told
her joyously, although there was a trace of awe in her birdlike voice.
The mansion seemed so very, very large to her. "Is janitor the same as
owner, Mrs. Black? It's--it's----" she drew a deep breath as if she
found it difficult to say what it was. "It's wonderful! There isn't
one house in all Mifflin so big and grand, is there? It looks more,"
she cocked her head on one side, "like the new Masonic Temple on Main
Street than anybody's home."

"So it does," agreed Mrs. Black, leading the way into the vestibule,
where she found a bell labeled "Janitor."

When Kate Donovan answered it she saw a pleasant-faced, smartly clad
woman with a child in a neat, if shabby, boy's suit of blue serge,
belted blouse over shrunken knickerbockers. She knew at once that they
had come to look at the vacant apartment on the second floor.

"An I'll have to tell her we don't have no childern here," she said to
herself, and she sighed. "I wish Larry had a place in a house that was
overrun with childern. Seems if I hate to tell her how it is."

But the pleasant-faced smartly clad woman smiled at her as no
prospective tenant had ever smiled and asked sweetly: "Is this Mrs.
Donovan?"

Before Kate Donovan could admit it the boyish little figure ran to her.

"My Aunt Kate! I know it is. It's my Aunt Kate!"

"My soul an' body!" murmured the startled Mrs. Donovan, staring
stupidly at the child embracing her knees.

"I brought your little niece," began Mrs. Black.

"Niece!" gasped Mrs. Donovan in astonishment, for the figure at her
knees did not look like any niece she had ever seen. "Sure, it's a
boy!"

The little face upturned to her broke into a radiant smile. "That's
what everyone says. But I'm not a boy, I'm not! Am I, Mrs. Black?
I'm a girl and my name's Mary R