be ashamed of yourself for askin' me to send her away!"

"Sure, an' I'd like the little thing here as much as you, Kate, dear,"
Larry said soothingly, and in her heart Mrs. Donovan knew that he meant
it. "But it isn't every day that a man picks up a job like this,
janitor of a swell apartmen' buildin', an' if we take in a kid when the
lease says plain as can be, no childern, no dogs an' no cats, I'll lose
the job an' then how'll I put a roof over your heads an' bread in your
stomachs? That's why I'm again' it."

"A clever man like you'll find a way." Mrs. Donovan's confidence was
both flattering and stimulating. If a woman expects her husband to do
things he just has to do them. He has no choice. "Don't you worry.
You haven't been out of work since we were married 'cept the three
months you was laid up with inflamm't'ry rheumatiz. The way I look at
it is this: the good Lord must have meant us to have Mary Rose or he
wouldn't have taken her mother an' her father an' all her relations but
us. Seems if he didn't send us any of our own so we'd have plenty of
room in our hearts an' home for her. She's a present to us straight
from the Lord."

"That may be, Kate," Larry scratched his puzzled head. "But will the
agents, will Brown an' Lawson look at it that way? The lease says----"

"Bother the lease!" Mrs. Donovan interrupted him impatiently. "What's
the lease got to do with a slip of a girl who's been left an orphan
down in Mifflin?"

"That's just what I'm tryin' to tell you." Larry clung to his temper
with all of his ten fingers, for it was irritating to have her refuse
to understand. "If we took Mary Rose in here to live don't you s'pose
all those up above," he jerked his thumb significantly toward the
ceiling, "'d know it an' make trouble? God knows they make enough as
it is. They're a queer lot of folks under this roof, Kate, and that's
no lie. Folks--they're cranks!" explosively. "When one isn't findin'
fault another is. When I've heat enough for ol' Mrs. Johnson it's too
hot for Mrs. Bracken. Mrs. Schuneman on the first floor has too much
hot water an' Miss Adams on the third too little. Mrs. Rawson won't
stand for Mrs. Matchan's piano an' Mrs. Matchan kicks on Mrs. Rawson's
sewin' machine. Mr. Jarvis never gets his newspaper an' Mrs. Lewis
al'ys gets two. Mrs. Willoughby jumps on me if a pin drops in the
hall. She can't stand no noise since her mother died. She don't do
nothin' but cry.