and now--" she
shuddered and hid her face in her apron.

"Nothing's happened to her," repeated Mrs. Schuneman with a poor
attempt at firmness. "Nothing could happen to a child like Mary Rose.
It's when you're looking for trouble that trouble comes, Mrs. Donovan,
and Mary Rose never looked for trouble. She was too busy looking for
friends."

"That's what she always said," exclaimed Grandma Johnson; "that the
pleasant things come to the people who are looking for pleasant things
but, land! see what's happened to her and if anyone ever looked for
pleasantness it was Mary Rose. Why she even looked for it in us!" And
she laughed harshly.

"And she found it, too," Mrs. Schuneman declared quickly. "Yes, she
did. She looked deep enough to find the pleasantness we didn't know
was there because we'd covered it up with so much disagreeableness.
I'm not ashamed to admit that she made me see that so long as you live
in a world with other people you owe some obligation to be agreeable to
them. If each of us did our share, as Mary Rose was always asking us
to do, we'd find this world a friendlier place than it is."

"She must have said that to me a hundred times," sniffled Miss Adams.
"I knew she was right all the time but I wouldn't say so."

"It's easy to get out of the habit of being friendly in the city,"
murmured Mrs. Matchan. "It's different in the country."

"I guess it's much the same, city or country. If she hadn't found
Germania for me I'd have been in an asylum by now," asserted Mrs.
Schuneman. "There I was all by myself and while a bird isn't a human
being, it's a lot of company. And it's through Germania and Mary Rose
that I've got acquainted with all of you."

"If it hadn't been for Mary Rose I doubt if Mr. Bracken would have
asked me to go for Harriet," Mrs. Bracken said in a low voice.

It seemed as if each of them had something to say of what Mary Rose had
done for her. Mary Rose's friendly nature, her undaunted belief in the
friendliness of people and of the world in which she lived had made
those whose lives she had touched develop friendliness also. The dozen
people gathered in the Donovan living-room said so, quite frankly.

Suddenly the clock struck eleven times. Mrs. Donovan burst into a
perfect storm of tears. "She should have been in her bed hours ago!"
she sobbed. "An' where is she? Where's Mary Rose?"

"Sh--sh!" There was a step on the stairs. It seemed as if everyone
stopped