y did find her Mary Rose was amazed to see the
look of determination that came into his sunburned face.

"He'll do it," he said, half under his breath. "It's all very well for
a girl to be independent, but she needn't be so darned independent that
she won't listen to a word a man says."

"I don't think I understand," Mary Rose ventured to say when there was
a long pause.

Her new friend laughed. "No, of course, you don't." He put his hands
on her shoulders. "As man to man," he said, "the modern girl is
getting to be almost too much of a problem for the modern man. I don't
suppose you understand that, either. But wait ten or fifteen years and
you will. Godfrey! I feel sorry for you. If they keep on as they've
started what will they be in ten years? Did you say you were living
over there?" He looked toward the white wall.

Mary Rose nodded her yellow head. "I thought perhaps you might like to
take a cat to board. An orphan cat," she explained pityingly.

Jerry Longworthy swallowed a laugh when he saw that there was real
trouble in her face. "Suppose you climb into the car and tell me why
you're looking for a boarding place for an orphan cat?"

Mary Rose smiled radiantly as she obeyed and, with George Washington
cuddled against her, she told him all about it.

"My Uncle Larry," she began very importantly, "is the janitor of that
wonderful two-faced palace."

"Is he, indeed," remarked Jerry Longworthy, lighting his pipe.

"But he doesn't own it. At first I thought he did. I used to live in
Mifflin, where there aren't any houses like that. Every family has its
own house. Some of them are little but Mrs. Black's is as big as
yours. She brought me to Waloo and we had a taxicab all the way."

"All the way!" Mr. Jerry showed a proper amount of astonishment. "That
was a treat."

"It was to me," simply. "There aren't any taxicabs in Mifflin, just
one old hack that was made before the war, Mr. Day said, and that's a
very long time ago."

"It is," agreed Mr. Jerry. "Longer than either you or I can remember.
I expect you are all of ten years old?"

"I'm older than that." She would have told him how much older but she
remembered what Aunt Kate had said. "I'm going on fourteen." It
sounded so aged that she felt quite important. "And my name is Mary
Rose Crocker."

"Mary Rose?" He lifted his eyebrows, and Mary Rose knew at once that
he was thinking that boys' clothes and girls' names do not us