new pet is a nuisance you can answer him yourself."

"How could anyone say a bird was a nuisance?" Mary Rose was shocked.
"Why, it can't be that late!" for the dock on the mantel called out
five times and she looked at it in wide-eyed amazement. Never had an
afternoon run away any faster. "I must go. I've had a perfectly
wonderful time, Mrs. Schuneman, and I hope that Germania will be happy
with you in her new home."

There was a wistful note in her voice that reminded Mrs. Schuneman that
Mary Rose had recently come to a new home. She patted Mary Rose on the
shoulder and told her to come again.

"Come whenever you like. I'm alone most of the time and you can be
free with me," meaningly. "My tongue isn't hung in the middle to wag
at both ends."

"You can't have a kid running in and out all the time," objected Miss
Lottie, when Mary Rose had gone.

Mrs. Schuneman stopped snapping her fingers at Germania and looked at
her daughter. "There isn't much about this house that you let me have
as I want it. You took me away from my old friends and brought me up
here where it's so stylish I don't know a soul. I wonder I haven't
lost my voice, I've so little chance to use it. We've been here for
seven months now and though there's dozens and dozens of people pass my
door every night and morning, there's not one of them ever stops. The
janitor and his wife are the only ones I can talk to and I have to find
fault to get them up here. You and Louise are out all day. You don't
stay here."

"You don't have to stay here, either," yawned Miss Lottie. She had
heard all that before, very, very often. "We've told you a million
times to go out."

"Where'll I go?" asked her mother sharply. "Where'll I go? I can't
run about the streets and the stores six days in the week. A woman's
got to be home some time and if I find that child amuses me I'm going
to have her here when I want her. You needn't say another word, Lottie
Schuneman. So long as I pay the bills I'll have something to say about
my own house."

"I was only telling you the kid might be a nuisance," muttered Miss
Lottie.

"And I was telling you I'd do as you do, choose my own friends. That
child's the only soul that has ever looked at me in a friendly way
since I came to this house and I'm going to see her when I want to."

Mrs. Donovan could scarcely believe her ears when Mary Rose poured out
the story of the afternoon.

"Old Lady Schuneman's been