crosser than two sticks ever since she came
here. Maybe it is because she's lonesome, I dunno. Seems if a canary
won't do much for her but, for the land's sakes, Mary Rose, don't put
one in every flat."

"Wouldn't that be grand!" Mary Rose stopped paring potatoes for supper
to look at her aunt with admiration. "It would be like living inside
an organ, wouldn't it. I think it would be perfectly lovely."

CHAPTER VI

When Mary Rose went up to Mrs. Bracken's the next morning she took
Jenny Lind with her and placed the cage on the kitchen table.

"I can't bear to be alone," she had explained to Aunt Kate. "If I
don't have a friend with me I feel as if I was shut up in a dark
closet."

First Mary Rose went into the big living-room and picked up papers,
straightened the chairs and raised the shades as she had seen her aunt
do the day before. It was a very splendid room to Mary Rose but there
was something about it that made her frown as she stood in the doorway.

"It needs something. Even the chairs don't look as if they really knew
each other. It doesn't feel as if people ever had a good time in it."
She shook her head and thought of the shabby sitting-room in
Mifflin--not big enough to swing a cat in, daddy had said--where she
and daddy and Jenny Lind and George Washington and Solomon and Lena had
been crowded together. Everyone had had good times there.

She winked back a tear as she went down the hall. She glanced in at an
open door and stopped short as she found that she was looking into the
black eyes of a woman on the bed.

"Are you Mrs. Donovan's niece?" the woman said faintly. "Come in.
Gracious, but you're small for your age! You washed up very nicely
yesterday. I didn't close my eyes last night and I'm not feeling well
today, so I'm not going to get up for a while. I wish you would tell
your uncle that Mrs. Matchan can't practice this morning. I must get
some sleep. What's that in the kitchen?" she demanded as she heard a
happy chirp-chirp.

"That's Jenny Lind." Mary Rose was all sympathy for this lovely lady
who could not sleep. For a moment she had thought that she might be
the enchanted princess but if she was Mrs. Bracken she was a married
lady and Mary Rose had never heard of a married princess. All the
princesses she knew ceased to exist when they began to live happily
ever after.

"Jenny Lind?" asked Mrs. Bracken.

"My canary. I brought her for company. I never was