all have
to charge you for them. It's pure carelessness."

"It's Jenny Lind," gulped Mary Rose, too frightened to think of dishes.
And she tried to make Mrs. Bracken understand that Jenny Lind had been
there, in that hole in the wall, and that now--Oh, where was she?

Mrs. Bracken shrugged her shoulders. "It's the dumbwaiter," she
yawned. "Your bird has gone up to Mr. Wells or possibly higher. If
it's Mr. Wells I don't suppose you'll see the bird again. He's a very
peculiar man."

Mary Rose did not wait to hear another word. With Aunt Kate's big blue
and white checked apron on, the dish mop in her hand, and a great fear
in her heart, she dashed up the stairs and pounded on the door of the
apartment above. Mr. Wells came himself and if he had looked cross and
forbidding the night before he looked a thousand times crosser and more
forbidding now. Indeed, he exactly fulfilled Mary Rose's idea of an
ogre.

"Please don't hurt Jenny Lind," sobbed Mary Rose, as soon as she could
gather breath to speak. "I'll take her right away."

"Hurt who? Who's Jenny Lind?" growled the ogre.

"My bird! my Jenny Lind! She came up to your house with a dumbwaiter."
Mary Rose hadn't the faintest idea of what a dumbwaiter was and it
sounded horrible to her. "Please, please, give her to me at once!"
She fairly danced in her impatience. She would have rushed into the
apartment but Mr. Wells stood in the doorway.

"The dumbwaiter?" Mary Rose had never heard a more unfriendly voice.
He called to someone behind him and a Japanese man came and peered
under Mr. Wells' arm as he held it against the frame of the door.

"Sako has taken nothing from the dumbwaiter this morning," Mr. Wells
said very coldly after he had exchanged a few words with his servant.
"But if you have lost your bird it is only what you must expect. Pets
are not allowed in this house." And he scowled fiercely enough to
frighten anyone but the owner of a lost canary.

"They are if they're not children nor cats nor dogs," insisted tearful
Mary Rose. "Uncle Larry said the law never says one word about birds.
Oh, are you quite sure Jenny Lind isn't in your house?" she wailed.

"I told you we have taken nothing from the dumbwaiter," impatiently.
He thought he was wonderfully patient with the child. He could have
ordered her out of the building at once. "Your bird may have gone up
to the next floor."

"Perhaps she has." Mary Rose was on the stairs before he