finished the
sentence. "I'm sorry for bothering you," she called back, "but if one
of your family was lost I rather think you'd try to find her."

Her voice rang out shrill and clear and it was such an unexpected sound
in the Washington, where children's voices were forbidden, that old
Mrs. Johnson opened her door in a spasm of curiosity. She closed it
abruptly when she met the cold unfriendly glance of Mr. Wells' black
eyes, and shook in her shoes.

Four doors faced Mary Rose when she reached the third floor. She
knocked on all of them not to waste time. Two doors remained firmly
closed. The other two opened simultaneously. In one stood a girl with
yellow hair and blue eyes and in the other was a young man who promptly
changed the morose expression he had put on when he rose for a
pleasanter one as he glanced across at Miss Blanche Carter before he
even looked at Mary Rose. Miss Carter looked at Mary Rose first and
then at Mr. Robert Strahan.

"Oh, please," Mary Rose was almost, if not quite, in tears, "have you
seen Jenny Lind?"

They stared at her. The only Jenny Lind they had ever heard of had
been quietly in her grave for many years. They looked at each other.
Mr. Strahan added a satisfied grin to his pleasant expression, for he
had wished to know Miss Carter ever since he had met her on the stairs
the day after he had moved into the Washington, but Fate had refused to
bring them together. He determined to make the most of this rare
opportunity as he kindly questioned Mary Rose.

"Who is Jenny Lind?"

"My canary," sobbed Mary Rose. "I put her on the shelf in Mrs.
Bracken's kitchen and she--she disappeared!"

"Cats," suggested Mr. Strahan with a very knowing glance for Miss
Carter.

Mary Rose shook her head. "Cats aren't allowed here. It was a
dumbwaiter, Mrs. Bracken said." Her voice was filled with anguish.
How hateful city life was!

"Oh! I thought it was the milkman." Miss Carter turned and ran into
her flat, Mary Rose at her heels. After a moment's hesitation, in
which he called himself a bashful idiot, Mr. Strahan deserted his
doorway for his neighbor's. On the top shelf of a cupboard like that
which had been in Mrs. Bracken's kitchen Mary Rose saw a bottle of
milk. She groaned. But Miss Carter gave a pull somewhere and sent it
higher. There on the lower shelf, swinging unconcernedly in her cage,
was Jenny Lind. Mary Rose gave a joyous shriek.

"I thought I'd never see her a