gain. I can't thank you, but I'll
remember you as long as I live. I--I feel as if you'd saved her life."
She shivered as she remembered the snap of Mr. Wells' black eyes, the
click of his heavy jaw, when he had said that pets were not allowed in
the building.

"What is all this excitement?" questioned a soft voice behind them, and
Mary Rose whirled around and stared at another girl.

Now that her anxiety in regard to Jenny Lind was relieved, Mary Rose
had time to think of other things. She brushed the tears from her
eyes, and her face was wreathed with a dewy smile as she asked eagerly:

"Please, which--which of you is the enchanted princess?" One of them
must be. She knew it by a funny prickle down her back.

Both girls laughed, the yellow-haired one and the brown.

"Princesses aren't enchanted now." Miss Carter pulled a lock of Mary
Rose's yellow hair. "They have their eyes too wide open."

"But Mr. Jerry said there was, that in this very house was a most
beautiful princess who was under the spell of a wicked witch. He said
the old witch's name was Independence." Her words fairly ran over each
other, she was so afraid something would happen before she could
deliver Mr. Jerry's message to the princess. "And he said to tell the
princess that the prince wasn't ever going to Jericho, but was going to
stay right here on the job."

Miss Carter looked significantly at the brown-haired girl. "That
message isn't for me," she told Mary Rose. "Independence and I are
strangers. I can't bear the thing. I quite agree with Mr. Jerry that
she is an old witch. Isn't someone a picture, Bess," she asked, "with
her birdcage and checked apron?"

"She surely is." The impatient frown that had marred Miss Thorley's
face at the mere mention of Mr. Jerry's name slipped away. "I must
paint her. She'll make a fine ad. Who are you, honey?"

And Mary Rose told them who she was and how she had come from Mifflin
to make her home with Aunt Kate and Uncle Larry in the cellar-basement,
she meant; and how she had had to board out George Washington and had
taken Jenny Lind to Mrs. Bracken's for company while she earned money
to pay for George Washington's board.

"By jinks, what a jolly story," murmured Mr. Strahan who still clung to
his neighbor's doorway and his opportunity. The two girls looked at
him and the three smiled involuntarily.

"I must go back and finish the dishes," Mary Rose announced suddenly.
"Mrs. Bracke