n won't like it if I stay away any longer. I'm sorry I
bothered you," she smiled tremulously. "But I just had to find Jenny
Lind. Thank you for your trouble. Good-by."

"Come and see us again?" The invitation came in a chorus.

Mary Rose stopped abruptly. "Is that an honest and true invitation?"
she asked doubtfully. "Aunt Kate said I mustn't ever be a nuisance to
the tenements because children aren't allowed here. I'm not a child,
she said, because I'm going on fourteen, but I had to promise to be
careful of the tenements."

"Bless the baby," murmured Miss Carter as she and Mr. Strahan stood in
the hall and watched Mary Rose's head go down, down.

"I thought children were barred?" asked Mr. Strahan quickly, he was so
afraid that Miss Carter would disappear also.

"I thought pets were barred, too. She's a quaint little thing. I
suppose she is homesick. A city apartment house is not like a home in
a small town," she said, as if she knew, and she sighed.

"It is not!" He agreed with her emphatically. He had come from a
small town himself and he knew. "I think I'll make a little story out
of this. I'm a newspaper man, you know, and there isn't anything a
city editor likes better than he does a human interest story. I have a
hunch that there is a lot of human interest in that kid."

"I fancy you are right. I'm a librarian myself, and I should be at my
library this blessed moment. I'd far rather go down and help Mary
Rose," and she laughed scornfully because she had such simple tastes.

He looked as if he admired them. "If you feel that way you surely
aren't under the spell of that wicked witch Independence that Mary Rose
talks of." There was nothing scornful in his laugh. It held so little
scorn and so much admiration that she flushed.

"Independence!" she shrugged her shoulders. "I learned long ago that
independence is just another word for loneliness. My friend, Miss
Thorley, doesn't agree with me. We have very warm arguments over it."

"They haven't been warm enough to disturb me. You're very quiet
neighbors. Doesn't the very quiet get on your nerves sometimes? It's
something just to hear people, when you are alone and have no one to
talk to."

"Lonely! You?" She was astonished. "I don't see how a young man could
be lonely." Evidently her idea of masculine life was a merry round of
social pleasure.

His laugh was a trifle bitter. "A man can be lonely for exactly the
same reaso