Part 9 (1/2)
With Jenny Lind's cage in her hand, Mary Rose knocked at Miss Thorley's door.
”We've come to have our pictures taken,” she told Miss Carter, when she opened it. ”The princess, I mean the other lady,” she colored pinkly as Miss Carter laughed, ”said we were to advertise Mr. Bingham Henderson's jam.” Mary Rose always made a careful explanation. ”If she would like two birds I'm almost sure that Mrs. Schuneman would loan her Germania.”
”Do you want two birds, Bess?” called Miss Carter, and Miss Thorley came in.
She wore a faded blue smock over her crash gown and looked more beautiful than before to Mary Rose's admiring eyes.
”I think I have two birds,” she laughed, and patted Mary Rose's head and snapped her fingers at Jenny Lind. ”But don't tell me old Lady Grouch is so human as to have a canary.”
”Old Lady Grouch?” Mary Rose did not know whom she meant.
”Schuneman, is that her name?” absently. Miss Thorley was studying Mary Rose from behind half shut eyes. Just how should she pose her?
”Oh, but she isn't grouchy!” Mary Rose flew to the defense of her new friend. ”She was just lonesome. Now that she has Germania for company, she is very, very pleasant. I go to see her every day.”
Miss Thorley shrugged her shoulders. ”Every one to their taste. Stand here, Mary Rose, so that the sun will fall on that yellow mop of yours.
Would your heart break if I took off that hair ribbon? I'd rather your hair was loose.”
”Aunt Kate put it there,” doubtfully.
”I'll put it back before Aunt Kate sees you. Now, just hold Jenny Lind's cage under one arm and these under the other.” She handed her a couple of blue and white jars, labeled with big letters--”Henderson-Bingham.
Jam Manufacturers.” ”Can you hold another? Don't say yes if you can't, for it is tiresome to pose when you're not used to it. Now then, how is that, Blanche? Isn't she ducky? You know it's moving day, Mary Rose, and you won't trust anyone but yourself to move what you like best, your bird and your jam.”
”I just did move,” proudly, ”from Mifflin to Waloo.”
”Exactly. Quaint, isn't she?” Miss Thorley murmured to Miss Carter.
”How old are you, Mary Rose?”
Before Mary Rose could stammer that she was going on fourteen Miss Carter broke in to say that she was off.
”Be good to Mary Rose,” she begged. ”And, Mary Rose, when you are tired, say so. Miss Thorley will forget all about you when she is interested in the picture and she'll let you stand there until you drop. I know. You have a hard pose with your arms like that and when you are tired be sure and say so.”
”Oh, run along, Blanche, and leave us alone,” Miss Thorley said impatiently as she got her drawing board and brushes and sat down beside the little table that held her paints.
Miss Carter only waited to make a face at Mary Rose before she shut the door and left the artist and her model together. Neither spoke for a few moments. Mary Rose was too interested in watching Miss Thorley's wonderful fingers and Miss Thorley was too intent on her work for conversation. At last Mary Rose could keep still no longer.
”Are you really an enchanted princess?” she asked eagerly.
”I should scarcely call myself that, Mary Rose. A working woman is the way I say it.”
”Then what did Mr. Jerry mean? Don't you think he is an awfully nice man? He makes me think of Alvin Lewis in Mifflin, only Alvin isn't quite so stylish. He is a clerk in the drug store in Mifflin and he was real pleasant. When Gladys and I only had a nickel he'd let us have a gla.s.s of ice cream soda with two spoons. He was such a pleasant man. But what did Mr. Jerry mean,” she returned to her mutton with a suddenness that made Miss Thorley blur a line, ”when he said you were under the spell of the wicked witch Independence?”
”How should I know?” And Miss Thorley frowned in a way that made Mary Rose wish she wouldn't. It quite spoiled her face to frown with it.
”What is Independence?” Mary Rose frowned, too. As Aunt Kate had said, frowns were contagious. Mary Rose had caught one now in a flash.
Miss Thorley took up a handful of brushes and regarded them intently before she said slowly: ”Independence is the greatest thing in the world, Mary Rose. It means that I can live as I choose, where I choose, that I can pay my own bills, buy my own clothes and food, that I can do exactly as I please and as I think best. The independence of women is the most wonderful thing in this wonderful age.”
Mary Rose looked puzzled. Mr. Jerry had not spoken of it as if it were such a wonderful thing. She looked around the pretty room with its simple furnis.h.i.+ngs and then at Miss Thorley.
”Does it mean you aren't ever going to be married?” she asked doubtfully.
In Mifflin all the girls as big as Miss Thorley meant to be married.