The Rosie World Part 29

"Ah, that's a different matter," Danny explained airily. "You see, Rosie, there be two cla.s.ses of men, sensible men and fools, and most men belong to both cla.s.ses. Now a sensible man knows that a sweet loving woman will make him a happy home and a good mother to his children. Any man'll agree to that. So I'm right when I tell you that all men love that kind of a woman, for they do. But let a bold hussy come along with a handsome face on her and a nasty wicked temper, and before you count ten she'll call out all the fool there is in a man and off he goes after her as crazy as a half-witted rooster. Ah, I've seen it time and again.

Many a poor lad that ought have known better has put the halter about his own neck! Have you ever thought, Rosie dear, of the queer ch'ices men make when they marry?"

"Danny, I don't know what you mean."

Danny's eyes took on a far-away look. "Take Mary and me. For forty years now I've been wonderin' what it was that married us."

"Why, Danny!" Rosie's expression was reproachful. "Didn't you love Mary?"

"Love her, do you say? Why, of course I loved her! Didn't me knees go weak at sight of her and me head dizzy? But the question is: why did I love her or why did she love me? There I was a gay dancing blade of a lad and Mary a serious owl of a girl that had never footed a jig in her life and would have died of shame not to have her washin' out bright and early of a Monda' mornin'. Now what was it, I ask you, that put love between us?"

Danny appealed to his young friend as man to man. Rosie, however, was not a person to grant the purely academic side of any question that was perfectly clear and matter-of-fact.

"Why, you loved her, Danny, and she loved you and that's all there was to it."

For a moment Danny looked blank. Then he chuckled. "Strange I didn't think of that before!" His eyes began to twinkle. "I'll wager, Rosie dear, ye've never lain awake o' nights wondering what it was that made the world go round, have you now?"

Rosie's answer was emphatic: "Of course not! I'm not so silly!"

Danny laughed. "I thought not."

Rosie went back to serious matters. "But, Danny, I can't understand about Jarge Riley and Ellen. Why is he so crazy about Ellen?"

Danny drew a long face. "The truth is, I suppose he loves her."

"But why does he love her?"

Danny's eyes opened wide. "Is it yourself, Rosie O'Brien, that's askin'

me why?"

"I don't understand it at all," Rosie continued. "I've got a mind to give Jarge a good talking to. He just ought to be told a few things for his own good."

"I'm sure he'll listen to you." There was a hint of guile in Danny's voice but Rosie refused to hear it.

"He always does listen to me. We're mighty good friends, Jarge and me.... Yes, I'll just talk to him tonight. I'll put it to him quietly.

Jarge has got lots of sense if only you talk to him right."

"Of course he has," Danny agreed. "And, Rosie dear, I'm consumed with impatience to hear the outcome of your conference. You won't fail to stop in and tell me about it tomorrow--promise me that!"

Rosie promised. She bid her old friend good-bye and left him, her mind already full of the things she would say to George Riley.

CHAPTER XXVI

ELLEN

"I don't know what's keepin' poor Ellen," Mrs. O'Brien remarked as the family gathered at supper that evening. "They're awful busy at them down-town offices, I'm thinkin'. Ellen was expectin' to be home at six o'clock sharp but something important must have come in and they need her. Ah, say what you will, a poor girl's got to work mighty hard these days."

"Huh!" grunted Terry.

There was a slam at the front door, at sound of which Mrs. O'Brien's face lighted up. "Ah, there she is now, the poor dear!"

Yes, it was Ellen. She swept at once into the kitchen and stood a moment glowering on the family with all the blackness of a storm-cloud. Then, without a word, she flung herself into a chair.

"Why, Ellen dear," her mother gasped, "what's ailin' you?"

Beyond twitching her shoulders impatiently, Ellen made no answer.

"How do you do, Ellen?" Rosie spoke formally, in the tone of one not at all certain as to how her own civility would be received.

Ellen glanced at her sharply. "Huh! So you're back, are you?"

"Ellen, Ellen," Mrs. O'Brien cried reprovingly, "is that the way you talk to poor little Rosie and her just in from the country? And she brought you two nice dressed chickens and a basket of fine fresh vegetables and a box----"

Ellen cut her mother short with an impatient, "Aw, Ma, you dry up!"

"What's the matter, Ellen?" Terry drawled out. "Lost your job?"

For answer Ellen s.n.a.t.c.hed off her hat and flung it angrily into the corner.

"Ellen, Ellen!" Mrs. O'Brien cried. "Your new hat!" She started forward to rescue the hat, then paused as the significance of Terry's question reached her understanding. Her fluttering hands fell limp, her face took on an expression at once scared and appealing. "Oh, Ellen dear, you haven't lost your job, have you? Don't tell me you've lost your job!"

Ellen scowled at her mother darkly. "You bet your life I've lost my job!

I wouldn't have staid in that office another day for a thousand dollars!

They're nothing but a set of old grannies--every one of them!"

"Oh, Ellen!" Mrs. O'Brien dropped back helplessly into her chair. A look of overwhelming disappointment settled on her face; her mouth quivered; her eyes overflowed. "Oh, Ellen," she repeated, "how does it come that ye've lost it?"

"Well, I guess you'd have lost it, too!" Ellen glared about the table defiantly. "Any one would with that old fogy, old man Harrison, worrying you to death with his old-maidish ways. He thinks people won't read his old letters if every word ain't spelled just so and every comma and period put in just right. The old fool! I'd like to know who cares about spelling nowadays! I did one letter over for him today six times and the sixth copy he tore up right in front of my face for nothing at all--a t-h-e-i-r for a t-h-e-r-e and a couple of little things like that. I tell you it made me hot under the collar and I just up and told him what I thought of him."

"Ellen!" Mrs. O'Brien gasped weakly.

"Well, I did!" Ellen repeated. "I just says to him, 'Since you're so mighty particular, Mr. Harrison, I don't see why you don't do your own typing!'" Ellen stood up and, indicating an imaginary Mr. Harrison, showed her family the pose she had taken.

"Well," asked Terry, "what did he say?"

"What did he say? He flew off the handle and shouted out: 'There's one thing sure: I'll never have you type another letter!' Just that way, as if I was nothing but an old errand boy! And after I had just done over his old letter for him six times, too!" Aggrieved and injured, Ellen appealed to her father: "Say, Dad, what do you know about that?"

Jamie O'Brien slowly cleared his throat. "Is that the way they teach you at the Business College to talk to your employer?"

The reproof in Jamie's words was entirely lost upon Ellen. She tossed her head scornfully. "Oh, us girls are on to his kind all right! We give it to them straight from the shoulder! That's the only way to treat 'em--the fussy old women! Then they respect you!"

"Ellen, Ellen, Ellen," Mrs. O'Brien wailed forlornly, "what makes you talk that way?"

Terence drew Ellen back to her story: "Well, Sis, after that, what did you say and what did he say?"

Ellen's ill humour was fast disappearing. Under the magic of her own recital, she was beginning to see herself in a new and flattering light.