The Rosie World

Mrs. Sullivan looked at her son reprovingly. "Tom Sullivan, you just mind your own business! What I'm saying is for Janet's own good. And I must say, Mary McFadden, it's your fault, too. You ought to be dressing Janet better now that she's getting big."

Mrs. McFadden sighed apologetically. "I'm sure I dress her as well as I can, Kitty."

"Well, then, all I got to say is you must be a mighty poor manager, with Dave making good money and you yourself working every day!" As she finished, Mrs. Sullivan smiled and dimpled with all the malicious triumph of a precocious child.

Rosie felt shamed and troubled. To Mrs. Sullivan's taunt there was one answer that everybody present knew, but that neither Mary McFadden nor Janet would ever give, and that Rosie, as an outsider, could not give. But even so, Mrs. Sullivan was not to go unanswered. Tom, blushing with mortification, jumped to his feet.

"Ma, you're the limit! You ought to be ashamed o' yourself! Uncle Dave makes good money, does he? Yes, and he boozes every cent of it, and Aunt Mary here has got to work like a nigger to pay the rent and keep herself and Janet, and you know it, too."

"Tom Sullivan, you shut up!" Mrs. Sullivan's voice rose to an angry scream. "How dare you interrupt me! You deserve a good thrashing, you do, and you're goin' to get it, too, as soon as your father comes home!.. Dave boozes, does he? Well, all I got to say is this: he never boozed before he got married, and if he boozes now it's a mighty queer thing!"

Rosie stood up to go. "Say, Janet, you promised to come with me this afternoon. Get your hat."

"Yes," advised Mrs. Sullivan; "put on that old black sailor hat that makes you look like a guy. Mary McFadden, if I had a girl I wouldn't let her out on the street in a hat like that!"

Rosie and Janet started off and Tom called after them: "Wait a minute! I'll come, too!"

"No, you don't!" his mother ordered. "You stay right where you are! You don't get out o' my sight till I hand you over to your dad!"

Once safe on the street, Rosie put a sympathetic arm about Janet's shoulder. "Even if she is your aunt, Janet, I think she's low-down and I hate her!"

"Pooh!" Janet tossed her head in fine scorn. "In my opinion she ain't worth hating! She ain't nuthin'! I consider her beneath my contemp'! The truth is, Rosie, I don't mind her buzzin' around any more than I do a fly! She'd die if she didn't talk; so I say let her talk. If she couldn't she'd probably do something worse. My mother feels the same way. We get tired of her sometimes, but we stand her because she's my dad's own sister… Of course, though, some of the things she says is perfectly true. I ain't pretty. You are, Rosie, but I ain't and I know it, and that's all there is about it."

Janet spread out her hands in simple candour and glanced at her friend. Then, involuntarily, she gave a little sigh. It was not a sigh of envy. She really did accept as a matter of fact that she herself was not pretty and that Rosie was. Where Rosie was plump and rounded and graceful, Janet knew that she was flat and long and lanky. Her arms were long, her fingers were long, her face was long. Her dark hair, too, was long, but with nothing in texture or colour to recommend it. She wore it pulled straight from her forehead and hanging behind in two stiff plaits.

With her old black hat, her colourless face, her faded clothes, she gave the impression of a very shabby, serious little person. And she was both. Rosie, on the other hand, though as poorly dressed, seemed anything but shabby and serious, for she was all life and colour, like some little roadside flower, which, in spite of dusty leaves, raises aloft a bright, fresh bloom.

Janet might bravely dismiss her aunt with a wave of the hand, but Rosie insisted upon repeating herself.

"I don't care what you say, Janet, I think she's low-down the way she talks to you and your mother! Now Tom's nice. That was fine the way he spoke up. You don't think his father'll lick him, do you?"

"Uncle Matt?" Janet laughed. "Nev-er! Uncle Matt's just crazy about Tom. They're like two kids when they're together. And that reminds me, Rosie – goodness me, I was forgetting all about it!" Janet paused to give full flavour to her bit of news. "What Tom came over for this afternoon was to tell me that Uncle Matt has promised to give him and me tickets for the Traction Boys' Picnic – you know it's coming in two weeks now – and Tom says he's going to try to beg another ticket for you!"

"Is he really, Janet? Now isn't he just too kind!"

"Kind? I should say he is! He's bashful, of course, and people laugh at him because he's got red hair, but he's just as generous as he can be. You remember last year I went with him, too. Why, do you know, last year his father had six customers who bought their tickets and then turned right around and said: 'But we can't go, so you just give these tickets to some one who can.' Uncle Matt had enough tickets for the whole family and two more besides. He sold those two and give us all ice-cream sodas on them."

"Did he really, Janet! That just proves what I always say: in some ways I'd much rather have my father be a conductor than a motorman. A motorman never gets a chance at a ticket. I'm glad Jarge Riley's a conductor. I bet he sells a good many, don't you?"

"Of course he will, Rosie! I hadn't thought of Jarge. If a customer gives Jarge back a ticket, of course he'll pass it on to you – I know he will. Gee, Rosie, you're lucky to have a fella like Jarge Riley boarding with you. He sure is a dandy."

To this last Rosie agreed readily enough but on the priority of her claim to any tickets she set Janet right. "If he gets only a couple, he'll give Ellen first chance."

Janet sighed. "Say, Rosie, is he still dead gone on Ellen?"

Rosie sighed, too, and nodded. "Ain't it funny with a fella that's got so much sense about other things?"

Janet sighed again. "I don't like to say anything against Ellen, because she's your sister, but, as you say yourself, it certainly is funny."

CHAPTER X

ROSIE RECEIVES AN INVITATION

Rosie did not see George that night, but she brought up the subject next day at dinner. It was Sunday, so the whole family was assembled.

"Are you selling many tickets, Jarge?"

"Yes, a good many, and one of my customers give me back two."

"Oh, Jarge, did he really? What are you going to do with them?"

George glanced timidly in the direction of Ellen. It was plain at once what he wanted to do with them. It was also plain that Ellen was not going to give him much encouragement. To get the support of the family, George made his invitation public. "I was hoping that Ellen would like to go with me."

Ellen glanced up languidly. "Thanks, Mr. Riley, but I don't see how I can."

George, swallowing hard, forced out the question: "Why not?"

"Well, if you insist on knowing, it's this: I don't care to make a guy o' myself going out with a fella that don't come up much above my shoulder."

Mrs. O'Brien threw up astonished hands and cried out: "Fie on you, Ellen, fie, for sayin' such a thing!"

Rosie blazed and spluttered with indignation: "Ellen O'Brien, you ought to be ashamed o' yourself to talk like that to a nice fella like Jarge Riley! If you had any sense you'd know that he's worth a whole cart-load of the dudes that you and Hattie Graydon run after!"

Rosie got up from her chair and, stepping over to George's place, slipped her arm about his embarrassed neck. Then she put her cheek against his. "Don't you care what that old Ellen says, Jarge. You're not little at all! You're plenty big enough! Besides, little men are much nicer!"

Ellen laughed maliciously. "It's a pity George don't ask you."

The red again surged up George's neck; he gulped; sent one hurt glance in Ellen's direction, then spoke to Rosie: "Rosie, I've got tickets for the Traction Boys' Picnic and I'd love like anything to take you. Have you got anything else on for Friday night next week?"

"Friday night, did you say, Jarge? Why, for Friday night they ain't nuthin' 'd suit me better! Thanks ever so much!"

Rosie, still behind George's chair, shot an annihilating glance at Ellen. That young woman, a trifle piqued perhaps but still amused, tossed her head and laughed.

"Ma, I don't think it's right the way Rosie's getting a grown-up fella and me not even engaged yet! I don't think you ought to allow it!"

"Ellen, Ellen, your tongue's entirely too long!" Mrs. O'Brien looked at her reprovingly, but Ellen, in a sudden change of mood, heeded her not. She was gazing at Rosie with speculative eyes. When she spoke, it was in a tone from which all banter and ill-humour had vanished.

"Ma, if Rosie does go with George Riley, there's just one thing: she's got to have a new dress. The poor kid hasn't a stitch to her back. She ought to have a little pink dimity. She's just sweet in pink. Lucky, too, there's a sale on tomorrow at the Big Store. So you needn't say a word – I'm going to get her something. And I'll trim her a hat, too."

Mrs. O'Brien protested that she hadn't the price of a ten-cent hat, let alone a dress, but Ellen, as usual, was firm, and Rosie knew that she was now destined to go to the picnic prettily costumed. Rosie would have liked to nurse a while longer her indignation against Ellen but, as Ellen was the only person in the house who knew how to trim a hat out of little or nothing and how to whip together a pretty little dress, Rosie was forced to change her manner of open hostility to one of a more friendly reserve.

On the whole Rosie was jubilant. "I'm sure I don't know why it is," she said to Janet McFadden, "but people are pretty nice to me, aren't they?"

"Nice?" echoed Janet with long-drawn emphasis. "Well, I should think they are!.. Say, Rosie, listen: " – Janet paused a moment – "do you think Tom and me and you and Jarge could all go together? Do you think Jarge'd mind?"

Rosie considered the request carefully before answering. Then she spoke as kindly as she could: "I'm sure I don't know, Janet. Perhaps he'd like it all right, but, then again, perhaps he wouldn't. Don't you know, men are so queer nowadays. Anyway, though, I tell you what: I'll ask him."

"Will you, Rosie?" Janet's gratitude was almost pathetic.