The Rosie World

It was Danny's turn to look distracted. "Rosie, Rosie, ye'll drive me mad with yir questions! If I could tell you how they do, I would and gladly. But I can't. All I can tell you is they do."

"But, Danny, what sense has a thing like that got? 'They want to be beat, and they don't want to be beat.' That's exactly like saying: It's winter and it's summer at the same time. It's not good sense to say a thing like that."

"Sense, Rosie?" Danny looked at her reproachfully. "It's not sense I'm talkin' about. It's not the logic of the ladies I'm impressin' on you, mind – it's their feelin's. I'm tellin' you the kind o' man every lady's on the lookout for – a fine brute of a fella that would as soon knock her down as look at her, and yet would never raise a finger against her."

Rosie's hands dropped limply into her lap. "Danny Agin, do you know sometimes I get so mixed up that I feel just like I was crazy! That's how I feel now."

Danny nodded sympathetically. "Small wonder, Rosie. 'They want to be beat, and they don't want to be beat.' I defy any man to say that over fifty times and not go mad! And what would you say, Rosie, to a poor man havin' to live, day in and day out, for forty years with an everlastin' conthradiction like that? Ah, Mary's a fine woman, but I tell you, Rosie, in all confidence, I've had me own troubles. Many's the time I've seen her just achin' for a good sound beatin', but, if ever I'd laid the tip o' me finger upon her, her heart would ha' broke, and she'd ha' felt the shame of it the longest day of her life. And they're all the same, Rosie; take me word for it, they're all the same. They want their menfolks to be lions, and they want them to be lambs."

Lions and lambs! Her mother's very words! Upon Rosie the light began to break. "Why, Danny!" she gasped.

"Take yir own case, Rosie dear. There's yir own da, a meek lamb of a man – "

"But, Danny, I like my father because he's so kind!"

"Whisht, now, darlint, and listen. Wouldn't it be fine if he was the size of that sthrappin' polisman, Pete Donovan, with the lump of a diamond in his shirt front as big as an egg, and a great black mustache coverin' the red lips of him, and a roar in his voice that'd send the b'ys a-scatterin' for blocks around!"

The figure evoked was certainly one of heroic proportions, and Rosie, as she gazed at it, involuntarily gave a little sigh.

Danny chuckled. "Ha, ha, Rosie! Ye're like the rest o' them!"

"No, I'm not, Danny Agin! Honest I'm not! I'm glad my father's kind. I wouldn't love him if he wasn't, and you needn't think I would!"

Rosie struggled hard to convince Danny, but in vain. The more she protested, the louder Danny chuckled.

"Only think, Rosie dear, the pride in yir heart, if this great brute of a man, rampin' about like a lion, tearin' to pieces everybody that stood in his way, in yir own prisence, wee bit of a woman that ye are, should turn into a tame lamb!"

"Oh, Danny!"

In spite of herself, Rosie faced the world with something of the conscious air of a lion-tamer. Danny's chuckle recalled her to herself, and she watched him with growing resentment, as he continued:

"You see, Rosie, it's this way: The worse brute a man is, the greater glory he brings to the woman that tames him. Rosie, me advice to any young man that is courtin' a girl is to roar – not to roar at her, mind, but at everybody else when she's within hearin'. What a fine feelin' it must give a girl to have a roarin' bull of a young fella come softly up to her and eat out of her hand! And think of the great game it is to keep him tame! Rosie, take me word for it, these here soft-spoken men like yir own poor da and like meself – I take shame to confess it – make a great mistake. Many's the time it had been better for me peace of mind afterward had I let out a roar just for appearances' sake. I see it now."

Danny wagged his head and sighed.

"It's lucky for you, Rosie, that you have me to tell you all this, for ye'd never hear it from the ladies themselves. They never let out a whisper about it, but carry on just like Janet and yir own ma. Ah, don't tell me! I know them! They's some kind of a mystic sisterhood among them – I dunno just what, and in some few things they never give each other away."

"Don't they, Danny?"

"They do not."

Rosie regarded the old man thoughtfully. One could see the very processes of a new idea slowly working in her mind. Danny watched her curiously. At length he asked: "Well, Rosie, what is it?"

Rosie paused impressively before answering: "I was just thinking, Danny Agin, that you're right about yourself, but you're making a great mistake about my father." Rosie nodded significantly. "He's not as quiet as you think he is, in spite of his quiet ways. Sometimes he's just awful."

For a moment Danny was taken in. "Why, Rosie, aren't you just afther tellin' me about the scar that wasn't there?"

"Yes, and I'm sorry now I told you." There was a gleam in Rosie's eye which declared very emphatically that the sequel to that story would never again be related. "Listen here, Danny Agin! Now I understand – if my mother made up something about that scar, it was just to hide something else that was worse!"

"Why, Rosie! Ye don't say so!" For a moment Danny looked at her in astonishment. Then he lay back with a wheezy guffaw. "Rosie, ye'll be the death o' me yet! I suppose if the truth was known, Jamie beats yir ma every night of her life to a black-and-blue jelly! Don't he now?"

Rosie covered herself with an air of distant reserve. "I'm not going to tell you what he does. That's a family matter. But I will say one thing: You think Terry's awful nice, don't you? Everybody does. But do you know what he'd do to me if I was to lose one of his paper customers? He'd just beat the puddin' out o' me – yes, he would!"

"Why, Rosie!" Danny looked shocked. "What's this ye're sayin'? I thought you and Terry were great friends."

"Great friends? Oh, yes, we're great friends all right. You can always be great friends with a fellow like Terry as long as you run your legs off for him. But just let something happen, and then – "

Rosie ended with a "Huh!" and shook her head gloomily.

Danny gasped. "You don't say so, Rosie!"

There was the sound of an opening screen, and Danny, knowing that his wife must be coming, with a wheezy chuckle called out:

"Mary, Mary, do ye know who's here? It's Rosie O'Brien, and she's one of ye! She's fallen into line!"

Mrs. Agin came out on the porch, and stood for a moment looking from Danny to Rosie. She was a tall, gaunt old woman with thick white hair and thick eyebrows, which were still dark. She gave one the impression of great tidiness and cleanliness, together with the possibility of that caustic speech which so often characterizes the good housekeeper.

Rosie appealed to her eagerly: "Mis' Agin, I think Danny's just awful!"

Mrs. Agin glanced sharply at Danny, and then, with a seemingly clairvoyant understanding that the subject under discussion related somehow to the eternal war of the sexes, she went over to Rosie's side at once.

"What's he been sayin' to you, dear?"

"He's making fun of me because I told him if I was to lose one of my paper customers, Terry would beat me. And he would, too!"

Mrs. Agin turned on Danny severely. "Take shame to yourself, Dan Agin, to be teasin' Rosie O'Brien!"

"And listen here, Mis' Agin," Rosie continued. "He's been sayin' just awful things about us!"

"About us, Rosie? Do you mean about both of us?"

"About all of us, Mis' Agin – us ladies."

Rosie sat up very straight and severe.

Danny seemed to think the situation amusing, but he was the only one who did. Mrs. Agin glared at him darkly.

"Dan Agin, what's this ye've been sayin' to Rosie?"

Danny continued to shake with silent mirth, so Rosie answered for him:

"He says what all of us ladies wants is this: We want to be beat, and we don't want to be beat. Now, isn't that the silliest thing you ever heard, Mis' Agin? And he says when we marry a brute of a man, we pretend that he's kind and nice, and when we marry a nice, kind man, we let on he's a brute."

"Dan Agin, what do ye mean, puttin' such nonsense into Rosie's head? Answer me that now!"

"And listen, Mis' Agin," Rosie went on. "Just because he's that kind of a man himself, he thinks everybody else is. And they're not! Every one thinks my father's so quiet and nice, but I guess I know him! Sometimes he's just awful! And Terry, too! But Danny here, he thinks they're every one of them just as harmless as he is. I guess he's so scared himself that that's the reason he tries to make out that other men are, too!"

Mrs. Agin glared at Danny a moment in silence. Then she spoke: