The Rosie World

Ellen was right. It would be necessary for him to hoard like a miser his little stock of money until the farm should once again be on a paying basis.

George sighed gloomily and went about his preparations for departure.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE SISTERS

Ellen and Rosie saw him off. Rosie wept openly.

"And, Jarge," she said, kissing him good-bye, "give your mother and your father my love, but especially your mother. Tell her that I love her and that I think of her every day. You won't forget, will you? And tell her that Geraldine is fat and well and has been ever since we got home from the country."

"Good-bye, George," Ellen said quietly. Her face was pale and there was a strained expression about eyes and mouth.

"Oh, Ellen!" George gave her one last wild kiss and rushed madly through the gate.

His coach was far down the train shed and Rosie and Ellen soon lost sight of his hurrying figure. They stood together at the gate and waited until the train started.

As it pulled away Ellen sighed deeply. "Thank goodness he's gone!" She leaned against the grating and laughed hysterically.

Rosie, who had been dabbing her eyes with a wet handkerchief, looked up blankly. "Ellen O'Brien, what do you mean? Are you glad he's gone?"

"You bet I'm glad!" Ellen's silly high-pitched laugh continued until silenced by Rosie's look of scornful fury.

"Ellen O'Brien, you're worse than I thought you were!"

Ellen faltered a moment, then reached toward Rosie appealingly. "Don't be too hard on me, Rosie. You don't know the awful time I've had. I feel like I've been dead. I haven't been able to breathe. I don't mean it was his fault. I think as much of him as you do – really I do. He's good and he's kind and he's honest and he's everything he ought to be. But if he'd ha' stayed much longer I'd ha' smothered."

Rosie, accusing angel and stern judge rolled into one, demanded gravely: "And now that he's gone what are you going to do?"

"What am I going to do?" Ellen's laugh was still a little beyond her control, but it had in it a note of happy relief that was unmistakable. "I'm going to live again – at least for the little time that's left me."

"What do you mean by 'the little time that's left you'?"

"From now till Thanksgiving; from Thanksgiving till spring." For an instant Ellen's face clouded. Then she cried: "But I'm not going to think of spring! I'm going to have my fling now!"

Rosie looked at her without speaking and, as she looked, it seemed to her that the Ellen of other days rose before her. It was as though a pale nun-like creature had been going about in Ellen's body, answering to Ellen's name. Now, at George's departure as at the touch of a magic wand, the old Ellen was back with eyes that sparkled once again and cheeks into which the colour was returning in waves. Yes, she was the old Ellen, eager for life and excitement and thirsting for admiration. But the old Ellen with a difference. Now, instead of estranging Rosie utterly with careless bravado, she strove to win her understanding.

"You don't know how I feel, Rosie; you can't, because you and me are made differently. You're perfectly happy if you've got some one to love and take care of – you know you are! With me it's different. I don't want to take care of people and work for them and slave for them. I want to have a good time myself! I'm just crazy about it! I know I ought to be ashamed, but can I help it? That's the way I am. Do you think I'm very awful, Rosie?"

Rosie answered truthfully: "I'm not thinking of you at all. I'm thinking of poor Jarge."

Ellen gave a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness I can give up thinking of him for a while." She began patting her hair and arranging her hat. "Do I look all right, Rosie? I got to hurry back to the shop. A feather salesman is coming today and Miss Graydon wants me to take care of him. He'll probably invite me out to lunch."

"And are you going?" Rosie asked slowly.

Ellen took a long happy breath. "You bet I'm going!"

"Ellen O'Brien, if you do, I'll tell Jarge! I will just as sure!"

For an instant Ellen was staggered. Then she recovered. "No, Rosie, you'll do no such thing! What you'll do is this: you'll mind your own business!"

Rosie tried to protest but her voice failed her, for the look in Ellen's eye betokened a will as strong as her own and a determination to brook no interference.

Ellen started off, then paused to repeat: "You'll mind your own business! Do you understand?"

Ellen walked on and Rosie called after her, a little wildly: "I won't! I won't! I tell you I won't!"

But she knew she would.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

ELLEN HAS HER FLING

It is hard to be the self-appointed guardian of another's interests, for one's standing is not, as it were, official. In the weeks that followed Rosie felt this keenly. She gave up protesting to Ellen, for Ellen's curt answer to everything she might say was always: "You mind your own business!" Though she would not accept Ellen's dictum that George's business was not hers, yet she was soon forced to give up direct action and to seek her end through the interference of others. She tried her mother.

"I don't care what you say, Ma, Ellen's just as crooked as she can be, acting this way with other fellows when she doesn't even deny that she's engaged to Jarge. And you ought to stop it, too! There, the very first week he was gone, she went out three nights hand-running with that feather man from St. Louis. You know she did! And now she's got that new little dude with an off eye and, besides, Larry Finn's come back. I tell you it ain't fair to Jarge and you're to blame, too, if you don't stop it!"

Mrs. O'Brien shared with Rosie the conviction that an engaged girl ought not so much as raise her eyes to other men. She was done forever with all men but one. Ellen, for some reason, did not feel this instinctively and, if a girl does not feel it instinctively, how is she to be made to feel it? Mrs. O'Brien sighed. Unknown to Rosie she had tried to speak to Ellen. Ellen had not let her go very far.

"Say, Ma, you dry up!" she had told her shortly. "I guess I know what I'm doing."

"I'm sure you do," Mrs. O'Brien had murmured in humble apology; "but, Ellen dear, be careful! There's a lot of people know you're engaged to Jarge and I'm afraid they'll be talkin'."

"Let 'em talk!" was Ellen's snappish answer.

So when Rosie approached her mother on the same subject, Mrs. O'Brien hemmed and hawed and ended by offering a defence of Ellen which sounded hollow even to herself. "As for that feather fella, Rosie dear, you mustn't get excited about him. It's a matter of business to keep him jollied. Miss Graydon wants Ellen to be nice to him. And, as I says to Ellen, 'If that's the case,' says I, 'of course you've got to accept his little attentions. Miss Graydon,' says I, 'is your employer and a girl ought always to please her employer.' As you know yourself, Rosie, Ellen's certainly getting on beautifully in that shop. Miss Graydon told me herself the other night that she had never had a girl so quick and tasty with her needle and when I told her about me own poor dead sister, Birdie, she said that explained it."

"But, Ma," Rosie cried, "what about poor Jarge?"

"Jarge? Why, Jarge is all right. He's out there in the country and you know yourself he's crazy about the country. And more than that, Ellen writes him a picture postcard every week. She gave me her word she'd do it. I couldn't very well insist on her writing a letter, for you know her long hours at the shop and it wouldn't be right to ask her to use her eyes at night. 'But, Ellen dear,' says I to her, 'promise me faithfully you'll never let a week go by without sending him a picture postcard.' And she gave me her word she wouldn't."

Mrs. O'Brien could always be depended on to obscure reason in a dust of words, especially at times when it would be embarrassing to face reason in the open. After three or four attempts to arouse her mother to some sort of action, Rosie had to give up. She felt as keenly as ever that George was being basely betrayed, but she saw no way to protect him. She had not written to him since he left, but she wrote every week to his mother on the pretext that Mrs. Riley was deeply interested in Geraldine and must be kept informed of Geraldine's growth and health. Rosie always put in a sentence about Ellen: "Ellen's very busy but very well," or "Ellen's hours are much longer now than they used to be and she hasn't so very much time to herself, but she likes millinery, so it's all right," – always something that would assure George of Ellen's well-being and excuse, if necessary, her silence. Rosie hated herself for thus apparently shielding Ellen but, in her anxiety to spare George, she would have gone to almost any length.

A sort of family pride kept her from confiding her worries to Janet McFadden. Soon after George's departure she had remarked to Janet: "You oughtn't to be surprised because you know the kind of girl Ellen is. She's just got to amuse herself. Besides, you can't exactly blame her because poor Jarge'd want her to have a good time." This attitude had not in the least deceived Janet, but Janet was too tactful to question it.

The reasons for not talking to Janet did not apply to Danny Agin, who, being old and of another generation, was philosophical rather than personal and had long since mastered the art of forgetting confidences when forgetting was more graceful than remembering. So at last Rosie opened her heart to Danny.

"Now take an engaged girl, Danny."

Rosie paused and Danny, nodding his head, said: "For instance, a girl like Ellen."

Rosie was glad enough to be definite. "I don't mind telling you, Danny, that it's Ellen I'm talking about. I just don't know what to do about it and maybe you'll be able to help me."

Danny listened carefully while Rosie slowly unfolded her story. "And, Danny," she said, as she reached the present in her narrative, "that St. Louis fellow's just dead gone on her – that's all there is about it. He's sending her picture postcards every day or every other day. I can't help knowing because they come to the house. I suppose he doesn't like to send them to the shop where the other girls would see them. He used to sign the postcards with his full name but now he only signs 'Harry.' Now, Danny, do you think it's nice for a girl that's engaged to let another fella send her postcards and sign 'em 'Harry'?"

Danny ruminated a moment. "Well, if you ask me, Rosie, I don't believe that's so awful bad."

"But, Danny, that ain't all! Listen here: last week he sent a big box of candy from Cleveland and this morning another box came from Pittsburg. And there was a postcard this morning and what do you think it said? 'I just can't wait till Saturday night!' And it was signed, 'With love, Harry.' Now, Danny, what can that mean? I bet anything he's coming to spend Sunday with her and, if he does come, what in the world am I to do about it?"