Rosie reached the corner in good time for George's car. There was a slight congestion in traffic and George had a moment or two before dashing back to his place on the rear platform. He looked dirty and hot.

His collar was in a soft welt, his face streaked with dust and perspiration. His expression, usually good-natured, was gloomy and irritable.

"What you got tonight?" he asked, lifting the lid of the pail. "What!

Ham again? Ham! What do you think I am? It's ham, ham, ham, every night of the week till I'm sick and tired of it! Here! Take it back--I don't want it! I'll buy me something decent to eat!"

"Why, Jarge!" Rosie had never heard him talk that way before. She hadn't supposed he could talk that way to her. The unexpectedness of it was like a blow. For the first time in their acquaintance she shrank from him. Her face quivered, her eyes filled with tears. "Why, Jarge!" she stammered again.

The motorman of George's car sounded his gong in warning and George, without another word, dropped the pail at Rosie's feet and jumped aboard.

Rosie, dazed and crushed, stood where she was until the car disappeared.

At first she was too hurt to cry out; too surprised by the suddenness of the attack to formulate her protest in words. One thing only was clear, namely, that George Riley had failed her. She could never again believe in him blindly, implicitly, as heretofore. There she had been supposing him so much better than any one else, and he wasn't at all. Probably he wasn't as good!... One little corner of her heart pleaded for him, whispering that poor George must have forgotten himself for the moment because, like the rest of the world, he was crazy with the heat. But Rosie silenced the whisper by exclaiming pa.s.sionately: "Even if he was, I don't see why he had to go and take it out on me! I'm sure I'm not to blame!"

After a pause her heart again sought weakly to excuse him by suggesting that perhaps Mrs. O'Brien did serve fried ham with a certain monotonous regularity. Rosie was not to be taken in by that. "Well," she demanded grimly, "what does he expect on a five-dollar-a-week board, with meat the price it is! Lamb chops and porterhouse steak?" After that her heart said nothing more, realizing, apparently, that so long as Rosie cared to nurse her grievance, she could find reasons in plenty. And Rosie did care to nurse it, and by the act of nursing soon changed it from a feeling of bewildered woe to one of mounting indignation.... If George Riley wanted to act that way, very well, let him do so. But he better not think that she, Rosie O'Brien, would stand for any such treatment, for she just wouldn't!

At home she was able to explain quietly enough that George hadn't wanted any supper. Jack at once called out: "Give me his ham! Aw, please, now, Rosie, give it to me! Give it to me!"

"No, Jackie, you're too little to have meat at supper," Rosie explained.

"This is for Terry. Here, Terry."

Terence accepted the windfall with a gallant, "Thanks, Rosie." Then he added: "But don't you want a piece of it yourself?"

"No, Terry, I'm not hungry. Besides, ma has saved me a little piece."

"And here it is, ye poor lamb." Mrs. O'Brien touched her affectionately on the cheek. "Sit right down and eat it before Geraldine wakes. Ye've hardly had a bite all day."

Rosie took her place at the table and tried to eat. It was no use; and suddenly, as much to her own surprise as to the others', she burst out crying.

"Mercy on us!" Mrs. O'Brien threw up astonished hands. "What's happened now?"

"N-nothing," Rosie quavered, pushing her plate away and dropping her head upon the table.

"What's ailin' you, Rosie?" her father asked gently.

"E-E-Ellen's got to do the dishes tonight. I-I-I'm too tired."

"I'm awful sorry," Ellen began, "but tonight, Rosie, I got to go out early. I got to go over to Hattie Graydon's for a note-book."

"Note-book nuthin'!" Terence glared at Ellen angrily. "That's the way you get out of everything, with your note-books and your Hattie Graydons and your old business college! Listen here, Ellen O'Brien: you'll do those dishes tonight or I'll know why!"

"Huh!" snorted Ellen. "From the way you talk, a person would suppose you were my father."

"Wish I was your father for ten minutes--long enough to give you a good beatin'!... Who do you think you are, anyway? A real live lady?

Everybody else in the family's got to work, but not you!"

"Ah, now, Terry," Mrs. O'Brien expostulated, "you mustn't be talkin'

that way to your poor sister Ellen. She's got her own work to do at school and I'm sure it's hard work, ain't it, Ellen dear?"

"Say, Ma, you fade away!" Terence waved his hand suggestively. "What you don't know about Ellen's a-plenty! Just look at her, the big lazy lump!

There she's been sitting in a comfortable cool room all day long with a fan in one hand and a pencil in the other and her mouth full of chewing-gum, pretending to study, and you and Rosie have been up here in this hot little hole working like n.i.g.g.e.rs. Aw, why do you let her fool you? Why don't you make her do something?"

Ellen, her head tossed high, appealed to her mother. "Ma, will you please explain to Mr. Terence O'Brien that I'd be perfectly willing to wash and wipe the dishes every night of my life if it wasn't for my hands. If ever I'm to be a stenog, I've got to take care of my hands."

"What about Rosie's hands?" Reaching over, Terence drew one out from beneath Rosie's face and held it up. At that moment it was a pathetic little hand, shaken by sobs and wet with tears, but its roughened skin and short, stubby nails were evidence enough of the work that it did.

"Well, what about them?" Ellen, at least, was unmoved by the exhibit.

"Rosie's not going to be a stenog, is she?"

Terence almost choked in fury, but before he could find an answer sufficiently crushing, his father spoke.

"See here, Ellen, we've had talk enough. You'll be doing the dishes tonight before you go after the note-book. That ends it."

"Very well!" Ellen flounced out of the room, then flounced back. "But if I don't get my certificate next month, you'll know whose fault it is!"

"Ain't she the limit?" Terry addressed his inquiry to the gas-jet, and small Jack, taking up the word, called after her: "Ellen, you're the limit! You're the limit!"

"Fie on you, Jackie!" Mrs. O'Brien said reprovingly. "You mustn't be talkin' that way to your sister."

But Jack, hopping about the kitchen like mad, kept shouting, "You're the limit! You're the limit!" until there was a sudden wail from the front of the house.

"Now see what ye've done, ye naughty b'y! Ye've waked up Geraldine!"

Jack subsided abruptly and Rosie, with a sigh, stood up.

Her mother looked at her compa.s.sionately. "Sit where you are, Rosie dear, and rest, and I'll take care of Geraldine."

"No, I'll go."

Rosie carried the child outside to the little front porch, where she rocked and crooned in the gathering darkness until Geraldine grew quiet.

Then she put her to bed and later, at the proper time, gave her a last bottle. After that Rosie's day was done.

To be near Geraldine, Rosie was sleeping downstairs for the present, on the floor of the front room. Just as George Riley got home she was ready to retire.

"Good-night, everybody," she said.

George, looking a little sheepish, called after her: "Aren't you going to kiss me good-night, Rosie?"

Without turning back, Rosie made answer: "It's too hot to kiss." Then she told herself grimly: "There, now! I guess that'll jar him! If he thinks he can treat me like a n.i.g.g.e.r and then kiss me good-night, he's mightily mistaken." She closed the door of the room with a determined click and stood for a moment with her head high. Then she sank to the floor, a very miserable little heap of a girl who sobbed to herself: "But I wish he wasn't so mean to me!"

CHAPTER XX

A FEVERED WORLD

It was a sultry, oppressive night, hard enough for adults to endure and fearfully weakening to teething babies. The next day the heat continued and Geraldine fretted and drooped until Rosie was frantic with anxiety.