Ellen touched Rosie's cheek impulsively. "If ever I get a home of my own in St. Louie, will you come and make me a visit?"

Rosie's thought was: "If ever you get a home of your own, you'll never remember me." Her spoken answer, though, was all that it should be: "Ellen, I'd love to."

Rosie, you see, knew Ellen's character pretty well. What she did not know and could not as yet know was this: that the Ellen of tomorrow might not be quite the Ellen of today; that life probably held experiences for Ellen that would at last make her look back on home and family with a new understanding and a feeling of genuine tenderness.

Ellen's train pulled out and Rosie watched it go with a sigh of relief.

The chapter of Family Chronicles ent.i.tled Ellen was finished. That is, it was finished so far as any new interest was concerned. Yet, like the hand of a dead man touching the living through the clauses of a last will, so Ellen, though gone, continued to touch Rosie on a spot already sensitive beyond endurance.

Rosie had not spoken of George Riley during Ellen's last week. She had tried to suppress even the thought of him. Now the time was come when she had again to think of him, and she was so tired and weary of the whole problem that she felt unequal to the task of working out its solution.

"Do you know, Danny," she remarked that afternoon to her old friend, "I'd give anything to go off somewheres where I don't know anybody and where n.o.body knows me. I'm just so tired of this old town that I don't know what to do."

Danny nodded sympathetically. "I'm thinking you're in need of a little change, Rosie. Maybe you could go out to the country for a day or two at Thanksgiving."

Rosie knew perfectly well what Danny meant but, for conversational reasons, she asked: "Where in the country, Danny?"

"Well, I was thinking of the Riley farm. I'm sure Mrs. Riley would be crazy to have you."

Rosie shook her head. "I can't go out there because Jarge is coming here." She paused a moment. "He's coming to see Ellen. You know, Danny, he thinks he's engaged to Ellen."

"What!" Danny's little eyes blinked rapidly. "Don't he know yet that she's married to the other fella?"

"How can he know when no one's told him? Ellen said she would, but of course she didn't."

Danny's expression grew serious. "Rosie dear, he ought to be told! He ought t' have been told at once! You don't mean to say, Rosie, you'll let him come down on Thanksgiving without a word of warning?"

Rosie shrugged her shoulders. "I don't see that it's any of my business."

Danny looked at her sharply. "Why, Rosie dear, what's come over you?"

Rosie sighed. "I don't know, Danny. I'm just kind o' tired of things."

She made a sudden change of subject. "Wisht I didn't have to go to school! I hate school this year. I don't see why I have to go, anyway.

I'm not going to be a teacher."

There was no mistaking Rosie's dejection and Danny, instead of scoffing it away, accepted it quietly.

"I'm sorry to hear you say that about school, Rosie. I was thinkin'

you'd be in High School next year."

"I would be, if I pa.s.sed. Ellen went through High School, and now Terry's in the first year, and of course dad wants me to go, too. But I don't see why I should. You know, Danny, I'm not very bright in school.

I'm not a bit like Janet. I've got to work awful hard just barely to pa.s.s. I don't think I'd have pa.s.sed last year if Janet hadn't helped me.

But I can cook and do a lot of things that Janet can't do. I know perfectly well I could never be a teacher, so I don't see the use of keeping on at school."

"You surprise me, Rosie!" Danny peered at her earnestly. "Do you think that's the only reason for going to school--so's to be a teacher?"

Rosie nodded. "I don't see any other."

"And what do you want to be, Rosie?"

"I don't want to be anything."

"Don't you want to do something?"

"No."

"But, Rosie dear, that's no way to talk. You know you can't sit through life with folded hands, doing nothing."

Rosie protested: "But, Danny, I don't expect to do nothing. I know I have to work and I do work, too. You ask ma. I take care of Geraldine night and day, and you needn't think it isn't a big job taking care of a baby, because it is. And I used to take care of Jarge Riley, too. Old Mis' Riley herself told me I took as good care of him as she did. And she meant it, too. Oh, I could just work forever for Geraldine and Jarge."

Danny looked at her a few moments in silence. "Rosie dear," he said gently, "pull your chair over close. I want to talk to you."

Rosie obeyed and, after a slight pause, Danny continued: "You're troubled about Jarge, aren't you, Rosie?"

Rosie's eyes filled with tears. "I suppose I am, Danny."

"Rosie," Danny asked slowly, "are you in love with Jarge?"

The question startled Rosie. She stared blankly through her tears. "Why, Danny, how can you say a thing like that? I'm only a little girl and Jarge is a grown man!"

"But you'd like to take care of him all the time, wouldn't you, Rosie?"

Rosie nodded. "You bet I would! If I could have just Jarge and Geraldine, I wouldn't care how hard I'd have to work! I'd do anything for both of them. Don't you know, Danny, I just feel like they're _mine_!"

"I thought so, Rosie." Danny sighed and cleared his throat. "Now listen carefully, Rosie, what I've got to say. As you say yourself you're only a little girl now, but in a few years you'll be a big girl, as big as Ellen is today. And then perhaps, Rosie, you'll be marrying some one."

"No, Danny, no!" Rosie cried. "I don't want to be marrying some one, honest I don't!"

Danny waved aside the interruption. "As I was saying, perhaps you'll be marrying some one, and then after while you'll be having babies of your own."

"Oh, Danny!" A look of wonder, almost of ecstasy, spread over Rosie's face. Instinctively her arms reached out for the precious burden of the future. "Do you really mean it, Danny?" she whispered. "My _own_!"

"Yes, Rosie, I mean it. And you'll be a wonderful mother, for you'll know how to feed your children properly and take proper care of them.

But in one way, Rosie, I fear you'll be a pretty poor mother."

The light in Rosie's eyes went out. "Why do you say that, Danny?"

"You won't be able to help them in their schoolin' and they'll probably all turn out poor ignur'nt b'ys and girls, with no opportunity to rise in the world. And if they do get on in school, they'll soon be scornin'

their poor mother and lookin' down on her because she hasn't had the education she might have had. And when their father sees how they feel, I'm afeared he'll begin feelin' the same and thinkin' he'd made an awful mistake marryin' such an ignur'nt woman."

"Oh, Danny, stop! Stop!" Tears of self-pity already filled Rosie's eyes.

"So I say to you, Rosie, if I was a little girl, I'd want to keep on going to school even if I didn't expect to be a teacher. And for that matter, darlint, isn't a mother the greatest teacher in the world?

Aren't you yourself Geraldine's teacher every day of your life?"

Rosie's eyes stretched wide in surprise. "Danny, I believe you're right!

A mother is a teacher, isn't she?"

"Sure she is, Rosie. And the better her own education is, the better chance she has of being a good teacher. That stands to reason, don't it now?"