The Rosie World Part 19

"You look all right, Danny Agin, just as kind and nice as can be, but I guess Mis' Agin knows a few things about you!"

Danny blinked his eyes several times in quick succession. "What's this ye're sayin', Rosie?"

"Oh, nuthin'. I was only saying what a nice day it was. Good-bye."

Rosie started resolutely away, then paused. She really wanted some one with whom to talk out her perplexity, and here was Danny Agin, a man of sound sense and quick sympathy, and her own sworn friend and ally.

Rosie turned back and, seating herself on the porch step at Danny's feet, looked up into Danny's face.

"What's troublin' you, Rosie dear?" Danny's tone was kind and invited confidence.

Rosie shook her head gloomily. "Danny, I'm just so mixed up that I don't know where I'm at. You know Janet McFadden? Well----"

Rosie took a long breath and, beginning at the beginning, gave Danny a full account of yesterday's discussion. She brought her story down to that very morning when her mother had called her upstairs to tie the broken corset string. At this point she paused and sighed, then looked at Danny long and searchingly.

"And, Danny, listen here: _There wasn't any scar at all!_ I hunted over every sc.r.a.p of both shoulders and I felt 'em, too, and they were just as round and smooth as a fat baby! And she said: 'A foot long at least and two fingers deep.' And she even said it itched in rainy weather! Now what do you know about that?"

Danny slowly shook out the folds of a large red handkerchief, dropped it over his head and face, and bowed himself as though in prayer. No sound came from behind the handkerchief, but Danny's body began to shake convulsively. Either he was sobbing, or----

"Danny Agin, are you laughing?"

Danny slowly raised his head and, drawing off the handkerchief, began wiping his eyes.

"Laughin', is it? Why, it's weepin' I am! Don't you see the tears?"

Rosie looked at him doubtfully. "I don't see what you're weeping about."

Danny shook his head mournfully. "It's a way I have, Rosie. A thought came over me while we was talkin' and off I went. And--and here it comes again!"

Danny reached for his handkerchief, but too late. The thought seemed to hit him full in the stomach, and back he fell into his chair, rolling and spluttering.

"Danny Agin, you are laughing!"

Danny wiped his eyes again. "Perhaps I am this time, Rosie. I'm took different at different times."

Rosie frowned on him severely. "Well, I think you were laughing the first time and you needn't deny it. And, what's more, I don't see anything to laugh at."

"Whisht now, darlint, and I'll tell you. I'll talk to you like man to man. 'Twas thought of the ladies."

"What ladies?"

"All o' them. They're all the same."

"Who are all the same?"

"The ladies, Rosie. Janet and your ma, and the rest o' them!"

"Danny, I don't see how you can say that. Ma and Janet are not a bit the same. They're exactly different. There's ma who's got a kind husband, and she goes telling that he chases her with a butcher-knife, and there's Janet whose father is a drunken brute, and she goes pretending he's the best ever."

"Precisely, Rosie. You couldn't have expressed it better. Now you'll understand me when I tell you that they all want the same thing, which is this: They want to be beat, and they don't want to be beat. Now let me say it to you again, Rosie: They want to be beat, and they don't want to be beat. There!"

Rosie put her hands to her head in distraction. "Danny Agin, I don't know what you're talking about!"

"I'm talkin' about the ladies."

"Well, then, what I want to know is this: How can they want a thing when they don't want it?"

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 s.h.i.+rt 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?"