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:

"Dan Agin, how dare ye go blastin' the reputation of decent men! There
are others like ye, do ye say? There are not! There's not another woman
in Ameriky that's stood what I've stood for forty years! Ah, many's the
time it was just one black murtherin' look I was cravin' from ye to bear
out me story that I had married a man, instead of a joke! And did ever I
get it from ye, Dan Agin! I did not--bad cess to ye for a soft-hearted,
good-for-nuthin' of a man that'd let a woman thrample ye in the dust if
she wanted to! 'Twas yir luck that ye little deserved to marry a decent,
quiet woman like meself!"

"Ye're right, Mary!" Danny murmured meekly. "Ye're a fine woman!"

"Hold yir tongue, Dan Agin, or, cripple that ye are, I'll be givin' you
the lickin' that I've wanted to give you these forty years every time
ye've let me have me own way when I oughtn't have had it!"

Rosie stood up to go. "I have one more paper to deliver, Mis' Agin, so
I'll have to say good-bye. If Terry was to know that I stopped to talk
before I had delivered all my papers, he'd beat me half to death."

Mrs. Agin smiled on