as just a-saying to Janet," Aunt Kitty began, "that she ought to be
making herself more attractive. As long as she goes about looking like
a scarecrow, she never will have a beau! Ain't that right, Rosie?"

Aunt Kitty smiled upon Rosie that meaning smile with which one conscious
beauty appeals to another. Rosie did not respond to it. From the bottom
of her heart she despised Aunt Kitty for the persistence with which she
tormented Janet. When Rosie came in her tirade must have been going on
for some time, for Janet looked tense and angry and her mother badly
flustered.

Mrs. McFadden, hard-worked and worn and shabby, could not openly resent
her sister-in-law's little pleasantries, for Kitty Sullivan was the
prosperous member of the family. The chance that had given her a sober,
frugal, industrious husband had also given her a certain moral
superiority over all women whose husbands were not sober or frugal or
industrious. Mrs. McFadden did not question this superiority; she
accepted it humbly. Far be it from her, poor drudge that she was, to
dispute the words of a woman who could afford good clothes and a weekly
ticket to the matinee. So all she said now in Janet's defence was:

"Kitty, I wish you wouldn't be putting such notions into Janet's head.
She's too young to have beaux."

"Too young!" scoffed Mrs. Sullivan. "I guess I begun havin' beaux when I
was a good deal younger than Janet is now! Why, nowadays a girl can't
begin too young havin' beaux, or the first thing she knows she's an old
maid! Ain't that right, Rosie?"

Rosie turned her head away, mumbling some unintelligible answer. Tom,
blushing until his freckles were all hidden, came to her rescue.

"Aw, now, Ma, why can't you let up on Janet? She ain't done nuthin' to
you!"

Mrs. Sullivan looked at her son reprovingly. "Tom Sullivan, you just
mind your own business! What I'm saying is for Janet's own good. And I
must say, Mary McFadden, it's your fault, too. You ought to be dressing
Janet better now that she's getting big."

Mrs. McFadden sighed apologetically. "I'm sure I dress her as well as I
can, Kitty."

"Well, then, all I got to say is you must be a mighty poor manager, with
Dave making good money and you yourself working every day!" As she
finished, Mrs. Sullivan smiled and dimpled with all the malicious
triumph of a precocious child.

Rosie felt shamed and troubled. To Mrs. Sullivan's taunt there was one
answer that everybody present knew, but