the kitchen.

"Come in!" said Danny's voice in answer to her knock.

Rosie opened the door and Danny received her with a friendly, "Ah now,
and is it yourself, Rosie? I've been waiting for you this half-hour."

He was a little apple-cheeked old man who wheezed with asthma and was
half-crippled with rheumatism. "Mary!" he called to some one in another
room. "It's Rosie O'Brien. Have you something for Rosie?"

A voice, as serious in tone as Danny's was gay, came back in answer:
"Tell Rosie to look on the second shelf of the panthry."

Rosie went to the pantry--it was a little game they had been playing
every afternoon--and on the second shelf found a shiny red apple.

"Thanks, Danny. I do love apples."

Danny shook his head lugubriously. "I'm afeared there won't be many
more, Rosie. We're gettin' to the bottom of the barrel and summer's
comin'. But can't you sit down for a minute and talk to a body?"

Rosie sat down. As she had only two more papers to deliver, she had
plenty of time. But she had nothing to say.

Danny, watching her, drew a long face. "What's the matter, Rosie dear?
Somebody dead?"

Rosie shook her head and sighed. "That old Otto Schnitzer's waiting for
me outside."

Danny exploded angrily. "The Schnitzer, indeed! I'd like to give that
lad a crack wid me stick!"

"Danny," Rosie said solemnly, "do you know what I'd do if I was a boy?"

"What?"

"I'd try a chin-chopper on Otto Schnitzer. That'd fix him!"

"It would that!" said Danny, heartily. He paused and meditated. "But
what's a chin-chopper, darlint?"

Rosie explained. "And Jarge says," she concluded, "they tumble right
over like ninepins."

"Who's Jarge?"

"Jarge Riley, our boarder. He's little but he's a dandy scrapper. Terry
says so, too."

Danny wagged his head. "Jarge is right. I've turned the same thrick
meself in me younger days, many's the time."

"It would just serve that Otto Schnitzer right, don't you think so,
Danny?"

"I do!" Danny declared. He looked at Rosie with a sudden light in his
little blue eyes. "Say, Rosie, why don't you try it on him? He's nuthin'
but a bag o' wind anyhow. One good blow and he'll bust."

Rosie cried out in protest: "But, Danny, he's so big and I'm so scared!
I don't want to fight! I'm glad it's not ladylike to fight, it scares me
so!"

"Whisht, darlint!" Danny raised a quieting hand. "Mind now what I'm
sayin': Almost everybody's got to fight sometime. I don't mean to pick a
fight bu