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ing right here with us wouldn't you suppose he'd get to know her?" "Well,"--Terry spoke in a tone somewhat didactic--"you forget one thing, Rosie: Jarge is in love." "But why is he in love?" Rosie persisted. Terry shook his head gloomily. "Search me." CHAPTER XXVII ROSIE URGES COMMON SENSE "Why is he in love?" The question kept repeating itself to Rosie as she sat on the porch steps while day slowly faded and twilight deepened into night. Mrs. O'Brien and Jamie came out after a time and Rosie talked to them about the country, telling them of all the marvels of farm and roadside. But through it all her mind kept reverting to the problem which had met her so promptly on her return. "When you know Mis' Riley," she told her mother, "then you understand Jarge from start to finish. She's jolly and kind and she'll do anything in the world for you if she likes you. And, my! how she works! Jarge's father is all right, but all he does is talk. No matter what there is to do, he always wants to stop and talk. In the mornings he just nearly used to drive Mis' Riley and me crazy. I can tell you we were always busy and he ought to have been, too, and he did used to get real tired just talking about all he had to do. Of course Grandpa Riley was awful good to me and Geraldine and I don't like to say anything about him, but I understand now why Jarge has to save so hard and why poor Mis' Riley has to work so hard. And I know one thing: when Jarge does go back to the farm and take hold of things, he and his mother'll make that old farm pay. They're not afraid of hard work, either of them, and they've both got good sense, too.... Say, Dad, what do you think of Ellen the way she treats Jarge?" "Ellen?" Jamie O'Brien's tilted chair came down with a thud and Jamie cleared his throat to answer. "How would you want her to be treating him?" "Well, I don't want her to treat him like a dog! Jarge is too good!" "Don't you be worryin' about Jarge," Jamie advised. "It's just as well for him that Ellen does treat him so." To Rosie this seemed a subject for further discussion, but not to Jamie. He balanced back his chair and relapsed into an abstracted silence from which Rosie's protests were unable to arouse him. It had been a long and exciting day and Rosie was tired. If she had not felt that George would be expecting to see her when he got in from his run, she would have said good-night early and slipped quietly o
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