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