's easy to say a thing like that to a poor woman that's got
to work or starve, but it would be a good deal more sensible if they'd
say right out: 'You better go drown yourself!'"

"Why, Janet!" Mrs. O'Brien's hands went up in shocked amazement.

"I mean it!" Janet insisted fiercely. "Do you suppose my mother works
like she does because she wants to? I'd like to see that doctor married
to a drunk and have some one say to him: 'Now don't work or worry and
you'll be all right.'"

Mrs. O'Brien was much distressed. "Why, Janet dear, you surprise me to
be talkin' so about that poor doctor."

"The doctor!" Janet turned on Mrs. O'Brien passionately. "I'm not
talking about the doctor! I'm talking about my father!" She paused an
instant, then flung out a terrible epithet which even in the mouth of a
rough man would have been shocking.

Instinctively Rosie shrank and Mrs. O'Brien raised a startled,
disapproving hand.

Janet tossed her head defiantly. "I don't care!" she insisted. "It's all
his fault, the drunken brute, and if my mother dies tonight, it'll be
him that's murdered her!" She ended with a sob and hid her face on
Rosie's shoulder.

Mrs. O'Brien, still scandalised, opened her mouth to speak. But the
right word which would express both reproof and commiseration was slow
in coming, and at last she was forced to meet the difficulty by fleeing
it. "I--I think I must be going in. I think I hear Geraldine. Sit still,
Rosie dear." And then, her heart getting the better of her, she ended
with: "Poor child! She's not herself today! Comfort her, Rosie!"

Rosie scarcely needed her mother's admonition. "There now, Janet dear,
don't cry! Your mother's going to be all right--I know she is! She's
been sick before and got over it."

Janet was not a person of tears. She swallowed her sobs now and slowly
dried her eyes. "I'm sorry I used such strong language, Rosie, honest I
am. And before your mother, too! You've got to excuse me. I know it
wasn't ladylike."

"That's all right, Janet. You really didn't mean it."

"Yes, I did mean it," Janet declared truthfully. "If you only knew it,
Rosie, there are lots of times I don't feel a bit ladylike! I often use
cuss words inside to myself. Don't you?"

No, most emphatically, Rosie did not! She was saved, however, the
necessity of having to acknowledge so embarrassing an evidence of
feminine weakness by Janet's further pronouncement:

"I tell you what, Rosie, when you come to a pl