t she thought was great and all it said was,
'Say, kid, maybe I ain't crazy about you!' Now is it so awful hard to
tell a girl you're crazy about her if you are? And that's all that any
love-letter says anyhow."

"Seems to me," George grumbled one day, "for a kid you know an awful lot
about love-letters."

"Of course I do," Rosie told him. "I know just the kind I'd like to get
and that's the kind every girl would like to get."

All such discussions took place in the privacy of their
pseudo-courtship. Who would have the heart to be censorious if, to the
outside world, Rosie began to bear herself with something of the air of
a lady who has a knight, of a girl who has a beau? It would have been
beyond human nature for Rosie not to remark periodically to Janet
McFadden: "What do you suppose it is that makes Jarge Riley treat me so
kind? He just seems to lie awake nights to think up nice things to do."

Janet, being a true friend, would give a long sigh and murmur: "Don't it
beat all, Rosie, the way some girls have beaux from the beginning and
some don't. I suppose it runs in your family. You know Tom Sullivan is
always asking about you. Whenever I go to Aunt Kitty's or when Tom comes
to our house, the first thing he says is, 'How's Rosie O'Brien these
days?' If only he wasn't so bashful, he'd invite you to the movies--you
know he would. Of course he asks me because we're cousins, but I tell
you one thing, Rosie: you're the one he'd like to take."

What Janet was always saying about Tom Sullivan's devotion to Rosie was
perfectly true but, nevertheless, it was so generous in Janet to
acknowledge it that Rosie was always ready to declare: "Aw, now, Janet,
you needn't go jollyin' me like that! Tom likes you awful well and you
know he does."

Rosie never talked to Janet about her own round of pleasure without
stopping suddenly with a feeling of compunction and the quick question:
"But, Janet dear, how are things going with you? How's your poor mother
and is your father still on the water wagon?"

News about Mrs. McFadden was slow in changing. For days she lay in the
hospital, weak and broken, not wishing to come back to life and without
interest in herself or her husband or even her child. A case like this
takes a long time, the nurse would tell Janet and Janet had only this to
repeat in answer to Rosie's inquiries.

With Dave McFadden it was different. There the unexpected was happening.
It was a week before Janet risk