see? What was it I was
sayin' now? Ah, yes, this: now that summer's come, if only ye'd help me
out with Geraldine, p'rhaps I could catch up with me work. Like a
darlint, now."

Mrs. O'Brien, shifting Geraldine from one warm arm to the other, smiled
ingratiatingly; but Rosie only shook her head more doggedly than before.

"No, Ma. The rest of the people in this house don't do things they don't
want to do, and for once I'm not going to either. I tell you I'm not
going to begin lugging Geraldine around!"

"You poor infant!" Mrs. O'Brien crooned tearfully, "and does nobody love
you? Ah, now, don't cry! Your poor ma loves you even if your own sister
Rosie don't!"

Responsive to the pity expressed in her mother's tones, Geraldine raised
a fretful wail, but Rosie, though she felt something of a murderess,
still held out.

"I tell you, Ma, Jackie's my baby. I've taken good care of him, and
that's all you can ask."

Mrs. O'Brien sighed in patient exasperation. "But, Rosie dear, can't you
see that Jackie's a big b'y now, well able to take care of himself?"

"Take care of himself! Why, Ma, how you talk! Don't I have to wash him
and button his shoes and put him to bed?"

"Well, I must say, Rosie, it's high time he did such things for
himself--a fine, healthy lad going on six! Why, yourself, Rosie, hadn't
turned six when you began mothering Jackie!"

It was not a subject Rosie cared to argue, so she retired in dignified
silence. But her mother's words troubled her. In her heart she knew that
Jackie was a well-grown boy even if in many things he was still a baby.
But why shouldn't he still be a baby? The truth was Rosie wanted him to
be a baby; it delighted her to feel that he was dependent on her; it was
her greatest pleasure in life to do things for him. And if she was
willing to serve him, why, pray, should other people object?

Unfortunately, though, certain disturbing changes were coming over
Jackie himself. Within a few months he had burst, as it were, the
chrysalis of his babyhood and come forth a full-fledged small boy with
all a small boy's keenness to be exactly like all other small boys.
Rosie's interest in his welfare he had begun to resent as interference;
her supervision of him he was openly repudiating; and, worst of all, he
was showing unmistakable signs of becoming fast friends with Joe
Slattery, youngest member of the family and neighbourhood gang of the
same name. Rosie had done her best to check the g