pay attention to her.... But it was a
shame--that's what it was! I just tell you when there's a baby around,
some one ought to take proper care of it!... Rosie wanted dreadfully to
fasten blame somewhere, and the person naturally responsible would seem
to be her mother.

For some reason, though, she couldn't work up much of a case against
Mrs. O'Brien. That poor soul had enough to do, and more than enough,
without ever touching Geraldine. She was not, it is true, the best
manager in the world, and she was dreadfully helpless in the hands of
unscrupulous people like, say, her own daughter Ellen; but when all was
said and done, she was fearfully hard driven, early and late, and never
a day off. And yet how cheerful and uncomplaining she was! How loving
and kind, too, never remembering the cross words you gave her nor the
short, ill-natured answers. No matter how you had been acting, she would
call you "dear" again, the moment you let her....

Moreover, even if she did not wash Geraldine as often as she should,
Heaven knows it was not to save herself. Maggie O'Brien would have gone
through fire and flood for the benefit of any of her children, living or
dead, and Rosie knew this. No, no. The things slighted were not slighted
because she was lazy and selfish, but because there were not hours in
the day for her one pair of hands, willing but not very skilled, to do
all there was to do in the crowded little household.

But if it was once granted that her mother was unable to give Geraldine
proper care, was the child, Rosie asked herself, never to receive such
care? In her heart Rosie knew the one way possible and at last forced
herself to consider it. Could she take this baby and raise it as she had
Jackie?... To have Geraldine for a morning or an afternoon would be a
pleasure; but all day and every day--that was another matter. Rosie
knew how time-consuming it was to be a mother. She knew what it meant to
look after a baby's food and its naps and its baths and its clothes. And
such things were worse now than in Jackie's time. It would never do to
raise another baby in the haphazard fashion Jackie had been raised. The
care of babies was an exact science now. Out of curiosity Rosie and
Janet had once attended a few meetings of the Little Mothers' Class at
the Settlement, so Rosie knew. She sighed. Among other things, she
supposed she would have to become a regular member of that class....
Dear, dear, what time would be left