Читать книгу The Rosie World - Fillmore Parker - Страница 9

Janet McFadden, after one searching look in Rosie's face, rushed forward eagerly.

"I'm so glad to see you! Where have you been all this time?"

Rosie dimpled with pleasure. Wasn't it sweet of Janet not to refer to the coldness of their last meeting? That was Janet right straight through: always ready to be insulted on the first provocation, but just as ready, once she knew you still loved her, to let bygones be bygones.

"Well, you see, Janet, Jackie's been sick. No, not really sick, but sore. His back was all sunburnt. He'd been in swimming for the first time. You know boys always go in swimming and get sunburnt the first day. But he's all right now and I don't have to bother about him any more."

Janet blinked in surprise and started to say something when the expression on Rosie's face checked her. She paused, then exclaimed, rather fatuously: "How sweet Geraldine looks!"

"Doesn't she!" Rosie spoke enthusiastically. "Say, Janet, don't you think she's a nice baby?"

"I do indeed!" Janet wagged her head impressively. "You know yourself I always did think she was a nice baby and I never could make out why you didn't like her more."

"Janet McFadden, how you talk! Of course I like Geraldine! I love her!" Rosie bounced the baby-carriage vigorously and made direct appeal to Geraldine herself: "Doesn't sister Rosie love her own baby? Of course she does! And she's going to take care of her all summer, isn't she? because ma's too busy."

"Why, Rosie!" Janet began.

Rosie faced square about and with one look challenged Janet to show further surprise.

"Why – why, isn't that nice!" Janet murmured meekly.

"Of course it's nice and we're going to Boulevard Place every afternoon, aren't we, Geraldine? We're going there now and Janet can come with us if she wants to."

Janet wanted to, but she had to refuse. "I can't today, Rosie. I've got to help my mother. But tomorrow afternoon – will you stop for me then? I'll expect you."

In this way friendship was restored. Not having to bear the strain of an insistent questioning from Janet, its restoration was simple. Something had occurred to change Rosie's attitude in regard to her small brother and sister and upon this something she was not disposed, evidently, to be communicative. Well, Janet was not inquisitive. Besides, even if this subject of conversation was taboo, conversation was not in any danger of early extinction. When together, Janet and Rosie always talked – not perfunctorily, either, but with much emphasis and many headshakings. Goodness me, they never stopped talking! After only a few hours' separation, each had a hundred things to tell the other. By the very next day Janet had a bit of news, that was to furnish them an exciting topic for weeks to come.

When Rosie called for Janet the following afternoon, her knock was answered by Tom Sullivan, who instantly blushed a glowing crimson and with difficulty stammered: "Yes, Janet's home. Come on in."

Rosie found Janet and her mother entertaining Mrs. Sullivan, who was Dave McFadden's sister and therefore Janet's aunt.

At sight of Rosie, Mrs. Sullivan exclaimed gushingly: "If there ain't Rosie O'Brien! You sweet thing! Come right here and kiss me!"

Rosie had to submit to the caress although she knew it was intended as a slight to Janet. That was one of Aunt Kitty Sullivan's little ways. Aunt Kitty was a fat, smiling, middle-aged woman who was going through life under the delusion that her face still retained the empty prettiness of its youth.

"I was just a-saying to Janet," Aunt Kitty began, "that she ought to be making herself more attractive. As long as she goes about looking like a scarecrow, she never will have a beau! Ain't that right, Rosie?"

Aunt Kitty smiled upon Rosie that meaning smile with which one conscious beauty appeals to another. Rosie did not respond to it. From the bottom of her heart she despised Aunt Kitty for the persistence with which she tormented Janet. When Rosie came in her tirade must have been going on for some time, for Janet looked tense and angry and her mother badly flustered.

Mrs. McFadden, hard-worked and worn and shabby, could not openly resent her sister-in-law's little pleasantries, for Kitty Sullivan was the prosperous member of the family. The chance that had given her a sober, frugal, industrious husband had also given her a certain moral superiority over all women whose husbands were not sober or frugal or industrious. Mrs. McFadden did not question this superiority; she accepted it humbly. Far be it from her, poor drudge that she was, to dispute the words of a woman who could afford good clothes and a weekly ticket to the matinée. So all she said now in Janet's defence was:

"Kitty, I wish you wouldn't be putting such notions into Janet's head. She's too young to have beaux."

"Too young!" scoffed Mrs. Sullivan. "I guess I begun havin' beaux when I was a good deal younger than Janet is now! Why, nowadays a girl can't begin too young havin' beaux, or the first thing she knows she's an old maid! Ain't that right, Rosie?"

Rosie turned her head away, mumbling some unintelligible answer. Tom, blushing until his freckles were all hidden, came to her rescue.

"Aw, now, Ma, why can't you let up on Janet? She ain't done nuthin' to you!"

Mrs. Sullivan looked at her son reprovingly. "Tom Sullivan, you just mind your own business! What I'm saying is for Janet's own good. And I must say, Mary McFadden, it's your fault, too. You ought to be dressing Janet better now that she's getting big."

Mrs. McFadden sighed apologetically. "I'm sure I dress her as well as I can, Kitty."

"Well, then, all I got to say is you must be a mighty poor manager, with Dave making good money and you yourself working every day!" As she finished, Mrs. Sullivan smiled and dimpled with all the malicious triumph of a precocious child.

Rosie felt shamed and troubled. To Mrs. Sullivan's taunt there was one answer that everybody present knew, but that neither Mary McFadden nor Janet would ever give, and that Rosie, as an outsider, could not give. But even so, Mrs. Sullivan was not to go unanswered. Tom, blushing with mortification, jumped to his feet.

"Ma, you're the limit! You ought to be ashamed o' yourself! Uncle Dave makes good money, does he? Yes, and he boozes every cent of it, and Aunt Mary here has got to work like a nigger to pay the rent and keep herself and Janet, and you know it, too."

"Tom Sullivan, you shut up!" Mrs. Sullivan's voice rose to an angry scream. "How dare you interrupt me! You deserve a good thrashing, you do, and you're goin' to get it, too, as soon as your father comes home!.. Dave boozes, does he? Well, all I got to say is this: he never boozed before he got married, and if he boozes now it's a mighty queer thing!"

Rosie stood up to go. "Say, Janet, you promised to come with me this afternoon. Get your hat."

"Yes," advised Mrs. Sullivan; "put on that old black sailor hat that makes you look like a guy. Mary McFadden, if I had a girl I wouldn't let her out on the street in a hat like that!"

Rosie and Janet started off and Tom called after them: "Wait a minute! I'll come, too!"

"No, you don't!" his mother ordered. "You stay right where you are! You don't get out o' my sight till I hand you over to your dad!"

Once safe on the street, Rosie put a sympathetic arm about Janet's shoulder. "Even if she is your aunt, Janet, I think she's low-down and I hate her!"

"Pooh!" Janet tossed her head in fine scorn. "In my opinion she ain't worth hating! She ain't nuthin'! I consider her beneath my contemp'! The truth is, Rosie, I don't mind her buzzin' around any more than I do a fly! She'd die if she didn't talk; so I say let her talk. If she couldn't she'd probably do something worse. My mother feels the same way. We get tired of her sometimes, but we stand her because she's my dad's own sister… Of course, though, some of the things she says is perfectly true. I ain't pretty. You are, Rosie, but I ain't and I know it, and that's all there is about it."

Janet spread out her hands in simple candour and glanced at her friend. Then, involuntarily, she gave a little sigh. It was not a sigh of envy. She really did accept as a matter of fact that she herself was not pretty and that Rosie was. Where Rosie was plump and rounded and graceful, Janet knew that she was flat and long and lanky. Her arms were long, her fingers were long, her face was long. Her dark hair, too, was long, but with nothing in texture or colour to recommend it. She wore it pulled straight from her forehead and hanging behind in two stiff plaits.

With her old black hat, her colourless face, her faded clothes, she gave the impression of a very shabby, serious little person. And she was both. Rosie, on the other hand, though as poorly dressed, seemed anything but shabby and serious, for she was all life and colour, like some little roadside flower, which, in spite of dusty leaves, raises aloft a bright, fresh bloom.

Janet might bravely dismiss her aunt with a wave of the hand, but Rosie insisted upon repeating herself.

"I don't care what you say, Janet, I think she's low-down the way she talks to you and your mother! Now Tom's nice. That was fine the way he spoke up. You don't think his father'll lick him, do you?"

"Uncle Matt?" Janet laughed. "Nev-er! Uncle Matt's just crazy about Tom. They're like two kids when they're together. And that reminds me, Rosie – goodness me, I was forgetting all about it!" Janet paused to give full flavour to her bit of news. "What Tom came over for this afternoon was to tell me that Uncle Matt has promised to give him and me tickets for the Traction Boys' Picnic – you know it's coming in two weeks now – and Tom says he's going to try to beg another ticket for you!"

"Is he really, Janet? Now isn't he just too kind!"

"Kind? I should say he is! He's bashful, of course, and people laugh at him because he's got red hair, but he's just as generous as he can be. You remember last year I went with him, too. Why, do you know, last year his father had six customers who bought their tickets and then turned right around and said: 'But we can't go, so you just give these tickets to some one who can.' Uncle Matt had enough tickets for the whole family and two more besides. He sold those two and give us all ice-cream sodas on them."

"Did he really, Janet! That just proves what I always say: in some ways I'd much rather have my father be a conductor than a motorman. A motorman never gets a chance at a ticket. I'm glad Jarge Riley's a conductor. I bet he sells a good many, don't you?"

"Of course he will, Rosie! I hadn't thought of Jarge. If a customer gives Jarge back a ticket, of course he'll pass it on to you – I know he will. Gee, Rosie, you're lucky to have a fella like Jarge Riley boarding with you. He sure is a dandy."

To this last Rosie agreed readily enough but on the priority of her claim to any tickets she set Janet right. "If he gets only a couple, he'll give Ellen first chance."

Janet sighed. "Say, Rosie, is he still dead gone on Ellen?"

Rosie sighed, too, and nodded. "Ain't it funny with a fella that's got so much sense about other things?"

Janet sighed again. "I don't like to say anything against Ellen, because she's your sister, but, as you say yourself, it certainly is funny."