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 for all those lovely vacation picnics which she had been planning for herself and Janet and Jackie?... Jackie!... She had forgotten: _there wasn't any Jackie now_. Rosie stopped, expecting again to be swallowed up in that ancient grief. But it scarcely touched her. Instead, she found herself looking at Jackie with the critical eyes of an outsider. He was pretty big. Perhaps he did not need her any longer. George Riley and Danny Agin and Janet McFadden and Terry and her mother--hadn't each of them said the same thing? Rosie had wanted to make herself believe that they were all in league against her, but deep down in her heart she knew they were not and had always known it. Now at last she was ready to confess the truth: Jack did not need her any longer.... And poor little Geraldine did.