Rosie answered quickly, almost too quickly: "Oh, no, no! I was just a-talkin' to Jarge----" "Well, just stop yir talkin' and be off wid yez to school! Do ye hear me now, all o' yez!" Mrs. O'Brien opened the kitchen door and, raising her apron aloft, drove them out with a "Shoo!" as though they were so many chickens. CHAPTER II THE SCHNITZER "Tell me now, Rosie, are you having any trouble with your papers?" Terence asked this as he and Rosie and little Jack started off for school. Terence had a regular newspaper business which kept him busy every day from the close of school until dark. His route had grown so large that recently he had been forced to engage the services of one or two subordinates. Rosie had begged to be given a job as paper-carrier, to deliver the papers in their own immediate neighbourhood, and Terence was at last allowing her a week's trial. If she could be a newsgirl without attracting undue attention, he would be as willing to pay her twenty cents a week as to pay any ordinary small boy a quarter. Twenty cents seemed a princely wage to one handicapped by the limitation of sex, and Rosie was determined to make good. So, when Terence inquired whether she were having any trouble, she declared at once: "No, Terry, honest I'm not. Every one's just as nice and kind to me as they can be. Those two nice Miss Grey ladies always give me a cookie, and nice old Danny Agin nearly always has an apple for me." "Well," said Terence, severely--besides being Rosie's brother, fourteen years old and nearly two years her senior, he was her employer and so simply had to be severe--"Well, just see that you don't eat too many apples!" Terence and Jack turned into the boys' school-yard and Rosie pursued her way down to the girls' gate. Just before she reached it, a boy, biggish and overgrown, with a large flat face and loosely hung joints, ran up behind her and shouted: "Oh, look at the paper-girl, paper-girl, paper-girl! Rosie O'Brien, O'Brien, O'Brien!" He seemed to think there was something funny in the name O'Brien, and his own name, mind you, was Schnitzer! Rosie marched on with unhearing ears, unseeing eyes. Other people, however, heard, for in a moment, one of the little girls clustered about the school-yard gate rushed over to her, jerking her head about like an indignant little hen. "Don't you care what that old Schnitzer says, Rosie! Just treat him like he's beneath your contemp'!" Whereupon she herself turned upon the Schnitzer and, with most withering sarcasm, called out: "Dutch!" Rosie's friend's name was McFadden, Janet McFadden. "Why don't you just tell Terry on him?" Janet said, when they were safe within the crowded school-yard and able to discuss at length the cowardice of the attack. "It wouldn't take Terry two minutes to punch his face into pie-crust!"