"I know, Janet, but don't you see if I was to tell Terry, then he'd think I was getting bothered on my paper route and take it away from me. He's not quite sure, anyhow, whether girls ought to carry papers." Janet clucked her tongue in sympathy and understanding. "Does that Schnitzer bother you every afternoon, Rosie?" "Yes, and he's getting worse. Yesterday he tried to grab my papers and he tore one of them. I'm just scared to death when I get near his house, honest, I am." Janet clenched her hands and drew a long shivering breath. "Do you know, Rosie, boys like him--they just make me so mad that I almost--I almost _bust_!" Black care sat behind Rosie O'Brien's desk that afternoon. It was her fifth day as paper-carrier and, but for Otto Schnitzer, she knew that she would be able to complete satisfactorily her week of probation. Was he to cause her failure? Her heart was heavy with fear but, after school, when she met Terry, she smiled as she took her papers and marched off with so brave a show of confidence that Terry, she felt sure, suspected nothing. As usual, she had no trouble whatever on the first part of her route. At sight of her papers a few people smiled but they all greeted her pleasantly enough, so that was all right. One boy called out, "How's business, old gal?" but his tone was so jolly that Rosie was able to sing back, "Fine and dandy, old hoss!" So that was all right, too. The Schnitzer place was toward the end of her route, a few doors before she reached Danny Agin's cottage. As she passed it, no Otto was in sight, and she wondered if for once she was to be allowed to go her way unmolested. A sudden yell from the Schnitzers' garden disclosed Otto's whereabouts and also his disappointment not to be on the sidewalk to meet her. He came pounding out in all haste but she was able to make Danny Agin's gate in safety. Rosie always delivered Danny's paper in the kitchen. "Come in!" said Danny's voice in answer to her knock. Rosie opened the door and Danny received her with a friendly, "Ah now, and is it yourself, Rosie? I've been waiting for you this half-hour." He was a little apple-cheeked old man who wheezed with asthma and was half-crippled with rheumatism. "Mary!" he called to some one in another room. "It's Rosie O'Brien. Have you something for Rosie?" A voice, as serious in tone as Danny's was gay, came back in answer: "Tell Rosie to look on the second shelf of the panthry." Rosie went to the pantry--it was a little game they had been playing every afternoon--and on the second shelf found a shiny red apple. "Thanks, Danny. I do love apples." Danny shook his head lugubriously. "I'm afeared there won't be many more, Rosie. We're gettin' to the bottom of the barrel and summer's comin'. But can't you sit down for a minute and talk to a body?" Rosie sat down. As she had only two more papers to deliver, she had plenty of time. But she had nothing to say.