Rosie ended with a "Huh!" and shook her head gloomily. Danny gasped. "You don't say so, Rosie!" There was the sound of an opening screen, and Danny, knowing that his wife must be coming, with a wheezy chuckle called out: "Mary, Mary, do ye know who's here? It's Rosie O'Brien, and she's one of ye! She's fallen into line!" Mrs. Agin came out on the porch, and stood for a moment looking from Danny to Rosie. She was a tall, gaunt old woman with thick white hair and thick eyebrows, which were still dark. She gave one the impression of great tidiness and cleanliness, together with the possibility of that caustic speech which so often characterizes the good housekeeper. Rosie appealed to her eagerly: "Mis' Agin, I think Danny's just awful!" Mrs. Agin glanced sharply at Danny, and then, with a seemingly clairvoyant understanding that the subject under discussion related somehow to the eternal war of the sexes, she went over to Rosie's side at once. "What's he been sayin' to you, dear?" "He's making fun of me because I told him if I was to lose one of my paper customers, Terry would beat me. And he would, too!" Mrs. Agin turned on Danny severely. "Take shame to yourself, Dan Agin, to be teasin' Rosie O'Brien!" "And listen here, Mis' Agin," Rosie continued. "He's been sayin' just awful things about us!" "About us, Rosie? Do you mean about both of us?" "About all of us, Mis' Agin--us ladies." Rosie sat up very straight and severe. Danny seemed to think the situation amusing, but he was the only one who did. Mrs. Agin glared at him darkly. "Dan Agin, what's this ye've been sayin' to Rosie?" Danny continued to shake with silent mirth, so Rosie answered for him: "He says what all of us ladies wants is this: We want to be beat, and we don't want to be beat. Now, isn't that the silliest thing you ever heard, Mis' Agin? And he says when we marry a brute of a man, we pretend that he's kind and nice, and when we marry a nice, kind man, we let on he's a brute." "Dan Agin, what do ye mean, puttin' such nonsense into Rosie's head? Answer me that now!" "And listen, Mis' Agin," Rosie went on. "Just because he's that kind of a man himself, he thinks everybody else is. And they're not! Every one thinks my father's so quiet and nice, but I guess I know him! Sometimes he's just awful! And Terry, too! But Danny here, he thinks they're every one of them just as harmless as he is. I guess he's so scared himself that that's the reason he tries to make out that other men are, too!" Mrs. Agin glared at Danny a moment in silence. Then she spoke: