One girl called out in passing: "Gee, Rosie, ain't this the limit?" Another asked facetiously: "Well, kid, how does this weather suit you?" and a third stopped her to exclaim breathlessly: "Say, Rosie, ain't you just crazy with the heat!" Rosie reached the corner in good time for George's car. There was a slight congestion in traffic and George had a moment or two before dashing back to his place on the rear platform. He looked dirty and hot. His collar was in a soft welt, his face streaked with dust and perspiration. His expression, usually good-natured, was gloomy and irritable. "What you got tonight?" he asked, lifting the lid of the pail. "What! Ham again? Ham! What do you think I am? It's ham, ham, ham, every night of the week till I'm sick and tired of it! Here! Take it back--I don't want it! I'll buy me something decent to eat!" "Why, Jarge!" Rosie had never heard him talk that way before. She hadn't supposed he could talk that way to her. The unexpectedness of it was like a blow. For the first time in their acquaintance she shrank from him. Her face quivered, her eyes filled with tears. "Why, Jarge!" she stammered again. The motorman of George's car sounded his gong in warning and George, without another word, dropped the pail at Rosie's feet and jumped aboard. Rosie, dazed and crushed, stood where she was until the car disappeared. At first she was too hurt to cry out; too surprised by the suddenness of the attack to formulate her protest in words. One thing only was clear, namely, that George Riley had failed her. She could never again believe in him blindly, implicitly, as heretofore. There she had been supposing him so much better than any one else, and he wasn't at all. Probably he wasn't as good!... One little corner of her heart pleaded for him, whispering that poor George must have forgotten himself for the moment because, like the rest of the world, he was crazy with the heat. But Rosie silenced the whisper by exclaiming passionately: "Even if he was, I don't see why he had to go and take it out on me! I'm sure I'm not to blame!" After a pause her heart again sought weakly to excuse him by suggesting that perhaps Mrs. O'Brien did serve fried ham with a certain monotonous regularity. Rosie was not to be taken in by that. "Well," she demanded grimly, "what does he expect on a five-dollar-a-week board, with meat the price it is! Lamb chops and porterhouse steak?" After that her heart said nothing more, realizing, apparently, that so long as Rosie cared to nurse her grievance, she could find reasons in plenty. And Rosie did care to nurse it, and by the act of nursing soon changed it from a feeling of bewildered woe to one of mounting indignation.... If George Riley wanted to act that way, very well, let him do so. But he better not think that she, Rosie O'Brien, would stand for any such treatment, for she just wouldn't!