Parker Fillmore - The Rosie World

Mrs. O'Brien raised helpless distracted hands. "Off wid yez to school!" she shouted. "All of yez! Make room for George!" What Mrs. O'Brien really called her boarder is best represented by spelling his name Jarge.

"Maybe I didn't have a dandy fight on my last trip down," George announced as he took off his coat and began washing his hands at the sink.

The young O'Briens clustered about him eagerly.

"Did you lick him, Jarge?" Terry asked.

"Tell us about it!" Rosie begged.

"Will yez be off to school!" Mrs. O'Brien again shouted.

No one heeded her in the least. George by this time was seated at the table and Rosie was hanging over his shoulder. Terence and small Jack stood facing him at the other side of the table and Miss Ellen O'Brien, with the baby in her arms, lingered near the door.

"Your cabbage'll be stone cold," Mrs. O'Brien scolded, "and they'll all be late for school if they don't be off wid 'em!"

"Was he drunk, Jarge?" Rosie asked.

"No, but he'd been taking too much." George spoke through a mouthful of corned beef and cabbage.

"Aw, go on," Terry pleaded, "tell us all about it."

"They ain't much to tell," George declared, with a complacency that belied his words. "He was nuthin' but a big stiff about nine feet high and built double across the shoulders." George sighed and cocked his eye as though bored at the necessity of recounting his adventure. Then, just to humour them, as it were, he continued: "I see trouble as soon as he got on. They was plenty of empty seats on one side, but the first thing I knew he was hanging on a strap on the crowded side insultin' a poor little lady. He wasn't sayin' nuthin' but he was just hangin' over her face, lookin' at her and grinnin' until she was ready to cry out for shame."

"The brute!" snapped Mrs. O'Brien as she slopped down a big cup of coffee.

"Did you throw him off?" Terence asked.

George took an exasperating time to swallow, then complained: "You mustn't hurry me so. 'Tain't healthy to hurry when you eat."

Ellen O'Brien tossed her head disdainfully. "If that's all you've got to say, Mr. Riley, I guess I'll be going."

Rosie turned on her big sister scornfully. "Aw, why don't you call him Jarge? Ain't he been boarding with us a whole week now?" To show the degree of intimacy she herself felt, Rosie slipped an arm about George's neck.

Ellen sniffed audibly.

George had not been looking at the elder Miss O'Brien but, from the haste with which now he finished his story, it was evident that he wished her to hear it.

"When I see he was looking for trouble, I went right up to him and says: 'If you can't sit down and act ladylike, just get off this car.' And then he looks down at me and grins like a jackass and says: 'Who do you think you are?' 'Who do I think I am?' I says; 'I'm the conductor of this car and my number's eight-twenty and, if I get any more jawin' from you, I'll throw you off.' He'd make two of me in size but I could see from the look of him he was nuthin' to be afraid of. So, when he grins down at the little lady again and then drops his strap to turn clean around to me and poke out his jaw, I up and gives him a good chin-chopper."

George stopped as if this were the end and his auditors grumbled in balked expectancy:

"Aw, go on, Jarge, tell us what you did."

"Well, if that's the end of your story, Mr. Riley, I'm going."

"The brute, insultin' a lady!"

It was Rosie who demanded in desperation: "But, Jarge, what is a chin-chopper?"

"Chin-chopper? Why, don't you know what a chin-chopper is?" George paused in his eating to explain. "A chin-chopper is when a big stiff pokes out his jaw at you and then, before he knows what you're doing, you up and push him one under the chin with the inside of your hand. It tips him over just like a ninepin."

"Oh, Jarge, do you mean you knocked him down on the floor of the car?" By this time Rosie was skipping and hopping in excitement.

"Sure that's what I mean."

"And then, Jarge, when you had him down, what did you do?"

"What did I do? Why, then I danced on him, of course."

George jumped up from his chair and, indicating a prostrate form on the kitchen floor, proceeded to execute a series of wild jig steps over limbs and chest.

Rosie clapped her hands. "Good, good, good, Jarge! And then what did you do?"

"What did I do? Why, then I snatches off the stiff's hat and throws it out the window. As luck went, it landed in a fine big mud-puddle. Then I pulls the bell and says to him, 'Now, you big bully, if you've had enough, get off this car and go home and tell your wife she wants you.'"

"And, Jarge, did he get off?"

"Did he? I wonder! He couldn't get off quick enough!"

George glanced timidly toward Ellen in hopes, apparently, that his prowess would meet the same favour from her as from the others.

Ellen caught his look and instantly tightened her lips in disgust. "I think it's perfectly disgraceful to get in fights!"

Under the scorn of her words George withered into silence. Terence rallied instantly to his defence. He turned on his older sister angrily. "Aw, go dry up, you old school-teacher!"

"I'm not an old school-teacher!" Ellen cried. "And you just stop calling me names! Ma, Terence is calling me an old school-teacher and you don't say a thing!"

Mrs. O'Brien looked at her son reprovingly. "Why, Terry lad, I'm surprised at you callin' your poor sister Ellen a thing like that! You know as well as I that she's not an old school-teacher."

"Well, anyway," Terence growled, "she talks like one."

Rosie's wild spirits, meantime, had vanished. She sighed heavily. "Say, Jarge, wisht I was a boy."

George looked at her kindly. "What makes you say that, Rosie?"

"Oh, nuthin'. Only I know some stiffs I'd like to try a chin-chopper on."

George eyed her a little uneasily. "Aw, now, Rosie, you oughtn't to talk that way. You're a girl and 'tain't ladylike for girls to fight."

"I know, Jarge. That's why I say I wisht I was a boy."

George grew thoughtful. "Of course, though, Rosie, I wouldn't have blamed the little lady in the car if she had poked her hatpin into that fellow. It's all right for a lady to do anything in self-defence."

In Rosie's face a sudden interest gathered. "Ain't it unladylike, Jarge, if it's in self-defence?"

George answered emphatically: "Of course not – not if it's in self-defence."

He would have said more but Terence interrupted: "What's the matter, Rosie? Any one been teasing you?"

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.

"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: