Rosie petted and comforted her as best she could, teaching her how to wrap a paper that is to be thrown on a porch, explaining to her the scale of profits in the newspaper business, and giving her interesting bits of family history about the various houses where they stopped.
Had she been alone with Rosie, Margery would have been allowed to forget somewhat her recent troubles. In fact, she almost did forget them once or twice at moments when Janet McFadden was busy sucking the jaw-breaker. But the instant it became Rosie's turn to suck, Janet was back again on the old subject.
"Ha, ha! Don't you think I know 'em?" The 'em of Janet's acquaintance were, of course, Willie Jones and his kind. "Oh, I tell you, I know 'em just as well! They're all the same, every last one of them, always getting the best of us, and then going off by themselves and having a good time! I tell you, if I had my way, things'd be different! Oh, I tell you, if we'd all just get together and treat 'em like they ought to be treated, it—it—it—it'd be just good for 'em—it would!"
Of course, everything Janet said was gospel truth, and there was no gainsaying it; but even truth is sometimes depressing, and not the thing one wishes forever to have dinned into one's ears.
"And I know just as well as I know my own name, Margery, that now, after he's acted this way, he'll be coming back trying to make friends with you. You needn't tell me! I know him! But listen here, Margery, don't have a thing to do with him! Don't ever speak to him again, and pretend you don't even see him. He's not worth it—honestly he's not!"
When Margery parted from them later in the afternoon Janet made her solemnly promise that henceforward she would consider Willie Jones as dirt beneath her feet. It was neither the time nor the place for Margery to ask herself whether she really wished to make such a promise, for, in the presence of so fiery an apostle of female rights, her private inclinations simply shriveled to fine ashes and blew away.
"Of course," murmured Margery meekly, "of course I'll never speak to him again."
"That's right!" Janet declared. "He don't deserve it."
"And say, Margery," Rosie O'Brien begged, in parting, "come down to East Maplewood again some afternoon, won't you? I start on my paper route at half past three—you know where. I'd love to have you come again."
"I'll come if I can, Rosie—honest, I will. Both of you have been just as nice to me! Good-by."