"What's ailin' you, Rosie?" her father asked gently.
"E-E-Ellen's got to do the dishes tonight. I-I-I'm too tired."
"I'm awful sorry," Ellen began, "but tonight, Rosie, I got to go out early. I got to go over to Hattie Graydon's for a note-book."
"Note-book nuthin'!" Terence glared at Ellen angrily. "That's the way you get out of everything, with your note-books and your Hattie Graydons and your old business college! Listen here, Ellen O'Brien: you'll do those dishes tonight or I'll know why!"
"Huh!" snorted Ellen. "From the way you talk, a person would suppose you were my father."
"Wish I was your father for ten minutes—long enough to give you a good beatin'!... Who do you think you are, anyway? A real live lady? Everybody else in the family's got to work, but not you!"
"Ah, now, Terry," Mrs. O'Brien expostulated, "you mustn't be talkin' that way to your poor sister Ellen. She's got her own work to do at school and I'm sure it's hard work, ain't it, Ellen dear?"
"Say, Ma, you fade away!" Terence waved his hand suggestively. "What you don't know about Ellen's a-plenty! Just look at her, the big lazy lump! There she's been sitting in a comfortable cool room all day long with a fan in one hand and a pencil in the other and her mouth full of chewing-gum, pretending to study, and you and Rosie have been up here in this hot little hole working like niggers. Aw, why do you let her fool you? Why don't you make her do something?"
Ellen, her head tossed high, appealed to her mother. "Ma, will you please explain to Mr. Terence O'Brien that I'd be perfectly willing to wash and wipe the dishes every night of my life if it wasn't for my hands. If ever I'm to be a stenog, I've got to take care of my hands."
"What about Rosie's hands?" Reaching over, Terence drew one out from beneath Rosie's face and held it up. At that moment it was a pathetic little hand, shaken by sobs and wet with tears, but its roughened skin and short, stubby nails were evidence enough of the work that it did.