Rosie shook her head thoughtfully. "I don't see how you make that out. Take Ellen now: she hasn't very loving ways; she snaps your head off if you look at her; but she's got beaux all right—more than any girl on the street, and poor old Jarge Riley's gone daft over her. Now how do you make that out?"
"Ah, that's a different matter," Danny explained airily. "You see, Rosie, there be two classes of men, sensible men and fools, and most men belong to both classes. Now a sensible man knows that a sweet loving woman will make him a happy home and a good mother to his children. Any man'll agree to that. So I'm right when I tell you that all men love that kind of a woman, for they do. But let a bold hussy come along with a handsome face on her and a nasty wicked temper, and before you count ten she'll call out all the fool there is in a man and off he goes after her as crazy as a half-witted rooster. Ah, I've seen it time and again. Many a poor lad that ought have known better has put the halter about his own neck! Have you ever thought, Rosie dear, of the queer ch'ices men make when they marry?"
"Danny, I don't know what you mean."
Danny's eyes took on a far-away look. "Take Mary and me. For forty years now I've been wonderin' what it was that married us."
"Why, Danny!" Rosie's expression was reproachful. "Didn't you love Mary?"
"Love her, do you say? Why, of course I loved her! Didn't me knees go weak at sight of her and me head dizzy? But the question is: why did I love her or why did she love me? There I was a gay dancing blade of a lad and Mary a serious owl of a girl that had never footed a jig in her life and would have died of shame not to have her washin' out bright and early of a Monda' mornin'. Now what was it, I ask you, that put love between us?"
Danny appealed to his young friend as man to man. Rosie, however, was not a person to grant the purely academic side of any question that was perfectly clear and matter-of-fact.
"Why, you loved her, Danny, and she loved you and that's all there was to it."
For a moment Danny looked blank. Then he chuckled. "Strange I didn't think of that before!" His eyes began to twinkle. "I'll wager, Rosie dear, ye've never lain awake o' nights wondering what it was that made the world go round, have you now?"
Rosie's answer was emphatic: "Of course not! I'm not so silly!"