That trampled creature was sending forth a terrific bellow of, "Murder! Murder! Mommer! Help! I'm gettin' killed!"
"And just good for him, too!" the woman with the baby shouted over to Mary and Danny. "I've been watching the way he's been teasing the life out of that little girl!"
"Good wur-r-rk, Rosie, good wur-r-rk!" old Danny kept wheezing as he pounded his stick in enthusiastic applause.
As the jig ended, Rosie stooped and snatched off the Schnitzer's cap. For a moment she hesitated, for there was no mud-puddle on the street into which to throw it. Then she noticed a tree. Good! That would give him some trouble. She twisted the cap in her hand and tossed it up into a high branch where it lodged securely.
Then she leaned over the Schnitzer for the last time. He was moaning and groaning and whimpering with no least little spark of fight left in him. And was this the thing she used to be afraid of? Danny was right: never again would she fear him. She gazed at him long and scornfully. Then she gave him one last stir with her foot and brought the episode to a close.
"Now then, you big bully, if you've had enough, get off this car—I mean, sidewalk, and go home and tell your—your mother, I mean, that she wants you!"
And, as Rosie said that evening in relating the adventure to George Riley: "And, oh, Jarge, you just ought ha' seen how that stiff got up and went!"
CHAPTER III
THE PAPER-GIRL
On Saturday night as soon as supper was cleared away, Terence was accustomed to make out his weekly accounts. He had a small account-book with crisscross rulings and two fascinating little canvas money-bags, one for coppers, the other for nickels and silver. After his book accounts were finished, he would gravely open his money-bags and, with banker-like precision, pile up together coins of the same denomination—pennies by themselves, nickels by themselves, dimes, and so on.