Mrs. O'Brien conceded this readily enough. "Of course it is, Rosie dear, and I'm not sayin' it ain't. You're a great worker, and a fine little manager, too. I used to be a manager meself, but after ye've been the mother of eight, and three of them dead and gone—God rest their souls!—things kind o' slip away from you, do ye see? What was it I was sayin' now? Ah, yes, this: now that summer's come, if only ye'd help me out with Geraldine, p'rhaps I could catch up with me work. Like a darlint, now."
Mrs. O'Brien, shifting Geraldine from one warm arm to the other, smiled ingratiatingly; but Rosie only shook her head more doggedly than before.
"No, Ma. The rest of the people in this house don't do things they don't want to do, and for once I'm not going to either. I tell you I'm not going to begin lugging Geraldine around!"
"You poor infant!" Mrs. O'Brien crooned tearfully, "and does nobody love you? Ah, now, don't cry! Your poor ma loves you even if your own sister Rosie don't!"
Responsive to the pity expressed in her mother's tones, Geraldine raised a fretful wail, but Rosie, though she felt something of a murderess, still held out.
"I tell you, Ma, Jackie's my baby. I've taken good care of him, and that's all you can ask."
Mrs. O'Brien sighed in patient exasperation. "But, Rosie dear, can't you see that Jackie's a big b'y now, well able to take care of himself?"
"Take care of himself! Why, Ma, how you talk! Don't I have to wash him and button his shoes and put him to bed?"
"Well, I must say, Rosie, it's high time he did such things for himself—a fine, healthy lad going on six! Why, yourself, Rosie, hadn't turned six when you began mothering Jackie!"
It was not a subject Rosie cared to argue, so she retired in dignified silence. But her mother's words troubled her. In her heart she knew that Jackie was a well-grown boy even if in many things he was still a baby. But why shouldn't he still be a baby? The truth was Rosie wanted him to be a baby; it delighted her to feel that he was dependent on her; it was her greatest pleasure in life to do things for him. And if she was willing to serve him, why, pray, should other people object?