Aunt Kitty smiled upon Rosie that meaning smile with which one conscious beauty appeals to another. Rosie did not respond to it. From the bottom of her heart she despised Aunt Kitty for the persistence with which she tormented Janet. When Rosie came in her tirade must have been going on for some time, for Janet looked tense and angry and her mother badly flustered.
Mrs. McFadden, hard-worked and worn and shabby, could not openly resent her sister-in-law's little pleasantries, for Kitty Sullivan was the prosperous member of the family. The chance that had given her a sober, frugal, industrious husband had also given her a certain moral superiority over all women whose husbands were not sober or frugal or industrious. Mrs. McFadden did not question this superiority; she accepted it humbly. Far be it from her, poor drudge that she was, to dispute the words of a woman who could afford good clothes and a weekly ticket to the matinée. So all she said now in Janet's defence was:
"Kitty, I wish you wouldn't be putting such notions into Janet's head. She's too young to have beaux."
"Too young!" scoffed Mrs. Sullivan. "I guess I begun havin' beaux when I was a good deal younger than Janet is now! Why, nowadays a girl can't begin too young havin' beaux, or the first thing she knows she's an old maid! Ain't that right, Rosie?"
Rosie turned her head away, mumbling some unintelligible answer. Tom, blushing until his freckles were all hidden, came to her rescue.
"Aw, now, Ma, why can't you let up on Janet? She ain't done nuthin' to you!"
Mrs. Sullivan looked at her son reprovingly. "Tom Sullivan, you just mind your own business! What I'm saying is for Janet's own good. And I must say, Mary McFadden, it's your fault, too. You ought to be dressing Janet better now that she's getting big."
Mrs. McFadden sighed apologetically. "I'm sure I dress her as well as I can, Kitty."
"Well, then, all I got to say is you must be a mighty poor manager, with Dave making good money and you yourself working every day!" As she finished, Mrs. Sullivan smiled and dimpled with all the malicious triumph of a precocious child.
Rosie felt shamed and troubled. To Mrs. Sullivan's taunt there was one answer that everybody present knew, but that neither Mary McFadden nor Janet would ever give, and that Rosie, as an outsider, could not give. But even so, Mrs. Sullivan was not to go unanswered. Tom, blushing with mortification, jumped to his feet.