Rosie's patience was about exhausted, but she restrained herself. "But, Dad, if I was to do something awful bad—steal ten dollars, or run away from home!"
Jamie looked at Rosie, then at the sky line, then at the soap-box, then back at Rosie. Surely now a brutal threat was coming.
"Why, Rosie dear, I don't think you'd ever do anything like that!"
Huh! What kind of an answer was that for a father to give his child? Rosie straightened her back, and without another word departed. She felt that her worst fears were justified. Any man as difficult to trap as Jamie O'Brien was a dangerous character.
She nursed her resentment the rest of the evening. Just before she went to sleep, however, she decided, as a matter of scrupulous justice, to suspend final judgment until she should have seen for herself that damning evidence of his brutality, namely, the scar on her poor mother's right shoulder. Yes, she would find some excuse for seeing it at once.
The next morning, while her mother was preparing to go to market, of itself the opportunity came.
"Rosie dear," Mrs. O'Brien called down from upstairs, "I need your help. One of me corset strings is busted."
Rosie found her mother seated at the bureau, half dressed, fanning herself with a towel. A full expanse of neck and shoulders was exposed, so that Rosie, busied at her mother's back, was able to scan minutely all that there was to scan. She looked and looked again, and by patting her mother affectionately, was able to add the testimony of touch to that of sight.
In due time her mother departed, and Rosie, left alone, turned to the mirror and gazed into it several moments without speaking.