"What ladies?"
"All o' them. They're all the same."
"Who are all the same?"
"The ladies, Rosie. Janet and your ma, and the rest o' them!"
"Danny, I don't see how you can say that. Ma and Janet are not a bit the same. They're exactly different. There's ma who's got a kind husband, and she goes telling that he chases her with a butcher-knife, and there's Janet whose father is a drunken brute, and she goes pretending he's the best ever."
"Precisely, Rosie. You couldn't have expressed it better. Now you'll understand me when I tell you that they all want the same thing, which is this: They want to be beat, and they don't want to be beat. Now let me say it to you again, Rosie: They want to be beat, and they don't want to be beat. There!"
Rosie put her hands to her head in distraction. "Danny Agin, I don't know what you're talking about!"
"I'm talkin' about the ladies."
"Well, then, what I want to know is this: How can they want a thing when they don't want it?"
It was Danny's turn to look distracted. "Rosie, Rosie, ye'll drive me mad with yir questions! If I could tell you how they do, I would and gladly. But I can't. All I can tell you is they do."