"But, Danny, what sense has a thing like that got? 'They want to be beat, and they don't want to be beat.' That's exactly like saying: It's winter and it's summer at the same time. It's not good sense to say a thing like that."
"Sense, Rosie?" Danny looked at her reproachfully. "It's not sense I'm talkin' about. It's not the logic of the ladies I'm impressin' on you, mind—it's their feelin's. I'm tellin' you the kind o' man every lady's on the lookout for—a fine brute of a fella that would as soon knock her down as look at her, and yet would never raise a finger against her."
Rosie's hands dropped limply into her lap. "Danny Agin, do you know sometimes I get so mixed up that I feel just like I was crazy! That's how I feel now."
Danny nodded sympathetically. "Small wonder, Rosie. 'They want to be beat, and they don't want to be beat.' I defy any man to say that over fifty times and not go mad! And what would you say, Rosie, to a poor man havin' to live, day in and day out, for forty years with an everlastin' conthradiction like that? Ah, Mary's a fine woman, but I tell you, Rosie, in all confidence, I've had me own troubles. Many's the time I've seen her just achin' for a good sound beatin', but, if ever I'd laid the tip o' me finger upon her, her heart would ha' broke, and she'd ha' felt the shame of it the longest day of her life. And they're all the same, Rosie; take me word for it, they're all the same. They want their menfolks to be lions, and they want them to be lambs."
Lions and lambs! Her mother's very words! Upon Rosie the light began to break. "Why, Danny!" she gasped.
"Take yir own case, Rosie dear. There's yir own da, a meek lamb of a man——"
"But, Danny, I like my father because he's so kind!"
"Whisht, now, darlint, and listen. Wouldn't it be fine if he was the size of that sthrappin' polisman, Pete Donovan, with the lump of a diamond in his shirt front as big as an egg, and a great black mustache coverin' the red lips of him, and a roar in his voice that'd send the b'ys a-scatterin' for blocks around!"
The figure evoked was certainly one of heroic proportions, and Rosie, as she gazed at it, involuntarily gave a little sigh.
Danny chuckled. "Ha, ha, Rosie! Ye're like the rest o' them!"