"About all of us, Mis' Agin—us ladies."
Rosie sat up very straight and severe.
Danny seemed to think the situation amusing, but he was the only one who did. Mrs. Agin glared at him darkly.
"Dan Agin, what's this ye've been sayin' to Rosie?"
Danny continued to shake with silent mirth, so Rosie answered for him:
"He says what all of us ladies wants is this: We want to be beat, and we don't want to be beat. Now, isn't that the silliest thing you ever heard, Mis' Agin? And he says when we marry a brute of a man, we pretend that he's kind and nice, and when we marry a nice, kind man, we let on he's a brute."
"Dan Agin, what do ye mean, puttin' such nonsense into Rosie's head? Answer me that now!"
"And listen, Mis' Agin," Rosie went on. "Just because he's that kind of a man himself, he thinks everybody else is. And they're not! Every one thinks my father's so quiet and nice, but I guess I know him! Sometimes he's just awful! And Terry, too! But Danny here, he thinks they're every one of them just as harmless as he is. I guess he's so scared himself that that's the reason he tries to make out that other men are, too!"
Mrs. Agin glared at Danny a moment in silence. Then she spoke:
"Dan Agin, how dare ye go blastin' the reputation of decent men! There are others like ye, do ye say? There are not! There's not another woman in Ameriky that's stood what I've stood for forty years! Ah, many's the time it was just one black murtherin' look I was cravin' from ye to bear out me story that I had married a man, instead of a joke! And did ever I get it from ye, Dan Agin! I did not—bad cess to ye for a soft-hearted, good-for-nuthin' of a man that'd let a woman thrample ye in the dust if she wanted to! 'Twas yir luck that ye little deserved to marry a decent, quiet woman like meself!"