Part 15 (1/2)
The wind kept blowing Rosie's streamers into her eyes until she was ready to tear them off.... Would they never get home?
Janet McFadden, her dull black eyes fixed in a dream, heeded nothing.
But at the corner where their ways parted Rosie saw to it that she heard something. When Janet offered farewells, Rosie called out with unmistakable emphasis:
”Good-night, _Tom!_ I've had a very pleasant time with _you!_”
Like Janet, George Riley seemed to think that everything was as before.
He himself was quiet, with the drowsy languor that follows an evening's excitement, and he seemed to be attributing Rosie's silence to the same cause.
When they got home, Rosie tried to show him his mistake. The gas in the little hallway was burning low, and George turned it high to light Rosie upstairs.
Rosie started off without a word.
”Aren't you going to kiss me good-night, Rosie?”
At that Rosie turned slowly about and gazed down upon him with all the hauteur of an offended queen. ”There's just one thing I want to tell you, Jarge Riley: because you kiss Janet McFadden, you needn't think you can kiss _any_ girl!”
”Why, Rosie!” George began. But Rosie was already gone.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Because you kiss Janet McFadden, you needn't think you can kiss _any_ girl.”]
CHAPTER XIII
JANET EXPLAINS
By ten o'clock next morning Janet McFadden was at the door asking for Rosie. Rosie did not, of course, ever care to see Janet again, but as she had come Rosie could scarcely deny herself.
She found her one-time friend looking pinched and worried--conscience-stricken, no doubt--and little wonder.
”I'm going to the grocery, Janet. Do you want to come with me?”
Hardly outside the gate, Janet began: ”You're not mad at me, Rosie, are you?”
”Mad?” Rosie spoke the word as if it were one with which she was unfamiliar.
”I didn't think you'd care, Rosie, honest I didn't. I thought you'd understand.”
”Understand what?” There was a certain coldness in the tone of Rosie's inquiry, and Janet, feeling it, seemed ready to wring her hands in despair.
”Why, Rosie, all we talked about was you--honest it was! Jarge said you were just like his own little sister to him, and I told him I loved you more than I would my own sister if I had one.”
”Huh!” Rosie grunted, recalling the tilt of Janet's black sailor hat over George's shoulder. It had looked then as if they were talking about her, hadn't it now?
”Honest, Rosie!”
”Yes, of course. I suppose now you were talking about me when you----”
Rosie pursed her lips and Janet, understanding her meaning, blushed guiltily.