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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Madigans, by Miriam Michelson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Madigans
+
+Author: Miriam Michelson
+
+Illustrator: Orson Lowell
+
+Release Date: April 27, 2007 [EBook #21243]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MADIGANS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by V. L. Simpson and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    [Illustration:
+      A Few of Irene's "Fathers"]
+
+
+THE MADIGANS
+BY
+MIRIAM MICHELSON
+
+
+
+AUTHOR OF "IN THE BISHOP'S CARRIAGE"
+
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
+BY ORSON LOWELL
+
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+THE CENTURY CO.
+1904
+
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1904, by
+The Century Co.
+
+_Published October, 1904_
+
+The DeVinne Press
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                          PAGE
+
+Cecilia the Pharisee         3
+
+A Pagan and a Puritan       39
+
+A Merry, Merry Zingara      79
+
+The Shut-Ups               115
+
+The Ancestry of Irene      147
+
+The Last Straw             189
+
+A Ready Letter-Writer      219
+
+"The Martyrdom of Man"     265
+
+Kate: A Pretense           297
+
+Old Mother Gibson          331
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+A Few of Irene's "Fathers"                          _Frontispiece_
+
+"That settles Number 10," said Sissy, grimly               7
+
+Left the room with such uncompromising hauteur
+... that her aunt again exploded                          13
+
+"Please, Mr. Garvan," she said                            17
+
+Some of the Madigans                                      23
+
+The Rest of the Madigans                                  29
+
+Seizing Sissy in his arms, he bore her off to bed         35
+
+"Play it, then, you mean thing," she cried, ... "if
+it's going to do you any good!"                           47
+
+"Go and shake hands properly, like a little gentleman,"
+bullied Mrs. Pemberton                                    53
+
+Of the design and construction of which he was quite
+vain                                                      63
+
+The Belle of the Afternoon                                71
+
+She was pronounced a "regular little love" by the
+Misses Bryne-Stivers                                      91
+
+"I don't see how you're going to dance in them"           95
+
+"But is she _very_ sick?"                                101
+
+She glanced up the incline of the see-saw to the height
+whence Irene looked down                                 153
+
+"I want you--come!" the Indian princess announced        163
+
+They had coasted only half a block                       169
+
+"Oh, you needn't glare at me!" exclaimed Bep             183
+
+A train meant domesticity and dignity to Sissy. In
+Split it bred and fostered a spirit of coquetry          223
+
+Stamping ... in a frenzy                                 229
+
+Madigan banged the door behind him as he fled            237
+
+"Here would I rest," she chanted                         253
+
+She walked a step or two with him                        261
+
+
+
+
+THE MADIGANS
+
+
+
+
+CECILIA THE PHARISEE
+
+
+    I, Cecilia Morgan Madigan, being of sound mind and in
+    purfect bodily health, and residing in Virginia City,
+    Nevada, do hereby on this first day of April solemnly
+    promise:
+
+    1. That I will be Number 1 this next month at school.
+
+    2. That I will be pachient with Papa, and try to stand
+    him.
+
+    3. That I will set Bep--yes, and Fom too, even if she is
+    Irene's partner--a good example.
+
+    4. That I will not once this next month pinch Aunt
+    Anne's sensative plant--no matter what she does to me.
+
+    5. That I will dust the back legs of the piano even when
+    Mrs. Pemberton isn't expected.
+
+    6. That I will help Kate controll her temper, and not
+    mock and aggravate her when she sulks.
+
+    7. That I will be a little mother to Frank and teach her
+    to grow up and be a creddit to the famly.
+
+    8. That I will not steal candy out of Kate's
+    pocket--without first begging her very hard to give me
+    some.
+
+    9. That I will practice The Gazelle fathfully every
+    solatary day. And give up reading on the sly while I
+    play 5-finger exercises.
+
+    10. That I will try to bear with Irene. That I will do
+    all I can not to fight with her--but she is a selfish
+    devvil who is always in the wrong.
+
+    And all this I solemnly promise myself without being
+    coersed in any way, of my own free will, without let or
+    hidrance, because I want to be good.
+
+                 _Cecilia Morgan Madigan_ (_called Sissy_),
+                                     Aged 11 last birthday.
+
+    P.S. And I feel sure I can do it all, God helping me,
+    except Number 10--which is the hardest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sissy, who had been sitting writing only half dressed, folded the paper
+reverently, put it to her lips for lack of a seal, and then buttoned it
+firmly inside her corset waist.
+
+She felt so virtuous already that the carrying out of her intentions
+seemed really supererogatory. When she went to Irene to have her button
+her dress in the back, she had such a sensation of holiness, such a
+consciousness of a forbearing, pure, and gentle spirit, that her
+sister's malicious pretense of ignoring her presence appeared to her
+nothing less than sacrilege.
+
+"Ain't you going to button me, Split?" she demanded, indignant that her
+enemy, whom she was going to treat with Christ-like charity, should
+successfully try her temper before the ink was dry on her own promise to
+keep the peace.
+
+"Ask me pretty," grinned Split, whose nickname honored a gymnastic feat
+which no other Madigan, however athletic, could accomplish half so
+successfully as the second. "Say 'please.'"
+
+"I won't do anything of the sort. You know you've got to do it, and
+you've no right to expect me to say 'please' every time. You don't do it
+yourself, you hateful thing!"
+
+"Why don't you cry?"
+
+"Because I won't for you--because you can't make me--because--"
+
+"Because you are crying in spite of yourself! Because anybody can make
+you cry, cry-baby!"
+
+Sissy's hands flew up to her breast. It was a recognized gesture with
+her, a physical holding of herself together in the last minute that
+preceded her temperamental flying to pieces.
+
+Split retreated cautiously, clearing the deck herself for action.
+
+But no first gun was fired in that engagement. A crackling of the
+document hidden over the spot where she thought her heart was came like
+a warning note to Sissy. She struggled against it a moment; then her
+hands fell. Meekly she turned her back upon her tormentor, and in a
+voice of such exquisite holiness as to be almost unearthly, she said:
+
+"Split dear, will you please button me?"
+
+A look of outraged astonishment at the unheard-of endearment came over
+Irene's face. The Madigans regarded demonstrative affection as pure
+affectation at its best; at its worst it was little short of indecent.
+
+"'Split dear?'" mocked Irene as soon as she recovered. "Yes, dear. Turn
+around, dear. Stand straight, dear. Wait a minute, dear--"
+
+Sissy stood in silence, biting her tongue that she might not speak. She
+was so occupied with the desire to keep Number 10 of her compact with
+herself that she did not notice how long it was before Irene really
+began to button her waist. She did note, though, that she began at the
+bottom, a proceeding Split fancied merely because it drove her junior
+nearly frantic. She buttoned with maddening slowness up to the middle,
+when she capriciously left this point and recommenced at the top.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "'That settles Number 10,' said Sissy, grimly"]
+
+Mentally Sissy followed the operation. It was almost complete when
+through the little gap purposely left open Split deftly introduced a
+providentially flattened piece of ice from the window-sill, giving her
+victim a little shake that sent the ice slipping smoothly down her
+squirming body, but escaping before Sissy could turn and rend her.
+
+"That settles Number 10," said Sissy, grimly, to herself, while she
+danced with discomfort. "I'll kill her if I get a chance--that's what
+I'll do. I'll get even, or my name's not Sis Madigan."
+
+She hurried back into her room, which the twins shared, and stood in
+damp martyrdom while Bessie's butter-fingers crept with miserable
+slowness up and down. She suffered so from Bessie's ineptness that,
+despite the requirements of Number 3 of her code, she tore herself
+violently from her and turned her back imploringly to Florence. But Fom
+was a partizan of Split's, and it was against all the ethics of Madigan
+warfare to aid and comfort the enemy. When Sissy, chastened, returned to
+Bep's ministrations, the blonde one of the twins was so hurt and
+offended by the implication of awkwardness--a point upon which she was
+as vulnerable as she was sensitive--that Sissy slapped them both before
+she went at last for relief to Aunt Anne.
+
+This was fatal, as she knew it would be.
+
+"I shall tell your father about Irene," her aunt said, looking up from
+the coffee she was sipping as she lay in bed reading a French book. "But
+it's just as well, for I told you yesterday that that dress was too
+dirty to wear another day. Change it now--"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Anne, it's late already--"
+
+"You'll change that dress, Sissy, or you won't go to school."
+
+"I won't! It's too late. I'll be late. That means one credit off, and
+this month I'm going--" A remembrance of her lofty intentions came
+suddenly to Sissy. All the world seemed bent on compelling her to
+forswear herself.
+
+"Cecilia!" commanded Miss Madigan.
+
+Sissy stiffened.
+
+"You've disturbed my reading enough this morning. If you say another
+word I'll--"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Anne--"
+
+"Go over to the wall, Cecilia, and stand with your back to me for five
+minutes."
+
+With a fiendish light in her eye--a light of such desperate satisfaction
+as betokened one gladly driven to commit the unforgivable Sissy moved
+toward the sensitive-plant in the window.
+
+"Not there! That poor plant seems to suffer sympathetically with your
+badness. Stand over by the bureau."
+
+Sissy obeyed. Her rage at being made ridiculous, her sense of outrage
+that a perfectionist like herself should suffer punishment, added to her
+knowledge of the flight of time on school mornings, strangled her into
+dumbness. But she clasped the paper in her breast as a drowning man
+might a spar from the wreck. At least Number 4 was intact. She had been
+mercifully spared the fracture of this one of her self-made
+commandments.
+
+She was standing with her nose pressed firmly against the green
+wall-paper, her back laid open as by a surgical operation, and a towel,
+which her aunt had forced into the aperture for drying purposes,
+dangling down behind, when Kate, passing the door on her way to
+breakfast, glanced in.
+
+Her sputtering, quickly stifled screech of laughter sent Sissy spinning
+about as a bull does when the banderilla is planted in his quivering
+flesh. She looked at the doorway; it was empty, but she heard scurrying
+footsteps without. Kate was on her way to tell the others.
+
+She looked at Aunt Anne. That severe lady had dropped her book and,
+seized by the contagion, was shaking with silent laughter.
+
+Not a word did Sissy say. Her expression of disgust,--disgust that a
+grown-up should be so silly as to see something funny in absolutely
+nothing; disgust that her aunt should so weaken the effect of her own
+discipline,--reinforced by the green smudge on her nose, rubbed off the
+wall-paper, finished Miss Madigan. The lady no longer attempted to
+conceal the disgraceful fact that she was laughing. She gave an audible
+gurgle, and began to wipe the tears of enjoyment from her eyes.
+
+In that moment the iron entered into Sissy Madigan's soul. She turned
+again to the wall, and taking a pin which had fastened the bow of ribbon
+at her throat, she pricked slowly but relentlessly in the loose
+wall-paper this legend:
+
+  AUNT ANNE--PIG
+
+After which she felt relieved, and, the five minutes being up, left the
+room with such uncompromising hauteur, still splashed with green on the
+nose, still split open down the back, with the towel's fringe dangling
+in dignity behind, that her aunt again exploded.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "Left the room with such uncompromising hauteur ... that
+       her aunt again exploded"]
+
+The fact that she had irretrievably lost one credit through tardiness
+set Sissy's lips in a tight line of determination to guard jealously
+every one of the ninety-and-nine left to her.
+
+At recess she remained at her desk studying her geography with an
+intensity of purpose that made her rivals' hearts quake. She sat at the
+teacher's desk--lifted to this almost regal eminence by his fondness for
+her petulant ways as well as because of that quality of leadership which
+made Sissy her fellows' spokeswoman. Hers was the privilege of using the
+master's pencils, sharpened to a fineness that made neatness a
+dissipation instead of a task. It was she, of course, who originated the
+decorative style of arithmetic-paper much in vogue, on which each
+example was penned off in an inclosure fenced by alternating vertical
+and horizontal double hyphens.
+
+But a queer, conscientious sense of the responsibilities of power and
+place modified Sissy's rapturous delight in her position, so that she
+kept it despite a fiercely jealous class-spirit developed by a strict
+credit-system, by the emulative temper which the rarefied atmosphere of
+the little mining town fostered, and by a young master just out of
+college who looked upon his teaching as a temporary adventure, much as
+a Japanese gentleman regards domestic service.
+
+It was in her capacity of class representative that the master had
+consulted Sissy upon the limits to be observed in the forthcoming public
+oral examination in geography. And she had enlightened him as to what
+would be considered quite "fair." This treaty, into which she entered
+with the seriousness of an ambassador to an unfriendly power arranging a
+settlement of a disputed question, had a character so sacred in her eyes
+that its violation by the master in the course of the afternoon came
+upon her like a blow.
+
+"Cecilia Madigan," asked the master, "what is the highest mountain in
+the world?"
+
+Sissy rose. The imposing array of visitors in school faded out of her
+horizon. All she could see was the eyes of her schoolmates turned in
+accusatory horror upon her. They suspected her of betraying them; of
+using her elevated position to hand down untrustworthy information.
+
+"Please, Mr. Garvan," she said in tones more of sorrow than of anger,
+skilfully showing her knowledge of the answer while denying his right to
+it, "that question isn't on the map of Africa."
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "'Please, Mr. Garvan,' she said"]
+
+A flush of annoyance mounted to the young master's forehead. Out of the
+corner of her eye Sissy saw the preliminary twitch of the corners of his
+lips that served the class for a danger-signal.
+
+"What is the highest mountain, Cecilia?" he repeated sternly.
+
+Sissy stood a moment looking at him. All that she might not say--her
+contempt for pledge-breakers, her shocked hero-worship now forever a
+thing of the past, her outraged school-girl's affection--she shot
+straight at the master from her angry eyes.
+
+Then she sat down.
+
+"I don't know," she said.
+
+He looked up from his book, incredulous. Ten credits out of one hundred
+gone at one fell swoop--ten of Sissy Madigan's credits, for which she
+fought so gallantly and which she cherished so jealously when she once
+had them in her possession.
+
+"I--don't--know," repeated Sissy, disdainfully.
+
+The master passed the question. But as he put it to the next girl, Sissy
+put another question, with her eyes, to the same girl.
+
+"Are you a scab?" her steady gaze challenged. "Are you going to benefit
+by what a mate suffers for principle's sake? Are you a coward who
+doesn't dare to stand up for your class? And--do you know what you'll
+get from me if you are?"
+
+"I--don't--know," faltered the girl.
+
+A glory of triumph shot over Sissy's face. It leaped like a sunrise from
+peak to peak in a mountain-range of obstinacy. "I don't know"--"I don't
+know"--"I don't know"--the shibboleth of the strikers' cause went down
+the line. The master was shamed in public by the banner pupils of his
+school. He writhed, but he put the question steadily to every girl till
+he came to Irene, last in the line.
+
+"What is the highest mountain in the world?" he asked, perfunctorily
+now.
+
+But, to his amazement, she rose, and, looking out of the window up to
+the mountain to the skirts of which the town clung, she answered:
+
+"Mount Davidson."
+
+Sissy's savage joy followed so quickly upon her horror at her own
+sister's defection that the closing of school left her in a trembling
+storm of emotions. In the dressing-room, where the girls were putting on
+their hats, she marched up to Irene, followed by her wrathful adherents
+and feeling like an avenging Brutus.
+
+"You're a sneak, Split Madigan! You're a coward, and--and a stupid
+coward. You don't know enough to betray your class and get the benefit
+of it, but you'd rather be mean than get credits, anyway. Nobody can
+count on you. Changeable Silk, that's what you are--changing color all
+the time, never standing firm! I hate you! Changeable Silk! Changeable
+Silk!"
+
+"Changeable Silk! Changeable Silk!" chanted her following.
+
+The little dressing-room rang with the cry of the mob, so filled with
+significance by the tone in which it was uttered that Irene paled and
+shrank.
+
+But only for a moment. The Madigans never lacked courage long. That
+fierce internecine strife waged by the clan in the old house high on the
+side of the hill made a Madigan quick and resolute.
+
+"Stupid yourself, Sissy! My answer made him madder than your not
+answering."
+
+Sissy looked at her searchingly. "But--did you--" she wavered.
+
+"Of course I did! Who's the stupid now? Do you s'pose I didn't know it
+was--"
+
+"What?--what?" Sissy repeated as her sister hesitated.
+
+Irene turned up her nose insultingly. "I don't--know," she mocked, and
+beat a successful retreat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Francis Madigan dined in a long room, the only man at a table with seven
+women ranging in years from four to forty-four. The accumulation of
+girls in his family was so wanton an outrage upon his desires that he
+rather rejoiced in the completeness of the infliction as an undeniable
+grievance.
+
+He needed a grievance as a shield against which others' grievances might
+be shattered. And in default of a more tangible one, he cited his
+heavily be-daughtered house. It was at dinner-time that he always seemed
+to realize the extent of his disaster. As he took his place at the head,
+his wrathful eye swept from Frances in her high chair, up along the
+line, past the twins, through Cecilia, Irene, and Kate, till it lighted
+upon Miss Madigan's good-humored, placid face. His sister's placidity
+was an ever-present offense to the father of the Madigans,--the most
+irascible of unsuccessful men,--and the snort with which he finished the
+inspection and took up the carving-knife had become a classic in Madigan
+annals long before Sissy brought down the house at the age of eight by
+imitating it one evening in his absence.
+
+    [Illustration:
+       "Some of the Madigans"]
+
+But to-night a most painful and ostentatious respect marked Sissy's
+manner to her parent. She stood markedly,--while the others scrambled
+into their chairs and Wong, the Chinese servant, sped about placing
+everything on the table at once,--waiting for her father to be seated.
+
+She was still waiting politely when his eye lighted upon her. "Sit down,
+Cecilia!" he roared; "what d' ye want, gaping there?"
+
+Sissy sat down. So holy was she that she did not resent (openly) the
+low, delighted giggle Irene gave. She began to be politely attentive to
+Dusie, her father's pet canary, though she loathed the spoiled little
+thing that hopped about the table helping itself.
+
+Madigan had a way of telling himself, in his rare moments of
+introspection, that the tenderness he might have lavished upon a son he
+spent upon the male offspring of more fortunate genera than man. The big
+Newfoundland and the great cat came to meals regularly. They shared
+Madigan's affection with the birds (whose cage, big as a dog's house, he
+had himself nailed up against the side of the wall), that broke into a
+maddening din of song, excited by the rival clatter of young Madigans
+dining.
+
+Protected by this shrill symphony from the sound of his daughters'
+voices, Madigan fed his dog, his cat, and his favorite canary, and with
+his head upon one hand, in token of his abiding disgust with the human,
+daughterful world, ate quickly with the other.
+
+This pose was the signal that freed the feminine Madigan tongue. Usually
+they all broke into conversation at once; but on this evening there
+seemed to be some agreement which held them mute till Irene spoke.
+
+"I am glad to see you be so patient with papa, Sissy," she said gently.
+
+His third daughter glanced apprehensively at Madigan. But her father had
+retired within his shell, and nothing but a cataclysm could reach him
+there.
+
+"Why--" she said, puzzled, "why--I--"
+
+"Promise me that you'll try to stand him," urged Split, joyously.
+
+"And that you'll help me control my temper, and not mock and aggravate
+me when I sulk," chanted Kate.
+
+Sissy dropped her knife and fork, and her hands flew to her bosom, not
+in wrath, but in terror. The crackling testament was gone!
+
+"Split! You--"
+
+"Try to bear with me, won't you, Sis, even if I am a devil?" grinned
+Split.
+
+"And set us a good example, Sissy," piped the twins.
+
+Sissy gasped.
+
+"Be a yittle muvver to Fwank," lisped the baby, prompted by a big
+sister.
+
+"And don't steal candy out of my pocket, will you, Cecilia Morgan?"
+begged her oldest sister.
+
+"And--"
+
+Sissy sprang into the air, as though lifted bodily by the taunts of
+these ungrateful beneficiaries of her good intentions.
+
+"Sit down, you ox!" came in thundering tones from the head of the table.
+
+When one was called an ox among the Madigans the culprit invariably
+subsided, however the epithet might tend to make her sisters rejoice.
+But Sissy had borne too much in that one day--always keeping in mind the
+perfect sanctity with which she had begun it.
+
+With an inarticulate explanation that was at once a sob, a complaint,
+and a trembling defiance, she pushed back her chair and fled to her
+room. Here she sobbed in peace and plenty; sobbed till tears became a
+luxury to be produced by a conscious effort of the will. It had always
+been a grief to Sissy that she could never cry enough. Split, now, could
+weep vocally and by the hour, but all too soon for Sissy the wells of
+her own sorrow ran dry.
+
+Yet tears had ever a chastening effect upon the third of the Madigans.
+In due time she rose, washed her face, and combed back her hair and
+braided it in a tight plait that stuck out at an aggressive angle on the
+side; unaided she could never get it to depend properly from the middle.
+This heightened the feeling of utter peacefulness, of remorse washed
+clean, besides putting her upon such a spiritual elevation as enabled
+her to meet her world with composure, though bitter experience told her
+how long a joke lasted among the Madigans.
+
+She fell upon her knees at last beside her bed. No Madigan of this
+generation had been taught to pray, an aggressive skepticism--the
+tangent of excessive youthful religiosity--having made the girls' father
+an outspoken foe to religious exercise. But to Sissy's emotional,
+self-conscious soul the necessity for worded prayer came quick now and
+imperative.
+
+"O Lord," she pleaded aloud, "help me to keep 'em all--even Number
+10--in spite of Split and the devil. Help--"
+
+She heard the door open behind her.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "The Rest of the Madigans"]
+
+With a bound she was in bed, fully dressed as she was; and pulling the
+covers tight up to her neck, she waited, to all intents and purposes
+fast asleep.
+
+"You little fool!" said Madigan, with a hint of laughter in his heavy
+voice and laying a not ungentle hand on her blazing cheeks. "D' ye think
+I care if you want to kneel and kotow like other idiots? If you're that
+kind--and I suppose you are, being a woman--pray and be--blessed!"
+
+It was the nearest thing to a paternal benediction that had ever come to
+Sissy, but she was too wary a small actress to be moved by it out of her
+rôle. Nor did her father wait to note the effect of his words. His heavy
+step passed on and out of her room into his own, and the door slammed
+between them.
+
+In a moment Sissy was up; in another moment she had torn off her
+clothes, blown out her candle, and jumped back into bed. She was almost
+asleep when the twins came in, but she feigned the deepest of slumbers
+when Bessie pushed a crackling piece of paper under her pillow, though
+her fingers closed greedily about it as soon as the room was quiet
+again.
+
+She knew what it was--her precious compact with herself, that loyal
+little Bep had recaptured from the enemy. She lay there, lulled by its
+presence; and slowly, slowly she was dropping off into real slumber
+when a sharply agonizing thought, an inescapable mental pin-prick,
+roused her. It was Number 9. She had not touched the piano during the
+whole of that strenuous day.
+
+She withdrew her fingers reproachfully from the insistent reminder of
+virtuous intention, and resolutely she turned her back on it and tried
+to pretend herself to sleep. But every broken section of her treaty had
+a voice, and above them all clamored the call of Number 9 that it was
+not yet too late.
+
+When Sissy rose wearily at last and draped the Mexican quilt about her,
+the house was quiet. All youthful Madigans were abed, and the older ones
+were in secure seclusion.
+
+It was a small Saint Cecilia, with a short, stiff braid standing out
+from one side of her head, and utterly without musical enthusiasm, that
+sat down in the darkness at the old square piano. "La Gazelle" was out
+of the question, for she had no lamp and she did not yet know the trills
+and runs of her new "piece" by heart. But the five-finger exercises and
+the scales that it had been her custom to run over slightingly while she
+read from a paper novel by the Duchess open in front of her music--this
+much of an atonement was still within her power.
+
+With her bare foot on the soft pedal, that none might hear her, Sissy
+played. It was dark and very quiet; the hush-hush of the throbbing mines
+filled the night and stilled it. At times her heart stood still for fear
+that she might be discovered; at other times the longing for a
+sensational uncovering of her belated and extraordinary goodness seized
+her, and her naked foot slipped from the cold pedal only to be hurriedly
+replaced before the jangle of the keys could escape.
+
+How long she practised, and whether she redeemed herself and Number 9,
+Sissy never knew, for she fell asleep at last over the keys and was
+waked by a hoarse scream and a wild cry of "De debbil! De debbil!"
+
+It was Wong, the Chinaman, who had but one name for all things
+supernatural. Coming home from Chinatown, he was passing the glass door
+near which the piano stood when he saw the slender figure in its
+trailing white drapery bowed over the keys.
+
+Sissy looked up, sleep still bewildering her, and yet awake enough to be
+fearful of consequences. She tore open the door and sped after the
+Chinaman to enlighten him, but her pursuit only confirmed Wong's
+conception of that mission of malice which is devil's work on earth. A
+terrified howl burst from him. There was only one being on earth of whom
+he stood in greater awe than the thing he fancied he was fleeing from;
+that one, logically, must be greater than It. Taking his very life in
+his hand, he doubled, darted past the shivering Thing, flew on through
+the open door, and made straight for the master's room.
+
+For Sissy there was nothing to do but to follow.
+
+"I wanted to be good," she wailed, unnerved, when Aunt Anne had her by
+the shoulder and was catechizing her in the presence of a nightgowned
+multitude of excited Madigans.
+
+But succor came from an unexpected quarter. "Let the child alone, Anne,"
+growled Madigan, adjusting the segment of the leg of woolen underwear
+which he wore for a nightcap; and seizing Sissy in his arms, he bore her
+off to bed.
+
+"Papa's pet! Papa's baby!" mouthed Irene, under her breath, as she
+danced tauntingly along behind his back.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "Seizing Sissy in his arms, he bore her off to bed"]
+
+And Sissy, outraged in all the dignity of her eleven years at being
+carried like a child, but unspeakably happy in her father's favor,
+looked over his shoulder with a sheepish, smiling, sleepy face,
+murmuring, "Sour grapes, Split, sour grapes!"
+
+Afterward, encouraged by the darkness and the strangeness of being laid
+in bed from her father's arms, Sissy held him a moment by her side.
+
+"When men make promises on paper that they can't keep, father," she
+whispered, "what do they do?"
+
+"Oh, go to sleep, child! They become bankrupt, I suppose."
+
+"And--and what becomes of the paper?"
+
+"What do you know or care about such things? Will you go to sleep
+to-night?"
+
+"If you had any bankrupt's paper," she pleaded, catching hold of his
+hand as he turned to leave her, "what would you do with it--please,
+father!"
+
+"Why, tear it up, you goose."
+
+With a jump, Sissy was bolt upright in bed and holding up a fluttering,
+much-folded sheet, an almost incredulous joy in her eager voice.
+
+"Take mine and pretend I was bankrupt--please--oh, please!"
+
+To Madigan all children, his own particularly, were such unaccountable
+beings that a vagary more or less could not more hopelessly perplex his
+misunderstanding of them. With a "Tut! tut!" of impatience, he took the
+paper from her and tore it twice across.
+
+A long sigh of relief came from Sissy as the bits fluttered to the
+floor. "You're such a nice father!" she murmured happily, and fell
+asleep, a blissful bankrupt instead of a Pharisee.
+
+
+
+
+A PAGAN AND A PURITAN
+
+
+"Split! Split!"
+
+The morning was warm and young; Mount Davidson's side was golden with
+sunflowers. On the long front piazza Mr. Madigan's canaries, in their
+mammoth cage, were like to burst their throats for joy in the promise of
+summer. Irene, every lithe muscle a-play, was hanging by her knees on
+the swinging-bar, her tawny hair sweeping the woodshed floor as she
+swung.
+
+"Split, I say!"
+
+The tone was commanding--such a tone as Sissy dared assume only on
+Saturday mornings, when her elder sister's necessities delivered Irene
+the Oppressor into her hands.
+
+"Split Madigan!"
+
+In the very exhilaration of effort--the use of her muscles was joy to
+her--Split paused to wish that the house might fall on Sissy; that she
+might suddenly become dumb; that the key to the piano might be
+lost--anything that would avert her own impending doom.
+
+But none of these things happened; they never did happen, no matter how
+passionately the second of the Madigans longed for them on the last day
+of the week.
+
+"Split--you know very well you hear me," the voice cried, coming nearer.
+
+Split burst into song. She was a merry, merry Zingara, she declared in
+sweet, strong cadence, with a boisterous chorus of tra-la-las that
+rivaled the canaries'; and the louder she sang, the faster she swung, so
+that she was really half deaf and wholly giddy when she felt Sissy's
+hand on her ankle.
+
+"Oh, is that you, Sissy?" she asked, sweetly surprised, peering out from
+under her bushy mane.
+
+"Yes, it's me, Sissy!" Cecilia's small, round face was stern. "And
+you've heard me from the very first, and if you want any--"
+
+"Shall I show you how to skin the cat, Sis?" Irene interrupted hastily,
+pulling herself up with a jerk.
+
+But Sissy was fat and had none of her sister's wiry agility. She
+declined; her mind was attuned to other issues just then, and her soul
+was a-quiver with malicious, anticipatory glee; for this was the day of
+Split's music lesson, and her teacher was none other than Sissy herself.
+
+"So, if you want it," the younger sister's voice rose threateningly,
+"you've got to come now."
+
+"Let's leave it till the afternoon." Split's voice came from somewhere
+in the midst of her evolutions.
+
+"Will you come?" demanded Sissy peremptorily. "Once!"
+
+How could Split answer? Her mouth was tight shut; she was pulling
+herself up inch by inch, slowly, slowly, till her chin should rest upon
+the bar.
+
+"Will you come? Twice!"
+
+Split's face was purple, and there was an agonized prayer for delay in
+her eyes.
+
+"Will you come? Third--and la-ast--" Sissy prolonged the note
+quaveringly. It was not her intention to provoke her victim beyond
+endurance. These lessons, which gave her the whip-hand over the doughty
+and invincible Split, were far too precious to her.
+
+"And la-ast," she repeated inexorably.
+
+With a thud Irene dropped to the floor. Leaving all her
+light-heartedness behind in the dusk of the shed, where the trapeze
+still swung, she followed, a sullen captive; while Cecilia, gloating
+like the despot she was, led the way.
+
+"We'll begin with the piece," said Split, eagerly, seating herself
+before the piano.
+
+"No; scales and exercises first," declared Sissy, firmly. "Sit farther
+back, Split, and keep your wrist up."
+
+Split moved the stool a millionth of an inch. Why, oh, why had she
+quarreled with Professor Trask? If some one had only told her that her
+own rebellion would mean the substitution of Cecilia for herself as his
+pupil, and another opportunity for that apt young perfectionist to
+outrank her senior!
+
+With a rattling verve, and a dime on each wrist, which Professor Cecilia
+had placed there to effect a divorce between finger and arm movement,
+Irene attacked her scales and exercises. She loathed five-finger
+exercises. So did the talented but lazy Sissy, who knew well from
+experience what torture would most try her victim's soul. Split merely
+wanted to play well, to outplay Cecilia, to be independent of her and
+play her own accompaniments.
+
+"Lift your fingers, Split. You must raise your wrist," came in an easy
+tone of command. "Repeat that, please. Again. There goes the dime
+again! If you'd keep your wrist steady, it wouldn't fall off. No; you're
+playing altogether too fast. Slowly! slow-ly! Bad fingering! bad
+fingering! Wretched! Wait, I'll mark it for you."
+
+With her nicely pointed long pencil, Sissy, a martinet for technic,
+assumed all the airs of her own professor and prepared to explain the
+obvious.
+
+"No, you don't!" Irene's hand shot out from the keys to the sheet-music,
+scattering the dimes; her wide-spread fingers covered the spot Sissy
+contemplated adorning with prettily made figures.
+
+"Don't what?" asked Sissy.
+
+"Oh, Miss Innocence! Don't be so affected, that's what! Don't put on so
+many airs! Don't pretend you know it all, Sis Madigan!"
+
+"Why, Split! Do you s'pose I _want_ to put the fingering down?"
+
+"You do; but you sha'n't!" exclaimed Split, savagely.
+
+"All I want to do is to help you," said Sissy, with well-bred
+forbearance.
+
+"Well, don't show off, then."
+
+Split withdrew her hand, and the lesson proceeded.
+
+"I'll play your piece for you first, Split, to show you how it ought to
+go." Sissy rose, her calico rustling, to change the professorial chair
+for the stool of the demonstrator.
+
+But Split sat like a rock.
+
+"Professor Trask always does, Split."
+
+There was an abused note in Sissy's voice that deceived her sister. In
+the perennial game of "bluff" these two played, each was alert to detect
+a weakness in the other; and Irene thought she had found one now.
+Ignoring her professor, she placed "In Sweet Dreams" on the rack before
+her, and gaily and loudly, and very badly, began to play.
+
+Sissy rose majestically. Her correct ear was outraged, her small mouth
+was shut tight. Without a word she resigned her post and made for the
+door. She had quite reached it before Split capitulated.
+
+"Play it, then, you mean thing," she cried, flouncing off the stool, "if
+it's going to do you any good!"
+
+Sissy hardened. She had a way of becoming adamant on rare occasions that
+really struck terror to Split's facile soul, which resented a grudge
+promptly and as promptly forgot all about it.
+
+"I don't care to play it," said Sissy, loftily.
+
+"Well--I want you to--now."
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "'Play it, then, you mean thing,' she cried, ... 'if
+      it's going to do you any good!'"]
+
+"But I don't want to."
+
+"Ain't you going to give me my lesson, then?" demanded Split, hoarsely.
+"I thought you were so anxious to help me!"
+
+Sissy was mute. Hers was a strong position, she felt.
+
+"D' ye expect me to get down on my knees?" Irene's wrathful voice rose,
+and her unstable temper rocked threateningly. A Madigan would willingly
+have been flayed alive rather than apologize in so many words.
+
+"I don't expect anything at all," remarked Sissy, coldly.
+
+"Well, you'd better expect, for"--with a swift motion that cut off her
+sister's retreat and put her own back to the door--"you'll play that
+piece before you go out of this room."
+
+Without a word Sissy plumped down on the floor. Unconcernedly she pulled
+her jackstones out of her pocket, and soon their regular click-clock and
+the deft thump of her small, fat fist was all that was heard in the
+room.
+
+It always seemed to Split that the last occasion of a disagreement
+between herself and the sister nearest to her in years, and furthest
+from her in temperament, was the most intolerable. Never in her life,
+she thought, had she so longed to murder Sissy as at this minute.
+She--Split--had no time to waste besieging the impregnable fortress of
+Sissy's mulishness, when the hardening process had really set in. There
+never was time enough on Saturdays to do half what one planned, and
+to-day was the day of Crosby Pemberton's party, besides.
+
+And still Split remained at the door, and still Sissy played jackstones.
+Twice there were skirmishes between besieger and besieged--once when
+Split crept upon Sissy and, with a quick thrust of her slim, straight
+leg, disarranged an elaborate scheme for "putting horses in the stable,"
+and once when there was a strategic sortie from Sissy, which failed to
+catch the enemy napping.
+
+It was Split who finally yielded, as, with rage in her heart, she had
+known from the very beginning would be the case. But no Madigan ever
+laid down her arms and surrendered formally.
+
+Split threw open the door with a bang. "Go out, then, miss! go out!" she
+commanded.
+
+Calmly and skilfully Sissy finished the "devil on a stump," the last of
+those ornamental additions the complexities of which appeal to experts
+in the game; then she gathered up her beloved jackstones and got to her
+feet. But dignity forbade that she should leave the room just when her
+foe had ordered her to go. So she ignored the invitation, and going to
+the piano, sat down in an ostentatiously correct position, requiring
+many adjustments and readjustments, and began to play "The Gazelle."
+
+She played prettily, did this young person, who seemed to Split
+specially designed to infuriate her. And to-day she played "with
+expression," soft-pedaling and lingering upon certain passages in a way
+which the Madigans considered shameless.
+
+"Oh, the affected thing! Just listen to her! How she does put on!"
+sneered Split to the world at large.
+
+Sissy's lips opened, then closed tightly. She had almost answered, for
+no Madigan may be accused of sentimentality and live unavenged. Only a
+moment, though, was she at a loss. Then calmly, prettily, she glided
+into Split's own particular "piece." She knew this would draw blood. And
+it did.
+
+"You sha'n't play it now! You sha'n't!" Split cried, her ungovernable
+temper aroused. She dashed impetuously for the piano and tore the sheet
+of music from the rack.
+
+It was the thing for which she had suffered so many lessons; for which
+she had sat feeling like a mean-spirited imbecile with Sissy's
+impertinent finger under her wrist, while all outdoors was calling to
+her; for which she had forborne often and often during the week, only to
+be more thoroughly bullied on Saturdays. Yet she tore it across and
+recklessly trampled it underfoot. Then with her hands over her ears,
+lest she hear the imperturbable and maddeningly excellent Sissy play "In
+Sweet Dreams" without the notes, Split fled.
+
+Sissy played on till the very last bar; she had an idea that Split might
+be ambushed out in the hall. But when she got to the end and heard no
+sound from there, she decided that the enemy was indeed vanquished, and
+she rose to close the piano. As she did so she got a view of an
+elegantly stout and very upright lady coming up the front steps, with a
+fair, pale boy by her side.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "'Go and shake hands properly, like a little gentleman,'
+      bullied Mrs. Pemberton"]
+
+With an agility commendable in one so round, Sissy dropped beneath the
+piano, and, whipping off her apron, proceeded to wipe the dust from the
+back legs of the instrument with it. This done, she rammed the apron up
+between the wall and the piano, and was seated, breathless, but with a
+bit of very dirty white embroidery in her hands, when the lady entered.
+
+"Ah, Cecilia, busy as usual," she said in an important, throaty voice.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Pemberton," said Sissy, softly.
+
+"You see, Crosby, that even a child may make use of spare moments. Why
+don't you say how-d'-ye-do to Cecilia? Where're your manners?" demanded
+the lady.
+
+"Yes, 'm. How-do, Sissy?" asked the boy, uncomfortably. He was a very
+prim child, immaculately dressed, his smooth hair plastered neatly down
+over his forehead; and he sat bolt upright on the edge of his chair, for
+he knew well his mother's views about lounging.
+
+"Go and shake hands properly, like a little gentleman," bullied Mrs.
+Pemberton.
+
+With a sickly smile Crosby walked over to Sissy and grasped her hand. He
+let it go with an "Ouch!" that made Mrs. Pemberton turn majestically and
+glare at him.
+
+"I'm so sorry I stuck you, Crosby," said Sissy, softly, smoothing out
+her embroidery. "I forgot there was a needle in my work."
+
+Crosby looked at her; he knew just how sorry she was.
+
+"The thing to say, Crosby," thundered his mama, "is, 'Not at all, not at
+all, Cecilia!'"
+
+"Not at all--not at all, Cecilia," squeaked the boy, his thin voice like
+a faint echo of his mother's heavy contralto.
+
+Sissy yearned to beat him; she always did. That she did not invariably
+yield to her desire to express her resentment of so awfully mothered a
+person, was due solely to a sentiment of chivalry: he was so weak and so
+devoted to herself, and it took some courage to be devoted to Sissy.
+
+"I'm ashamed of my son!" thundered Mrs. Pemberton.
+
+Yes, Sissy knew that formula. She had heard the announcement first one
+memorable day at school when she led a revolt against the master--a
+revolt which only the girls of her clique were expected to indorse. But
+Crosby, either because he was so accustomed to playing with girls that
+he considered himself one of them, or because of that dogged devotion
+which even so stern a puritan as Sissy could not sufficiently
+discourage, had taken the cue from her lips. He, too, had failed
+publicly and vicariously, in the very presence of his lion-hearted,
+bull-voiced mother, and sat a white-faced criminal awaiting execution,
+when Mrs. Pemberton, rising in her voluminous black silk skirts, like an
+outraged and peppery hen, stood a moment speechless with wrath, and
+then broke forth with her denunciation before the whole school, visitors
+and all. "Mr. Garvan," she had exclaimed in a deep voice all a-tremble,
+"I am ashamed of my son!" and sailed majestically from the room.
+Crosby's action had really touched Sissy at the time, though, like the
+diplomat she was, she had promptly disowned it.
+
+But to-day Mrs. Pemberton's shame did not too much affect her offspring,
+who sat, not quite so upright now, squeezing the blood from the finger
+that Sissy's needle had pricked.
+
+"Let me look at your embroidery, Cecilia," said the lady, patronizingly.
+
+Sissy rose and brought it to her. Before Crosby she tried not to show
+it, but this little Madigan was really suffering in her perfect soul:
+she embroidered so badly, and knew it so well.
+
+"H'm!" Mrs. Pemberton drew off her glove. "Make your stitches even, and
+keep your work clean--like this--like this--see?"
+
+Sissy saw. Under the firm, big, white hand the strawberry leaves and
+blossoms sprang up and flourished. Mrs. Pemberton loved to embroider;
+her voice was almost gentle when she painted on linen with her needle,
+and then only did she forget to bully her boy.
+
+"Perhaps you will play for us, Cecilia, if I do a bit of your work for
+you?"
+
+Sissy knew it was coming. Mrs. Pemberton always asked her to play, and
+playing for company was pure show-off from a Madigan point of view.
+Split would hear and taunt her with it later, she knew. But though she
+scorned the servile and downtrodden Crosby, Sissy, no more than he,
+dared disobey that grenadier, his mother. She took her seat at the
+piano, opened a Beethoven that Mrs. Pemberton had given her the last
+Christmas, under the impression that she was fostering a taste for the
+classical, and, with a revengeful little hand that couldn't reach the
+octaves, she began to murder the "Funeral March."
+
+Just as the performer let her hands fall upon the last somber chord (her
+puritanical soul enjoying the double dissipation of pretending to
+herself while she afflicted others), she lifted her eyes to the mirror
+over the piano and saw Irene out in the hall. In the mirror their eyes
+met, and the mockery in Irene's was unmistakable as Sissy rose,
+agitated, caught in the very act of showing off, convicted of being
+affected.
+
+"Very pretty; very pretty, indeed!" said Mrs. Pemberton,
+absent-mindedly. "Now play another little waltz."
+
+"Aunt Anne says, Mrs. Pemberton," put in Irene, entering, "will you come
+to her room?"
+
+Mrs. Pemberton rose, her deft hands still calling forth the perfection
+of fruit from the stubborn linen soil upon which Sissy could make
+nothing grow, and sailed across the hall. Crosby immediately jumped from
+his chair.
+
+"I say, Sissy," he cried, "I know an awful swell way to cut paper-doll
+dresses."
+
+Sissy looked at him. For all her sins (and in a hidden corner of her
+heart that she rarely looked into, she knew herself for the hypocrite
+she was, despite all her self-righteous pretense) this girl-boy's
+devotion was her punishment. She did not envy Split her successes; in
+fact, she often disapproved the methods by which they were attained. Her
+pride would permit her neither to make such conquests, nor to enjoy them
+when they were made; but she cursed her fate that Crosby Pemberton had
+fallen to her share. For the love of a really bad boy Sissy felt she
+could have sacrificed much--for a fellow quite out of the pale, a bold,
+wicked pirate of a boy who would say "Darn," and even smoke a cigarette;
+a daredevil, whose people could do nothing with him; a fellow with a
+swagger and a droop to his eyelid and something deliciously sinister in
+his lean, firm jaw and saucy black eye--a boy like Jack Cody, for
+instance, for whom a whole world of short-skirted femininity divided
+itself naturally into two classes: just girls--and Split Madigan. But
+that a forthright, practical, severe person like herself should be made
+ridiculous by Crosby's worship, and that Split, her arch-enemy, should
+be there to hear her adorer make his sexless declaration, was too much!
+Even a Madigan could not bear up under it. When Sissy looked from "Miss
+Crosby" (as the very girls who played with him called him) to Split,
+there were tears of rage trembling in her eyes.
+
+But, with a generosity suspiciously unlike her, Split ignored the signal
+of distress. "What time this afternoon will the party begin, Crosby?"
+she asked.
+
+"Oh, two o'clock. But you'll come early, won't you--Sissy?"
+
+Sissy did not answer. She was waiting to see what Split's next move
+would be.
+
+"I don't know that I can go," said Split, gently. "I haven't any
+gloves--unless--won't you ask father for some, Sissy?"
+
+There was a prompt refusal upon Sissy's lips, but she did not utter it;
+the Pembertons' visit had given the enemy too much material with which
+to regale her fellow-Madigans at the dinner-table in the evening. Sissy
+looked questioningly into Split's eyes, and silently the bargain was
+struck: to so much refraining from ridicule in public on the part of
+one, a certain indebtedness which the other might discharge by facing
+Francis Madigan with a demand for money. It was hard, but Sissy shut her
+teeth and got to her feet.
+
+"Can I come with you, Sissy?" asked Crosby, following her to the door.
+"If you'll let me have your tissue-paper and the scissors, I'll show--"
+
+Sissy's hands flew to her breast. "I wish--I wish you'd never speak to
+me again!" she exclaimed, and Crosby dodged as though he were
+apprehensive that she might beat him.
+
+"It's so kind of you to go the very minute I ask," giggled Split,
+gleefully.
+
+But Sissy shut the door behind her on Crosby's woeful face and Split's
+radiantly happy one, and went to her fate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "Of the design and construction of which he was quite
+      vain"]
+
+Francis Madigan's room was his castle. It was his castle and his
+workshop and his boudoir, his kitchen, his library, and his pantry in
+one. The laxness of the family housekeeping had led him to distrust all
+hands and heads but his own. Everything that he wanted, or that he might
+want in the near future, he kept under his eyes, within reach of his
+hands, where none might borrow or lose or destroy. In order to provide
+for the needs which grew and changed daily, he fitted up rude shelf
+above shelf, till the corners of the room were transformed into rough
+bric-à-brac stands. Mr. Madigan had the unsuccessful man's pride in
+trifling successes in amateur carpentering, in husbandry of any sort
+unrelated to the real issues of his life; and every tool he needed for
+the exercise of his skill he kept under lock and key. He believed in, he
+trusted no Madigan. He had been known to lend his penknife to Sissy, but
+that was when she was ailing long ago. He laid in supplies as though he
+had inside information of a famine near at hand; and his pipes and his
+great cans of tobacco were piled up with his cards and his books on the
+table where he played solitaire all day and read half the night. The
+sweets he liked occasionally, and the day's provision of fruit (for he
+ate fruit only and at this time looked upon a vegetarian as a coarse
+creature who belonged to a dead era), were packed in a small home-made
+pantry of the design and construction of which he was quite vain. His
+bed swathed in sheets; his blankets sewed securely together, as though
+he feared they might escape; a device all his own of great wooden wedges
+raising the lower end of the mattress so that his feet were on a level
+with his pillowed head; the chest of little drawers which his daughters
+called "father's hobby," nailed high on the wall and filled with all
+sorts of odds and ends, the detritus and possible repair-material of
+years of housekeeping--all this Sissy took in with the unseeing eyes one
+has for the familiar.
+
+She did not expect her father's room to be like any one else's; neither
+did she look for an easy and successful termination to her quest.
+Sometimes she got what she asked for, but she asked for little. And
+to-day Francis Madigan had been tinkering at the old house, hammering
+here and patching there, a process that specially tried his temper,
+being a threatening indication of change, which he resented by declaring
+that "everything goes to the devil."
+
+"Father," began Sissy, carefully, as she met his inquiring eye, "do you
+approve of dancing?"
+
+He looked up from his cards. "What nonsense are you talking now?"
+
+"Because Irene and I have a good chance to practise it--dancing--this
+afternoon."
+
+"Well--practise," he growled.
+
+"Shall we? All right. It's Crosby's party, you know. He's thirteen
+to-day. It's his party. His mother's giving it for him at Cooper's Hall.
+And there'll be dancing and--"
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Yes," agreed Sissy, sweetly. "But we'll go if you say so. I won't need
+any dress, and--" she hurried on as he raised his head belligerently,
+"neither will Irene. Isn't that lucky? My brown will do, though the
+over-skirt does jump up when I dance and show the red sham underneath;
+but--"
+
+"What are you bothering me about, then?" he demanded indignantly,
+throwing down his cards.
+
+"Gloves," she said gently. Then quickly, before he could speak, "That's
+all. They don't cost very much. Or, I'll tell you,"--her voice grew
+suddenly most cheerful, as though she had made a discovery that must
+delight him,--"we can wear mitts. I don't mind--and neither will Split.
+Just a pair of blue lace ones for her and pink for me, or--or--" her
+voice wavered, but she was ready to pay the price, "just blue ones for
+Split, father."
+
+He put his hand in his pocket. "Why not just pink ones for Sissy?" he
+asked almost good-naturedly.
+
+Sissy shook her head, but the red rushed to her cheeks. She had won!
+
+"Are you sure you need them?" he asked cautiously in the very act of
+bestowal.
+
+"Sure! Sure!" she cried, throwing her arms gratefully about his neck
+before she danced to the door.
+
+"But you're going, too?" he called after her. "All right, then. Make
+Irene behave. She's an ox--that girl."
+
+An ox, of course, interpreted variously according to Madigan's mood and
+the correlating circumstances, signified this time an indiscreet,
+pleasure-mad child. Sissy understood, and she blushed for her sister. In
+fact, she was always blushing for her sister. She considered it to be
+her duty formally and officially to disavow her senior. So reprehensible
+did she feel Split's conduct to be that some one must blush for it; and
+as blushing was not Split's forte, Sissy did it for her.
+
+And she really did it very well, with an assumption of chagrin that
+could not fail to call attention subtly to the contrast between the
+sisters. When Split failed in her lessons with a completeness, a
+sensational ostentation that was shocking to Sissy, that Number 1
+scholar blushed gently, and, discreetly lowering her head, became
+absorbed in her work. After school, when Split was being kept in and
+disciplined (a process which never failed effectually to discipline the
+hardy individual who attempted it), when she wept and stormed and raged
+and threw caution to the winds as only tempestuous Split could, then was
+Sissy's attitude a marvel of disapproving rectitude. She had a great
+deal of dignity, had Sissy, and the picture of holiness that she
+presented as, with her books on her arm, she walked past the desk where
+the sobbing sinner's head lay with tumbled curls and bloated face, came
+as near as anything could to quench the passion of tears in which
+Split's tempers culminated. On such occasions the infuriated Split was
+wont, for just a moment, to conquer the half-hysterical sobs that
+threatened to choke her as well as inundate the world, and make a face
+at Saint Cecilia as she passed holily by. But Cecilia was a Madigan
+always, as well as a saint temporarily, and her eyes were turned
+prudently away just then, as though she were already studiously
+pondering to-morrow's lesson.
+
+But Sissy blushed her most perfect disapproval when she played chaperon
+to her elder sister. It was a position for which she felt herself
+peculiarly fitted, even without the semi-official commission she held--a
+position which so conscientious a person could not regard in the light
+of a sinecure.
+
+As she danced only the more sedate dances, because of that obtrusive
+tendency of the red sham to her skirt, Sissy was able to chaperon her
+senior all the more effectively at Crosby Pemberton's party. Irene
+danced like a thing whose vocation is motion. She was a twig in a
+rain-storm, a butterfly seeking sweets, a humming-bird whose wing beat
+the air with a very rhapsody of rhythm. She was on the floor with the
+first note Professor Trask struck, and she danced down the side of the
+little hall, when the waltz was over and all the other couples had
+seated themselves, as though the meter of the music had bewitched her
+feet and they might nevermore walk soberly.
+
+"Split--don't!" It was the shocked voice of her young chaperon.
+
+"Sissy--don't!" mocked the mutinous Split.
+
+Even after she took the seat beside Sissy, her heels were lifted and the
+toes of her slippers were beating time. She sat there chattering to a
+group of boys buzzing about her, upon whom her high spirits had the
+effect that dance-music had upon herself.
+
+"You're the prettiest girl I've seen since I left the city, Irene,"
+patronizingly whispered the boy lately from San Francisco, whose
+metropolitan elegances had dazzled the eyes of the mountain maidens.
+
+"I wonder how many girls Will Morrow's said that to this afternoon!"
+came like a sarcastic douche from Sissy, who conceived it to be a
+chaperon's duty to take the conceit out of citified chaps.
+
+Young Morrow turned to find a small woman in brown eying him
+disdainfully.
+
+"Well--well, I never said it to you, anyway," he retorted gallantly.
+
+"Good reason why. You knew I wouldn't believe you," Sissy declared,
+floundering in her anger.
+
+"Neither would anybody else."
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "The Belle of the Afternoon"]
+
+"Why? Because you said it? Didn't know you had such a reputation." Sissy
+was recovering. "Never mind, Split," she added, heavily sarcastic and
+assuming a comforting air that maddened Irene, who desired nothing more
+than to impress her new suitor with the elegant gentility of her manner,
+her family's, and all that was hers. "Just to have a boy from the city
+even pretend to think you're good-looking is worth living for. Boys know
+so much--in the city!" she concluded witheringly.
+
+Mr. Morrow from San Francisco looked bewildered. He had merely paid what
+he considered a very dashing compliment to one girl, when lo! the other
+overwhelmed him with her contempt. He turned for consolation to Irene.
+
+"I'll show you how they dance the two-step in the city," he said,
+holding out his hand as the music began again.
+
+But he had reckoned without that stern censor of sisterly manners,
+Cecilia Madigan; that loyal Comstocker who resented the implication of
+her town's inferiority, quite independent of the fact that the insult
+was not addressed to her but to one who, apparently, welcomed it.
+
+"I think I'll go home now, Split," she remarked carelessly, rising.
+
+A sudden blight fell upon the belle of the afternoon. When Sissy went,
+go she must, too; this was the sole rule of conduct Francis Madigan had
+devised for the guidance of his most headstrong daughter.
+
+"Oh, Sissy--not till after supper!" she pleaded piteously.
+
+"I--I've got some studying to do for the examination Monday," explained
+the exemplary member of Mr. Garvan's class and society at large.
+
+"Just wait till this one dance is over!" Coaxing was not Split Madigan's
+forte; she was accustomed to demand.
+
+But it was just that one dance that Sissy, the pure and patriotic, could
+not countenance.
+
+A quick flash of fury lighted Irene's eye. To be bossed publicly and
+before Mr. Will Morrow of San Francisco! In her heart she swore to be
+avenged; yet she dropped Mr. Morrow's hand and shook her head to all his
+pleadings, as she followed her ruthless tyrant across the floor to the
+little dressing-room.
+
+But as the sisters emerged from the dressing-room door, Crosby Pemberton
+and his cousin Fred stopped them.
+
+"You're not going home, Split?" begged Fred. "I've been looking
+everywhere for you. Oh, come and dance just this one with me!"
+
+"Sissy's going," said Split, the lilting of the music stirring her
+pulses and lifting her feet, despite the unmusical rage she was in, "and
+I've got to go, too."
+
+"Won't you stay--won't you wait just for this one, Sissy?" begged Fred.
+
+"Why--certainly," acquiesced the gentle Sissy.
+
+Split gasped with amazement. But she wasted no time, throwing off her
+jacket with a quick twist of her wrist. Later she might fathom the
+tortuosities of her tyrant's mind. All she knew now was that she might
+dance. With whom was a small matter to Split Madigan.
+
+Sissy watched her dance away, delight and malice in her eye. She was
+watching till Mr. Morrow from the city should behold her revenge. But
+Crosby did not know this, and he had plans of his own.
+
+"Come and play a game over in the corner, just till this dance's over,
+won't you, Sissy?"
+
+"What kind of a game?" she demanded, following him mechanically.
+
+"Oh, a new game. It's lots of fun. I'll show you."
+
+Sissy consented. She could play a game--and she knew she was clever at
+all games--without fear of betrayal from that red sham which she had
+been fiercely sitting upon half the afternoon.
+
+Before long, her emulative spirit got her so interested in this
+particular game that she forgot not only the sham skirt but the sham
+pretense upon which she had bullied Irene. And she played so well that
+there was only one forfeit against her name, though Crosby, who had
+named himself treasurer, held half the bangle bracelets and pins and
+handkerchiefs of the little circle as evidence of dereliction in others.
+
+He called her name first, as he stood with her little turquoise ring in
+his hand and an odd light in his eye that might have enlightened her;
+but she was looking toward the door, where the young gentleman from San
+Francisco, in a Byronic pose, was staring gloomily at Irene dancing with
+a rival, and so joying in the dance that she had forgotten all about
+him.
+
+    "Open your mouth and shut your eyes,
+    And I'll give you something to make you wise,"
+
+chanted Crosby, holding out the ring and beckoning to her.
+
+Closing her eyes upon the spectacle of Mr. Morrow's suffering, Sissy
+opened a mouth about which the malicious smile still lingered.
+
+Crosby hesitated a moment. He was very much afraid of her, but as she
+stood, docile and innocent, before him, with her eyes shut and her tiny
+red mouth open, he could not fancy consequences nearly so well as he
+could picture the thing his wish painted.
+
+In a moment he had realized it, and Sissy, overwhelmed by astonishment,
+dumb and impotent with the audacity of the unexpected, felt his arms
+close about her and his greedy lips upon hers.
+
+Oh, the rage and shame of the proper Sissy! Her mouth fell shut and her
+eyes flew open. And then, if she could, she would have closed them
+forever; for, before her in the sudden silence, towering above the
+triumphant and unrepentant Crosby, stood Mrs. Pemberton, a portentous
+figure of shocked matronly disapproval. And she promptly placed the
+blame where mothers of sons have placed it since the first similar
+impropriety was discovered.
+
+"Cecilia!" she cried in that velvety bass that echoed through the
+room--"Cecilia Madigan, you--teaching my son a vulgar kissing game--you,
+the good one! Oh, you deceitful little thing!"
+
+
+
+
+A MERRY, MERRY ZINGARA
+
+
+It had been Crosby Pemberton's custom to climb the steps that led to
+Madigan's every Wednesday afternoon at four, with his music neatly done
+up in a roll, on his way to play duets with Sissy.
+
+On the Wednesday that followed his birthday party--the mere mention of
+which, after the lapse of four days, was enough to send Sissy into
+hysterics--that young lady was seated in the parlor, ready for her
+guest. She was ready for him in all the senses a Madigan knew how to
+infuse into that frame of mind. She intended to make him as miserable as
+she herself had been ever since that disgraceful episode in which she
+had so innocently played the victim's part. She would show the betrayer
+of trust no mercy--none. She would accept no apology. She would trample
+upon his excuses and tear them limb from limb. She would show him her
+scorn and detestation and make him feel how everlastingly unforgivable
+his offense was; then she would send him forth forever from the house,
+and dare him to so much as speak to her at school.
+
+She pictured him going down the stairs for the last time, utterly
+wretched, broken, despised, condemned. And in order to make the picture
+more real, she glanced out of the window. Suddenly her hands flew in
+terror to her breast, and all her plans for vengeance were left hanging
+in mid-air; for it was not Crosby's trim little figure that was climbing
+the steps, but the stately solidity of Mrs. Pemberton herself.
+
+In her extremity, Sissy did not even stop to look at the back legs of
+the piano; she sped across the room and made a flying leap through the
+low west window. Mrs. Pemberton, glancing in through the open door as
+she rang the bell, got a glimpse of two plump disappearing legs, but
+when she and Miss Madigan entered, there was no trace of Sissy except
+her jackstones. They stumbled over these, lying scattered on the floor,
+where she had been sitting waiting for Crosby and concocting schemes of
+punishment.
+
+"I come to explain--" said Mrs. Pemberton, stiffly and a bit out of
+breath, seating herself with a rigidity of backbone that would have
+justified Sissy's bestowal upon her of the nickname Mrs. Ramrod, if she
+could have seen it. But Sissy, lying attentive beneath the open window,
+could not see; she could only hear. "I am here to tell you, Miss
+Madigan, why Crosby did not come to-day to play duets."
+
+"Dear me! didn't he come?" asked Miss Madigan, absently. "He isn't sick,
+is he? Irene complains of headache and backache, and she's so languid
+she let Sissy get the wish-bone--I call it the bone of contention--at
+dinner yesterday without a struggle. I'm half afraid she'll not be able
+to sing to-night at Professor Trask's concert; but perhaps it's only
+that she danced too much at Crosby's party. She al--"
+
+"It's about that--about the party that I wanted to speak to you,"
+interrupted Mrs. Pemberton, severely.
+
+"Yes? Such a lovely party, the girls say! I'm sure, Mrs. Pemberton, it's
+just--"
+
+"Did they tell you what--occurred?"
+
+Miss Madigan blinked reflectively. Her acquaintance with the stately and
+wealthy Mrs. Warren Pemberton was her most prized social connection.
+What could have occurred?
+
+"Why, of course, of course!" she laughed after a bit, pleasantly, still
+trying to remember what the girls had gossiped about. "Delightful,
+wasn't it?"
+
+Mrs. Pemberton lifted her plumed head with a slow and terrible
+solemnity. "De-lightful, Miss Madigan, de-lightful!"
+
+The smile vanished from Miss Madigan's face. "I hope, dear Mrs.
+Pemberton, that the girls did nothing that--that--They're such madcaps,
+and their father never will--"
+
+Miss Madigan's distress touched her august visitor. "I trust this," she
+said significantly, "will be a lesson to Mr. Madigan."
+
+"What--what will? If there's a lesson for Madigan, let him have it
+direct, Mrs. Pemberton."
+
+Lying flat on her stomach beneath the window, Sissy heard her father's
+voice come clanging harshly on the lighter-timbred dialogue. Cautiously
+she raised herself on her elbow and let a single eye peer through the
+curtain at the group within. There, with his paint-pot in his hand, his
+brush and his pipe in the other, his unique nightcap rakishly on one
+side and drawn over his white head to protect it from the paint, Madigan
+stood in his overalls and heavy shirt--his Michelangelo costume, Kate
+had called it. He had been regilding an old mirror in his room, and
+having some gilt left at the bottom of his can, he was going about the
+house in search of tarnished articles of virtue.
+
+"Oh, Francis!" exclaimed his sister.
+
+"Why, how do you do, Mr. Madigan?" said Mrs. Pemberton, bravely, putting
+out her hand. "I did not know you were within hearing."
+
+"Or you wouldn't have offered the lesson? Well, give it to me, now that
+I am here. No, I won't shake hands; mine are all sticky with gilt." He
+rested his elbow on his hip and stood at ease.
+
+A savage delight at this outrage upon gentility in Mrs. Ramrod's very
+presence possessed that red republican Sissy. She giggled within
+herself, Madigan's attitude, his streaked and gilded face, his confident
+voice, showed such delightful indifference to the effect his
+unconventional attire must have upon this Priestess of Form.
+
+"I must beg your pardon, Mr. Madigan," said that lady, in her most
+official tone, "for using the expression I did. The matter I wished to
+bring to Miss Madigan's attention--and to yours, now that you are
+here--concerns one of your daughters. I should have come to tell you of
+it before, as was my duty, as I would wish any mother to do for me were
+it my daughter; but I have been busy helping the Misses Bryne-Stivers
+and Professor Trask with this concert for to-night. This must be my
+apology for the delay. For speaking--for telling you what I have to
+tell, no mother could apologize."
+
+"H'm!" Madigan cleared his throat threateningly, and out in the
+sage-brush Sissy shook with apprehension. She knew that preliminary
+bugle-call to battle.
+
+"I assure you, my dear Mrs. Pemberton, we can have only the kindest
+feelings for any one who will take an interest in those motherless--"
+
+"Let Mrs. Pemberton go on, Anne," interrupted Madigan, harshly. "Just
+what is it, ma'am? Out with it."
+
+Mrs. Pemberton rose, rustling her heavy silks.
+
+"Merely, Mr. Madigan, that with my own eyes I saw your daughter take
+part in a vulgar kissing game--the only occurrence of any kind that
+marred the perfect propriety of my son's birthday party."
+
+There was a long silence inside. Sissy, without, her heart beating so
+loud that she was afraid it might drown all other sounds, heard, despite
+it, Aunt Anne's gasp of horror, the tinkle of the jet on Mrs.
+Pemberton's heavy gown, the squeaking of her father's paint-spotted
+slippers as he shifted his weight.
+
+Finally it came. "That ox!" exclaimed Madigan, in a rage.
+
+Mrs. Pemberton moved in majesty toward the door. "My son," she said
+slowly, "chivalrously tries to take the blame from her and insists that
+he proposed the game himself. But I know Crosby to be incapable of such
+a thing."
+
+"H'm! Yes. So do I," assented Madigan.
+
+Miss Madigan turned to her brother, and in a voice that suggested long
+years of martyrdom, said: "You will send her to the convent now,
+Francis? You positively must now. I really admire you for the way you
+have discharged a most unpleasant duty, Mrs. Pemberton. For years I've
+insisted that Irene must--"
+
+"Irene? Yes, if it had been Irene, one could expect it," remarked Mrs.
+Pemberton, funereally.
+
+"But it wasn't--it couldn't be--"
+
+"It was Cecilia." Mrs. Pemberton's grief-stricken tones conveyed all the
+disappointment she felt.
+
+Cecilia, on her quaking knees, now peering through the window, saw a
+quick change come over her father's dread countenance. It smoothed, it
+wrinkled, it twitched, and his shoulders began to shake silently.
+
+"No! Sissy?" he exclaimed, with an appreciative chuckle, which made that
+young perfectionist outside feel seasick, as though the hillside had
+swelled up beneath her. "And who was the boy, might I ask?"
+
+"It was"--Mrs. Pemberton paused to mark both her shocked surprise at Mr.
+Madigan's reception of the news, as well as the further enormity
+involved in its completion--"my son Crosby."
+
+"No! Ha! ha! ha!" Madigan's rare laugh rang out.
+
+Mechanically Sissy turned down her thumb to mark the number of times she
+had heard it, since Split and she had made a wager on it. Inwardly,
+though, she was nauseated by the thought that she was being laughed at.
+As nearly destitute as a Madigan could be of humor, she would so much
+rather have been flayed alive, she thought in the depths of her
+puritanical soul, than suffer ridicule.
+
+"Crosby--eh?" Madigan was recovering. "Congratulate him for me. I didn't
+know the little milksop had it in him. You ought to thank Sissy, ma'am,
+for proving that he is not really stuffed with sawdust. Where is she,
+anyway?"
+
+Lying flat, her blushing face buried in the sage-brush, was Sissy at
+that moment, while Mrs. Ramrod rustled out of the room, precisely as she
+had done the day Crosby failed in the public oral examination in
+geography, Miss Madigan hurrying placatingly after.
+
+But outside Sissy wept and would not be comforted. Her purist's pride
+was wounded; her prudish maiden's modesty was outraged--that her own
+father should believe it of her! And she must not open the subject or
+try to alter his opinion, for fear of the ridicule which seared her very
+soul!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A taste for the ethereally symbolic had not strongly manifested itself
+in Virginia City, yet under Professor Trask's direction "The Cantata of
+the Flowers" had been in active rehearsal for weeks. The professor
+relied upon the school-children for chorus material, and upon the
+Madigans to fill those lieutenancies without which the spectacular
+features of his production must be a failure--this last as a matter of
+course. For there were many Madigans, and those of them that were not
+leaders by instinct had developed leadership through force of
+environment, a natural desire to bully others being not the least
+important by-product of being bullied. Besides, the reputation they had
+of being talented the professor knew to be almost as efficacious in
+lending children self-confidence as talent itself.
+
+Kate, therefore, who could not sing a note, but who was grace embodied,
+led a chorus of Poppies, whose red tissue-paper garments creaked and
+rustled as they swayed, waving their star-tipped wands and chanting
+"Breathe we now our charmed fragrance."
+
+Florence and Bessie, whom the curse of being twins linked like
+galley-slaves, were Heather-bells in a childish chorus which piped forth
+the information "We are the Heather-bells: list to our song," but which
+was almost ruined by their common desire to get away from each other and
+lead in two different directions.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "She was pronounced a 'regular little love' by the Misses
+      Bryne-Stivers"]
+
+Quite self-possessed (even if she was very much off key), Sissy, who was
+the best "speaker" in her class, warbled her part of a sanctimonious
+little duet in which Heliotrope and Mignonette voiced the sentiment--
+
+    "'Tis not in beauty alone we may find
+    Purity, goodness, and wisdom combined"
+
+Even small Frances, most self-conscious of Madigans, in a costume so
+inadequate that Bep's doll would have been scandalized at the idea of
+wearing it, posed and attitudinized as a Dewdrop. She was pronounced a
+"regular little love" by the Misses Bryne-Stivers, whom the Madigans had
+nicknamed the Misses Blind-Staggers--a resentful play upon their
+hyphenated name, as well as a delicate reference to their blue goggles
+that might have served as blinkers.
+
+For Irene, though, as the unquestioned possessor of a voice, a solo had
+been interpolated. She was to repeat, for the first time on the
+professional stage, that renowned success in "The Zingara" which school
+exhibitions had made famous.
+
+Just before the time came for Split to sing, Sissy was hovering about
+the prima donna in the dressing-room. As Miss Heliotrope she wore the
+dark-purple gown which Aunt Anne had made over from her own wardrobe.
+(Being Comstock-born, Sissy knew no flower intimately, and could easily
+be imposed upon as to their habits and colors.) Above it her round
+little dark face looked almost sallow, in spite of the excited red that
+flamed in her cheeks.
+
+The atmosphere of a theater was like wine to the Madigans. The smell of
+escaping gas in the dark was, in itself, enough to transport them by
+association of ideas out of the workaday world; and emotion due to a
+dramatic situation was the one evidence of sensibility they permitted
+themselves.
+
+Yet Sissy, who was tying the ribbons on Split's tambourine, looked in
+vain for a reflection of that fever of delight which possessed herself.
+Split was cross. She was languid. She was dull. She did not seem to
+enjoy even the pair of slippers she was pulling on. They had been given
+to Sissy by Henrietta Blind-Staggers, and their newness and beauty had
+tempted the poor Zingara. But if Sissy had not felt that the family
+fortunes were at stake, as she always did in the matter of a public
+appearance, she would never have made so generous an offer of her
+cherished property.
+
+"But they seem awful tight, Split," she suggested.
+
+"They're nothing of the sort," snapped Split, wincing as she rose to her
+feet.
+
+"I don't see how you're going to dance in them."
+
+"Will you just leave that to me, Miss Cecilia Morgan Madigan, and mind
+your own business?"
+
+   [Illustration:
+     "'I don't see how you're going to dance in them'"]
+
+Deeply offended, Sissy withdrew. No one called her Cecilia Morgan
+Madigan who did not want to wound her to the soul and remind her of an
+incident it were more generous to forget. She went out to the wings and
+stood there looking upon the stage and Professor Trask, who, as the
+Recluse, was gowned in mysterious flowing black, while he chanted "Here
+would I rest" in a hollow bass. But Sissy was worried. Not even being
+behind the scenes could still her apprehensions about Split. She longed
+to confide in some fellow-Madigan, but Kate was on the other side of the
+stage, and to all her winks and beckonings turned an uninterested back.
+Then, all at once, sooner than she expected, the Recluse departed, the
+scenes shifted; there, alone on the stage, looking white in the glare of
+the footlights, was a bedizened, big-eyed, panting little Zingara, and
+the syncopated prelude began.
+
+Sissy's fingers thrummed it sympathetically upon her knee, but Trask,
+who was playing the accompaniment behind the scenes, had put an
+unfamiliar accent upon the notes. Out on the stage the Zingara was
+beating her tambourine sadly out of time and was longing, with a panicky
+fear, for the familiar touch of Sissy's hand upon the piano.
+
+"Dum--dum-de-dum-dum--dum-dum--dum-dum!"
+
+The notes came like a warning signal. The Zingara's throat was parched,
+her feet ached excruciatingly merely from carrying her weight--how, oh,
+how was she going to dance?
+
+"Dum--dum-de-dum-dum--dum-dum--dum-dum!"
+
+The last note prolonged itself into a summons. The Zingara's eye,
+turning from the faces that danced before her, sent appealing glances to
+the wings, where Sissy yearned toward her, all rivalry drowned in a
+mothering anxiety for her success.
+
+"'I'm a--mer-ry, meh-hi-ri-y--Zin-ga-ra!'" wailed Split, trying to get
+her breath. "'From a--gold-e-en--clime I come!'"
+
+Sissy's hands flew to her breast, then with a wild gesture up over her
+ears, and she fled back to the dressing-room. Split the redoubtable,
+Split the invincible, the impudent, ready, pugnacious Split had
+stage-fright! The world rocked beneath Sissy's feet. Time stopped, and
+all the world stood agape witnessing a Madigan's failure! It seemed to
+the third of them that she could never bear to lift her head again and
+meet a Comstocker's eye and see there that shameful record against the
+family. But she scrambled quickly to her feet when Irene came running
+in, "The Zingara" all unsung.
+
+Irene's face was white and her eyes glittered. Sissy did not dare meet
+them, for, to a Madigan, to put a shame in words or looks was to double
+and triple it. She did not dare to condole; she had no heart to accuse.
+So she bent down again, ostensibly to tie her shoe, in order to give the
+furious little Zingara time to recover and to begin to undress. She
+heard the tambourine's tingling clatter as it was cast to the floor. She
+looked anywhere but at her sister, but she heard buttons give and
+buttonholes rend, and bowed her head to the storm.
+
+"I must say," she remarked in a scornfully careless tone when the
+silence became oppressive, "that Trask plays funny accompaniments." And
+she lifted her head, fancying herself rather clever in finding a
+scapegoat.
+
+She ducked immediately, but not in time. One of her own slippers,--oh,
+the irony of things!--torn off and thrown by Split's impatient hand,
+struck her in the face.
+
+Sissy's cheek flamed. "Did you do that on purpose, Split Madigan?"
+
+Split Madigan had not done it on purpose, for the reason mainly that it
+had not occurred to her. But now that it was done, it was not in her
+present fury against all the world to disclaim intention to insult so
+small a part of it. Glad of an excuse to outrage some one, any
+one,--and, even then, preferably Sissy,--to make her sister share some
+of that hurt and sting and smart that burned within herself, she met
+Sissy's eye maliciously, triumphantly, significantly.
+
+Sissy gasped. She took the slipper in her hand and made for her enemy.
+She intended, she believed, to ram her own best Sunday slipper down
+Split Madigan's throat! And she got quite close before she could have
+been made to believe that anything on earth or anywhere else could alter
+her intention. But a little thing did; merely the sound of voices
+outside the door and a swift, piteous change of expression in that
+defiant face opposite.
+
+Sissy dropped the slipper and flew to the door. She had a glimpse--which
+she pretended not to have seen--of the Merry Zingara crumbling in a
+passion of regretful sobs to the floor. Then she was standing outside,
+her back to the closed door, a determined, fat little Horatius in
+purple, with two red cheeks,--one, indeed, redder than the other where
+the slipper had struck,--vowing to hold the bridge against all comers,
+so that Split might mourn in peace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "'But is she _very_ sick?'"]
+
+"But is she _very_ sick?" came the eager question.
+
+"Well--pretty sick," said the doctor, gravely.
+
+"Not very?" Sissy's voice fell disappointedly. She opened the door for
+him and stood at the head of the steps as he prepared cautiously to
+descend.
+
+"You don't want your sister to be dangerously ill, do you?" Dr.
+Murchison demanded sharply, turning upon her.
+
+"N-no," said Sissy.
+
+"Well, see that you don't squabble with her. Your aunt ought to have
+sent for me five days ago, instead of which she lets a sick, nervous,
+half-crazy child dance and sing on the stage. All poppycock!"
+
+"Can I help you down the first step, doctor?" asked Sissy, gratefully.
+
+She was so thankful for his words. No one--not even a Madigan,
+accustomed to be held strictly accountable--could be to blame for a
+failure if she had been ill at the time. The family was almost
+rehabilitated, it seemed to Sissy.
+
+The doctor's dim old eyes looked curiously at her. "I believe you've got
+some deviltry in your head, Sissy. Now, you mind me and let your sister
+alone. There! I'm all right now. I can go all right the rest of the way
+when I'm once started down your infernal stairs. I ought to charge your
+father double rates for risking my old bones on them. Yes, it's all
+right now. It's only the first step that bothers me. It's always the
+first step that costs--eh, Sissy?"
+
+She looked blankly up at him.
+
+He bent down and patted her head. "See here," he said, "I'll bet you've
+got more sense than you want us to believe."
+
+Sissy blushed. It was a tardy tribute, she felt, but as welcome as it
+was deserved.
+
+"With a lot of common sense and a physique like yours, you ought to make
+a good nurse. Take care of your sister," he added almost appealingly,
+divided between his knowledge of how poor a nurse Miss Madigan was and
+how impossible it was to tell this to her niece. "She'll be cross and
+irritable and--even worse than usual," he said, with a grim smile that
+recognized the battle-ground upon which the Madigans spent their lives;
+and this recognition made him seem more human to them than any other
+adult. "But you just treat her like a teething baby. She's got a hard
+row to hoe, that poor, bad Split. She must sleep, and you understand
+her--Lord! Lord! the care these queer little devils need!" he muttered,
+shaking his shoulders as he went on down the steps, as though physically
+to throw off responsibility.
+
+Sissy turned and went back into the house. It was a queer house, she
+thought. To her alert impressibility, the sickness and apprehension it
+inclosed were something tangible. She could taste the odors of the
+sick-room. She could feel the weight of the odd stillness that filled
+it. The sharpness of sound when it did come, the strangeness of
+suppressed excitement, the unfamiliar place with Split's quick figure
+missing, the loneliness of being without her, the boredom of lacking a
+playmate or a fighting-mate--it all affected Sissy as the prelude of a
+drama the end of which has something terrifyingly fascinating in it. It
+must be wonderful to die, thought Sissy, with a swift, satisfying vision
+of pretty young death--herself in white and the mysterious glamour of
+the silent sleep. Poor Sissy, who had never been ill!
+
+Split, with shorn head and with wide-open eyes and hard, flushed
+cheeks, lay tossing on the big bed in the room off the parlor, which had
+seldom been used since Frances was born there. "Mother's bed" the
+Madigans always called it, and they crept into it when ailing, as though
+it still held something of the old curative magic for childish aches,
+though all but Kate had forgotten the mother's face as it was before she
+lay down there the last time. Split had a big hot silver dollar in one
+hand,--Francis Madigan's way of recognizing and sympathizing with a
+child's illness,--and in the other an undivided orange, evidence enough
+of an extraordinary occasion in the Madigan household. But she was not
+waking. She was not sleeping. She was not dreaming. She knew that Sissy
+had come in and had squatted on the floor with Bep and Fom, playing
+dolls, probably. Yet she felt that numb, gradual, terrifying enlargement
+of her fingertips, of her limbs, of her tongue, her body, her head, that
+she had been told again and again was mere fancy. With a self-control
+that was unlike her, an unnatural product of her unnatural state, she
+locked her jaws together that she might not scream this once. And in the
+eery stillness that followed the effort, which had made her ears buzz
+and her temples throb, she heard quite sanely Florence's denial of some
+charge her twin had brought against her.
+
+"I didn't do any such thing," she whispered.
+
+"You did," said Bep.
+
+"I didn't."
+
+"Cross your heart to die?"
+
+The scream burst from Irene then--not the cry of delirium, but a sharp,
+terrified, if inarticulate, call for help. If there was one thing Split
+did respect, it was that Reaper whose name she could never hear without
+a quick indrawn breath. Yet--in her heart--she knew that, though others
+might fall at the touch of that fearful scythe, she, Split Madigan, as
+fleet of limb as a coyote and as sound of heart as a young pine-cone,
+could never, never die; that the world could never be when her quick red
+blood should be quiet and her mountain-bred lungs should be stilled.
+
+With a bound Sissy pushed the twins out of the door. She was at the
+bedside when Miss Madigan entered.
+
+"Go outside, Sissy!" she commanded. "Can't you see you're exciting her?
+Isn't it hard enough for me to take care of her when she's so cross?
+She's not to be excited. She's to be kept quiet. There, there,
+Irene--it's only fancy, I tell you! Look at your fingers; they're
+thinner, littler than they ever were. Look at Sissy's; see how much
+bigger they are."
+
+Irene lifted her fingers that had caught Sissy's. She looked from her
+own fevered hand to Sissy's dimpled one and was comforted. But her hold
+on her old enemy did not relax. She had something tangible now to
+reassure her; something that spoke to her in her own language. Her eyes
+closed, her tense little hand dropped wearily, but she held Sissy fast.
+
+When she thought her patient was asleep, Miss Madigan tried to open her
+fingers, but, with something of her old waywardness, Irene resisted. And
+Sissy, with an old-fashioned nod of advice, motioned her aunt to let
+things be. She curled herself up on a corner of the bed, and--it being
+quite safe, no other Madigan being present but this unnatural one lying
+prone, half conscious, half dazed--she put her other hand over the one
+that held hers, and sat there quietly waiting.
+
+The minutes came to seem like hours, but Sissy sat motionless and Miss
+Madigan left the room. Presently an eery humming came from Split's lips.
+Then, mechanically, Sissy's fingers picked out on the spread the simple
+little melody Split sang as in a dream.
+
+"Play it," the sick girl whispered, pushing away the hand she had held.
+
+Sissy jumped as though she had been discovered indulging in gross and
+inexcusable sentimentality. She looked down at Split with a puzzled,
+sheepish smile, wondering how long it had been since her sister had come
+into the real world out of that fantastic one where marvelous things
+might happen.
+
+"Play it!" repeated Split, fretfully.
+
+Sissy rose and walked softly into the front room. She fancied if she
+took a long time, yet appeared about to obey, Split would forget her
+desire and, left alone in the silence, would fall asleep. She opened the
+piano softly and pulled out the stool. Then leisurely she pretended to
+arrange the light and the piano-cover.
+
+Split, quieted by her apparent compliance, lay back with a sigh of
+content. Her mind, whose very apprehension of the delirium had excluded
+other thoughts, dwelt now restfully upon the combination of easy mental
+effort and soothing melody her "piece" meant to her. Besides, she was
+ordering her junior about, using her illness as a club to beat down
+remonstrance. Split was really on the way to being herself again.
+
+After a bit she found that she was almost dozing off, and waked with an
+indignant start to see Sissy stealing softly out of the room.
+
+"Where are you going?" she demanded. "Why don't you play it when I tell
+you to?"
+
+For an instant Sissy rebelled. Then she looked at the passionate little
+figure sitting tensely upright, at the white fever-circle about the dry
+lips, at the short hair and the unnaturally bright, angry eyes. She went
+back to the piano, sat down, and with her foot on the soft pedal, that
+Aunt Anne might not hear, she began to play.
+
+The melody was simple and light, with a little break in its sweetness.
+Sissy's touch was childlike, but her impressionable temperament,
+quickened by the strangeness of that dark room behind her, overflowed
+into the melody her fingers brought out. The accompanying bass was
+rhythmic, and the nervous, fevered child found mental and physical
+occupation in letting the fingers of her left hand pick out its detail
+upon the pillow which she had lately thrown in a passion against the
+wall because it had been so hot and she so miserably uncomfortable.
+
+Sissy had begun the second part, the changing bass of which had been
+poor Split's _pons asinorum_. It was the part to which Sissy had always
+given a dramatic touch--partly because, it being simpler music than she
+was accustomed to, she could safely do so, and partly because it
+irritated Irene, to whom the most forthright interpretation was
+difficult. Her foot slipped now, through force of habit, upon the hard
+pedal, and in a moment she heard the whirring of Aunt Anne's skirts.
+
+"Sissy, are you crazy, you--" she heard behind her, and then there came
+a sudden, an unaccountable stop.
+
+Sissy turned. Behind and above Miss Madigan towered tall old Dr.
+Murchison. He had come back, as usual, up the long flight of steps, for
+his forgotten spectacles. One of his hands was clapped with good-humored
+firmness over the lady's mouth; the other was pointing to Split,
+sleeping like a Madigan again, while over Aunt Anne's head the doctor
+nodded and bobbed encouragingly to Sissy, like a benignant musical
+conductor deprived of the use of his arms.
+
+Sissy turned again to the piano. It was a beautiful opportunity for her
+to affect disgust with the situation; to register a silent, but
+expressive, exception to being compelled to entertain Irene; and to
+pose, not only before her aunt but before the doctor, too, as a very
+important personage, whose services were in urgent demand, and who
+yielded under protest. But as a matter of fact she was too happy. There
+was no misconceiving the light that illumined the doctor's round, rosy
+face. Something her undisciplined, childish imagination had been
+coquetting with, as an untried experience, though never admitting its
+full, dread significance, was carried out of her horizon by the shining
+look of success in old Murchison's face; something that shook her strong
+little body with a long shiver, as she realized, in the second when she
+could almost feel the lift of its dark wings taking flight, the thing
+that might have been.
+
+So Sissy played "In Sweet Dreams" "with expression."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later she played it, and over and over again, with the salt tears
+trickling down her nose and splashing on the keys; played it with tired,
+fat fingers and a rebellious, burning heart. But this was during Split's
+convalescence--a reign of terror for the whole household; for to the
+natural taste she possessed for bullying, Split Madigan then added the
+whims and caprices of the invalid, who uses her weaknesses as a cat of a
+hundred tails with which to scourge her victims into compliance.
+
+She was loath to get well, this tyrannical, hot-tempered, short-haired
+Zingara, who led her people such a merry dance, and she left the
+self-indulgent land of convalescence and the bed in the big back room
+with regret.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHUT-UPS
+
+
+It was an early-morning rite practised by the twins, its performance
+hidden from everybody but each other, to see whether Dr. Murchison's
+prophecy had come true.
+
+"There were once two little girls--twins," began the old doctor,
+significantly, the day Bep and Fom were vaccinated, after battling
+desperately against precedence, in the doctor's very office. "Now all
+twins love each other dearly."
+
+The twins looked at him pityingly. To be so old and so ignorant!
+
+"Yes, they do," he insisted. "Everybody knows they're fonder of each
+other than the closest sisters."
+
+Bep glanced at Fom and Fom looked at Bep; there was something almost
+Chinese in the irony of their eyes; they knew just how fond of each
+other sisters can be! But they politely suppressed their incredulous
+grins.
+
+"Well," resumed the old doctor, realizing how lacking in conviction his
+comparison might seem to a Madigan, "well, these twins were the
+exception: they did not love each other."
+
+There was an interested movement from Bep.
+
+"They hated each other."
+
+Fom looked up eagerly; there was something human about such a tale. She
+felt her respect for Dr. Murchison reviving.
+
+"They fought from morning till night. There was never a moment's peace
+when the two were together. Each was so jealous of the other that she
+would rather do without, herself, than share with her twin. It was
+disgraceful."
+
+The twins leaned forward, charmed.
+
+The doctor looked over his spectacles at them; there was no mistaking
+the effect he had produced. "Everybody warned them that unless they
+stopped squabbling, something dreadful would happen to them. But they
+never believed it till one day--"
+
+The twins held their breath. Dr. Murchison went to the library and took
+out a book. He knew the value of a dramatic pause.
+
+"--till one day they waked up in the morning and found that they
+were--stuck--fast--together--for life! Everything the dark one had she
+just had to share with her twin. And everywhere she went her lazy blonde
+sister had to go, too. People made up a terrible name for them. They
+called them"--he lowered his voice to the apologetic tone one has for
+not quite proper subjects--"the 'Siamese Twins,' and--if you don't
+believe me, here's their picture!" With a quick movement he opened the
+book before them.
+
+The twins' faces went gray; in that second they even looked alike, so
+tense were both with the same emotion. Instinctively they made a swift
+motion, a dumb prayer for sympathy, toward each other; then as swiftly
+shuddered apart as though temporary contact might become lifelong
+bondage.
+
+But as the months went by and they remained mercifully unattached
+(though battling still in their double capacity of Madigans and twins),
+they almost outgrew their credulity; yet still, on occasions, observed
+the morning ceremony of self-inspection.
+
+In fact, though, nothing held them in peace together except sleep, when
+nature must have reunited them in dreams; for, no matter in what
+positions they were relatively when they closed their eyes, morning
+found their arms about each other, their breath intermingled, their
+little bodies intercurved like well-packed sardines.
+
+On their birthday morning--the twins were born on Christmas--Fom waked
+very early, alarmed to find Bep's arm about her. She never remembered in
+the morning that at night her last hazy thought had been to reach for
+it, pull down the sleeve of its nightgown, and cuddle close to her twin.
+She threw it from her now with unusual violence, and, sitting up in bed,
+slipped off her gown that she might closely examine her right side--the
+side that had been nearest Bep.
+
+The blonde twin woke while this process was going on, and its dread
+significance shook the haze of slumber from her eyes. She, too, slipped
+her gown from her shoulders and, shivering with the cold, passed an
+apprehensive hand along her left ribs.
+
+"Do you?" she whispered.
+
+"N-no. I don't think so. I--I dreamed that it was there, though. Do
+you?"
+
+An assenting shudder shook Bep's body.
+
+"Where--oh, where? I don't believe it!" cried Fom. "You're just a
+'fraid-cat trying to frighten me."
+
+Bep pointed to her side. There it was unmistakably--a round
+black-and-blue mark.
+
+A wail escaped Florence. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she cried, "what in the
+world shall we do?"
+
+Bep did not answer. She sat stupefied, staring at the evidence of
+calamity.
+
+"If it's commenced on you, it's bound to commence on me before long. I
+wonder--how fast it grows?"
+
+Bep shook her head. "It wasn't there when I went to sleep."
+
+"If it grows on you toward me, and on me toward you that quick, why, in
+a week--we'll be--stuck fast--won't we?"
+
+Bep nodded miserably.
+
+"Some morning," mourned Fom, wriggling unhappily, "we'll wake and it'll
+be all done. You'll just have to study hard, Bessie Madigan, and be in
+my class in school; I won't go back into the mixed primary--I just
+won't! Oh, Bep, why will you put your arm around me at night?"
+
+"I don't. I always go to sleep with my back to you. You know I do. And
+in the morning, the first thing I know you're flinging my arm off. I
+believe you pull my arm over you yourself. I believe you want to get
+stuck together and be Chemise Twins!" Bep scolded tearfully, with her
+usual ill luck with unfamiliar words.
+
+There was a sorrow-smitten pause.
+
+"I say, Beppy," the termination was a sign of sudden good humor in Fom,
+"didn't you tumble down yesterday when you and Bombey Forrest were
+driving the Grayson kids round the block in your relay race?"
+
+The light of hope leaped up in Bessie's eyes. "Could it be that?"
+
+"Of course it could; it is, you silly!"
+
+"I'm not a silly. You were scared yourself," retorted the blonde twin,
+relieved but pugnacious.
+
+"Pooh! I only pretended, to frighten you," jeered Fom.
+
+"Not much you didn't. I ain't anybody's dope."
+
+"Anybody's what?"
+
+"Anybody's dope," answered Bep, uncertainly; she knew how little words
+were to be trusted.
+
+"What's 'dope'?" demanded Florence.
+
+"Why--what Kate said yesterday."
+
+An enjoying giggle came from Sissy's bed. She had waked. "_Dupe_, you
+goosy--_dupe_!" she chuckled.
+
+"Yah! Yah!" sneered Fom, happy in her twin's discomfiture.
+
+Bep blushed with mortification. "Don't you trophy over me, Fom
+Madigan!" she cried wrathfully.
+
+Sissy's giggle became a shout of laughter, and straightway she sallied
+forth, benightgowned as she was, to carry the news of Bep's latest to
+the Madigans--while Bep, aware that she had Partingtoned again, without
+knowing just how, cried furiously after her: "I didn't say it! I
+didn't!"
+
+Bep's talent was dear to the Madigans. They seized upon each blunder she
+made, and held it up, shrinking and bare, under the light of their
+laughter-loving eyes. They ridiculed it interminably, and were
+unflaggingly entertained by it, repeating it for the edification of each
+new-comer so often and so faithfully that from conscious mimicry they
+turned to use of it without quotation-marks, till, insensibly, at last
+it was received into their vocabulary--which fact, by the way, made the
+Madigan dialect at times difficult for strangers to master.
+
+For instance, the rare rainy days in Nevada were always "glummy" among
+Madigans, because the blonde twin had once been so affected by their
+gloom that she spelled it that way. An over-credulous person was a
+"sucher" since the day she had written it so. Jack Cody lived in the
+"vikinty" of their house, because Bep Partington had so decreed. "Don't
+greed" had become a classic since the day Aunt Anne issued her infamous
+ukase, compelling that twin who (wilfully speculating upon her sister's
+envy) kept goodies to the last to divide said last precious morsel with
+the gloating other. And the Madigan who (taking base advantage of the
+fact that Bep was at an age when to bite into a hard red winter apple
+was to leave a shaky tooth behind) obligingly took the first bite, but
+made that bite include nearly half the apple--that rapacious betrayer of
+confiding helplessness deserved to be called a harpy. But she wasn't;
+she was known as "a regular harper!"
+
+The Madigans trooped back into the twins' room in a body to "trophy"
+over Bep, whose double misfortune it was not only to be a Partington,
+but to strenuously deny her kinship with the family of that name. Bessie
+Madigan could not be got to admit that she had ever misused a word. And
+though the expressions she coined became part of Madigan history, though
+each piece was stamped undeniably by poor Bep her awkward mark, she
+never ceased insisting that they were counterfeit, issued for the
+express purpose of discrediting her well-known familiarity with elegant
+English.
+
+Yet she it was who had first miscalled her shadow a "shabby"; who had
+asked to be "merinded to merember," like her absent-minded Aunt Anne;
+and who had unconsciously parodied Split's passionate rendering of a
+line of the old song, "I feel his presence near" into "I feel his
+pleasant sneer"!
+
+It was rarely that the Madigans could keep peace among themselves long
+enough to make an onslaught in a body. But when they did, the lone
+victim of their attack knew better than to struggle against her fate.
+Poor Bep, her protests borne down, all her old sins of diction raked up
+and, joined to the new ones, marshaled against her, became sulky. She
+turned her back upon the enemy and retreated to a corner to find out
+what Santa Claus and her own particular patron saint had to offer for
+the double celebration.
+
+There was a dictionary from Kate--an added insult. But, to compensate,
+there was a whole orange from Aunt Anne, a bag of Chinese nuts from
+Wong, and from Split and Sissy (a separate donation from each) an
+undivided half-interest in the white kitten known as Spitfire.
+
+When she had summed up the gifts of the gods to herself, Bep's eyes
+turned quickly to Fom's pile.
+
+There was an assortment of hair-ribbons, more or less the worse for
+wear, from Kate, whose braids were coiled around her head these days.
+(Bep didn't envy her twin these, for the excellent reason that a
+back-comb was all that was necessary to keep her short blonde hair in
+order.) Then there was, from Sissy, a pen-wiper, whose cruelly twisted
+shape was a reflection of that needlewoman's agonies in its composition;
+upon it were embroidered figures and colors of things never seen on sea
+or land. (Fom might have that.) From Split--but Bep knew, of course,
+what there was from Split. Every year regularly, since the second of the
+Madigans had put away childish things, she had bestowed upon her
+faithful retainer her favorite doll Dora,--the large one, with waxen
+head and dark-brown tresses,--only to take it back at the first symptom
+of revolt, for a caprice, or merely to feel her power. She was an Indian
+giver, was Split. (Fom might have Dora, Bep said to herself, as long as
+she could keep her.)
+
+But then Fom, too, had a large, fair, yellow orange and a bag of strange
+candies from Chinatown. As to these ...
+
+The twins must be pardoned, but circumstances had soured them. They had
+been cheated out of either a birthday or a Christmas--they had not
+decided which was the crueler wrong, so had not yet adopted and
+proclaimed their grievance. Besides this sorrow, each, by an interfering
+and unprovoked intrusion, had defrauded the other of the child's
+inalienable right to the center of the stage at least once a year. And
+when one remembers how crowded was the Madigan stage with jealous
+performers, any actor at all desirous of an opportunity must sympathize
+with them.
+
+It was not etiquette for the twins to remember each other's birthday
+with a gift, one reason being that they were incapable of such a piece
+of hypocrisy. Another was that it would have seemed too like the rigid
+reciprocity of the Misses Blind-Staggers, whom it had been their custom
+to parody since the day they had been invited down to the cottage to see
+those ladies' strictly mutual Christmas presents. They played "From
+Maude to Etta" and "From Etta to Maude," as they called it; Fom handing
+to Bep, with great ceremony, a shoe, a stocking, or any other thing
+traveling in pairs, with the legend "From Maude to Etta," and receiving
+in return the mate of said shoe or stocking, "From Etta to Maude."
+
+As for Francis Madigan, his daughters appreciated the fact that a girl's
+birthday could be looked upon only as a day of wrath and mourning; it
+came to be considered delicate, therefore, to mention the matter in his
+presence. Christmas, of course, was "nonsense"--a blanket term of
+disapproval behind which no one peered for reasons for its application.
+
+On Miss Madigan anniversaries acted as a stimulant to an already
+sufficiently fecund pen. They awakened in her that sense of
+responsibility for her nieces' future, which nothing but an
+exceptionally heartrending letter of appeal for financial assistance for
+them could put comfortably to sleep again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out in the woodshed a disemboweled chest of drawers had been turned into
+an apartment-house for dolls. All the dolls that had dwelt in the
+Madigan family since Kate's babyhood (with the exception of Split's
+Dora, whom Fom, according to the preordained penchant of mothers, loved
+best because for her sake she suffered most) had descended to the twins.
+
+On the top floor Mrs. Guy St. Gerald Clair lived with her husband and an
+only daughter. Mrs. Clair was an elegant matron, quite new, a small
+blonde who could turn her head. Florence's skilful fingers kept this
+lady most beautifully gowned. And Split--whose favorite of the small-fry
+dolls she had once been--still remembered her fondly, and passed over to
+Fom the most wonderful patches. These she got from Jack Cody, the
+washerwoman's son, who bribed his mother by promises of good conduct to
+beg samples of their gowns from her aristocratic patrons.
+
+Mr. Guy St. Gerald Clair was an unfortunate gentleman, tall,
+low-spirited, loose-jointed, with fixed blue eyes and knobby black hair.
+His melancholy, Bep was assured, was due to two things--the superiority
+of his wife in the matter of a movable head, and the impossibility of
+ever getting a pair of trousers that would come near to him in the seat
+and stay away from him at the ankle. Fom's theory--a hypothesis that
+enraged Bep--was that Mrs. Guy St. Gerald was the wealthy member of the
+family, and that her husband basely envied her her good fortune. She had
+a way, had Fom, of carrying on imaginary conversations with Mr. Clair
+upholding this idea, which made her twin long to rend her, and the doll
+too, limb from limb.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Clair! Yes, thank you. Mrs. Clair not in?... I'm sorry. Gone
+off to Newport, has she, to sell her marble palace? What about the one
+on Fifth Avenue?... You don't say! Making it bigger? Well, well! And
+made a million in stocks, too. How delightful! You wish that you had
+some money--yes, I suppose--"
+
+"He does not! He does not!" The interruption came fiercely from Bep.
+"You talk to your own doll and leave mine alone."
+
+"Pouf! If you're afraid he'll tell me how poor he is--"
+
+"He ain't poor."
+
+"What does he wear such trousers for, then? Tell me that!"
+
+Bep looked unutterable things at her twin. "Just you make men's clothes
+for a while, Fom Madigan, and see how 't is yourself!" she cried.
+
+"Put Mrs. Clair in men's clothes?" demanded Fom, purposely
+misunderstanding. "I'd like to see myself! The very richest lady in New
+York in men's clothes--why, you could get arrested for that!"
+
+"I'll change--" began Bep, quickly.
+
+"No, thank you. You couldn't suit Mrs. Clair. She's that particular
+about her things!"
+
+"Well, just the same, I won't make men's clothes any more." Bep rolled
+her head threateningly.
+
+"Going to let Mr. Clair go naked?" inquired Fom, pleasantly. "He'll have
+to be sent to the poorhouse, then."
+
+"He sha'n't! He'll go to bed sick first, and then Mrs. Clair'll just
+have to stay home in an old wrapper and nurse him."
+
+"No; she'll take Anita and go off to the country.... Are you so sick,
+Mr. Clair?" began Fom, while her slower twin danced with apprehension of
+the outcome of this one-sided dialogue. "I'm awful sorry. Smallpox? Oh,
+how dreadful! And that's why Mrs. Clair and Anita have gone--"
+
+"'T ain't! 'T ain't smallpox! 'T ain't! 'T ain't! 'T ain't!" Bep hopped
+about on one foot in her excitement.
+
+"How do you know?" asked Fom, calmly. "Are you the doctor?"
+
+The doctor lived in the flat below. He was a ready-dressed gentleman,
+still stylish if a bit seedy, and his large family overflowed down into
+the next two shelves. He was summoned.
+
+"I have called you, doctor,"--began Fom.
+
+"I've sent for you, doctor,"--interrupted Bep.
+
+"Well!" exclaimed Fom, stiffly, "I think you might be polite enough to
+let Mrs. Clair speak to the doctor about her own husband."
+
+"What's she going to say?" demanded Bep.
+
+"How should I know?" asked Fom, airily; and then, hurrying on, while she
+made Mrs. Clair bow low before the ready-made physician, "I am Mrs.
+Clair, doctor, the rich Mrs. Guy St. Gerald Clair who has all the
+money--"
+
+"It's no such thing! It's no such thing!" shrieked Bep.
+
+"Well, Miss Florence Madigan!" exclaimed Mrs. Clair by proxy, "if your
+sister Bessie ain't the rudest!"
+
+"I'll smash her if she says that again!" came in a bellow from Bep.
+
+"You touch my doll!" Daringly Fom placed Mrs. Clair within tempting
+distance of Bep's hand.
+
+"Well--just you let her say it again!"
+
+"I don't need to. She's told me, so now I know it."
+
+"You may go down-stairs again, doctor. It's a mistake," said Bep,
+addressing the medical man. (The twins always tried to keep up
+appearances before their dolls.) "Mr. Clair--the awfully rich Mr. Guy
+St. Gerald Clair--is not sick at all. But you can send your bill to him
+anyway, he won't care. It must have been some poor relation of Mrs.
+Clair's--she didn't have a dress to her name before she married, you
+know."
+
+"Oh--oh! Bessie Madigan!"
+
+"Well, she didn't," said Bep, stoutly.
+
+"I'll bet you--I'll bet you a shut-up. There!" Cautious Fom rarely
+hazarded so great a stake; but she felt that the occasion demanded
+something adequate.
+
+"All right; I'll leave it to Sissy." It was from Sissy that Bep had
+inherited Mr. Clair. She would know.
+
+Laying down stiff all-china Anita Clair, whose shoes she was painting
+red to match her sash, Bep followed her twin into the house.
+
+But the omnivorous Sissy was reading "The Boys of England"--a thing
+Sissy loved to do; for it was a magazine not permitted to enter Mrs.
+Pemberton's immaculate house, a recommendation in itself, and, besides,
+Split, to whom Jack Cody had loaned it, was doubtless looking all over
+for it at this very moment. Lying luxuriously flat upon the floor and
+eating chocolate, Sissy had just got to that part where Jack Harkaway
+"with one flash of Abu Hadji's ruby-incrusted simitar decapitated the
+unfortunate Arab, and Dick Lightheart, seizing the bewitching Haidee,
+had mounted his horse"--when the belligerent twins found her.
+
+"Now, let me say it," began Fom.
+
+"No; you won't ask it fair.... Sissy, tell me, wasn't Mr.--"
+
+"Tra--la--la--la!" sang Fom, shrilly, drowning Bep's voice.
+
+"Say!" Sissy looked up. Her cheeks were flaming with excitement, for any
+bit of print, however crude, had the power to move her as reality could
+not. At eleven she shivered and glowed over pseudo-sentiment, while a
+tragedy in the mine--whose tall chimneys she could see from her
+window--was as intangibly distant and irrelevant as weekly statistics of
+the superintendent's mining reports.
+
+Her juniors harkened respectfully; but neither would permit the other to
+ask the question, for fear of its revealing the nature of the answer
+hoped for. So they withdrew for a period, returning with the following
+query, which Bep allowed Fom to put, so sure was she of the response:
+
+"Did or did not Mrs. Clair ever have a dress before she married Mr.
+Clair?"
+
+To this the oracle gave answer:
+
+She did not, for how could she, she being Mr. Clair's second wife; his
+first, an accomplished lady, but all-solid china, having fallen from
+the top story of the apartment-house and smashed herself into bits, and
+the widower having himself accompanied Sissy and Split to the shop to
+select her successor, whose first gown was, of course, a heavy mourning
+robe.
+
+Bep heaved a deep sigh of content. She ran back to the woodshed so
+relieved that, although she had won a valuable shut-up, she did not care
+to "trophy" in her victory. Fom followed. But her grief for Mrs. Clair
+was bitterer even than her own disappointment.
+
+"I want the Smith twins," she said stiffly, when they got back to the
+dolls' sky-scraper. And Bep understood.
+
+The Smith twins were an invention of technical Fom's that had become an
+institution with herself and her playmate. Two tiny china dolls dressed
+in baby long clothes (the better to hide the fact that they were
+legless), the one with pink, the other with a blue sash, were brought up
+from the lowest story, where broken-nosed Mrs. Smith lived with her
+family of cripples.
+
+They were dolls of bad omen, these two, but following instead of
+prophesying a storm. When it became absolutely necessary for one Madigan
+twin to be "mad" at the other, and yet that the business of playing be
+uninterrupted, the Smith twins invariably made their appearance. They
+were supposed to save one's dignity; in reality, they lent piquancy to
+games and rendered "making up" delightful.
+
+Occasionally Bep and Fom did disown each other and adopt a chum from the
+outside world. One Beulah, known as "Bombey," Forrest was always ready
+obligingly to serve either or both of them in the capacity of dearest
+friend. But other playmates were tame after being accustomed to a
+Madigan; and each twin was so jealously afraid of the other's having a
+good time without her that she spent most of the period of estrangement
+trying to spy out what the other and her interloping companion were
+doing.
+
+The Smith twins were easier.
+
+"Tell Bep," said Florence to the pink-sashed small Smith, "that I think
+she's a nasty mean thing, and Mrs. Clair'll never forgive her."
+
+"Tell Fom," returned Bep, with spirit, putting the blue-sashed Smith
+baby in her pocket as a sort of emergency battery, so that the wires of
+communication might be set up at any time between her twin and herself,
+"that I don't care a 'article for what she thinks. And Mrs. Clair's
+nothing but a beggar. I wonder that Mr. Clair married her!"
+
+The war was on.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Down on the dump, that fascinating mountain of soft, glittering waste
+rock, the godless twins went to dig on Christmas afternoon. The mining
+operations were elaborate that they projected there, particularly after
+Jack Cody's brother Peter joined them. While Peter was rigging up
+windlasses with pieced-out cord, Fom, with a couple of tin cups
+purloined from Wong's kitchen, brought up the rock, piling it in
+miniature dumps at the mouth of their shaft. Bep's awkward fingers could
+be trusted only with the preliminary scooping out of the ground where a
+new shaft was to be sunk.
+
+"Tell Fom," she said to the blue-sashed Smith twin in her pocket, "that
+I want the scooper; my hands are all sore."
+
+"Tell Bep," returned Fom, quickly, "that she can't have it till Pete an'
+I get through running our drift."
+
+The excuse did not seem legitimate to Bep, whose grimy hands ached to
+the fingertips from being used as both pick and shovel. She made a dart
+for the "scooper"--a heavy china cup which had been smashed in so
+fortunate a manner as to be ideally fitted for emptying ore by hand.
+
+But Fom was slim, and quick as a cat. She threw herself bodily upon both
+scooper and pick--the latter an old fork with but one tine left. Bep
+promptly threw herself on top of her twin, while Peter, a laconic lad,
+calmly set himself to rehabilitating the hind wheel of a battered tin
+toy express which served as a dump-cart.
+
+"Little folks shouldn't quarrel," suddenly said a slow voice above the
+struggling arms and legs of the twins.
+
+Fom looked up, still pressing her body hard against the tools in
+dispute, while Bep got to her feet, red-faced and panting. "We're not
+quarreling," said Florence, calmly.
+
+Superintendent Warren Pemberton, still in his oilskins from a trip down
+the mine, looked down at her and gasped. He did not know the Madigan
+brunette twin, and actually thought she was lying. But Fom was never
+known to lie; she only pettifogged.
+
+"You're not quarreling!"
+
+"Nope."
+
+"Didn't I see you with my own eyes?" he demanded, piqued.
+
+"People don't see people quarreling," said Fom, didactically. "They hear
+them."
+
+"Oh, that's it! Well, didn't I hear--"
+
+"No, you didn't; for we're mad and don't speak to each other."
+
+"But you're not quarreling?"
+
+"Nope," repeated Fom, stoutly, "we're not."
+
+Mr. Pemberton shook his head helplessly. "What are you doing?"
+
+"I'm running a drift"--Fom misunderstood the drift of his
+question--"from the Silver King to the Diamond Heart, and the earth
+keeps coming down. Then Bep tries to make it harder by grabbing for the
+tools and--"
+
+"Why don't you timber?" suggested Pemberton, gravely.
+
+"'Cause I don't have to," answered Fom, quite as seriously.
+
+"Oh, you don't!" Pemberton, a man with no sense of humor, had been
+unusually expansive; but he shrank angrily into himself now, as though
+from a cold douche. It took some time for one to get accustomed to Fom's
+way of instructing authorities upon the subjects which they were
+supposed to know most about.
+
+"No, that's silly," remarked Fom, superbly. "If the ground's sticky
+enough, and you're not butter-fingered,"--with an insulting glance at
+Bep,--"you can manage all right."
+
+"But I'm not butter-fingered and I always timber." Warren Pemberton was
+a slow man, but a dogged one; the elusiveness of this pert child
+irritated him.
+
+"That's 'cause you don't know any better," came from the expert, who had
+returned to her task, the excited flourishes of her uplifted legs
+betraying its difficulties.
+
+"You're a little fool!" declared the superintendent. "Do you know who I
+am? My name's Pemberton, and I--"
+
+"Why don't you make your wife leave Crosby alone, then?" demanded Fom,
+without seeming much impressed.
+
+Warren Pemberton looked down upon her little body with an expression
+that made Bep wonder why he refrained from stamping upon it.
+
+"You don't think Mrs. Pemberton knows her business, either?" His ruddy,
+full face looked apoplectic.
+
+"Nope. Sissy says if she was Crosby she'd run away to sea. And she's
+going to put him up to it, too, if--"
+
+But Bep, frightened by the growing anger in the great man's face,
+interposed. "Shall I shut her up for you, Mr. Pemberton?" she asked.
+
+"What--what d' ye say? I wish to God you would, or that somebody could!"
+
+"Fom," said Bep, authoritatively, "shut up!"
+
+Fom jumped to her feet. There was appeal, wrath, rebellion in her
+crimson face. She opened her lips as if to protest.
+
+"Shut up, Fom," repeated Bep, distinctly. "I said _shut up_."
+
+There came a deadly silence. Pemberton, in the act of stalking
+ill-temperedly away, turned bewildered to regard the miracle.
+
+"Say," asked Peter Cody, driven to speech by curiosity. "Say, Fom, do
+you let your sister boss you like that? I thought you was twins."
+
+Fom looked appealingly at Bep. If Bep would but explain the nature of a
+shut-up--its power of suddenly depriving one of speech; of making one
+temporarily dumb in the very midst of a sentence, at the bidding of the
+winner of a wager, whenever, wherever the caprice to collect the debt of
+honor occurred to her!
+
+But Bep, after accompanying Mr. Pemberton a few steps, striving to
+untell him what Fom had betrayed, turned her attention again to mining
+matters. She knew well what Fom's eyes begged, but hid her head in the
+Silver King, whence a subterranean giggle came, revealing her enjoyment
+of the situation.
+
+Fom's stormy eyes filled and the Silver King and the Diamond Heart
+jigged back and forth till the tears splashed down and cleared her
+vision.
+
+"Ho--cry-baby!" called Peter Cody. Peter was one of those gallant
+gentlemen who are never afraid of a playmate when some one else has
+demonstrated that he can be downed.
+
+At the taunt, a revengeful passion seized Fom, standing there--a lingual
+Samson shorn of her tongue, two dirty channels plowed down her cheeks by
+her tears. Deliberately lifting her foot, she brought it down, stamping
+with all her might again and again.
+
+The soft, loosely packed earth slid smoothly down. The Diamond Heart
+caved in completely, the almost finished connecting tunnel was a wreck,
+and the still rolling, moist gravel swept over Bep's head, filling up
+the Silver King clear to the surface.
+
+By the time Peter had realized their utter ruin, and Bep had shaken the
+particles of sand and gravel from her hair and ears and throat, Fom was
+nowhere in sight.
+
+"Let's kill her," suggested Bep.
+
+"Shall we?" asked Peter, with an air of stern justice.
+
+They debated the question, fully realizing the make-believe of it, yet
+taking pleasure in at least the mention of revenge.
+
+Suddenly Bep gave a cry of triumph and picked up something from the
+ground.
+
+"What is it?" asked Peter.
+
+"It's Fom's doll. It must have dropped out of her pocket when she was
+digging and sassing Mr. Pemberton. We'll play there's been an
+accident,--a cave in the mine,--and the doll'll be buried alive down
+there. Wouldn't Fom howl?"
+
+She rolled up her sleeve and thrust a round arm far down in the clean,
+moist gravel, leaving the poor Smith twin in the murderous depths of the
+Silver King. Then both set to work. Poor Fom, half-way down the dump,
+beside the mysterious "flush" of seething, boiling, foaming waste water,
+whose tide went low or high with the breathing of the great mine, heard
+a laugh or a whistle now and then; and a miserable feeling of loneliness
+oppressed her. But she lay there sobbing quietly, while on top the
+valiant rescuers emptied the mines, carried on conversations with the
+entombed men, and at last, with a fine pretense of amazement and grief,
+discovered the dead miner. Reverently he was borne to the surface, Bep
+holding the bucket steady while Peter wound the cord. And then they
+buried the unfortunate man. There was an imposing funeral, and the
+three-wheeled dump-cart was filled with imaginary mourners. At the grave
+hymns were sung by Bep, when she could be spared from mourner's duties,
+and a prayer by Peter concluded the impressive services.
+
+It had been Fom's intention to lie there half-way down the dump till she
+died of hunger--when Bep would be sorry for her cruel treatment. The
+self-pitying tears were in Florence's eyes as she thought out the
+details of Bep's grief, and the unanimous reprobation of the family for
+the bad blonde twin. But she grew hungrier and hungrier, and at last
+resolved to go home to lunch.
+
+First, though, she would see how much damage she had done in her
+short-lived anger, for her heart was sore when she thought how proud
+they two had been of their mines. She scrambled to the top. There was
+the new shaft, the Tomboy, almost completed. The Diamond Heart was in
+working order. Peter's dexterous fingers had triumphed over the
+shifting rock, and he had modestly taken a hint as to timbering from
+Warren Pemberton. The tunnel was an accomplished fact, while over the
+frail hoisting-works of the Silver King a tiny flag--a corner torn from
+Bep's handkerchief--fluttered at half-mast.
+
+
+
+
+THE ANCESTRY OF IRENE
+
+
+In her heart Irene was confident that, though among the Madigans, she
+was not of them. The color of her hair, the shape of her nose, the
+tempestuousness of her disposition, the difficulty she experienced in
+fitting her restless and encroaching nature into what was merely one of
+a number of jealously frontiered interstices in a large family--all this
+forbade tame acceptance on her part of so ordinary and humble an origin
+as Francis Madigan's fatherhood connoted.
+
+"No," she said firmly to herself the day she and Florence were
+see-sawing in front of the woodshed after school, "he's only just my
+foster-father; that's all."
+
+How this foster-father--she loved the term, it sounded so delightfully
+haughty--had obtained possession of one whose birthright would place her
+in a station so far above his own, she had not decided. But she was
+convinced that, although poor and peculiar and incapable of
+comprehending the temperament and necessities of the nobly born, he was,
+in his limited way, a worthy fellow. And she had long ago resolved that
+when her real father came for her, she would bend graciously and
+forgivingly down from her seat in the carriage, to say good-by to poor
+old Madigan.
+
+"Thank you very, very much, Mr. Madigan," she would sweetly say, "for
+all your care. My father, the Count, will never forget what you have
+done for his only child. As for myself, I promise you that I will have
+an eye upon your little girls. I am sure his Grace the Duke will gladly
+do anything for them that I recommend. I am very much interested in
+little Florence, and shall certainly come for her some day in my golden
+chariot to take her to my castle for a visit, because she is such a
+well-behaved child and knew me, in her childish way, for a noble lady in
+disguise. Cecilia? Which one is that? Oh, the one her sisters call
+Sissy! She needs disciplining sadly, Mr. Madigan, sadly. Much as he
+loves me, my father, the Prince, would not care to have me know her--as
+she is now. But she will improve, if you will be very, very strict with
+her. Good-by! Good-by, all! No, I shall not forget you. Be good and obey
+your aunty. Good-by!"
+
+The milk-white steeds would fly down the steep, narrow, unpaved streets.
+On each side would stand the miners, bowing, hat in hand, hurrahing for
+the great Emperor and his beautiful daughter--she who had so strangely
+lived among them under the name of Split Madigan. They would speak,
+realizing now, of certain royal traits they had always noted in her--her
+haughty spirit that never brooked an insult, her independence, her utter
+fearlessness, the reckless bravery of a long line of kings, and--and
+even that very disinclination for study which they had stupidly fancied
+indicated that Sissy Madigan was her superior! What would Princess Irene
+want with vulgar fractions, a common denominator, and such low subjects?
+
+"What makes you wrinkle up your nose that way, Split?" Florence's voice
+broke in complainingly on her sister's reverie. She glanced up the
+incline of the see-saw to the height whence Irene looked down,
+physically as well as socially, upon her faithful retainer and the
+straggling little town.
+
+Irene did not answer. She was busy dreaming, and her dreams were of the
+turned-up-nose variety.
+
+"Don't, Split! It makes you look like a--what Sissy just now called
+you." The smaller sister's eyes fell, as though seeking corroboration
+from the middle of the board, where Sissy had been so lately acting as
+"candle-stick"--lately, for the incident had ended (no game being
+enticing enough to hold these two long in an unnatural state of
+neutrality) in Split's washing Sissy's face vigorously in the snow, and
+Sissy's calling her elder sister "nothing but an old Indian!" as she ran
+weeping into the house with the familiar parting threat to get even
+before bedtime. No Madigan could bear that the sun should set on her
+wrath; she preferred that all scores should be paid off, so that the
+slate might be clean for to-morrow's reckonings.
+
+"Fom," said her big sister, slowly, when she was quite ready to speak,
+"I think you'd better call me 'Irene.' You'd feel gladder about it when
+I'm gone."
+
+"Where?" At this minute it was Fom's turn to be dangerously high, and
+she wriggled to the uttermost end of the plank to counterbalance her
+sister's weight.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "She glanced up the incline of the see-saw to the height
+      whence Irene looked down"]
+
+A mysterious smile overspread Irene's face. It became broadly triumphant
+as she rose presently on the short end of the board, her arms daringly
+outspread, her toes upturned in front of her, her agile body well
+balanced, her spirit exulting in the sense of danger without and
+superiority within.
+
+"When?" asked Florence, with that amiable readiness to consider a
+question unasked, so becoming to the vassal. "When are you going?"
+
+"To-night--maybe." Her own words startled Irene. She loved to play upon
+Fom's fears, but she had not really intended committing herself so far.
+"He may call for me to-night," she added, with qualifying emphasis.
+
+"Who? Not--not--"
+
+"Yes, my father. I must be ready at any time, you know."
+
+Fom looked alarmed. She had heard long ago and in strict confidence
+about Split's lofty parentage. She had even accepted drafts upon her
+future, rendering services which were unusual in a Madigan fag, with the
+understanding that when the Princess Split should come into her own, she
+would richly repay. But she had never before heard her speak so
+positively or set a time when their relationship must cease.
+
+A feeling of utter loneliness came over Split's faithful ally. She saw
+the balance of power in the Madigan oligarchy rudely disturbed. She
+beheld, in a swift, dread vision, the undisputed supremacy of the party
+of Sissy. Dismay entered her soul and shook her body, for with the
+brunette of the twins emotion and action were synonymous. "Oh, don't go,
+Split!" she begged, squirming unhappily at her end of the plank. "Don't
+go!"
+
+High up in the air, Split smiled superbly. There was _noblesse oblige_
+in that smile; also the strong teasing tincture which no Madigan could
+resist using, even upon her closest ally.
+
+"Oh, Split--o-o-oh, Split!" wailed Fom, forgetting in her wriggling
+misery how close she already was to the end of the plank.
+
+A crash and a bump and a squeal told it to her all at once. She had slid
+clear off, getting an instantaneous effect of her haughty sister
+unsupported at a dizzy eminence, before Split came bumping down to
+earth, the see-saw giving that regal head a parting, stunning tap as the
+long end finally settled down and the short one went up to stay.
+
+It was never in the ethics of Madigan warfare to explain the
+inexplicable. Florence was on her feet, flying as though for her very
+life, before Split, shaken down from her dreams, quite realized what had
+happened. And she was still sitting as she had fallen when Jim, the
+Indian, came for the sawbuck.
+
+Jim limped, his eyes were sore and watery, and it took him two weeks to
+conquer the Madigan woodpile, which any other Piute in town could have
+leveled in half the time.
+
+"Him fall, eh?" he asked, dismantling the see-saw with that careful
+leisureliness that accounted for the Chinaman Wong's contempt for
+Indians.
+
+"Not him; _her_, Jim."
+
+Split possessed a passion for imparting knowledge, of which she had
+little, and which was hard for her to attain.
+
+Jim grinned.
+
+"She no got little gal like you teach her Inglis," he said, gently
+apologetic.
+
+"Not she, Jim; _he_. How old is your little girl?" Split remembered that
+a genteel interest in the lower classes is becoming to the well-born.
+
+"He just big like you," Jim responded mournfully, drawing the back of
+his brown hand across his nose. "But he all gone."
+
+"Dead?" Split crossed her legs uneasily as she squatted, and lowered her
+voice reverently.
+
+"He no dead," Jim said, lifting the sawbuck and easing it on his
+shoulder. "One Washoe squaw steal him--little papoose, nice little
+papoose. Much white--like you, missy. So white, squaw say no sure
+Injun."
+
+"Jim!"
+
+"Take him down Tluckee valley. Take him 'way. Jim see squaw one day long
+time 'go--Washoe Lake--shoot ducks. Heap shoot squaw. He die, but he say
+white Faginia man got papoose."
+
+"Jim!" It was the faintest echo of the first terrified exclamation.
+
+"Come Faginia, look papoose. No find. Chop wood long time. Heap
+hogady--not much dinner. Nice papoose--white, like you."
+
+Jim paused. He expected sympathy, but he hoped for dinner. When he saw
+he was to get neither, he hunched his lame hip; scratched his head,
+balanced the sawbuck, and shuffled away.
+
+Too overcome to move, Split sat looking after him. Her father! This,
+then, was her father! She was dazed, helpless, too overwhelmed even to
+be unhappy yet.
+
+There came a shrill call for her from Kate, and Split, with unaccustomed
+meekness, staggered obediently to her feet. What was left for her but to
+be a slave, she said stonily to herself. She was an Indian like--like
+her father! And Sissy had noticed the resemblance that very afternoon!
+
+"It's the bell, Split," explained Kate, who was reading "The Spanish
+Gypsy" in the low, hall-like library.
+
+She had begun to read the book for the reason that no one in her class
+at school had read it--usually a compelling reason for the eldest of the
+Madigans; but the poetic beauty, the extravagance of the romance, had
+whirled the girl away from her pretentious pose, and she was finishing
+it now because she could not help it; chained to it, it seemed to her,
+till she should know the end.
+
+"Shall I go?" asked Split, humbly, looking up at her sister.
+
+Kate looked up, too surprised by her sister's docility to do anything
+but nod. She had anticipated a battle, a ring at the door-bell being the
+signal for a flying wedge of Madigans tearing through the hall, with
+inquisitive Irene at its apex--except when she was asked to answer it.
+
+The sisters' eyes met: those of the elder, in her thin, dark, flushed
+face, hazy with romantic happiness; those of the younger bright with
+romantic suffering, demanding a share of that felicity which
+transfigured her senior.
+
+"What're you reading, anyway, Kate?" she asked.
+
+As well tap the bung of a cask and ask what it holds. Kate began
+chanting:
+
+    "'Father, your child is ready! She will not
+    Forsake her kindred: she will brave all scorn
+    Sooner than scorn herself. Let Spaniards all,
+    Christians, Jews, Moors, shoot out the lip and say,
+    "Lo, the first hero in a tribe of thieves!"
+    Is it not written so of them? They, too,
+    Were slaves, lost, wandering, sunk beneath a curse,
+    Till Moses, Christ, and Mahomet were born,
+    Till beings lonely in their greatness lived,
+    And lived to save their people.'"
+
+It poured from Kate's lips, the story of the lady Fedalma and her Gipsy
+father, a stream of winy romance, a sugared impossibility preserved in
+the very spirits of poetry.
+
+Again the old bell jangled, and again. Kate was glutted, drunk with the
+sound of the verbal music that had been chorusing behind her lips; while
+for Irene every word seemed charged with the significance of special
+revelation. The light seemed to leap from her sister's eyes to kindle a
+conflagration in her own.
+
+"Read it again--that part--Kate! Read it!" she cried.
+
+And Kate, not a bit loath, turned the page and repeated:
+
+    "'Lay the young eagle in what nest you will,
+      The cry and swoop of eagles overhead
+      Vibrate prophetic in its kindred frame,
+      And make it spread its wings and poise itself
+      For the eagle's flight.'"
+
+Split breathed again, a full, deep breath of satisfaction. An
+Indian--she, Split Madigan? Perhaps; but an Indian princess, then, with
+a mission as great, glorious, and impossible as Fedalma's own.
+
+When at last she did turn mechanically to answer the bell, she saw that
+Sissy had anticipated her and was showing old Professor Trask into the
+parlor. Ordinarily Irene loved to listen at the door while Sissy's
+lesson was in progress; for Trask was a nervous, disappointed wreck,
+whose idea of teaching music seemed to be to make his pupils as much
+like himself as harried youth can be like worried age. But on this great
+day the joy of hearing the perfect Sissy rated had not the smallest
+place in her enemy's thoughts. A poet's words had lifted Irene in an
+instant from child hell to heaven, had fired her imagination, had
+rekindled her pride, had given back her dreams.
+
+Reality was not altogether so pleasant, she found, when she went into
+the kitchen, skirmished with the Chinese cook for Jim's dinner, and
+went out to the woodpile to give it to him herself.
+
+She did not wait to see him eat it--she was not poet enough for that;
+and, that impersonal, composite father, her tribe, was calling her.
+
+Pulling on her hood and jacket, with her mittens dangling from a red
+tape on each side, she flew out and down the long, rickety stairs which
+a former senator from Nevada had built up the mountain's side, when he
+planned for his home a magnificent view of the mountains and desert off
+toward the east.
+
+Split did not look at either, though they shone, the one like a billowy
+moonlit sea, the other like a lake of silver, because of the snow that
+covered them. She half ran, half slid down the hilly street till she
+came to a box-like miner's cabin, where Jane Cody, the washerwoman,
+lived with her son. In front of it she halted and called imperiously:
+
+"Jack!"
+
+For this same Jack was her own, her discovery, her possession, who
+acknowledged her thrall and was proud of it.
+
+But the green shutters over the one window remained fast, and the door
+tight closed.
+
+"Jack?" There was a suggestion of incredulity in Split's voice.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "'I want you--come!' the Indian princess announced"]
+
+The whistles burst forth in a medley of throaty roars (it was
+five-o'clock "mining-time"), but the bird-like whistle of Jack was
+missing.
+
+"Jack Cody!" Split stamped her high arctics in the snow.
+
+The door was opened a little, and a round black head was cautiously
+thrust forth.
+
+"I want you--come!" the Indian princess announced. "And get your sled."
+
+"I can't," replied the head.
+
+"But I want you."
+
+The head wagged dolefully.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+The head hung down.
+
+"Tell me."
+
+The head's negative was sorrowful but determined.
+
+"If you don't tell me I'll--never speak to you again 's long as I live,
+Jack Cody!"
+
+The head stretched out its long neck and sent an agonized glance toward
+her.
+
+"Tell me--right now!" she commanded.
+
+"Well--she's took my clothes with her," wailed the head, and jerked
+itself within, while the door was slammed behind it.
+
+Split walked up the stoop.
+
+"Jack," she called, her mouth at the keyhole, "who took 'em? Your
+mother? Why? But she can't keep you in that way. Never mind. What _have_
+you got on?"
+
+The door was opened an inch or two, and the head started to look out.
+But at sight of Split so near it withdrew in such turtle-like alarm that
+she laughed aloud.
+
+"What're you laughing at?" growled the boy.
+
+"What's that you got on?" said she.
+
+"My--my mother's wrapper."
+
+A peal of laughter burst from the Indian princess. But it ceased
+suddenly. For the door was thrown open with such violence that it made
+Jane Cody's wax flowers shake apprehensively under their glass bell, and
+a figure stalked out such as might haunt a dream--long, gaunt, awkward,
+inescapably boyish, yet absurdly feminine, now that the dark calico
+wrapper flapped at its big, awkward heels and bound and hindered its
+long legs.
+
+Split looked from the heavily shod feet to the round, short-shaven black
+head, and a premonitory giggle shook her.
+
+"Don't you laugh--don't you dare laugh at me! Don't you, Split--will
+you?" The phrases burst from him, a threat at the beginning, an appeal
+at the end.
+
+"No," said Split, choking a bit; "no, I won't. You don't look very--"
+she gulped--"very funny, Jack. And it's getting so dark that nobody'd
+know--really they wouldn't."
+
+"Sure?"
+
+Split nodded.
+
+"Get your sled quick, the big, long one, the leg-breaker, and take me
+down--I'll tell you where. Get it, won't you?"
+
+"In this, this--like this?" Jack faltered.
+
+"It's so important, Jack. Please! It's always you that asks me,
+remember."
+
+The boy threw his hands out with a gesture that strained the narrow
+garment he wore almost to bursting. He began to talk, to argue, to
+plead; then suddenly he yielded, and turned and ran, a grotesque,
+long-legged shape, toward the back of the house.
+
+When he whistled, Split joined him, and together they plowed their way
+through the high snow to the beaten-down street beyond. At the top of
+the hill, Split sat down well to the front of the low, rakish-looking
+leg-breaker. Behind her the boy, hitching up his skirts, threw himself
+with one knee bent beneath him, and, with a skilful ruddering of the
+other long, untrousered leg, started the sled.
+
+They had coasted only half a block--Virginia City runs downhill--when
+they heard the shrill yelp of the Comstock boy on the trail of his prey.
+As Jack stopped the sled a swift volley of snowballs from a cross-street
+struck the figure of a tall, timid, stooping man in an old-fashioned
+cape, such as no Comstock boy had ever seen on anything masculine.
+
+"It's Professor Trask," breathed Irene, keen delight in persecution
+lending to her aggressive, bright face that savage sharpness of feature
+which Sissy Madigan called Indian. "Don't you wish you hadn't got that
+dress on, Jack?" she asked, as the tall, black mark for a good shot
+still stood hesitating to cross the polished, steep street, down which
+many sleds had slipped for days past. "You could get him every time,
+couldn't you?"
+
+Despite the ignoble garment that cramped it, the boy's breast swelled
+with pride in his lady's approval.
+
+"You could just fire one at him from here, anyway," suggested Irene,
+adaptable as her sex is to contemporary standards and customs.
+
+"Ye-es," said the boy, hesitating; "but he's such a poor old luny."
+
+Split turned her imperial little hooded head questioningly.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "They had coasted only half a block"]
+
+"He is--really luny," said the boy, apologetically. "Since his little
+girl wandered away one day from home and never came back, he gets
+spells, you know. He was telling ma one day when she went over to do his
+washing. But--but I will land one on him if you want, Split."
+
+But Split had suddenly pivoted clear around and sat now facing him, an
+eager, mittened hand staying his hard, skilful, obedient fingers,
+already making the snowball.
+
+"How--how old would that little girl be, Jack?" she gasped.
+
+"Why, 'bout twelve--thirteen. Why?"
+
+"And what would be the color of her hair?"
+
+"Red, I s'pose, like his; not--not like yours--Split," he added shyly,
+glancing at the brown fire of the curls that escaped from her hood.
+
+But Irene was no longer listening. She was looking over to the other
+side of the street, where that shrinking, pitiable old figure in its
+threadbare neatness trembled; not daring to seek safety across the
+dangerously smooth street, nor daring to remain exposed here, where it
+ducked ridiculously every now and then to avoid the whizzing balls that
+sang about it.
+
+Irene breathed hard. A coward for a father, a scarecrow, a butt for a
+gang of miners' boys! This, this was her father! Why, even crippled old
+Jim, the wood-chopper, seen in retrospect and haloed by copper-colored
+dreams of romantic rehabilitation--even Jim seemed regrettable.
+
+But she did not hesitate, any more than Fedalma did. She, too, knew a
+daughter's duty--to a hitherto unknown, just-discovered father. A merely
+ordinary, every-day parent like Francis Madigan was, as a matter of
+course, the common enemy, and no self-respecting Madigan would waste the
+poetry of filial feeling upon any one so realistic.
+
+"You wait for me here, Jack," she said, with unhesitating reliance upon
+his obedience.
+
+"Where're you going? I thought you were in a hurry to get down to the
+wickiups."
+
+She did not hear him. She had spun off the sled, and with the
+sure-footed speed of the hill-child she was crossing the street.
+
+Old Trask, his short-sighted eyes blinking beneath his twitching, bushy
+red eyebrows, looked down as upon a miracle when a red-mittened hand
+caught his and he heard a confident voice--the clear voice children use
+to enlighten the stupidity of adults:
+
+"I'll help you across; take my hand."
+
+"Eh--what?"
+
+He leaned down, failing to recognize her. Children had no identity to
+him. They were merely brats, he used to say, unless they happened to
+have some musical aptitude. But he accepted her aid, his battered old
+hat rocking excitedly upon his high bony forehead, as he ducked and
+turned and shivered at the oncoming balls. "Bad boys--bad boys!" he
+ejaculated. "Boys are the devil!"
+
+"Yes," agreed Split, craftily. "Girls are best. Your little girl,
+now--father--" she began softly.
+
+"Eh--what?" he exclaimed. "Who's your father? My respects to him."
+
+"I have no father," she answered softly. A plan had sprung full-born
+from her quick brain. She would win this erratic father back to memory
+of his former life and her place in it--somewhat as did one Lucy
+Manette, a favorite heroine of Split's that Sissy had read about and
+told her of. That would be a fine thing to do--almost as fine, and
+requiring the center of the stage as much, as rehabilitating the Red
+Man.
+
+"I have no father," she murmured, "if you won't be mine."
+
+"What? What? No!" Trask was across now and brushing the snowy traces of
+battle from his queer old cape. "No; I don't want any children. I had
+one once--a daughter."
+
+Split's heart beat fast.
+
+"She was a brat, with the temper of a little fiend, and no
+ear--absolutely none--for music; played like an elephant."
+
+How terribly confirmatory!
+
+"And what--what became of her?" whispered Split.
+
+"She ran away two years ago and--"
+
+"Two years!"
+
+"I said two, didn't I?" demanded the old professor, irascibly.
+
+Disgusted, Split turned her back on him. Why, two years ago Sissy had
+first called her an Indian; how right she had been! Two years ago she,
+Split, was making over all her dolls to Fom. Two years ago she had
+already discovered Jack Cody's fleet strength, his wonderful aptness at
+making swift sleds, in which her reckless spirit reveled, his mastership
+of other boys of his gang, and--her mastery of him.
+
+She turned and beckoned to him. His sweet whistle rang out in answer
+like a vocal salute, and in a moment she was seated again in front of
+him, with that deft, tail-like left leg of his steering them down, down
+over cross-street, through teams and sleighs and unwary pedestrians;
+past the miners coming off shift; past the lamplighter making his rounds
+in the crisp, clear cold of the evening; past the heavy-laden squaws,
+with their bowed heads, their papooses on their backs, their weary arms
+bearing home the spoils of a hard day's work, and the sore-eyed yellow
+dogs trudging, too, wearily and dejectedly at their heels, toward the
+rest of the wickiup and the acrid warmth of the sage-brush camp-fire.
+
+In short, swift sentences, as they hurdled over artificially raised
+obstructions, or slid along the firm-packed snow, or grated on the muddy
+cross-streets, Princess Split told her plan--with reservations. She was
+not prepared to admit to so humble a worshiper the secret of her birth,
+but the magnanimous self-sacrifice of a beautiful nature, the heroine
+concealed beneath a frivolous exterior--these she was willing Jack Cody
+should suspect and admire.
+
+"We'll lift them up, you and I, Jack. I'm going 'to--to be the angel of
+a homeless tribe,' or something like that," she quoted, as it grew
+darker and the sled slowed down a bit, where the slant of the
+hill-street became gentler and she need not hold on tight. "You'll be
+their general and I their princess. You'll teach them to be fine
+soldiers, so that the people in town will be afraid of them and have to
+give them back their lands--and the mines, too. They're theirs, and
+they shall have them and be millionaires. And, of course, so will we.
+We'll own all the stocks and brokers' offices, and after a few years,
+when they're quite civilized, we'll come up to town to live. We'll take
+Bob Graves's 'Castle' and--Jack! Ah!"
+
+A long scream burst from her. Never in her life had Split Madigan
+screamed like that. For an incredibly fleet instant she actually saw
+above her head a struggling horse's hoofs. In the next, her
+calico-wrappered knight had thrown himself and his lady out into the
+great drifts on the side. Split felt the cold fleeciness of new-fallen
+snow on her face, down her neck, up her sleeves. She was smothered,
+drowned in it, when with another tug the boy whirled her to her feet,
+and swaying unsteadily, she looked up into the face of the man whose
+horses had so nearly crushed her life out.
+
+It was her father--she knew it was. Else why had fate so strangely
+thrown them together? Yes, this was her true father. No other girl's
+father could have so handsome a fur coat as that reaching from the tips
+of this very tall man's ears to his heels. No other could have a sleigh
+so fine, and silver-belled horses fit for a king. No other could have
+such bright brown eyes beneath heavy sandy brows, such red, red cheeks,
+and so long and silver-white a beard which the sun could still betray
+into confession of its youthful ruddiness. What if he did have, too, a
+brogue so soft, so wheedling that men had long called him Slippery Uncle
+Sammy?
+
+Split waked with a humiliating start from her lesser, less genteel
+dreams. Of course this bonanza king driving up from the mine was her
+real father, and she a bonanza princess, happier, more fortunate than a
+merely political one; for princesses have to live in Europe, where
+Madigans cannot see and envy them.
+
+With the mien of one who has come at last into her own, Split accepted
+his invitation to carry her up to town, and, with a facetious twinkle in
+his eyes that added to his likeness to a stately Santa Claus (though his
+was not a reputation for benevolence), he lifted her and set her down
+under the silky fur rugs.
+
+Split nestled back in perfect content: at last she was fitly placed.
+
+"Hitch on behind, Jack," she cried patronizingly, and the bonanza king's
+sleigh went up the hill with its queer freight: queer, for this was that
+one of them whose strength was subtlety, whose forte was guile, whose
+left hand knew not the charitable acts of his right--and neither did
+the right, for that matter.
+
+Thoroughly sophisticated are Comstock children as to the character of
+the masters of their masters, and Split Madigan knew how foreign to this
+man's nature a lovable action was. All the more, then, she valued the
+distinction which chance--fate--had made hers. And all the more did a
+something fierce and lawless and proud in herself leap to recognize the
+tyrant in him. Kings should be above law, as princesses were, was
+Split's creed; else why be kings and princesses?
+
+"An' where would ye be a-goin' to, down this part o' the world so late?"
+she heard the unctuous voice above her inquire.
+
+Split was silent. That the daughter of a bonanza king should have
+fancied for a moment that Indian Jim could be her father!
+
+"An' who's the gyurl with ye--the witch ye call Jack?"
+
+"'T isn't a girl." That virility which Split's wild nature respected and
+admired forbade her denying the boy his sex. "It's a boy--Jack--Jack
+Cody."
+
+King Sammy laughed. His was rich, strong laughter, and men who heard it
+on C Street (they had reached the main thoroughfare now, so fleet were
+these kingly horses of Split's father) knew it--and knew, too, what
+poor, mean thoughts lay behind it.
+
+"An' this Cody," he said, turning his handsome head to look down at the
+boy on his sled behind. "Cody--Cody, now," he continued, with royalty's
+marvelous memory, "your father killed in the Ophir--eh? Time of the fire
+on the 1800--yes--yes! An' I was goin' to give him a point that very
+day. Well--well!"
+
+"Ye did!" The boy looked up resentful, and met those smiling, crafty
+eyes.
+
+"No! An' he sold short? Too bad! Too bad! I thought sure that stock was
+goin' down. My, the bad man that told me it was! I hope he didn't lose?"
+he chuckled.
+
+"All we had," said the boy.
+
+"Tut--tut--tut! What a pity! Haven't I always said it's wicked to deal
+in stocks!" The king shook his sorrowful old head, then turned to the
+princess beside him. "An' it's out for a ride ye'd be, sweetheartin' on
+the sly, eh?"
+
+"He's not! I was not!" Split's cheeks grew hotter. He was her father,
+this splendid, handsome king, yet never had she felt for poor Francis
+Madigan what she felt now for the man beside her.
+
+"What, then?"
+
+"I was going down for--for a reason," she stammered.
+
+"To be sure! To be sure!" chuckled his old Majesty. "An' ye've told your
+father an' mother ye were goin', no doubt."
+
+"No, I--didn't. I--couldn't."
+
+"Coorse not; coorse not, but ye--"
+
+"Let me out!" cried Split.
+
+The sneer in his voice had set her aflame. She rose in the sleigh, cast
+off the furs, and, stamping like a fury, tried to seize the reins.
+
+"Ho! Ho!" The old monarch's bowed broad shoulders shook with laughter as
+he caught her trembling hands and held them. "What a little spitfire! A
+divvle of a temper ye've got, my dear. Cody, now, does he like gyurls
+with such a temper?"
+
+"Will you let me out?" Her voice was hoarse with anger.
+
+"Can't ye wait till we get t' a crossin', ye little termagant?"
+
+"No--no!" She tore her hands from him, and, with a quick, lithe leap
+from the low sleigh, landed, a bit dazed, in the snow banked high on the
+side of the street.
+
+Uncle Sammy stared after her a moment. Then he remembered the boy
+behind.
+
+"Hi--there!" he cried, looking over his shoulder as he reached for his
+whip. "Git!"
+
+But Cody had the street-boy's quickness. All he had to do was to let go
+the end of rope he held, and the leg-breaker slipped smoothly back,
+while the king's runnered chariot shot ahead, drawn by the flying horses
+on whose backs the whip had descended.
+
+"Ugh!" shivered Split, as she made her way out of the drift. "It's cold,
+Jack. Let's run."
+
+Together they hauled the leg-breaker up the hill, parting at the
+snow-caked, wandering flights of steps, which seemed weary and worn with
+their endless task of climbing the mountain to Madigan's door.
+
+Irene mounted them quickly. She was cold, and it had grown very dark and
+late; so late that the lamp shone out from the dining-room, warning her
+that it must be dangerously near to dinner-time. She had reached the
+last flight when Sissy came flying out along the porch to meet her.
+
+"Split--ssh!" she cautioned, with a friendliness that surprised Split,
+who remembered how well she had washed that round, innocent face in the
+snow only a few hours ago--the face of Sissy, the unforgiving. "Dinner's
+ready," she went on, "but father isn't down yet. Go round the back way,
+and you can get in without his knowing how late you are."
+
+Split did not budge. The sight of Sissy had made her a Madigan again,
+prepared for any emergency the appearance of her arch-enemy might
+portend. "What are you up to?" she demanded suspiciously.
+
+"Oh!" Sissy turned haughtily on her heel. "If you want to go in and
+catch it--go."
+
+But Split did not want to catch it. Her day's experience had made her
+content to bear the eccentricities of her humble foster-father, but she
+was by no means anxious to be the instrument that should provoke a
+characteristic expression of them.
+
+She slipped around the back way, passing through Wong's big kitchen, the
+heat and odors of which were grateful messages of cheer to her chilled
+little body. She flew up-stairs and tore off her wet clothing, and was
+out in the hall, buttoning hastily as she walked, when the door-bell
+rang.
+
+In some previous existence Split Madigan must have been a most
+intelligent horse in some metropolitan fire department. It was her
+instinct still to run at the sound of the bell; every other Madigan,
+therefore, delighted in preventing that impulse's gratification. But
+this time Bessie came hurriedly to meet her and even speed her on her
+errand.
+
+     [Illustration:
+       "'Oh, you needn't glare at me!' exclaimed Bep"]
+
+"Quick--it's your father, Split!" she cried.
+
+Split looked at her. She trusted Bep no more than she did Sissy, whose
+lieutenant the blonde twin was.
+
+"Oh, you needn't glare at me!" exclaimed Bep, her guilty conscience
+sensitive to accusation by implication. "Fom told me all you told her
+about him. She was 'fraid you were coming after her for letting you fall
+off the see-saw, and she told me the whole thing. She said you expected
+him to-night--don't you?"
+
+"How--do you know it's--my father that's at the door?" demanded Split,
+all the warier of the enemy because of her acquaintance with her secret.
+
+"Why!" Bep opened clear, china-blue eyes, as shallow and baffling as
+bits of porcelain. "Hasn't he been here once for you already, while you
+were out?"
+
+Split turned and ran down the hall. In the minute this took she had
+lived through a long, heart-breaking, childish regret--regret for the
+familiar, apprehension of the unknown. It was so warm and snug in this
+Madigan house; she seemed so to belong there. Why must that unknown
+parent come to claim her just now, when her spirit was still sorely
+vexed with the failings of the various fathers she had borne with in
+one short afternoon!
+
+She got to the top of the staircase that led down to the front door,
+when she saw that some one had preceded her. It was Madigan, who was on
+his way down to dinner; poor old Madigan, with his slippered, slow, but
+positive tread, his straight, assertive back expressing indignation, as
+it always did when his door-bell was rung. Oh, that familiar old back!
+Something swelled in Split's throat and held her choking, as she grasped
+the banister and gazed yearningly down upon him. For a moment she had
+the idea of flying down past him to save him from what was coming. But
+it was too late; already he had his hand on the door-knob. Did he know
+who it was for whom he was opening his door? Split gasped. Did he
+anticipate what was coming? Some one ought to tell him--to break it to
+him--to--
+
+But evidently Split herself could not have done this, for in almost the
+identical moment that Madigan resentfully threw open the door, a stream
+of water was dashed into his astonished face.
+
+From her point of vantage on the stairway Split saw a paralyzed Sissy,
+the empty pitcher in her guilty hand, the grin of satisfaction frozen
+on her panic-stricken round face; while, before she fled, her eyes shot
+one quick, hunted glance over Madigan's dripping head to the joyous
+enemy above.
+
+And Split was joyous. Her explosive laugh pealed out in the second
+before fear of her father stifled it. So this was how Sissy had planned
+to get even; so this was the plot behind Bep's baffling blue eyes! And
+only the accident of Madigan's going to the door had saved Split--and
+confounded her enemy.
+
+Oh, it was good to be a Madigan! Standing there dry and triumphant,
+Split hugged herself--her very own self--her individuality, which at
+this minute she would not have changed for anything the world had to
+offer. To be a Madigan, one's birthright to laugh and do battle with
+one's peers; and to win, sometimes through strength, sometimes through
+guile, sometimes through sheer luck--but to win!
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST STRAW
+
+
+Young as she was, Frances Madigan had known a great sorrow. She
+remembered (or fancied she did, having heard the circumstance so often
+related) how Francis Madigan had seized and confiscated her cradle as
+soon as her sex had been avowed.
+
+"It's too bad, Madigan!" was the form in which Dr. Murchison had made
+the announcement of her birth.
+
+"It's the last straw--that's what it is," Madigan answered grimly,
+bearing the cradle out to the woodshed. There he chopped it to pieces,
+as though defying a perverse destiny to send him another daughter.
+
+With tears running down her cheeks, Frances had witnessed the pathetic
+sight--or, if she had not, she believed she had; which was quite as
+effective in her narrative of the occurrence.
+
+"And he took my cwadle," Frank was accustomed to relate, with an abused
+sniff to punctuate each phrase, "and he chopped it wif the hatchet all
+in little bits o' pieces."
+
+"How big, Frank?" Sissy liked to ask.
+
+"Teeny-weeny bits--little as that," Frank whined, still in character,
+and showing a small finger-nail. "And--"
+
+"And then what did you do?" prompted Sissy.
+
+Frank stamped her foot. The cynical tone of the question grated upon an
+artistic temperament at the crucial moment when it was composing and
+acting at the same time. "Don't you say it, Sissy Madigan!" she cried
+petulantly. "I can say it myself. And then"--turning to Maude
+Bryne-Stivers, to whom she was telling the touching incident, with a
+resumption of her first manner, and her most heartrending tone--"and
+then I looked first at my cwadle and then at my father, and I cwied--and
+cwied--and cwied--and--"
+
+One is limited at four and is apt to strive for emphasis by the simple
+method of repetition. Frank always "cwied and cwied" till some
+interruption came to the rescue and furnished a climax.
+
+"You dear little lump of sugar!" cried Miss Bryne-Stivers at the proper
+moment, lifting the chubby mourner off her feet and out of her pose at
+the same time.
+
+And Frank, seated on the lady's lap, was content with her effect.
+
+It was a small matter, anyway, with Frank Madigan--the loss of a pose or
+two; she had so many. A parody of parodies was the smallest Madigan, and
+her jokes were the shadows of shades of jokes handed down ready-made to
+her. Yet she was convinced that they were good; otherwise the Madigans
+would not have laughed at them long before she adopted them.
+
+She herself was a victim--as was the gentleman after whom she was
+named--of a surplusage of femininity about the house. All female
+children are mothers before they are girls, the earliest sex-tendency
+having a scientific precedence over others; and the Madigans "played
+with" their smallest sister bodily, as with a doll whose mechanism
+presented more possibilities than that of any mechanical toy they had
+seen--in some other child's possession. Later they were charmed--if but
+for a while--by the field her mentality provided for experimental work.
+There were times when Frances Madigan had a mother for every day in the
+week; there were days when she had no mother at all; and there were
+occasions when she was adopted as a whole, and for a stated time, by
+some Madigan with a theory, which was tried upon her with all the
+remorselessness of a faddist before she was given over as completely to
+its successor.
+
+Thus Sissy had taken possession of her and made of her, in the short
+time her enthusiasm lasted, a visible replica of that which Sissy tried
+to delude herself into thinking was her own character. In those days she
+cut poor Frank's curls off and plastered the child's hair down in a
+strong-minded fashion. She insisted upon her disciple's pronouncing
+clearly and distinctly. She inaugurated a régime of practical common
+sense, small rewards and severe punishments, and taught Frank how to
+count. But not to spell; for Sissy had introduced the fashion among
+Madigans of spelling out the word which was the key-note of a
+sentence--a proceeding that exasperated Frank. "Don't you let her have
+any c-a-n-d-y; Aunt Anne says 't ain't good for her," was a sample of
+the abuses that drove Frank nearly mad with curiosity and indignation.
+
+But finally Sissy joined the Salvation Army with her protégée (religion
+had all the attraction of the impliedly forbidden to the Madigans), and
+was discovered by Francis Madigan one evening on C Street, putting up a
+fluent prayer in a nasal tremolo--an excellent imitation of the
+semi-hysterical falsetto of the bonneted enthusiast who had preceded
+her.
+
+Madigan looked from Sissy--her hypocritical eyes upcast, while her soul
+was ravished by the whispered comment upon her precocity, to which she
+lent an encouraging ear--to Frank, kneeling angelically beside her.
+Something in himself, his enthusiastic, emotional, long-forgotten,
+youthful self, felt the tug of sympathy at the sight, and, after his
+first irritated start, he stood there behind the watching crowd with no
+thought of interference.
+
+"You can thank your stars, you unco guid lassie," he said within
+himself, his sarcastic eyes on Sissy's holy face, "that you've not a
+more religious and more conventional man for a father. 'T is one like
+that would yank you out of your play-acting preaching, or my name's not
+Madigan--ahem!"
+
+He did not know that the exclamation had been uttered aloud. Their
+father was unaware of the habit; but his daughters knew well that
+stentorian clearing of the throat which served for a warning that he was
+about to speak, and also a notification that he had spoken and would
+permit no difference of opinion. In the midst of her religio-dramatic
+ecstasy, Sissy heard that sound behind her, and jumped to her feet as
+though brought painfully back to a sorrowing, sinful world.
+
+"And he tooked her," said Frances later, in relating the affair to an
+eager audience of Madigans, "and he whipped her awful!"
+
+"With his whole hand?" asked Bep, feeling it to be the partizan's duty
+to doubt.
+
+"Uh-huh!" The small fabricator nodded her head in slow and awful
+confirmation.
+
+"That shows, Frank Madigan!" said Bep, scornfully turning her back. "He
+never whips with more than two fingers."
+
+And yet it was the confident belief of the Madigans that if it had been
+anybody but Sissy, that somebody would have been eaten alive!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Split who next adopted the Last Straw. Under her tutelage Frank
+learned to climb her sister's body and stand upright and fearless on her
+shoulders. She was also initiated into the great game of "fats," which
+the Madigans played winter evenings on the crumb-cloth in the
+dining-room; said crumb-cloth being printed in large squares of red and
+white, one of which was chalked off for the ring.
+
+Frank's induction into the game led to a grand battle between Split and
+Sissy, the latter contending that the baby's fingers could not properly
+handle and shoot the marbles. But Sissy ought to have known better than
+to make such a point, as the Madigans had a peculiar way of playing
+fats, for which Frank--being a Madigan--was as fitted by nature as any
+of her seniors.
+
+It consisted, first, in hauling out the big box of marbles, in which the
+booty won by the whole family was kept--the Madigans were gamblers, of
+course, as was everything born on the Comstock. Second, in a desperate
+controversy as to how the marbles were to be divided. Third, in a
+compromise, which necessitated that a complete count be made of every
+marble in the box--and the Madigans' unfeminine skill made this a
+question of handling hundreds of them, of suspiciously watching one
+another, of losing and of finding; and it all took time. Fourth, a
+decision as to handicaps. Fifth, a heated discussion of the relative
+values of puries, pottries, agates, crystals, and 'dobies. Sixth, a
+fiery attack from Sissy on Split's lucky taw. Seventh, the falling
+asleep of Frank squarely over the ring. And eighth, the sending of the
+whole tribe to bed by Aunt Annethe entire evening having been taken up
+with arranging an order of business, and not a stroke of business
+accomplished.
+
+But the Split sphere of influence over the disputed territory of Frances
+was considerably circumscribed by the affair of the stagecoach. It
+stood--a dusty, lumbering vehicle that made daily trips down from the
+mountain to the small towns in the cañon--upon a raised platform in
+front of Baldy Bob's. Baldy Bob, who departed with it the first thing in
+the morning and returned late in the afternoon, hauled it each day up on
+to the platform, intending to get out the hose and wash it off--after
+dinner when he came back from downtown. But he never came back till time
+to hitch up and start down the cañon again. So the old coach was left
+high and dry, while the sun went down behind Mount Davidson and the
+brightest stars in all the world shone out from a black-blue firmament
+unmarred by the smallest haze.
+
+Till Split discovered it.
+
+To Split, who had never traveled by any means other than her own lithe
+limbs and Jack Cody's sled, the coach's big, low, dusty body, its heavy
+high wheels, its dusky interior smelling of heated leather and
+twig-scented, summer-sunned country dust, were romance incarnate. It
+meant voyaging to her, this coach: strange sights, queer peoples, the
+sea that she had never seen, the rippling of rivers she had never heard,
+the smell of pasture-land, of pine forests, of lake-dipped willows, of
+flowers--valleys full of flowers, like those that bloomed in Mrs.
+Pemberton's garden, but unlike those enchanted blossoms in not being
+irrevocably attached to the bush on which they grew, and unguarded by
+any Mrs. Ramrod, whose most gracious act was to hold up a rose on its
+stalk between forefinger and thumb and permit a flower-hungry girl to
+bend down and sniff it. On the same principle, Mrs. Ramrod _showed_ her
+preserves, but she never bestowed a rose "for keeps," nor did it ever
+seem to occur to her that one might want a taste of that which made her
+glass jars so temptingly beautiful.
+
+Split "took a dare" the first time she mounted Baldy Bob's coach. She
+climbed up to the driver's high seat in front with as much hidden
+trepidation but as unhesitatingly as she would have plunged down a
+shaft, to show Sissy, who was a coward, how brave her sister was.
+
+But after she got up there, Sissy faded out of the world. In Baldy Bob's
+coach Split was seized with _Wanderlust_. She sat erect and still up
+there in front, her hands clasped in her lap, her shining eyes averted
+from the motionless tongue below and fixed on the unrolling landscapes
+of the world; on plains and valleys, on villages nestling in trees and
+flying past, on great rolling fields of grain--perhaps a smooth, light,
+continuous sort of sage-brush, wrinkling in the wind as the sunflowers
+seem to when one looks up at the mountain from the sluice-box.
+
+Yet with the advent of Frances into this strange game of rapt silences
+there came a change. Frank's imagination did not tempt her abroad
+strange countries for to see; she merely wanted to ride down and off the
+platform.
+
+"Make it go, Split," she begged, with a trust in her big sister's
+capacity that Split would have perished rather than admit to be
+unfounded.
+
+"Will you hold on tight?" she asked Frances.
+
+The child nodded, grasping the dashboard firmly. With the ease of long
+practice, Split got to the big wheel and leaped to the ground. She had
+noticed the big stone which Baldy Bob had slipped in front of the hind
+wheel, and she fancied it was part of the reason why the stagecoach
+could not be moved.
+
+She was mistaken: it was the whole reason. And when Split had pushed and
+tugged and kicked with all her strength, laying herself flat at last and
+bracing her toes against the other wheel to get a leverage, her first
+feeling when she saw the coach move above her head was of delight at the
+unexpected. Her second was of unmixed terror; for, gaining an impetus
+from its descent on the inclined plane that led from the platform, the
+coach rattled briskly down Sutton Avenue, headed for the cañon, with
+Frank clutching the dashboard and laughing aloud in glee.
+
+Split Madigan had always fancied she could run. She never knew how
+impotent human fleetness is till she saw that lumbering coach go
+plunging swiftly and more swiftly away from her, across B Street, and
+tearing down the next hill with a speed that made her puny efforts
+laughable.
+
+Baldy Bob, emerging from the saloon on the corner with that feverishly
+distorted view of the world due to never going back home after dinner
+downtown, saw his coach come down upon him as if to demand the washing
+so long promised. If it had been morning, he would have been properly
+afraid of getting in the way of the monster let loose. But in the
+evening Bob was accustomed to the occurrence of peculiar things. So he
+ran--at that time of day he could run better than walk--out to the
+middle of the street, threw up his arms, and called hoarsely upon the
+mad thing to stop.
+
+It did--for a moment, when it came in contact with his body; but it was
+long enough for its course to be deflected from the steep hill below and
+turned northward down the comparatively level cross street.
+
+When Bob picked himself up and followed, he found a thin, white-faced,
+red-haired girl running swiftly beside him. Later he accompanied her and
+the plucky little Frank (still smiling and chuckling over her fine ride)
+up the hill to the home of Mr. Francis Madigan, where he demanded
+damages--both personal and mechanical.
+
+"And fa-ther tooked her in his own room," Frank said with shuddering
+unction, as she told the tale, "and she's in there yet!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Fom who awakened a sense of the beautiful in Frank. She and Bep
+were continually playing London Bridge, in the course of which it became
+necessary to demand:
+
+"Which would you rather have (that means, like best): a diamond horse
+covered with stars, or a golden cradle with red silk pillows?"
+
+Sentiment and the sad experience of her babyhood always prompted Frank
+to choose the cradle, of course. After which, her preference promptly
+became of no importance whatever; the whole beautiful business was put
+aside, and she was bidden to get behind Fom. She discovered later that
+whether she preferred diamonds and stars to gold and red silk, it was
+all the same: she invariably had to get behind one twin or the other,
+clasp her tightly about the waist, and pull--and pull--till the whole
+universe gave way and she plumped down on the ground with a big twin
+falling on top of her.
+
+But there was another phase of the beautiful which was far more
+satisfactory to Frank, while it lasted. Fom discovered it one day when
+Split took Dora away from her, just because the brunette twin preferred
+her lunch to the burned potatoes Split had baked in the back yard when
+they were playing emigrants. It was then, in the depths of her grief,
+that the inspiration came to her.
+
+"Shall Fom make you look awful pretty, Frank?" she asked, in the form
+which children suppose wheedles babies most successfully.
+
+Frank didn't know; she was suspicious of the hollowness of the
+beautiful and the inutility of choosing. Besides, she was making dolls'
+biscuit just then from a piece of dough Wong had given her, cutting out
+each individual bun with Aunt Anne's thimble.
+
+But Florence coaxed and threatened and bribed, and when Francis Madigan
+got home that night to dinner, he found his big porch covered with
+children gathered from blocks around. Each held in his or her hand one
+pin or more--the price of admission to the show. (Fom was a most thrifty
+and businesslike Madigan.) And the show, which he as well as they saw in
+the interval between the opening of his front door and its swift
+closing, was Frances's plump, naked body draped in a sheet, posing, with
+uplifted arms and an uncertain, apprehensive smile, on a tottering
+draped pedestal, which fell with a crash when Fom, who was crouched
+behind steadying it, beheld her father's face.
+
+"And he tooked her," with bated breath Frank repeated the monotonous
+refrain of her saga, "and he made her thwow evewy--pin--she'd made--out
+the fwont window!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As a Madigan, Frances should have been above fear. She was--except of
+the tank in the back room up-stairs. Its gurglings and chucklings were
+more than mortal four-years-old could bear at night in the dark,
+particularly after Bep had taught her to be superstitious.
+
+Bep's nature was spongy with a capacity for saturation. She took in
+every new child fad and folly. She believed in a multiplicity of
+remedies, and was ready to try a new one--on somebody else--whenever the
+occasion offered. When Frank got the whooping-cough, and used to march
+around the dining-room table, stamping in her paroxysms of coughing and
+of speechless anger at the Madigans who followed mimicking her, Bep
+decided that she would try the latest cure she had heard of. So she
+wandered down to the gas-works one day, Frank's hand in hers, to give
+her patient the benefit of breathing the heavily charged atmosphere down
+there.
+
+"How-do, Mrs. Grayson?" she greeted the gas-man's wife amiably, as she
+opened the kitchen door.
+
+Mrs. Grayson, her babies leaving her side to cluster interestedly around
+Frank, replied that she and the children were well; that the epidemic of
+whooping-cough had not reached them because they lived so far out of
+town.
+
+"Yes," assented Bep, politely; "and then, the smell of gas is so good
+for whooping-cough. That keeps 'em well. And that's why I brought Frank
+down here."
+
+Mrs. Grayson's excitable motherhood took alarm. "I never heard," she
+said quickly, "that breathing in coal-tar smells kept off
+whooping-cough."
+
+"No, neither did I, though p'r'aps it does. But it cures--I know that."
+
+"You don't mean to say--" Mrs. Grayson flew like a terrified hen for her
+chicks, lifting two by an arm each clear from the ground and hustling
+the third into the kitchen before her.
+
+"Yep, she's got it," said Bep, proudly. And Frank, feeling called upon
+to be interesting, burst into a convulsive corroboration of the glad
+tidings.
+
+"You nasty little minx!" exclaimed Mrs. Grayson, as she shut the door in
+Bep's face.
+
+"What's 'minx'?" Frank asked her sister, as they toiled up toward town
+again.
+
+"Oh, it's a wild animal," answered Bep, readily; "but she don't know how
+to say it. She's going to have bad luck, though; anybody can tell that
+by the way she walked under that ladder. I shouldn't be a bit surprised
+if every last one of her children gets the whooping-cough!"
+
+And Frank felt sorry for the Graysons. For she was sure that Bep knew
+whereof she spoke. She knew the laws of the superstitious country in
+which she dwelt, did Bep: a country where if you sing before you eat,
+you're bound to cry before you sleep; where, if you put your
+corset-waist on wrong side out, and are hardy enough to change it, you
+deserve what you're likely to get; where no sane girl will tempt
+Providence by walking on a crack; where, if you lose something, you have
+only to spit in the palm of your hand,--if you're dowered in the matter
+of saliva,--strike the tiny pool sharply, and say:
+
+    "Spit, spit, spider!
+    If you show me where my pencil is
+    I'll give you a keg of cider!"
+
+Then note the direction which the escaping particles of saliva take, and
+there you are! or, rather, there it is--the lost article.
+
+Or there it ought to be, unless you have been guilty of some inexcusable
+act, such as omitting to wish at the very instant a star is falling, or
+the first time you taste each new fruit in season, or if you have
+forgotten to say:
+
+    "Star light, star bright,
+    First star I've seen to-night,
+    I wish I may, I wish I might
+    Have the wish I wish to-night!"
+
+It was Bep who taught Frank to count white horses; to pick up a pin when
+its head was turned toward her, to let it lie when it pointed the other
+way; to bite the tea-grounds left in a cup, and declare gravely, if
+soft, that a female visitor might be expected, and, if hard, a male;
+never to cut friendship by giving or accepting a knife, a pin--indeed,
+anything sharp; and never, by any chance, to tempt the devil of bad luck
+by going out of a house by a different door than that by which she had
+entered.
+
+The versatile Frank was most teachable. When Bep was "collecting bows,"
+Frances would obligingly bow and bob for her minutes at a time, like a
+Chinese mandarin, or like some small priestess observing a solemn rite.
+What the Bad Luck was, the terrible alternative of all these
+precautions, poor Frank could form no idea. But she had come to
+associate it with the babbling tank, which seemed at night, when all was
+still, to be gurgling, "Bad Luck--Bad Luck!" threateningly at her.
+
+Then she would go over her conduct during the day, carefully
+scrutinizing her every action that might have given this chuckling Bad
+Luck a hold over her.
+
+Not a crack had been stepped on that she could remember; not a pin
+picked up that should have been let lie; not--
+
+The scream that burst from Frances one Sunday night during this
+self-catechism brought Madigan and all the family to her bedside.
+
+"What is it--what is it, child?" demanded her father.
+
+And Frank repeated like a Maeterlinck or a bobolink, holding up a
+shaking small hand whose nails Aunt Anne had trimmed that very morning:
+
+    "Monday for health,
+    Tuesday for wealth,
+    Wednesday the best day of all.
+    Thursday for cwosses,
+    Fwiday for losses--
+    Saturday no day at all.
+    And better the child had never been bawn
+    That pared its nails on a Sunday mawn!"
+
+"And fa-ther tooked Bep," remarked Frank the next day, the light of
+desire fulfilled in her eye, "and he said 'You ox!' and smacked her wif
+two fingers!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss Madigan, who was a congenital sentimentalist, her tendency
+confirmed by a long course of novel-reading, would have loved a female
+Fauntleroy, and hoped to find it in each of her brother's children in
+turn--only to be bitterly disappointed when they came to an expressing
+age.
+
+It occurred to her once to satisfy her maternal cravings--so perversely
+left ungratified amid much material that lacked mothering--with an
+imported angel-child. She chose Bombey Forrest's three-year-old brother
+for the purpose; a small manikin manufactured according to recipe by his
+mother, whom he had been taught to call "Dear-rust" in imitation of his
+pernicious progenitor; whose curls were as long, whose trousers were as
+short, whose collars were as big, whose sashes were as flaunting as
+feminine folly could make them.
+
+The Madigans hailed his advent with delight the night he was loaned to
+their aunt, in their mistaken glee fancying his visit was to themselves.
+Miss Madigan soon undeceived them. At table he sat next to that devoted
+lady, who heaped the choicest bits upon his plate of a menu which had
+been ordered solely with regard to infantile tastes. Afterward this
+maiden lady (whose genius for mothering cruel fate had condemned to
+waste its sweetness upon half a dozen mere Madigans) built card houses
+for her borrowed baby, read him the nursery rhymes that Sissy used to
+tell to Frances, confiscated Fom's Dora for his pleasure, and Split's
+book of interiors made of illustrated advertisements of furniture, which
+she had cut out and arranged tastefully upon a tissue-paper background.
+She dangled her old-fashioned enameled watch before his jaded eyes, and
+even permitted him to hold Dusie, the canary, who pecked furiously at
+the presuming hand that detained her.
+
+At this the borrowed baby set up a howl of alarm, whereupon he was given
+Sissy's jackstones--not altogether to that young lady's sorrow, for at
+that moment Split was collecting a cruel pinch or bestowing a stinging
+slap for every point in the game she had just won.
+
+To the bathing of the child Miss Madigan gave her personal attention,
+while Kate waited for the tub, into which it was her nightly task to
+coax Frances. Then, when her charge was ready for bed, the devoted aunt
+of other children sat rocking the borrowed baby softly till he fell
+asleep. The whole household hushed that night when Baby Fauntleroy
+Forrest's eyelids fell. An indignant lot of young Madigans were hustled
+off to bed that his slumbers might not be disturbed; and yet the moment
+Miss Madigan laid him, with infinite care and a sentimental smile, in
+her own bed, his eyes flew open, like the disordered orbs of a wax doll
+that has forgotten it was made to open its eyes when in a vertical
+position and keep them shut when placed horizontally. He saw a strange
+face bending over him, and he howled with terror.
+
+Miss Madigan tried to comfort him, babbling fondest baby-talk in vain.
+
+"I yant to go home!" wailed Aunt Anne's Fauntleroy.
+
+Why, no; he didn't want to go home, the lady to whom he had been loaned
+assured him. Mama was asleep and daddy was asleep and Bombey was asleep
+and the pussy was--
+
+"I yant to go home!" bellowed the borrowed baby.
+
+But how could he go home? the lady, a bit impatiently, demanded. Wasn't
+he all undressed? Did he want to go through the streets all
+undressed--fie, fie, for shame!
+
+"I yant to go home!" screamed Fauntleroy Forrest.
+
+"Sissy--Irene--some one come here and amuse this child!" called Aunt
+Anne, at her wits' end. Fauntleroy was black in the face from holding
+his breath, and his borrower was nervously exhausted by the tension of a
+day spent in attendance upon the lovely child.
+
+A troop of nightgowned Madigans came joyously in. For the edification of
+Fauntleroy, sitting up wide-eyed now in Aunt Anne's big bed, the tears
+still on his cheeks, the Madigans made monkeys of themselves till he
+dropped off asleep at last, when they were dismissed by a frazzled
+maiden lady, who was left looking at the small thing lying in her bed as
+at some strange animal whose waking she dreaded.
+
+In the middle of the night and again toward morning the Madigans heard
+Fauntleroy's frightened scream, and chuckled like the depraved young
+things they were. But when Francis Madigan got up and, candle in hand,
+his queer nightcap tumbling over his left eye, and his gaunt shadow
+covering the wall and wavering over the ceiling, came to demand of Miss
+Madigan what in thousand devils was the matter, the borrowed baby was
+thrown into convulsions; while Don, the big Newfoundland, awakened by
+the din, burst into hoarse barks that the mountains echoed and reëchoed.
+After this it seemed best to Aunt Anne to sit up in bed for the rest of
+the night, making shadow-pictures on the wall for Fauntleroy.
+
+Miss Madigan's high color had faded the next morning. Accustomed to
+unbroken sleep, she had not rested half an hour the whole night. It
+seemed that Fauntleroy Forrest was in the habit of lying across his bed
+instead of along it, and he had so terrorized the poor lady that she had
+not dared to move him, when he did fall asleep toward morning and she
+felt his toes digging into her ribs, lest he wake.
+
+"Hurry with your breakfast, Sissy," she said faintly, sipping her tea,
+"so that you can take him home before school."
+
+"Don't yant to go home!" whimpered the baby, whom the morning light and
+the presence of many small Madigans had reassured.
+
+"He could stay and play with Frank, couldn't he, Aunt Anne?" suggested
+Sissy, sweetly.
+
+Miss Madigan's look spoke volumes.
+
+"Yes, yes," cried Fauntleroy. "Don't yant to go home!"
+
+His papa would be lonesome, Miss Madigan told him, archly; and his mama
+would be lonesome, and Bombey--
+
+"Don't yant to go home!" wept the baby.
+
+"There! There!... Take him, Frank, into my room and amuse him--anything,
+only don't let him cry!" exclaimed Miss Madigan. "I'm going into Kate's
+room to lie down. I'm exhausted and--"
+
+"Did Fauntleroy disturb you, Aunt Anne?" asked Kate, sympathetically.
+
+But Miss Madigan hurried away. She was so unnerved she feared that she
+might weep. But, after nearly half an hour's trying, she found she was
+too tired to sleep, after all, and rising wearily, she went back to her
+room for the book she had been reading.
+
+The sight that met her eyes, as she opened the door, completed her
+undoing. There was Fauntleroy, with an uncomprehending grin on his
+cherubic face, pinching each separate leaf of her cherished
+sensitive-plant. Evidently the borrowed baby did not exactly understand
+the desperately funny quality of the act, but he knew it must be the
+funniest thing in the world, for the Madigans were writhing grotesquely
+in the unbounded merriment it caused.
+
+With a cry, Miss Madigan flew forward and sharply slapped the
+destructive baby hands.
+
+"I yant to go home!" screamed Fauntleroy.
+
+"Yes; and I want you to go, too," Miss Madigan declared, incensed. "Get
+his things, Sissy, this minute."
+
+"But I want him to play wif," whimpered Frank. She was not so slow but
+that she could learn the lesson Fauntleroy's success taught.
+
+Miss Madigan looked at her a moment. "Oh, you do!" she ejaculated
+sarcastically. "You haven't sisters enough--you want more noise and
+confusion in this house!"
+
+The wise Madigans looked from her to one another and merely thought
+things. There was sadly little of the "angel child" about them. Their
+intuition was keen enough to penetrate their aunt's secret wishes and
+tastes, and they were occasionally tempted, for the spoils to be gotten
+out of it, to play up to that lady's ideals. But Aunt Anne was
+considered almost too easy by the Madigans, whom honor restricted to
+those foemen worthy of their steel. Frances was the only one who could,
+without losing caste, cater to her aunt's well-known and deeply detested
+sentimentality.
+
+She did for a time, and it was from Miss Madigan that she learned her
+famous accomplishment. It was sung, or rather droned, and it went like
+this:
+
+    "B--A--Ba,
+    B--E--Be,
+    B--I--Bi--
+    Ba--Be--Bi;
+    B--O--Bo,
+    Ba--Be--Bi--Bo,
+    B--U--Bu,
+    Ba--Be--Bi--Bo--Bu!"
+
+Intoxicated by success, Frank sang this subtle ditty one day for Francis
+Madigan. He listened to it with that puzzled expression which his
+children's vagaries brought to his lined, stern face.
+
+"Who taught you that nonsense, Frances?" he demanded sternly when she
+had finished.
+
+Frank began to whimper. This was not the effect she had intended to
+produce.
+
+"Who told you to say that gibberish?" her father repeated angrily.
+
+Frank stammered the answer.
+
+"And he tooked her--" she began her account of the incident afterward.
+
+"Oh, you awful little liar!" interrupted a chorus of Madigans.
+
+And Frank laughed with them. How she would have completed the sentence,
+if she had been permitted, she herself did not know.
+
+
+
+
+A READY LETTER-WRITER
+
+
+Split threw herself with a bump against Miss Madigan's door. It remained
+unansweringly closed.
+
+"Where's Aunt Anne?" she asked Sissy, whom she had nearly walked over as
+she sat playing jackstones in the hall.
+
+Sissy looked up. Assuming a rigidly erect position and scholastically
+correct finger-movement, she mimicked her aunt at her desk so faithfully
+that Split could almost see the close-lined pages of Miss Madigan's
+ornate handwriting on the carpet where her disrespectful niece pretended
+to trace it.
+
+"Scribbling, huh?" Split asked.
+
+Sissy nodded.
+
+Split shrugged her shoulders impatiently. She had intended to ask a
+favor of Aunt Anne, but she knew how useless it would be now. So she
+pushed past Sissy, entered the room softly, and returned with a
+long-trained grenadine skirt.
+
+Sissy's round eyes opened enviously. "Did she say you could have it?"
+she asked.
+
+A muffled sound which could be variously interpreted came from Split,
+who was throwing the skirt over her head.
+
+"Did she?" persisted Sissy, putting her jackstones in her pocket and
+rising emulatively.
+
+But Irene was doubling fold after fold of the skirt in front to shorten
+it; behind her the train billowed with an elegance that sent ecstatic
+thrills through her and a passion of envy through her sister.
+
+"Is she writing yet?" Sissy asked at length.
+
+Irene nodded. She was cinching her sash tight about the waist, so that
+her trained skirt might not come off in the ardor of "playing lady."
+When Sissy disappeared, and reappeared with her aunt's claret-colored
+poplin, Split was catching up her train with a grace that was simply
+ravishing as she rustled away.
+
+"What'll you say to her--afterward?" called Sissy after her, prudently
+facing the future, even in the height of delight induced by feeling
+ruffles about her feet.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "A train meant domesticity and dignity to Sissy. In
+      Split it bred and fostered a spirit of coquetry"]
+
+"Pouf!" A train meant domesticity and dignity to Sissy. In Split it bred
+and fostered a spirit of coquetry; she believed herself to be very
+French in long skirts. "I'll just say she said 'Yes' when I asked her.
+She never knows what she says when she's writing."
+
+Sissy nodded understandingly, and rustled in a most ladylike manner
+after her senior. The twins saw the two beautiful creatures swishing
+down the front steps, bound for the street to show their glory and feel
+the peacock's delight in dragging his tail in the dust.
+
+"Did she say you could have 'em?" they shrieked.
+
+And Sissy responded with that quick imitative gesture that signified
+scribbling.
+
+With a light on their faces such as the Goths might have worn when
+pillaging Rome, the twins made for the treasure-house. A few moments
+later they rustled gorgeously down the steps, followed by Frances,
+wearing her aunt's embroidered red flannel petticoat. Unfortunately,
+Frank's heels caught in this, as she too strutted worldward, and down
+she fell, bumping from step to step, gaining momentum as she bumped, and
+threatening to roll clear down to Taylor Street, and so on down, down
+into the cañon, if she had not bumped safely at last into the twins.
+They, hearing her coming, had turned their backs and joined hands, and
+catching hold of the shaky banister on each side, presented a natural
+bulwark beyond which Frances and her bumps and shrieks might not pass.
+
+And through it all Miss Madigan wrote.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss Madigan was writing letters. Indeed, Miss Madigan was always
+writing letters. In any emergency she might be trusted to concoct a long
+and literary epistle, which she rephrased, edited, and copied till she
+felt all an author's satisfaction.
+
+For the Madigans' Aunt Anne was afflicted with _cacoëthes scribendi_,
+and was never so happy as when there was a letter to be written--except
+when she was actually writing it. But the heartlessness of the merely
+literary was very far indeed from Miss Madigan's ideal. She had the
+happiness to believe that, besides being very beautiful, her letters
+were most useful--in fact, indispensable. When everything else failed
+she wrote a letter. When that failed she wrote another.
+
+A Malthusian consequence of her epistolary fertility, it might be
+feared, would be the necessary exhaustion of correspondents. But Miss
+Madigan's was a soul above the inevitable, as well as a pen divorced
+from the practical. On those occasions when the future of her nieces
+pressed itself questioningly upon that lady's mind she met the threat by
+declaring firmly to herself that she would "do her duty to those
+motherless children." It happened that her duty was her pleasure. It was
+her dissipation to suffer--on paper. In letters she enjoyed being
+miserable. No relative, therefore, however distant, no acquaintance,
+however slight, was exempt from this epistolary plague. To take the
+darkest view, most genteelly expressed; to make the most forthright and
+pitiful appeal in a ladylike and polished phrase; to picture the
+inevitable and speedy alternative if her plea were disregarded; and then
+to sign herself, "With a thousand apologies, and the assurance that only
+the extreme need of some one's doing something for poor Francis's
+children would bring me to trouble you again,"--this was Miss Madigan's
+vice. And she was as intemperate in yielding to it as only the viciously
+good can be.
+
+A rebuff, absolute silence, even the return of her letter unopened,
+produced in her not the slightest diminution of faith in the power of
+her pen. Invariably when she mailed a letter she was so struck by her
+own summing up of the situation that she felt there could not be the
+smallest doubt of a favorable response. He who read it must be
+convinced. If he was not, why, there was but one thing to do--write to
+him again. If not to him, to another. And the Madigans were a prolific
+family, its members widely scattered and differentiated--an ideal
+clientele for a ready letter-writer.
+
+So Miss Madigan wrote. Her wardrobe was pillaged, her privacy violated,
+yet she knew it not, or knew it only as one is aware of the buzzing of
+gnats when he rides his hobby through a cloud of them.
+
+But there came an interruption which she was compelled to heed.
+
+"Anne, I say!"
+
+Miss Madigan's busy pen paused. It seemed to her that there was unusual
+irritation in her brother's irascible voice. Was it possible that he had
+knocked before, or was there--
+
+The door opened in answer to her call, and Madigan stalked in. At sight
+of the open letter he held, Miss Madigan hastily covered the one she was
+writing.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "Stamping ... in a frenzy"]
+
+"Perhaps," said her brother, suppressed rage vibrating in his voice, "it
+may be a change for you to _read_ letters. Read that!" He threw the page
+on the desk before her, banging his knuckles upon it in an excess of
+fury.
+
+She took up the letter, a pretty rosy pink dyeing her cheeks (she was
+one of those old maids whose exquisitely delicate complexions retain a
+babylike freshness) as her eyes met the expression:
+
+    Anne was always a sot where her pen was concerned. The
+    habit's growing on her; she can evidently no more
+    resist it than Miles could the bottle.
+
+"It must be from Nora Madigan," she exclaimed, recognizing the touch.
+
+"Yes, it is from Nora, and it incloses one of your own. There it is."
+
+He threw down before the ready letter-writer a composition which had
+cost her much labor, the thought of many days, upon which she had based
+unnumbered hopes and built air-castles galore, none of which, to do the
+poor lady justice, was intended directly for her own habitation.
+
+She took the letter and spread it out carefully before her; these
+epistolary children of hers were tenderly dear to Miss Madigan. Her eye
+caught a phrase here and there that appeared to be singularly
+felicitous. This one, for instance:
+
+    Poor Francis, of course, knows nothing about this
+    letter. I am writing to you, my dear cousin, relying as
+    much upon your discretion as upon your generosity.
+
+Or this one:
+
+    And Cecilia--she is really talented, though a commonplace
+    creature like myself can hardly give you an idea in just
+    what direction.
+
+Or this one:
+
+    As to Irene, apart from her voice, which is really
+    exceptional, she is Francis over again--Francis as he
+    was, a high-spirited, reckless, devil-may-care fellow,
+    winning and tyrannical, as we all remember him in the
+    old days when the world was young.
+
+Or even this:
+
+    I am afraid Kate will have to teach school, young as
+    she is. I can't tell you how I dread the long years of
+    drudgery I see before this slender, spirited child--she
+    is little more than that. Think, Miles, of these
+    motherless children growing up in this wretched hole
+    without the smallest advantage, and, if you can, help
+    them; or get some one else to. Couldn't you take Kate
+    into your own family? I'm sure she'd marry well, and
+    Nora wouldn't be troubled with her long. She's really
+    very pretty. Or couldn't you send me a little something
+    to spend on clothes for her? Or couldn't Nora be
+    persuaded to send her--
+
+"Well," thundered Madigan, standing over her, "it must be pretty
+familiar to you. Suppose you read what Nora says."
+
+Miss Madigan put her own letter away with a sigh. It was really
+unaccountable that Miles could have resisted it.
+
+     "Miles passed away six weeks ago,"
+
+she read aloud in an awed voice.
+
+    "He had been ailing all spring. This letter, which came
+    a fortnight since, I opened, of course, and return it
+    to you that you may be made aware (if you are not
+    already) of the demands Anne makes upon comparative
+    strangers.
+
+    "For myself, I regret very much that your affairs are in
+    such a bad state. Anne says that there are six of your
+    children, all girls; but that can't be true--she always
+    loved to exaggerate miseries; it must be that her
+    writing is so illegible that--"
+
+Miss Madigan's voice rebelled. She could read aloud adverse opinions
+upon her common sense, her judgment, or her pride, but to impugn her
+penmanship was to commit the unforgivable.
+
+"I think Nora is distinctly insulting," she declared.
+
+"No!" Madigan laughed wrathfully. "Do you, now? Why, what has she said?
+Only that you're a beggar, and I'm a coward as well as a beggar, because
+I don't dare to beg in my own name."
+
+"Does she say that?" exclaimed the literal Miss Madigan, shocked.
+"Where?" Her eyes sought the letter again.
+
+"'Where'! Thousand devils--'where'!" Madigan tore it from her and threw
+it to the floor, stamping upon it in a frenzy.
+
+Sighing, Miss Madigan leaned her head on her hand. It was hard enough to
+find one's most hopeful appeal wasted, without Francis's flying into
+such a rage.
+
+A silence followed.
+
+"Look here, Anne,"--Madigan's voice was manifestly struggling to be
+calm,--"you must quit this infernal letter-writing. How could you write
+to Miles Madigan for charity, knowing that he cheated me out of my share
+of the Tomboy? Half the mine was mine. You know that, and yet you hurt
+my--"
+
+"I fail to see," responded Miss Madigan, with dignity, "why I should
+not write to my own relatives; why I should not try, for my nieces'
+sake, to knit close again the raveled ties which your eccentricities
+have--"
+
+"In order to get a box of old duds sent clear from Ireland!"
+
+"Has Nora sent a box?" asked Miss Madigan, eager as a child. "You see,
+my letter did touch her, in spite of herself. And they won't be old
+duds. They'll be handsome garments, Francis, just the thing for the
+girls' winter wardrobe. Now that Nora's in mourning--"
+
+With a crash that sent Miss Madigan's sensitive-plant rolling from its
+stand to the floor, Madigan banged the door behind him as he fled.
+
+Miss Madigan flew to the rescue, and she had begun to scoop up the
+scattered earth when her eye lighted upon a line at the end of Nora's
+letter:
+
+    As you know, Miles had only a life-interest in the
+    estate. At his death everything went to Miles Morgan.
+    Perhaps Anne would do well to apply to him. The little
+    matter of her never having seen him would not, of
+    course, stand in her way.
+
+"Of course not. Why should it?" Miss Madigan asked herself.
+
+She knelt down upon the floor in the midst of the debris and took from
+her pocket the letter that Miles Madigan had never read. With the
+slightest change, the recopying of the first page or so, why could not--
+
+Miss Madigan sat down at her desk. In a moment the steady, slow, studied
+pace of her pen was all that was heard in the disordered room, where the
+sensitive-plant lay half uprooted on the floor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Madigans were up and out. All A Street was alive with tales of them.
+In a cloud of dust due to their sweeping trains, they had swooped down
+like the gay Hieland folk they were, and captured the admiration and
+imitation of the slower, prosaic Lowlander.
+
+They had not intended to go so far, accoutred as they were; but the
+attention they attracted first challenged, then seduced the vain things
+farther and farther, till they threw caution to the winds (and a
+boisterous Washoe zephyr was abroad) and sallied shamelessly forth. In
+their immediate train they carried Jack Cody, clothed and in his right
+sex, and Bombey Forrest, beating her drum. Crosby Pemberton slunk
+unrecognized in the rear.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "Madigan banged the door behind him as he fled"]
+
+In the van was Sissy victrix. She had cut her adorer dead, dead, dead,
+and she now felt that resultant reckless uplift of spirits which is the
+feminine corollary to demonstration of power (preferably unjust and
+tyrannical) over the other sex.
+
+"Let's try to see the walking-match," she suggested to Split.
+
+"How can we, with all that tagging after us?"
+
+With a sweeping gesture to the rear, Split indicated the trained twins
+and Frances holding up her torn petticoat. Frank was bruised but
+beaming; in fact, she had never felt so much a Madigan, for she had
+never before been out on a raid.
+
+"Let 'em tag," cried Sissy, gaily; her blood was up, and she knew no
+obstacles.
+
+Down a clay-bank, into a vacant lot strewn with tin cans, slid the
+Madigans. Their trains hampered them, and, once started, only speed
+could save them. But they were not Comstockers and Madigans for nothing.
+Jack Cody, who had arrived first on the field, caught each whirling,
+dwarf-like figure as it came flying down, holding it a moment to steady
+it before he put it aside in order to receive the next female
+projectile.
+
+Sissy was the last, and Cody, by way of flourish to mark the conclusion
+of his labors, lifted Split's little sister, train and all, as he caught
+her, with a whoop of satisfaction.
+
+His whoop was cut short abruptly, and he set her down, his ears
+tingling. For Sissy, outraged in her sense of dignity as well as in the
+offish prudery that characterized her, declined to accept patronage as
+anybody's little sister, and boxed his ears as well as she could in the
+short time given to her.
+
+Cody looked at her. It was really the first time he had regarded her as
+an unrelated individual. "Ye know what a boy does when a girl strikes
+him," he threatened, a laughing glitter in his bold black eye that made
+Sissy's heart jump.
+
+But she held herself very primly, and the masking puritan in her voice
+quelled him. "If he's a coward--yes," she responded haughtily, hurrying
+on.
+
+The boy looked after her as he joined Split. "She's funny--your sister,"
+he said lamely.
+
+"Who--Sissy? Oh, she's always cranky," said Irene, with Madigan candor
+when a relative was criticized.
+
+They hurried on. The barn-like opera-house is built uphill, like all
+buildings on Virginia City's cross-streets, and it seems to burrow into
+as well as climb the hill. In the rear, on the side where its boards
+were unpainted and unplaned, certain knots had been converted into
+knot-holes by the initiated.
+
+Sissy was already on her knees, her eye glued to one of these apertures.
+All she could see was a short curve of empty seats, a man's shoulder and
+another's hat, a long space, and then the passing of a neat, long pair
+of women's gaiters unhidden by skirts, and soon after the nervous
+following of a smaller pair of women's ties.
+
+"Why," she said, with a deep blush, fixing one eye upon the company,
+while the other blinked from the strain put upon it, "they're women!
+It's a women's walking-match."
+
+"Sure," said Cody, without withdrawing his attention for a moment from
+the view inside. "The big, long feet belong to the one they call La
+Tourtillotte. She's French. The German one's Von Hagen."
+
+"I think it's a shame," gasped Sissy. "Let's go home, Split."
+
+Split, at her own particular knot-hole, affected not to hear. But Crosby
+Pemberton, perched in the elbow of some long scantlings bracing the
+building, took heart at Sissy's words.
+
+"It isn't respectable, Sissy," he called to her. "No ladies go. Your
+aunt wouldn't like it."
+
+This was fatal. At his voice Sissy hardened, and with a gulp of disgust
+she resolutely turned her attention to her knot-hole. In fact, as Crosby
+reiterated his advice, she felt called upon more spectacularly to ignore
+it, and seeing a more commanding and spacious knot-hole farther up, she
+mounted upon a big dry-goods box, and from there seated herself in a
+lone poplar, the apple of the proprietor's eye.
+
+This was better, and in a sense it was also worse; for Sissy could
+plainly see La Tourtillotte, a gaunt, businesslike creature in short
+rainy-day skirt and sweater, her long, thin arms going like
+pump-handles, her dark, tense face set upon a goal which seemed ever to
+flee before her as her weary feet carried her slowly and still more
+slowly around the circular track.
+
+Despite her shocked sense of propriety,--and the lawless young Madigans
+had very strict ideas as to the conventions for adults,--the ardor of
+the struggle, the uncertainty of the issue, seized upon Sissy. She heard
+a swift call from Irene, some distance below, and was vaguely aware that
+the company, skirted and otherwise, was beating a retreat. But the
+smaller of the two contestants, on the other side of the knot-hole, had
+just come within the field of Sissy's rude lens. It was pitiable to see
+the haggard look on the German woman's plump face, the childish
+breakdown imminent behind the woman's staring eyes that met the bored
+glance of the male spectators doggedly, though her stout little body was
+still being carried resolutely, sluggishly, painfully along.
+
+Sissy's hands flew to her breast. Something hurt her there, cried out to
+her, threatened her. She was furious with rage and choked with
+sympathetic sobs. She wanted to hurt somebody, and Jack Cody's insistent
+whistle, which kept sounding the retreat, so irritated and confused her
+that she fancied it was he that she would have liked to beat, as a
+representative of his cruel sex. But when she looked down, at last awake
+to the world on this side of the knot-hole, she saw Crosby Pemberton on
+the box at her feet, and knew who it was that she longed to punish for
+his own sins and every other man's.
+
+"Quick--quick, Sissy! He's coming!" he cried, tugging at her skirt.
+
+"Who? Go 'way!" Sissy stamped viciously, as she stood clinging to a
+limb; yet in that very instant she had seen that all the Madigans and
+their train had fled, save this poor servitor at her feet.
+
+"Jan Lally--oh, hurry!"
+
+Around the corner of the opera-house came a short-legged, bald little
+German, so stout and so loosely put together that, as he ran, his
+jelly-like flesh shook as though it was about to break the loose bag of
+skin that held it. It was Lally's opera-house, and Lally was come to
+catch trespassers in the act of seeing without paying.
+
+Sissy's heart jumped to her throat. In the course of their maraudings,
+the Madigans were not unaccustomed to a stern-chase and a lively one,
+yet now it seemed to her that strategy was the watchword. Perched high
+up in the tree, hidden by its foliage, who would notice her--if only
+Crosby would go away!
+
+But Crosby would not budge. He begged, he implored, he became confused
+in trying to explain to her her danger, and at last burst into bitter
+tears as he felt Lally's fat, moist hand upon his collar, and saw a
+hereafter peopled with wrathful motherly faces in various stages of
+disgust and despair.
+
+"You come vid me. I gif you to Riddle. He lock you oop, you bat boy!"
+
+A suppressed giggle of pleasure, at the thought of neat little Crosby
+in the hands of the constable, shook Sissy, perched snugly like a
+malicious little bird in the tree. It served him right, she said to
+herself gleefully, ascribing the basest motives to Crosby, as one loves
+to do when one's friends are not in good standing with one's self. He
+had had no business to hang around and point the way to her
+hiding-place!
+
+"Oh, I say, Jan, let me off!" begged Crosby, white with terror of the
+jail--and his lady mother. "I'll never peek again, sure I won't!"
+
+"Nu! You come vid me. And _you_, too!"
+
+Sissy looked down. Was it possible there was another laggard whom she
+had not seen?
+
+"I say--you, too!" bellowed Lally. "Vill you come now?"
+
+In the very certainty of security a sudden panic fell upon Sissy. If she
+only dared to move, to reassure herself! Of course it couldn't mean
+herself--oh!
+
+She felt a sudden tug that almost dislodged her. "You t'ink I don't
+see--huh?" shouted the perspiring Teuton below. "What for you leave dis
+trail hang down den--hey?" And he tugged again.
+
+With a sickly remnant of dignity Sissy stepped down and out. She had
+forgotten her train--the train that had been at once her pride and her
+undoing.
+
+"We--I was playing lady," she explained, trembling.
+
+"Oop a tree--huh? Peeking t'rough knot-holes--yes? A fine lady! I fix
+you."
+
+A glow of defiance came to Sissy's cheeks. "I don't care," she cried,
+stamping her foot as she stood enthroned on the dry-goods box, her train
+about her. "It's a nasty, cruel show, anyway, and you couldn't hire me
+to come and see it. You ought to be ashamed, Mr. Lally! How'd you like
+it if your wife was staggering along in there without sleeping or eating
+for six days?"
+
+Mr. Jan Lally's purple face looked as though it had been slapped. What
+had Mrs. Lally, with all her babies and busy housekeeping, to do with
+business? He was so astonished and perplexed by the sudden onslaught
+that the wriggling Crosby managed to slip out of his grasp, and got to a
+safe distance before Lally realized it.
+
+"Nu!" he grunted. "I cou'n't hire you--no? Vell, you come mitout hire. I
+show _you_."
+
+Sissy felt herself lifted down without ceremony and dragged off. Her
+round face was white, her heart was beating like the stamps at the
+Chollar pan-mill. Yet her train trailed after her still in mock dignity.
+So did Crosby, at a respectful distance, fearing to follow, yet, though
+helpless, incapable of desertion. But at the entrance to the opera-house
+the door was shut in his face.
+
+Sissy and her captor entered. The stage had been built out over the pit,
+and in the very first row of the dress-circle, the rim of which was the
+boundary of the contestants' suffering feet, Jan Lally sat down, with
+Sissy at his side.
+
+Ah, to sit in the front row of the dress-circle! To feel the opulence of
+one's enviable position, as well as the artistic delight of being
+properly placed where one could miss nothing, while the brass band
+outside the opera-house played its third and last quick, jubilant
+invitation to pleasure--so tantalizing to the outsider, so gratifying to
+the fortunate one within!
+
+Many and many a time had Sissy Madigan waited, during first and second
+bands, for some miracle to set her where she now sat! Many a time had
+the third selection been played, the players with their instruments
+filed into Paradise, and the poor Madigan peri remained shut outside.
+
+But now Cecilia hung her head, shamed by being caught; shamed by
+punishment; shamed trebly by the fact that, apart from those poor
+sexless, half-maddened machines tottering feverishly around and forever
+around, she, Sissy Madigan, the proud, the pure, the proper, was the one
+thing womanly in the house!
+
+It was not a full house by any means, and only the men immediately next
+to her seemed aware of her presence. Yet, with a consciousness that
+seared her soul and humbled the pride of the childish prude as with a
+stain upon her purity, Sissy felt the compounded, composite gaze of man
+upon woman out of place. It withered, it scorched, it stung her.
+
+But finally Von Hagen, the little German woman, going the round of her
+maddening treadmill, reached the spot where Sissy sat. The sight of a
+child there, of a bare, bowed, neat little head in the midst of that
+inclosure of men's cold eyes, seemed to be the last touch needed to
+overthrow her tottering reason. She stopped, swaying from the
+unaccustomed cessation of motion, and held out her arms, smiling
+vacantly and babbling baby-talk in German as though to a dearly loved
+little _Mädchen_ of her own.
+
+Swift horror piled on Sissy. She had never looked into eyes from which
+sense had fled, and the sight stamped itself upon her brain with
+terrible vividness as food for future nightmares. So frightened was she
+that she was not aware of Jan Lally's relaxed hold upon her arm, which
+ached from the tight grip he had had upon it. But when the overtaxed
+body of the German woman fell in a heap almost at her feet, fright
+became action in Sissy. She flew past old Jan (his one concern now being
+for his walking-match), past the knees of the staring men, up the
+interminable center aisle, her poor train switching behind her as she
+stumbled, yet ran on, so absorbed by her suffering that she was unaware
+of the attention her queer little figure attracted, till she was out at
+last in the free air.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, punish me!" she said, when she found Aunt Anne waiting for her at
+the head of the long steps fifteen minutes later.
+
+It was a good deal for a Madigan--the nearest they ever got to _mea
+culpa_: they were not Christians.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sissy's arrival was hailed by a populous nightgowned world, sent, like
+herself, supperless for its sins to the purgatory of early bedtime.
+Split came stealing in from the other room, bringing Frank along that
+she might not cry and betray her elder sister's movements--a successful
+sort of blackmail the youngest Madigan often practised. And later, Kate,
+looking most conventional and full-dressed in this nightgowned society,
+brought succor for the starving. They munched chocolate and camped
+comfortably, three on each bed, while Sissy told her adventures. When
+she came to the description of Von Hagen's fall, though still shuddering
+at the memory, she acted the incident so dramatically that Frances set
+up a howl, which was, however, most fortunately drowned by the ringing
+of the front-door bell.
+
+Split started to answer it, but her nightgowned state gave her pause.
+"Perhaps father'll go," she suggested.
+
+Kate shook her head. "He didn't come to dinner; he's been shut up in his
+room all day."
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Sissy. An old look, that washed all the
+self-satisfaction from her round face, came over it now.
+
+Kate shrugged her shoulders. "Something he and Aunt Anne talked about
+to-day," she answered, as she went out into the hall with the air of a
+martyr.
+
+Sissy looked owlishly after her. Though Francis Madigan rarely ate
+anything that was prepared for the family dinner, she could remember
+the rare times when he had absented himself from it, and feel again the
+usually ignored undercurrent of the realities upon which their young
+lives flowed full and free.
+
+But things happened too quickly at the Madigans', and to be preoccupied
+to the exclusion of one's sisters was one of the forms of affectation
+not to be tolerated. Split threw a pillow at her head, and the fight was
+in progress when Kate called for volunteers to bring in a big box from
+Ireland, left by a drayman who was fiercely resentful of the
+extraordinary approach to the Madigan house.
+
+Like a lot of white-robed Lilliputians, they tugged and hauled till they
+got it into the parlor. But when they had lighted the tall,
+old-fashioned lamp that they called "the lighthouse" they were disgusted
+to find that the box was addressed to "Miss Madigan, Virginia City,
+Nevada, California, U. S. A."
+
+"Some people don't know anything about geography," sniffed Sissy.
+
+"Well,--" Kate had been thinking,--"I'm Miss Madigan."
+
+"Whoop--hooray!" The shout came from the twins. They were off into the
+kitchen for Wong's hatchet, and when they pressed it obligingly into
+Kate's hand, that young lady saw no way but to make use of it.
+
+"Girls--it's clothes!" she exclaimed, her starved femininity reveling in
+the quantity of material before her.
+
+"Boys' clothes," said Split, holding up a full-kneed pair of
+knickerbockers and a belted jacket. "Well!" With a philosophical grin,
+she began to put them on.
+
+"And ladies' clothes!" cried Sissy, dragging forth a long black cape.
+"'Here would I rest,'" she chanted, draping it about her and
+lugubriously mimicking Professor Trask as the Recluse in "The Cantata of
+the Flowers."
+
+"Let's do it! Let's sing 'The Flowers,'" cried Irene, shaking herself
+into some Irish boy's jacket.
+
+"Not much!" Sissy planted herself against the door, as though physical
+compulsion had been threatened.
+
+"Oh, yes, Sissy," begged Fom. "Bep and I can sing the Heliotrope and
+Mignonette. Frank can be a Poppy, and we can double up and--"
+
+"I'll be the Rose," put in Kate, quickly. She had a much-feathered hat
+on her head and a crocheted lace shawl about her shoulders.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "'Here would I rest,' she chanted"]
+
+"_I_'ll be the Rose." Split, corrupted by her body's boyish environment,
+stretched her legs apart defiantly. "You can't sing it; you know you
+can't, Kate. You never could get up to G. If I'm not the Rose--"
+
+"Oh, well," said Kate, drawing on a pair of soiled, long light gloves
+she had pulled out of the box, "I'll be the Lily, then. Come on, Sis."
+
+"I won't," said Sissy, almost weeping. She knew she would. "I won't be
+the Recluse! I won't be the Recluse every time, just because you two are
+so greedy and--"
+
+"You know," said Kate, smothering a giggle, but not very successfully,
+"no one can do it as well as you."
+
+"And it's really a very important part, and the very first solo,"
+chuckled Irene. "Else why did Professor Trask take it himself?"
+
+"If it's so important," put in Sissy, grasping at a straw, "you'd better
+take it yourself. Why must I always take a man's part? And I can't sing,
+anyway."
+
+"Why, Sissy!" Split's tone was flattery incarnate, but the irony in her
+eye made her junior dance.
+
+"You know I can't," she sniffled.
+
+"But my voice and Split's go so well together in the Rose and Lily
+duet," said Kate, putting the book of the cantata upon the piano-rack
+and opening it persuasively.
+
+"You promise me every time," wailed the downtrodden Recluse, reluctantly
+moving forward, "that I won't have to be it the next time."
+
+"Well, you won't next time," said Kate, generously. "Will she, Split?"
+
+"Well, I won't sing it this time," declared Sissy, seating herself at
+the piano, yet making a last stand at the very guns.
+
+But Kate and Irene burst forth in the opening chorus with all the verve
+in the world. The Madigans never scorned expression when it was
+understood that they were acting. And the twins, still pulling stage
+properties out of the box, and even Frances, fantastically decorated
+with a torn Irish lace fichu over the bifurcated, footed white garment
+she still wore o' nights, joined joyfully in:
+
+    "'We are the flowers,
+    The fair young flowers,
+    That come at the voice of spring--'
+    DING--DONG!"
+
+It was a familiar old Madigan joke, always greeted with a shriek of
+laughter, to shout out the two notes of the accompaniment that
+punctuated the musical phrases. Its observance now put even Sissy in
+good humor, so that when the time came for the Recluse to make his
+appearance, she left the piano, and stalking miserably about with the
+preliminary cough with which the unfortunate Professor Trask was
+afflicted, she sang her doleful recitative.
+
+The Madigans were never literalists. They were of the impressionistic
+school, which requires of the audience, as well as of the artist, high
+imaginative powers. And here the audience of one moment was the actor of
+the next, whose duty it was not to mind too closely the letter that
+killeth, but to mimic irreverently, to exaggerate, to make of themselves
+caricatures of the mannerisms of others, to nickname, to seize upon
+every peculiarity with their quick, observant, cruel young eyes and
+paint it in flesh-and-blood cartoons.
+
+Thus, when the Rose, that "gentle flower in which a thorn is oft
+concealed," sang her duet with the Nightingale (Sissy trilling weakly on
+the piano, while Frank fluted her fingers affectedly as she had seen it
+done that memorable night) it was done in the hollow, throaty tones of
+the elder Miss Blind-Staggers, who had created the rôle; while the Lily
+sang through her nose, which she wiped every now and then in a manner
+unmistakably that of Henrietta Blind-Staggers.
+
+"The Cantata of the Flowers" was never brought to a glorious completion
+by the Madigans, even though they skipped uninteresting and difficult
+parts, and, like the early Elizabethans, permitted no intermission
+between acts. It was very often laughed to death. At times it became a
+saturnalia of extravagant action, and it frequently ended in a free
+fight, when the Rose and the Lily hinted too openly at the Recluse's
+incurable tendency to sing off key. But that night it might have dragged
+its saccharine length of melody to the coronation of the Rose and a
+quick curtain if Miss Madigan had not walked right into the thick of it.
+
+"Golly!" gasped Sissy, while Irene dodged behind Kate, who quickly
+turned down the lamp, and a hush fell upon the rest.
+
+But Miss Madigan had been writing, or rather rewriting, letters. She had
+completely forgotten the heinous offense of the afternoon.
+
+"Will you mail a letter for me, Sissy, the first thing in the morning?"
+she asked, still preoccupied. "Why are you in the dark?"
+
+"We're just going to bed," remarked Sissy, with soothing demureness,
+taking the envelope from her aunt's hand and falling in with her mood,
+as one does with the mentally afflicted.
+
+When Miss Madigan, fatigued with the labor of composition, had gone back
+to her room, Kate turned up the light again. "Same thing, I s'pose?" she
+asked. "Circumstances-letter--huh?"
+
+"I s'pose so. 'T ain't sealed," said Sissy, with resignation. "But she
+always forgets to seal 'em." Then, suddenly inspired, she caught up
+Professor Trask's pencil lying on the piano, and on the vacant half-page
+at the end of Miss Madigan's letter she wrote in her best school-girl
+hand:
+
+    You--whoever you are--needn't bother to answer this.
+    None of us Madigans wants your help or annybody else's.
+    It 't only that Aunt Anne's got the scribbles, and
+    we'll thank you to mind your own buisness.
+
+                                           _Sissy Madigan._
+
+She read her composition to the startled but, on the whole, approving
+Madigans, sealed the letter, and was ready for bed.
+
+They were all scampering through the long hall playing leap-frog--a
+specialty of Split's which her present costume facilitated--when
+Francis Madigan, candle in hand, came out of his room on his usual tour
+of nightly inspection. His short-sighted eyes fell upon Irene, a pretty,
+lithe, wavy-haired boy, before she and the twins bolted.
+
+"What boy have you got there?" he demanded. "Send him home."
+
+Kate took Frances up in her arms and covered the retreat; she knew how
+much the better part of valor was discretion.
+
+Sissy remained standing, looking up at him. When she was alone with her
+father she was conscious of her poor little barren favoriteship, though
+she dared not impose upon it. In the candle-light his harsh, rugged
+features stood out marked with lines of suffering.
+
+"It's all right, father," she said, with a quick choice of the lesser
+irritation for him. "He'll go--right away. Good night."
+
+"Good night, child."
+
+But she walked a step or two with him, slipping her hand at last into
+his, and pressing it tenderly.
+
+"Is--anything the matter, father?" she whispered.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "She walked a step or two with him"]
+
+He threw back his head as though some one had struck him. It was not
+difficult to guess from whom the Madigans had inherited their fanatical
+desire to conceal emotion.
+
+Sissy was terrified at what she had done, yet the vague trouble lay
+quivering before her, though still unnamed, in his working face.
+
+"Father--I'm sorry," she sobbed.
+
+He pushed her from him, but gently, and she crept into her bed and
+pulled the clothes over her head, that the twins might not hear her
+strangled sobbing.
+
+
+
+
+"THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN"
+
+
+With a shrill whistle of recognition, Jack Cody ran down the hill to
+meet Split toiling up.
+
+The air is like ethereal champagne in Virginia City, and on a late
+summer's evening, after the sun's honeyed freshness has been strained
+through miles of it, it has a quality that makes playing outdoors
+intoxicating.
+
+Split, though, had not been playing. There was business on hand and she
+had been downtown to buy eggs for the picnic, with the usual result. She
+had never yet succeeded in bringing home an unbroken dozen, nor did she
+ever hope to; but she was really out of temper at the extraordinary
+dampness of the paper bag, to which her two hands adhered stickily. She
+walked slowly upward, holding the eggs far in front of her like a votive
+offering to the culinary gods, unconscious of the betraying yellow
+streaks that beaded her blue gingham apron.
+
+"Where you been, Split?" asked Cody, by way of an easy opening.
+
+"Down to the grocery. Mrs. Pemberton's not laying decently these days."
+
+"Mrs. Pemberton!"
+
+"Sissy's gray hen, you know. Sissy called her that 'cause she's so
+stuck-up and thinks she's better than any other hen in the yard.
+Besides, she's got only one chicken, and bosses him for all the world
+like Crosby."
+
+Cody nodded. "What time you going to start in the morning? Six?"
+
+"Uh-huh." Split dared not lift her eyes from the sticky trail that
+exuded from her.
+
+"Sure?" the boy demanded.
+
+"Sure--if only father don't keep us so long to-night that we can't get
+ready. We've got to be martyred to-night," she added gloomily.
+
+Cody looked his resentment and sympathy. Delicacy and the fear of
+betraying some social disability on his own part of which he was
+unaware--some neglect of training which might be considered essential in
+well-regulated families--forbade his inquiring precisely what the
+process was. To him "martyring" meant some queer rite whose main and
+malicious purpose it was to keep Split indoors of an evening when the
+high mountain twilight was going to be long, long; and when the moon
+that followed it would be so brilliant that one might read by its
+light--if he weren't too wise, and too fond of hide-and-seek--out in the
+silver-flooded streets made vocal by childish cries.
+
+"But it can't last the whole evening?" he asked appealingly, as she
+prepared to mount the steps, always accompanied by the silent yellow
+witness of her passing.
+
+She shook her head hopelessly, sniffing in a manner that showed plainly
+how little reliance she placed upon the generosity and judgment of
+adults. And Cody walked away, haunted by the tormenting vision of Split
+flying before him through the moonlit night: the only girl in town who
+had any originality about choosing hiding-places, or who could make a
+race worth while.
+
+The family was assembled when Split reached the library and sat down,
+rebelliously sullen, beside Sissy. That young woman, though, wore an
+expression of purified patience, a submissive willingness to kiss the
+rod, that was eminently appropriate, however infuriating to the junior
+Madigans. But Sissy had known that it was coming. She could have
+foretold the martyrdom; all the signs of yesterday prophesied it, and
+she was reconciled.
+
+It followed invariably that after the rare occasions when the pitiful
+curtain of his egotism had been blown aside by some chance breeze of
+destiny, and Francis Madigan had stood for a moment face to face with
+himself and his shirked responsibilities, he made the spasmodic effort
+to fulfil his paternal obligations, which the Madigans had learned to
+call their "martyring." He took from his library the book which had been
+most to him, which he had read all his life: for inspiration when he had
+been young and hopeful, for philosophy now that he was old and a
+failure. He was sincere in offering to his children the fruit of a great
+mind with comments by one that was sympathetic, able if not deep, and
+genuinely eager, for the moment, to share its enthusiasm.
+
+But the sight of all this helpless though secretly critical womanhood
+disposed attentively about him invariably, through association of ideas,
+brought to his mind every similar and abortive attempt he had made in
+this direction. When he opened the book to read aloud to them, he was
+always irritated, with that deep-seated irascibility which has its
+foundation in self-discontent, however externals may influence or add to
+it.
+
+Whatever Francis Madigan might have been, he was never intended for a
+pedagogue. His impatience of stupidity, his irritation at the slow,
+stumbling steps of immaturity, not to speak of his lack of judgment in
+his selection and his determination to persevere in reading aloud from
+the book of his choice, if he had to ram undigested wisdom whole into
+the mental stomachs of his offspring--all this would have deterred a
+less obstinate man. But Madigan, who had become a bully through weakness
+(forced to domineer unsuccessfully in his home by the conquering
+softness of his sister's disposition), had the bully's despairing
+consciousness of being in the wrong at the very moment of superficial
+victory; of being powerless in the very act of imposing himself upon his
+poor little women-folk; of recognizing the fact that, although he might
+lead them to the fountain of knowledge, he was unable to make them
+drink; and yet not daring to hesitate in his bullying, for fear that he
+might do nothing at all if he did not do this.
+
+Now that his conscience was quickened, Madigan insisted to himself that
+the culture of his daughters' minds must be attended to. So he read
+aloud from "The Martyrdom of Man"; and enjoyed the sound of his
+voice--the irresistible accents of the cultured Irishman--a pleasure
+which the world shared with him; but not a martyred world of small
+women, over whose heads the long-sounding, musical periods of the
+poet-historian rolled, dropping only an occasional light shower of
+intelligence upon the untilled minds below.
+
+"We will begin where we left off the last time," Madigan said harshly.
+He remembered how long it had been since "last time," and how much his
+audience had had time to forget. "Where was that? Were any of you
+interested enough to remember?"
+
+Miss Madigan looked up from her work, like an amiable but very silly hen
+who pretends to make a mental effort, yet, unfortunately, has nothing to
+make that effort with. Kate, with the consciousness that she was really
+the only one of Madigan's children capable of following the line of the
+historian's thought, flushed guiltily. Irene sat like a prisoner,
+looking out into the balmy evening. She could hear cries of "Free home!
+Free home!" from down yonder in the paradise of the streets, in Crosby
+Pemberton's voice. Even Crosby, whose unnatural mother was the only lady
+of Split's acquaintance who was prejudiced against playing in the
+streets--even Crosby was out. While she--
+
+"It was the fall of Carthage, wasn't it, father?" asked Sissy, sweetly.
+
+If a glance from Split could have slain, Sissy had been dead. It was not
+the Madigan policy to encourage Francis Madigan in his belief that the
+seeds he sought to sow fell on fertile soil. If they had to be martyred
+in one sense, they declined to be in another. Besides, they knew and
+detested Sissy's hypocritical desire to "show off."
+
+"It was, indeed, Cecilia," said Madigan, with a pathetic softening of
+his whole being. "'Tis a fine, stirring, terrible picture the historian
+gives us of the doomed city. Ahem!... 'And then, as if the birds of the
+air had carried the news, it became known all over northern Africa that
+Carthage was about to fall. And then, from the dark and dismal corners
+of the land, from the wasted frontiers of the desert, from the snowy
+lairs and caverns of the Atlas, there came creeping and crawling to the
+coast the most abject of the human race--black, naked, withered beings,
+their bodies covered with red paint, their hair cut in strange fashions,
+their language composed of muttering and whistling sounds. By day they
+prowled around the camp, and fought with the dogs for the offal and the
+bones. If they found a skin, they roasted it on ashes, and danced
+around it in glee, wriggling their bodies and uttering abominable cries.
+When the feast was over, they cowered together on their hams, and fixed
+their gloating eyes upon the city, and expanded their blubber-lips and
+showed their white fangs. At last-'"
+
+A piercing scream came from Frances.
+
+"Thousand devils!" Madigan burst forth, enraged at the interruption.
+
+It was only that Bep and Fom, in the midst of a finger conversation
+carried on politely with a deaf-and-dumb alphabet, had had their
+attention attracted by the ghastly word-picture made so vivid by their
+father's voice. So, wearying of the innocuous desuetude of things, it
+occurred to them to present for Frank's entertainment a bodily
+representation of what the words meant to their minds. Safe in the
+obscurity of the table-cloth's circular shadow, down on the floor they
+wriggled, they prowled, they cowered and gloated and expanded their
+blubber-lips and showed their fangs. If they did not utter abominable
+cries, it was only because that particular detail was not needed to send
+the smallest Madigan into hysterics.
+
+"Leave the room!" cried Madigan. "Leave the room, you ox!" looking
+wrathfully, but generally, down at the disturbance.
+
+And three small Madigans, feeling that they had paid a small price for
+freedom, crept and crawled to the door--the most abject of the Madigan
+race till they were fairly outside, when they became the most jubilant.
+
+"'At last,'" went on Madigan, a lingering growl of resentment in his
+voice, "'the day came. The harbor walls were carried by assault and the
+Roman soldiers passed into--'"
+
+"Father," interrupted Sissy, with the exasperating air of one who knows
+how soothing she is (like many a talented person, she was irretrievably
+ruined by her first success and she felt very intelligent)--"father, in
+what part of Rome was Carthage?"
+
+Behind her father's back Split mouthed a threat of vengeance and shook
+her fist at the interested Sissy for wilfully prolonging the session.
+But at Madigan's snort of disgust, the Indian profile of Split, below
+its bushy crown of red, shone out malevolently. She did not know what
+Sissy had done; she knew only that she had done something.
+
+Sissy met her glance, and returned it with dignity. "I didn't mean that,
+father, you know," she said priggishly. "I meant, of course, in what
+part of Carthage was Rome."
+
+"Oh, you did!" Madigan's smile was not pleasant.
+
+"Ye-es," said Sissy, uncertainly.
+
+"Well," said Madigan, explosively, "Rome was in the same part of
+Carthage as Carthage was of Rome."
+
+His jaw was set now, and his glowing dark eyes beneath their white
+shaggy brows as he sought his place in the book were not encouraging.
+But the enigmatic character of his response was not enough for Sissy,
+dazed, yet greedy for glory. She glanced from Split, in whose ear Kate
+was whispering something that seemed vastly to delight her, to her
+father, who had begun to read again.
+
+"I don't remember, father, please," she said as he paused a moment to
+clear his throat. "What part was that?"
+
+A sputtering giggle broke from Split. It was unlucky, for it turned
+Madigan's wrath upon her.
+
+"Outside!" he commanded, pointing to the door. "Outside, you ox!..."
+
+"'Six days passed thus,'" the reading began again. (In almost the moment
+the door had closed behind her, Split could be heard flying down the
+outside steps two at a time. That he was sorely tried, Madigan's voice
+showed plainly, and his shrunken audience looked apprehensively at one
+another). "'Six days passed thus and only the citadel was left. It was
+a steep rock in the middle of the town; a temple of the god of healing
+crowned the summit.' The god of healing, Cecilia," he put in, with a
+contempt that mantled the perfectionist's check with a resentful red,
+"means that particular deity--"
+
+A soft little snore came from Miss Madigan. Her head had fallen to one
+side, and the lamp-light shone on her soft, pretty, high-colored face,
+placid in its repose as a baby's.
+
+In the moment that Madigan paused and looked at her, Sissy's hand sought
+Kate's in terror. But the reader controlled himself with an effort,
+remembering possibly that, after all, it was not his sister but his
+daughters he was educating.
+
+"'The rock was covered with people,'" he went on, skipping the
+explanation he had intended giving to Sissy. And he read on for some
+minutes without interruption, becoming more and more interested himself
+in the vivid picture as it unrolled, and half declaiming it in his
+enthusiasm, with a verve that accounted for Sissy's successful rendition
+of "The Polish Boy" at school entertainments. "'The trumpets sounded,'"
+he sang out. "'The soldiers, clashing their bucklers with their swords
+and uttering the war-cry _Alala! Alala!_ advanced in--'"
+
+"Mercy me!" exclaimed Miss Madigan, waked by his realistic shout, and
+blinking her bright little eyes to accustom them to the light.
+
+"Anne," said Madigan, tensely, "if you are not interested, you--are not
+obliged to listen, of course. But it would be more--civil to withdraw
+if--"
+
+"Not interested?" she repeated, with gentle surprise, as she took up her
+crocheting again. "Why, it's very interesting--most interesting; don't
+you find it so, Kate?"
+
+"'A man dressed in purple rushed out of the temple with an olive-branch
+in his hand,'" Madigan began again, all the ardor gone from his voice.
+"'This was Hasdrubal, the commander-in-chief, and the Robespierre of the
+Reign of Terror. His--'"
+
+"Missy Kate--want chocolate--picnic--" Wong stood open-mouthed in the
+doorway. Consciousness of having interrupted the master, as well as
+amazement at beholding him out of his own room after dinner, was too
+much for him.
+
+"What do you want, Wong?" demanded Madigan, harshly.
+
+"Notting--oh, notting," murmured Wong, deprecatingly. "One picnic,
+sabe, t'-malla morning."
+
+"Irene--I mean Cecilia--Thousand devils!--Kate," stormed Madigan, in his
+rage forgetting his daughter's precise appellation, "go out into the
+kitchen and give your orders. If you had the least grain of common sense
+you'd know that the first duty of a housekeeper is to have some system
+about her work; to do things at the right time and not to interrupt the
+evening's entertainment." He gulped a bit at this, though Kate's dropped
+lids quickly hid the ironical gleam in her eye. "Well, why don't you
+go--and stay? You might as well, or you'll forget something else and
+interrupt us again."
+
+A desire to make herself look very numerous, intelligent, and
+appreciative possessed Sissy as the door closed on her big sister. She
+was in the familiar frame of mind in which she disapproved of her
+sisters, yet she was terrified lest, if she gave him time, her father
+might draw the same inference that she had.
+
+"Perhaps you'll let me read aloud for a while, father. Mr. Garvan often
+has me read things to the class," she suggested quickly, when she saw he
+was about to close the book.
+
+Madigan hesitated. A succession of infuriating trifles had beat upon
+his temper till it was worn thin. But Sissy's outstretched hand
+conquered merely by suggestion. He put the book before her, pointed to
+the place, got to his feet, and began pacing to and fro.
+
+"'Carthage burned seventeen days before it was entirely consumed,'" read
+Sissy. "'Then the plow was passed over the soil to put an end in legal
+form to the existence of the city. House might never be built, corn
+might never be sown, upon the ground where it had stood.'"
+
+She read well, did Sissy, as she did most things. Little by little
+Madigan's sharp, quick steps became less and less the bodily expression
+of exasperated nerves, and tuned themselves to the meter of that pretty,
+childish voice, intelligently giving utterance to the thoughtful
+philosophy that had always soothed him. It lost some of its familiarity
+and gained a new charm, coming from that small, round mouth which had an
+almost faultless instinct for pronunciation. A feeble germ of fatherly
+pride began to sprout beneath the soil upon which the child's
+intelligent reading fell like a warm, spring rain.
+
+"One moment, Cecilia." Madigan stopped in his walk, lifting an
+apologetic hand to excuse the interruption. "You read just now of 'the
+Britons of Cornwall gathering on high places and straining their eyes
+toward the west; the ships which had brought them beads and purple cloth
+would come again no more.' Now, to what does that refer?"
+
+Sissy's hands flew to her breast; and before she had time to conceal, to
+pretend, to affect, he had seen the blank expression of her face. You
+see, she had been merely reading; not thinking. The sound of her own
+voice had drowned the sense. To read intelligently a thing the
+comprehension of which was far over her head was the utmost this
+eleven-year-old could do. She had not the vaguest idea what she had been
+reading. It was all a blank!
+
+Madigan stood petrified; and the last little martyred ox, stuffing her
+apron into her mouth, that she might not weep aloud, hurried from the
+room.
+
+A moment longer Madigan stood. Then he looked at Miss Madigan. That
+lady's placid face had not changed a particle. She sat crocheting what
+she called a fascinator, her white bone needle moving harmoniously in
+and out of the blue wool. Had she heard a word that had been read? Her
+brother knew better than to ask. Did it make the least difference to
+her whether he read from "The Martyrdom of Man" or not?
+
+Madigan shut the book with a bang. The "martyring," boomerang that it
+had proved, was over.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The world seems new-born every summer morning in Virginia City. This
+little mining-town, dry, sterile, and unlovely, and built at an absurd
+angle up the mountain, is the poor relation of her fortunate cousins of
+the high Alps; yet shares with them their birthright--an open, boundless
+breadth of view, an endless depth of unpolluted, sparkling air, the
+fresh, shining virginity of the new-created.
+
+It was the sense of a nature-miracle, and the desire to penetrate still
+farther and higher into the crystalline sky that crowned it, which sent
+the Madigans every summer toiling up Mount Davidson. They did not know
+it, but yearly the _Wanderlust_ seized them, and as all things in
+Virginia point one way, they followed that suggestion--upward.
+
+They were spared the usual struggle with Frances (who, after being
+coaxed, bribed, threatened, and bullied, had at last annually to be run
+away from), for the reason that Frank had not slept well after the
+martyring, and was still dreaming of creeping, crawling things with
+blubber-lips and gloating eyes when, in the pellucid dawn, Jack Cody
+found the Madigans waiting, in clean calicoes, perched on their
+bottommost step.
+
+The sun was barely over the top of Sugar Loaf, and the town, scantily
+shrubberied (for water costs as many dollars in Virginia as there are
+weeks in the year), lay sleeping in soft chill shadow below them,
+looking oddly picturesque and strange in the unfamiliar light.
+
+"Say," said Cody, "I think I see that Pemberton kid coming up Taylor. Is
+he coming along?"
+
+"No," said Sissy, promptly.
+
+"Yes," said Split, firmly.
+
+"Well, _I_ didn't ask him," from Sissy, with a haughty air of saying the
+last word. The Madigans were quite accustomed to being social arbiters
+in their own small world.
+
+"Well, I did," remarked Split, easily.
+
+A pugnacious red overshot Sissy's face. Crosby was her property, to
+browbeat and maltreat as seemed best to her. She felt that Irene's
+interference in a matter that was purely personal was unwarranted as it
+was intolerable.
+
+"He always has such good cream-tarts," explained Split.
+
+"Well, he can have 'em and keep 'em," declared Sissy, savagely, turning
+her back as Crosby yodeled a greeting and waved his hat gaily to her.
+
+Cody grinned. "I think that kid better stay at home. It won't be much
+picnic for him, will it, Sissy?"
+
+Sissy sniffed. "He's Split's company," she said loftily. "She'll make
+things pleasant for him."
+
+But Crosby, glad to be among the enticing Madigans at any price, and
+innocently joying in the picnic spirit that possessed him, came whooping
+to his fate.
+
+"Say," he said eagerly, putting down his basket with the air of one who
+has a good story to tell, "do you know, I almost got caught this
+morning. Ma said I wasn't to go, but I bet I wouldn't stay at home. So I
+told Delia to put up my lunch last night, and to put in a lot of those
+cream-tarts you like, Sissy--you used to like, Sissy...."
+
+But Sissy, actuated by a delicate desire not to interfere in the
+slightest with Split's plans for the entertainment of her guest, was
+deep in conversation with Jack Cody. Crosby's jaw fell. He saw her give
+her round tin lunch-bucket--the one he had so often carried to school
+for her--to Cody, to sling with his own upon a leather strap. And as he
+watched her start up the ravine carrying one end of the strap, and the
+washerwoman's boy the other, he wondered passionately within himself at
+the faithlessness and ingratitude of women.
+
+Wasn't it enough to have a reckoning with Madam Pemberton at the end of
+his day, without having that precious time utterly spoiled? He felt like
+turning back. Sissy knew well that there could be no picnic for him
+within the pale of her displeasure. The mountain air might be never so
+sweet with the wild sage perfuming it; the sun striping the shadowy town
+below with bloody bands might be never so promising; the mountain's
+peak, soft and deceitfully near, might be never so tempting--with Sissy
+chattering gaily in advance, ostentatiously ignorant of his very
+existence, the glory was cut out of Crosby's morn. It seemed, too, to
+him that he had never been so fond of her. His mother's disapproval of
+this Madigan since a certain episode (to avenge which cruel Sissy's
+thirst could never be slaked) had put the last touch to his devotion.
+That matron's pleasure in their intercourse hitherto had been the one
+drawback to his delight in it. In his eyes, his inamorata walked now
+with the crown of the forbidden upon her haughty little head; and that
+Crosby was more of a natural boy than his effeminate tastes indicated is
+proven by the fact that he loved Sissy far more for this than for being
+"the good one" his mother had once thought and proclaimed her.
+
+At the sluice-box which circles Mount Davidson, bringing the purest of
+water from a mountain lake, the party halted and was joined by other
+brave mountaineers, big and little; the latter in calico skirts, and
+shirts and knickerbockers. Bombey Forrest was the only one who came
+under neither of these heads. She was a slender slip of a girl whose
+mother, to the scandal of conventional folk, believed that for the first
+decade or so of child-life the boy's costume is fitter than the girl's.
+So Bombey wore a knickerbockered sailor-suit with a broad collar and
+white braid; wore it with a bit of a conscious air, yet with that grace
+which long use and habit lend; with piquancy, too, for she was the least
+masculine of girls in mind and manner, and her delicate face with its
+golden curls bloomed like a flower on a strange stalk, above the
+assertive masculinity of her attire.
+
+It was to Bombey that Crosby Pemberton turned for solace. (Split had
+promptly deserted him for Kate, whom she suspected of a contemptible
+desire to cut loose from the Madigans as children, and join the older
+members of the party.) He had not had the courage to forgo the picnic,
+though he knew his mistress well enough to be sure that by the end of
+the day he would realize that that course would have been the least
+painful. He carried Bombey's basket, like the little gentleman he was;
+not in the division-of-labor fashion, from which Cody's and Sissy's
+jangling buckets extracted a sort of cow-bell music as they ran merrily
+along, far in advance.
+
+Cody spied the two below when he and Sissy sat down to rest on a huge
+boulder. Jack never knew how to treat Bombey Forrest, always feeling
+that the most decent thing to do was not to look at her. Despite his own
+bitter and recurring experiences (which, one might fancy, would have
+made him tender to the vicissitudes of sex as warranted by clothing),
+something in him felt outraged and resentful at the sight of her.
+
+"Look at the girl-boy and the boy-girl!" he sneered. "See how they poke
+along. They'll never get to the top."
+
+Sissy's shoes were hot and dusty. The strong odor of sage-brush was in
+her nostrils. Her skirt was torn, and the short-stemmed desert-lilies
+she held in a moist hand were wilted. But she was happy, for she was
+outdoing, she was pretending, and she was punishing. The only thing that
+detracted from her pleasure was to be obliged to concur in Cody's
+opinion. That roused her perversity. She loved to lead or to oppose--not
+to agree.
+
+"Let's go on," she said imperiously. "What are you stopping for?"
+
+As the sun climbed higher, the mountain's top got farther and farther
+away. But Cody, who had scaled not only its summit, but the flagpole
+that tipped it, knew its habit of piling one small hill up behind the
+other, as though, like a grotesque Gulliver playing a practical joke, it
+delighted in fatiguing and disappointing the Liliputians that swarmed up
+from its base. Crosby and Bombey and the twins, with the Misses
+Blind-Staggers,--blinder than ever to-day for the glare on their blue
+goggles,--had yielded long since. They were camping patiently in a
+ravine far below, where a tiny spring hinted at dining-room
+conveniences. The rest of the party, with Irene revenging herself upon
+Kate's disloyalty by sticking like a burr to that young lady (whom,
+Split thought, Mr. Garvan was treating altogether too much like a young
+lady), was close on the vanguard's heels. And Sissy and Cody, panting
+now, but toiling doggedly on, had reached the cool little cup-shaped
+hollow in the cone where the snow lies.
+
+From here to the top was but a few minutes' run. Cody was all for
+halting and snow-balling the party as it came up, but Sissy was too
+exhausted to stop now.
+
+"We'll rest at the top of the hill," she decided impatiently, and
+hurried him on, both a bit out of temper.
+
+No beauty of winding river and peaceful valley checkered with fields of
+grain, no low-lying gardens and climbing forests, reward the scaler of
+the heights behind the Comstock--only the bare little brown town far
+down, digging tenacious heels into the mountain's side and propped up
+with spindle-shanked foothold, the great white inverted cones of steam
+rising from the mines, the naked and scarred majesty of the gray
+mountains all about, the desert gleaming like a lake in the east, and
+Washoe Lake gleaming like a desert in the west.
+
+Yet Sissy held her breath. Something in the still purity of the air, the
+savage grandeur of the mountains, the great arch of liquid blue above
+her, caught and held her impressionable spirit. She stretched out her
+hands--a small, petticoated Balboa--to the world she had discovered.
+"It--it makes you want to scream," she stammered.
+
+"Booh!" It was a yell from Cody, delivered full in her ear. "If you want
+to scream, darn it, scream!" was his practical advice as he spat out the
+sunflower-seeds he had been chewing and prepared to climb the pole.
+
+Sissy stood looking at him, the color flooding her face. And as he noted
+her expression, the boy suddenly remembered that he did not like Split's
+sister. But his mild memory of distaste was as nothing to the disgust
+that possessed Sissy. In her ecstasy she had unwittingly lifted a corner
+of the lid that she kept tight over her emotions. Logically, she hated
+the unimpressed and profane witness of the phenomenon.
+
+She turned her back on him, refusing even to look at his progress up the
+high pole. She would not see when, at its top, small as a fly at the
+point of a pencil, he waved his hat and, ululating brassily, gave vent
+to the desire to be noisily vocal which had clutched Sissy's throat into
+silence. At luncheon, she found a spot that was farthest from him; and
+when he and Split tore noisily down the mountain's side on the way
+back, she submitted rather to be outdone than to join a party of which
+he was one.
+
+Crosby Pemberton, bracing himself for the derision he expected from her,
+was delighted to see her come sliding down alone to the ravine, where
+the successful ones paused to take up the rest of the party. Her
+solitary state encouraged him, and he sought her where she sat knocking
+the sand out of her shoe.
+
+"Sissy," he said softly, holding out a peace-offering, "I saved some
+cream-puffs for you."
+
+But the ruthless Sissy was not to be so easily placated. "You mean for
+Split, don't you?" she said, scarcely looking at him, and diligently
+lacing her shoe. "She asked you to come, you know. I didn't."
+
+With the look of a wounded dove, Crosby turned, and Sissy saw Irene a
+moment later, her teeth gluttonously closed over one of Delia's biggest
+puffs, a heart-breaking amount of "filling" gushing over her cheeks and
+chin.
+
+But to do without for the sake of principle was ever rapture to the
+purist. Sissy placed the pangs of desire to the credit side of Crosby's
+account; this was only one thing more she owed her victim. In fact, as
+the party started on, so engaged was she in inventing and perfecting
+tortures for him that she followed the procession on its unusual detour
+without demur. It was only when it was too late that she saw Bullion
+Ravine ahead of her, and the swaying high trestle over which the flume
+is carried.
+
+Split's malicious face as that most sure-footed of Madigans touched the
+first plank made Sissy realize the test to which she was to be put. Her
+terror of giddy heights was treated as an absurd affectation by the
+steady-headed Madigans, and as such requiring discipline, which, with
+truly sisterly foresight, Split had provided. She ran across now with
+the joy of a thing that feels itself flying. Jack Cody turned a
+handspring in the very middle; and the sight so nauseated Sissy that she
+had to stand aside and let those immediately behind her pass first. Yet
+she dared not remain till the last, for a panicky picture in her mind
+showed her to herself paralyzed forever on the brink. As she put her
+foot on the first board, beneath which she could hear the running water
+chuckling and gurgling as it ran, she swore to herself that she would
+not look down. And, indeed, she did keep her eyes on Crosby Pemberton's
+straw hat, as he walked some distance in front of her. But the moment
+his foot touched the ground on the other side, the light structure,
+relieved of his weight, changed its rhythmic swaying, which had measured
+the steady strength of his step. Its rebound, exaggerated by Sissy's
+tense nerves, seemed sickeningly high; its fall ghastly low. Swung there
+from mountain to mountain, its slender supports looked frail as a
+spider's woof, and seemed to tremble with every gasping breath she drew.
+In spite of herself, her eye caught the silvery glitter of the thread of
+water far below in the stony bed of the nearly dry creek.
+
+It was all over with Sissy. Trembling with terror, she sat down,
+clutching the edge of the board beneath her, the world swimming away
+before her shut eyes, just as it did when one looked too long through a
+knot-hole at the flowing race in the flume beneath.
+
+Irene's giggle came faintly to her; she was too terrified to resent it.
+The murmur of voices that called her name, encouragingly, warningly,
+angrily, was not so loud as the chuckling of the water in the box which
+seemed to hurry her senses away. She lived through years of agony, in
+which she found herself wishing that she could only fall and end it.
+Then she felt the trestle bound beneath her, and she was waked by the
+touch of Crosby's hand.
+
+"Get up!" he said in a tone of command that reminded her of that
+grenadier his mother.
+
+She opened her eyes and saw that his face was white, but the glitter of
+determination in his eyes was so new and curious that it held her
+attention for the moment necessary to give her strength to obey. He
+almost pulled her to her feet, and then half dragged, half ran with her
+across. Yet within ten feet of the end, the trembling of his hand had
+communicated itself to her whole body. She watched the drops of
+perspiration fall from his pale face and, fascinated, followed them down
+with her eyes. Then wrenching her hand from his, she almost fell down
+again. It seemed to her her head swayed back and forth with such force
+as might bear her whole body with it, and she squatted down, shivering.
+
+It was a most humiliating finish to an exciting adventure, for when he
+strove to compel her again to rise, Crosby found that terror is
+contagious. He himself dared not stand. He squatted down in front of
+her, and on all fours the two crawled toward the bank. Sissy could have
+kissed the earth when her hands touched it.
+
+But it took her some time to recover. The sympathetic fussing of the
+Misses Bryne-Stivers she endured as in a dream. She even permitted Mr.
+Garvan to take her hand and help her walk for a time. But when they
+reached the first house and had turned down Taylor Street, she was so
+thoroughly herself that she contrived to let the rest pass her, and she
+rested till Crosby came up. She was walking beside him, with a sudden
+flattering kindness that almost turned his head, when he looked in the
+direction in which her eyes were fixed, and saw his mother in her
+phaeton pull up and beckon to him.
+
+He looked shyly at Sissy. He would have given much to be told that this
+forgiveness was not to be merely temporary, like others that had
+preceded it whenever Mrs. Pemberton might see and disapprove; that he
+was no longer to be flouted and scorned when there was nobody but Sissy
+herself to be glad of it.
+
+"The shadow of the guillotine is over you!" said Sissy, in a bombastic
+whisper addressed to Mrs. Pemberton--a comforting formula the Madigans
+had invented to still their envy of those who rode in carriages. But her
+smiling face, when it turned toward Crosby, had no threat in it.
+
+Relieved, forgiven, reinstated,--for there was a promise without words
+in his tyrant's good humor,--Crosby laughed out gaily. At that moment
+he had no more fear for Madam Pemberton than for the invoked Madame
+Guillotine.
+
+"S' long, Sissy," he cried, waving his basket to her as he went, a young
+aristocrat, to meet his fate.
+
+That night Sissy said her prayers in a rush. She wanted to give her
+undivided attention to plans of revenge on Split.
+
+
+
+
+KATE: A PRETENSE
+
+
+The lesser Madigans meant to stand no nonsense from Kate. Other girls'
+big sisters had been known to assume superiority as their skirts
+lengthened, and to imply an esoteric something in their experience which
+younger sisters could not comprehend, and privileges which they might
+not share. But for them, the Madigans, though they were graciously
+willing to count Kate out of such outdoor sports as were incompatible
+with lengthened skirts, she might come no pretense of young-ladyhood
+over them. They were on the watch for the smallest affectation, the
+least sentimentality; and as for beaus per se--just let Kate try it!
+
+Kate did, being human, a Comstock girl when girls were in a delightful
+minority, and a Madigan. But, realizing the argus-eyed watch put upon
+her, and the forthright methods of her sister Madigans, she tried it
+secretly.
+
+To be sure, there was old Westlake,--he was at least thirty-five years
+old--whose intentions were quite apparent. He came up to play whist at
+the house whenever he was in town, upon which occasions Kate was always
+his partner; and he scolded her with the same proprietary freedom for
+leading a "sneak" suit as Francis Madigan did his sister--a lady who was
+never known to know what was trumps, and who smiled and blinked and
+blushed and made the same mistakes over and over again with a
+complacency that Madigan's fiercest thumps upon the table could not
+shake.
+
+But the Madigans forgave Kate her Westlake, for the pleasure she took in
+guying him, and the loyal frankness with which she let them into all the
+moves of the game. He was "The Avalanche" to her and to them, because of
+his avoirdupois, his slow movements, and the imperviousness to a joke
+with which he was credited; because he could not take in all the little
+infinity of homely facetiæ in which the Madigans lived and had their
+being. Besides, it was pleasant and exciting, being leagued with Kate
+against Aunt Anne, who was known to have positively had the indecency to
+speak openly upon the subject, and in favor of it, to her oldest niece!
+
+"Fly, the Avalanche is upon you!" was Sissy's dramatic way of warning
+her big sister that her suitor had been spied by the outpost coming up
+the steps.
+
+And on such occasions Kate could slip out of the side door and be safely
+inside the Misses Blind-Staggers's sitting-room by the time Westlake's
+heavy step made the porch shake--and Sissy, too--with laughter. But this
+was before she went to open the door.
+
+"Is your sister at home?" old Westlake asked confidently.
+
+"Which one--Irene? Yes, she's home." Sissy's small round face was
+simplicity and candor incarnate.
+
+"No," said old Westlake, uncomfortably. He had seen shrewdness once or
+twice behind the eyes where innocence now dwelt, and he only half
+trusted this demure, blank-faced child. "I mean your sister Katherine."
+
+"Oh!" Cecilia exclaimed, in gentle surprise. "Oh, no, sir, she's out."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+Old Westlake fancied he heard a mocking "indeed" that followed. In fact,
+an echo that had the queer effect of making him hear double seemed to
+accompany all his words. It came from the portières, which were
+suspiciously bulky, and shook as though something more than the wind
+moved them.
+
+"And how soon will she be home?" he asked.
+
+"Kate? You mean Kate? Oh, I really do not know." Sissy pronounced her
+words with pedantic care--a permissible thing among Madigans when adults
+were to be guyed.
+
+Old Westlake (he was rather a handsome old fellow, with his regular
+features, his blond mustache, and prominent blue eyes) fidgeted
+uneasily. There must be some way, he felt, of moderating this
+half-chilly, half-critical atmosphere on the part of the smaller
+Madigans. But children were riddles to him, and the solutions his small
+experience offered were either too simple or too complex.
+
+"She can't be intending to spend the whole day out?" he asked, conscious
+that he presented a ridiculous figure to the childish gray eyes lifted
+to his.
+
+"No, I don't suppose she can," agreed Sissy. "Won't you come in?"
+
+He followed her hesitatingly into the parlor and sat down, his eyes
+fixed upon the portières over the front windows, which still appeared to
+be strangely agitated.
+
+"You--do you think it will be worth while--my waiting?" he asked
+helplessly, as Cecilia was modestly about to withdraw.
+
+She looked up at him with the bland look of intelligence which it takes
+a clever child to counterfeit.
+
+"Worth while waiting for Kate?" she asked in accents half puzzled, half
+reproachful.
+
+Old Westlake blushed to the roots of his close-cropped fair hair. He
+fancied he heard a muffled gurgle behind the portières that wasn't
+soothing.
+
+"Oh--you mean, is she likely to come home soon?" added Sissy, gravely,
+eying his discomfiture. "I really do not know."
+
+"Is Miss Madigan in?" asked the desperate man.
+
+"Why, do you call her that? I told you she was out."
+
+"No; you told me Katherine was out. Is she in?" he asked eagerly.
+
+Sissy stared at him stupidly. He returned her stare contemplatively. He
+yearned to bribe her, but he didn't dare. She looked too old to be
+bought, too young to understand; yet he was sure she was neither.
+
+"Katherine, Kate, and Miss Madigan are out," said Sissy, didactically.
+"So are Kitty, Kathleen, and even Kathy--that's her latest; she wrote it
+that way in Henrietta Bryne-Stivers's autograph-album."
+
+The visitor looked bewildered. "I asked you whether your aunt is in,"
+he said, with some impatience.
+
+"I beg your pardon," retorted Sissy, ceremoniously. No Madigan begged
+pardon unless intending to be doubly offensive thereafter. "You asked me
+whether my sister was in."
+
+"Is--your--aunt--in?" demanded Westlake, with insulting clearness.
+
+"She--is--in. I'll--tell--her--you're--here."
+
+"Please." Westlake bit the word out, promising himself that his first
+post-nuptial act would be to shake this small sister-in-law well for her
+impertinence.
+
+And this was the pathos, as well as the absurdity of old Westlake--he
+was so confident.
+
+But he was not so confident that he did not long for an ally. And when
+Split stepped out from behind the portières, with a barefaced pretense
+of having just come through the long French window from the porch, he
+straightway invited her to go to the circus that evening with him and
+Kate.
+
+There happened to be two sties on Split's left eye just then, and a
+third on the upper eyelid of the right one. But this, of course, was no
+reason for discouraging the overtures of a poor old man like Westlake,
+who, it appeared to Split, had some virtues, after all.
+
+That evening Sissy, who was playing holey down on Taylor (a famous
+button-string had Sissy, as token of her prowess; it had a sample of
+almost every buttoned frock worn in Virginia for the past ten years),
+watched the three as they set out for the tent far down at the foot of
+the hill. And three things occurred to her, as she stood looking after
+them, Bombey Forrest waiting vainly, meanwhile, for her to shoot: First,
+that if his desire was to propitiate the clan, old Westlake had selected
+the wrong Madigan: Split being not nearly so tenacious an enemy nor so
+loyal a friend as herself. Second, that that same Split looked "like a
+silly" with the white handkerchief bound over her left eye, and her
+right one swollen and teary. She wondered, did Sissy, that they should
+take such a fright with them. And thirdly, the censor of the family sins
+made a mental note to the effect that Kate Madigan was putting on
+altogether too many airs as she pulled on her gloves; there was an
+inexcusable self-consciousness about her manner toward the Avalanche;
+and as for old Westlake himself, he was clearly taking advantage of
+Split's blindness and casting such glances at that giddy Kate as she,
+Sissy, would certainly not have tolerated--if she had been invited to go
+to the circus. If only she had!
+
+It must not be supposed that the esthetic side of life for the Madigans
+was represented wholly by women's walking-matches and the circus. There
+was also the Tridentata.
+
+Of course the Tridentata--the name was supposed to have something
+to do with sage-brush--was very select. Naturally, for it had had
+its origin in Mrs. Pemberton's strenuous estheticism and double
+parlors--possessions of which few Comstockers could boast. But after the
+infant literary society had learned to stand alone, it adopted migratory
+habits, meeting now at the Misses Bryne-Stivers's cottage, now at Mrs.
+Forrest's over-furnished rooms, and occasionally even at the Madigans'.
+
+There was at least room enough at the Madigans; it was the one
+particular in which they were never stinted. The long, shabby parlor had
+sufficient seating-capacity, even if the chairs were not all, strictly
+speaking, presentable.
+
+"Shall I bring in the Versiye fotoy?" asked Split on one of the
+occasions when the meeting of the Tridentata necessitated a real
+house-cleaning in which the full corps of Madigans took part.
+
+"The Versailles _fauteuil_, Irene," replied Miss Madigan, doubtfully,
+"is not reliable. If I wasn't sure that Mrs. Pemberton, who has seen
+the real ones, would be sure to ask where it is, I'd keep it out; for
+the last time she came so near sitting on it while I was reading my
+paper on 'Home-keeping' that I got so nervous I left out all that part
+about the housewife's duty being, above all, to make a spiritual home:
+to diffuse about herself a home atmosphere, so that wherever she sat,
+wherever two or three gathered about her, there was the Sanctuary of the
+Church of Home, so to speak. And--"
+
+"Then you want me to bring it in?" Split had too much to do to listen to
+Tridentata culture. Her humble office was merely to make ready for the
+literary feast and modest bodily refreshment to come.
+
+It was one of the contradictions of Split's nature--her intense
+occasional domesticity and the practical good sense that marked her home
+economies. She rose now, basin in hand. Her sleeves were rolled up, her
+bushy hair, a troublesome half-length now, was bound up in a towel. She
+had been scrubbing and polishing the zinc under the stove, and she was
+as happy as she was executive. She flew about trilling "The Zingara,"
+with a smudge on her chin and a big kitchen-apron tied about her waist,
+looking like a dirty little slavey; yet putting the mark of her
+thoroughness upon everything she touched and Miss Madigan overlooked.
+
+"The big rug from your room is to go over the hole by the window?" she
+asked perfunctorily, being half-way through the hall at the time.
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad you remembered it," said Miss Madigan. "Mrs. Forrest
+tripped in that hole the last time. I thought it was exceedingly
+impolite of her to call attention to it that way, because--"
+
+"Shall I turn the couch-cover?" demanded Split.
+
+"I don't see how you can," said Miss Madigan, helplessly. "It's worn on
+the other side."
+
+But with a tug Split had drawn it off, pillows and all, and she flew
+up-stairs, carrying Kate in her wake to help her pull down a portière
+which she intended transforming into a couch-cover.
+
+Things sentient as well as material were accustomed to doing double duty
+at the Madigans' on Tridentata nights. When Francis Madigan, forewarned
+that his bell would often be rung that evening, but that he was not
+expected to resent the insult, had retreated to his castle and pulled up
+the drawbridge behind him, the slavey, with Sissy as assistant, became
+doorkeeper, and, later, butler. Critics, of course, these two were ex
+officio; and from their station out in the chilly hall, they listened to
+and mocked at the literary program, which Miss Madigan had entitled, "A
+Night of All Nations."
+
+The opening duet between Maude and Henrietta Bryne-Stivers they had
+heard before. Few people in Virginia, indeed, had not.
+
+"Trash!" Sissy pronounced it in Professor Trask's best manner.
+
+The reading from "Sodom's Ende," in the original, by the traveled Mrs.
+Pemberton, was fiercely resented by her audience outside the gates. It
+always made a Madigan furious to hear a foreign tongue; for, apart from
+the affectation of strange pronunciations, the deliberate mouthing of
+words (and you couldn't make Sissy Madigan believe that Mrs. Ramrod
+understood half of what she was reading in that guttural, heavy tongue),
+there was the impugnment of other people's lack of linguistic
+accomplishment.
+
+The critical paper on Daudet that followed was read by Miss Henrietta
+Bryne-Stivers. While it was in progress the two Madigans out in the hall
+each read an imaginary paper on the same topic, finishing with that
+identical courtesy which Henrietta had imported from Miss Jessup's
+school in the city. But Split tripped Sissy as she was bowing over low,
+and she fell, as softly as she could, to the floor. Miss Madigan looked
+out with a "S--sh!" Sissy cast off all blame in virtuous dumb-show, and
+in the pause the two heard Dr. Murchison's voice as Henrietta passed him
+and the door, on her triumphant way back to her seat.
+
+"Allow me to compliment you, Miss Henrietta," said the old doctor,
+pleasantly excited by so youthful a lady's literary discrimination. "You
+are really fond of Daudet, then?"
+
+Henrietta blushed. "Oh, no, indeed, doctor!" she said deprecatingly. "At
+Miss Jessup's we girls were not permitted to read him, you know."
+
+"Ah, I see," murmured the doctor. "Only to write about him?"
+
+"Miss Jessup thought it was more--fitting, with the French authors,"
+observed Henrietta.
+
+"So it is," agreed Murchison, dryly. "So it is. The excellent Miss
+Jessups--how well they know!"
+
+"He's guying her," chuckled Sissy, making a mental vow to read Daudet or
+die in the attempt. "And she doesn't know it."
+
+"Hush!" came from Split.
+
+In a tenor a bit foggy, but effectively sympathetic, old Westlake was
+singing, "Oh, would that we two were maying!"
+
+Sissy put her eye to the crack of the door, and Split, watching her, saw
+her round face grow red and indignant.
+
+"What is it?" she whispered, squirming till she too had an eye glued to
+the crack.
+
+"Look!" exclaimed Sissy, disgustedly.
+
+Straight in their line of vision sat Kate, and upon her old Westlake's
+eyes were ardently fixed as he sang.
+
+"It's--it's not decent," declared Sissy, wrathfully.
+
+"He does look like a calf." Split grinned. Kate looked very pretty in
+that white cashmere embroidered in red rosebuds, which had been made
+over from the box from Ireland, Split said to Sissy, and so was
+deserving of forgiveness, she hinted; for when one had a new frock--
+
+Sissy, the sensible, snorted unbelievingly. What gown had ever affected
+her?
+
+"But I'll get even with him," she said, stealing on tiptoe down the
+hall. "Just you watch!"
+
+Split, her nose in the crack of the door, watched. The Avalanche had
+finished his first verse and begun the second, when Sissy appeared in
+the parlor, very modest and retiring, walking behind chairs and effacing
+herself with an ostentation that could not but attract all eyes. She
+stopped at Miss Madigan's chair, asked a question,--which Split knew
+well was utterly irrelevant and immaterial,--and received an answer in
+Aunt Anne's company manner: a compound of sweetness and flustered
+inattention which no one could mimic better than Sissy herself.
+
+Then she withdrew, slowly and by a tortuous route which brought her just
+beside him at the moment Westlake stopped singing. Without a word, yet
+with a gracious instinct for the momentary confusion in which the
+performer found himself, his seat having been taken while he sang,
+Cecilia pulled out another from the wall and moved it slightly toward
+him.
+
+The little attention was offered so naturally, with such engaging
+demureness, that Mrs. Pemberton--whom the social amenities in children
+ever delighted--almost loved Sissy Madigan at that moment. So, by the
+way, did Split, out in the hall, her eye at the crack of the door, her
+feet lifting alternately with anticipative rapture. For it was the
+Versailles _fauteuil_ that Sissy had so sweetly selected for old
+Westlake. And when the big fellow came down to earth with a crash,
+rising red and confused from the debris, Sissy was already out in the
+hall. She arrived at the crack in time to see Kate stuff her
+handkerchief into her mouth and hurry to the window, her shoulders
+shaking, while Miss Madigan flew to the rescue.
+
+It took a recitation in Italian by Mrs. Forrest to rob Sissy Madigan,
+judge and executioner, of her complacency after this. Then Aunt Anne
+recited "The Bairnies Cuddle Doon" charmingly, as she always did, but
+most Hibernianly, with that clean accent that makes Irish-English the
+prettiest tongue in the world. After which she received with smiling
+complacency the compliments of Mrs. Forrest, who told her that an ideal
+mother had been lost to the world in her.
+
+Outside, two cynics listened with a bored air. They felt that they
+required a stimulant after this, so they made a hurried visit to the
+dining-room, thereby escaping Mr. Garvan's reading of "Father Phil's
+Collection." But when Henrietta Bryne-Stivers delivered "Blow, Bugle,
+Blow," changing from speaking voice to the sung chorus with a composure
+that was really shameless, the critics out in the hall received that
+insulting shock which novelty inflicts upon the provincial, which is
+the childish, mind. They revenged themselves in their own way, mouthing
+and attitudinizing, caricaturing every pose which Miss Henrietta had
+been taught, by the instructor of Delsarte at Miss Jessup's, was grace.
+They were caught in the midst of their saturnalia of ridicule by Kate,
+who promptly exploded at their uncouth, dumb merriment.
+
+"Aunt Anne wants you, Sissy," she said when she got her breath.
+
+In an instant Sissy was sobered. It wasn't possible that she was to be
+sent to bed before supper! To be a waiter was the height of happiness
+for Sissy.
+
+"It's because of the Versiye fotoy," giggled Split, as she ran off to
+the dining-room.
+
+"It isn't, is it?" whispered Sissy to Kate. And Kate shook her head
+reassuringly, and waved her in. She couldn't answer audibly, for Dr.
+Murchison was tuning up his sweet old violin, while Maude Bryne-Stivers
+offered to accompany him on the piano.
+
+But Murchison knew too much of the manners and methods of Jessup's
+Seminary, as revealed by its showiest pupil.
+
+"Thank you, thank you, Miss Maude, but this is a very old-fashioned and
+a very simple entertainment I'm going to give. Just the things that I
+play to myself when I'm weary of listening to humanity tell of its ills
+and aches--the egotist! Then I look down into the beautifully clean
+inside of my fiddle, its good old mechanism without a flaw, and listen
+to the things it has to tell.... Thank you, just the same, Miss Maude;
+this is not a theme worthy of your brilliant rendition, but, as I said,
+a simple, old-fashioned playing of the fiddle. I'll supply the
+old-fashioned part, and Sissy here can do the simple accompaniment, if
+she will."
+
+If she would! Sissy was so gaspingly happy and proud that she forgot
+even to pretend that she wasn't. Seating herself, she let her trembling
+fingers sink into the opening chord, while the old doctor's bow sought
+the strains of "Kathleen Mavourneen," of "Annie Laurie," the "Blue Bells
+of Scotland," and "Rose Marie."
+
+The unspoken sympathy that existed between these two flowed now from the
+bow to Sissy's fingers, and made a harmony as pretty as was the sight of
+the old man and the happy child looking up at him. Sissy Madigan was
+conscious that the doctor knew her--almost; that, nevertheless, she
+occupied a place quite unique in his heart. And she loved passionately
+to be loved, this hypocrite of a Madigan, who jeered and jibed at any
+demonstration of affection. A sense of being utterly at harmony with the
+world possessed her now; the fact that she was "showing off" was far,
+far in the background of her consciousness, when all at once she
+happened to glance out through the hall door.
+
+She had left it ajar behind her, expecting Kate to follow her in. But
+Kate, evidently, had not followed. She stood out there alone with Mr.
+Garvan, her arms behind her, her slender figure drawn up beneath the
+swinging hall lamp, her pert little head, circled by the braids she wore
+coiled clear around it when she wanted to be very grown-up, upturned to
+the master, her every feature stamped with coquetry.
+
+Sissy shut her lips firmly--and the wrong note she struck marred the
+doctor's finale. It was evident that Kate Madigan needed looking after.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She did; and yet no one but Kate and those she experimented upon could
+help her to find herself.
+
+A wilful Madigan, intoxicated with her first taste of a new pleasure,
+was Kate. She had outgrown her short skirts with regret; she was
+preparing to make them still longer with delight. She had the maturity
+of her motherless and quasi-fatherless state to add to the natural
+precocity of the mining-town girl, and of the eldest sister who has been
+pushed out of her childhood by the press of numbers behind her. And yet
+the wine of romance kept her almost babyishly young. She had a way of
+proclaiming the fact that she read everything her father did. (Madigan,
+marooned by his misfortunes in the most picturesque setting, where men
+were living the most picturesque lives, turned his back upon it all and
+found the action his dull days were denied in the elder Dumas.) By this
+Kate intended to show how proud and unrestrained a Madigan was; hoped,
+too, perhaps, that there might attach a bit--the least bit--of
+suggestive license to the phrase. And all the while she was pitiably
+unconscious of how innocuous the old romanticist's tales of adventure
+may be, read in translation, by the light of such purity and innocence
+as hers.
+
+But she was pert, was Kate, and piquant; she presumed upon her youth,
+upon her age. She was a child when you expected her to be a woman, and a
+woman where you looked for the child. No dream of romance was romantic
+enough to hold her fickle soul constant to it--to satisfy the hopes of
+her heart. Every man she met was a prince; yet was he, too, bare and
+poor and mean compared with The Man to come. The child in her was gauche
+and crude, sitting in judgment--as cynical, as critical a spectator as
+Sissy herself--upon the very hopes the woman awakened. In her eyes the
+flash of coquetry was succeeded by the blank, childish irony which
+denied the emotion hardly passed. She loved to shock pretense, yet she
+was the most absurd and innocent of pretenders, for the terms in which
+convention speaks were Greek to her. She was masterful, being a Madigan,
+and daring and impertinent. A creature utterly impatient of forms, with
+a boy-like chivalry, revealing how incomplete the work of sex was yet,
+for the woman misunderstood--whom she, in her crude purity, understood
+least of all. This was Kate, ready, at fifteen, to battle single-handed
+with windmills, with world-old problems, with world-young prejudices; to
+burn intolerance to ashes in the white flame of her brave young
+innocence; to cry aloud the word that older, wiser cowards whisper or
+stifle in their hearts; to make no compromise; to know that black is
+black and white is white; to be unforgiving, as only cruel young
+inexperience can be; to flame at a wrong and glow at its righting; and
+yet to have her contradictions cased in a body of such vivid grace, a
+mind leavened by humor, and a heart of such sweetness as made her the
+irresistibly lovable Pretense she was.
+
+Pretending to be a child, to annoy her Aunt Anne; pretending to be a
+woman, to infuriate her younger sisters; pretending to be a saint,
+pretending to be a sinner; pretending to scorn the world, yet quaffing
+its first sweet draughts of individual power and experience with
+full-opened throat; pretending to be mannish--driven to that extremity
+by the super-femininity of Henrietta Bryne-Stivers; pretending to be
+frivolous, to shock rigid Mrs. Pemberton; pretending to be a
+blue-stocking with a passion for the solid and heavy in literature;
+pretending to be a Spartan who must rise at dawn and, after a plunge in
+ice-cold mountain water, climb, with only big Don, the Newfoundland, for
+company, up to the sluice-box; there to pretend she was an esthete to
+whom the sunrise, while she communed alone with nature, revealed things
+invisible to the world below.
+
+But Reality's day came. Miss Madigan went out into the future, sent
+thither by her auntly sense of responsibility, and brought it back with
+her. It led them straight to Warren Pemberton's office, and Pretense
+fled like a shy shadow before the sun when Reality looked at her
+through Pemberton's cold, dull eyes.
+
+"Miss Madigan, Mr. Pemberton. My niece Kate," was the lady's
+introduction as they entered.
+
+The red-faced, heavy little man, too important a personage to be
+expected to contribute socially to the life of the town, had been
+looking at Miss Madigan as though he knew he ought to remember having
+met her. She wanted something, of course. Everybody wanted something
+from Warren Pemberton, King Sammy's viceroy, in charge of his mining
+interests and his political plantations. But he brightened at the
+formula, recollecting having heard it before from the same lady's lips,
+and promptly placed her in the category of small political favors.
+
+"I remember you, Miss Madigan--of course," he stammered. "Remember the
+little girl, too. Crosby's flame, eh?"
+
+Kate flushed, struck dumb with the insult, and her black-gray eyes
+gleamed handsomely with anger. After getting herself up in her most
+mature fashion to be mistaken for Sissy!
+
+"Why, Mr. Pemberton," exclaimed Miss Madigan, flustered by propinquity
+to greatness, "this is Kate, the Miss Madigan who--for whom--"
+
+"Oh, excuse me." Pemberton sat rubbing his chin and silently blinking at
+the Miss Madigan for whom his influence had been invoked. She felt he
+was weighing her youth and inexperience against the thing that had been
+asked for her. And the Madigan in her fiercely resented it; was tempted
+to confirm his doubts by a saucy flippancy that would relieve her
+impatience of a false position. But there was that other Madigan in her
+to be reckoned with, that new one, on the reverse of whose shining,
+romantic shield a plain, dull, tenacious sense of duty was slowly
+spelling itself into legibility.
+
+"Kate's really very clever, Mr. Pemberton," said Kate's aunt, tactfully;
+and the girl's teeth clicked together, in her effort to control her
+irritation. "And in some ways she is much older than her years. She will
+graduate, you know, this year at the head of her class; she passed first
+in the examination, and really, in a family where there are so many
+girls--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," interrupted the great man. "You told me all about
+that, and I--"
+
+"And you've had time to realize just how extraordinary a creature I am
+and how pitiful a case ours is! Am I too brilliant altogether to be
+wasted on school-teaching?" Wrath tingled in Kate's voice. She heard
+Miss Madigan's gasp of horror, and could imagine the fishy
+disconsolateness of her expression. And she saw the red-faced little man
+opposite her start, as at the injection of a foreign tongue into the
+interview.
+
+"Eh--what? Oh, yes," he said dully. "I mean--no. It'll be--it's all
+right."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Pemberton, how can I thank you!" Miss Madigan clasped her
+hands.
+
+"Yes; I spoke to Forrest yesterday, and--and, of course, Murchison's
+willing," went on the little man, gravely. "But there's no vacancy just
+now, so they'll arrange to appoint substitutes. It's the way they do in
+cities, I understand. And Miss Cecilia here will be--"
+
+"My name, Mr. Pemberton, is Kate!"
+
+"And Kate's exceedingly grateful." Miss Madigan gazed amazed at her
+niece; she didn't look grateful.
+
+"Not at all; not at all," murmured Pemberton, feeling for his papers
+helplessly. "I'm so busy--"
+
+"It--is good of you," stammered Kate, rising. "I am--very much obliged
+to you." She held out a hand to him that was cold to the fingertips. All
+at once she felt so old, so young, so niched forever in a somber, gray
+life, so settled, so bound up by small formalities, so miserably unlike
+a Madigan!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet the Madigan in Kate waked with a defiant brightness when the first
+call came that took her temporarily over the threshold of the new life.
+She left her own school-room, where her rôle was as congenial and
+irresponsible as Sissy's, with an air of importance that roused envy in
+her mates' hearts.
+
+The very pretense rallied her, excited her, inspired her to continue to
+pretend after she had left her audience behind her. And though she
+entered the lower class-room, of which she was to have charge for a day,
+with a terrified feeling of being thrown to the lions, she faced the
+undisciplined mob that licked its lips in anticipation of a feast on raw
+young substitute with a flash in her eye that promised battle first.
+
+And she did make a hit at the beginning, thanks to her sister and
+present pupil, Bessie, who was invariably late to school.
+
+To Bep, the aspect of her own sister in a position of authority was the
+hugest absurdity, and when the blonde twin sauntered in, tardy, as
+usual, she joined the class as one of the lions. She intended to give
+Kate distinctly to understand that she was mixed primary pupil first
+and a Madigan afterward; that the substitute might expect no mercy from
+her on the pitiful plea of relationship.
+
+Bep's attitude was very Madigan; the only drawback to it was that it
+left out of the reckoning the fact that she had a Madigan to deal with.
+
+"Elizabeth Madigan," said the substitute, in the clear, high, formal
+tone that, in itself, was sufficient to sever all bonds of kinship,
+"where is your excuse for being late?"
+
+Bep's blue eyes blinked. The impudence of Kate to talk that way to her!
+
+"I ain't got any. Miss Walker never--"
+
+"Miss Walker isn't teaching to-day," remarked the substitute, in the
+patient tone which the enlightened have for dullness. "She is ill and I
+am teacher here. Where is your excuse?"
+
+Bep felt the silence grow around her. She saw the whole school drop its
+mirth and its employments to watch this duel between Madigans.
+
+"Why, you know very well, Kate Madigan--" she began hotly.
+
+A sharp ring on the bell at the teacher's desk cut Bep's eloquence
+short. "If you have anything to say to me, little girl, you will address
+me as Miss Madigan."
+
+The audacity of it struck Bep dumb. Call that slim girl Miss Madigan?
+She'd like to see herself!
+
+"You will go home, Elizabeth," the substitute continued, unconcernedly
+making her way to the blackboard as though this life-and-death affair
+were a mere incident in her many duties, "and bring me back a written
+excuse for your tardiness."
+
+Bep set her teeth. "You know I had to go an errand for Aunt Anne; you
+saw me yourself," she muttered.
+
+"A _written_ excuse, I said."
+
+"I can't get any." Yet Bep rose. She felt the ground slipping from under
+her.
+
+"Then I am sorry to say," remarked the substitute, firmly, "that I shall
+not be able to have you in my class to-day. Leave the room, Bessie....
+Now, children, the first thing to do in subtraction--"
+
+Bessie walked slowly up the aisle and toward the door. With the prospect
+of a double disciplining, at home and at school, too, she dared not
+rebel. Yet wrath smoldered within her. She came to where the substitute
+stood at the board, calmly explaining the process of "borrowing," and
+the resolution to regard her as an undeserving stranger was tempered by
+Bep's desire to inflict an intimate, personal insult.
+
+"I wouldn't be so afflicted as you," she growled under her breath, like
+a small Mrs. Partington, misapplying her big word in her wrath, "for all
+the world. And I'll get even!"
+
+A gleam of quite unofficial laughter lit the substitute's eye. "You mean
+'affected,' my little girl, not 'afflicted,'" she said clearly, pausing
+pedagogically, chalk in hand. "Look up the difference in your
+dictionary, and if you can't understand, come to me and I'll explain it
+to you--after you bring your excuse."
+
+And Bep brought her excuse. The substitute, her cheeks glowing with
+excitement, yet calm-voiced and pretending valiantly, saw the door open
+nearly an hour later, and a hand thrust through waving an envelop, as
+though it were a lightning-rod that might attract the storm of her wrath
+away from the one who carried it.
+
+Gravely, even encouragingly, Miss Kate Madigan read a prayer from Miss
+Anne Madigan that the teacher would kindly excuse the tardiness of
+Elizabeth, her niece. She placed it on file religiously, like a
+confirmed devotee to red tape, and resumed her lesson to the baby
+class, with a matter-of-course air that completed the routing of Bep.
+
+But there was still another relative in the mixed primary--Frances. For
+half a day the smallest of Madigans was supposed to be doing
+kindergarten work, with a mild infusion of the practical in the shape of
+a-b-c's.
+
+It did not occur to this young lady to try to disown the substitute. On
+the contrary, she was exceedingly proud of her proprietary interest in
+the teacher. She leaned her plump hand upon that august person's knee in
+all the easy charm of intimacy when the baby class gathered about her,
+and was so intoxicated by reflected glory that she forgot the two
+letters of the alphabet she was supposed to know.
+
+There was one thing no Madigan--not even Kate--could pretend to: to be
+patient was beyond them all, talented as they were.
+
+"It's 'B,' Frank!" the substitute cried, in her exasperation forgetting
+the dignified demeanor she had adopted. "Say 'B,' 'B,' you stupid!"
+
+In that terrible moment Frank realized that there were drawbacks to
+being too well acquainted with the teacher. Her eyes filled with tears
+of chagrin. "'B, B, you stupid!'" she sobbed.
+
+And a quick, clear laugh from the substitute completed the
+demoralization of the mixed primary. It was not, strictly speaking, "in
+order" when Mr. Garvan visited it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Oh, to be out of school, at the end of that first day of adulthood! To
+be unwatched, to be free, to be little and young, if that pleased one!
+To walk up the hill and along the main street, and then, just as one was
+about to turn the corner prosaically and mount still higher--then to
+come face to face with a creature so elegant, so visibly "dressed," that
+no gambler in town could outshine him. By sheer good luck, to have been
+introduced to this dandy in one's capacity of teacher of the mixed
+primary that very morning, when he had been given permission by Mr.
+Garvan to make an announcement at the school concerning special
+privileges granted school-children at the "high-class minstrel
+performance" given at Lally's Opera House. To be unhampered now by the
+timidities of office, and ready to pick up the gage of coquetry his
+saucy glance threw down. And so, after the smallest second's
+hesitation,--the woman in one stifling both the child's and the
+substitute's hesitation,--to allow the gaudy stranger to walk beside one
+the length of C Street. And though the sidewalk was crowded, for stocks
+were up, and one had to wriggle one's way through the people packed
+tight in front of the brokers' offices, yet, in the very teeth of the
+townsfolk, to joy shamelessly in flirtation with this gorgeous, shining,
+flattering stranger--a social outlaw, as well as a bird of passage, the
+very disrepute of whose profession made temptation more subtly sweet!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Split," whispered Sissy, her voice muffled with shame,--it was a week
+later,--"Kate walked with a minstrel! What shall we do?"
+
+"Did she? Who told on her--Mrs. Ramrod? Well," added Split, out of the
+depths of experience, "it must have been that day she substituted."
+
+
+
+
+OLD MOTHER GIBSON
+
+
+Imprisoned in skirts, Jack Cody was awaiting his mother and relief, when
+there came a knock at the door, and a voice distinctly not Jane Cody's
+said:
+
+"I beg your pardon, I'm sure, but your town's so jolly dark, I believe
+I've lost my way. I'm looking for--My word, what's that!"
+
+A parabola of light had suddenly shot out athwart the soft black night.
+It seemed to come from the hill to the left, and it was accompanied by
+the tinkle of shattered glass.
+
+"It's the Madigans." Jack's voice was wistful and his gaze was turned
+longingly upward.
+
+"Madigans!" exclaimed the stranger, looking in amazement from the boyish
+face surmounting a shapeless woman's gown to the thing it watched so
+yearningly--a light flaring brightly on the hill, a lot of small dancing
+figures silhouetted blackly against it, the smell of coal-oil, and the
+shrill excited laughter of children.
+
+"Upon my soul, yours is a strange country," the man went on--"stranger
+even than it looks. How in the world did you know that I was looking for
+the Madigans?"
+
+"Are you?" asked the boy, dully. His body might be down in Jane Cody's
+cabin, but his soul was up aloft there where the Madigans held high
+carnival.
+
+"Yes, I am," answered the stranger, his eyes fixed upon the odd figure
+before him.
+
+"Well, there they are," the boy said, pointing upward to the grotesque
+dancing shadows.
+
+"Eh?--I beg your pardon, I--I don't understand. Just what has happened?"
+asked the stranger.
+
+"Nothin'," said Jack. "The lamp gets tipped over when they're playing
+Old Mother Gibson, and they just throw it out so's not to set the house
+afire."
+
+"Every night?" asked the man, in the polite tone strangers adopt in
+striving to fathom a local mystery.
+
+"Nope," said the boy, in a matter-of-fact tone. "They can't play it
+every night; sometimes their aunt won't let 'em."
+
+"You appear to know them." There was a smile hidden beneath the voice;
+but Jack was thinking, not of the questioner, indistinguishable in the
+darkness, but of the mad carnival up yonder on the hill.
+
+"Yep. That's Split," he said. "That one--see--with the bushy lot of
+hair, singing and cake-walking in front. She can do a cake-walk better'n
+any nigger I ever see."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"That's Frank, the baby--the one that's screamin' so. You can tell her
+squeals; they're laughin' ones, you know."
+
+"I suppose I ought to know. Anyway, I'm glad to be told."
+
+"Over on the side there, where there's a kind of blotch, is the twins;
+they must be fighting. Don, the dog, 's mixed up in it somehow."
+
+"My word!" exclaimed the man, softly, to himself.
+
+"That's Kate dancing round on the porch, and the one standing high-like,
+right next to the fire, with her arms up stiff, as if she was running
+the whole show, sort of--of--"
+
+"A priestess, say, invocating the Goddess of Kerosene!"
+
+"Huh?--Well, that's Sissy."
+
+"Oh, is it? Tell me--is she nice--Sissy?"
+
+"What?" asked the boy, so surprised that he withdrew his attention from
+on high and stared out at the man on the door-step.
+
+There came a laugh out of the darkness. "It is an odd question, but then
+everything is so odd out here, I half hoped you wouldn't notice it. But
+you do know them, evidently. I wonder--do you mind going up there with
+me and showing me the way?"
+
+But his last question had suddenly recalled to Jack Cody the reason why
+he wasn't at that moment one of the dancing black figures on the hill.
+The boy looked from his mother's wrapper to the man's face, growing more
+distinct now, out on the door-step, and the amused expression he saw
+there his sore egotism attributed to a personal cause. So he promptly
+slammed the door in the man's face.
+
+There was an instant's pause out in the blackness, made denser now that
+the candle's light from the cabin was cut off; then a short, nonplussed
+laugh.
+
+"Miles, old chap," the young man was saying to himself, as he turned
+cautiously to jump from the stoop and mount the hill, "this is Bedlam
+you've fallen into--this mad little mining-town ten thousand miles off
+in a brand-new corner of the world, all hills and characters! Now, what
+might be the sex of that animal you were talking to? And what in the
+name of peace are these Madigans? Are they the ones you're look--Steps,
+as I value my immortal soul!" he exclaimed, rubbing his shin where he
+had struck against the wandering Madigan stairway. "It would not have
+surprised me, now, if I had had to climb that hill on my hands and
+knees, and stand on my head when I got to the door, to knock at it with
+my heels!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss Madigan's demeanor was beautiful to see. Just a bit--oh, the least
+bit of I-told-you-so in her manner, but also a generous willingness to
+postpone the acceptance of apologies due to one long misunderstood, and
+to take for granted the family's obligation.
+
+"The estate must be worth at least ten thousand a year," she confided in
+her delighted perturbation to Frances, as she curled her hair. And Frank
+looked up at her, soulful and uncomprehending, and a bit cross-eyed, for
+the curl dangling down over her nose. "He'll marry Kate, of course--I
+had no idea he was so young. He'll just be the savior of the whole
+family. It's a providence,--Miles Madigan's dying when he did,--and
+wasn't it fortunate that Nora sent my letter back?... You will be good
+at the table, Frances, and show cousin Miles how nicely you can use your
+fork?... He is practically a cousin.... Have you washed your hands?"
+
+"Hm-mm," murmured Frank, mendaciously. And then, as Aunt Anne appeared
+to doubt her word, "Just you ask God if I haven't," she suggested
+solemnly, carefully putting her hands behind her.
+
+But Miss Madigan had no time to put questions to so distant an
+authority. She had Wong to placate--Wong with his wash-day face on,
+grim, ill-tempered, hurried, defying the world to put even the smallest
+additional burden on his shoulders on Monday. And Miles Morgan just
+arrived from Ireland!
+
+And Francis talking to him in the library, in that distant, watchful,
+uncompromising way of his, that was just as likely as not to send the
+young man off in a huff.
+
+"One needn't insult a man just because he's rich and a relative!" Miss
+Madigan's exclamation was uttered aloud unconsciously, so excited was
+she. It ended with a gasp, as Sissy collided with her on the way from
+peeking through the half-open library door at her father and his guest.
+
+It was the bedroom, Kate's and Irene's, that Sissy was bound for; for
+there, in solemn conclave, the junior Madigans were assembled, waiting
+for their scout's report.
+
+"He's big--but not so big as the Avalanche," she began the moment she
+had shut the door behind her and faced the questioning eyes that
+commanded her to stand and deliver. "He's straight, too, but not so
+poker-stiff as Mrs. Ramrod. He's got a big haw-haw voice, and scrubs
+every word he says with a tooth-brush before he says it. His hands are
+as white--as white; and they're cleaner than Crosby Pemberton's. He's
+got a tan shirt on, plaited in front, and every time Aunt Anne moves
+he's up like a jumping-jack till she gets sat down again. He says 'My
+word!' and 'in the States'--like that. He's got a mustache the color of
+your hair, Split, a scrubby, stiffy little mustache. His eyes are little
+twinkling things, and I believe--" she paused in her indictment to give
+the criminal the benefit of the doubt--"I do believe he had gloves on
+when he first came! I won't be sure; but, anyway, I hate him."
+
+A gratified sigh rose from the Madigans assembled. It was good to have
+definite information, to know that this Miles Morgan was hatable. For
+the Madigans loved to hate any one who could put them under
+obligations--when they did not spend their very souls in a passion of
+gratitude to him. But for this interloping, distant relative from
+foreign shores they were prepared. They were ready to outrage him, to
+throw his patronage in his teeth, if he dared offer it, to out-Madigan
+the Madigans, if that were necessary; to disgust him and satisfy their
+pride, wounded by the insolence of his prosperity. Yes, it was good to
+hear Sissy's frank declaration of war. For war was as the breath of the
+Madigans' nostrils. They knew themselves there, and, though they might
+have trusted Sissy, they had feared for a moment that her report might
+not be all they had hoped.
+
+"We'll show him," said Split.
+
+"A patronizing, affected Irishman!" snorted Sissy, informally now that
+her official duties were ended.
+
+"He thinks he'll come out here and run the whole family," said Fom,
+aggrieved.
+
+"And show off how rich he is, and turn up his nose at things," said Bep,
+"and boss us. I'd like to see him try it!"
+
+"And be shocked at what we don't know, and what we do do, and what we
+haven't seen and learned. I dare him just to say 'abroad' to me!" cried
+Kate, with a flash in her eye.
+
+A chorus of groans went up from the indignant assemblage.
+
+"Aunt Anne," put in Frank, a bit puzzled, "says he's the savior of the
+fam'ly. What's a--"
+
+"The savior of the family! The savior!" mocked Sissy, genuflecting
+sarcastically. "The savior of the family will have you sent to a
+convent, Split, 'where young ladies are taught to behave properly.' The
+savior'll get a nursemaid for you, Frank, and you'll have to go about
+always holding her hand and wearing socks in the English style that'll
+show your bare, naked legs and--"
+
+"I won't! I won't!" Tears of terror stood in Frank's eyes.
+
+"The savior'll put a stop, Fom, to your--Kate Madigan, are you changing
+your dress?" Sissy's voice fell suddenly, and she put the question in a
+calm, magisterial tone that sent every eye in the room on a query toward
+the eldest Madigan.
+
+Kate turned at bay. She had slipped off her waist, and the red was
+flushing her long throat and small, spirited face. "Well, miss, suppose
+I am?" she demanded hotly.
+
+"She always changes her dress for dinner, you know," came in a sarcastic
+sneer from Split. "She wants to show our dear cousin how swell we are.
+We all wear low-necked rigs, and father has his swallowtail, and--"
+
+"Shall I bring you the curling-iron, Kathy?" mocked Sissy.
+
+"Don't you want a rose for your hair, Kathleen?"
+
+"Or a ribbon here and there, as Mrs. Ramrod says, Kitty?"
+
+"Aunt Anne says," said Frank, feeling that this was some sort of game
+and that her turn had come, "he's going to mawwy you. Is he, Kate?"
+
+The white cashmere with the red-embroidered rosebuds slipped from Kate's
+hand. All innocent of malicious intent, Frank's shot had scored. The cry
+of the Pack that leaped about her could not touch Kate after this. She
+was frozen in by maidenly prudery, by childish self-consciousness, by
+Madigan perversity. When the bell rang she went in to dinner in her old
+pink gingham, her head high, her lips set, her eyes unseeing.
+
+"She's got 'em," Sissy whispered to Split.
+
+"Yep, that's the sulks all right," Split nodded.
+
+"This is Kate." Miss Madigan, brave in her new purple gown with the lace
+collar at her throat, shot a reproachful glance at the unadorned young
+lady of the house. "Your cousin, Miles Morgan, Kate."
+
+"Howd' ye do?" Kate said coldly, ignoring his outstretched hand and
+passing on to her seat, where she began busily to serve the butter.
+
+The savior of the family looked after her, interested. Though guilty of
+every count in Sissy's indictment, he was not accustomed to being
+overlooked by such very young ladies.
+
+"And this is Irene," said Miss Madigan, a tremor in her voice; she, too,
+knew now that Kate "had 'em." "This one is Cecilia; the twins, Bessie
+and Florence; and Frances, the baby."
+
+The savior of the family glanced along the line of five blank faces, and
+felt the perfunctory touch of five small, slippery hands with nothing
+more human about their clasp than the childish masks above them.
+
+"I say, how do you tell one another apart?" he asked, with a sudden
+gleam in his eye, as they passed him and slid into their places.
+
+A dozen pitying eyes looked coldly at him; half a dozen small mouths
+curved disdainfully. His remark seemed to make them more than ever like
+mechanisms--hostile ones.
+
+Miss Madigan dropped the soup-ladle in her confusion. To that
+experienced lady there was something ominous about so unbroken a union
+of Madigans; she remembered with sorrow the few times any subject had
+found them unanimous.
+
+But Madigan came in just then, took his seat at the head, looked
+mechanically for the banished dog and the cat, and Dusie, chirping
+madly in her cage to attract his attention to the fact of her cruel and
+unusual imprisonment. He cleared his throat and took up the carver--and
+immediately Miles Morgan was conscious of an unbending of the small
+Madigans--a cuddling together, so to speak, and a swift interchange of
+impressions.
+
+"You haven't given me an opportunity to explain, Miss Madigan--" he
+began, in the pause during which Madigan carved strenuously.
+
+"'Aunt Anne,' if you please, my dear boy," urged Miss Madigan, warmly.
+"The relationship's distant, but now that you are with us we can have no
+ceremony out here in the wilds."
+
+"Oh, thank you." The savior, turning toward her, saw the fattest little
+Madigan nudge her red-haired neighbor savagely. She was evidently angry
+at something. "It's good of you to take me in like this. What I want to
+say is that the train was late crawling crookedly up and around the
+mountains. I had no idea of arriving in the evening and coming in upon
+you this way. But when I got here, the town looked so savage, don't you
+know, so--drear--and desolate and--and flimsy, I got a bit
+home-sick--there! The thought of all you people, my own people, housed
+somewhere in the spraddling town, called to me. I positively couldn't
+wait till morning. You'll forgive me--Aunt Anne?"
+
+A suppressed gurgle came from a blonde Madigan on the other side of the
+table, choking over her soup at this endearment. A brunette just her
+height spoke rapidly to her and persuasively, but to no avail. Alarming
+sounds came from the victim till presently a very dignified, small fat
+person rose from her seat, made her way to the nearly suffocated blonde,
+gave her a thump between the shoulder-blades that brought tears of
+another variety to the sufferer's eyes, and walked composedly back to
+her seat.
+
+"How can you be so rough, Sissy!" Aunt Anne exclaimed in an agitated
+voice.
+
+"Ah--Sissy!" The savior leaned forward, looking across with a smile in
+his eye that might have melted any heart save so savage a Madigan's. "So
+you are Sissy."
+
+"My name," said that young person, meeting his smiling eye coldly, "is
+Cecilia."
+
+"But your friends call you Sissy?"
+
+"Yes, my friends do," admitted the perfectionist, with an accent that
+was supposed to be crushing.
+
+"And you sign yourself so in your letters?" he went on pleasantly.
+
+"My letters?"
+
+"Yes; your informal little notes, you know."
+
+Sissy laid down her spoon. A sudden distaste for eating, for living, for
+breathing had come upon her. She had forgotten her postscript to that
+unhappy letter; it was all so long ago, and Aunt Anne's letters never
+had had a sequel! But before her now the savior's head seemed to bob up
+and down sickeningly, while a voice cried in her ears so loud she
+fancied the whole table must hear it:
+
+    "You--whoever you are--needn't bother to answer this.
+    None of us Madigans wants your help or annybody else's.
+    It's only that Aunt Anne's got the scribbles, and we'll
+    thank you to mind your own business.
+
+                                           _"Sissy Madigan."_
+
+The savior threw back his head in a quite boyish way and laughed aloud
+as he watched her face.
+
+A cold rage seized Sissy. To be laughed at before the whole table! She
+hated him; she knew she hated him!
+
+"I don't understand," said Madigan, feeling called upon to say
+something that was not vituperative at his own dinner-table. "You could
+never have seen a note of Sissy's, Mr. Morgan?"
+
+"Never." The savior lied like a gentleman.
+
+But he was mistaken if he supposed that he had placated Cecilia. She
+would not even meet his eyes, those eyes that twinkled so enjoyingly.
+
+The savior tried Irene.
+
+"You and I have hair the same color," he said genially. "I hope your
+temper isn't like mine, too."
+
+"I hope not," she answered stiffly.
+
+He laughed again, that big, amused laugh. Split's eyes shot fire.
+Evidently the Madigans were funnier than they knew.
+
+"Now, I wonder," he said, "would that be a compliment or a confession?"
+
+"Irene is trying and succeeding better every day in gaining
+self-control," interposed Aunt Anne, with hasty amiability. To discuss
+Irene's temper in committee of the whole, like that--the temerity of the
+man! "Won't you have some more mutton?" she pressed. "It's wash-day, you
+know, and it's just a pick-up dinner; but we're so glad to have you, if
+you'll excuse--"
+
+"The apology's due from me, you know," he interrupted. "And the good
+fortune's mine, too. Fancy me dining the evening of my arrival at that
+brick barn they call the hotel down yonder! It will be hard enough when
+I really have to live there."
+
+"You do not surely expect--" began Madigan, pausing over his
+strawberries.
+
+"To live 'out West'? Will you let me tell you how it happened, Mr.
+Madigan? There isn't much to it--just this: Miles Madigan, as you
+know--do you know?--was not the man to leave much behind him. Not that
+he'd deliberately wrong a fellow, poor old chap, but--well--oh, you
+understand! Well, when his solicitors got through subtracting and
+dividing and subdividing, the heir--one Miles Morgan, bred to do
+nothing, and with a talent for that profession, I must admit--found
+himself poor, with just enough to live on. The ten thousand a year
+had--just slipped through Miles Madigan's fingers."
+
+"Oh!" Miss Madigan's voice was sympathizing, disappointed.
+
+"Then"--it was Frank's clear treble; she hadn't understood much, but she
+knew what "poor" meant: a Madigan learned that early--"then you're not
+going to mawwy Kate?"
+
+Kate went white, while Miss Madigan's delicate face flushed purple, and
+Split pinched Sissy's arm, in her excitement, till that young woman
+cried aloud.
+
+"Frances--outside!" stormed Madigan.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Madigan--please!" deprecated the savior, holding out his arms
+to the whimpering Frances, who jumped into them as to a refuge. "No,
+little girl," he said, bending down to reassure her, "I'm going to marry
+Sissy; that's why I came out here."
+
+A gasp of relief parted Kate's trembling lips. She was very near being
+fond of the detested savior in that moment, in her gratitude to him for
+not having looked at her.
+
+But oh, the disdain of Sissy! It was such a very poor joke, in her
+opinion. Her round little face with its dots for features looked so sour
+and supercilious, as she passed the savior with averted eyes on her way
+out of the dining-room,--the children were withdrawing now,--that he
+could not resist putting out a hand to stop her.
+
+"You will have me, Sissy?" he begged with a laugh. "Think of a man
+coming clear out here with so little encouragement as I had. Such
+devotion might appeal to a heart of stone!"
+
+His enemy stood with downcast eyes, the red slowly mounting to the
+smoothed-back brown hair.
+
+"Sissy's Number One in her class," ventured Frank, as a recommendation.
+
+"I'm not!" flamed forth Sissy. "I never was, or--or if I was it was
+because of--of--"
+
+"Why, Sissy!" interjected Miss Madigan, grieved.
+
+"Of a mistake of some sort," suggested the savior, soothingly. "Well, I
+suppose I could marry a girl that was only Number Two."
+
+"I'm never Number Two--never! I'm Number--Twenty!" Sissy's eyes were
+raised for a moment to his--a revelation of the insulted dignity
+seething within her.
+
+"Oh, well, a Number Twenty wife is good enough; but we'd have to live in
+Ireland, I suppose," said the savior, philosophically.
+
+A passion of wrath at his dullness filled the clever Sissy, and she
+sought for a moment before she found the weapon to hurt him.
+
+"In Ireland, you know," she said, as deliberately as she could for fear
+of breaking into tears before she had delivered the insult, "the pigs
+live in the parlor, and--and the children have no place to sleep and--go
+barefooted!"
+
+"Oh!" The savior was stunned for an instant, but he recovered. "No, I
+didn't know. But in Nevada, I'm told, the Indians eat Irishmen alive,
+and those that are left are shot down by white desperados on C Street
+every day just at noon! We couldn't live here, could we?"
+
+Sissy gasped. She opened her lips as if to speak, but closed them again,
+and suddenly, in the instant's pause, there came an irresistible giggle
+from Split, already out in the hall.
+
+Sissy's hands flew to her breast. She shook off her suitor's detaining
+hand and bolted.
+
+"I couldn't help it," the savior said to Madigan, who was looking at him
+with that perplexed frown which the manifestation of his children's
+eccentricities so often brought to his face. "She is delightful. What
+jolly times we'll have getting acquainted! How fortunate you are, Mr.
+Madigan, to have these--"
+
+Madigan threw up his head, a challenge in his eye. Was he even to be
+congratulated upon his misfortunes?
+
+"I always said," the savior went on, with a chuckle,--"in fact, I began
+to say it before I got into knickerbockers,--that I intended to be the
+father of a family numbering at least a 'baker's dozzen.' I believe I
+had a vague notion that by means of superabundance of paternity I could
+atone to myself for my lack of other family ties. I was always so
+beastly alone. Yet no one--Miles Madigan least of all--saw the pathos of
+my lot. 'He's young and unencumbered,' he said of me toward the last
+when he was reminded of how little he had left for me. 'He'll get along.
+Besides, there's that wildcat mine out in the States; I'm leaving him
+that.'"
+
+Madigan's pipe fell to the floor; he had been filling it for his
+after-dinner smoke. "You've got the Tomboy!" he exclaimed.
+
+"That interests you?" Morgan asked.
+
+Kate, who picked up the pipe and handed it to her father, as she passed,
+the last of the line of young Madigans on the way out, saw how Francis
+Madigan's hand shook. Mechanically she paused and listened.
+
+"I--I was swindled out of my share of that mine," he said harshly.
+"Miles Madigan knew that in fairness half of it was mine. I found it. I
+worked for it. I put aside all other opportunities to devote myself to
+developing it. I sacrificed my children and my business to it. I gave up
+the best years of my life to it. I bore disappointment and poverty
+because of it. I was at the end of my tether when Miles Madigan went
+into it with me; and yet when I saw he was bent on freezing me out of
+it, I--I--But after he got it he didn't know what to do with it. He
+left it to be worked and himself fleeced by strangers. But--it killed my
+wife, and left me, after all those years of litigation, an embittered,
+beggared, broken man!"
+
+"And so it's but fair"--to Kate, shivering at the revelation in her
+father's voice, Miles Morgan's words seemed like soothing music--"it's
+but fair that you and I should handle the thing together--what there is
+of it, Mr. Madigan," he added hastily, as Madigan was about to speak;
+and he leaned forward, holding out his hand boyishly. "There may not be
+much, but I can get English capital to develop it, at a sacrifice of
+half its value now, and its possibilities. So that will leave only
+quarter shares for each of us. I may be offering you only a lot of work
+and a disappointment at the end. But the thing seemed worth enough to
+me, 'way over on the other side, to come out here and look into it
+myself. And one thing that made it seem so was the desperate battle you
+had fought to keep it. I hoped--I hoped you'd like me well enough, when
+we got to know each other, to help me with your experience,
+and--frankly, to help yourself in helping me. I had no intention of
+saying all this to-night, but--allow me, Cousin Kate."
+
+He had dropped Madigan's hand after a hearty squeeze, and was standing
+holding open the door for Kate to pass.
+
+It was a glorified Kate, for, lo, the veil of ill humor had fallen; a
+treacherous Kate, Sissy would have said, for she shone out now, warm and
+sparkling, upon the man who had had the discrimination to let a brood of
+small Madigans pass without special attention, yet who jumped to his
+feet when the young-lady daughter of the house made her exit, and stood
+looking after her till Madigan hauled him off to the library to talk
+about the Tomboy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That certain contentment which followed after an unusually good dinner,
+when the world and the Madigans were young together, had inspired Old
+Mother Gibson. The original couplet, with which all Madigans are
+familiar, is not strictly quotable; it was not invented, but adopted, by
+them. And it served merely to give a name to the game, which was half a
+war-dance, half a cake-walk, accompanied by chanted couplets composed by
+each performer in turn; said couplets being necessarily original and
+relevant locally. The accompaniment--an easy change of chords--was
+played on the piano _colla voce_. And no one minded in the least a
+foot, more or less, at the end of a verse. The joke was the thing with
+the Madigans, and the impromptu rhyme that brought down the house was
+the one that hit hardest.
+
+For Old Mother Gibson was a satire, a pasquinade, a flesh-and-blood
+libel done in rhyme, of wildest license both as to form and matter, and
+set to music--to be discharged full at the head of the victim. It began
+in an orderly way, every Madigan in her turn playing both parts of
+victim and cartoonist. But it degenerated into an open and shameless
+mimicry of Aunt Anne, of Francis Madigan, of the school-master, Mrs.
+Ramrod, the Misses Blind-Staggers, Professor Trask, Dr. Murchison, Wong,
+Indian Jim, and, finally, each of the other's tenderest folly--till a
+living caricature too true or too cutting precipitated an appeal to
+arms, and the Lighthouse, which was always in the way, was tipped over
+in the mêlée, and had to be thrown out of the window, there to burn
+itself into darkness innocuously.
+
+Old Mother Gibson was given by a full cast the night of the savior's
+arrival. Though Jane Cody had been merciless, Jack, tempted beyond his
+powers of resistance by the sounds of revelry upon the hill, was
+stalking about in melancholy masquerade among its personnel. Bombey
+Forrest, her delicate head looking like a surprised sunflower upon its
+masculine stalk, had come in, and Crosby Pemberton, looking as much out
+of place in his immaculate linen and small Tuxedo as either of these,
+was joyous at being among Madigans again.
+
+You might have heard--if you'd stood out on the piazza looking in, and
+happened to have the key to the riddle--a hint in verse of every Madigan
+escapade, of every Madigan failing, of all the Madigan jokes, on Old
+Mother Gibson nights. You would have seen even Kate--young-lady Kate,
+who had once substituted in a school--join in this mad revel, with an
+appetite for fun that showed how much of a child she still was.
+
+An impressionable young Irishman, who had come out upon the piazza to
+smoke a cigar and think himself back into his usual poise after a day
+full of new experiences, had his attention attracted by the strumming on
+the piano; and glancing in through the open window, he saw a slender,
+graceful girl, her dark head rising lightly from the sailor collar of a
+pink gingham blouse. She was balancing lightly as she walked, keeping
+time to the rhythm, and followed by a procession of children in single
+file. (A belief in the efficacy of motion to stimulate one's power of
+improvisation made Old Mother Gibson the liveliest of games.) And
+arriving at the center of the stage, she delivered herself in a singsong
+of the following:
+
+    "Old Mother Gibson, be on your best behavior,
+    Or you'll surely fail to satisfy the savior."
+
+It didn't seem a very funny or apposite ditty to Miles Morgan, but, to
+judge by its effect upon those within, it was exquisitely witty. The
+whole company doubled up with laughter. It giggled till its collective
+sides must have ached; then it slowly and gaspingly subsided. When it
+had quieted down, the piano began again, and a red-headed Madigan,
+intoxicated by the music, the license of the time, and the excitement
+accompanying creative work, danced a fantastic _pas seul_, as she flew
+about in the Mother Gibson merry-go-round.
+
+    "Old Mother Gibson's savior was a dandy--
+    He thought he'd buy the Madigans with a stick of candy!"
+
+sang Split, and the parlor yelled itself hoarse with uproarious delight.
+
+The fat little girl at the piano began to play, and stopped several
+times, that she might wipe the tears of laughter from her eyes and get
+her breath. At last, with a squaring of her shoulders and a stiffening
+of backbone that seemed queerly familiar to Morgan, watching outside,
+she half drawled, half sang, with an unmistakable accent:
+
+    "Old Mother Gibson was angry at the Fates;
+    My word! They sent the savior 'way out to the States!"
+
+A sudden enlightenment came to Miles Morgan. For a moment the red flamed
+up in his cheek, and if Split could have seen his face she might have
+fancied that some imp had caught her likeness, when her temper had got
+beyond her control, and set it on this man's body.
+
+"The impudent little beggars!" Morgan cried furiously. "My word!" He
+stopped, remembering the use to which his favorite exclamation had been
+put. "But what a saucy lot!" He was laughing before he had finished
+wording his thought.
+
+He was interested now, and listened with a grin to Fom's declaration
+that
+
+    "Old Mother Gibson ought to 've known better
+    Then to come in answer to Aunt Anne's letter."
+
+He saw even Frank strutting in the ring, though she was capable only of
+a repetition of the classic phrase with which each couplet began. And he
+laughed with the rest at Bep,--poor, unready Bep, set as by a musical
+time-lock and bound to go off,--getting slower and slower in motion as
+well as utterance, the accompaniment retarding sympathetically as the
+critical moment approached when she must be delivered of her rhyme.
+
+    "Old Mother Gibson, why do you--"
+
+she began her singsong. "No, no! Wait. I know another. 'T ain't fair,"
+she stammered in a prose parenthesis.
+
+    "Old Mother Gibson had a--
+
+"Stop laughing, now; wait a minute. You don't give me a chance, Sissy.
+You play faster for me than for anybody else! You do it a-purpose, too,
+just 'cause you know it's easy to bluster me.
+
+    "Old Moth-er--Gib-son--"
+
+Bep stopped suddenly, for through the glass doors came the subject of
+her lay. He had a finger to his lips as he glanced at Sissy's back--a
+hint that the rest of the company seized delightedly. And when the music
+began again, he was not ashamed to make this contribution:
+
+    "Old Mother Gibson, take pity on a cousin
+    Left to the tender mercies of the other half-dozen!"
+
+At first the accompanist, accustomed to the rodomontade of voice as well
+as gesture of the excited performers, was not aware of the interloper.
+When she finally spun around and saw the savior singing in the midst of
+his libelers, she let him finish the couplet unaccompanied, and sat, a
+fat, shocked statue glued to the piano-stool, staring at him.
+
+It was absurd of him, but there was something in Old Mother Gibson, as
+the Madigans sang and played her, that turned the soberest of heads. And
+the savior's forte was not in being staid. He fell upon his knee before
+her.
+
+"Forgive me, O Sissy, for not being a Madigan," he begged, "and receive
+me into the fold!"
+
+She looked down at him, self-conscious, embarrassed; yet the hidden
+sentimentality of her nature was appealed to by the masculine young face
+turned half laughing, half seriously, to her.
+
+"Are you sure," she asked shyly, "that you're not one already?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is of record that one evening during that summer when the old Tomboy
+mine was reopened, a young Irishman newly arrived on the Comstock
+escorted down to Fitzmeier's--where, everybody knows, there is ice-cream
+to be had--six girls of assorted ages, one boy, and two young persons
+whose garments belied their sex. Yet they all seemed rampantly happy and
+quite unashamed.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Madigans, by Miriam Michelson
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Madigans, by Miriam Michelson.
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Madigans, by Miriam Michelson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Madigans
+
+Author: Miriam Michelson
+
+Illustrator: Orson Lowell
+
+Release Date: April 27, 2007 [EBook #21243]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MADIGANS ***
+
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+Produced by V. L. Simpson and the Online Distributed
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+</pre>
+
+
+<p><a href="images/img1.jpg"><img id="img1" src="images/img1th.jpg"
+alt="A Few of Irene's Fathers"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">A Few of Irene's "Fathers"</p>
+
+<div class="titlepage">
+<h1>THE MADIGANS</h1>
+
+<div class="byline">
+BY
+<span class="author">MIRIAM MICHELSON</span>
+AUTHOR OF "IN THE BISHOP'S CARRIAGE"
+</div>
+
+<div class="byline">
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS<br>
+BY ORSON LOWELL<br>
+</div>
+
+<div class="publisher">
+NEW YORK<br>
+THE CENTURY CO.<br>
+1904
+</div>
+
+<div class="copyright">
+Copyright, 1904, by<br>
+The Century Co.<br>
+
+<i>Published October, 1904</i><br>
+
+The DeVinne Press
+</div>
+
+</div><!-- end titlepage -->
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<ul class="toc">
+<li><a href="#CECILIA_THE_PHARISEE">CECILIA THE PHARISEE <span class="ralign">3</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#A_PAGAN_AND_A_PURITAN">A PAGAN AND A PURITAN <span class="ralign">39</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#A_MERRY_MERRY_ZINGARA">A MERRY, MERRY ZINGARA <span class="ralign">79</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#THE_SHUT-UPS">THE SHUT-UPS <span class="ralign">115</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#THE_ANCESTRY_OF_IRENE">THE ANCESTRY OF IRENE <span class="ralign">147</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#THE_LAST_STRAW">THE LAST STRAW <span class="ralign">189</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#A_READY_LETTER-WRITER">A READY LETTER-WRITER <span class="ralign">219</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#THE_MARTYRDOM_OF_MAN">"THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" <span class="ralign">265</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#KATE_A_PRETENSE">KATE: A PRETENSE <span class="ralign">297</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#OLD_MOTHER_GIBSON">OLD MOTHER GIBSON <span class="ralign">331</span></a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<div class="loi">
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<p class="ralign">PAGE</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#img1">A Few of Irene's "Fathers" <span class="ralign"><i>Frontispiece</i></span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img2">"That settles Number 10," said Sissy, grimly <span class="ralign">7</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img3">Left the room with such uncompromising hauteur
+... that her aunt again exploded <span class="ralign">13</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img4">"Please, Mr. Garvan," she said <span class="ralign">17</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img5">Some of the Madigans <span class="ralign">23</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img6">The Rest of the Madigans <span class="ralign">29</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img7">Seizing Sissy in his arms, he bore her off to bed <span class="ralign">35</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img8">"Play it, then, you mean thing," she cried, ... "if
+it's going to do you any good!" <span class="ralign">47</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img9">"Go and shake hands properly, like a little gentleman,"
+bullied Mrs. Pemberton <span class="ralign">53</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img10">Of the design and construction of which he was quite
+vain <span class="ralign">63</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img11">The Belle of the Afternoon <span class="ralign">71</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img12">She was pronounced a "regular little love" by the
+Misses Bryne-Stivers <span class="ralign">91</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img13">"I don't see how you're going to dance in them" <span class="ralign">95</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img14">"But is she <i>very</i> sick?" <span class="ralign">101</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img15">She glanced up the incline of the see-saw to the height
+whence Irene looked down <span class="ralign">153</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img16">"I want you&mdash;come!" the Indian princess announced <span class="ralign">163</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img17">They had coasted only half a block <span class="ralign">169</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img18">"Oh, you needn't glare at me!" exclaimed Bep <span class="ralign">183</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img19">A train meant domesticity and dignity to Sissy. In
+Split it bred and fostered a spirit of coquetry <span class="ralign">223</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img20">Stamping ... in a frenzy <span class="ralign">229</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img21">Madigan banged the door behind him as he fled <span class="ralign">237</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img22">"Here would I rest," she chanted <span class="ralign">253</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#img23">She walked a step or two with him <span class="ralign">261</span></a></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="cb">
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 1]</span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_MADIGANS" id="THE_MADIGANS"></a>THE MADIGANS</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 2]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="cb">
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 3]</span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CECILIA_THE_PHARISEE" id="CECILIA_THE_PHARISEE"></a>CECILIA
+THE PHARISEE</h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>I, Cecilia Morgan Madigan, being of sound mind and in purfect bodily
+health, and residing in Virginia City, Nevada, do hereby on this first
+day of April solemnly promise:</p>
+
+<p>1. That I will be Number 1 this next month at school.</p>
+
+<p>2. That I will be pachient with Papa, and try to stand him.</p>
+
+<p>3. That I will set Bep&mdash;yes, and Fom too, even if she is Irene's
+partner&mdash;a good example.</p>
+
+<p>4. That I will not once this next month pinch Aunt Anne's sensative
+plant&mdash;no matter what she does to me.</p>
+
+<p>5. That I will dust the back legs of the piano even when Mrs.
+Pemberton isn't expected.</p>
+
+<p>6. That I will help Kate controll her temper, and not mock and
+aggravate her when she sulks.</p>
+
+<p>7. That I will be a little mother to Frank and teach her to grow up
+and be a creddit to the famly.</p>
+
+<p>8. That I will not steal candy out of
+Kate's <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 4]</span>pocket&mdash;without first
+begging her very hard to give me some.</p>
+
+<p>9. That I will practice The Gazelle fathfully every solatary day. And
+give up reading on the sly while I play 5-finger exercises.</p>
+
+<p>10. That I will try to bear with Irene. That I will do all I can not
+to fight with her&mdash;but she is a selfish devvil who is always in the
+wrong.</p>
+
+<p>And all this I solemnly promise myself without being coersed in any
+way, of my own free will, without let or hidrance, because I want to be
+good.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cecilia Morgan Madigan</i> (<i>called Sissy</i>), Aged 11 last
+birthday.</p>
+
+<p>P.S. And I feel sure I can do it all, God helping me, except Number
+10&mdash;which is the hardest.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Sissy, who had been sitting writing only half dressed, folded the
+paper reverently, put it to her lips for lack of a seal, and then
+buttoned it firmly inside her corset waist.</p>
+
+<p>She felt so virtuous already that the carrying out of her intentions
+seemed really supererogatory. When she went to Irene to have her button
+her dress in the back, she had such a sensation of holiness, such a
+consciousness of a forbearing, pure, and gentle spirit, that her
+sis<span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 5]</span>ter's malicious pretense of
+ignoring her presence appeared to her nothing less than sacrilege.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't you going to button me, Split?" she demanded, indignant that
+her enemy, whom she was going to treat with Christ-like charity, should
+successfully try her temper before the ink was dry on her own promise to
+keep the peace.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask me pretty," grinned Split, whose nickname honored a gymnastic
+feat which no other Madigan, however athletic, could accomplish half so
+successfully as the second. "Say 'please.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I won't do anything of the sort. You know you've got to do it, and
+you've no right to expect me to say 'please' every time. You don't do it
+yourself, you hateful thing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you cry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I won't for you&mdash;because you can't make
+me&mdash;because&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you are crying in spite of yourself! Because anybody can
+make you cry, cry-baby!"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy's hands flew up to her breast. It was a recognized gesture with
+her, a physical holding of herself together in the last minute that
+preceded her temperamental flying to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>Split retreated cautiously, clearing the deck herself for action.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 6]</span></p>
+
+<p>But no first gun was fired in that engagement. A crackling of the
+document hidden over the spot where she thought her heart was came like
+a warning note to Sissy. She struggled against it a moment; then her
+hands fell. Meekly she turned her back upon her tormentor, and in a
+voice of such exquisite holiness as to be almost unearthly, she
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Split dear, will you please button me?"</p>
+
+<p>A look of outraged astonishment at the unheard-of endearment came
+over Irene's face. The Madigans regarded demonstrative affection as pure
+affectation at its best; at its worst it was little short of
+indecent.</p>
+
+<p>"'Split dear?'" mocked Irene as soon as she recovered. "Yes, dear.
+Turn around, dear. Stand straight, dear. Wait a minute, dear&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy stood in silence, biting her tongue that she might not speak.
+She was so occupied with the desire to keep Number 10 of her compact
+with herself that she did not notice how long it was before Irene really
+began to button her waist. She did note, though, that she began at the
+bottom, a proceeding Split fancied merely because it drove her junior
+nearly frantic. She buttoned with maddening slowness up to the middle,
+when she capriciously left this point and recommenced at the top.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 7]</span></p>
+
+<p><a href="images/img2.jpg"><img id="img2" src="images/img2th.jpg"
+alt="That settles Number 10, said Sissy, grimly"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">"'That settles Number 10,' said Sissy, grimly"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 8]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 9]</span></p>
+
+<p>Mentally Sissy followed the operation. It was almost complete when
+through the little gap purposely left open Split deftly introduced a
+providentially flattened piece of ice from the window-sill, giving her
+victim a little shake that sent the ice slipping smoothly down her
+squirming body, but escaping before Sissy could turn and rend her.</p>
+
+<p>"That settles Number 10," said Sissy, grimly, to herself, while she
+danced with discomfort. "I'll kill her if I get a chance&mdash;that's
+what I'll do. I'll get even, or my name's not Sis Madigan."</p>
+
+<p>She hurried back into her room, which the twins shared, and stood in
+damp martyrdom while Bessie's butter-fingers crept with miserable
+slowness up and down. She suffered so from Bessie's ineptness that,
+despite the requirements of Number 3 of her code, she tore herself
+violently from her and turned her back imploringly to Florence. But Fom
+was a partizan of Split's, and it was against all the ethics of Madigan
+warfare to aid and comfort the enemy. When Sissy, chastened, returned to
+Bep's ministrations, the blonde one of the twins was so hurt and
+offended by the implication of awkwardness&mdash;a point upon which she
+was as vulnerable as she was sensitive&mdash;that
+Sissy <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 10]</span>slapped them both before she
+went at last for relief to Aunt Anne.</p>
+
+<p>This was fatal, as she knew it would be.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall tell your father about Irene," her aunt said, looking up
+from the coffee she was sipping as she lay in bed reading a French book.
+"But it's just as well, for I told you yesterday that that dress was too
+dirty to wear another day. Change it now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Aunt Anne, it's late already&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll change that dress, Sissy, or you won't go to school."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't! It's too late. I'll be late. That means one credit off, and
+this month I'm going&mdash;" A remembrance of her lofty intentions came
+suddenly to Sissy. All the world seemed bent on compelling her to
+forswear herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Cecilia!" commanded Miss Madigan.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy stiffened.</p>
+
+<p>"You've disturbed my reading enough this morning. If you say another
+word I'll&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Aunt Anne&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Go over to the wall, Cecilia, and stand with your back to me for
+five minutes."</p>
+
+<p>With a fiendish light in her eye&mdash;a light of such desperate
+satisfaction as betokened one gladly driven to commit the
+unforgivable <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 11]</span>Sissy moved toward the
+sensitive-plant in the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Not there! That poor plant seems to suffer sympathetically with your
+badness. Stand over by the bureau."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy obeyed. Her rage at being made ridiculous, her sense of outrage
+that a perfectionist like herself should suffer punishment, added to her
+knowledge of the flight of time on school mornings, strangled her into
+dumbness. But she clasped the paper in her breast as a drowning man
+might a spar from the wreck. At least Number 4 was intact. She had been
+mercifully spared the fracture of this one of her self-made
+commandments.</p>
+
+<p>She was standing with her nose pressed firmly against the green
+wall-paper, her back laid open as by a surgical operation, and a towel,
+which her aunt had forced into the aperture for drying purposes,
+dangling down behind, when Kate, passing the door on her way to
+breakfast, glanced in.</p>
+
+<p>Her sputtering, quickly stifled screech of laughter sent Sissy
+spinning about as a bull does when the banderilla is planted in his
+quivering flesh. She looked at the doorway; it was empty, but she heard
+scurrying footsteps without. Kate was on her way to tell the others.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 12]</span>She looked at Aunt Anne. That
+severe lady had dropped her book and, seized by the contagion, was
+shaking with silent laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Not a word did Sissy say. Her expression of disgust,&mdash;disgust
+that a grown-up should be so silly as to see something funny in
+absolutely nothing; disgust that her aunt should so weaken the effect of
+her own discipline,&mdash;reinforced by the green smudge on her nose,
+rubbed off the wall-paper, finished Miss Madigan. The lady no longer
+attempted to conceal the disgraceful fact that she was laughing. She
+gave an audible gurgle, and began to wipe the tears of enjoyment from
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>In that moment the iron entered into Sissy Madigan's soul. She turned
+again to the wall, and taking a pin which had fastened the bow of ribbon
+at her throat, she pricked slowly but relentlessly in the loose
+wall-paper this legend:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>AUNT ANNE&mdash;PIG</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>After which she felt relieved, and, the five minutes being up, left
+the room with such uncompromising hauteur, still splashed with green on
+the nose, still split open down the back, with the towel's fringe
+dangling in dignity behind, that her aunt again exploded.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 13]</span></p>
+
+<p><a href="images/img3.jpg"><img id="img3" src="images/img3th.jpg"
+alt="Left the room with such uncompromising hauteur"></a></p>
+<p class="caption">"Left the room with such uncompromising hauteur ...
+that her aunt again exploded"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 14]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 15]</span>The fact that she had
+irretrievably lost one credit through tardiness set Sissy's lips in a
+tight line of determination to guard jealously every one of the
+ninety-and-nine left to her.</p>
+
+<p>At recess she remained at her desk studying her geography with an
+intensity of purpose that made her rivals' hearts quake. She sat at the
+teacher's desk&mdash;lifted to this almost regal eminence by his
+fondness for her petulant ways as well as because of that quality of
+leadership which made Sissy her fellows' spokeswoman. Hers was the
+privilege of using the master's pencils, sharpened to a fineness that
+made neatness a dissipation instead of a task. It was she, of course,
+who originated the decorative style of arithmetic-paper much in vogue,
+on which each example was penned off in an inclosure fenced by
+alternating vertical and horizontal double hyphens.</p>
+
+<p>But a queer, conscientious sense of the responsibilities of power and
+place modified Sissy's rapturous delight in her position, so that she
+kept it despite a fiercely jealous class-spirit developed by a strict
+credit-system, by the emulative temper which the rarefied atmosphere of
+the little mining town fostered, and by a young master just out of
+college who looked upon his teaching as a temporary
+adventure, <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 16]</span>much as a Japanese
+gentleman regards domestic service.</p>
+
+<p>It was in her capacity of class representative that the master had
+consulted Sissy upon the limits to be observed in the forthcoming public
+oral examination in geography. And she had enlightened him as to what
+would be considered quite "fair." This treaty, into which she entered
+with the seriousness of an ambassador to an unfriendly power arranging a
+settlement of a disputed question, had a character so sacred in her eyes
+that its violation by the master in the course of the afternoon came
+upon her like a blow.</p>
+
+<p>"Cecilia Madigan," asked the master, "what is the highest mountain in
+the world?"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy rose. The imposing array of visitors in school faded out of her
+horizon. All she could see was the eyes of her schoolmates turned in
+accusatory horror upon her. They suspected her of betraying them; of
+using her elevated position to hand down untrustworthy information.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, Mr. Garvan," she said in tones more of sorrow than of anger,
+skilfully showing her knowledge of the answer while denying his right to
+it, "that question isn't on the map of Africa."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 17]</span>
+
+<a href="images/img4.jpg"><img id="img4" src="images/img4th.jpg"
+alt="Please, Mr. Garvan, she said"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">"'Please, Mr. Garvan,' she said"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 18]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 19]</span>A flush of annoyance mounted to
+the young master's forehead. Out of the corner of her eye Sissy saw the
+preliminary twitch of the corners of his lips that served the class for
+a danger-signal.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the highest mountain, Cecilia?" he repeated sternly.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy stood a moment looking at him. All that she might not
+say&mdash;her contempt for pledge-breakers, her shocked hero-worship now
+forever a thing of the past, her outraged school-girl's
+affection&mdash;she shot straight at the master from her angry eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Then she sat down.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up from his book, incredulous. Ten credits out of one
+hundred gone at one fell swoop&mdash;ten of Sissy Madigan's credits, for
+which she fought so gallantly and which she cherished so jealously when
+she once had them in her possession.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;don't&mdash;know," repeated Sissy, disdainfully.</p>
+
+<p>The master passed the question. But as he put it to the next girl,
+Sissy put another question, with her eyes, to the same girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a scab?" her steady gaze challenged. "Are you going to
+benefit by what a <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 20]</span>mate suffers for
+principle's sake? Are you a coward who doesn't dare to stand up for your
+class? And&mdash;do you know what you'll get from me if you are?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;don't&mdash;know," faltered the girl.</p>
+
+<p>A glory of triumph shot over Sissy's face. It leaped like a sunrise
+from peak to peak in a mountain-range of obstinacy. "I don't
+know"&mdash;"I don't know"&mdash;"I don't know"&mdash;the shibboleth of
+the strikers' cause went down the line. The master was shamed in public
+by the banner pupils of his school. He writhed, but he put the question
+steadily to every girl till he came to Irene, last in the line.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the highest mountain in the world?" he asked, perfunctorily
+now.</p>
+
+<p>But, to his amazement, she rose, and, looking out of the window up to
+the mountain to the skirts of which the town clung, she answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Mount Davidson."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy's savage joy followed so quickly upon her horror at her own
+sister's defection that the closing of school left her in a trembling
+storm of emotions. In the dressing-room, where the girls were putting on
+their hats, she marched up to Irene, followed by her wrathful adherents
+and feeling like an avenging Brutus.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a sneak, Split Madigan! You're <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+21]</span>a coward, and&mdash;and a stupid coward. You don't know enough
+to betray your class and get the benefit of it, but you'd rather be mean
+than get credits, anyway. Nobody can count on you. Changeable Silk,
+that's what you are&mdash;changing color all the time, never standing
+firm! I hate you! Changeable Silk! Changeable Silk!"</p>
+
+<p>"Changeable Silk! Changeable Silk!" chanted her following.</p>
+
+<p>The little dressing-room rang with the cry of the mob, so filled with
+significance by the tone in which it was uttered that Irene paled and
+shrank.</p>
+
+<p>But only for a moment. The Madigans never lacked courage long. That
+fierce internecine strife waged by the clan in the old house high on the
+side of the hill made a Madigan quick and resolute.</p>
+
+<p>"Stupid yourself, Sissy! My answer made him madder than your not
+answering."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy looked at her searchingly. "But&mdash;did you&mdash;" she
+wavered.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I did! Who's the stupid now? Do you s'pose I didn't know
+it was&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?&mdash;what?" Sissy repeated as her sister hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>Irene turned up her nose insultingly. "I <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+22]</span>don't&mdash;know," she mocked, and beat a successful
+retreat.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Francis Madigan dined in a long room, the only man at a table with
+seven women ranging in years from four to forty-four. The accumulation
+of girls in his family was so wanton an outrage upon his desires that he
+rather rejoiced in the completeness of the infliction as an undeniable
+grievance.</p>
+
+<p>He needed a grievance as a shield against which others' grievances
+might be shattered. And in default of a more tangible one, he cited his
+heavily be-daughtered house. It was at dinner-time that he always seemed
+to realize the extent of his disaster. As he took his place at the head,
+his wrathful eye swept from Frances in her high chair, up along the
+line, past the twins, through Cecilia, Irene, and Kate, till it lighted
+upon Miss Madigan's good-humored, placid face. His sister's placidity
+was an ever-present offense to the father of the Madigans,&mdash;the
+most irascible of unsuccessful men,&mdash;and the snort with which he
+finished the inspection and took up the carving-knife had become a
+classic in Madigan annals long before Sissy brought down the house at
+the age of eight by imitating it one evening in his absence.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+23]</span><a href="images/img5.jpg"><img id="img5"
+src="images/img5th.jpg" alt="Some of the Madigans"></a></p>
+<p class="caption">"Some of the Madigans"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 24]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 25]</span>But to-night a most painful and
+ostentatious respect marked Sissy's manner to her parent. She stood
+markedly,&mdash;while the others scrambled into their chairs and Wong,
+the Chinese servant, sped about placing everything on the table at
+once,&mdash;waiting for her father to be seated.</p>
+
+<p>She was still waiting politely when his eye lighted upon her. "Sit
+down, Cecilia!" he roared; "what d' ye want, gaping there?"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy sat down. So holy was she that she did not resent (openly) the
+low, delighted giggle Irene gave. She began to be politely attentive to
+Dusie, her father's pet canary, though she loathed the spoiled little
+thing that hopped about the table helping itself.</p>
+
+<p>Madigan had a way of telling himself, in his rare moments of
+introspection, that the tenderness he might have lavished upon a son he
+spent upon the male offspring of more fortunate genera than man. The big
+Newfoundland and the great cat came to meals regularly. They shared
+Madigan's affection with the birds (whose cage, big as a dog's house, he
+had himself nailed up against the side of the wall), that broke into a
+maddening din of song, excited by the rival clatter of young Madigans
+dining.</p>
+
+<p>Protected by this shrill symphony from the <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+26]</span>sound of his daughters' voices, Madigan fed his dog, his cat,
+and his favorite canary, and with his head upon one hand, in token of
+his abiding disgust with the human, daughterful world, ate quickly with
+the other.</p>
+
+<p>This pose was the signal that freed the feminine Madigan tongue.
+Usually they all broke into conversation at once; but on this evening
+there seemed to be some agreement which held them mute till Irene
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad to see you be so patient with papa, Sissy," she said
+gently.</p>
+
+<p>His third daughter glanced apprehensively at Madigan. But her father
+had retired within his shell, and nothing but a cataclysm could reach
+him there.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;" she said, puzzled, "why&mdash;I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Promise me that you'll try to stand him," urged Split, joyously.</p>
+
+<p>"And that you'll help me control my temper, and not mock and
+aggravate me when I sulk," chanted Kate.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy dropped her knife and fork, and her hands flew to her bosom,
+not in wrath, but in terror. The crackling testament was gone!</p>
+
+<p>"Split! You&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Try to bear with me, won't you, Sis, even if I am a devil?" grinned
+Split.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 27]</span>"And set us a good example,
+Sissy," piped the twins.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Be a yittle muvver to Fwank," lisped the baby, prompted by a big
+sister.</p>
+
+<p>"And don't steal candy out of my pocket, will you, Cecilia Morgan?"
+begged her oldest sister.</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy sprang into the air, as though lifted bodily by the taunts of
+these ungrateful beneficiaries of her good intentions.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, you ox!" came in thundering tones from the head of the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>When one was called an ox among the Madigans the culprit invariably
+subsided, however the epithet might tend to make her sisters rejoice.
+But Sissy had borne too much in that one day&mdash;always keeping in
+mind the perfect sanctity with which she had begun it.</p>
+
+<p>With an inarticulate explanation that was at once a sob, a complaint,
+and a trembling defiance, she pushed back her chair and fled to her
+room. Here she sobbed in peace and plenty; sobbed till tears became a
+luxury to be produced by a conscious effort of the will. It had always
+been a grief to Sissy that she could never cry enough. Split, now, could
+weep <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 28]</span>vocally and by the hour, but
+all too soon for Sissy the wells of her own sorrow ran dry.</p>
+
+<p>Yet tears had ever a chastening effect upon the third of the
+Madigans. In due time she rose, washed her face, and combed back her
+hair and braided it in a tight plait that stuck out at an aggressive
+angle on the side; unaided she could never get it to depend properly
+from the middle. This heightened the feeling of utter peacefulness, of
+remorse washed clean, besides putting her upon such a spiritual
+elevation as enabled her to meet her world with composure, though bitter
+experience told her how long a joke lasted among the Madigans.</p>
+
+<p>She fell upon her knees at last beside her bed. No Madigan of this
+generation had been taught to pray, an aggressive skepticism&mdash;the
+tangent of excessive youthful religiosity&mdash;having made the girls'
+father an outspoken foe to religious exercise. But to Sissy's emotional,
+self-conscious soul the necessity for worded prayer came quick now and
+imperative.</p>
+
+<p>"O Lord," she pleaded aloud, "help me to keep 'em all&mdash;even
+Number 10&mdash;in spite of Split and the devil. Help&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She heard the door open behind her.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 29]</span>
+<a href="images/img6.jpg"><img id="img6" src="images/img6th.jpg"
+alt="The Rest of the Madigans"></a></p>
+<p class="caption">"The Rest of the Madigans"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 30]</span></p>
+
+<p>With a bound she was in bed, fully dressed as she was; and pulling
+the covers tight up to <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 31]</span>her neck,
+she waited, to all intents and purposes fast asleep.</p>
+
+<p>"You little fool!" said Madigan, with a hint of laughter in his heavy
+voice and laying a not ungentle hand on her blazing cheeks. "D' ye think
+I care if you want to kneel and kotow like other idiots? If you're that
+kind&mdash;and I suppose you are, being a woman&mdash;pray and
+be&mdash;blessed!"</p>
+
+<p>It was the nearest thing to a paternal benediction that had ever come
+to Sissy, but she was too wary a small actress to be moved by it out of
+her r&ocirc;le. Nor did her father wait to note the effect of his words.
+His heavy step passed on and out of her room into his own, and the door
+slammed between them.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment Sissy was up; in another moment she had torn off her
+clothes, blown out her candle, and jumped back into bed. She was almost
+asleep when the twins came in, but she feigned the deepest of slumbers
+when Bessie pushed a crackling piece of paper under her pillow, though
+her fingers closed greedily about it as soon as the room was quiet
+again.</p>
+
+<p>She knew what it was&mdash;her precious compact with herself, that
+loyal little Bep had recaptured from the enemy. She lay there, lulled by
+its presence; and slowly, slowly she was drop<span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+32]</span>ping off into real slumber when a sharply agonizing thought,
+an inescapable mental pin-prick, roused her. It was Number 9. She had
+not touched the piano during the whole of that strenuous day.</p>
+
+<p>She withdrew her fingers reproachfully from the insistent reminder of
+virtuous intention, and resolutely she turned her back on it and tried
+to pretend herself to sleep. But every broken section of her treaty had
+a voice, and above them all clamored the call of Number 9 that it was
+not yet too late.</p>
+
+<p>When Sissy rose wearily at last and draped the Mexican quilt about
+her, the house was quiet. All youthful Madigans were abed, and the older
+ones were in secure seclusion.</p>
+
+<p>It was a small Saint Cecilia, with a short, stiff braid standing out
+from one side of her head, and utterly without musical enthusiasm, that
+sat down in the darkness at the old square piano. "La Gazelle" was out
+of the question, for she had no lamp and she did not yet know the trills
+and runs of her new "piece" by heart. But the five-finger exercises and
+the scales that it had been her custom to run over slightingly while she
+read from a paper novel by the Duchess open in front of her
+music&mdash;this much of an atonement was still within her power.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 33]</span>With her bare foot on the soft
+pedal, that none might hear her, Sissy played. It was dark and very
+quiet; the hush-hush of the throbbing mines filled the night and stilled
+it. At times her heart stood still for fear that she might be
+discovered; at other times the longing for a sensational uncovering of
+her belated and extraordinary goodness seized her, and her naked foot
+slipped from the cold pedal only to be hurriedly replaced before the
+jangle of the keys could escape.</p>
+
+<p>How long she practised, and whether she redeemed herself and Number
+9, Sissy never knew, for she fell asleep at last over the keys and was
+waked by a hoarse scream and a wild cry of "De debbil! De debbil!"</p>
+
+<p>It was Wong, the Chinaman, who had but one name for all things
+supernatural. Coming home from Chinatown, he was passing the glass door
+near which the piano stood when he saw the slender figure in its
+trailing white drapery bowed over the keys.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy looked up, sleep still bewildering her, and yet awake enough to
+be fearful of consequences. She tore open the door and sped after the
+Chinaman to enlighten him, but her pursuit only confirmed Wong's
+conception of that mission of malice which is devil's work
+on <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 34]</span>earth. A terrified howl burst
+from him. There was only one being on earth of whom he stood in greater
+awe than the thing he fancied he was fleeing from; that one, logically,
+must be greater than It. Taking his very life in his hand, he doubled,
+darted past the shivering Thing, flew on through the open door, and made
+straight for the master's room.</p>
+
+<p>For Sissy there was nothing to do but to follow.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to be good," she wailed, unnerved, when Aunt Anne had her
+by the shoulder and was catechizing her in the presence of a nightgowned
+multitude of excited Madigans.</p>
+
+<p>But succor came from an unexpected quarter. "Let the child alone,
+Anne," growled Madigan, adjusting the segment of the leg of woolen
+underwear which he wore for a nightcap; and seizing Sissy in his arms,
+he bore her off to bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Papa's pet! Papa's baby!" mouthed Irene, under her breath, as she
+danced tauntingly along behind his back.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 35]</span>
+<a href="images/img7.jpg"><img id="img7" src="images/img7th.jpg"
+alt="Seizing Sissy in his arms, he bore her off to
+bed"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">"Seizing Sissy in his arms, he bore her off to
+bed"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 36]</span></p>
+
+<p>And Sissy, outraged in all the dignity of her eleven years at being
+carried like a child, but unspeakably happy in her father's favor,
+looked over his shoulder with a sheepish,
+smiling, <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 37]</span>sleepy face, murmuring,
+"Sour grapes, Split, sour grapes!"</p>
+
+<p>Afterward, encouraged by the darkness and the strangeness of being
+laid in bed from her father's arms, Sissy held him a moment by her
+side.</p>
+
+<p>"When men make promises on paper that they can't keep, father," she
+whispered, "what do they do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, go to sleep, child! They become bankrupt, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;and what becomes of the paper?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you know or care about such things? Will you go to sleep
+to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you had any bankrupt's paper," she pleaded, catching hold of his
+hand as he turned to leave her, "what would you do with it&mdash;please,
+father!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, tear it up, you goose."</p>
+
+<p>With a jump, Sissy was bolt upright in bed and holding up a
+fluttering, much-folded sheet, an almost incredulous joy in her eager
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Take mine and pretend I was bankrupt&mdash;please&mdash;oh,
+please!"</p>
+
+<p>To Madigan all children, his own particularly, were such
+unaccountable beings that a vagary more or less could not more
+hopelessly perplex his misunderstanding of them. With
+a <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 38]</span>"Tut! tut!" of impatience, he
+took the paper from her and tore it twice across.</p>
+
+<p>A long sigh of relief came from Sissy as the bits fluttered to the
+floor. "You're such a nice father!" she murmured happily, and fell
+asleep, a blissful bankrupt instead of a Pharisee.</p>
+
+<hr class="cb">
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 39]</span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="A_PAGAN_AND_A_PURITAN" id="A_PAGAN_AND_A_PURITAN"></a>A
+PAGAN AND A PURITAN</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 40]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 41]</span></p>
+
+<p>"Split! Split!"</p>
+
+<p>The morning was warm and young; Mount Davidson's side was golden with
+sunflowers. On the long front piazza Mr. Madigan's canaries, in their
+mammoth cage, were like to burst their throats for joy in the promise of
+summer. Irene, every lithe muscle a-play, was hanging by her knees on
+the swinging-bar, her tawny hair sweeping the woodshed floor as she
+swung.</p>
+
+<p>"Split, I say!"</p>
+
+<p>The tone was commanding&mdash;such a tone as Sissy dared assume only
+on Saturday mornings, when her elder sister's necessities delivered
+Irene the Oppressor into her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Split Madigan!"</p>
+
+<p>In the very exhilaration of effort&mdash;the use of her muscles was
+joy to her&mdash;Split paused to wish that the house might fall on
+Sissy; that she might suddenly become dumb; that the
+key <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 42]</span>to the piano might be
+lost&mdash;anything that would avert her own impending doom.</p>
+
+<p>But none of these things happened; they never did happen, no matter
+how passionately the second of the Madigans longed for them on the last
+day of the week.</p>
+
+<p>"Split&mdash;you know very well you hear me," the voice cried, coming
+nearer.</p>
+
+<p>Split burst into song. She was a merry, merry Zingara, she declared
+in sweet, strong cadence, with a boisterous chorus of tra-la-las that
+rivaled the canaries'; and the louder she sang, the faster she swung, so
+that she was really half deaf and wholly giddy when she felt Sissy's
+hand on her ankle.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, is that you, Sissy?" she asked, sweetly surprised, peering out
+from under her bushy mane.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's me, Sissy!" Cecilia's small, round face was stern. "And
+you've heard me from the very first, and if you want any&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I show you how to skin the cat, Sis?" Irene interrupted
+hastily, pulling herself up with a jerk.</p>
+
+<p>But Sissy was fat and had none of her sister's wiry agility. She
+declined; her mind was attuned to other issues just then, and her soul
+was a-quiver with malicious, anticipatory <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+43]</span>glee; for this was the day of Split's music lesson, and her
+teacher was none other than Sissy herself.</p>
+
+<p>"So, if you want it," the younger sister's voice rose threateningly,
+"you've got to come now."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's leave it till the afternoon." Split's voice came from
+somewhere in the midst of her evolutions.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come?" demanded Sissy peremptorily. "Once!"</p>
+
+<p>How could Split answer? Her mouth was tight shut; she was pulling
+herself up inch by inch, slowly, slowly, till her chin should rest upon
+the bar.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come? Twice!"</p>
+
+<p>Split's face was purple, and there was an agonized prayer for delay
+in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come? Third&mdash;and la-ast&mdash;" Sissy prolonged the
+note quaveringly. It was not her intention to provoke her victim beyond
+endurance. These lessons, which gave her the whip-hand over the doughty
+and invincible Split, were far too precious to her.</p>
+
+<p>"And la-ast," she repeated inexorably.</p>
+
+<p>With a thud Irene dropped to the floor. Leaving all her
+light-heartedness behind in the dusk of the shed, where the trapeze
+still swung, <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 44]</span>she followed, a sullen
+captive; while Cecilia, gloating like the despot she was, led the
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll begin with the piece," said Split, eagerly, seating herself
+before the piano.</p>
+
+<p>"No; scales and exercises first," declared Sissy, firmly. "Sit
+farther back, Split, and keep your wrist up."</p>
+
+<p>Split moved the stool a millionth of an inch. Why, oh, why had she
+quarreled with Professor Trask? If some one had only told her that her
+own rebellion would mean the substitution of Cecilia for herself as his
+pupil, and another opportunity for that apt young perfectionist to
+outrank her senior!</p>
+
+<p>With a rattling verve, and a dime on each wrist, which Professor
+Cecilia had placed there to effect a divorce between finger and arm
+movement, Irene attacked her scales and exercises. She loathed
+five-finger exercises. So did the talented but lazy Sissy, who knew well
+from experience what torture would most try her victim's soul. Split
+merely wanted to play well, to outplay Cecilia, to be independent of her
+and play her own accompaniments.</p>
+
+<p>"Lift your fingers, Split. You must raise your wrist," came in an
+easy tone of command. "Repeat that, please. Again. There goes
+the <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 45]</span>dime again! If you'd keep your
+wrist steady, it wouldn't fall off. No; you're playing altogether too
+fast. Slowly! slow-ly! Bad fingering! bad fingering! Wretched! Wait,
+I'll mark it for you."</p>
+
+<p>With her nicely pointed long pencil, Sissy, a martinet for technic,
+assumed all the airs of her own professor and prepared to explain the
+obvious.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you don't!" Irene's hand shot out from the keys to the
+sheet-music, scattering the dimes; her wide-spread fingers covered the
+spot Sissy contemplated adorning with prettily made figures.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't what?" asked Sissy.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Miss Innocence! Don't be so affected, that's what! Don't put on
+so many airs! Don't pretend you know it all, Sis Madigan!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Split! Do you s'pose I <i>want</i> to put the fingering
+down?"</p>
+
+<p>"You do; but you sha'n't!" exclaimed Split, savagely.</p>
+
+<p>"All I want to do is to help you," said Sissy, with well-bred
+forbearance.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, don't show off, then."</p>
+
+<p>Split withdrew her hand, and the lesson proceeded.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll play your piece for you first,
+Split, <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 46]</span>to show you how it ought to
+go." Sissy rose, her calico rustling, to change the professorial chair
+for the stool of the demonstrator.</p>
+
+<p>But Split sat like a rock.</p>
+
+<p>"Professor Trask always does, Split."</p>
+
+<p>There was an abused note in Sissy's voice that deceived her sister.
+In the perennial game of "bluff" these two played, each was alert to
+detect a weakness in the other; and Irene thought she had found one now.
+Ignoring her professor, she placed "In Sweet Dreams" on the rack before
+her, and gaily and loudly, and very badly, began to play.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy rose majestically. Her correct ear was outraged, her small
+mouth was shut tight. Without a word she resigned her post and made for
+the door. She had quite reached it before Split capitulated.</p>
+
+<p>"Play it, then, you mean thing," she cried, flouncing off the stool,
+"if it's going to do you any good!"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy hardened. She had a way of becoming adamant on rare occasions
+that really struck terror to Split's facile soul, which resented a
+grudge promptly and as promptly forgot all about it.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care to play it," said Sissy, loftily.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;I want you to&mdash;now."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 47]</span>
+<a href="images/img8.jpg"><img id="img8" src="images/img8th.jpg"
+alt="Play it, then, you mean thing,"></a></p>
+<p class="caption">"'Play it, then, you mean thing,' she cried, ... 'if
+it's going to do you any good!'"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 48]</span></p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 49]</span>"But I don't want to."</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't you going to give me my lesson, then?" demanded Split,
+hoarsely. "I thought you were so anxious to help me!"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy was mute. Hers was a strong position, she felt.</p>
+
+<p>"D' ye expect me to get down on my knees?" Irene's wrathful voice
+rose, and her unstable temper rocked threateningly. A Madigan would
+willingly have been flayed alive rather than apologize in so many
+words.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't expect anything at all," remarked Sissy, coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you'd better expect, for"&mdash;with a swift motion that cut
+off her sister's retreat and put her own back to the door&mdash;"you'll
+play that piece before you go out of this room."</p>
+
+<p>Without a word Sissy plumped down on the floor. Unconcernedly she
+pulled her jackstones out of her pocket, and soon their regular
+click-clock and the deft thump of her small, fat fist was all that was
+heard in the room.</p>
+
+<p>It always seemed to Split that the last occasion of a disagreement
+between herself and the sister nearest to her in years, and furthest
+from her in temperament, was the most intolerable. Never in her life,
+she thought, had she <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 50]</span>so longed to
+murder Sissy as at this minute. She&mdash;Split&mdash;had no time to
+waste besieging the impregnable fortress of Sissy's mulishness, when the
+hardening process had really set in. There never was time enough on
+Saturdays to do half what one planned, and to-day was the day of Crosby
+Pemberton's party, besides.</p>
+
+<p>And still Split remained at the door, and still Sissy played
+jackstones. Twice there were skirmishes between besieger and
+besieged&mdash;once when Split crept upon Sissy and, with a quick thrust
+of her slim, straight leg, disarranged an elaborate scheme for "putting
+horses in the stable," and once when there was a strategic sortie from
+Sissy, which failed to catch the enemy napping.</p>
+
+<p>It was Split who finally yielded, as, with rage in her heart, she had
+known from the very beginning would be the case. But no Madigan ever
+laid down her arms and surrendered formally.</p>
+
+<p>Split threw open the door with a bang. "Go out, then, miss! go out!"
+she commanded.</p>
+
+<p>Calmly and skilfully Sissy finished the "devil on a stump," the last
+of those ornamental additions the complexities of which appeal to
+experts in the game; then she gath<span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+51]</span>ered up her beloved jackstones and got to her feet. But
+dignity forbade that she should leave the room just when her foe had
+ordered her to go. So she ignored the invitation, and going to the
+piano, sat down in an ostentatiously correct position, requiring many
+adjustments and readjustments, and began to play "The Gazelle."</p>
+
+<p>She played prettily, did this young person, who seemed to Split
+specially designed to infuriate her. And to-day she played "with
+expression," soft-pedaling and lingering upon certain passages in a way
+which the Madigans considered shameless.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the affected thing! Just listen to her! How she does put on!"
+sneered Split to the world at large.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy's lips opened, then closed tightly. She had almost answered,
+for no Madigan may be accused of sentimentality and live unavenged. Only
+a moment, though, was she at a loss. Then calmly, prettily, she glided
+into Split's own particular "piece." She knew this would draw blood. And
+it did.</p>
+
+<p>"You sha'n't play it now! You sha'n't!" Split cried, her ungovernable
+temper aroused. She dashed impetuously for the piano and tore the sheet
+of music from the rack.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 52]</span>It was the thing for which she
+had suffered so many lessons; for which she had sat feeling like a
+mean-spirited imbecile with Sissy's impertinent finger under her wrist,
+while all outdoors was calling to her; for which she had forborne often
+and often during the week, only to be more thoroughly bullied on
+Saturdays. Yet she tore it across and recklessly trampled it underfoot.
+Then with her hands over her ears, lest she hear the imperturbable and
+maddeningly excellent Sissy play "In Sweet Dreams" without the notes,
+Split fled.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy played on till the very last bar; she had an idea that Split
+might be ambushed out in the hall. But when she got to the end and heard
+no sound from there, she decided that the enemy was indeed vanquished,
+and she rose to close the piano. As she did so she got a view of an
+elegantly stout and very upright lady coming up the front steps, with a
+fair, pale boy by her side.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 53]</span>
+<a href="images/img9.jpg"><img id="img9" src="images/img9th.jpg"
+alt="Go and shake hands properly, like a little
+gentleman"></a></p>
+<p class="caption">"'Go and shake hands properly, like a little
+gentleman,' bullied Mrs. Pemberton"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 54]</span></p>
+
+<p>With an agility commendable in one so round, Sissy dropped beneath
+the piano, and, whipping off her apron, proceeded to wipe the dust from
+the back legs of the instrument with it. This done, she rammed the apron
+up between the wall and the piano, and was seated, breathless, but with
+a bit of very dirty white <span class='pagenum'> [Pg.
+55]</span>embroidery in her hands, when the lady entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Cecilia, busy as usual," she said in an important, throaty
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mrs. Pemberton," said Sissy, softly.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Crosby, that even a child may make use of spare moments.
+Why don't you say how-d'-ye-do to Cecilia? Where're your manners?"
+demanded the lady.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, 'm. How-do, Sissy?" asked the boy, uncomfortably. He was a very
+prim child, immaculately dressed, his smooth hair plastered neatly down
+over his forehead; and he sat bolt upright on the edge of his chair, for
+he knew well his mother's views about lounging.</p>
+
+<p>"Go and shake hands properly, like a little gentleman," bullied Mrs.
+Pemberton.</p>
+
+<p>With a sickly smile Crosby walked over to Sissy and grasped her hand.
+He let it go with an "Ouch!" that made Mrs. Pemberton turn majestically
+and glare at him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so sorry I stuck you, Crosby," said Sissy, softly, smoothing out
+her embroidery. "I forgot there was a needle in my work."</p>
+
+<p>Crosby looked at her; he knew just how sorry she was.</p>
+
+<p>"The thing to say, Crosby," thundered his mama, "is, 'Not at all, not
+at all, Cecilia!'"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 56]</span>"Not at all&mdash;not at all,
+Cecilia," squeaked the boy, his thin voice like a faint echo of his
+mother's heavy contralto.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy yearned to beat him; she always did. That she did not
+invariably yield to her desire to express her resentment of so awfully
+mothered a person, was due solely to a sentiment of chivalry: he was so
+weak and so devoted to herself, and it took some courage to be devoted
+to Sissy.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm ashamed of my son!" thundered Mrs. Pemberton.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Sissy knew that formula. She had heard the announcement first
+one memorable day at school when she led a revolt against the
+master&mdash;a revolt which only the girls of her clique were expected
+to indorse. But Crosby, either because he was so accustomed to playing
+with girls that he considered himself one of them, or because of that
+dogged devotion which even so stern a puritan as Sissy could not
+sufficiently discourage, had taken the cue from her lips. He, too, had
+failed publicly and vicariously, in the very presence of his
+lion-hearted, bull-voiced mother, and sat a white-faced criminal
+awaiting execution, when Mrs. Pemberton, rising in her voluminous black
+silk skirts, like an outraged and peppery
+hen, <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 57]</span>stood a moment speechless with
+wrath, and then broke forth with her denunciation before the whole
+school, visitors and all. "Mr. Garvan," she had exclaimed in a deep
+voice all a-tremble, "I am ashamed of my son!" and sailed majestically
+from the room. Crosby's action had really touched Sissy at the time,
+though, like the diplomat she was, she had promptly disowned it.</p>
+
+<p>But to-day Mrs. Pemberton's shame did not too much affect her
+offspring, who sat, not quite so upright now, squeezing the blood from
+the finger that Sissy's needle had pricked.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me look at your embroidery, Cecilia," said the lady,
+patronizingly.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy rose and brought it to her. Before Crosby she tried not to show
+it, but this little Madigan was really suffering in her perfect soul:
+she embroidered so badly, and knew it so well.</p>
+
+<p>"H'm!" Mrs. Pemberton drew off her glove. "Make your stitches even,
+and keep your work clean&mdash;like this&mdash;like this&mdash;see?"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy saw. Under the firm, big, white hand the strawberry leaves and
+blossoms sprang up and flourished. Mrs. Pemberton loved to embroider;
+her voice was almost gentle when she <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+58]</span>painted on linen with her needle, and then only did she forget
+to bully her boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you will play for us, Cecilia, if I do a bit of your work
+for you?"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy knew it was coming. Mrs. Pemberton always asked her to play,
+and playing for company was pure show-off from a Madigan point of view.
+Split would hear and taunt her with it later, she knew. But though she
+scorned the servile and downtrodden Crosby, Sissy, no more than he,
+dared disobey that grenadier, his mother. She took her seat at the
+piano, opened a Beethoven that Mrs. Pemberton had given her the last
+Christmas, under the impression that she was fostering a taste for the
+classical, and, with a revengeful little hand that couldn't reach the
+octaves, she began to murder the "Funeral March."</p>
+
+<p>Just as the performer let her hands fall upon the last somber chord
+(her puritanical soul enjoying the double dissipation of pretending to
+herself while she afflicted others), she lifted her eyes to the mirror
+over the piano and saw Irene out in the hall. In the mirror their eyes
+met, and the mockery in Irene's was unmistakable as Sissy rose,
+agitated, caught in the very act of showing off, convicted of being
+affected.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 59]</span>"Very pretty; very pretty,
+indeed!" said Mrs. Pemberton, absent-mindedly. "Now play another little
+waltz."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Anne says, Mrs. Pemberton," put in Irene, entering, "will you
+come to her room?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pemberton rose, her deft hands still calling forth the
+perfection of fruit from the stubborn linen soil upon which Sissy could
+make nothing grow, and sailed across the hall. Crosby immediately jumped
+from his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Sissy," he cried, "I know an awful swell way to cut
+paper-doll dresses."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy looked at him. For all her sins (and in a hidden corner of her
+heart that she rarely looked into, she knew herself for the hypocrite
+she was, despite all her self-righteous pretense) this girl-boy's
+devotion was her punishment. She did not envy Split her successes; in
+fact, she often disapproved the methods by which they were attained. Her
+pride would permit her neither to make such conquests, nor to enjoy them
+when they were made; but she cursed her fate that Crosby Pemberton had
+fallen to her share. For the love of a really bad boy Sissy felt she
+could have sacrificed much&mdash;for a fellow quite out of the pale, a
+bold, wicked pirate of a boy who would say "Darn," and even smoke a
+cigarette; a dare<span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 60]</span>devil, whose
+people could do nothing with him; a fellow with a swagger and a droop to
+his eyelid and something deliciously sinister in his lean, firm jaw and
+saucy black eye&mdash;a boy like Jack Cody, for instance, for whom a
+whole world of short-skirted femininity divided itself naturally into
+two classes: just girls&mdash;and Split Madigan. But that a forthright,
+practical, severe person like herself should be made ridiculous by
+Crosby's worship, and that Split, her arch-enemy, should be there to
+hear her adorer make his sexless declaration, was too much! Even a
+Madigan could not bear up under it. When Sissy looked from "Miss Crosby"
+(as the very girls who played with him called him) to Split, there were
+tears of rage trembling in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>But, with a generosity suspiciously unlike her, Split ignored the
+signal of distress. "What time this afternoon will the party begin,
+Crosby?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, two o'clock. But you'll come early, won't you&mdash;Sissy?"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy did not answer. She was waiting to see what Split's next move
+would be.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that I can go," said Split, gently. "I haven't any
+gloves&mdash;unless&mdash;won't you ask father for some, Sissy?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 61]</span>There was a prompt refusal upon
+Sissy's lips, but she did not utter it; the Pembertons' visit had given
+the enemy too much material with which to regale her fellow-Madigans at
+the dinner-table in the evening. Sissy looked questioningly into Split's
+eyes, and silently the bargain was struck: to so much refraining from
+ridicule in public on the part of one, a certain indebtedness which the
+other might discharge by facing Francis Madigan with a demand for money.
+It was hard, but Sissy shut her teeth and got to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I come with you, Sissy?" asked Crosby, following her to the
+door. "If you'll let me have your tissue-paper and the scissors, I'll
+show&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy's hands flew to her breast. "I wish&mdash;I wish you'd never
+speak to me again!" she exclaimed, and Crosby dodged as though he were
+apprehensive that she might beat him.</p>
+
+<p>"It's so kind of you to go the very minute I ask," giggled Split,
+gleefully.</p>
+
+<p>But Sissy shut the door behind her on Crosby's woeful face and
+Split's radiantly happy one, and went to her fate.</p>
+
+<p><a href="images/img10.jpg"><img id="img10" src="images/img10th.jpg"
+alt="Of the design and construction of which he was quite
+vain"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">"Of the design and construction of which he was quite
+vain"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Francis Madigan's room was his castle. It was his castle and his
+workshop and his bou<span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 62]</span>doir, his
+kitchen, his library, and his pantry in one. The laxness of the family
+housekeeping had led him to distrust all hands and heads but his own.
+Everything that he wanted, or that he might want in the near future, he
+kept under his eyes, within reach of his hands, where none might borrow
+or lose or destroy. In order to provide for the needs which grew and
+changed daily, he fitted up rude shelf above shelf, till the corners of
+the room were transformed into rough bric-&agrave;-brac stands. Mr.
+Madigan had the unsuccessful man's pride in trifling successes in
+amateur carpentering, in husbandry of any sort unrelated to the real
+issues of his life; and every tool he needed for the exercise of his
+skill he kept under lock and key. He believed in, he trusted no Madigan.
+He had been known to lend his penknife to Sissy, but that was when she
+was ailing long ago. He laid in supplies as though he had inside
+information of a famine near at hand; and his pipes and his great cans
+of tobacco were piled up with his cards and his books on the table where
+he played solitaire all day and read half the night. The sweets he liked
+occasionally, and the day's provision of fruit (for he ate fruit only
+and at this time looked upon a vegetarian as a coarse creature who
+belonged to a dead era), were packed in a small home-made pantry of the
+design and construction of which he was quite vain. His bed swathed in
+sheets; his blankets sewed securely together, as though he feared they
+might escape; a device all his own of great wooden wedges raising the
+lower end of the mattress so that his feet were on a level with his
+pillowed head; the chest of little drawers which his daughters called
+"father's hobby," nailed high on the wall and filled with all sorts of
+odds and ends, the detritus and possible repair-material of years of
+housekeeping&mdash;all this Sissy took in with the unseeing eyes one has
+for the familiar.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 63]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 64]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 65]</span></p>
+
+<p>She did not expect her father's room to be like any one else's;
+neither did she look for an easy and successful termination to her
+quest. Sometimes she got what she asked for, but she asked for little.
+And to-day Francis Madigan had been tinkering at the old house,
+hammering here and patching there, a process that specially tried his
+temper, being a threatening indication of change, which he resented by
+declaring that "everything goes to the devil."</p>
+
+<p>"Father," began Sissy, carefully, as she met his inquiring eye, "do
+you approve of dancing?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 66]</span>He looked up from his cards.
+"What nonsense are you talking now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because Irene and I have a good chance to practise
+it&mdash;dancing&mdash;this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;practise," he growled.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we? All right. It's Crosby's party, you know. He's thirteen
+to-day. It's his party. His mother's giving it for him at Cooper's Hall.
+And there'll be dancing and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," agreed Sissy, sweetly. "But we'll go if you say so. I won't
+need any dress, and&mdash;" she hurried on as he raised his head
+belligerently, "neither will Irene. Isn't that lucky? My brown will do,
+though the over-skirt does jump up when I dance and show the red sham
+underneath; but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What are you bothering me about, then?" he demanded indignantly,
+throwing down his cards.</p>
+
+<p>"Gloves," she said gently. Then quickly, before he could speak,
+"That's all. They don't cost very much. Or, I'll tell you,"&mdash;her
+voice grew suddenly most cheerful, as though she had made a discovery
+that must delight him,&mdash;"we can wear mitts. I don't mind&mdash;and
+neither will Split. Just a pair <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 67]</span>of
+blue lace ones for her and pink for me, or&mdash;or&mdash;" her voice
+wavered, but she was ready to pay the price, "just blue ones for Split,
+father."</p>
+
+<p>He put his hand in his pocket. "Why not just pink ones for Sissy?" he
+asked almost good-naturedly.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy shook her head, but the red rushed to her cheeks. She had
+won!</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure you need them?" he asked cautiously in the very act of
+bestowal.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure! Sure!" she cried, throwing her arms gratefully about his neck
+before she danced to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"But you're going, too?" he called after her. "All right, then. Make
+Irene behave. She's an ox&mdash;that girl."</p>
+
+<p>An ox, of course, interpreted variously according to Madigan's mood
+and the correlating circumstances, signified this time an indiscreet,
+pleasure-mad child. Sissy understood, and she blushed for her sister. In
+fact, she was always blushing for her sister. She considered it to be
+her duty formally and officially to disavow her senior. So reprehensible
+did she feel Split's conduct to be that some one must blush for it; and
+as blushing was not Split's forte, Sissy did it for her.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 68]</span>And she really did it very well,
+with an assumption of chagrin that could not fail to call attention
+subtly to the contrast between the sisters. When Split failed in her
+lessons with a completeness, a sensational ostentation that was shocking
+to Sissy, that Number 1 scholar blushed gently, and, discreetly lowering
+her head, became absorbed in her work. After school, when Split was
+being kept in and disciplined (a process which never failed effectually
+to discipline the hardy individual who attempted it), when she wept and
+stormed and raged and threw caution to the winds as only tempestuous
+Split could, then was Sissy's attitude a marvel of disapproving
+rectitude. She had a great deal of dignity, had Sissy, and the picture
+of holiness that she presented as, with her books on her arm, she walked
+past the desk where the sobbing sinner's head lay with tumbled curls and
+bloated face, came as near as anything could to quench the passion of
+tears in which Split's tempers culminated. On such occasions the
+infuriated Split was wont, for just a moment, to conquer the
+half-hysterical sobs that threatened to choke her as well as inundate
+the world, and make a face at Saint Cecilia as she passed holily by. But
+Cecilia was a Madigan always, as well as a <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+69]</span>saint temporarily, and her eyes were turned prudently away
+just then, as though she were already studiously pondering to-morrow's
+lesson.</p>
+
+<p>But Sissy blushed her most perfect disapproval when she played
+chaperon to her elder sister. It was a position for which she felt
+herself peculiarly fitted, even without the semi-official commission she
+held&mdash;a position which so conscientious a person could not regard
+in the light of a sinecure.</p>
+
+<p>As she danced only the more sedate dances, because of that obtrusive
+tendency of the red sham to her skirt, Sissy was able to chaperon her
+senior all the more effectively at Crosby Pemberton's party. Irene
+danced like a thing whose vocation is motion. She was a twig in a
+rain-storm, a butterfly seeking sweets, a humming-bird whose wing beat
+the air with a very rhapsody of rhythm. She was on the floor with the
+first note Professor Trask struck, and she danced down the side of the
+little hall, when the waltz was over and all the other couples had
+seated themselves, as though the meter of the music had bewitched her
+feet and they might nevermore walk soberly.</p>
+
+<p>"Split&mdash;don't!" It was the shocked voice of her young
+chaperon.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 70]</span>"Sissy&mdash;don't!" mocked the
+mutinous Split.</p>
+
+<p>Even after she took the seat beside Sissy, her heels were lifted and
+the toes of her slippers were beating time. She sat there chattering to
+a group of boys buzzing about her, upon whom her high spirits had the
+effect that dance-music had upon herself.</p>
+
+<p>"You're the prettiest girl I've seen since I left the city, Irene,"
+patronizingly whispered the boy lately from San Francisco, whose
+metropolitan elegances had dazzled the eyes of the mountain maidens.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder how many girls Will Morrow's said that to this afternoon!"
+came like a sarcastic douche from Sissy, who conceived it to be a
+chaperon's duty to take the conceit out of citified chaps.</p>
+
+<p>Young Morrow turned to find a small woman in brown eying him
+disdainfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;well, I never said it to you, anyway," he retorted
+gallantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Good reason why. You knew I wouldn't believe you," Sissy declared,
+floundering in her anger.</p>
+
+<p>"Neither would anybody else."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+71]</span><a href="images/img11.jpg"><img id="img11"
+src="images/img11th.jpg" alt="The Belle of the Afternoon"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">"The Belle of the Afternoon"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 72]</span></p>
+
+<p>"Why? Because you said it? Didn't know you had such a reputation."
+Sissy was recovering. "Never mind, Split," she
+added, <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 73]</span>heavily sarcastic and
+assuming a comforting air that maddened Irene, who desired nothing more
+than to impress her new suitor with the elegant gentility of her manner,
+her family's, and all that was hers. "Just to have a boy from the city
+even pretend to think you're good-looking is worth living for. Boys know
+so much&mdash;in the city!" she concluded witheringly.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Morrow from San Francisco looked bewildered. He had merely paid
+what he considered a very dashing compliment to one girl, when lo! the
+other overwhelmed him with her contempt. He turned for consolation to
+Irene.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll show you how they dance the two-step in the city," he said,
+holding out his hand as the music began again.</p>
+
+<p>But he had reckoned without that stern censor of sisterly manners,
+Cecilia Madigan; that loyal Comstocker who resented the implication of
+her town's inferiority, quite independent of the fact that the insult
+was not addressed to her but to one who, apparently, welcomed it.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I'll go home now, Split," she remarked carelessly,
+rising.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden blight fell upon the belle of the afternoon. When Sissy
+went, go she must, too; this was the sole rule of conduct Francis
+<span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+74]</span>Madigan had devised for the guidance of his most
+headstrong daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Sissy&mdash;not till after supper!" she pleaded piteously.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I've got some studying to do for the examination Monday,"
+explained the exemplary member of Mr. Garvan's class and society at
+large.</p>
+
+<p>"Just wait till this one dance is over!" Coaxing was not Split
+Madigan's forte; she was accustomed to demand.</p>
+
+<p>But it was just that one dance that Sissy, the pure and patriotic,
+could not countenance.</p>
+
+<p>A quick flash of fury lighted Irene's eye. To be bossed publicly and
+before Mr. Will Morrow of San Francisco! In her heart she swore to be
+avenged; yet she dropped Mr. Morrow's hand and shook her head to all his
+pleadings, as she followed her ruthless tyrant across the floor to the
+little dressing-room.</p>
+
+<p>But as the sisters emerged from the dressing-room door, Crosby
+Pemberton and his cousin Fred stopped them.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not going home, Split?" begged Fred. "I've been looking
+everywhere for you. Oh, come and dance just this one with me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sissy's going," said Split, the lilting
+of <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 75]</span>the music stirring her pulses
+and lifting her feet, despite the unmusical rage she was in, "and I've
+got to go, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you stay&mdash;won't you wait just for this one, Sissy?"
+begged Fred.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;certainly," acquiesced the gentle Sissy.</p>
+
+<p>Split gasped with amazement. But she wasted no time, throwing off her
+jacket with a quick twist of her wrist. Later she might fathom the
+tortuosities of her tyrant's mind. All she knew now was that she might
+dance. With whom was a small matter to Split Madigan.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy watched her dance away, delight and malice in her eye. She was
+watching till Mr. Morrow from the city should behold her revenge. But
+Crosby did not know this, and he had plans of his own.</p>
+
+<p>"Come and play a game over in the corner, just till this dance's
+over, won't you, Sissy?"</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of a game?" she demanded, following him mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a new game. It's lots of fun. I'll show you."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy consented. She could play a game&mdash;and she knew she was
+clever at all games&mdash;without fear of betrayal from that red sham
+<span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+76]</span>which she had been fiercely sitting upon half the
+afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Before long, her emulative spirit got her so interested in this
+particular game that she forgot not only the sham skirt but the sham
+pretense upon which she had bullied Irene. And she played so well that
+there was only one forfeit against her name, though Crosby, who had
+named himself treasurer, held half the bangle bracelets and pins and
+handkerchiefs of the little circle as evidence of dereliction in
+others.</p>
+
+<p>He called her name first, as he stood with her little turquoise ring
+in his hand and an odd light in his eye that might have enlightened her;
+but she was looking toward the door, where the young gentleman from San
+Francisco, in a Byronic pose, was staring gloomily at Irene dancing with
+a rival, and so joying in the dance that she had forgotten all about
+him.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Open your mouth and shut your eyes,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I'll give you something to make you wise,"<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>chanted Crosby, holding out the ring and beckoning to her.</p>
+
+<p>Closing her eyes upon the spectacle of Mr. <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+77]</span>Morrow's suffering, Sissy opened a mouth about which the
+malicious smile still lingered.</p>
+
+<p>Crosby hesitated a moment. He was very much afraid of her, but as she
+stood, docile and innocent, before him, with her eyes shut and her tiny
+red mouth open, he could not fancy consequences nearly so well as he
+could picture the thing his wish painted.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment he had realized it, and Sissy, overwhelmed by
+astonishment, dumb and impotent with the audacity of the unexpected,
+felt his arms close about her and his greedy lips upon hers.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, the rage and shame of the proper Sissy! Her mouth fell shut and
+her eyes flew open. And then, if she could, she would have closed them
+forever; for, before her in the sudden silence, towering above the
+triumphant and unrepentant Crosby, stood Mrs. Pemberton, a portentous
+figure of shocked matronly disapproval. And she promptly placed the
+blame where mothers of sons have placed it since the first similar
+impropriety was discovered.</p>
+
+<p>"Cecilia!" she cried in that velvety bass that echoed through the
+room&mdash;"Cecilia Madigan, you&mdash;teaching my son a vulgar kissing
+game&mdash;you, the good one! Oh, you deceitful little thing!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 78]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="cb">
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 79]</span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="A_MERRY_MERRY_ZINGARA" id="A_MERRY_MERRY_ZINGARA"></a>A
+MERRY, MERRY ZINGARA</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 80]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 81]</span>It had been Crosby Pemberton's
+custom to climb the steps that led to Madigan's every Wednesday
+afternoon at four, with his music neatly done up in a roll, on his way
+to play duets with Sissy.</p>
+
+<p>On the Wednesday that followed his birthday party&mdash;the mere
+mention of which, after the lapse of four days, was enough to send Sissy
+into hysterics&mdash;that young lady was seated in the parlor, ready for
+her guest. She was ready for him in all the senses a Madigan knew how to
+infuse into that frame of mind. She intended to make him as miserable as
+she herself had been ever since that disgraceful episode in which she
+had so innocently played the victim's part. She would show the betrayer
+of trust no mercy&mdash;none. She would accept no apology. She would
+trample upon his excuses and tear them limb from limb. She would show
+him her scorn and detestation and make him feel how everlastingly
+unforgivable <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 82]</span>his offense was; then
+she would send him forth forever from the house, and dare him to so much
+as speak to her at school.</p>
+
+<p>She pictured him going down the stairs for the last time, utterly
+wretched, broken, despised, condemned. And in order to make the picture
+more real, she glanced out of the window. Suddenly her hands flew in
+terror to her breast, and all her plans for vengeance were left hanging
+in mid-air; for it was not Crosby's trim little figure that was climbing
+the steps, but the stately solidity of Mrs. Pemberton herself.</p>
+
+<p>In her extremity, Sissy did not even stop to look at the back legs of
+the piano; she sped across the room and made a flying leap through the
+low west window. Mrs. Pemberton, glancing in through the open door as
+she rang the bell, got a glimpse of two plump disappearing legs, but
+when she and Miss Madigan entered, there was no trace of Sissy except
+her jackstones. They stumbled over these, lying scattered on the floor,
+where she had been sitting waiting for Crosby and concocting schemes of
+punishment.</p>
+
+<p>"I come to explain&mdash;" said Mrs. Pemberton, stiffly and a bit out
+of breath, seating herself with a rigidity of backbone that would have
+<span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 83]</span>justified Sissy's bestowal upon her
+of the nickname Mrs. Ramrod, if she could have seen it. But Sissy, lying
+attentive beneath the open window, could not see; she could only hear.
+"I am here to tell you, Miss Madigan, why Crosby did not come to-day to
+play duets."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! didn't he come?" asked Miss Madigan, absently. "He isn't
+sick, is he? Irene complains of headache and backache, and she's so
+languid she let Sissy get the wish-bone&mdash;I call it the bone of
+contention&mdash;at dinner yesterday without a struggle. I'm half afraid
+she'll not be able to sing to-night at Professor Trask's concert; but
+perhaps it's only that she danced too much at Crosby's party. She
+al&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's about that&mdash;about the party that I wanted to speak to
+you," interrupted Mrs. Pemberton, severely.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes? Such a lovely party, the girls say! I'm sure, Mrs. Pemberton,
+it's just&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Did they tell you what&mdash;occurred?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Madigan blinked reflectively. Her acquaintance with the stately
+and wealthy Mrs. Warren Pemberton was her most prized social connection.
+What could have occurred?</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course, of course!" she laughed after a bit, pleasantly,
+still trying to remem<span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 84]</span>ber what the
+girls had gossiped about. "Delightful, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pemberton lifted her plumed head with a slow and terrible
+solemnity. "De-lightful, Miss Madigan, de-lightful!"</p>
+
+<p>The smile vanished from Miss Madigan's face. "I hope, dear Mrs.
+Pemberton, that the girls did nothing that&mdash;that&mdash;They're such
+madcaps, and their father never will&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Madigan's distress touched her august visitor. "I trust this,"
+she said significantly, "will be a lesson to Mr. Madigan."</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;what will? If there's a lesson for Madigan, let him have
+it direct, Mrs. Pemberton."</p>
+
+<p>Lying flat on her stomach beneath the window, Sissy heard her
+father's voice come clanging harshly on the lighter-timbred dialogue.
+Cautiously she raised herself on her elbow and let a single eye peer
+through the curtain at the group within. There, with his paint-pot in
+his hand, his brush and his pipe in the other, his unique nightcap
+rakishly on one side and drawn over his white head to protect it from
+the paint, Madigan stood in his overalls and heavy shirt&mdash;his
+Michelangelo costume, Kate had called it. He had been regilding an old
+mirror in his room, and having some gilt <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+85]</span>left at the bottom of his can, he was going about the house in
+search of tarnished articles of virtue.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Francis!" exclaimed his sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, how do you do, Mr. Madigan?" said Mrs. Pemberton, bravely,
+putting out her hand. "I did not know you were within hearing."</p>
+
+<p>"Or you wouldn't have offered the lesson? Well, give it to me, now
+that I am here. No, I won't shake hands; mine are all sticky with gilt."
+He rested his elbow on his hip and stood at ease.</p>
+
+<p>A savage delight at this outrage upon gentility in Mrs. Ramrod's very
+presence possessed that red republican Sissy. She giggled within
+herself, Madigan's attitude, his streaked and gilded face, his confident
+voice, showed such delightful indifference to the effect his
+unconventional attire must have upon this Priestess of Form.</p>
+
+<p>"I must beg your pardon, Mr. Madigan," said that lady, in her most
+official tone, "for using the expression I did. The matter I wished to
+bring to Miss Madigan's attention&mdash;and to yours, now that you are
+here&mdash;concerns one of your daughters. I should have come to tell
+you of it before, as was my duty, as I would wish any mother to do for
+me were it <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 86]</span>my daughter; but I have
+been busy helping the Misses Bryne-Stivers and Professor Trask with this
+concert for to-night. This must be my apology for the delay. For
+speaking&mdash;for telling you what I have to tell, no mother could
+apologize."</p>
+
+<p>"H'm!" Madigan cleared his throat threateningly, and out in the
+sage-brush Sissy shook with apprehension. She knew that preliminary
+bugle-call to battle.</p>
+
+<p>"I assure you, my dear Mrs. Pemberton, we can have only the kindest
+feelings for any one who will take an interest in those
+motherless&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let Mrs. Pemberton go on, Anne," interrupted Madigan, harshly. "Just
+what is it, ma'am? Out with it."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pemberton rose, rustling her heavy silks.</p>
+
+<p>"Merely, Mr. Madigan, that with my own eyes I saw your daughter take
+part in a vulgar kissing game&mdash;the only occurrence of any kind that
+marred the perfect propriety of my son's birthday party."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence inside. Sissy, without, her heart beating so
+loud that she was afraid it might drown all other sounds, heard, despite
+it, Aunt Anne's gasp of horror, the <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+87]</span>tinkle of the jet on Mrs. Pemberton's heavy gown, the
+squeaking of her father's paint-spotted slippers as he shifted his
+weight.</p>
+
+<p>Finally it came. "That ox!" exclaimed Madigan, in a rage.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pemberton moved in majesty toward the door. "My son," she said
+slowly, "chivalrously tries to take the blame from her and insists that
+he proposed the game himself. But I know Crosby to be incapable of such
+a thing."</p>
+
+<p>"H'm! Yes. So do I," assented Madigan.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Madigan turned to her brother, and in a voice that suggested
+long years of martyrdom, said: "You will send her to the convent now,
+Francis? You positively must now. I really admire you for the way you
+have discharged a most unpleasant duty, Mrs. Pemberton. For years I've
+insisted that Irene must&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Irene? Yes, if it had been Irene, one could expect it," remarked
+Mrs. Pemberton, funereally.</p>
+
+<p>"But it wasn't&mdash;it couldn't be&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It was Cecilia." Mrs. Pemberton's grief-stricken tones conveyed all
+the disappointment she felt.</p>
+
+<p>Cecilia, on her quaking knees, now peering <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+88]</span>through the window, saw a quick change come over her father's
+dread countenance. It smoothed, it wrinkled, it twitched, and his
+shoulders began to shake silently.</p>
+
+<p>"No! Sissy?" he exclaimed, with an appreciative chuckle, which made
+that young perfectionist outside feel seasick, as though the hillside
+had swelled up beneath her. "And who was the boy, might I ask?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was"&mdash;Mrs. Pemberton paused to mark both her shocked
+surprise at Mr. Madigan's reception of the news, as well as the further
+enormity involved in its completion&mdash;"my son Crosby."</p>
+
+<p>"No! Ha! ha! ha!" Madigan's rare laugh rang out.</p>
+
+<p>Mechanically Sissy turned down her thumb to mark the number of times
+she had heard it, since Split and she had made a wager on it. Inwardly,
+though, she was nauseated by the thought that she was being laughed at.
+As nearly destitute as a Madigan could be of humor, she would so much
+rather have been flayed alive, she thought in the depths of her
+puritanical soul, than suffer ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>"Crosby&mdash;eh?" Madigan was recovering. "Congratulate him for me.
+I didn't know the little milksop had it in him. You ought
+to <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 89]</span>thank Sissy, ma'am, for proving
+that he is not really stuffed with sawdust. Where is she, anyway?"</p>
+
+<p>Lying flat, her blushing face buried in the sage-brush, was Sissy at
+that moment, while Mrs. Ramrod rustled out of the room, precisely as she
+had done the day Crosby failed in the public oral examination in
+geography, Miss Madigan hurrying placatingly after.</p>
+
+<p>But outside Sissy wept and would not be comforted. Her purist's pride
+was wounded; her prudish maiden's modesty was outraged&mdash;that her
+own father should believe it of her! And she must not open the subject
+or try to alter his opinion, for fear of the ridicule which seared her
+very soul!</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>A taste for the ethereally symbolic had not strongly manifested
+itself in Virginia City, yet under Professor Trask's direction "The
+Cantata of the Flowers" had been in active rehearsal for weeks. The
+professor relied upon the school-children for chorus material, and upon
+the Madigans to fill those lieutenancies without which the spectacular
+features of his production must be a failure&mdash;this last as a matter
+of course. For there were many Madigans, and those of them that were not
+leaders by in<span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 90]</span>stinct had developed
+leadership through force of environment, a natural desire to bully
+others being not the least important by-product of being bullied.
+Besides, the reputation they had of being talented the professor knew to
+be almost as efficacious in lending children self-confidence as talent
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>Kate, therefore, who could not sing a note, but who was grace
+embodied, led a chorus of Poppies, whose red tissue-paper garments
+creaked and rustled as they swayed, waving their star-tipped wands and
+chanting "Breathe we now our charmed fragrance."</p>
+
+<p>Florence and Bessie, whom the curse of being twins linked like
+galley-slaves, were Heather-bells in a childish chorus which piped forth
+the information "We are the Heather-bells: list to our song," but which
+was almost ruined by their common desire to get away from each other and
+lead in two different directions.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+91]</span><a href="images/img12.jpg"><img id="img12"
+src="images/img12th.jpg" alt="She was pronounced a regular little love by the
+Misses Bryne-Stivers"></a></p>
+<p class="caption">"She was pronounced a 'regular little love' by the
+Misses Bryne-Stivers"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 92]</span></p>
+
+<p>Quite self-possessed (even if she was very much off key), Sissy, who
+was the best "speaker" in her class, warbled her part of a sanctimonious
+little duet in which Heliotrope and Mignonette voiced the
+sentiment&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Tis not in beauty alone we may find<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Purity, goodness, and wisdom combined"<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 93]</span>Even small Frances, most
+self-conscious of Madigans, in a costume so inadequate that Bep's doll
+would have been scandalized at the idea of wearing it, posed and
+attitudinized as a Dewdrop. She was pronounced a "regular little love"
+by the Misses Bryne-Stivers, whom the Madigans had nicknamed the Misses
+Blind-Staggers&mdash;a resentful play upon their hyphenated name, as
+well as a delicate reference to their blue goggles that might have
+served as blinkers.</p>
+
+<p>For Irene, though, as the unquestioned possessor of a voice, a solo
+had been interpolated. She was to repeat, for the first time on the
+professional stage, that renowned success in "The Zingara" which school
+exhibitions had made famous.</p>
+
+<p>Just before the time came for Split to sing, Sissy was hovering about
+the prima donna in the dressing-room. As Miss Heliotrope she wore the
+dark-purple gown which Aunt Anne had made over from her own wardrobe.
+(Being Comstock-born, Sissy knew no flower intimately, and could easily
+be imposed upon as to their habits and colors.) Above it her round
+little dark face looked almost sallow, in spite of the excited red that
+flamed in her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>The atmosphere of a theater was like wine to the Madigans. The smell
+of escaping gas <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 94]</span>in the dark was, in
+itself, enough to transport them by association of ideas out of the
+workaday world; and emotion due to a dramatic situation was the one
+evidence of sensibility they permitted themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Sissy, who was tying the ribbons on Split's tambourine, looked in
+vain for a reflection of that fever of delight which possessed herself.
+Split was cross. She was languid. She was dull. She did not seem to
+enjoy even the pair of slippers she was pulling on. They had been given
+to Sissy by Henrietta Blind-Staggers, and their newness and beauty had
+tempted the poor Zingara. But if Sissy had not felt that the family
+fortunes were at stake, as she always did in the matter of a public
+appearance, she would never have made so generous an offer of her
+cherished property.</p>
+
+<p>"But they seem awful tight, Split," she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"They're nothing of the sort," snapped Split, wincing as she rose to
+her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how you're going to dance in them."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you just leave that to me, Miss Cecilia Morgan Madigan, and
+mind your own business?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+95]</span><a href="images/img13.jpg"><img id="img13"
+src="images/img13th.jpg" alt="I don't see how you're going to dance in them"></a></p>
+<p class="caption">"'I don't see how you're going to dance in them'"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 96]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 97]</span>Deeply offended, Sissy withdrew.
+No one called her Cecilia Morgan Madigan who did not want to wound her
+to the soul and remind her of an incident it were more generous to
+forget. She went out to the wings and stood there looking upon the stage
+and Professor Trask, who, as the Recluse, was gowned in mysterious
+flowing black, while he chanted "Here would I rest" in a hollow bass.
+But Sissy was worried. Not even being behind the scenes could still her
+apprehensions about Split. She longed to confide in some fellow-Madigan,
+but Kate was on the other side of the stage, and to all her winks and
+beckonings turned an uninterested back. Then, all at once, sooner than
+she expected, the Recluse departed, the scenes shifted; there, alone on
+the stage, looking white in the glare of the footlights, was a
+bedizened, big-eyed, panting little Zingara, and the syncopated prelude
+began.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy's fingers thrummed it sympathetically upon her knee, but Trask,
+who was playing the accompaniment behind the scenes, had put an
+unfamiliar accent upon the notes. Out on the stage the Zingara was
+beating her tambourine sadly out of time and was longing, with a panicky
+fear, for the familiar touch of Sissy's hand upon the piano.</p>
+
+<p>"Dum&mdash;dum-de-dum-dum&mdash;dum-dum&mdash;dum-dum!"</p>
+
+<p>The notes came like a warning signal. The Zingara's throat was
+parched, her feet ached excruciatingly merely from carrying her
+weight&mdash;how, oh, how was she going to dance?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+98]</span>"Dum&mdash;dum-de-dum-dum&mdash;dum-dum&mdash;dum-dum!"</p>
+
+<p>The last note prolonged itself into a summons. The Zingara's eye,
+turning from the faces that danced before her, sent appealing glances to
+the wings, where Sissy yearned toward her, all rivalry drowned in a
+mothering anxiety for her success.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm a&mdash;mer-ry, meh-hi-ri-y&mdash;Zin-ga-ra!'" wailed Split,
+trying to get her breath. "'From a&mdash;gold-e-en&mdash;clime I
+come!'"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy's hands flew to her breast, then with a wild gesture up over
+her ears, and she fled back to the dressing-room. Split the redoubtable,
+Split the invincible, the impudent, ready, pugnacious Split had
+stage-fright! The world rocked beneath Sissy's feet. Time stopped, and
+all the world stood agape witnessing a Madigan's failure! It seemed to
+the third of them that she could never bear to lift her head again and
+meet a Comstocker's eye and see there that shameful record against the
+<span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+99]</span>family. But she scrambled quickly to her feet when Irene
+came running in, "The Zingara" all unsung.</p>
+
+<p>Irene's face was white and her eyes glittered. Sissy did not dare
+meet them, for, to a Madigan, to put a shame in words or looks was to
+double and triple it. She did not dare to condole; she had no heart to
+accuse. So she bent down again, ostensibly to tie her shoe, in order to
+give the furious little Zingara time to recover and to begin to undress.
+She heard the tambourine's tingling clatter as it was cast to the floor.
+She looked anywhere but at her sister, but she heard buttons give and
+buttonholes rend, and bowed her head to the storm.</p>
+
+<p>"I must say," she remarked in a scornfully careless tone when the
+silence became oppressive, "that Trask plays funny accompaniments." And
+she lifted her head, fancying herself rather clever in finding a
+scapegoat.</p>
+
+<p>She ducked immediately, but not in time. One of her own
+slippers,&mdash;oh, the irony of things!&mdash;torn off and thrown by
+Split's impatient hand, struck her in the face.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy's cheek flamed. "Did you do that on purpose, Split
+Madigan?"</p>
+
+<p>Split Madigan had not done it on purpose, for the reason mainly that
+it had not occurred <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 100]</span>to her. But
+now that it was done, it was not in her present fury against all the
+world to disclaim intention to insult so small a part of it. Glad of an
+excuse to outrage some one, any one,&mdash;and, even then, preferably
+Sissy,&mdash;to make her sister share some of that hurt and sting and
+smart that burned within herself, she met Sissy's eye maliciously,
+triumphantly, significantly.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy gasped. She took the slipper in her hand and made for her
+enemy. She intended, she believed, to ram her own best Sunday slipper
+down Split Madigan's throat! And she got quite close before she could
+have been made to believe that anything on earth or anywhere else could
+alter her intention. But a little thing did; merely the sound of voices
+outside the door and a swift, piteous change of expression in that
+defiant face opposite.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy dropped the slipper and flew to the door. She had a
+glimpse&mdash;which she pretended not to have seen&mdash;of the Merry
+Zingara crumbling in a passion of regretful sobs to the floor. Then she
+was standing outside, her back to the closed door, a determined, fat
+little Horatius in purple, with two red cheeks,&mdash;one, indeed,
+redder than the other where the slipper had struck,&mdash;vowing to hold
+the bridge <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 101]</span>against all comers, so
+that Split might mourn in peace.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+102]</span><a href="images/img14.jpg"><img id="img14"
+src="images/img14th.jpg" alt="But is she very sick"></a></p>
+<p class="caption">"'But is she <i>very</i> sick?'"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 103]</span></p>
+
+<p>"But is she <i>very</i> sick?" came the eager question.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;pretty sick," said the doctor, gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Not very?" Sissy's voice fell disappointedly. She opened the door
+for him and stood at the head of the steps as he prepared cautiously to
+descend.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't want your sister to be dangerously ill, do you?" Dr.
+Murchison demanded sharply, turning upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"N-no," said Sissy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, see that you don't squabble with her. Your aunt ought to have
+sent for me five days ago, instead of which she lets a sick, nervous,
+half-crazy child dance and sing on the stage. All poppycock!"</p>
+
+<p>"Can I help you down the first step, doctor?" asked Sissy,
+gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>She was so thankful for his words. No one&mdash;not even a Madigan,
+accustomed to be held strictly accountable&mdash;could be to blame for a
+failure if she had been ill at the time. The family was almost
+rehabilitated, it seemed to Sissy.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 104]</span>The doctor's dim old eyes
+looked curiously at her. "I believe you've got some deviltry in your
+head, Sissy. Now, you mind me and let your sister alone. There! I'm all
+right now. I can go all right the rest of the way when I'm once started
+down your infernal stairs. I ought to charge your father double rates
+for risking my old bones on them. Yes, it's all right now. It's only the
+first step that bothers me. It's always the first step that
+costs&mdash;eh, Sissy?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked blankly up at him.</p>
+
+<p>He bent down and patted her head. "See here," he said, "I'll bet
+you've got more sense than you want us to believe."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy blushed. It was a tardy tribute, she felt, but as welcome as it
+was deserved.</p>
+
+<p>"With a lot of common sense and a physique like yours, you ought to
+make a good nurse. Take care of your sister," he added almost
+appealingly, divided between his knowledge of how poor a nurse Miss
+Madigan was and how impossible it was to tell this to her niece. "She'll
+be cross and irritable and&mdash;even worse than usual," he said, with a
+grim smile that recognized the battle-ground upon which the Madigans
+spent their lives; and this recognition made him seem more human to them
+<span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 105]</span>than any other adult. "But you
+just treat her like a teething baby. She's got a hard row to hoe, that
+poor, bad Split. She must sleep, and you understand her&mdash;Lord!
+Lord! the care these queer little devils need!" he muttered, shaking his
+shoulders as he went on down the steps, as though physically to throw
+off responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy turned and went back into the house. It was a queer house, she
+thought. To her alert impressibility, the sickness and apprehension it
+inclosed were something tangible. She could taste the odors of the
+sick-room. She could feel the weight of the odd stillness that filled
+it. The sharpness of sound when it did come, the strangeness of
+suppressed excitement, the unfamiliar place with Split's quick figure
+missing, the loneliness of being without her, the boredom of lacking a
+playmate or a fighting-mate&mdash;it all affected Sissy as the prelude
+of a drama the end of which has something terrifyingly fascinating in
+it. It must be wonderful to die, thought Sissy, with a swift, satisfying
+vision of pretty young death&mdash;herself in white and the mysterious
+glamour of the silent sleep. Poor Sissy, who had never been ill!</p>
+
+<p>Split, with shorn head and with wide-open <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+106]</span>eyes and hard, flushed cheeks, lay tossing on the big bed in
+the room off the parlor, which had seldom been used since Frances was
+born there. "Mother's bed" the Madigans always called it, and they crept
+into it when ailing, as though it still held something of the old
+curative magic for childish aches, though all but Kate had forgotten the
+mother's face as it was before she lay down there the last time. Split
+had a big hot silver dollar in one hand,&mdash;Francis Madigan's way of
+recognizing and sympathizing with a child's illness,&mdash;and in the
+other an undivided orange, evidence enough of an extraordinary occasion
+in the Madigan household. But she was not waking. She was not sleeping.
+She was not dreaming. She knew that Sissy had come in and had squatted
+on the floor with Bep and Fom, playing dolls, probably. Yet she felt
+that numb, gradual, terrifying enlargement of her fingertips, of her
+limbs, of her tongue, her body, her head, that she had been told again
+and again was mere fancy. With a self-control that was unlike her, an
+unnatural product of her unnatural state, she locked her jaws together
+that she might not scream this once. And in the eery stillness that
+followed the effort, which had made her ears buzz and her temples throb,
+<span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 107]</span>she heard quite sanely Florence's
+denial of some charge her twin had brought against her.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't do any such thing," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"You did," said Bep.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Cross your heart to die?"</p>
+
+<p>The scream burst from Irene then&mdash;not the cry of delirium, but a
+sharp, terrified, if inarticulate, call for help. If there was one thing
+Split did respect, it was that Reaper whose name she could never hear
+without a quick indrawn breath. Yet&mdash;in her heart&mdash;she knew
+that, though others might fall at the touch of that fearful scythe, she,
+Split Madigan, as fleet of limb as a coyote and as sound of heart as a
+young pine-cone, could never, never die; that the world could never be
+when her quick red blood should be quiet and her mountain-bred lungs
+should be stilled.</p>
+
+<p>With a bound Sissy pushed the twins out of the door. She was at the
+bedside when Miss Madigan entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Go outside, Sissy!" she commanded. "Can't you see you're exciting
+her? Isn't it hard enough for me to take care of her when she's so
+cross? She's not to be excited. She's to be kept quiet. There, there,
+Irene&mdash;<span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 108]</span>it's only fancy, I
+tell you! Look at your fingers; they're thinner, littler than they ever
+were. Look at Sissy's; see how much bigger they are."</p>
+
+<p>Irene lifted her fingers that had caught Sissy's. She looked from her
+own fevered hand to Sissy's dimpled one and was comforted. But her hold
+on her old enemy did not relax. She had something tangible now to
+reassure her; something that spoke to her in her own language. Her eyes
+closed, her tense little hand dropped wearily, but she held Sissy
+fast.</p>
+
+<p>When she thought her patient was asleep, Miss Madigan tried to open
+her fingers, but, with something of her old waywardness, Irene resisted.
+And Sissy, with an old-fashioned nod of advice, motioned her aunt to let
+things be. She curled herself up on a corner of the bed, and&mdash;it
+being quite safe, no other Madigan being present but this unnatural one
+lying prone, half conscious, half dazed&mdash;she put her other hand
+over the one that held hers, and sat there quietly waiting.</p>
+
+<p>The minutes came to seem like hours, but Sissy sat motionless and
+Miss Madigan left the room. Presently an eery humming came from Split's
+lips. Then, mechanically, Sissy's fin<span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+109]</span>gers picked out on the spread the simple little melody Split
+sang as in a dream.</p>
+
+<p>"Play it," the sick girl whispered, pushing away the hand she had
+held.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy jumped as though she had been discovered indulging in gross and
+inexcusable sentimentality. She looked down at Split with a puzzled,
+sheepish smile, wondering how long it had been since her sister had come
+into the real world out of that fantastic one where marvelous things
+might happen.</p>
+
+<p>"Play it!" repeated Split, fretfully.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy rose and walked softly into the front room. She fancied if she
+took a long time, yet appeared about to obey, Split would forget her
+desire and, left alone in the silence, would fall asleep. She opened the
+piano softly and pulled out the stool. Then leisurely she pretended to
+arrange the light and the piano-cover.</p>
+
+<p>Split, quieted by her apparent compliance, lay back with a sigh of
+content. Her mind, whose very apprehension of the delirium had excluded
+other thoughts, dwelt now restfully upon the combination of easy mental
+effort and soothing melody her "piece" meant to her. Besides, she was
+ordering her junior about, using her illness as a club to beat down
+remon<span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 110]</span>strance. Split was really on
+the way to being herself again.</p>
+
+<p>After a bit she found that she was almost dozing off, and waked with
+an indignant start to see Sissy stealing softly out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?" she demanded. "Why don't you play it when I
+tell you to?"</p>
+
+<p>For an instant Sissy rebelled. Then she looked at the passionate
+little figure sitting tensely upright, at the white fever-circle about
+the dry lips, at the short hair and the unnaturally bright, angry eyes.
+She went back to the piano, sat down, and with her foot on the soft
+pedal, that Aunt Anne might not hear, she began to play.</p>
+
+<p>The melody was simple and light, with a little break in its
+sweetness. Sissy's touch was childlike, but her impressionable
+temperament, quickened by the strangeness of that dark room behind her,
+overflowed into the melody her fingers brought out. The accompanying
+bass was rhythmic, and the nervous, fevered child found mental and
+physical occupation in letting the fingers of her left hand pick out its
+detail upon the pillow which she had lately thrown in a passion against
+the wall because it had been so hot and she so miserably
+uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 111]</span>Sissy had begun the second
+part, the changing bass of which had been poor Split's <i>pons
+asinorum</i>. It was the part to which Sissy had always given a dramatic
+touch&mdash;partly because, it being simpler music than she was
+accustomed to, she could safely do so, and partly because it irritated
+Irene, to whom the most forthright interpretation was difficult. Her
+foot slipped now, through force of habit, upon the hard pedal, and in a
+moment she heard the whirring of Aunt Anne's skirts.</p>
+
+<p>"Sissy, are you crazy, you&mdash;" she heard behind her, and then
+there came a sudden, an unaccountable stop.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy turned. Behind and above Miss Madigan towered tall old Dr.
+Murchison. He had come back, as usual, up the long flight of steps, for
+his forgotten spectacles. One of his hands was clapped with good-humored
+firmness over the lady's mouth; the other was pointing to Split,
+sleeping like a Madigan again, while over Aunt Anne's head the doctor
+nodded and bobbed encouragingly to Sissy, like a benignant musical
+conductor deprived of the use of his arms.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy turned again to the piano. It was a beautiful opportunity for
+her to affect disgust with the situation; to register a silent, but
+ex<span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 112]</span>pressive, exception to being
+compelled to entertain Irene; and to pose, not only before her aunt but
+before the doctor, too, as a very important personage, whose services
+were in urgent demand, and who yielded under protest. But as a matter of
+fact she was too happy. There was no misconceiving the light that
+illumined the doctor's round, rosy face. Something her undisciplined,
+childish imagination had been coquetting with, as an untried experience,
+though never admitting its full, dread significance, was carried out of
+her horizon by the shining look of success in old Murchison's face;
+something that shook her strong little body with a long shiver, as she
+realized, in the second when she could almost feel the lift of its dark
+wings taking flight, the thing that might have been.</p>
+
+<p>So Sissy played "In Sweet Dreams" "with expression."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Later she played it, and over and over again, with the salt tears
+trickling down her nose and splashing on the keys; played it with tired,
+fat fingers and a rebellious, burning heart. But this was during Split's
+convalescence&mdash;a reign of terror for the whole household; for to
+the natural taste she possessed for bullying, <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+113]</span>Split Madigan then added the whims and caprices of the
+invalid, who uses her weaknesses as a cat of a hundred tails with which
+to scourge her victims into compliance.</p>
+
+<p>She was loath to get well, this tyrannical, hot-tempered,
+short-haired Zingara, who led her people such a merry dance, and she
+left the self-indulgent land of convalescence and the bed in the big
+back room with regret.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 114]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="cb">
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 115]</span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_SHUT-UPS" id="THE_SHUT-UPS"></a>THE SHUT-UPS</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 116]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 117]</span>It was an early-morning rite
+practised by the twins, its performance hidden from everybody but each
+other, to see whether Dr. Murchison's prophecy had come true.</p>
+
+<p>"There were once two little girls&mdash;twins," began the old doctor,
+significantly, the day Bep and Fom were vaccinated, after battling
+desperately against precedence, in the doctor's very office. "Now all
+twins love each other dearly."</p>
+
+<p>The twins looked at him pityingly. To be so old and so ignorant!</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they do," he insisted. "Everybody knows they're fonder of each
+other than the closest sisters."</p>
+
+<p>Bep glanced at Fom and Fom looked at Bep; there was something almost
+Chinese in the irony of their eyes; they knew just how fond of each
+other sisters can be! But they politely suppressed their incredulous
+grins.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 118]</span>"Well," resumed the old doctor,
+realizing how lacking in conviction his comparison might seem to a
+Madigan, "well, these twins were the exception: they did not love each
+other."</p>
+
+<p>There was an interested movement from Bep.</p>
+
+<p>"They hated each other."</p>
+
+<p>Fom looked up eagerly; there was something human about such a tale.
+She felt her respect for Dr. Murchison reviving.</p>
+
+<p>"They fought from morning till night. There was never a moment's
+peace when the two were together. Each was so jealous of the other that
+she would rather do without, herself, than share with her twin. It was
+disgraceful."</p>
+
+<p>The twins leaned forward, charmed.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor looked over his spectacles at them; there was no mistaking
+the effect he had produced. "Everybody warned them that unless they
+stopped squabbling, something dreadful would happen to them. But they
+never believed it till one day&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The twins held their breath. Dr. Murchison went to the library and
+took out a book. He knew the value of a dramatic pause.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;till one day they waked up in the morning and found that they
+were&mdash;stuck&mdash;fast&mdash;together&mdash;for life! Everything
+the dark one had <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 119]</span>she just had to
+share with her twin. And everywhere she went her lazy blonde sister had
+to go, too. People made up a terrible name for them. They called
+them"&mdash;he lowered his voice to the apologetic tone one has for not
+quite proper subjects&mdash;"the 'Siamese Twins,' and&mdash;if you don't
+believe me, here's their picture!" With a quick movement he opened the
+book before them.</p>
+
+<p>The twins' faces went gray; in that second they even looked alike, so
+tense were both with the same emotion. Instinctively they made a swift
+motion, a dumb prayer for sympathy, toward each other; then as swiftly
+shuddered apart as though temporary contact might become lifelong
+bondage.</p>
+
+<p>But as the months went by and they remained mercifully unattached
+(though battling still in their double capacity of Madigans and twins),
+they almost outgrew their credulity; yet still, on occasions, observed
+the morning ceremony of self-inspection.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, though, nothing held them in peace together except sleep,
+when nature must have reunited them in dreams; for, no matter in what
+positions they were relatively when they closed their eyes, morning
+found their arms about each other, their breath intermingled,
+<span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 120]</span> their little bodies intercurved
+like well-packed sardines.</p>
+
+<p>On their birthday morning&mdash;the twins were born on
+Christmas&mdash;Fom waked very early, alarmed to find Bep's arm about
+her. She never remembered in the morning that at night her last hazy
+thought had been to reach for it, pull down the sleeve of its nightgown,
+and cuddle close to her twin. She threw it from her now with unusual
+violence, and, sitting up in bed, slipped off her gown that she might
+closely examine her right side&mdash;the side that had been nearest
+Bep.</p>
+
+<p>The blonde twin woke while this process was going on, and its dread
+significance shook the haze of slumber from her eyes. She, too, slipped
+her gown from her shoulders and, shivering with the cold, passed an
+apprehensive hand along her left ribs.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you?" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"N-no. I don't think so. I&mdash;I dreamed that it was there, though.
+Do you?"</p>
+
+<p>An assenting shudder shook Bep's body.</p>
+
+<p>"Where&mdash;oh, where? I don't believe it!" cried Fom. "You're just
+a 'fraid-cat trying to frighten me."</p>
+
+<p>Bep pointed to her side. There it was unmistakably&mdash;a round
+black-and-blue mark.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 121]</span> A wail escaped Florence. "Oh,
+dear! Oh, dear!" she cried, "what in the world shall we do?"</p>
+
+<p>Bep did not answer. She sat stupefied, staring at the evidence of
+calamity.</p>
+
+<p>"If it's commenced on you, it's bound to commence on me before long.
+I wonder&mdash;how fast it grows?"</p>
+
+<p>Bep shook her head. "It wasn't there when I went to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"If it grows on you toward me, and on me toward you that quick, why,
+in a week&mdash;we'll be&mdash;stuck fast&mdash;won't we?"</p>
+
+<p>Bep nodded miserably.</p>
+
+<p>"Some morning," mourned Fom, wriggling unhappily, "we'll wake and
+it'll be all done. You'll just have to study hard, Bessie Madigan, and
+be in my class in school; I won't go back into the mixed primary&mdash;I
+just won't! Oh, Bep, why will you put your arm around me at night?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't. I always go to sleep with my back to you. You know I do.
+And in the morning, the first thing I know you're flinging my arm off. I
+believe you pull my arm over you yourself. I believe you want to get
+stuck together and be Chemise Twins!" Bep scolded tearfully, with her
+usual ill luck with unfamiliar words.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 122]</span> There was a sorrow-smitten
+pause.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Beppy," the termination was a sign of sudden good humor in
+Fom, "didn't you tumble down yesterday when you and Bombey Forrest were
+driving the Grayson kids round the block in your relay race?"</p>
+
+<p>The light of hope leaped up in Bessie's eyes. "Could it be that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it could; it is, you silly!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not a silly. You were scared yourself," retorted the blonde
+twin, relieved but pugnacious.</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! I only pretended, to frighten you," jeered Fom.</p>
+
+<p>"Not much you didn't. I ain't anybody's dope."</p>
+
+<p>"Anybody's what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anybody's dope," answered Bep, uncertainly; she knew how little
+words were to be trusted.</p>
+
+<p>"What's 'dope'?" demanded Florence.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;what Kate said yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>An enjoying giggle came from Sissy's bed. She had waked.
+"<i>Dupe</i>, you goosy&mdash;<i>dupe</i>!" she chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"Yah! Yah!" sneered Fom, happy in her twin's discomfiture.</p>
+
+<p>Bep blushed with mortification. "Don't <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+123]</span>you trophy over me, Fom Madigan!" she cried wrathfully.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy's giggle became a shout of laughter, and straightway she
+sallied forth, benightgowned as she was, to carry the news of Bep's
+latest to the Madigans&mdash;while Bep, aware that she had Partingtoned
+again, without knowing just how, cried furiously after her: "I didn't
+say it! I didn't!"</p>
+
+<p>Bep's talent was dear to the Madigans. They seized upon each blunder
+she made, and held it up, shrinking and bare, under the light of their
+laughter-loving eyes. They ridiculed it interminably, and were
+unflaggingly entertained by it, repeating it for the edification of each
+new-comer so often and so faithfully that from conscious mimicry they
+turned to use of it without quotation-marks, till, insensibly, at last
+it was received into their vocabulary&mdash;which fact, by the way, made
+the Madigan dialect at times difficult for strangers to master.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, the rare rainy days in Nevada were always "glummy"
+among Madigans, because the blonde twin had once been so affected by
+their gloom that she spelled it that way. An over-credulous person was a
+"sucher" since the day she had written it so. <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+124]</span>Jack Cody lived in the "vikinty" of their house, because Bep
+Partington had so decreed. "Don't greed" had become a classic since the
+day Aunt Anne issued her infamous ukase, compelling that twin who
+(wilfully speculating upon her sister's envy) kept goodies to the last
+to divide said last precious morsel with the gloating other. And the
+Madigan who (taking base advantage of the fact that Bep was at an age
+when to bite into a hard red winter apple was to leave a shaky tooth
+behind) obligingly took the first bite, but made that bite include
+nearly half the apple&mdash;that rapacious betrayer of confiding
+helplessness deserved to be called a harpy. But she wasn't; she was
+known as "a regular harper!"</p>
+
+<p>The Madigans trooped back into the twins' room in a body to "trophy"
+over Bep, whose double misfortune it was not only to be a Partington,
+but to strenuously deny her kinship with the family of that name. Bessie
+Madigan could not be got to admit that she had ever misused a word. And
+though the expressions she coined became part of Madigan history, though
+each piece was stamped undeniably by poor Bep her awkward mark, she
+never ceased insisting that they were counterfeit, issued for the
+express purpose of dis<span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 125]</span>crediting
+her well-known familiarity with elegant English.</p>
+
+<p>Yet she it was who had first miscalled her shadow a "shabby"; who had
+asked to be "merinded to merember," like her absent-minded Aunt Anne;
+and who had unconsciously parodied Split's passionate rendering of a
+line of the old song, "I feel his presence near" into "I feel his
+pleasant sneer"!</p>
+
+<p>It was rarely that the Madigans could keep peace among themselves
+long enough to make an onslaught in a body. But when they did, the lone
+victim of their attack knew better than to struggle against her fate.
+Poor Bep, her protests borne down, all her old sins of diction raked up
+and, joined to the new ones, marshaled against her, became sulky. She
+turned her back upon the enemy and retreated to a corner to find out
+what Santa Claus and her own particular patron saint had to offer for
+the double celebration.</p>
+
+<p>There was a dictionary from Kate&mdash;an added insult. But, to
+compensate, there was a whole orange from Aunt Anne, a bag of Chinese
+nuts from Wong, and from Split and Sissy (a separate donation from each)
+an undivided half-interest in the white kitten known as Spitfire.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 126]</span>When she had summed up the
+gifts of the gods to herself, Bep's eyes turned quickly to Fom's
+pile.</p>
+
+<p>There was an assortment of hair-ribbons, more or less the worse for
+wear, from Kate, whose braids were coiled around her head these days.
+(Bep didn't envy her twin these, for the excellent reason that a
+back-comb was all that was necessary to keep her short blonde hair in
+order.) Then there was, from Sissy, a pen-wiper, whose cruelly twisted
+shape was a reflection of that needlewoman's agonies in its composition;
+upon it were embroidered figures and colors of things never seen on sea
+or land. (Fom might have that.) From Split&mdash;but Bep knew, of
+course, what there was from Split. Every year regularly, since the
+second of the Madigans had put away childish things, she had bestowed
+upon her faithful retainer her favorite doll Dora,&mdash;the large one,
+with waxen head and dark-brown tresses,&mdash;only to take it back at
+the first symptom of revolt, for a caprice, or merely to feel her power.
+She was an Indian giver, was Split. (Fom might have Dora, Bep said to
+herself, as long as she could keep her.)</p>
+
+<p>But then Fom, too, had a large, fair, yellow orange and a bag of
+strange candies from Chinatown. As to these ...</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 127]</span>The twins must be pardoned, but
+circumstances had soured them. They had been cheated out of either a
+birthday or a Christmas&mdash;they had not decided which was the crueler
+wrong, so had not yet adopted and proclaimed their grievance. Besides
+this sorrow, each, by an interfering and unprovoked intrusion, had
+defrauded the other of the child's inalienable right to the center of
+the stage at least once a year. And when one remembers how crowded was
+the Madigan stage with jealous performers, any actor at all desirous of
+an opportunity must sympathize with them.</p>
+
+<p>It was not etiquette for the twins to remember each other's birthday
+with a gift, one reason being that they were incapable of such a piece
+of hypocrisy. Another was that it would have seemed too like the rigid
+reciprocity of the Misses Blind-Staggers, whom it had been their custom
+to parody since the day they had been invited down to the cottage to see
+those ladies' strictly mutual Christmas presents. They played "From
+Maude to Etta" and "From Etta to Maude," as they called it; Fom handing
+to Bep, with great ceremony, a shoe, a stocking, or any other thing
+traveling in pairs, with the legend "From Maude to Etta," and receiving
+in return the mate of said shoe or stocking, "From Etta to Maude."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 128]</span>As for Francis Madigan, his
+daughters appreciated the fact that a girl's birthday could be looked
+upon only as a day of wrath and mourning; it came to be considered
+delicate, therefore, to mention the matter in his presence. Christmas,
+of course, was "nonsense"&mdash;a blanket term of disapproval behind
+which no one peered for reasons for its application.</p>
+
+<p>On Miss Madigan anniversaries acted as a stimulant to an already
+sufficiently fecund pen. They awakened in her that sense of
+responsibility for her nieces' future, which nothing but an
+exceptionally heartrending letter of appeal for financial assistance for
+them could put comfortably to sleep again.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Out in the woodshed a disemboweled chest of drawers had been turned
+into an apartment-house for dolls. All the dolls that had dwelt in the
+Madigan family since Kate's babyhood (with the exception of Split's
+Dora, whom Fom, according to the preordained penchant of mothers, loved
+best because for her sake she suffered most) had descended to the
+twins.</p>
+
+<p>On the top floor Mrs. Guy St. Gerald Clair lived with her husband and
+an only daughter. Mrs. Clair was an elegant matron, quite
+new, <span class='pagenum'>[Pg. 129]</span>a small blonde who could turn
+her head. Florence's skilful fingers kept this lady most beautifully
+gowned. And Split&mdash;whose favorite of the small-fry dolls she had
+once been&mdash;still remembered her fondly, and passed over to Fom the
+most wonderful patches. These she got from Jack Cody, the washerwoman's
+son, who bribed his mother by promises of good conduct to beg samples of
+their gowns from her aristocratic patrons.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Guy St. Gerald Clair was an unfortunate gentleman, tall,
+low-spirited, loose-jointed, with fixed blue eyes and knobby black hair.
+His melancholy, Bep was assured, was due to two things&mdash;the
+superiority of his wife in the matter of a movable head, and the
+impossibility of ever getting a pair of trousers that would come near to
+him in the seat and stay away from him at the ankle. Fom's
+theory&mdash;a hypothesis that enraged Bep&mdash;was that Mrs. Guy St.
+Gerald was the wealthy member of the family, and that her husband basely
+envied her her good fortune. She had a way, had Fom, of carrying on
+imaginary conversations with Mr. Clair upholding this idea, which made
+her twin long to rend her, and the doll too, limb from limb.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Mr. Clair! Yes, thank you. Mrs. <span class='pagenum'>[Pg.
+130]</span>Clair not in?... I'm sorry. Gone off to Newport, has she, to
+sell her marble palace? What about the one on Fifth Avenue?... You don't
+say! Making it bigger? Well, well! And made a million in stocks, too.
+How delightful! You wish that you had some money&mdash;yes, I
+suppose&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He does not! He does not!" The interruption came fiercely from Bep.
+"You talk to your own doll and leave mine alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Pouf! If you're afraid he'll tell me how poor he is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He ain't poor."</p>
+
+<p>"What does he wear such trousers for, then? Tell me that!"</p>
+
+<p>Bep looked unutterable things at her twin. "Just you make men's
+clothes for a while, Fom Madigan, and see how 't is yourself!" she
+cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Put Mrs. Clair in men's clothes?" demanded Fom, purposely
+misunderstanding. "I'd like to see myself! The very richest lady in New
+York in men's clothes&mdash;why, you could get arrested for that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll change&mdash;" began Bep, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you. You couldn't suit Mrs. Clair. She's that particular
+about her things!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 131]</span>"Well, just the same, I won't
+make men's clothes any more." Bep rolled her head threateningly.</p>
+
+<p>"Going to let Mr. Clair go naked?" inquired Fom, pleasantly. "He'll
+have to be sent to the poorhouse, then."</p>
+
+<p>"He sha'n't! He'll go to bed sick first, and then Mrs. Clair'll just
+have to stay home in an old wrapper and nurse him."</p>
+
+<p>"No; she'll take Anita and go off to the country.... Are you so sick,
+Mr. Clair?" began Fom, while her slower twin danced with apprehension of
+the outcome of this one-sided dialogue. "I'm awful sorry. Smallpox? Oh,
+how dreadful! And that's why Mrs. Clair and Anita have gone&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"'T ain't! 'T ain't smallpox! 'T ain't! 'T ain't! 'T ain't!" Bep
+hopped about on one foot in her excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?" asked Fom, calmly. "Are you the doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>The doctor lived in the flat below. He was a ready-dressed gentleman,
+still stylish if a bit seedy, and his large family overflowed down into
+the next two shelves. He was summoned.</p>
+
+<p>"I have called you, doctor,"&mdash;began Fom.</p>
+
+<p>"I've sent for you, doctor,"&mdash;interrupted Bep.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 132]</span>"Well!" exclaimed Fom, stiffly,
+"I think you might be polite enough to let Mrs. Clair speak to the
+doctor about her own husband."</p>
+
+<p>"What's she going to say?" demanded Bep.</p>
+
+<p>"How should I know?" asked Fom, airily; and then, hurrying on, while
+she made Mrs. Clair bow low before the ready-made physician, "I am Mrs.
+Clair, doctor, the rich Mrs. Guy St. Gerald Clair who has all the
+money&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's no such thing! It's no such thing!" shrieked Bep.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Miss Florence Madigan!" exclaimed Mrs. Clair by proxy, "if
+your sister Bessie ain't the rudest!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll smash her if she says that again!" came in a bellow from
+Bep.</p>
+
+<p>"You touch my doll!" Daringly Fom placed Mrs. Clair within tempting
+distance of Bep's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;just you let her say it again!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't need to. She's told me, so now I know it."</p>
+
+<p>"You may go down-stairs again, doctor. It's a mistake," said Bep,
+addressing the medical man. (The twins always tried to keep up
+appearances before their dolls.) "Mr. Clair&mdash;the awfully rich Mr.
+Guy St. Gerald Clair&mdash;is not sick at all. But you can send your
+bill <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 133]</span>to him anyway, he won't care.
+It must have been some poor relation of Mrs. Clair's&mdash;she didn't
+have a dress to her name before she married, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;oh! Bessie Madigan!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she didn't," said Bep, stoutly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bet you&mdash;I'll bet you a shut-up. There!" Cautious Fom
+rarely hazarded so great a stake; but she felt that the occasion
+demanded something adequate.</p>
+
+<p>"All right; I'll leave it to Sissy." It was from Sissy that Bep had
+inherited Mr. Clair. She would know.</p>
+
+<p>Laying down stiff all-china Anita Clair, whose shoes she was painting
+red to match her sash, Bep followed her twin into the house.</p>
+
+<p>But the omnivorous Sissy was reading "The Boys of England"&mdash;a
+thing Sissy loved to do; for it was a magazine not permitted to enter
+Mrs. Pemberton's immaculate house, a recommendation in itself, and,
+besides, Split, to whom Jack Cody had loaned it, was doubtless looking
+all over for it at this very moment. Lying luxuriously flat upon the
+floor and eating chocolate, Sissy had just got to that part where Jack
+Harkaway "with one flash of Abu Hadji's ruby-incrusted simitar
+decapitated the unfortunate Arab, and Dick Lightheart,
+seizing <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 134]</span>the bewitching Haidee, had
+mounted his horse"&mdash;when the belligerent twins found her.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, let me say it," began Fom.</p>
+
+<p>"No; you won't ask it fair.... Sissy, tell me, wasn't Mr.&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Tra&mdash;la&mdash;la&mdash;la!" sang Fom, shrilly, drowning Bep's
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Say!" Sissy looked up. Her cheeks were flaming with excitement, for
+any bit of print, however crude, had the power to move her as reality
+could not. At eleven she shivered and glowed over pseudo-sentiment,
+while a tragedy in the mine&mdash;whose tall chimneys she could see from
+her window&mdash;was as intangibly distant and irrelevant as weekly
+statistics of the superintendent's mining reports.</p>
+
+<p>Her juniors harkened respectfully; but neither would permit the other
+to ask the question, for fear of its revealing the nature of the answer
+hoped for. So they withdrew for a period, returning with the following
+query, which Bep allowed Fom to put, so sure was she of the
+response:</p>
+
+<p>"Did or did not Mrs. Clair ever have a dress before she married Mr.
+Clair?"</p>
+
+<p>To this the oracle gave answer:</p>
+
+<p>She did not, for how could she, she being Mr. Clair's second wife;
+his first, an accomplished <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 135]</span>lady,
+but all-solid china, having fallen from the top story of the
+apartment-house and smashed herself into bits, and the widower having
+himself accompanied Sissy and Split to the shop to select her successor,
+whose first gown was, of course, a heavy mourning robe.</p>
+
+<p>Bep heaved a deep sigh of content. She ran back to the woodshed so
+relieved that, although she had won a valuable shut-up, she did not care
+to "trophy" in her victory. Fom followed. But her grief for Mrs. Clair
+was bitterer even than her own disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"I want the Smith twins," she said stiffly, when they got back to the
+dolls' sky-scraper. And Bep understood.</p>
+
+<p>The Smith twins were an invention of technical Fom's that had become
+an institution with herself and her playmate. Two tiny china dolls
+dressed in baby long clothes (the better to hide the fact that they were
+legless), the one with pink, the other with a blue sash, were brought up
+from the lowest story, where broken-nosed Mrs. Smith lived with her
+family of cripples.</p>
+
+<p>They were dolls of bad omen, these two, but following instead of
+prophesying a storm. When it became absolutely necessary for one Madigan
+twin to be "mad" at the other, and <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+136]</span>yet that the business of playing be uninterrupted, the Smith
+twins invariably made their appearance. They were supposed to save one's
+dignity; in reality, they lent piquancy to games and rendered "making
+up" delightful.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally Bep and Fom did disown each other and adopt a chum from
+the outside world. One Beulah, known as "Bombey," Forrest was always
+ready obligingly to serve either or both of them in the capacity of
+dearest friend. But other playmates were tame after being accustomed to
+a Madigan; and each twin was so jealously afraid of the other's having a
+good time without her that she spent most of the period of estrangement
+trying to spy out what the other and her interloping companion were
+doing.</p>
+
+<p>The Smith twins were easier.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell Bep," said Florence to the pink-sashed small Smith, "that I
+think she's a nasty mean thing, and Mrs. Clair'll never forgive
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell Fom," returned Bep, with spirit, putting the blue-sashed Smith
+baby in her pocket as a sort of emergency battery, so that the wires of
+communication might be set up at any time between her twin and herself,
+"that I <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 137]</span>don't care a 'article for
+what she thinks. And Mrs. Clair's nothing but a beggar. I wonder that
+Mr. Clair married her!"</p>
+
+<p>The war was on.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Down on the dump, that fascinating mountain of soft, glittering waste
+rock, the godless twins went to dig on Christmas afternoon. The mining
+operations were elaborate that they projected there, particularly after
+Jack Cody's brother Peter joined them. While Peter was rigging up
+windlasses with pieced-out cord, Fom, with a couple of tin cups
+purloined from Wong's kitchen, brought up the rock, piling it in
+miniature dumps at the mouth of their shaft. Bep's awkward fingers could
+be trusted only with the preliminary scooping out of the ground where a
+new shaft was to be sunk.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell Fom," she said to the blue-sashed Smith twin in her pocket,
+"that I want the scooper; my hands are all sore."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell Bep," returned Fom, quickly, "that she can't have it till Pete
+an' I get through running our drift."</p>
+
+<p>The excuse did not seem legitimate to Bep, whose grimy hands ached to
+the fingertips from being used as both pick and shovel. She made a dart
+for the "scooper"&mdash;a heavy china <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+138]</span>cup which had been smashed in so fortunate a manner as to be
+ideally fitted for emptying ore by hand.</p>
+
+<p>But Fom was slim, and quick as a cat. She threw herself bodily upon
+both scooper and pick&mdash;the latter an old fork with but one tine
+left. Bep promptly threw herself on top of her twin, while Peter, a
+laconic lad, calmly set himself to rehabilitating the hind wheel of a
+battered tin toy express which served as a dump-cart.</p>
+
+<p>"Little folks shouldn't quarrel," suddenly said a slow voice above
+the struggling arms and legs of the twins.</p>
+
+<p>Fom looked up, still pressing her body hard against the tools in
+dispute, while Bep got to her feet, red-faced and panting. "We're not
+quarreling," said Florence, calmly.</p>
+
+<p>Superintendent Warren Pemberton, still in his oilskins from a trip
+down the mine, looked down at her and gasped. He did not know the
+Madigan brunette twin, and actually thought she was lying. But Fom was
+never known to lie; she only pettifogged.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not quarreling!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nope."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I see you with my own eyes?" he demanded, piqued.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 139]</span>"People don't see people
+quarreling," said Fom, didactically. "They hear them."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's it! Well, didn't I hear&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, you didn't; for we're mad and don't speak to each other."</p>
+
+<p>"But you're not quarreling?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nope," repeated Fom, stoutly, "we're not."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pemberton shook his head helplessly. "What are you doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm running a drift"&mdash;Fom misunderstood the drift of his
+question&mdash;"from the Silver King to the Diamond Heart, and the earth
+keeps coming down. Then Bep tries to make it harder by grabbing for the
+tools and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you timber?" suggested Pemberton, gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"'Cause I don't have to," answered Fom, quite as seriously.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you don't!" Pemberton, a man with no sense of humor, had been
+unusually expansive; but he shrank angrily into himself now, as though
+from a cold douche. It took some time for one to get accustomed to Fom's
+way of instructing authorities upon the subjects which they were
+supposed to know most about.</p>
+
+<p>"No, that's silly," remarked Fom, superbly. "If the ground's sticky
+enough, and <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 140]</span>you're not
+butter-fingered,"&mdash;with an insulting glance at Bep,&mdash;"you can
+manage all right."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm not butter-fingered and I always timber." Warren Pemberton
+was a slow man, but a dogged one; the elusiveness of this pert child
+irritated him.</p>
+
+<p>"That's 'cause you don't know any better," came from the expert, who
+had returned to her task, the excited flourishes of her uplifted legs
+betraying its difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a little fool!" declared the superintendent. "Do you know who
+I am? My name's Pemberton, and I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you make your wife leave Crosby alone, then?" demanded
+Fom, without seeming much impressed.</p>
+
+<p>Warren Pemberton looked down upon her little body with an expression
+that made Bep wonder why he refrained from stamping upon it.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't think Mrs. Pemberton knows her business, either?" His
+ruddy, full face looked apoplectic.</p>
+
+<p>"Nope. Sissy says if she was Crosby she'd run away to sea. And she's
+going to put him up to it, too, if&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Bep, frightened by the growing anger
+in <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 141]</span>the great man's face,
+interposed. "Shall I shut her up for you, Mr. Pemberton?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;what d' ye say? I wish to God you would, or that somebody
+could!"</p>
+
+<p>"Fom," said Bep, authoritatively, "shut up!"</p>
+
+<p>Fom jumped to her feet. There was appeal, wrath, rebellion in her
+crimson face. She opened her lips as if to protest.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up, Fom," repeated Bep, distinctly. "I said <i>shut
+up</i>."</p>
+
+<p>There came a deadly silence. Pemberton, in the act of stalking
+ill-temperedly away, turned bewildered to regard the miracle.</p>
+
+<p>"Say," asked Peter Cody, driven to speech by curiosity. "Say, Fom, do
+you let your sister boss you like that? I thought you was twins."</p>
+
+<p>Fom looked appealingly at Bep. If Bep would but explain the nature of
+a shut-up&mdash;its power of suddenly depriving one of speech; of making
+one temporarily dumb in the very midst of a sentence, at the bidding of
+the winner of a wager, whenever, wherever the caprice to collect the
+debt of honor occurred to her!</p>
+
+<p>But Bep, after accompanying Mr. Pemberton a few steps, striving to
+untell him what Fom had betrayed, turned her attention
+again <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 142]</span>to mining matters. She knew
+well what Fom's eyes begged, but hid her head in the Silver King, whence
+a subterranean giggle came, revealing her enjoyment of the
+situation.</p>
+
+<p>Fom's stormy eyes filled and the Silver King and the Diamond Heart
+jigged back and forth till the tears splashed down and cleared her
+vision.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho&mdash;cry-baby!" called Peter Cody. Peter was one of those
+gallant gentlemen who are never afraid of a playmate when some one else
+has demonstrated that he can be downed.</p>
+
+<p>At the taunt, a revengeful passion seized Fom, standing there&mdash;a
+lingual Samson shorn of her tongue, two dirty channels plowed down her
+cheeks by her tears. Deliberately lifting her foot, she brought it down,
+stamping with all her might again and again.</p>
+
+<p>The soft, loosely packed earth slid smoothly down. The Diamond Heart
+caved in completely, the almost finished connecting tunnel was a wreck,
+and the still rolling, moist gravel swept over Bep's head, filling up
+the Silver King clear to the surface.</p>
+
+<p>By the time Peter had realized their utter ruin, and Bep had shaken
+the particles of sand and gravel from her hair and ears and throat, Fom
+was nowhere in sight.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 143]</span>"Let's kill her," suggested
+Bep.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we?" asked Peter, with an air of stern justice.</p>
+
+<p>They debated the question, fully realizing the make-believe of it,
+yet taking pleasure in at least the mention of revenge.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Bep gave a cry of triumph and picked up something from the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" asked Peter.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Fom's doll. It must have dropped out of her pocket when she was
+digging and sassing Mr. Pemberton. We'll play there's been an
+accident,&mdash;a cave in the mine,&mdash;and the doll'll be buried
+alive down there. Wouldn't Fom howl?"</p>
+
+<p>She rolled up her sleeve and thrust a round arm far down in the
+clean, moist gravel, leaving the poor Smith twin in the murderous depths
+of the Silver King. Then both set to work. Poor Fom, half-way down the
+dump, beside the mysterious "flush" of seething, boiling, foaming waste
+water, whose tide went low or high with the breathing of the great mine,
+heard a laugh or a whistle now and then; and a miserable feeling of
+loneliness oppressed her. But she lay there sobbing quietly, while on
+top the valiant rescuers emptied the mines, carried on conversations
+with the entombed <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 144]</span>men, and at
+last, with a fine pretense of amazement and grief, discovered the dead
+miner. Reverently he was borne to the surface, Bep holding the bucket
+steady while Peter wound the cord. And then they buried the unfortunate
+man. There was an imposing funeral, and the three-wheeled dump-cart was
+filled with imaginary mourners. At the grave hymns were sung by Bep,
+when she could be spared from mourner's duties, and a prayer by Peter
+concluded the impressive services.</p>
+
+<p>It had been Fom's intention to lie there half-way down the dump till
+she died of hunger&mdash;when Bep would be sorry for her cruel
+treatment. The self-pitying tears were in Florence's eyes as she thought
+out the details of Bep's grief, and the unanimous reprobation of the
+family for the bad blonde twin. But she grew hungrier and hungrier, and
+at last resolved to go home to lunch.</p>
+
+<p>First, though, she would see how much damage she had done in her
+short-lived anger, for her heart was sore when she thought how proud
+they two had been of their mines. She scrambled to the top. There was
+the new shaft, the Tomboy, almost completed. The Diamond Heart was in
+working order. Peter's dexterous fingers had triumphed over the
+shifting <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 145]</span>rock, and he had modestly
+taken a hint as to timbering from Warren Pemberton. The tunnel was an
+accomplished fact, while over the frail hoisting-works of the Silver
+King a tiny flag&mdash;a corner torn from Bep's
+handkerchief&mdash;fluttered at half-mast.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 146]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="cb">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 147]</span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_ANCESTRY_OF_IRENE" id="THE_ANCESTRY_OF_IRENE"></a>THE ANCESTRY OF IRENE</h2>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 148]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 149]</span>In her heart Irene was
+confident that, though among the Madigans, she was not of them. The
+color of her hair, the shape of her nose, the tempestuousness of her
+disposition, the difficulty she experienced in fitting her restless and
+encroaching nature into what was merely one of a number of jealously
+frontiered interstices in a large family&mdash;all this forbade tame
+acceptance on her part of so ordinary and humble an origin as Francis
+Madigan's fatherhood connoted.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said firmly to herself the day she and Florence were
+see-sawing in front of the woodshed after school, "he's only just my
+foster-father; that's all."</p>
+
+<p>How this foster-father&mdash;she loved the term, it sounded so
+delightfully haughty&mdash;had obtained possession of one whose
+birthright would place her in a station so far above his own, she had
+not decided. But she was convinced that, although poor and peculiar and
+incapable <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 150]</span>of comprehending the
+temperament and necessities of the nobly born, he was, in his limited
+way, a worthy fellow. And she had long ago resolved that when her real
+father came for her, she would bend graciously and forgivingly down from
+her seat in the carriage, to say good-by to poor old Madigan.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you very, very much, Mr. Madigan," she would sweetly say, "for
+all your care. My father, the Count, will never forget what you have
+done for his only child. As for myself, I promise you that I will have
+an eye upon your little girls. I am sure his Grace the Duke will gladly
+do anything for them that I recommend. I am very much interested in
+little Florence, and shall certainly come for her some day in my golden
+chariot to take her to my castle for a visit, because she is such a
+well-behaved child and knew me, in her childish way, for a noble lady in
+disguise. Cecilia? Which one is that? Oh, the one her sisters call
+Sissy! She needs disciplining sadly, Mr. Madigan, sadly. Much as he
+loves me, my father, the Prince, would not care to have me know
+her&mdash;as she is now. But she will improve, if you will be very, very
+strict with her. Good-by! Good-by, all! No, I shall not forget you. Be
+good and obey your aunty. Good-by!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 151]</span>The milk-white steeds would fly
+down the steep, narrow, unpaved streets. On each side would stand the
+miners, bowing, hat in hand, hurrahing for the great Emperor and his
+beautiful daughter&mdash;she who had so strangely lived among them under
+the name of Split Madigan. They would speak, realizing now, of certain
+royal traits they had always noted in her&mdash;her haughty spirit that
+never brooked an insult, her independence, her utter fearlessness, the
+reckless bravery of a long line of kings, and&mdash;and even that very
+disinclination for study which they had stupidly fancied indicated that
+Sissy Madigan was her superior! What would Princess Irene want with
+vulgar fractions, a common denominator, and such low subjects?</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you wrinkle up your nose that way, Split?" Florence's
+voice broke in complainingly on her sister's reverie. She glanced up the
+incline of the see-saw to the height whence Irene looked down,
+physically as well as socially, upon her faithful retainer and the
+straggling little town.</p>
+
+<p>Irene did not answer. She was busy dreaming, and her dreams were of
+the turned-up-nose variety.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, Split! It makes you look like a<span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+152]</span>&mdash;what Sissy just now called you." The smaller sister's
+eyes fell, as though seeking corroboration from the middle of the board,
+where Sissy had been so lately acting as "candle-stick"&mdash;lately,
+for the incident had ended (no game being enticing enough to hold these
+two long in an unnatural state of neutrality) in Split's washing Sissy's
+face vigorously in the snow, and Sissy's calling her elder sister
+"nothing but an old Indian!" as she ran weeping into the house with the
+familiar parting threat to get even before bedtime. No Madigan could
+bear that the sun should set on her wrath; she preferred that all scores
+should be paid off, so that the slate might be clean for to-morrow's
+reckonings.</p>
+
+<p>"Fom," said her big sister, slowly, when she was quite ready to
+speak, "I think you'd better call me 'Irene.' You'd feel gladder about
+it when I'm gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Where?" At this minute it was Fom's turn to be dangerously high, and
+she wriggled to the uttermost end of the plank to counterbalance her
+sister's weight.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+153]</span><a href="images/img15.jpg"><img id="img15"
+src="images/img15th.jpg" alt="She glanced up the incline of the see-saw to the
+height whence Irene looked down"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">"She glanced up the incline of the see-saw to the
+height whence Irene looked down"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 154]</span></p>
+
+<p>A mysterious smile overspread Irene's face. It became broadly
+triumphant as she rose presently on the short end of the board, her arms
+daringly outspread, her toes upturned in
+front <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 155]</span>of her, her agile body well
+balanced, her spirit exulting in the sense of danger without and
+superiority within.</p>
+
+<p>"When?" asked Florence, with that amiable readiness to consider a
+question unasked, so becoming to the vassal. "When are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-night&mdash;maybe." Her own words startled Irene. She loved to
+play upon Fom's fears, but she had not really intended committing
+herself so far. "He may call for me to-night," she added, with
+qualifying emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"Who? Not&mdash;not&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my father. I must be ready at any time, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Fom looked alarmed. She had heard long ago and in strict confidence
+about Split's lofty parentage. She had even accepted drafts upon her
+future, rendering services which were unusual in a Madigan fag, with the
+understanding that when the Princess Split should come into her own, she
+would richly repay. But she had never before heard her speak so
+positively or set a time when their relationship must cease.</p>
+
+<p>A feeling of utter loneliness came over Split's faithful ally. She
+saw the balance of power in the Madigan oligarchy rudely disturbed. She
+beheld, in a swift, dread vision, the undisputed supremacy of the party
+of Sissy. <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 156]</span>Dismay entered her soul
+and shook her body, for with the brunette of the twins emotion and
+action were synonymous. "Oh, don't go, Split!" she begged, squirming
+unhappily at her end of the plank. "Don't go!"</p>
+
+<p>High up in the air, Split smiled superbly. There was <i>noblesse
+oblige</i> in that smile; also the strong teasing tincture which no
+Madigan could resist using, even upon her closest ally.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Split&mdash;o-o-oh, Split!" wailed Fom, forgetting in her
+wriggling misery how close she already was to the end of the plank.</p>
+
+<p>A crash and a bump and a squeal told it to her all at once. She had
+slid clear off, getting an instantaneous effect of her haughty sister
+unsupported at a dizzy eminence, before Split came bumping down to
+earth, the see-saw giving that regal head a parting, stunning tap as the
+long end finally settled down and the short one went up to stay.</p>
+
+<p>It was never in the ethics of Madigan warfare to explain the
+inexplicable. Florence was on her feet, flying as though for her very
+life, before Split, shaken down from her dreams, quite realized what had
+happened. And she was still sitting as she had fallen when Jim, the
+Indian, came for the sawbuck.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 157]</span>Jim limped, his eyes were sore
+and watery, and it took him two weeks to conquer the Madigan woodpile,
+which any other Piute in town could have leveled in half the time.</p>
+
+<p>"Him fall, eh?" he asked, dismantling the see-saw with that careful
+leisureliness that accounted for the Chinaman Wong's contempt for
+Indians.</p>
+
+<p>"Not him; <i>her</i>, Jim."</p>
+
+<p>Split possessed a passion for imparting knowledge, of which she had
+little, and which was hard for her to attain.</p>
+
+<p>Jim grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"She no got little gal like you teach her Inglis," he said, gently
+apologetic.</p>
+
+<p>"Not she, Jim; <i>he</i>. How old is your little girl?" Split
+remembered that a genteel interest in the lower classes is becoming to
+the well-born.</p>
+
+<p>"He just big like you," Jim responded mournfully, drawing the back of
+his brown hand across his nose. "But he all gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Dead?" Split crossed her legs uneasily as she squatted, and lowered
+her voice reverently.</p>
+
+<p>"He no dead," Jim said, lifting the sawbuck and easing it on his
+shoulder. "One Washoe squaw steal him&mdash;little papoose, nice little
+pa<span class="pagenum">[Pg. 158]</span>poose. Much white&mdash;like
+you, missy. So white, squaw say no sure Injun."</p>
+
+<p>"Jim!"</p>
+
+<p>"Take him down Tluckee valley. Take him 'way. Jim see squaw one day
+long time 'go&mdash;Washoe Lake&mdash;shoot ducks. Heap shoot squaw. He
+die, but he say white Faginia man got papoose."</p>
+
+<p>"Jim!" It was the faintest echo of the first terrified
+exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>"Come Faginia, look papoose. No find. Chop wood long time. Heap
+hogady&mdash;not much dinner. Nice papoose&mdash;white, like you."</p>
+
+<p>Jim paused. He expected sympathy, but he hoped for dinner. When he
+saw he was to get neither, he hunched his lame hip; scratched his head,
+balanced the sawbuck, and shuffled away.</p>
+
+<p>Too overcome to move, Split sat looking after him. Her father! This,
+then, was her father! She was dazed, helpless, too overwhelmed even to
+be unhappy yet.</p>
+
+<p>There came a shrill call for her from Kate, and Split, with
+unaccustomed meekness, staggered obediently to her feet. What was left
+for her but to be a slave, she said stonily to herself. She was an
+Indian like&mdash;like her father! And Sissy had noticed the resemblance
+that very afternoon!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 159]</span>"It's the bell, Split,"
+explained Kate, who was reading "The Spanish Gypsy" in the low,
+hall-like library.</p>
+
+<p>She had begun to read the book for the reason that no one in her
+class at school had read it&mdash;usually a compelling reason for the
+eldest of the Madigans; but the poetic beauty, the extravagance of the
+romance, had whirled the girl away from her pretentious pose, and she
+was finishing it now because she could not help it; chained to it, it
+seemed to her, till she should know the end.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I go?" asked Split, humbly, looking up at her sister.</p>
+
+<p>Kate looked up, too surprised by her sister's docility to do anything
+but nod. She had anticipated a battle, a ring at the door-bell being the
+signal for a flying wedge of Madigans tearing through the hall, with
+inquisitive Irene at its apex&mdash;except when she was asked to answer
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The sisters' eyes met: those of the elder, in her thin, dark, flushed
+face, hazy with romantic happiness; those of the younger bright with
+romantic suffering, demanding a share of that felicity which
+transfigured her senior.</p>
+
+<p>"What're you reading, anyway, Kate?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 160]</span>As well tap the bung of a cask
+and ask what it holds. Kate began chanting:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Father, your child is ready! She will not<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Forsake her kindred: she will brave all scorn<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sooner than scorn herself. Let Spaniards all,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Christians, Jews, Moors, shoot out the lip and say,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">"Lo, the first hero in a tribe of thieves!"<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is it not written so of them? They, too,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Were slaves, lost, wandering, sunk beneath a curse,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till Moses, Christ, and Mahomet were born,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till beings lonely in their greatness lived,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And lived to save their people.'"<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It poured from Kate's lips, the story of the lady Fedalma and her
+Gipsy father, a stream of winy romance, a sugared impossibility
+preserved in the very spirits of poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Again the old bell jangled, and again. Kate was glutted, drunk with
+the sound of the verbal music that had been chorusing behind her lips;
+while for Irene every word seemed charged with the significance of
+special revelation. The light seemed to leap from her sister's eyes to
+kindle a conflagration in her own.</p>
+
+<p>"Read it again&mdash;that part&mdash;Kate! Read it!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>And Kate, not a bit loath, turned the page and repeated:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 161]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"'Lay the young eagle in what nest you will,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The cry and swoop of eagles overhead<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Vibrate prophetic in its kindred frame,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And make it spread its wings and poise itself<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For the eagle's flight.'"<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Split breathed again, a full, deep breath of satisfaction. An
+Indian&mdash;she, Split Madigan? Perhaps; but an Indian princess, then,
+with a mission as great, glorious, and impossible as Fedalma's own.</p>
+
+<p>When at last she did turn mechanically to answer the bell, she saw
+that Sissy had anticipated her and was showing old Professor Trask into
+the parlor. Ordinarily Irene loved to listen at the door while Sissy's
+lesson was in progress; for Trask was a nervous, disappointed wreck,
+whose idea of teaching music seemed to be to make his pupils as much
+like himself as harried youth can be like worried age. But on this great
+day the joy of hearing the perfect Sissy rated had not the smallest
+place in her enemy's thoughts. A poet's words had lifted Irene in an
+instant from child hell to heaven, had fired her imagination, had
+rekindled her pride, had given back her dreams.</p>
+
+<p>Reality was not altogether so pleasant, she found, when she went into
+the kitchen, skirmished with the Chinese cook for Jim's
+dinner, <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 162]</span>and went out to the
+woodpile to give it to him herself.</p>
+
+<p>She did not wait to see him eat it&mdash;she was not poet enough for
+that; and, that impersonal, composite father, her tribe, was calling
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Pulling on her hood and jacket, with her mittens dangling from a red
+tape on each side, she flew out and down the long, rickety stairs which
+a former senator from Nevada had built up the mountain's side, when he
+planned for his home a magnificent view of the mountains and desert off
+toward the east.</p>
+
+<p>Split did not look at either, though they shone, the one like a
+billowy moonlit sea, the other like a lake of silver, because of the
+snow that covered them. She half ran, half slid down the hilly street
+till she came to a box-like miner's cabin, where Jane Cody, the
+washerwoman, lived with her son. In front of it she halted and called
+imperiously:</p>
+
+<p>"Jack!"</p>
+
+<p>For this same Jack was her own, her discovery, her possession, who
+acknowledged her thrall and was proud of it.</p>
+
+<p>But the green shutters over the one window remained fast, and the
+door tight closed.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack?" There was a suggestion of incredulity in Split's voice.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+163]</span><a href="images/img16.jpg"><img id="img16"
+src="images/img16th.jpg" alt="I want you&mdash;come"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">"'I want you&mdash;come!' the Indian princess
+announced"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 164]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 165]</span>The whistles burst forth in a
+medley of throaty roars (it was five-o'clock "mining-time"), but the
+bird-like whistle of Jack was missing.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack Cody!" Split stamped her high arctics in the snow.</p>
+
+<p>The door was opened a little, and a round black head was cautiously
+thrust forth.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you&mdash;come!" the Indian princess announced. "And get your
+sled."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't," replied the head.</p>
+
+<p>"But I want you."</p>
+
+<p>The head wagged dolefully.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>The head hung down.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me."</p>
+
+<p>The head's negative was sorrowful but determined.</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't tell me I'll&mdash;never speak to you again 's long as
+I live, Jack Cody!"</p>
+
+<p>The head stretched out its long neck and sent an agonized glance
+toward her.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me&mdash;right now!" she commanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;she's took my clothes with her," wailed the head, and
+jerked itself within, while the door was slammed behind it.</p>
+
+<p>Split walked up the stoop.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack," she called, her mouth at the
+keyhole, <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 166]</span>"who took 'em? Your
+mother? Why? But she can't keep you in that way. Never mind.
+What <i>have</i> you got on?"</p>
+
+<p>The door was opened an inch or two, and the head started to look out.
+But at sight of Split so near it withdrew in such turtle-like alarm that
+she laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"What're you laughing at?" growled the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that you got on?" said she.</p>
+
+<p>"My&mdash;my mother's wrapper."</p>
+
+<p>A peal of laughter burst from the Indian princess. But it ceased
+suddenly. For the door was thrown open with such violence that it made
+Jane Cody's wax flowers shake apprehensively under their glass bell, and
+a figure stalked out such as might haunt a dream&mdash;long, gaunt,
+awkward, inescapably boyish, yet absurdly feminine, now that the dark
+calico wrapper flapped at its big, awkward heels and bound and hindered
+its long legs.</p>
+
+<p>Split looked from the heavily shod feet to the round, short-shaven
+black head, and a premonitory giggle shook her.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you laugh&mdash;don't you dare laugh at me! Don't you,
+Split&mdash;will you?" The phrases burst from him, a threat at the
+beginning, an appeal at the end.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 167]</span>"No," said Split, choking a
+bit; "no, I won't. You don't look very&mdash;" she gulped&mdash;"very
+funny, Jack. And it's getting so dark that nobody'd know&mdash;really
+they wouldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure?"</p>
+
+<p>Split nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Get your sled quick, the big, long one, the leg-breaker, and take me
+down&mdash;I'll tell you where. Get it, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"In this, this&mdash;like this?" Jack faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"It's so important, Jack. Please! It's always you that asks me,
+remember."</p>
+
+<p>The boy threw his hands out with a gesture that strained the narrow
+garment he wore almost to bursting. He began to talk, to argue, to
+plead; then suddenly he yielded, and turned and ran, a grotesque,
+long-legged shape, toward the back of the house.</p>
+
+<p>When he whistled, Split joined him, and together they plowed their
+way through the high snow to the beaten-down street beyond. At the top
+of the hill, Split sat down well to the front of the low, rakish-looking
+leg-breaker. Behind her the boy, hitching up his skirts, threw himself
+with one knee bent beneath him, and, with a skilful ruddering of the
+other long, untrousered leg, started the sled.</p>
+
+<p>They had coasted only half a
+block&mdash;Virginia <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 168]</span>City runs
+downhill&mdash;when they heard the shrill yelp of the Comstock boy on
+the trail of his prey. As Jack stopped the sled a swift volley of
+snowballs from a cross-street struck the figure of a tall, timid,
+stooping man in an old-fashioned cape, such as no Comstock boy had ever
+seen on anything masculine.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Professor Trask," breathed Irene, keen delight in persecution
+lending to her aggressive, bright face that savage sharpness of feature
+which Sissy Madigan called Indian. "Don't you wish you hadn't got that
+dress on, Jack?" she asked, as the tall, black mark for a good shot
+still stood hesitating to cross the polished, steep street, down which
+many sleds had slipped for days past. "You could get him every time,
+couldn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Despite the ignoble garment that cramped it, the boy's breast swelled
+with pride in his lady's approval.</p>
+
+<p>"You could just fire one at him from here, anyway," suggested Irene,
+adaptable as her sex is to contemporary standards and customs.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye-es," said the boy, hesitating; "but he's such a poor old
+luny."</p>
+
+<p>Split turned her imperial little hooded head questioningly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+169]</span><a href="images/img17.jpg"><img id="img17"
+src="images/img17th.jpg" alt="They had coasted only half a block"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">"They had coasted only half a block"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 170]</span></p>
+
+<p>"He is&mdash;really luny," said the boy,
+apologeti<span class="pagenum">[Pg. 171]</span>cally. "Since his little
+girl wandered away one day from home and never came back, he gets
+spells, you know. He was telling ma one day when she went over to do his
+washing. But&mdash;but I will land one on him if you want, Split."</p>
+
+<p>But Split had suddenly pivoted clear around and sat now facing him,
+an eager, mittened hand staying his hard, skilful, obedient fingers,
+already making the snowball.</p>
+
+<p>"How&mdash;how old would that little girl be, Jack?" she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, 'bout twelve&mdash;thirteen. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"And what would be the color of her hair?"</p>
+
+<p>"Red, I s'pose, like his; not&mdash;not like yours&mdash;Split," he
+added shyly, glancing at the brown fire of the curls that escaped from
+her hood.</p>
+
+<p>But Irene was no longer listening. She was looking over to the other
+side of the street, where that shrinking, pitiable old figure in its
+threadbare neatness trembled; not daring to seek safety across the
+dangerously smooth street, nor daring to remain exposed here, where it
+ducked ridiculously every now and then to avoid the whizzing balls that
+sang about it.</p>
+
+<p>Irene breathed hard. A coward for a father, a scarecrow, a butt for a
+gang of miners' boys! This, this was her father! Why, even
+crippled <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 172]</span>old Jim, the
+wood-chopper, seen in retrospect and haloed by copper-colored dreams of
+romantic rehabilitation&mdash;even Jim seemed regrettable.</p>
+
+<p>But she did not hesitate, any more than Fedalma did. She, too, knew a
+daughter's duty&mdash;to a hitherto unknown, just-discovered father. A
+merely ordinary, every-day parent like Francis Madigan was, as a matter
+of course, the common enemy, and no self-respecting Madigan would waste
+the poetry of filial feeling upon any one so realistic.</p>
+
+<p>"You wait for me here, Jack," she said, with unhesitating reliance
+upon his obedience.</p>
+
+<p>"Where're you going? I thought you were in a hurry to get down to the
+wickiups."</p>
+
+<p>She did not hear him. She had spun off the sled, and with the
+sure-footed speed of the hill-child she was crossing the street.</p>
+
+<p>Old Trask, his short-sighted eyes blinking beneath his twitching,
+bushy red eyebrows, looked down as upon a miracle when a red-mittened
+hand caught his and he heard a confident voice&mdash;the clear voice
+children use to enlighten the stupidity of adults:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll help you across; take my hand."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>He leaned down, failing to recognize her. <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+173]</span>Children had no identity to him. They were merely brats, he
+used to say, unless they happened to have some musical aptitude. But he
+accepted her aid, his battered old hat rocking excitedly upon his high
+bony forehead, as he ducked and turned and shivered at the oncoming
+balls. "Bad boys&mdash;bad boys!" he ejaculated. "Boys are the
+devil!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," agreed Split, craftily. "Girls are best. Your little girl,
+now&mdash;father&mdash;" she began softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh&mdash;what?" he exclaimed. "Who's your father? My respects to
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no father," she answered softly. A plan had sprung full-born
+from her quick brain. She would win this erratic father back to memory
+of his former life and her place in it&mdash;somewhat as did one Lucy
+Manette, a favorite heroine of Split's that Sissy had read about and
+told her of. That would be a fine thing to do&mdash;almost as fine, and
+requiring the center of the stage as much, as rehabilitating the Red
+Man.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no father," she murmured, "if you won't be mine."</p>
+
+<p>"What? What? No!" Trask was across now and brushing the snowy traces
+of battle from his queer old cape. "No; I don't want any children. I had
+one once&mdash;a daughter."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 174]</span>Split's heart beat fast.</p>
+
+<p>"She was a brat, with the temper of a little fiend, and no
+ear&mdash;absolutely none&mdash;for music; played like an elephant."</p>
+
+<p>How terribly confirmatory!</p>
+
+<p>"And what&mdash;what became of her?" whispered Split.</p>
+
+<p>"She ran away two years ago and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Two years!"</p>
+
+<p>"I said two, didn't I?" demanded the old professor, irascibly.</p>
+
+<p>Disgusted, Split turned her back on him. Why, two years ago Sissy had
+first called her an Indian; how right she had been! Two years ago she,
+Split, was making over all her dolls to Fom. Two years ago she had
+already discovered Jack Cody's fleet strength, his wonderful aptness at
+making swift sleds, in which her reckless spirit reveled, his mastership
+of other boys of his gang, and&mdash;her mastery of him.</p>
+
+<p>She turned and beckoned to him. His sweet whistle rang out in answer
+like a vocal salute, and in a moment she was seated again in front of
+him, with that deft, tail-like left leg of his steering them down, down
+over cross-street, through teams and sleighs and unwary pedestrians;
+past the miners coming off shift; past the lamplighter making his rounds
+in the crisp, <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 175]</span>clear cold of the
+evening; past the heavy-laden squaws, with their bowed heads, their
+papooses on their backs, their weary arms bearing home the spoils of a
+hard day's work, and the sore-eyed yellow dogs trudging, too, wearily
+and dejectedly at their heels, toward the rest of the wickiup and the
+acrid warmth of the sage-brush camp-fire.</p>
+
+<p>In short, swift sentences, as they hurdled over artificially raised
+obstructions, or slid along the firm-packed snow, or grated on the muddy
+cross-streets, Princess Split told her plan&mdash;with reservations. She
+was not prepared to admit to so humble a worshiper the secret of her
+birth, but the magnanimous self-sacrifice of a beautiful nature, the
+heroine concealed beneath a frivolous exterior&mdash;these she was
+willing Jack Cody should suspect and admire.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll lift them up, you and I, Jack. I'm going 'to&mdash;to be the
+angel of a homeless tribe,' or something like that," she quoted, as it
+grew darker and the sled slowed down a bit, where the slant of the
+hill-street became gentler and she need not hold on tight. "You'll be
+their general and I their princess. You'll teach them to be fine
+soldiers, so that the people in town will be afraid of them and have to
+give them back their lands&mdash;and the mines, too.
+They're <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 176]</span>theirs, and they shall
+have them and be millionaires. And, of course, so will we. We'll own all
+the stocks and brokers' offices, and after a few years, when they're
+quite civilized, we'll come up to town to live. We'll take Bob Graves's
+'Castle' and&mdash;Jack! Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>A long scream burst from her. Never in her life had Split Madigan
+screamed like that. For an incredibly fleet instant she actually saw
+above her head a struggling horse's hoofs. In the next, her
+calico-wrappered knight had thrown himself and his lady out into the
+great drifts on the side. Split felt the cold fleeciness of new-fallen
+snow on her face, down her neck, up her sleeves. She was smothered,
+drowned in it, when with another tug the boy whirled her to her feet,
+and swaying unsteadily, she looked up into the face of the man whose
+horses had so nearly crushed her life out.</p>
+
+<p>It was her father&mdash;she knew it was. Else why had fate so
+strangely thrown them together? Yes, this was her true father. No other
+girl's father could have so handsome a fur coat as that reaching from
+the tips of this very tall man's ears to his heels. No other could have
+a sleigh so fine, and silver-belled horses fit for a king. No other
+could have such bright brown <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 177]</span>eyes
+beneath heavy sandy brows, such red, red cheeks, and so long and
+silver-white a beard which the sun could still betray into confession of
+its youthful ruddiness. What if he did have, too, a brogue so soft, so
+wheedling that men had long called him Slippery Uncle Sammy?</p>
+
+<p>Split waked with a humiliating start from her lesser, less genteel
+dreams. Of course this bonanza king driving up from the mine was her
+real father, and she a bonanza princess, happier, more fortunate than a
+merely political one; for princesses have to live in Europe, where
+Madigans cannot see and envy them.</p>
+
+<p>With the mien of one who has come at last into her own, Split
+accepted his invitation to carry her up to town, and, with a facetious
+twinkle in his eyes that added to his likeness to a stately Santa Claus
+(though his was not a reputation for benevolence), he lifted her and set
+her down under the silky fur rugs.</p>
+
+<p>Split nestled back in perfect content: at last she was fitly
+placed.</p>
+
+<p>"Hitch on behind, Jack," she cried patronizingly, and the bonanza
+king's sleigh went up the hill with its queer freight: queer, for this
+was that one of them whose strength was subtlety, whose forte was guile,
+whose left hand knew <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 178]</span>not the
+charitable acts of his right&mdash;and neither did the right, for that
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>Thoroughly sophisticated are Comstock children as to the character of
+the masters of their masters, and Split Madigan knew how foreign to this
+man's nature a lovable action was. All the more, then, she valued the
+distinction which chance&mdash;fate&mdash;had made hers. And all the
+more did a something fierce and lawless and proud in herself leap to
+recognize the tyrant in him. Kings should be above law, as princesses
+were, was Split's creed; else why be kings and princesses?</p>
+
+<p>"An' where would ye be a-goin' to, down this part o' the world so
+late?" she heard the unctuous voice above her inquire.</p>
+
+<p>Split was silent. That the daughter of a bonanza king should have
+fancied for a moment that Indian Jim could be her father!</p>
+
+<p>"An' who's the gyurl with ye&mdash;the witch ye call Jack?"</p>
+
+<p>"'T isn't a girl." That virility which Split's wild nature respected
+and admired forbade her denying the boy his sex. "It's a
+boy&mdash;Jack&mdash;Jack Cody."</p>
+
+<p>King Sammy laughed. His was rich, strong laughter, and men who heard
+it on C Street (they had reached the main thoroughfare
+now, <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 179]</span>so fleet were these kingly
+horses of Split's father) knew it&mdash;and knew, too, what poor, mean
+thoughts lay behind it.</p>
+
+<p>"An' this Cody," he said, turning his handsome head to look down at
+the boy on his sled behind. "Cody&mdash;Cody, now," he continued, with
+royalty's marvelous memory, "your father killed in the Ophir&mdash;eh?
+Time of the fire on the 1800&mdash;yes&mdash;yes! An' I was goin' to
+give him a point that very day. Well&mdash;well!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye did!" The boy looked up resentful, and met those smiling, crafty
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"No! An' he sold short? Too bad! Too bad! I thought sure that stock
+was goin' down. My, the bad man that told me it was! I hope he didn't
+lose?" he chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"All we had," said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Tut&mdash;tut&mdash;tut! What a pity! Haven't I always said it's
+wicked to deal in stocks!" The king shook his sorrowful old head, then
+turned to the princess beside him. "An' it's out for a ride ye'd be,
+sweetheartin' on the sly, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's not! I was not!" Split's cheeks grew hotter. He was her father,
+this splendid, handsome king, yet never had she felt for poor Francis
+Madigan what she felt now for the man beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"What, then?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 180]</span>"I was going down for&mdash;for
+a reason," she stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure! To be sure!" chuckled his old Majesty. "An' ye've told
+your father an' mother ye were goin', no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I&mdash;didn't. I&mdash;couldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Coorse not; coorse not, but ye&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me out!" cried Split.</p>
+
+<p>The sneer in his voice had set her aflame. She rose in the sleigh,
+cast off the furs, and, stamping like a fury, tried to seize the
+reins.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho! Ho!" The old monarch's bowed broad shoulders shook with laughter
+as he caught her trembling hands and held them. "What a little spitfire!
+A divvle of a temper ye've got, my dear. Cody, now, does he like gyurls
+with such a temper?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you let me out?" Her voice was hoarse with anger.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't ye wait till we get t' a crossin', ye little termagant?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;no!" She tore her hands from him, and, with a quick, lithe
+leap from the low sleigh, landed, a bit dazed, in the snow banked high
+on the side of the street.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Sammy stared after her a moment. Then he remembered the boy
+behind.</p>
+
+<p>"Hi&mdash;there!" he cried, looking over his shoulder as he reached
+for his whip. "Git!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 181]</span>But Cody had the street-boy's
+quickness. All he had to do was to let go the end of rope he held, and
+the leg-breaker slipped smoothly back, while the king's runnered chariot
+shot ahead, drawn by the flying horses on whose backs the whip had
+descended.</p>
+
+<p>"Ugh!" shivered Split, as she made her way out of the drift. "It's
+cold, Jack. Let's run."</p>
+
+<p>Together they hauled the leg-breaker up the hill, parting at the
+snow-caked, wandering flights of steps, which seemed weary and worn with
+their endless task of climbing the mountain to Madigan's door.</p>
+
+<p>Irene mounted them quickly. She was cold, and it had grown very dark
+and late; so late that the lamp shone out from the dining-room, warning
+her that it must be dangerously near to dinner-time. She had reached the
+last flight when Sissy came flying out along the porch to meet her.</p>
+
+<p>"Split&mdash;ssh!" she cautioned, with a friendliness that surprised
+Split, who remembered how well she had washed that round, innocent face
+in the snow only a few hours ago&mdash;the face of Sissy, the
+unforgiving. "Dinner's ready," she went on, "but father isn't down yet.
+Go round the back way, and you can get in without his knowing how late
+you are."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 182]</span>Split did not budge. The sight
+of Sissy had made her a Madigan again, prepared for any emergency the
+appearance of her arch-enemy might portend. "What are you up to?" she
+demanded suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Sissy turned haughtily on her heel. "If you want to go in and
+catch it&mdash;go."</p>
+
+<p>But Split did not want to catch it. Her day's experience had made her
+content to bear the eccentricities of her humble foster-father, but she
+was by no means anxious to be the instrument that should provoke a
+characteristic expression of them.</p>
+
+<p>She slipped around the back way, passing through Wong's big kitchen,
+the heat and odors of which were grateful messages of cheer to her
+chilled little body. She flew up-stairs and tore off her wet clothing,
+and was out in the hall, buttoning hastily as she walked, when the
+door-bell rang.</p>
+
+<p>In some previous existence Split Madigan must have been a most
+intelligent horse in some metropolitan fire department. It was her
+instinct still to run at the sound of the bell; every other Madigan,
+therefore, delighted in preventing that impulse's gratification. But
+this time Bessie came hurriedly to meet her and even speed her on her
+errand.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+183]</span><a href="images/img18.jpg"><img id="img18"
+src="images/img18th.jpg" alt="Oh, you needn't glare at me"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">"'Oh, you needn't glare at me!' exclaimed Bep"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 184]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 185]</span>"Quick&mdash;it's your father,
+Split!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>Split looked at her. She trusted Bep no more than she did Sissy,
+whose lieutenant the blonde twin was.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you needn't glare at me!" exclaimed Bep, her guilty conscience
+sensitive to accusation by implication. "Fom told me all you told her
+about him. She was 'fraid you were coming after her for letting you fall
+off the see-saw, and she told me the whole thing. She said you expected
+him to-night&mdash;don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"How&mdash;do you know it's&mdash;my father that's at the door?"
+demanded Split, all the warier of the enemy because of her acquaintance
+with her secret.</p>
+
+<p>"Why!" Bep opened clear, china-blue eyes, as shallow and baffling as
+bits of porcelain. "Hasn't he been here once for you already, while you
+were out?"</p>
+
+<p>Split turned and ran down the hall. In the minute this took she had
+lived through a long, heart-breaking, childish regret&mdash;regret for
+the familiar, apprehension of the unknown. It was so warm and snug in
+this Madigan house; she seemed so to belong there. Why must that unknown
+parent come to claim her just now, when her spirit was still sorely
+vexed with the fail<span class="pagenum">[Pg. 186]</span>ings of the
+various fathers she had borne with in one short afternoon!</p>
+
+<p>She got to the top of the staircase that led down to the front door,
+when shelled in Split's throat and held her choking, as she grasped the
+banister and gazed yearningly down upon him. For a moment she had the
+idea of flying down past him to save him from what was coming. But it
+was too late; already he had his hand on the door-knob. Did he know who
+it was for whom he was opening his door? Split gasped. Did he anticipate
+what was coming? Some one ought to tell him&mdash;to break it to
+him&mdash;to&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>But evidently Split herself could not have done this, for in almost
+the identical moment that Madigan resentfully threw open the door, a
+stream of water was dashed into his astonished face.</p>
+
+<p>From her point of vantage on the stairway Split saw a paralyzed
+Sissy, the empty pitcher in her guilty hand, the grin of
+satisfaction <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 187]</span>frozen on her
+panic-stricken round face; while, before she fled, her eyes shot one
+quick, hunted glance over Madigan's dripping head to the joyous enemy
+above.</p>
+
+<p>And Split was joyous. Her explosive laugh pealed out in the second
+before fear of her father stifled it. So this was how Sissy had planned
+to get even; so this was the plot behind Bep's baffling blue eyes! And
+only the accident of Madigan's going to the door had saved
+Split&mdash;and confounded her enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, it was good to be a Madigan! Standing there dry and triumphant,
+Split hugged herself&mdash;her very own self&mdash;her individuality,
+which at this minute she would not have changed for anything the world
+had to offer. To be a Madigan, one's birthright to laugh and do battle
+with one's peers; and to win, sometimes through strength, sometimes
+through guile, sometimes through sheer luck&mdash;but to win!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 188]</span>
+
+<hr class="cb">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 189]</span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_LAST_STRAW" id="THE_LAST_STRAW"></a>THE LAST STRAW</h2>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 190]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 191]</span>Young as she was, Frances
+Madigan had known a great sorrow. She remembered (or fancied she did,
+having heard the circumstance so often related) how Francis Madigan had
+seized and confiscated her cradle as soon as her sex had been
+avowed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's too bad, Madigan!" was the form in which Dr. Murchison had made
+the announcement of her birth.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the last straw&mdash;that's what it is," Madigan answered
+grimly, bearing the cradle out to the woodshed. There he chopped it to
+pieces, as though defying a perverse destiny to send him another
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p>With tears running down her cheeks, Frances had witnessed the
+pathetic sight&mdash;or, if she had not, she believed she had; which was
+quite as effective in her narrative of the occurrence.</p>
+
+<p>"And he took my cwadle," Frank was ac<span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+192]</span>customed to relate, with an abused sniff to punctuate each
+phrase, "and he chopped it wif the hatchet all in little bits o'
+pieces."</p>
+
+<p>"How big, Frank?" Sissy liked to ask.</p>
+
+<p>"Teeny-weeny bits&mdash;little as that," Frank whined, still in
+character, and showing a small finger-nail. "And&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And then what did you do?" prompted Sissy.</p>
+
+<p>Frank stamped her foot. The cynical tone of the question grated upon
+an artistic temperament at the crucial moment when it was composing and
+acting at the same time. "Don't you say it, Sissy Madigan!" she cried
+petulantly. "I can say it myself. And then"&mdash;turning to Maude
+Bryne-Stivers, to whom she was telling the touching incident, with a
+resumption of her first manner, and her most heartrending
+tone&mdash;"and then I looked first at my cwadle and then at my father,
+and I cwied&mdash;and cwied&mdash;and cwied&mdash;and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>One is limited at four and is apt to strive for emphasis by the
+simple method of repetition. Frank always "cwied and cwied" till some
+interruption came to the rescue and furnished a climax.</p>
+
+<p>"You dear little lump of sugar!" cried Miss Bryne-Stivers at the
+proper moment, lifting <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 193]</span>the chubby
+mourner off her feet and out of her pose at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>And Frank, seated on the lady's lap, was content with her effect.</p>
+
+<p>It was a small matter, anyway, with Frank Madigan&mdash;the loss of a
+pose or two; she had so many. A parody of parodies was the smallest
+Madigan, and her jokes were the shadows of shades of jokes handed down
+ready-made to her. Yet she was convinced that they were good; otherwise
+the Madigans would not have laughed at them long before she adopted
+them.</p>
+
+<p>She herself was a victim&mdash;as was the gentleman after whom she
+was named&mdash;of a surplusage of femininity about the house. All
+female children are mothers before they are girls, the earliest
+sex-tendency having a scientific precedence over others; and the
+Madigans "played with" their smallest sister bodily, as with a doll
+whose mechanism presented more possibilities than that of any mechanical
+toy they had seen&mdash;in some other child's possession. Later they
+were charmed&mdash;if but for a while&mdash;by the field her mentality
+provided for experimental work. There were times when Frances Madigan
+had a mother for every day in the week; there were days when she had no
+mother at all; and there <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 194]</span>were
+occasions when she was adopted as a whole, and for a stated time, by
+some Madigan with a theory, which was tried upon her with all the
+remorselessness of a faddist before she was given over as completely to
+its successor.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Sissy had taken possession of her and made of her, in the short
+time her enthusiasm lasted, a visible replica of that which Sissy tried
+to delude herself into thinking was her own character. In those days she
+cut poor Frank's curls off and plastered the child's hair down in a
+strong-minded fashion. She insisted upon her disciple's pronouncing
+clearly and distinctly. She inaugurated a r&eacute;gime of practical
+common sense, small rewards and severe punishments, and taught Frank how
+to count. But not to spell; for Sissy had introduced the fashion among
+Madigans of spelling out the word which was the key-note of a
+sentence&mdash;a proceeding that exasperated Frank. "Don't you let her
+have any c-a-n-d-y; Aunt Anne says 't ain't good for her," was a sample
+of the abuses that drove Frank nearly mad with curiosity and
+indignation.</p>
+
+<p>But finally Sissy joined the Salvation Army with her
+prot&eacute;g&eacute;e (religion had all the attraction of the impliedly
+forbidden to the Madigans), and was discovered by
+Francis <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 195]</span>Madigan one evening on C
+Street, putting up a fluent prayer in a nasal tremolo&mdash;an excellent
+imitation of the semi-hysterical falsetto of the bonneted enthusiast who
+had preceded her.</p>
+
+<p>Madigan looked from Sissy&mdash;her hypocritical eyes upcast, while
+her soul was ravished by the whispered comment upon her precocity, to
+which she lent an encouraging ear&mdash;to Frank, kneeling angelically
+beside her. Something in himself, his enthusiastic, emotional,
+long-forgotten, youthful self, felt the tug of sympathy at the sight,
+and, after his first irritated start, he stood there behind the watching
+crowd with no thought of interference.</p>
+
+<p>"You can thank your stars, you unco guid lassie," he said within
+himself, his sarcastic eyes on Sissy's holy face, "that you've not a
+more religious and more conventional man for a father. 'T is one like
+that would yank you out of your play-acting preaching, or my name's not
+Madigan&mdash;ahem!"</p>
+
+<p>He did not know that the exclamation had been uttered aloud. Their
+father was unaware of the habit; but his daughters knew well that
+stentorian clearing of the throat which served for a warning that he was
+about to speak, and also a notification that he had spoken and would
+permit no difference of opinion. In the <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+196]</span>midst of her religio-dramatic ecstasy, Sissy heard that sound
+behind her, and jumped to her feet as though brought painfully back to a
+sorrowing, sinful world.</p>
+
+<p>"And he tooked her," said Frances later, in relating the affair to an
+eager audience of Madigans, "and he whipped her awful!"</p>
+
+<p>"With his whole hand?" asked Bep, feeling it to be the partizan's
+duty to doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"Uh-huh!" The small fabricator nodded her head in slow and awful
+confirmation.</p>
+
+<p>"That shows, Frank Madigan!" said Bep, scornfully turning her back.
+"He never whips with more than two fingers."</p>
+
+<p>And yet it was the confident belief of the Madigans that if it had
+been anybody but Sissy, that somebody would have been eaten alive!</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It was Split who next adopted the Last Straw. Under her tutelage
+Frank learned to climb her sister's body and stand upright and fearless
+on her shoulders. She was also initiated into the great game of "fats,"
+which the Madigans played winter evenings on the crumb-cloth in the
+dining-room; said crumb-cloth being printed in large squares of red and
+white, one of which was chalked off for the ring.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 197]</span>Frank's induction into the game
+led to a grand battle between Split and Sissy, the latter contending
+that the baby's fingers could not properly handle and shoot the marbles.
+But Sissy ought to have known better than to make such a point, as the
+Madigans had a peculiar way of playing fats, for which Frank&mdash;being
+a Madigan&mdash;was as fitted by nature as any of her seniors.</p>
+
+<p>It consisted, first, in hauling out the big box of marbles, in which
+the booty won by the whole family was kept&mdash;the Madigans were
+gamblers, of course, as was everything born on the Comstock. Second, in
+a desperate controversy as to how the marbles were to be divided. Third,
+in a compromise, which necessitated that a complete count be made of
+every marble in the box&mdash;and the Madigans' unfeminine skill made
+this a question of handling hundreds of them, of suspiciously watching
+one another, of losing and of finding; and it all took time. Fourth, a
+decision as to handicaps. Fifth, a heated discussion of the relative
+values of puries, pottries, agates, crystals, and 'dobies. Sixth, a
+fiery attack from Sissy on Split's lucky taw. Seventh, the falling
+asleep of Frank squarely over the ring. And eighth, the sending of the
+whole tribe to bed by Aunt Anne&mdash;<span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+198]</span>the entire evening having been taken up with arranging an
+order of business, and not a stroke of business accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>But the Split sphere of influence over the disputed territory of
+Frances was considerably circumscribed by the affair of the stagecoach.
+It stood&mdash;a dusty, lumbering vehicle that made daily trips down
+from the mountain to the small towns in the ca&ntilde;on&mdash;upon a
+raised platform in front of Baldy Bob's. Baldy Bob, who departed with it
+the first thing in the morning and returned late in the afternoon,
+hauled it each day up on to the platform, intending to get out the hose
+and wash it off&mdash;after dinner when he came back from downtown. But
+he never came back till time to hitch up and start down the ca&ntilde;on
+again. So the old coach was left high and dry, while the sun went down
+behind Mount Davidson and the brightest stars in all the world shone out
+from a black-blue firmament unmarred by the smallest haze.</p>
+
+<p>Till Split discovered it.</p>
+
+<p>To Split, who had never traveled by any means other than her own
+lithe limbs and Jack Cody's sled, the coach's big, low, dusty body, its
+heavy high wheels, its dusky interior smelling of heated leather and
+twig-scented, sum<span class="pagenum">[Pg. 199]</span>mer-sunned
+country dust, were romance incarnate. It meant voyaging to her, this
+coach: strange sights, queer peoples, the sea that she had never seen,
+the rippling of rivers she had never heard, the smell of pasture-land,
+of pine forests, of lake-dipped willows, of flowers&mdash;valleys full
+of flowers, like those that bloomed in Mrs. Pemberton's garden, but
+unlike those enchanted blossoms in not being irrevocably attached to the
+bush on which they grew, and unguarded by any Mrs. Ramrod, whose most
+gracious act was to hold up a rose on its stalk between forefinger and
+thumb and permit a flower-hungry girl to bend down and sniff it. On the
+same principle, Mrs. Ramrod <i>showed</i> her preserves, but she never
+bestowed a rose "for keeps," nor did it ever seem to occur to her that
+one might want a taste of that which made her glass jars so temptingly
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Split "took a dare" the first time she mounted Baldy Bob's coach. She
+climbed up to the driver's high seat in front with as much hidden
+trepidation but as unhesitatingly as she would have plunged down a
+shaft, to show Sissy, who was a coward, how brave her sister was.</p>
+
+<p>But after she got up there, Sissy faded out of the world. In Baldy
+Bob's coach Split was <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 200]</span>seized
+with <i>Wanderlust</i>. She sat erect and still up there in front, her
+hands clasped in her lap, her shining eyes averted from the motionless
+tongue below and fixed on the unrolling landscapes of the world; on
+plains and valleys, on villages nestling in trees and flying past, on
+great rolling fields of grain&mdash;perhaps a smooth, light, continuous
+sort of sage-brush, wrinkling in the wind as the sunflowers seem to when
+one looks up at the mountain from the sluice-box.</p>
+
+<p>Yet with the advent of Frances into this strange game of rapt
+silences there came a change. Frank's imagination did not tempt her
+abroad strange countries for to see; she merely wanted to ride down and
+off the platform.</p>
+
+<p>"Make it go, Split," she begged, with a trust in her big sister's
+capacity that Split would have perished rather than admit to be
+unfounded.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you hold on tight?" she asked Frances.</p>
+
+<p>The child nodded, grasping the dashboard firmly. With the ease of
+long practice, Split got to the big wheel and leaped to the ground. She
+had noticed the big stone which Baldy Bob had slipped in front of the
+hind wheel, <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 201]</span>and she fancied it was
+part of the reason why the stagecoach could not be moved.</p>
+
+<p>She was mistaken: it was the whole reason. And when Split had pushed
+and tugged and kicked with all her strength, laying herself flat at last
+and bracing her toes against the other wheel to get a leverage, her
+first feeling when she saw the coach move above her head was of delight
+at the unexpected. Her second was of unmixed terror; for, gaining an
+impetus from its descent on the inclined plane that led from the
+platform, the coach rattled briskly down Sutton Avenue, headed for the
+ca&ntilde;on, with Frank clutching the dashboard and laughing aloud in
+glee.</p>
+
+<p>Split Madigan had always fancied she could run. She never knew how
+impotent human fleetness is till she saw that lumbering coach go
+plunging swiftly and more swiftly away from her, across B Street, and
+tearing down the next hill with a speed that made her puny efforts
+laughable.</p>
+
+<p>Baldy Bob, emerging from the saloon on the corner with that
+feverishly distorted view of the world due to never going back home
+after dinner downtown, saw his coach come down upon him as if to demand
+the washing so long promised. If it had been morning, he
+would <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 202]</span>have been properly afraid of
+getting in the way of the monster let loose. But in the evening Bob was
+accustomed to the occurrence of peculiar things. So he ran&mdash;at that
+time of day he could run better than walk&mdash;out to the middle of the
+street, threw up his arms, and called hoarsely upon the mad thing to
+stop.</p>
+
+<p>It did&mdash;for a moment, when it came in contact with his body; but
+it was long enough for its course to be deflected from the steep hill
+below and turned northward down the comparatively level cross
+street.</p>
+
+<p>When Bob picked himself up and followed, he found a thin,
+white-faced, red-haired girl running swiftly beside him. Later he
+accompanied her and the plucky little Frank (still smiling and chuckling
+over her fine ride) up the hill to the home of Mr. Francis Madigan,
+where he demanded damages&mdash;both personal and mechanical.</p>
+
+<p>"And fa-ther tooked her in his own room," Frank said with shuddering
+unction, as she told the tale, "and she's in there yet!"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It was Fom who awakened a sense of the beautiful in Frank. She and
+Bep were continually playing London Bridge, in the course of which it
+became necessary to demand:</p>
+
+<p>"Which would you rather have (that means, <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+203]</span>like best): a diamond horse covered with stars, or a golden
+cradle with red silk pillows?"</p>
+
+<p>Sentiment and the sad experience of her babyhood always prompted
+Frank to choose the cradle, of course. After which, her preference
+promptly became of no importance whatever; the whole beautiful business
+was put aside, and she was bidden to get behind Fom. She discovered
+later that whether she preferred diamonds and stars to gold and red
+silk, it was all the same: she invariably had to get behind one twin or
+the other, clasp her tightly about the waist, and pull&mdash;and
+pull&mdash;till the whole universe gave way and she plumped down on the
+ground with a big twin falling on top of her.</p>
+
+<p>But there was another phase of the beautiful which was far more
+satisfactory to Frank, while it lasted. Fom discovered it one day when
+Split took Dora away from her, just because the brunette twin preferred
+her lunch to the burned potatoes Split had baked in the back yard when
+they were playing emigrants. It was then, in the depths of her grief,
+that the inspiration came to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall Fom make you look awful pretty, Frank?" she asked, in the form
+which children suppose wheedles babies most successfully.</p>
+
+<p>Frank didn't know; she was suspicious of <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+204]</span>the hollowness of the beautiful and the inutility of
+choosing. Besides, she was making dolls' biscuit just then from a piece
+of dough Wong had given her, cutting out each individual bun with Aunt
+Anne's thimble.</p>
+
+<p>But Florence coaxed and threatened and bribed, and when Francis
+Madigan got home that night to dinner, he found his big porch covered
+with children gathered from blocks around. Each held in his or her hand
+one pin or more&mdash;the price of admission to the show. (Fom was a
+most thrifty and businesslike Madigan.) And the show, which he as well
+as they saw in the interval between the opening of his front door and
+its swift closing, was Frances's plump, naked body draped in a sheet,
+posing, with uplifted arms and an uncertain, apprehensive smile, on a
+tottering draped pedestal, which fell with a crash when Fom, who was
+crouched behind steadying it, beheld her father's face.</p>
+
+<p>"And he tooked her," with bated breath Frank repeated the monotonous
+refrain of her saga, "and he made her thwow evewy&mdash;pin&mdash;she'd
+made&mdash;out the fwont window!"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>As a Madigan, Frances should have been above fear. She
+was&mdash;except of the tank in <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+205]</span>the back room up-stairs. Its gurglings and chucklings were
+more than mortal four-years-old could bear at night in the dark,
+particularly after Bep had taught her to be superstitious.</p>
+
+<p>Bep's nature was spongy with a capacity for saturation. She took in
+every new child fad and folly. She believed in a multiplicity of
+remedies, and was ready to try a new one&mdash;on somebody
+else&mdash;whenever the occasion offered. When Frank got the
+whooping-cough, and used to march around the dining-room table, stamping
+in her paroxysms of coughing and of speechless anger at the Madigans who
+followed mimicking her, Bep decided that she would try the latest cure
+she had heard of. So she wandered down to the gas-works one day, Frank's
+hand in hers, to give her patient the benefit of breathing the heavily
+charged atmosphere down there.</p>
+
+<p>"How-do, Mrs. Grayson?" she greeted the gas-man's wife amiably, as
+she opened the kitchen door.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grayson, her babies leaving her side to cluster interestedly
+around Frank, replied that she and the children were well; that the
+epidemic of whooping-cough had not reached them because they lived so
+far out of town.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 206]</span>"Yes," assented Bep, politely;
+"and then, the smell of gas is so good for whooping-cough. That keeps
+'em well. And that's why I brought Frank down here."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grayson's excitable motherhood took alarm. "I never heard," she
+said quickly, "that breathing in coal-tar smells kept off
+whooping-cough."</p>
+
+<p>"No, neither did I, though p'r'aps it does. But it cures&mdash;I know
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean to say&mdash;" Mrs. Grayson flew like a terrified hen
+for her chicks, lifting two by an arm each clear from the ground and
+hustling the third into the kitchen before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yep, she's got it," said Bep, proudly. And Frank, feeling called
+upon to be interesting, burst into a convulsive corroboration of the
+glad tidings.</p>
+
+<p>"You nasty little minx!" exclaimed Mrs. Grayson, as she shut the door
+in Bep's face.</p>
+
+<p>"What's 'minx'?" Frank asked her sister, as they toiled up toward
+town again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's a wild animal," answered Bep, readily; "but she don't know
+how to say it. She's going to have bad luck, though; anybody can tell
+that by the way she walked under that ladder. I shouldn't be a bit
+surprised if every last one of her children gets the
+whooping-cough!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 207]</span>And Frank felt sorry for the
+Graysons. For she was sure that Bep knew whereof she spoke. She knew the
+laws of the superstitious country in which she dwelt, did Bep: a country
+where if you sing before you eat, you're bound to cry before you sleep;
+where, if you put your corset-waist on wrong side out, and are hardy
+enough to change it, you deserve what you're likely to get; where no
+sane girl will tempt Providence by walking on a crack; where, if you
+lose something, you have only to spit in the palm of your hand,&mdash;if
+you're dowered in the matter of saliva,&mdash;strike the tiny pool
+sharply, and say:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Spit, spit, spider!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">If you show me where my pencil is<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll give you a keg of cider!"<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then note the direction which the escaping particles of saliva take,
+and there you are! or, rather, there it is&mdash;the lost article.</p>
+
+<p>Or there it ought to be, unless you have been guilty of some
+inexcusable act, such as omitting to wish at the very instant a star is
+falling, or the first time you taste each new fruit in season, or if you
+have forgotten to say:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 208]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Star light, star bright,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">First star I've seen to-night,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I wish I may, I wish I might<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Have the wish I wish to-night!"<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was Bep who taught Frank to count white horses; to pick up a pin
+when its head was turned toward her, to let it lie when it pointed the
+other way; to bite the tea-grounds left in a cup, and declare gravely,
+if soft, that a female visitor might be expected, and, if hard, a male;
+never to cut friendship by giving or accepting a knife, a
+pin&mdash;indeed, anything sharp; and never, by any chance, to tempt the
+devil of bad luck by going out of a house by a different door than that
+by which she had entered.</p>
+
+<p>The versatile Frank was most teachable. When Bep was "collecting
+bows," Frances would obligingly bow and bob for her minutes at a time,
+like a Chinese mandarin, or like some small priestess observing a solemn
+rite. What the Bad Luck was, the terrible alternative of all these
+precautions, poor Frank could form no idea. But she had come to
+associate it with the babbling tank, which seemed at night, when all was
+still, to be gurgling, "Bad Luck&mdash;Bad Luck!" threateningly at
+her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 209]</span>Then she would go over her
+conduct during the day, carefully scrutinizing her every action that
+might have given this chuckling Bad Luck a hold over her.</p>
+
+<p>Not a crack had been stepped on that she could remember; not a pin
+picked up that should have been let lie; not&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The scream that burst from Frances one Sunday night during this
+self-catechism brought Madigan and all the family to her bedside.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it&mdash;what is it, child?" demanded her father.</p>
+
+<p>And Frank repeated like a Maeterlinck or a bobolink, holding up a
+shaking small hand whose nails Aunt Anne had trimmed that very
+morning:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Monday for health,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tuesday for wealth,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wednesday the best day of all.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thursday for cwosses,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fwiday for losses&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Saturday no day at all.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And better the child had never been bawn<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That pared its nails on a Sunday mawn!"<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"And fa-ther tooked Bep," remarked Frank the next day, the light of
+desire fulfilled in her <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 210]</span>eye, "and
+he said 'You ox!' and smacked her wif two fingers!"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Miss Madigan, who was a congenital sentimentalist, her tendency
+confirmed by a long course of novel-reading, would have loved a female
+Fauntleroy, and hoped to find it in each of her brother's children in
+turn&mdash;only to be bitterly disappointed when they came to an
+expressing age.</p>
+
+<p>It occurred to her once to satisfy her maternal cravings&mdash;so
+perversely left ungratified amid much material that lacked
+mothering&mdash;with an imported angel-child. She chose Bombey Forrest's
+three-year-old brother for the purpose; a small manikin manufactured
+according to recipe by his mother, whom he had been taught to call
+"Dear-rust" in imitation of his pernicious progenitor; whose curls were
+as long, whose trousers were as short, whose collars were as big, whose
+sashes were as flaunting as feminine folly could make them.</p>
+
+<p>The Madigans hailed his advent with delight the night he was loaned
+to their aunt, in their mistaken glee fancying his visit was to
+themselves. Miss Madigan soon undeceived them. At table he sat next to
+that devoted lady, who <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 211]</span>heaped the
+choicest bits upon his plate of a menu which had been ordered solely
+with regard to infantile tastes. Afterward this maiden lady (whose
+genius for mothering cruel fate had condemned to waste its sweetness
+upon half a dozen mere Madigans) built card houses for her borrowed
+baby, read him the nursery rhymes that Sissy used to tell to Frances,
+confiscated Fom's Dora for his pleasure, and Split's book of interiors
+made of illustrated advertisements of furniture, which she had cut out
+and arranged tastefully upon a tissue-paper background. She dangled her
+old-fashioned enameled watch before his jaded eyes, and even permitted
+him to hold Dusie, the canary, who pecked furiously at the presuming
+hand that detained her.</p>
+
+<p>At this the borrowed baby set up a howl of alarm, whereupon he was
+given Sissy's jackstones&mdash;not altogether to that young lady's
+sorrow, for at that moment Split was collecting a cruel pinch or
+bestowing a stinging slap for every point in the game she had just
+won.</p>
+
+<p>To the bathing of the child Miss Madigan gave her personal attention,
+while Kate waited for the tub, into which it was her nightly task to
+coax Frances. Then, when her charge was ready for bed, the devoted aunt
+of other chil<span class="pagenum">[Pg. 212]</span>dren sat rocking the
+borrowed baby softly till he fell asleep. The whole household hushed
+that night when Baby Fauntleroy Forrest's eyelids fell. An indignant lot
+of young Madigans were hustled off to bed that his slumbers might not be
+disturbed; and yet the moment Miss Madigan laid him, with infinite care
+and a sentimental smile, in her own bed, his eyes flew open, like the
+disordered orbs of a wax doll that has forgotten it was made to open its
+eyes when in a vertical position and keep them shut when placed
+horizontally. He saw a strange face bending over him, and he howled with
+terror.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Madigan tried to comfort him, babbling fondest baby-talk in
+vain.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 213]</span>"I yant to go home!" wailed
+Aunt Anne's Fauntleroy.</p>
+
+<p>Why, no; he didn't want to go home, the lady to whom he had been
+loaned assured him. Mama was asleep and daddy was asleep and Bombey was
+asleep and the pussy was&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I yant to go home!" bellowed the borrowed baby.</p>
+
+<p>But how could he go home? the lady, a bit impatiently, demanded.
+Wasn't he all undressed? Did he want to go through the streets all
+undressed&mdash;fie, fie, for shame!</p>
+
+<p>"I yant to go home!" screamed Fauntleroy Forrest.</p>
+
+<p>"Sissy&mdash;Irene&mdash;some one come here and amuse this child!"
+called Aunt Anne, at her wits' end. Fauntleroy was black in the face
+from holding his breath, and his borrower was nervously exhausted by the
+tension of a day spent in attendance upon the lovely child.</p>
+
+<p>A troop of nightgowned Madigans came joyously in. For the edification
+of Fauntleroy, sitting up wide-eyed now in Aunt Anne's big bed, the
+tears still on his cheeks, the Madigans made monkeys of themselves till
+he dropped off asleep at last, when they were dismissed by a frazzled
+maiden lady, who was left looking at the small thing lying in her bed as
+at some strange animal whose waking she dreaded.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle of the night and again toward morning the Madigans
+heard Fauntleroy's frightened scream, and chuckled like the depraved
+young things they were. But when Francis Madigan got up and, candle in
+hand, his queer nightcap tumbling over his left eye, and his gaunt
+shadow covering the wall and wavering over the ceiling, came to demand
+of Miss Madigan what in thousand devils was the matter, the borrowed
+baby was thrown into convulsions; while Don, the big
+Newfound<span class="pagenum">[Pg. 214]</span>land, awakened by the din,
+burst into hoarse barks that the mountains echoed and re&euml;choed.
+After this it seemed best to Aunt Anne to sit up in bed for the rest of
+the night, making shadow-pictures on the wall for Fauntleroy.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Madigan's high color had faded the next morning. Accustomed to
+unbroken sleep, she had not rested half an hour the whole night. It
+seemed that Fauntleroy Forrest was in the habit of lying across his bed
+instead of along it, and he had so terrorized the poor lady that she had
+not dared to move him, when he did fall asleep toward morning and she
+felt his toes digging into her ribs, lest he wake.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry with your breakfast, Sissy," she said faintly, sipping her
+tea, "so that you can take him home before school."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 215]</span>"Don't yant to go home!"
+whimpered the baby, whom the morning light and the presence of many
+small Madigans had reassured.</p>
+
+<p>"He could stay and play with Frank, couldn't he, Aunt Anne?"
+suggested Sissy, sweetly.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Madigan's look spoke volumes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," cried Fauntleroy. "Don't yant to go home!"</p>
+
+<p>His papa would be lonesome, Miss Madigan told him, archly; and his
+mama would be lonesome, and Bombey&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Don't yant to go home!" wept the baby.</p>
+
+<p>"There! There!... Take him, Frank, into my room and amuse
+him&mdash;anything, only don't let him cry!" exclaimed Miss Madigan.
+"I'm going into Kate's room to lie down. I'm exhausted and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Did Fauntleroy disturb you, Aunt Anne?" asked Kate,
+sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Madigan hurried away. She was so unnerved she feared that
+she might weep. But, after nearly half an hour's trying, she found she
+was too tired to sleep, after all, and rising wearily, she went back to
+her room for the book she had been reading.</p>
+
+<p>The sight that met her eyes, as she opened the door, completed her
+undoing. There was Fauntleroy, with an uncomprehending grin on his
+cherubic face, pinching each separate leaf of her cherished
+sensitive-plant. Evidently the borrowed baby did not exactly understand
+the desperately funny quality of the act, but he knew it must be the
+funniest thing in the world, for the Madigans were writhing grotesquely
+in the unbounded merriment it caused.</p>
+
+<p>With a cry, Miss Madigan flew forward and sharply slapped the
+destructive baby hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I yant to go home!" screamed Fauntleroy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 216]</span>"Yes; and I want you to go,
+too," Miss Madigan declared, incensed. "Get his things, Sissy, this
+minute."</p>
+
+<p>"But I want him to play wif," whimpered Frank. She was not so slow
+but that she could learn the lesson Fauntleroy's success taught.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Madigan looked at her a moment. "Oh, you do!" she ejaculated
+sarcastically. "You haven't sisters enough&mdash;you want more noise and
+confusion in this house!"</p>
+
+<p>The wise Madigans looked from her to one another and merely thought
+things. There was sadly little of the "angel child" about them. Their
+intuition was keen enough to penetrate their aunt's secret wishes and
+tastes, and they were occasionally tempted, for the spoils to be gotten
+out of it, to play up to that lady's ideals. But Aunt Anne was
+considered almost too easy by the Madigans, whom honor restricted to
+those foemen worthy of their steel. Frances was the only one who could,
+without losing caste, cater to her aunt's well-known and deeply detested
+sentimentality.</p>
+
+<p>She did for a time, and it was from Miss Madigan that she learned her
+famous accomplishment. It was sung, or rather droned, and it went like
+this:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 217]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"B&mdash;A&mdash;Ba,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">B&mdash;E&mdash;Be,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">B&mdash;I&mdash;Bi&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ba&mdash;Be&mdash;Bi;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">B&mdash;O&mdash;Bo,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ba&mdash;Be&mdash;Bi&mdash;Bo,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">B&mdash;U&mdash;Bu,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ba&mdash;Be&mdash;Bi&mdash;Bo&mdash;Bu!"<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Intoxicated by success, Frank sang this subtle ditty one day for
+Francis Madigan. He listened to it with that puzzled expression which
+his children's vagaries brought to his lined, stern face.</p>
+
+<p>"Who taught you that nonsense, Frances?" he demanded sternly when she
+had finished.</p>
+
+<p>Frank began to whimper. This was not the effect she had intended to
+produce.</p>
+
+<p>"Who told you to say that gibberish?" her father repeated
+angrily.</p>
+
+<p>Frank stammered the answer.</p>
+
+<p>"And he tooked her&mdash;" she began her account of the incident
+afterward.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you awful little liar!" interrupted a chorus of Madigans.</p>
+
+<p>And Frank laughed with them. How she would have completed the
+sentence, if she had been permitted, she herself did not know.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 218]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="cb">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 219]</span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="A_READY_LETTER-WRITER" id="A_READY_LETTER-WRITER"></a>A READY LETTER-WRITER</h2>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 220]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 221]</span>Split threw herself with a bump
+against Miss Madigan's door. It remained unansweringly closed.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Aunt Anne?" she asked Sissy, whom she had nearly walked over
+as she sat playing jackstones in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy looked up. Assuming a rigidly erect position and scholastically
+correct finger-movement, she mimicked her aunt at her desk so faithfully
+that Split could almost see the close-lined pages of Miss Madigan's
+ornate handwriting on the carpet where her disrespectful niece pretended
+to trace it.</p>
+
+<p>"Scribbling, huh?" Split asked.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy nodded.</p>
+
+<p>Split shrugged her shoulders impatiently. She had intended to ask a
+favor of Aunt Anne, but she knew how useless it would be now. So she
+pushed past Sissy, entered the room softly, and returned with a
+long-trained grenadine skirt.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 222]</span>Sissy's round eyes opened
+enviously. "Did she say you could have it?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>A muffled sound which could be variously interpreted came from Split,
+who was throwing the skirt over her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Did she?" persisted Sissy, putting her jackstones in her pocket and
+rising emulatively.</p>
+
+<p>But Irene was doubling fold after fold of the skirt in front to
+shorten it; behind her the train billowed with an elegance that sent
+ecstatic thrills through her and a passion of envy through her
+sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she writing yet?" Sissy asked at length.</p>
+
+<p>Irene nodded. She was cinching her sash tight about the waist, so
+that her trained skirt might not come off in the ardor of "playing
+lady." When Sissy disappeared, and reappeared with her aunt's
+claret-colored poplin, Split was catching up her train with a grace that
+was simply ravishing as she rustled away.</p>
+
+<p>"What'll you say to her&mdash;afterward?" called Sissy after her,
+prudently facing the future, even in the height of delight induced by
+feeling ruffles about her feet.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+223]</span><a href="images/img19.jpg"><img id="img19"
+src="images/img19th.jpg" alt="A train meant domesticity and dignity to Sissy"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">"A train meant domesticity and dignity to Sissy. In
+Split it bred and fostered a spirit of coquetry"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 224]</span></p>
+
+<p>"Pouf!" A train meant domesticity and dignity to Sissy. In Split it
+bred and fostered a spirit of coquetry; she believed
+herself <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 225]</span>to be very French in long
+skirts. "I'll just say she said 'Yes' when I asked her. She never knows
+what she says when she's writing."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy nodded understandingly, and rustled in a most ladylike manner
+after her senior. The twins saw the two beautiful creatures swishing
+down the front steps, bound for the street to show their glory and feel
+the peacock's delight in dragging his tail in the dust.</p>
+
+<p>"Did she say you could have 'em?" they shrieked.</p>
+
+<p>And Sissy responded with that quick imitative gesture that signified
+scribbling.</p>
+
+<p>With a light on their faces such as the Goths might have worn when
+pillaging Rome, the twins made for the treasure-house. A few moments
+later they rustled gorgeously down the steps, followed by Frances,
+wearing her aunt's embroidered red flannel petticoat. Unfortunately,
+Frank's heels caught in this, as she too strutted worldward, and down
+she fell, bumping from step to step, gaining momentum as she bumped, and
+threatening to roll clear down to Taylor Street, and so on down, down
+into the ca&ntilde;on, if she had not bumped safely at last into the
+twins. They, hearing her coming, had turned their backs and joined
+hands, <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 226]</span>and catching hold of the
+shaky banister on each side, presented a natural bulwark beyond which
+Frances and her bumps and shrieks might not pass.</p>
+
+<p>And through it all Miss Madigan wrote.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Miss Madigan was writing letters. Indeed, Miss Madigan was always
+writing letters. In any emergency she might be trusted to concoct a long
+and literary epistle, which she rephrased, edited, and copied till she
+felt all an author's satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>For the Madigans' Aunt Anne was afflicted with <i>caco&euml;thes
+scribendi</i>, and was never so happy as when there was a letter to be
+written&mdash;except when she was actually writing it. But the
+heartlessness of the merely literary was very far indeed from Miss
+Madigan's ideal. She had the happiness to believe that, besides being
+very beautiful, her letters were most useful&mdash;in fact,
+indispensable. When everything else failed she wrote a letter. When that
+failed she wrote another.</p>
+
+<p>A Malthusian consequence of her epistolary fertility, it might be
+feared, would be the necessary exhaustion of correspondents. But Miss
+Madigan's was a soul above the inevitable, as well as a pen divorced
+from the practical. <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 227]</span>On those
+occasions when the future of her nieces pressed itself questioningly
+upon that lady's mind she met the threat by declaring firmly to herself
+that she would "do her duty to those motherless children." It happened
+that her duty was her pleasure. It was her dissipation to
+suffer&mdash;on paper. In letters she enjoyed being miserable. No
+relative, therefore, however distant, no acquaintance, however slight,
+was exempt from this epistolary plague. To take the darkest view, most
+genteelly expressed; to make the most forthright and pitiful appeal in a
+ladylike and polished phrase; to picture the inevitable and speedy
+alternative if her plea were disregarded; and then to sign herself,
+"With a thousand apologies, and the assurance that only the extreme need
+of some one's doing something for poor Francis's children would bring me
+to trouble you again,"&mdash;this was Miss Madigan's vice. And she was
+as intemperate in yielding to it as only the viciously good can be.</p>
+
+<p>A rebuff, absolute silence, even the return of her letter unopened,
+produced in her not the slightest diminution of faith in the power of
+her pen. Invariably when she mailed a letter she was so struck by her
+own summing up <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 228]</span>of the situation
+that she felt there could not be the smallest doubt of a favorable
+response. He who read it must be convinced. If he was not, why, there
+was but one thing to do&mdash;write to him again. If not to him, to
+another. And the Madigans were a prolific family, its members widely
+scattered and differentiated&mdash;an ideal clientele for a ready
+letter-writer.</p>
+
+<p>So Miss Madigan wrote. Her wardrobe was pillaged, her privacy
+violated, yet she knew it not, or knew it only as one is aware of the
+buzzing of gnats when he rides his hobby through a cloud of them.</p>
+
+<p>But there came an interruption which she was compelled to heed.</p>
+
+<p>"Anne, I say!"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Madigan's busy pen paused. It seemed to her that there was
+unusual irritation in her brother's irascible voice. Was it possible
+that he had knocked before, or was there&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The door opened in answer to her call, and Madigan stalked in. At
+sight of the open letter he held, Miss Madigan hastily covered the one
+she was writing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+229]</span><a href="images/img20.jpg"><img id="img20"
+src="images/img20th.jpg" alt="Stamping ... in a frenzy"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">"Stamping ... in a frenzy"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 230]</span></p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," said her brother, suppressed rage vibrating in his voice,
+"it may be a change for you to <i>read</i> letters. Read that!"
+He <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 231]</span>threw the page on the desk
+before her, banging his knuckles upon it in an excess of fury.</p>
+
+<p>She took up the letter, a pretty rosy pink dyeing her cheeks (she was
+one of those old maids whose exquisitely delicate complexions retain a
+babylike freshness) as her eyes met the expression:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Anne was always a sot where her pen was concerned. The
+habit's growing on her; she can evidently no more resist it than Miles
+could the bottle.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"It must be from Nora Madigan," she exclaimed, recognizing the
+touch.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is from Nora, and it incloses one of your own. There it
+is."</p>
+
+<p>He threw down before the ready letter-writer a composition which had
+cost her much labor, the thought of many days, upon which she had based
+unnumbered hopes and built air-castles galore, none of which, to do the
+poor lady justice, was intended directly for her own habitation.</p>
+
+<p>She took the letter and spread it out carefully before her; these
+epistolary children of hers were tenderly dear to Miss Madigan. Her eye
+caught a phrase here and there that appeared to be singularly
+felicitous. This one, for instance:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 232]</span>Poor Francis, of
+course, knows nothing about this letter. I am writing to you, my dear
+cousin, relying as much upon your discretion as upon your
+generosity.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Or this one:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>And Cecilia&mdash;she is really talented, though a
+commonplace creature like myself can hardly give you an idea in just
+what direction.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Or this one:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>As to Irene, apart from her voice, which is really
+exceptional, she is Francis over again&mdash;Francis as he was, a
+high-spirited, reckless, devil-may-care fellow, winning and tyrannical,
+as we all remember him in the old days when the world was
+young.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Or even this:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>I am afraid Kate will have to teach school, young as she
+is. I can't tell you how I dread the long years of drudgery I see before
+this slender, spirited child&mdash;she is little more than that. Think,
+Miles, of these motherless children growing up in this wretched hole
+without the smallest advantage, and, if you can, help them; or get some
+one else to. Couldn't you take Kate into your own family? I'm sure she'd
+marry <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 233]</span>well, and Nora wouldn't be
+troubled with her long. She's really very pretty. Or couldn't you send
+me a little something to spend on clothes for her? Or couldn't Nora be
+persuaded to send her&mdash;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"Well," thundered Madigan, standing over her, "it must be pretty
+familiar to you. Suppose you read what Nora says."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Madigan put her own letter away with a sigh. It was really
+unaccountable that Miles could have resisted it.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Miles passed away six weeks ago,"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>she read aloud in an awed voice.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"He had been ailing all spring. This letter, which came a
+fortnight since, I opened, of course, and return it to you that you may
+be made aware (if you are not already) of the demands Anne makes upon
+comparative strangers.</p>
+
+<p>"For myself, I regret very much that your affairs are in such a bad
+state. Anne says that there are six of your children, all girls; but
+that can't be true&mdash;she always loved to exaggerate miseries; it
+must be that her writing is so illegible that&mdash;"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Miss Madigan's voice rebelled. She could read aloud adverse opinions
+upon her com<span class="pagenum">[Pg. 234]</span>mon sense, her
+judgment, or her pride, but to impugn her penmanship was to commit the
+unforgivable.</p>
+
+<p>"I think Nora is distinctly insulting," she declared.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" Madigan laughed wrathfully. "Do you, now? Why, what has she
+said? Only that you're a beggar, and I'm a coward as well as a beggar,
+because I don't dare to beg in my own name."</p>
+
+<p>"Does she say that?" exclaimed the literal Miss Madigan, shocked.
+"Where?" Her eyes sought the letter again.</p>
+
+<p>"'Where'! Thousand devils&mdash;'where'!" Madigan tore it from her
+and threw it to the floor, stamping upon it in a frenzy.</p>
+
+<p>Sighing, Miss Madigan leaned her head on her hand. It was hard enough
+to find one's most hopeful appeal wasted, without Francis's flying into
+such a rage.</p>
+
+<p>A silence followed.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Anne,"&mdash;Madigan's voice was manifestly struggling to
+be calm,&mdash;"you must quit this infernal letter-writing. How could
+you write to Miles Madigan for charity, knowing that he cheated me out
+of my share of the Tomboy? Half the mine was mine. You know that, and
+yet you hurt my&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I fail to see," responded Miss Madigan, <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+235]</span>with dignity, "why I should not write to my own relatives;
+why I should not try, for my nieces' sake, to knit close again the
+raveled ties which your eccentricities have&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"In order to get a box of old duds sent clear from Ireland!"</p>
+
+<p>"Has Nora sent a box?" asked Miss Madigan, eager as a child. "You
+see, my letter did touch her, in spite of herself. And they won't be old
+duds. They'll be handsome garments, Francis, just the thing for the
+girls' winter wardrobe. Now that Nora's in mourning&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>With a crash that sent Miss Madigan's sensitive-plant rolling from
+its stand to the floor, Madigan banged the door behind him as he
+fled.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Madigan flew to the rescue, and she had begun to scoop up the
+scattered earth when her eye lighted upon a line at the end of Nora's
+letter:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>As you know, Miles had only a life-interest in the
+estate. At his death everything went to Miles Morgan. Perhaps Anne would
+do well to apply to him. The little matter of her never having seen him
+would not, of course, stand in her way.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"Of course not. Why should it?" Miss Madigan asked herself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 236]</span>She knelt down upon the floor
+in the midst of the debris and took from her pocket the letter that
+Miles Madigan had never read. With the slightest change, the recopying
+of the first page or so, why could not&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Miss Madigan sat down at her desk. In a moment the steady, slow,
+studied pace of her pen was all that was heard in the disordered room,
+where the sensitive-plant lay half uprooted on the floor.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The Madigans were up and out. All A Street was alive with tales of
+them. In a cloud of dust due to their sweeping trains, they had swooped
+down like the gay Hieland folk they were, and captured the admiration
+and imitation of the slower, prosaic Lowlander.</p>
+
+<p>They had not intended to go so far, accoutred as they were; but the
+attention they attracted first challenged, then seduced the vain things
+farther and farther, till they threw caution to the winds (and a
+boisterous Washoe zephyr was abroad) and sallied shamelessly forth. In
+their immediate train they carried Jack Cody, clothed and in his right
+sex, and Bombey Forrest, beating her drum. Crosby Pemberton slunk
+unrecognized in the rear.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+237]</span><a href="images/img21.jpg"><img id="img21"
+src="images/img21th.jpg" alt="Madigan banged the door behind him as he fled"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">"Madigan banged the door behind him as he fled"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 238]</span></p>
+
+<p>In the van was Sissy victrix. She had cut <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+239]</span>her adorer dead, dead, dead, and she now felt that resultant
+reckless uplift of spirits which is the feminine corollary to
+demonstration of power (preferably unjust and tyrannical) over the other
+sex.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's try to see the walking-match," she suggested to Split.</p>
+
+<p>"How can we, with all that tagging after us?"</p>
+
+<p>With a sweeping gesture to the rear, Split indicated the trained
+twins and Frances holding up her torn petticoat. Frank was bruised but
+beaming; in fact, she had never felt so much a Madigan, for she had
+never before been out on a raid.</p>
+
+<p>"Let 'em tag," cried Sissy, gaily; her blood was up, and she knew no
+obstacles.</p>
+
+<p>Down a clay-bank, into a vacant lot strewn with tin cans, slid the
+Madigans. Their trains hampered them, and, once started, only speed
+could save them. But they were not Comstockers and Madigans for nothing.
+Jack Cody, who had arrived first on the field, caught each whirling,
+dwarf-like figure as it came flying down, holding it a moment to steady
+it before he put it aside in order to receive the next female
+projectile.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy was the last, and Cody, by way of <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+240]</span>flourish to mark the conclusion of his labors, lifted Split's
+little sister, train and all, as he caught her, with a whoop of
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>His whoop was cut short abruptly, and he set her down, his ears
+tingling. For Sissy, outraged in her sense of dignity as well as in the
+offish prudery that characterized her, declined to accept patronage as
+anybody's little sister, and boxed his ears as well as she could in the
+short time given to her.</p>
+
+<p>Cody looked at her. It was really the first time he had regarded her
+as an unrelated individual. "Ye know what a boy does when a girl st
+jump.</p>
+
+<p>But she held herself very primly, and the masking puritan in her
+voice quelled him. "If he's a coward&mdash;yes," she responded
+haughtily, hurrying on.</p>
+
+<p>The boy looked after her as he joined Split. "She's funny&mdash;your
+sister," he said lamely.</p>
+
+<p>"Who&mdash;Sissy? Oh, she's always cranky," said Irene, with Madigan
+candor when a relative was criticized.</p>
+
+<p>They hurried on. The barn-like opera-house is built uphill, like all
+buildings on Virginia City's cross-streets, and it seems to
+burrow <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 241]</span>into as well as climb the
+hill. In the rear, on the side where its boards were unpainted and
+unplaned, certain knots had been converted into knot-holes by the
+initiated.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy was already on her knees, her eye glued to one of these
+apertures. All she could see was a short curve of empty seats, a man's
+shoulder and another's hat, a long space, and then the passing of a
+neat, long pair of women's gaiters unhidden by skirts, and soon after
+the nervous following of a smaller pair of women's ties.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," she said, with a deep blush, fixing one eye upon the company,
+while the other blinked from the strain put upon it, "they're women!
+It's a women's walking-match."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," said Cody, without withdrawing his attention for a moment
+from the view inside. "The big, long feet belong to the one they call La
+Tourtillotte. She's French. The German one's Von Hagen."</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's a shame," gasped Sissy. "Let's go home, Split."</p>
+
+<p>Split, at her own particular knot-hole, affected not to hear. But
+Crosby Pemberton, perched in the elbow of some long scantlings bracing
+the building, took heart at Sissy's words.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 242]</span>"It isn't respectable, Sissy,"
+he called to her. "No ladies go. Your aunt wouldn't like it."</p>
+
+<p>This was fatal. At his voice Sissy hardened, and with a gulp of
+disgust she resolutely turned her attention to her knot-hole. In fact,
+as Crosby reiterated his advice, she felt called upon more spectacularly
+to ignore it, and seeing a more commanding and spacious knot-hole
+farther up, she mounted upon a big dry-goods box, and from there seated
+herself in a lone poplar, the apple of the proprietor's eye.</p>
+
+<p>This was better, and in a sense it was also worse; for Sissy could
+plainly see La Tourtillotte, a gaunt, businesslike creature in short
+rainy-day skirt and sweater, her long, thin arms going like
+pump-handles, her dark, tense face set upon a goal which seemed ever to
+flee before her as her weary feet carried her slowly and still more
+slowly around the circular track.</p>
+
+<p>Despite her shocked sense of propriety,&mdash;and the lawless young
+Madigans had very strict ideas as to the conventions for
+adults,&mdash;the ardor of the struggle, the uncertainty of the issue,
+seized upon Sissy. She heard a swift call from Irene, some distance
+below, and was vaguely aware that the company, skirted and otherwise,
+was beating a retreat. But the <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+243]</span>smaller of the two contestants, on the other side of the
+knot-hole, had just come within the field of Sissy's rude lens. It was
+pitiable to see the haggard look on the German woman's plump face, the
+childish breakdown imminent behind the woman's staring eyes that met the
+bored glance of the male spectators doggedly, though her stout little
+body was still being carried resolutely, sluggishly, painfully
+along.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy's hands flew to her breast. Something hurt her there, cried out
+to her, threatened her. She was furious with rage and choked with
+sympathetic sobs. She wanted to hurt somebody, and Jack Cody's insistent
+whistle, which kept sounding the retreat, so irritated and confused her
+that she fancied it was he that she would have liked to beat, as a
+representative of his cruel sex. But when she looked down, at last awake
+to the world on this side of the knot-hole, she saw Crosby Pemberton on
+the box at her feet, and knew who it was that she longed to punish for
+his own sins and every other man's.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick&mdash;quick, Sissy! He's coming!" he cried, tugging at her
+skirt.</p>
+
+<p>"Who? Go 'way!" Sissy stamped viciously, as she stood clinging to a
+limb; yet in that very instant she had seen that all the
+Madi<span class="pagenum">[Pg. 244]</span>gans and their train had fled,
+save this poor servitor at her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Jan Lally&mdash;oh, hurry!"</p>
+
+<p>Around the corner of the opera-house came a short-legged, bald little
+German, so stout and so loosely put together that, as he ran, his
+jelly-like flesh shook as though it was about to break the loose bag of
+skin that held it. It was Lally's opera-house, and Lally was come to
+catch trespassers in the act of seeing without paying.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy's heart jumped to her throat. In the course of their
+maraudings, the Madigans were not unaccustomed to a stern-chase and a
+lively one, yet now it seemed to her that strategy was the watchword.
+Perched high up in the tree, hidden by its foliage, who would notice
+her&mdash;if only Crosby would go away!</p>
+
+<p>But Crosby would not budge. He begged, he implored, he became
+confused in trying to explain to her her danger, and at last burst into
+bitter tears as he felt Lally's fat, moist hand upon his collar, and saw
+a hereafter peopled with wrathful motherly faces in various stages of
+disgust and despair.</p>
+
+<p>"You come vid me. I gif you to Riddle. He lock you oop, you bat
+boy!"</p>
+
+<p>A suppressed giggle of pleasure, at the <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+245]</span>thought of neat little Crosby in the hands of the constable,
+shook Sissy, perched snugly like a malicious little bird in the tree. It
+served him right, she said to herself gleefully, ascribing the basest
+motives to Crosby, as one loves to do when one's friends are not in good
+standing with one's self. He had had no business to hang around and
+point the way to her hiding-place!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I say, Jan, let me off!" begged Crosby, white with terror of the
+jail&mdash;and his lady mother. "I'll never peek again, sure I
+won't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nu! You come vid me. And <i>you</i>, too!"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy looked down. Was it possible there was another laggard whom she
+had not seen?</p>
+
+<p>"I say&mdash;you, too!" bellowed Lally. "Vill you come now?"</p>
+
+<p>In the very certainty of security a sudden panic fell upon Sissy. If
+she only dared to move, to reassure herself! Of course it couldn't mean
+herself&mdash;oh!</p>
+
+<p>She felt a sudden tug that almost dislodged her. "You t'ink I don't
+see&mdash;huh?" shouted the perspiring Teuton below. "What for you leave
+dis trail hang down den&mdash;hey?" And he tugged again.</p>
+
+<p>With a sickly remnant of dignity Sissy <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+246]</span>stepped down and out. She had forgotten her train&mdash;the
+train that had been at once her pride and her undoing.</p>
+
+<p>"We&mdash;I was playing lady," she explained, trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"Oop a tree&mdash;huh? Peeking t'rough knot-holes&mdash;yes? A fine
+lady! I fix you."</p>
+
+<p>A glow of defiance came to Sissy's cheeks. "I don't care," she cried,
+stamping her foot as she stood enthroned on the dry-goods box, her train
+about her. "It's a nasty, cruel show, anyway, and you couldn't hire me
+to come and see it. You ought to be ashamed, Mr. Lally! How'd you like
+it if your wife was staggering along in there without sleeping or eating
+for six days?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Jan Lally's purple face looked as though it had been slapped.
+What had Mrs. Lally, with all her babies and busy housekeeping, to do
+with business? He was so astonished and perplexed by the sudden
+onslaught that the wriggling Crosby managed to slip out of his grasp,
+and got to a safe distance before Lally realized it.</p>
+
+<p>"Nu!" he grunted. "I cou'n't hire you&mdash;no? Vell, you come mitout
+hire. I show <i>you</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy felt herself lifted down without ceremony and dragged off. Her
+round face was <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 247]</span>white, her heart
+was beating like the stamps at the Chollar pan-mill. Yet her train
+trailed after her still in mock dignity. So did Crosby, at a respectful
+distance, fearing to follow, yet, though helpless, incapable of
+desertion. But at the entrance to the opera-house the door was shut in
+his face.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy and her captor entered. The stage had been built out over the
+pit, and in the very first row of the dress-circle, the rim of which was
+the boundary of the contestants' suffering feet, Jan Lally sat down,
+with Sissy at his side.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, to sit in the front row of the dress-circle! To feel the opulence
+of one's enviable position, as well as the artistic delight of being
+properly placed where one could miss nothing, while the brass band
+outside the opera-house played its third and last quick, jubilant
+invitation to pleasure&mdash;so tantalizing to the outsider, so
+gratifying to the fortunate one within!</p>
+
+<p>Many and many a time had Sissy Madigan waited, during first and
+second bands, for some miracle to set her where she now sat! Many a time
+had the third selection been played, the players with their instruments
+filed into Paradise, and the poor Madigan peri remained shut
+outside.</p>
+
+<p>But now Cecilia hung her head, shamed by <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+248]</span>being caught; shamed by punishment; shamed trebly by the fact
+that, apart from those poor sexless, half-maddened machines tottering
+feverishly around and forever around, she, Sissy Madigan, the proud, the
+pure, the proper, was the one thing womanly in the house!</p>
+
+<p>It was not a full house by any means, and only the men immediately
+next to her seemed aware of her presence. Yet, with a consciousness that
+seared her soul and humbled the pride of the childish prude as with a
+stain upon her purity, Sissy felt the compounded, composite gaze of man
+upon woman out of place. It withered, it scorched, it stung her.</p>
+
+<p>But finally Von Hagen, the little German woman, going the round of
+her maddening treadmill, reached the spot where Sissy sat. The sight of
+a child there, of a bare, bowed, neat little head in the midst of that
+inclosure of men's cold eyes, seemed to be the last touch needed to
+overthrow her tottering reason. She stopped, swaying from the
+unaccustomed cessation of motion, and held out her arms, smiling
+vacantly and babbling baby-talk in German as though to a dearly loved
+little <i>M&auml;dchen</i> of her own.</p>
+
+<p>Swift horror piled on Sissy. She had never looked into eyes from
+which sense had fled, <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 249]</span>and the
+sight stamped itself upon her brain with terrible vividness as food for
+future nightmares. So frightened was she that she was not aware of Jan
+Lally's relaxed hold upon her arm, which ached from the tight grip he
+had had upon it. But when the overtaxed body of the German woman fell in
+a heap almost at her feet, fright became action in Sissy. She flew past
+old Jan (his one concern now being for his walking-match), past the
+knees of the staring men, up the interminable center aisle, her poor
+train switching behind her as she stumbled, yet ran on, so absorbed by
+her suffering that she was unaware of the attention her queer little
+figure attracted, till she was out at last in the free air.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>"Well, punish me!" she said, when she found Aunt Anne waiting for her
+at the head of the long steps fifteen minutes later.</p>
+
+<p>It was a good deal for a Madigan&mdash;the nearest they ever got
+to <i>mea culpa</i>: they were not Christians.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Sissy's arrival was hailed by a populous nightgowned world, sent,
+like herself, supperless for its sins to the purgatory of early bedtime.
+Split came stealing in from the other room, <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+250]</span>bringing Frank along that she might not cry and betray her
+elder sister's movements&mdash;a successful sort of blackmail the
+youngest Madigan often practised. And later, Kate, looking most
+conventional and full-dressed in this nightgowned society, brought
+succor for the starving. They munched chocolate and camped comfortably,
+three on each bed, while Sissy told her adventures. When she came to the
+description of Von Hagen's fall, though still shuddering at the memory,
+she acted the incident so dramatically that Frances set up a howl, which
+was, however, most fortunately drowned by the ringing of the front-door
+bell.</p>
+
+<p>Split started to answer it, but her nightgowned state gave her pause.
+"Perhaps father'll go," she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>Kate shook her head. "He didn't come to dinner; he's been shut up in
+his room all day."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" asked Sissy. An old look, that washed all the
+self-satisfaction from her round face, came over it now.</p>
+
+<p>Kate shrugged her shoulders. "Something he and Aunt Anne talked about
+to-day," she answered, as she went out into the hall with the air of a
+martyr.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy looked owlishly after her. Though Francis Madigan rarely ate
+anything that was <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 251]</span>prepared for the
+family dinner, she could remember the rare times when he had absented
+himself from it, and feel again the usually ignored undercurrent of the
+realities upon which their young lives flowed full and free.</p>
+
+<p>But things happened too quickly at the Madigans', and to be
+preoccupied to the exclusion of one's sisters was one of the forms of
+affectation not to be tolerated. Split threw a pillow at her head, and
+the fight was in progress when Kate called for volunteers to bring in a
+big box from Ireland, left by a drayman who was fiercely resentful of
+the extraordinary approach to the Madigan house.</p>
+
+<p>Like a lot of white-robed Lilliputians, they tugged and hauled till
+they got it into the parlor. But when they had lighted the tall,
+old-fashioned lamp that they called "the lighthouse" they were disgusted
+to find that the box was addressed to "Miss Madigan, Virginia City,
+Nevada, California, U. S. A."</p>
+
+<p>"Some people don't know anything about geography," sniffed Sissy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well,&mdash;" Kate had been thinking,&mdash;"I'm Miss Madigan."</p>
+
+<p>"Whoop&mdash;hooray!" The shout came from the twins. They were off
+into the kitchen for Wong's hatchet, and when they pressed
+it <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 252]</span>obligingly into Kate's hand,
+that young lady saw no way but to make use of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Girls&mdash;it's clothes!" she exclaimed, her starved femininity
+reveling in the quantity of material before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Boys' clothes," said Split, holding up a full-kneed pair of
+knickerbockers and a belted jacket. "Well!" With a philosophical grin,
+she began to put them on.</p>
+
+<p>"And ladies' clothes!" cried Sissy, dragging forth a long black cape.
+"'Here would I rest,'" she chanted, draping it about her and
+lugubriously mimicking Professor Trask as the Recluse in "The Cantata of
+the Flowers."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's do it! Let's sing 'The Flowers,'" cried Irene, shaking herself
+into some Irish boy's jacket.</p>
+
+<p>"Not much!" Sissy planted herself against the door, as though
+physical compulsion had been threatened.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, Sissy," begged Fom. "Bep and I can sing the Heliotrope and
+Mignonette. Frank can be a Poppy, and we can double up and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be the Rose," put in Kate, quickly. She had a much-feathered
+hat on her head and a crocheted lace shawl about her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+253]</span><a href="images/img22.jpg"><img id="img22"
+src="images/img22th.jpg" alt="Here would I rest,"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">"'Here would I rest,' she chanted"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 254]</span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i>'ll be the Rose." Split, corrupted
+by <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 255]</span>her body's boyish environment,
+stretched her legs apart defiantly. "You can't sing it; you know you
+can't, Kate. You never could get up to G. If I'm not the
+Rose&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well," said Kate, drawing on a pair of soiled, long light gloves
+she had pulled out of the box, "I'll be the Lily, then. Come on,
+Sis."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't," said Sissy, almost weeping. She knew she would. "I won't
+be the Recluse! I won't be the Recluse every time, just because you two
+are so greedy and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You know," said Kate, smothering a giggle, but not very
+successfully, "no one can do it as well as you."</p>
+
+<p>"And it's really a very important part, and the very first solo,"
+chuckled Irene. "Else why did Professor Trask take it himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"If it's so important," put in Sissy, grasping at a straw, "you'd
+better take it yourself. Why must I always take a man's part? And I
+can't sing, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Sissy!" Split's tone was flattery incarnate, but the irony in
+her eye made her junior dance.</p>
+
+<p>"You know I can't," she sniffled.</p>
+
+<p>"But my voice and Split's go so well together in the Rose and Lily
+duet," said Kate, <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 256]</span>putting the book
+of the cantata upon the piano-rack and opening it persuasively.</p>
+
+<p>"You promise me every time," wailed the downtrodden Recluse,
+reluctantly moving forward, "that I won't have to be it the next
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you won't next time," said Kate, generously. "Will she,
+Split?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I won't sing it this time," declared Sissy, seating herself at
+the piano, yet making a last stand at the very guns.</p>
+
+<p>But Kate and Irene burst forth in the opening chorhat they were
+acting. And the twins, still pulling stage properties out of the box,
+and even Frances, fantastically decorated with a torn Irish lace fichu
+over the bifurcated, footed white garment she still wore o' nights,
+joined joyfully in:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'We are the flowers,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The fair young flowers,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That come at the voice of spring&mdash;'<br></span>
+<span class="i0">DING&mdash;DONG!"<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was a familiar old Madigan joke, always greeted with a shriek of
+laughter, to shout out <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 257]</span>the two
+notes of the accompaniment that punctuated the musical phrases. Its
+observance now put even Sissy in good humor, so that when the time came
+for the Recluse to make his appearance, she left the piano, and stalking
+miserably about with the preliminary cough with which the unfortunate
+Professor Trask was afflicted, she sang her doleful recitative.</p>
+
+<p>The Madigans were never literalists. They were of the impressionistic
+school, which requires of the audience, as well as of the artist, high
+imaginative powers. And here the audience of one moment was the actor of
+the next, whose duty it was not to mind too closely the letter that
+killeth, but to mimic irreverently, to exaggerate, to make of themselves
+caricatures of the mannerisms of others, to nickname, to seize upon
+every peculiarity with their quick, observant, cruel young eyes and
+paint it in flesh-and-blood cartoons.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, when the Rose, that "gentle flower in which a thorn is oft
+concealed," sang her duet with the Nightingale (Sissy trilling weakly on
+the piano, while Frank fluted her fingers affectedly as she had seen it
+done that memorable night) it was done in the hollow, throaty tones of
+the elder Miss Blind-Staggers, who had created the r&ocirc;le; while the
+Lily sang <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 258]</span>through her nose, which
+she wiped every now and then in a manner unmistakably that of Henrietta
+Blind-Staggers.</p>
+
+<p>"The Cantata of the Flowers" was never brought to a glorious
+completion by the Madigans, even though they skipped uninteresting and
+difficult parts, and, like the early Elizabethans, permitted no
+intermission between acts. It was very often laughed to death. At times
+it became a saturnalia of extravagant action, and it frequently ended in
+a free fight, when the Rose and the Lily hinted too openly at the
+Recluse's incurable tendency to sing off key. But that night it might
+have dragged its saccharine length of melody to the coronation of the
+Rose and a quick curtain if Miss Madigan had not walked right into the
+thick of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Golly!" gasped Sissy, while Irene dodged behind Kate, who quickly
+turned down the lamp, and a hush fell upon the rest.</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Madigan had been writing, or rather rewriting, letters. She
+had completely forgotten the heinous offense of the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you mail a letter for me, Sissy, the first thing in the
+morning?" she asked, still preoccupied. "Why are you in the dark?"</p>
+
+<p>"We're just going to bed," remarked Sissy, <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+259]</span>with soothing demureness, taking the envelope from her aunt's
+hand and falling in with her mood, as one does with the mentally
+afflicted.</p>
+
+<p>When Miss Madigan, fatigued with the labor of composition, had gone
+back to her room, Kate turned up the light again. "Same thing, I
+s'pose?" she asked. "Circumstances-letter&mdash;huh?"</p>
+
+<p>"I s'pose so. 'T ain't sealed," said Sissy, with resignation. "But
+she always forgets to seal 'em." Then, suddenly inspired, she caught up
+Professor Trask's pencil lying on the piano, and on the vacant half-page
+at the end of Miss Madigan's letter she wrote in her best school-girl
+hand:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>You&mdash;whoever you are&mdash;needn't bother to answer
+this. None of us Madigans wants your help or annybody else's. It 't only
+that Aunt Anne's got the scribbles, and we'll thank you to mind your own
+buisness.</p>
+
+<p class="author1">"<i>Sissy Madigan.</i>"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>She read her composition to the startled but, on the whole, approving
+Madigans, sealed the letter, and was ready for bed.</p>
+
+<p>They were all scampering through the long hall playing
+leap-frog&mdash;a specialty of Split's <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+260]</span>which her present costume facilitated&mdash;when Francis
+Madigan, candle in hand, came out of his room on his usual tour of
+nightly inspection. His short-sighted eyes fell upon Irene, a pretty,
+lithe, wavy-haired boy, before she and the twins bolted.</p>
+
+<p>"What boy have you got there?" he demanded. "Send him home."</p>
+
+<p>Kate took Frances up in her arms and covered the retreat; she knew
+how much the better part of valor was discretion.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy remained standing, looking up at him. When she was alone with
+her father she was conscious of her poor little barren favoriteship,
+though she dared not impose upon it. In the candle-light his harsh,
+rugged features stood out marked with lines of suffering.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, father," she said, with a quick choice of the lesser
+irritation for him. "He'll go&mdash;right away. Good night."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, child."</p>
+
+<p>But she walked a step or two with him, slipping her hand at last into
+his, and pressing it tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"Is&mdash;anything the matter, father?" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+261]</span><a href="images/img23.jpg"><img id="img23"
+src="images/img23th.jpg" alt="She walked a step or two with him"></a></p>
+
+<p class="caption">"She walked a step or two with him"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 262]</span></p>
+
+<p>He threw back his head as though some one had struck him. It was not
+difficult to guess <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 263]</span>from whom the
+Madigans had inherited their fanatical desire to conceal emotion.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy was terrified at what she had done, yet the vague trouble lay
+quivering before her, though still unnamed, in his working face.</p>
+
+<p>"Father&mdash;I'm sorry," she sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>He pushed her from him, but gently, and she crept into her bed and
+pulled the clothes over her head, that the twins might not hear her
+strangled sobbing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 264]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="cb">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 265]</span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_MARTYRDOM_OF_MAN" id="THE_MARTYRDOM_OF_MAN"></a>"THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN"</h2>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 266]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 267]</span>With a shrill whistle of
+recognition, Jack Cody ran down the hill to meet Split toiling up.</p>
+
+<p>The air is like ethereal champagne in Virginia City, and on a late
+summer's evening, after the sun's honeyed freshness has been strained
+through miles of it, it has a quality that makes playing outdoors
+intoxicating.</p>
+
+<p>Split, though, had not been playing. There was business on hand and
+she had been downtown to buy eggs for the picnic, with the usual result.
+She had never yet succeeded in bringing home an unbroken dozen, nor did
+she ever hope to; but she was really out of temper at the extraordinary
+dampness of the paper bag, to which her two hands adhered stickily. She
+walked slowly upward, holding the eggs far in front of her like a votive
+offering to the culinary gods, unconscious of the betraying yellow
+streaks that beaded her blue gingham apron.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 268]</span>"Where you been, Split?" asked
+Cody, by way of an easy opening.</p>
+
+<p>"Down to the grocery. Mrs. Pemberton's not laying decently these
+days."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Pemberton!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sissy's gray hen, you know. Sissy called her that 's got only one
+chicken, and bosses him for all the world like Crosby."</p>
+
+<p>Cody nodded. "What time you going to start in the morning? Six?"</p>
+
+<p>"Uh-huh." Split dared not lift her eyes from the sticky trail that
+exuded from her.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure?" the boy demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure&mdash;if only father don't keep us so long to-night that we
+can't get ready. We've got to be martyred to-night," she added
+gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>Cody looked his resentment and sympathy. Delicacy and the fear of
+betraying soed families&mdash;forbade his inquiring precisely what the
+process was. To him "martyring" meant some queer rite whose main and
+malicious purpose it was to keep Split indoors of an evening when the
+high mountain twilight was going to <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+269]</span>be long, long; and when the moon that followed it would be so
+brilliant that one might read by its light&mdash;if he weren't too wise,
+and too fond of hide-and-seek&mdash;out in the silver-flooded streets
+made vocal by childish cries.</p>
+
+<p>"But it can't last the whole evening?" he asked appealingly, as she
+prepared to mount the steps, always accompanied by the silent yellow
+witness of her passing.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head hopelessly, sniffing in a manner that showed
+plainly how little reliance she placed upon the generosity and judgment
+of adults. And Cody walked away, haunted by the tormenting vision of
+Split flying before him through the moonlit night: the only girl in town
+who had any originality about choosing hiding-places, or who could make
+a race worth while.</p>
+
+<p>The family was assembled when Split reached the library and sat down,
+rebelliously sullen, beside Sissy. That young woman, though, wore an
+expression of purified patience, a submissive willingness to kiss the
+rod, that was eminently appropriate, however infuriating to the junior
+Madigans. But Sissy had known that it was coming. She could have
+foretold the martyrdom; all the signs of yesterday prophesied it, and
+she was reconciled.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 270]</span>It followed invariably that
+after the rare occasions when the pitiful curtain of his egotism had
+been blown aside by some chance breeze of destiny, and Francis Madigan
+had stood for a moment face to face with himself and his shirked
+responsibilities, he made the spasmodic effort to fulfil his paternal
+obligations, which the Madigans had learned to call their "martyring."
+He took from his library the book which had been most to him, which he
+had read all his life: for inspiration when he had been young and
+hopeful, for philosophy now that he was old and a failure. He was
+sincere in offering to his children the fruit of a great mind with
+comments by one that was sympathetic, able if not deep, and genuinely
+eager, for the moment, to share its enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>But the sight of all this helpless though secretly critical womanhood
+disposed attentively about him invariably, through association of ideas,
+brought to his mind every similar and abortive attempt he had made in
+this direction. When he opened the book to read aloud to them, he was
+always irritated, with that deep-seated irascibility which has its
+foundation in self-discontent, however externals may influence or add to
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever Francis Madigan might have been, <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+271]</span>he was never intended for a pedagogue. His impatience of
+stupidity, his irritation at the slow, stumbling steps of immaturity,
+not to speak of his lack of judgment in his selection and his
+determination to persevere in reading aloud from the book of his choice,
+if he had to ram undigested wisdom whole into the mental stomachs of his
+offspring&mdash;all this would have deterred a less obstinate man. But
+Madigan, who had become a bully through weakness (forced to domineer
+unsuccessfully in his home by the conquering softness of his sister's
+disposition), had the bully's despairing consciousness of being in the
+wrong at the very moment of superficial victory; of being powerless in
+the very act of imposing himself upon his poor little women-folk; of
+recognizing the fact that, although he might lead them to the fountain
+of knowledge, he was unable to make them drink; and yet not daring to
+hesitate in his bullying, for fear that he might do nothing at all if he
+did not do this.</p>
+
+<p>Now that his conscience was quickened, Madigan insisted to himself
+that the culture of his daughters' minds must be attended to. So he read
+aloud from "The Martyrdom of Man"; and enjoyed the sound of his
+voice&mdash;the irresistible accents of the cultured
+Irishman&mdash;a <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 272]</span>pleasure which
+the world shared with him; but not a martyred world of small women, over
+whose heads the long-sounding, musical periods of the poet-historian
+rolled, dropping only an occasional light shower of intelligence upon
+the untilled minds below.</p>
+
+<p>"We will begin where we left off the last time," Madigan said
+harshly. He remembered how long it had been since "last time," and how
+much his audience had had time to forget. "Where was that? Were any of
+you interested enough to remember?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Madigan looked up from her work, like an amiable but very silly
+hen who pretends to make a mental effort, yet, unfortunately, has
+nothing to make that effort with. Kate, with the consciousness that she
+was really the only one of Madigan's children capable of following the
+line of the historian's thought, flushed guiltily. Irene sat like a
+prisoner, looking out into the balmy evening. She could hear cries of
+"Free home! Free home!" from down yonder in the paradise of the streets,
+in Crosby Pemberton's voice. Even Crosby, whose unnatural mother was the
+only lady of Split's acquaintance who was prejudiced against playing in
+the streets&mdash;even Crosby was out. While she&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 273]</span>"It was the fall of Carthage,
+wasn't it, father?" asked Sissy, sweetly.</p>
+
+<p>If a glance from Split could have slain, Sissy had been dead. It was
+not the Madigan policy to encourage Francis Madigan in his belief that
+the seeds he sought to sow fell on fertile soil. If they had to be
+martyred in one sense, they declined to be in another. Besides, they
+knew and detested Sissy's hypocritical desire to "show off."</p>
+
+<p>"It was, indeed, Cecilia," said Madigan, with a pathetic softening of
+his whole being. "'Tis a fine, stirring, terrible picture the historian
+gives us of the doomed city. Ahem!... 'And then, as if the birds of the
+air had carried the news, it became known all over northern Africa that
+Carthage was about to fall. And then, from the dark and dismal corners
+of the land, from the wasted frontiers of the desert, from the snowy
+lairs and caverns of the Atlas, there came creeping and crawling to the
+coast the most abject of the human race&mdash;black, naked, withered
+beings, their bodies covered with red paint, their hair cut in strange
+fashions, their language composed of muttering and whistling sounds. By
+day they prowled around the camp, and fought with the dogs for the offal
+and the bones. If they found a skin, <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+274]</span>they roasted it on ashes, and danced around it in glee,
+wriggling their bodies and uttering abominable cries. When the feast was
+over, they cowered together on their hams, and fixed their gloating eyes
+upon the city, and expanded their blubber-lips and showed their white
+fangs. At last-'"</p>
+
+<p>A piercing scream came from Frances.</p>
+
+<p>"Thousand devils!" Madigan burst forth, enraged at the
+interruption.</p>
+
+<p>It was only that Bep and Fom, in the midst of a finger conversation
+carried on politely with a deaf-and-dumb alphabet, had had their
+attention attracted by the ghastly word-picture made so vivid by their
+father's voice. So, wearying of the innocuous desuetude of things, it
+occurred to them to present for Frank's entertainment a bodily
+representation of what the words meant to their minds. Safe in the
+obscurity of the table-cloth's circular shadow, down on the floor they
+wriggled, they prowled, they cowered and gloated and expanded their
+blubber-lips and showed their fangs. If they did not utter abominable
+cries, it was only because that particular detail was not needed to send
+the smallest Madigan into hysterics.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave the room!" cried Madigan. "Leave the room, you ox!" looking
+wrathfully, but generally, down at the disturbance.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 275]</span>And three small Madigans,
+feeling that they had paid a small price for freedom, crept and crawled
+to the door&mdash;the most abject of the Madigan race till they were
+fairly outside, when they became the most jubilant.</p>
+
+<p>"'At last,'" went on Madigan, a lingering growl of resentment in his
+voice, "'the day came. The harbor walls were carried by assault and the
+Roman soldiers passed into&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"Father," interrupted Sissy, with the exasperating air of one who
+knows how soothing she is (like many a talented person, she was
+irretrievably ruined by her first success and she felt very
+intelligent)&mdash;"father, in what part of Rome was Carthage?"</p>
+
+<p>Behind her father's back Split mouthed a threat of vengeance and
+shook her fist at the interested Sissy for wilfully prolonging the
+session. But at Madigan's snort of disgust, the Indian profile of Split,
+below its bushy crown of red, shone out malevolently. She did not know
+what Sissy had done; she knew only that she had done something.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy met her glance, and returned it with dignity. "I didn't mean
+that, father, you know," she said priggishly. "I meant, of course, in
+what part of Carthage was Rome."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you did!" Madigan's smile was not pleasant.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 276]</span>"Ye-es," said Sissy,
+uncertainly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Madigan, explosively, "Rome was in the same part of
+Carthage as Carthage was of Rome."</p>
+
+<p>His jaw was set now, and his glowing dark eyes beneath their white
+shaggy brows as he sought his place in the book were not encouraging.
+But the enigmatic character of his response was not enough for Sissy,
+dazed, yet greedy for glory. She glanced from Split, in whose ear Kate
+was whispering something that seemed vastly to delight her, to her
+father, who had begun to read again.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't remember, father, please," she said as he paused a moment to
+clear his throat. "What part was that?"</p>
+
+<p>A sputtering giggle broke from Split. It was unlucky, for it turned
+Madigan's wrath upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"Outside!" he commanded, pointing to the door. "Outside, you
+ox!..."</p>
+
+<p>"'Six days passed thus,'" the reading began again. (In almost the
+moment the door had closed behind her, Split could be heard flying down
+the outside steps two at a time. That he was sorely tried, Madigan's
+voice showed plainly, and his shrunken audience looked apprehensively at
+one another). "'Six <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 277]</span>days passed
+thus and only the citadel was left. It was a steep rock in the middle of
+the town; a temple of the god of healing crowned the summit.' The god of
+healing, Cecilia," he put in, with a contempt that mantled the
+perfectionist's check with a resentful red, "means that particular
+deity&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A soft little snore came from Miss Madigan. Her head had fallen to
+one side, and the lamp-light shone on her soft, pretty, high-colored
+face, placid in its repose as a baby's.</p>
+
+<p>In the moment that Madigan paused and looked at her, Sissy's hand
+sought Kate's in terror. But the reader controlled himself with an
+effort, remembering possibly that, after all, it was not his sister but
+his daughters he was educating.</p>
+
+<p>"'The rock was covered with people,'" he went on, skipping the
+explanation he had intended giving to Sissy. And he read on for some
+minutes without interruption, becoming more and more interested himself
+in the vivid picture as it unrolled, and half declaiming it in his
+enthusiasm, with a verve that accounted for Sissy's successful rendition
+of "The Polish Boy" at school entertainments. "'The trumpets sounded,'"
+he sang out. "'The soldiers, clashing their bucklers with their swords
+and <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 278]</span>uttering the war-cry <i>Alala!
+Alala!</i> advanced in&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy me!" exclaimed Miss Madigan, waked by his realistic shout, and
+blinking her bright little eyes to accustom them to the light.</p>
+
+<p>"Anne," said Madigan, tensely, "if you are not interested,
+you&mdash;are not obliged to listen, of course. But it would be
+more&mdash;civil to withdraw if&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not interested?" she repeated, with gentle surprise, as she took up
+her crocheting again. "Why, it's very interesting&mdash;most
+interesting; don't you find it so, Kate?"</p>
+
+<p>"'A man dressed in purple rushed out of the temple with an
+olive-branch in his hand,'" Madigan began again, all the ardor gone from
+his voice. "'This was Hasdrubal, the commander-in-chief, and the
+Robespierre of the Reign of Terror. His&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"Missy Kate&mdash;want chocolate&mdash;picnic&mdash;" Wong stood
+open-mouthed in the doorway. Consciousness of having interrupted the
+master, as well as amazement at beholding him out of his own room after
+dinner, was too much for him.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want, Wong?" demanded Madigan, harshly.</p>
+
+<p>"Notting&mdash;oh, notting," murmured
+Wong, <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 279]</span>deprecatingly. "One picnic,
+sabe, t'-malla morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Irene&mdash;I mean Cecilia&mdash;Thousand devils!&mdash;Kate,"
+stormed Madigan, in his rage forgetting his daughter's precise
+appellation, "go out into the kitchen and give your orders. If you had
+the least grain of common sense you'd know that the first duty of a
+housekeeper is to have some system about her work; to do things at the
+right time and not to interrupt the evening's entertainment." He gulped
+a bit at this, though Kate's dropped lids quickly hid the ironical gleam
+in her eye. "Well, why don't you go&mdash;and stay? You might as well,
+or you'll forget something else and interrupt us again."</p>
+
+<p>A desire to make herself look very numerous, intelligent, and
+appreciative possessed Sissy as the door closed on her big sister. She
+was in the familiar frame of mind in which she disapproved of her
+sisters, yet she was terrified lest, if she gave him time, her father
+might draw the same inference that she had.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you'll let me read aloud for a while, father. Mr. Garvan
+often has me read things to the class," she suggested quickly, when she
+saw he was about to close the book.</p>
+
+<p>Madigan hesitated. A succession of infuriat<span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+280]</span>ing trifles had beat upon his temper till it was worn thin.
+But Sissy's outstretched hand conquered merely by suggestion. He put the
+book before her, pointed to the place, got to his feet, and began pacing
+to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>"'Carthage burned seventeen days before it was entirely consumed,'"
+read Sissy. "'Then the plow was passed over the soil to put an end in
+legal form to the existence of the city. House might never be built,
+corn might never be sown, upon the ground where it had stood.'"</p>
+
+<p>She read well, did Sissy, as she did most things. Little by little
+Madigan's sharp, quick steps became less and less the bodily expression
+of exasperated nerves, and tuned themselves to the meter of that pretty,
+childish voice, intelligently giving utterance to the thoughtful
+philosophy that had always soothed him. It lost some of its familiarity
+and gained a new charm, coming from that small, round mouth which had an
+almost faultless instinct for pronunciation. A feeble germ of fatherly
+pride began to sprout beneath the soil upon which the child's
+intelligent reading fell like a warm, spring rain.</p>
+
+<p>"One moment, Cecilia." Madigan stopped in his walk, lifting an
+apologetic hand to ex<span class="pagenum">[Pg. 281]</span>cuse the
+interruption. "You read just now of 'the Britons of Cornwall gathering
+on high places and straining their eyes toward the west; the ships which
+had brought them beads and purple cloth would come again no more.' Now,
+to what does that refer?"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy's hands flew to her breast; and before she had time to conceal,
+to pretend, to affect, he had seen the blank expression of her face. You
+see, she had been merely reading; not thinking. The sound of her own
+voice had drowned the sense. To read intelligently a thing the
+comprehension of which was far over her head was the utmost this
+eleven-year-old could do. She had not the vaguest idea what she had been
+reading. It was all a blank!</p>
+
+<p>Madigan stood petrified; and the last little martyred ox, stuffing
+her apron into her mouth, that she might not weep aloud, hurried from
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>A moment longer Madigan stood. Then he looked at Miss Madigan. That
+lady's placid face had not changed a particle. She sat crocheting what
+she called a fascinator, her white bone needle moving harmoniously in
+and out of the blue wool. Had she heard a word that had been read? Her
+brother knew better than to ask. Did it make the least difference
+to <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 282]</span>her whether he read from "The
+Martyrdom of Man" or not?</p>
+
+<p>Madigan shut the book with a bang. The "martyring," boomerang that it
+had proved, was over.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The world seems new-born every summer morning in Virginia City. This
+little mining-town, dry, sterile, and unlovely, and built at an absurd
+angle up the mountain, is the poor relation of her fortunate cousins of
+the high Alps; yet shares with them their birthright&mdash;an open,
+boundless breadth of view, an endless depth of unpolluted, sparkling
+air, the fresh, shining virginity of the new-created.</p>
+
+<p>It was the sense of a nature-miracle, and the desire to penetrate
+still farther and higher into the crystalline sky that crowned it, which
+sent the Madigans every summer toiling up Mount Davidson. They did not
+know it, but yearly the <i>Wanderlust</i> seized them, and as all things
+in Virginia point one way, they followed that
+suggestion&mdash;upward.</p>
+
+<p>They were spared the usual struggle with Frances (who, after being
+coaxed, bribed, threatened, and bullied, had at last annually to be run
+away from), for the reason that Frank had not slept well after the
+martyring, and <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 283]</span>was still dreaming
+of creeping, crawling things with blubber-lips and gloating eyes when,
+in the pellucid dawn, Jack Cody found the Madigans waiting, in clean
+calicoes, perched on their bottommost step.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was barely over the top of Sugar Loaf, and the town, scantily
+shrubberied (for water costs as many dollars in Virginia as there are
+weeks in the year), lay sleeping in soft chill shadow below them,
+looking oddly picturesque and strange in the unfamiliar light.</p>
+
+<p>"Say," said Cody, "I think I see that Pemberton kid coming up Taylor.
+Is he coming along?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Sissy, promptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Split, firmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, <i>I</i> didn't ask him," from Sissy, with a haughty air of
+saying the last word. The Madigans were quite accustomed to being social
+arbiters in their own small world.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I did," remarked Split, easily.</p>
+
+<p>A pugnacious red overshot Sissy's face. Crosby was her property, to
+browbeat and maltreat as seemed best to her. She felt that Irene's
+interference in a matter that was purely personal was unwarranted as it
+was intolerable.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 284]</span>"He always has such good
+cream-tarts," explained Split.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he can have 'em and keep 'em," declared Sissy, savagely,
+turning her back as Crosby yodeled a greeting and waved his hat gaily to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Cody grinned. "I think that kid better stay at home. It won't be much
+picnic for him, will it, Sissy?"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy sniffed. "He's Split's company," she said loftily. "She'll make
+things pleasant for him."</p>
+
+<p>But Crosby, glad to be among the enticing Madigans at any price, and
+innocently joying in the picnic spirit that possessed him, came whooping
+to his fate.</p>
+
+<p>"Say," he said eagerly, putting down his basket with the air of one
+who has a good story to tell, "do you know, I almost got caught this
+morning. Ma said I wasn't to go, but I bet I wouldn't stay at home. So I
+told Delia to put up my lunch last night, and to put in a lot of those
+cream-tarts you like, Sissy&mdash;you used to like, Sissy...."</p>
+
+<p>But Sissy, actuated by a delicate desire not to interfere in the
+slightest with Split's plans for the entertainment of her guest, was
+deep in conversation with Jack Cody. Crosby's
+jaw <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 285]</span>fell. He saw her give her
+round tin lunch-bucket&mdash;the one he had so often carried to school
+for her&mdash;to Cody, to sling with his own upon a leather strap. And
+as he watched her start up the ravine carrying one end of the strap, and
+the washerwoman's boy the other, he wondered passionately within himself
+at the faithlessness and ingratitude of women.</p>
+
+<p>Wasn't it enough to have a reckoning with Madam Pemberton at the end
+of his day, without having that precious time utterly spoiled? He felt
+like turning back. Sissy knew well that there could be no picnic for him
+within the pale of her displeasure. The mountain air might be never so
+sweet with the wild sage perfuming it; the sun striping the shadowy town
+below with bloody bands might be never so promising; the mountain's
+peak, soft and deceitfully near, might be never so tempting&mdash;with
+Sissy chattering gaily in advance, ostentatiously ignorant of his very
+existence, the glory was cut out of Crosby's morn. It seemed, too, to
+him that he had never been so fond of her. His mother's disapproval of
+this Madigan since a certain episode (to avenge which cruel Sissy's
+thirst could never be slaked) had put the last touch to his devotion.
+That matron's pleasure in their intercourse hitherto had been the
+one <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 286]</span>drawback to his delight in it.
+In his eyes, his inamorata walked now with the crown of the forbidden
+upon her haughty little head; and that Crosby was more of a natural boy
+than his effeminate tastes indicated is proven by the fact that he loved
+Sissy far more for this than for being "the good one" his mother had
+once thought and proclaimed her.</p>
+
+<p>At the sluice-box which circles Mount Davidson, bringing the purest
+of water from a mountain lake, the party halted and was joined by other
+brave mountaineers, big and little; the latter in calico skirts, and
+shirts and knickerbockers. Bombey Forrest was the only one who came
+under neither of these heads. She was a slender slip of a girl whose
+mother, to the scandal of conventional folk, believed that for the first
+decade or so of child-life the boy's costume is fitter than the girl's.
+So Bombey wore a knickerbockered sailor-suit with a broad collar and
+white braid; wore it with a bit of a conscious air, yet with that grace
+which long use and habit lend; with piquancy, too, for she was the least
+masculine of girls in mind and manner, and her delicate face with its
+golden curls bloomed like a flower on a strange stalk, above the
+assertive masculinity of her attire.</p>
+
+<p>It was to Bombey that Crosby Pemberton <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+287]</span>turned for solace. (Split had promptly deserted him for Kate,
+whom she suspected of a contemptible desire to cut loose from the
+Madigans as children, and join the older members of the party.) He had
+not had the courage to forgo the picnic, though he knew his mistress
+well enough to be sure that by the end of the day he would realize that
+that course would have been the least painful. He carried Bombey's
+basket, like the little gentleman he was; not in the division-of-labor
+fashion, from which Cody's and Sissy's jangling buckets extracted a sort
+of cow-bell music as they ran merrily along, far in advance.</p>
+
+<p>Cody spied the two below when he and Sissy sat down to rest on a huge
+boulder. Jack never knew how to treat Bombey Forrest, always feeling
+that the most decent thing to do was not to look at her. Despite his own
+bitter and recurring experiences (which, one might fancy, would have
+made him tender to the vicissitudes of sex as warranted by clothing),
+something in him felt outraged and resentful at the sight of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at the girl-boy and the boy-girl!" he sneered. "See how they
+poke along. They'll never get to the top."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy's shoes were hot and dusty. The <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+288]</span>strong odor of sage-brush was in her nostrils. Her skirt was
+torn, and the short-stemmed desert-lilies she held in a moist hand were
+wilted. But she was happy, for she was outdoing, she was pretending, and
+she was punishing. The only thing that detracted from her pleasure was
+to be obliged to concur in Cody's opinion. That roused her perversity.
+She loved to lead or to oppose&mdash;not to agree.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go on," she said imperiously. "What are you stopping for?"</p>
+
+<p>As the sun climbed higher, the mountain's top got farther and farther
+away. But Cody, who had scaled not only its summit, but the flagpole
+that tipped it, knew its habit of piling one small hill up behind the
+other, as though, like a grotesque Gulliver playing a practical joke, it
+delighted in fatiguing and disappointing the Liliputians that swarmed up
+from its base. Crosby and Bombey and the twins, with the Misses
+Blind-Staggers,&mdash;blinder than ever to-day for the glare on their
+blue goggles,&mdash;had yielded long since. They were camping patiently
+in a ravine far below, where a tiny spring hinted at dining-room
+conveniences. The rest of the party, with Irene revenging herself upon
+Kate's disloyalty by sticking like a burr to that young lady (whom,
+Split <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 289]</span>thought, Mr. Garvan was
+treating altogether too much like a young lady), was close on the
+vanguard's heels. And Sissy and Cody, panting now, but toiling doggedly
+on, had reached the cool little cup-shaped hollow in the cone where the
+snow lies.</p>
+
+<p>From here to the top was but a few minutes' run. Cody was all for
+halting and snow-balling the party as it came up, but Sissy was too
+exhausted to stop now.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll rest at the top of the hill," she decided impatiently, and
+hurried him on, both a bit out of temper.</p>
+
+<p>No beauty of winding river and peaceful valley checkered with fields
+of grain, no low-lying gardens and climbing forests, reward the scaler
+of the heights behind the Comstock&mdash;only the bare little brown town
+far down, digging tenacious heels into the mountain's side and propped
+up with spindle-shanked foothold, the great white inverted cones of
+steam rising from the mines, the naked and scarred majesty of the gray
+mountains all about, the desert gleaming like a lake in the east, and
+Washoe Lake gleaming like a desert in the west.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Sissy held her breath. Something in the still purity of the air,
+the savage grandeur of the mountains, the great arch of liquid
+blue <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 290]</span>above her, caught and held
+her impressionable spirit. She stretched out her hands&mdash;a small,
+petticoated Balboa&mdash;to the world she had discovered. "It&mdash;it
+makes you want to scream," she stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"Booh!" It was a yell from Cody, delivered full in her ear. "If you
+want to scream, darn it, scream!" was his practical advice as he spat
+out the sunflower-seeds he had been chewing and prepared to climb the
+pole.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy stood looking at him, the color flooding her face. And as he
+noted her expression, the boy suddenly remembered that he did not like
+Split's sister. But his mild memory of distaste was as nothing to the
+disgust that possessed Sissy. In her ecstasy she had unwittingly lifted
+a corner of the lid that she kept tight over her emotions. Logically,
+she hated the unimpressed and profane witness of the phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>She turned her back on him, refusing even to look at his progress up
+the high pole. She would not see when, at its top, small as a fly at the
+point of a pencil, he waved his hat and, ululating brassily, gave vent
+to the desire to be noisily vocal which had clutched Sissy's throat into
+silence. At luncheon, she found a spot that was farthest from him; and
+when he and <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 291]</span>Split tore noisily
+down the mountain's side on the way back, she submitted rather to be
+outdone than to join a party of which he was one.</p>
+
+<p>Crosby Pemberton, bracing himself for the derision he expected from
+her, was delighted to see her come sliding down alone to the ravine,
+where the successful ones paused to take up the rest of the party. Her
+solitary state encouraged him, and he sought her where she sat knocking
+the sand out of her shoe.</p>
+
+<p>"Sissy," he said softly, holding out a peace-offering, "I saved some
+cream-puffs for you."</p>
+
+<p>But the ruthless Sissy was not to be so easily placated. "You mean
+for Split, don't you?" she said, scarcely looking at him, and diligently
+lacing her shoe. "She asked you to come, you know. I didn't."</p>
+
+<p>With the look of a wounded dove, Crosby turned, and Sissy saw Irene a
+moment later, her teeth gluttonously closed over one of Delia's biggest
+puffs, a heart-breaking amount of "filling" gushing over her cheeks and
+chin.</p>
+
+<p>But to do without for the sake of principle was ever rapture to the
+purist. Sissy placed the pangs of desire to the credit side of Crosby's
+account; this was only one thing more she owed her victim. In fact, as
+the party started on, so engaged was she in inventing
+and <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 292]</span>perfecting tortures for him
+that she followed the procession on its unusual detour without demur. It
+was only when it was too late that she saw Bullion Ravine ahead of her,
+and the swaying high trestle over which the flume is carried.</p>
+
+<p>Split's malicious face as that most sure-footed of Madigans touched
+the first plank made Sissy realize the test to which she was to be put.
+Her terror of giddy heights was treated as an absurd affectation by the
+steady-headed Madigans, and as such requiring discipline, which, with
+truly sisterly foresight, Split had provided. She ran across now with
+the joy of a thing that feels itself flying. Jack Cody turned a
+handspring in the very middle; and the sight so nauseated Sissy that she
+had to stand aside and let those immediately behind her pass first. Yet
+she dared not remain till the last, for a panicky picture in her mind
+showed her to herself paralyzed forever on the brink. As she put her
+foot on the first board, beneath which she could hear the running water
+chuckling and gurgling as it ran, she swore to herself that she would
+not look down. And, indeed, she did keep her eyes on Crosby Pemberton's
+straw hat, as he walked some distance in front of her. But the moment
+his foot <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 293]</span>touched the ground on the
+other side, the light structure, relieved of his weight, changed its
+rhythmic swaying, which had measured the steady strength of his step.
+Its rebound, exaggerated by Sissy's tense nerves, seemed sickeningly
+high; its fall ghastly low. Swung there from mountain to mountain, its
+slender supports looked frail as a spider's woof, and seemed to tremble
+with every gasping breath she drew. In spite of herself, her eye caught
+the silvery glitter of the thread of water far below in the stony bed of
+the nearly dry creek.</p>
+
+<p>It was all over with Sissy. Trembling with terror, she sat down,
+clutching the edge of the board beneath her, the world swimming away
+before her shut eyes, just as it did when one looked too long through a
+knot-hole at the flowing race in the flume beneath.</p>
+
+<p>Irene's giggle came faintly to her; she was too terrified to resent
+it. The murmur of voices that called her name, encouragingly, warningly,
+angrily, was not so loud as the chuckling of the water in the box which
+seemed to hurry her senses away. She lived through years of agony, in
+which she found herself wishing that she could only fall and end it.
+Then she felt the trestle bound beneath her, and she was waked by the
+touch of Crosby's hand.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 294]</span>"Get up!" he said in a tone of
+command that reminded her of that grenadier his mother.</p>
+
+<p>She opened her eyes and saw that his face was white, but the glitter
+of determination in his eyes was so new and curious that it held her
+attention for the moment necessary to give her strength to obey. He
+almost pulled her to her feet, and then half dragged, half ran with her
+across. Yet within ten feet of the end, the trembling of his hand had
+communicated itself to her whole body. She watched the drops of
+perspiration fall from his pale face and, fascinated, followed them down
+with her eyes. Then wrenching her hand from his, she almost fell down
+again. It seemed to her her head swayed back and forth with such force
+as might bear her whole body with it, and she squatted down,
+shivering.</p>
+
+<p>It was a most humiliating finish to an exciting adventure, for when
+he strove to compel her again to rise, Crosby found that terror is
+contagious. He himself dared not stand. He squatted down in front of
+her, and on all fours the two crawled toward the bank. Sissy could have
+kissed the earth when her hands touched it.</p>
+
+<p>But it took her some time to recover. The sympathetic fussing of the
+Misses Bryne-Stivers she endured as in a dream. She even
+per<span class="pagenum">[Pg. 295]</span>mitted Mr. Garvan to take her
+hand and help her walk for a time. But when they reached the first house
+and had turned down Taylor Street, she was so thoroughly herself that
+she contrived to let the rest pass her, and she rested till Crosby came
+up. She was walking beside him, with a sudden flattering kindness that
+almost turned his head, when he looked in the direction in which her
+eyes were fixed, and saw his mother in her phaeton pull up and beckon to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He looked shyly at Sissy. He would have given much to be told that
+this forgiveness was not to be merely temporary, like others that had
+preceded it whenever Mrs. Pemberton might see and disapprove; that he
+was no longer to be flouted and scorned when there was nobody but Sissy
+herself to be glad of it.</p>
+
+<p>"The shadow of the guillotine is over you!" said Sissy, in a
+bombastic whisper addressed to Mrs. Pemberton&mdash;a comforting formula
+the Madigans had invented to still their envy of those who rode in
+carriages. But her smiling face, when it turned toward Crosby, had no
+threat in it.</p>
+
+<p>Relieved, forgiven, reinstated,&mdash;for there was a promise without
+words in his tyrant's good humor,&mdash;Crosby laughed out gaily.
+At <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 296]</span>that moment he had no more fear
+for Madam Pemberton than for the invoked Madame Guillotine.</p>
+
+<p>"S' long, Sissy," he cried, waving his basket to her as he went, a
+young aristocrat, to meet his fate.</p>
+
+<p>That night Sissy said her prayers in a rush. She wanted to give her
+undivided attention to plans of revenge on Split.</p>
+
+<hr class="cb">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 297]</span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="KATE_A_PRETENSE" id="KATE_A_PRETENSE"></a>KATE: A PRETENSE</h2>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 298]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 299]</span>The lesser Madigans meant to
+stand no nonsense from Kate. Other girls' big sisters had been known to
+assume superiority as their skirts lengthened, and to imply an esoteric
+something in their experience which younger sisters could not
+comprehend, and privileges which they might not share. But for them, the
+Madigans, though they were graciously willing to count Kate out of such
+outdoor sports as were incompatible with lengthened skirts, she might
+come no pretense of young-ladyhood over them. They were on the watch for
+the smallest affectation, the least sentimentality; and as for beaus per
+se&mdash;just let Kate try it!</p>
+
+<p>Kate did, being human, a Comstock girl when girls were in a
+delightful minority, and a Madigan. But, realizing the argus-eyed watch
+put upon her, and the forthright methods of her sister Madigans, she
+tried it secretly.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, there was old Westlake,&mdash;he was at least thirty-five
+years old&mdash;whose intentions <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+300]</span>were quite apparent. He came up to play whist at the house
+whenever he was in town, upon which occasions Kate was always his
+partner; and he scolded her with the same proprietary freedom for
+leading a "sneak" suit as Francis Madigan did his sister&mdash;a lady
+who was never known to know what was trumps, and who smiled and blinked
+and blushed and made the same mistakes over and over again with a
+complacency that Madigan's fiercest thumps upon the table could not
+shake.</p>
+
+<p>But the Madigans forgave Kate her Westlake, for the pleasure she took
+in guying him, and the loyal frankness with which she let them into all
+the moves of the game. He was "The Avalanche" to her and to them,
+because of his avoirdupois, his slow movements, and the imperviousness
+to a joke with which he was credited; because he could not take in all
+the little infinity of homely faceti&aelig; in which the Madigans lived
+and had their being. Besides, it was pleasant and exciting, being
+leagued with Kate against Aunt Anne, who was known to have positively
+had the indecency to speak openly upon the subject, and in favor of it,
+to her oldest niece!</p>
+
+<p>"Fly, the Avalanche is upon you!" was Sissy's dramatic way of warning
+her big sister <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 301]</span>that her suitor had
+been spied by the outpost coming up the steps.</p>
+
+<p>And on such occasions Kate could slip out of the side door and be
+safely inside the Misses Blind-Staggers's sitting-room by the time
+Westlake's heavy step made the porch shake&mdash;and Sissy,
+too&mdash;with laughter. But this was before she went to open the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"Is your sister at home?" old Westlake asked confidently.</p>
+
+<p>"Which one&mdash;Irene? Yes, she's home." Sissy's small round face
+was simplicity and candor incarnate.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said old Westlake, uncomfortably. He had seen shrewdness once
+or twice behind the eyes where innocence now dwelt, and he only half
+trusted this demure, blank-faced child. "I mean your sister
+Katherine."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Cecilia exclaimed, in gentle surprise. "Oh, no, sir, she's
+out."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>Old Westlake fancied he heard a mocking "indeed" that followed. In
+fact, an echo that had the queer effect of making him hear double seemed
+to accompany all his words. It came from the porti&egrave;res, which
+were suspiciously bulky, and shook as though something more than the
+wind moved them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 302]</span>"And how soon will she be
+home?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Kate? You mean Kate? Oh, I really do not know." Sissy pronounced her
+words with pedantic care&mdash;a permissible thing among Madigans when
+adults were to be guyed.</p>
+
+<p>Old Westlake (he was rather a handsome old fellow, with his regular
+features, his blond mustache, and prominent blue eyes) fidgeted
+uneasily. There must be some way, he felt, of moderating this
+half-chilly, half-critical atmosphere on the part of the smaller
+Madigans. But children were riddles to him, and the solutions his small
+experience offered were either too simple or too complex.</p>
+
+<p>"She can't be intending to spend the whole day out?" he asked,
+conscious that he presented a ridiculous figure to the childish gray
+eyes lifted to his.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't suppose she can," agreed Sissy. "Won't you come in?"</p>
+
+<p>He followed her hesitatingly into the parlor and sat down, his eyes
+fixed upon the porti&egrave;res over the front windows, which still
+appeared to be strangely agitated.</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;do you think it will be worth while&mdash;my waiting?" he
+asked helplessly, as Cecilia was modestly about to withdraw.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him with the bland look
+of <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 303]</span>intelligence which it takes a
+clever child to counterfeit.</p>
+
+<p>"Worth while waiting for Kate?" she asked in accents half puzzled,
+half reproachful.</p>
+
+<p>Old Westlake blushed to the roots of his close-cropped fair hair. He
+fancied he heard a muffled gurgle behind the porti&egrave;res that
+wasn't soothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;you mean, is she likely to come home soon?" added Sissy,
+gravely, eying his discomfiture. "I really do not know."</p>
+
+<p>"Is Miss Madigan in?" asked the desperate man.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, do you call her that? I told you she was out."</p>
+
+<p>"No; you told me Katherine was out. Is she in?" he asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy stared at him stupidly. He returned her stare contemplatively.
+He yearned to bribe her, but he didn't dare. She looked too old to be
+bought, too young to understand; yet he was sure she was neither.</p>
+
+<p>"Katherine, Kate, and Miss Madigan are out," said Sissy,
+didactically. "So are Kitty, Kathleen, and even Kathy&mdash;that's her
+latest; she wrote it that way in Henrietta Bryne-Stivers's
+autograph-album."</p>
+
+<p>The visitor looked bewildered. "I asked <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+304]</span>you whether your aunt is in," he said, with some
+impatience.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," retorted Sissy, ceremoniously. No Madigan begged
+pardon unless intending to be doubly offensive thereafter. "You asked me
+whether my sister was in."</p>
+
+<p>"Is&mdash;your&mdash;aunt&mdash;in?" demanded Westlake, with
+insulting clearness.</p>
+
+<p>"She&mdash;is&mdash;in.
+I'll&mdash;tell&mdash;her&mdash;you're&mdash;here."</p>
+
+<p>"Please." Westlake bit the word out, promising himself that his first
+post-nuptial act would be to shake this small sister-in-law well for her
+impertinence.</p>
+
+<p>And this was the pathos, as well as the absurdity of old
+Westlake&mdash;he was so confident.</p>
+
+<p>But he was not so confident that he did not long for an ally. And
+when Split stepped out from behind the porti&egrave;res, with a
+barefaced pretense of having just come through the long French window
+from the porch, he straightway invited her to go to the circus that
+evening with him and Kate.</p>
+
+<p>There happened to be two sties on Split's left eye just then, and a
+third on the upper eyelid of the right one. But this, of course, was no
+reason for discouraging the overtures of a poor old man like Westlake,
+who, it appeared to Split, had some virtues, after all.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 305]</span>That evening Sissy, who was
+playing holey down on Taylor (a famous button-string had Sissy, as token
+of her prowess; it had a sample of almost every buttoned frock worn in
+Virginia for the past ten years), watched the three as they set out for
+the tent far down at the foot of the hill. And three things occurred to
+her, as she stood looking after them, Bombey Forrest waiting vainly,
+meanwhile, for her to shoot: First, that if his desire was to propitiate
+the clan, old Westlake had selected the wrong Madigan: Split being not
+nearly so tenacious an enemy nor so loyal a friend as herself. Second,
+that that same Split looked "like a silly" with the white handkerchief
+bound over her left eye, and her right one swollen and teary. She
+wondered, did Sissy, that they should take such a fright with them. And
+thirdly, the censor of the family sins made a mental note to the effect
+that Kate Madigan was putting on altogether too many airs as she pulled
+on her gloves; there was an inexcusable self-consciousness about her
+manner toward the Avalanche; and as for old Westlake himself, he was
+clearly taking advantage of Split's blindness and casting such glances
+at that giddy Kate as she, Sissy, would certainly not have
+tolerated&mdash;if she had been invited to go to the circus. If only she
+had!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 306]</span>It must not be supposed that
+the esthetic side of life for the Madigans was represented wholly by
+women's walking-matches and the circus. There was also the
+Tridentata.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the Tridentata&mdash;the name was supposed to have
+something to do with sage-brush&mdash;was very select. Naturally, for it
+had had its origin in Mrs. Pemberton's strenuous estheticism and double
+parlors&mdash;possessions of which few Comstockers could boast. But
+after the infant literary society had learned to stand alone, it adopted
+migratory habits, meeting now at the Misses Bryne-Stivers's cottage, now
+at Mrs. Forrest's over-furnished rooms, and occasionally even at the
+Madigans'.</p>
+
+<p>There was at least room enough at the Madigans; it was the one
+particular in which they were never stinted. The long, shabby parlor had
+sufficient seating-capacity, even if the chairs were not all, strictly
+speaking, presentable.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I bring in the Versiye fotoy?" asked Split on one of the
+occasions when the meeting of the Tridentata necessitated a real
+house-cleaning in which the full corps of Madigans took part.</p>
+
+<p>"The Versailles <i>fauteuil</i>, Irene," replied Miss Madigan,
+doubtfully, "is not reliable. If <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 307]</span>I
+wasn't sure that Mrs. Pemberton, who has seen the real ones, would be
+sure to ask where it is, I'd keep it out; for the last time she came so
+near sitting on it while I was reading my paper on 'Home-keeping' that I
+got so nervous I left out all that part about the housewife's duty
+being, above all, to make a spiritual home: to diffuse about herself a
+home atmosphere, so that wherever she sat, wherever two or three
+gathered about her, there was the Sanctuary of the Church of Home, so to
+speak. And&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you want me to bring it in?" Split had too much to do to listen
+to Tridentata culture. Her humble office was merely to make ready for
+the literary feast and modest bodily refreshment to come.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the contradictions of Split's nature&mdash;her intense
+occasional domesticity and the practical good sense that marked her home
+economies. She rose now, basin in hand. Her sleeves were rolled up, her
+bushy hair, a troublesome half-length now, was bound up in a towel. She
+had been scrubbing and polishing the zinc under the stove, and she was
+as happy as she was executive. She flew about trilling "The Zingara,"
+with a smudge on her chin and a big kitchen-apron tied about her waist,
+looking like a dirty little slavey; yet putting
+the <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 308]</span>mark of her thoroughness upon
+everything she touched and Miss Madigan overlooked.</p>
+
+<p>"The big rug from your room is to go over the hole by the window?"
+she asked perfunctorily, being half-way through the hall at the
+time.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so glad you remembered it," said Miss Madigan. "Mrs. Forrest
+tripped in that hole the last time. I thought it was exceedingly
+impolite of her to call attention to it that way, because&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I turn the couch-cover?" demanded Split.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how you can," said Miss Madigan, helplessly. "It's worn
+on the other side."</p>
+
+<p>But with a tug Split had drawn it off, pillows and all, and she flew
+up-stairs, carrying Kate in her wake to help her pull down a
+porti&egrave;re which she intended transforming into a couch-cover.</p>
+
+<p>Things sentient as well as material were accustomed to doing double
+duty at the Madigans' on Tridentata nights. When Francis Madigan,
+forewarned that his bell would often be rung that evening, but that he
+was not expected to resent the insult, had retreated to his castle and
+pulled up the drawbridge behind him, the slavey, with Sissy as
+assistant, became <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 309]</span>doorkeeper, and,
+later, butler. Critics, of course, these two were ex officio; and from
+their station out in the chilly hall, they listened to and mocked at the
+literary program, which Miss Madigan had entitled, "A Night of All
+Nations."</p>
+
+<p>The opening duet between Maude and Henrietta Bryne-Stivers they had
+heard before. Few people in Virginia, indeed, had not.</p>
+
+<p>"Trash!" Sissy pronounced it in Professor Trask's best manner.</p>
+
+<p>The reading from "Sodom's Ende," in the original, by the traveled
+Mrs. Pemberton, was fiercely resented by her audience outside the gates.
+It always made a Madigan furious to hear a foreign tongue; for, apart
+from the affectation of strange pronunciations, the deliberate mouthing
+of words (and you couldn't make Sissy Madigan believe that Mrs. Ramrod
+understood half of what she was reading in that guttural, heavy tongue),
+there was the impugnment of other people's lack of linguistic
+accomplishment.</p>
+
+<p>The critical paper on Daudet that followed was read by Miss Henrietta
+Bryne-Stivers. While it was in progress the two Madigans out in the hall
+each read an imaginary paper on the same topic, finishing with that
+identical <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 310]</span>courtesy which Henrietta
+had imported from Miss Jessup's school in the city. But Split tripped
+Sissy as she was bowing over low, and she fell, as softly as she could,
+to the floor. Miss Madigan looked out with a "S&mdash;sh!" Sissy cast
+off all blame in virtuous dumb-show, and in the pause the two heard Dr.
+Murchison's voice as Henrietta passed him and the door, on her
+triumphant way back to her seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Allow me to compliment you, Miss Henrietta," said the old doctor,
+pleasantly excited by so youthful a lady's literary discrimination. "You
+are really fond of Daudet, then?"</p>
+
+<p>Henrietta blushed. "Oh, no, indeed, doctor!" she said deprecatingly.
+"At Miss Jessup's we girls were not permitted to read him, you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I see," murmured the doctor. "Only to write about him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Jessup thought it was more&mdash;fitting, with the French
+authors," observed Henrietta.</p>
+
+<p>"So it is," agreed Murchison, dryly. "So it is. The excellent Miss
+Jessups&mdash;how well they know!"</p>
+
+<p>"He's guying her," chuckled Sissy, making a mental vow to read Daudet
+or die in the attempt. "And she doesn't know it."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" came from Split.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 311]</span>In a tenor a bit foggy, but
+effectively sympathetic, old Westlake was singing, "Oh, would that we
+two were maying!"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy put her eye to the crack of the door, and Split, watching her,
+saw her round face grow red and indignant.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" she whispered, squirming till she too had an eye glued
+to the crack.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" exclaimed Sissy, disgustedly.</p>
+
+<p>Straight in their line of vision sat Kate, and upon her old
+Westlake's eyes were ardently fixed as he sang.</p>
+
+<p>"It's&mdash;it's not decent," declared Sissy, wrathfully.</p>
+
+<p>"He does look like a calf." Split grinned. Kate looked very pretty in
+that white cashmere embroidered in red rosebuds, which had been made
+over from the box from Ireland, Split said to Sissy, and so was
+deserving of forgiveness, she hinted; for when one had a new
+frock&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Sissy, the sensible, snorted unbelievingly. What gown had ever
+affected her?</p>
+
+<p>"But I'll get even with him," she said, stealing on tiptoe down the
+hall. "Just you watch!"</p>
+
+<p>Split, her nose in the crack of the door, watched. The Avalanche had
+finished his first <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 312]</span>verse and begun
+the second, when Sissy appeared in the parlor, very modest and retiring,
+walking behind chairs and effacing herself with an ostentation that
+could not but attract all eyes. She stopped at Miss Madigan's chair,
+asked a question,&mdash;which Split knew well was utterly irrelevant and
+immaterial,&mdash;and received an answer in Aunt Anne's company manner:
+a compound of sweetness and flustered inattention which no one could
+mimic better than Sissy herself.</p>
+
+<p>Then she withdrew, slowly and by a tortuous route which brought her
+just beside him at the moment Westlake stopped singing. Without a word,
+yet with a gracious instinct for the momentary confusion in which the
+performer found himself, his seat having been taken while he sang,
+Cecilia pulled out another from the wall and moved it slightly toward
+him.</p>
+
+<p>The little attention was offered so naturally, with such engaging
+demureness, that Mrs. Pemberton&mdash;whom the social amenities in
+children ever delighted&mdash;almost loved Sissy Madigan at that moment.
+So, by the way, did Split, out in the hall, her eye at the crack of the
+door, her feet lifting alternately with anticipative rapture. For it was
+the Versailles <i>fauteuil</i> that Sissy had so sweetly selected for
+old Westlake. <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 313]</span>And when the big
+fellow came down to earth with a crash, rising red and confused from the
+debris, Sissy was already out in the hall. She arrived at the crack in
+time to see Kate stuff her handkerchief into her mouth and hurry to the
+window, her shoulders shaking, while Miss Madigan flew to the
+rescue.</p>
+
+<p>It took a recitation in Italian by Mrs. Forrest to rob Sissy Madigan,
+judge and executioner, of her complacency after this. Then Aunt Anne
+recited "The Bairnies Cuddle Doon" charmingly, as she always did, but
+most Hibernianly, with that clean accent that makes Irish-English the
+prettiest tongue in the world. After which she received with smiling
+complacency the compliments of Mrs. Forrest, who told her that an ideal
+mother had been lost to the world in her.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, two cynics listened with a bored air. They felt that they
+required a stimulant after this, so they made a hurried visit to the
+dining-room, thereby escaping Mr. Garvan's reading of "Father Phil's
+Collection." But when Henrietta Bryne-Stivers delivered "Blow, Bugle,
+Blow," changing from speaking voice to the sung chorus with a composure
+that was really shameless, the critics out in the hall received that
+insulting shock which novelty <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+314]</span>inflicts upon the provincial, which is the childish, mind.
+They revenged themselves in their own way, mouthing and attitudinizing,
+caricaturing every pose which Miss Henrietta had been taught, by the
+instructor of Delsarte at Miss Jessup's, was grace. They were caught in
+the midst of their saturnalia of ridicule by Kate, who promptly exploded
+at their uncouth, dumb merriment.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Anne wants you, Sissy," she said when she got her breath.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant Sissy was sobered. It wasn't possible that she was to
+be sent to bed before supper! To be a waiter was the height of happiness
+for Sissy.</p>
+
+<p>"It's because of the Versiye fotoy," giggled Split, as she ran off to
+the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't, is it?" whispered Sissy to Kate. And Kate shook her head
+reassuringly, and waved her in. She couldn't answer audibly, for Dr.
+Murchison was tuning up his sweet old violin, while Maude Bryne-Stivers
+offered to accompany him on the piano.</p>
+
+<p>But Murchison knew too much of the manners and methods of Jessup's
+Seminary, as revealed by its showiest pupil.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, thank you, Miss Maude, but this is a very old-fashioned
+and a very simple <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 315]</span>entertainment
+I'm going to give. Just the things that I play to myself when I'm weary
+of listening to humanity tell of its ills and aches&mdash;the egotist!
+Then I look down into the beautifully clean inside of my fiddle, its
+good old mechanism without a flaw, and listen to the things it has to
+tell.... Thank you, just the same, Miss Maude; this is not a theme
+worthy of your brilliant rendition, but, as I said, a simple,
+old-fashioned playing of the fiddle. I'll supply the old-fashioned part,
+and Sissy here can do the simple accompaniment, if she will."</p>
+
+<p>If she would! Sissy was so gaspingly happy and proud that she forgot
+even to pretend that she wasn't. Seating herself, she let her trembling
+fingers sink into the opening chord, while the old doctor's bow sought
+the strains of "Kathleen Mavourneen," of "Annie Laurie," the "Blue Bells
+of Scotland," and "Rose Marie."</p>
+
+<p>The unspoken sympathy that existed between these two flowed now from
+the bow to Sissy's fingers, and made a harmony as pretty as was the
+sight of the old man and the happy child looking up at him. Sissy
+Madigan was conscious that the doctor knew her&mdash;almost; that,
+nevertheless, she occupied a place quite unique in his heart. And she
+loved passionately to be <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 316]</span>loved,
+this hypocrite of a Madigan, who jeered and jibed at any demonstration
+of affection. A sense of being utterly at harmony with the world
+possessed her now; the fact that she was "showing off" was far, far in
+the background of her consciousness, when all at once she happened to
+glance out through the hall door.</p>
+
+<p>She had left it ajar behind her, expecting Kate to follow her in. But
+Kate, evidently, had not followed. She stood out there alone with Mr.
+Garvan, her arms behind her, her slender figure drawn up beneath the
+swinging hall lamp, her pert little head, circled by the braids she wore
+coiled clear around it when she wanted to be very grown-up, upturned to
+the master, her every feature stamped with coquetry.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy shut her lips firmly&mdash;and the wrong note she struck marred
+the doctor's finale. It was evident that Kate Madigan needed looking
+after.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>She did; and yet no one but Kate and those she experimented upon
+could help her to find herself.</p>
+
+<p>A wilful Madigan, intoxicated with her first taste of a new pleasure,
+was Kate. She had outgrown her short skirts with regret; she was
+preparing to make them still longer with de<span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+317]</span>light. She had the maturity of her motherless and
+quasi-fatherless state to add to the natural precocity of the
+mining-town girl, and of the eldest sister who has been pushed out of
+her childhood by the press of numbers behind her. And yet the wine of
+romance kept her almost babyishly young. She had a way of proclaiming
+the fact that she read everything her father did. (Madigan, marooned by
+his misfortunes in the most picturesque setting, where men were living
+the most picturesque lives, turned his back upon it all and found the
+action his dull days were denied in the elder Dumas.) By this Kate
+intended to show how proud and unrestrained a Madigan was; hoped, too,
+perhaps, that there might attach a bit&mdash;the least bit&mdash;of
+suggestive license to the phrase. And all the while she was pitiably
+unconscious of how innocuous the old romanticist's tales of adventure
+may be, read in translation, by the light of such purity and innocence
+as hers.</p>
+
+<p>But she was pert, was Kate, and piquant; she presumed upon her youth,
+upon her age. She was a child when you expected her to be a woman, and a
+woman where you looked for the child. No dream of romance was romantic
+enough to hold her fickle soul constant to it&mdash;to satisfy the hopes
+of her heart. Every man <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 318]</span>she met
+was a prince; yet was he, too, bare and poor and mean compared with The
+Man to come. The child in her was gauche and crude, sitting in
+judgment&mdash;as cynical, as critical a spectator as Sissy
+herself&mdash;upon the very hopes the woman awakened. In her eyes the
+flash of coquetry was succeeded by the blank, childish irony which
+denied the emotion hardly passed. She loved to shock pretense, yet she
+was the most absurd and innocent of pretenders, for the terms in which
+convention speaks were Greek to her. She was masterful, being a Madigan,
+and daring and impertinent. A creature utterly impatient of forms, with
+a boy-like chivalry, revealing how incomplete the work of sex was yet,
+for the woman misunderstood&mdash;whom she, in her crude purity,
+understood least of all. This was Kate, ready, at fifteen, to battle
+single-handed with windmills, with world-old problems, with world-young
+prejudices; to burn intolerance to ashes in the white flame of her brave
+young innocence; to cry aloud the word that older, wiser cowards whisper
+or stifle in their hearts; to make no compromise; to know that black is
+black and white is white; to be unforgiving, as only cruel young
+inexperience can be; to flame at a wrong and glow at its righting; and
+yet to have her contradic<span class="pagenum">[Pg. 319]</span>tions
+cased in a body of such vivid grace, a mind leavened by humor, and a
+heart of such sweetness as made her the irresistibly lovable Pretense
+she was.</p>
+
+<p>Pretending to be a child, to annoy her Aunt Anne; pretending to be a
+woman, to infuriate her younger sisters; pretending to be a saint,
+pretending to be a sinner; pretending to scorn the world, yet quaffing
+its first sweet draughts of individual power and experience with
+full-opened throat; pretending to be mannish&mdash;driven to that
+extremity by the super-femininity of Henrietta Bryne-Stivers; pretending
+to be frivolous, to shock rigid Mrs. Pemberton; pretending to be a
+blue-stocking with a passion for the solid and heavy in literature;
+pretending to be a Spartan who must rise at dawn and, after a plunge in
+ice-cold mountain water, climb, with only big Don, the Newfoundland, for
+company, up to the sluice-box; there to pretend she was an esthete to
+whom the sunrise, while she communed alone with nature, revealed things
+invisible to the world below.</p>
+
+<p>But Reality's day came. Miss Madigan went out into the future, sent
+thither by her auntly sense of responsibility, and brought it back with
+her. It led them straight to Warren Pemberton's office, and Pretense
+fled like a shy <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 320]</span>shadow before the
+sun when Reality looked at her through Pemberton's cold, dull eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Madigan, Mr. Pemberton. My niece Kate," was the lady's
+introduction as they entered.</p>
+
+<p>The red-faced, heavy little man, too important a personage to be
+expected to contribute socially to the life of the town, had been
+looking at Miss Madigan as though he knew he ought to remember having
+met her. She wanted something, of course. Everybody wanted something
+from Warren Pemberton, King Sammy's viceroy, in charge of his mining
+interests and his political plantations. But he brightened at the
+formula, recollecting having heard it before from the same lady's lips,
+and promptly placed her in the category of small political favors.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember you, Miss Madigan&mdash;of course," he stammered.
+"Remember the little girl, too. Crosby's flame, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Kate flushed, struck dumb with the insult, and her black-gray eyes
+gleamed handsomely with anger. After getting herself up in her most
+mature fashion to be mistaken for Sissy!</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mr. Pemberton," exclaimed Miss Madigan, flustered by
+propinquity to greatness, <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 321]</span>"this is
+Kate, the Miss Madigan who&mdash;for whom&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, excuse me." Pemberton sat rubbing his chin and silently blinking
+at the Miss Madigan for whom his influence had been invoked. She felt he
+was weighing her youth and inexperience against the thing that had been
+asked for her. And the Madigan in her fiercely resented it; was tempted
+to confirm his doubts by a saucy flippancy that would relieve her
+impatience of a false position. But there was that other Madigan in her
+to be reckoned with, that new one, on the reverse of whose shining,
+romantic shield a plain, dull, tenacious sense of duty was slowly
+spelling itself into legibility.</p>
+
+<p>"Kate's really very clever, Mr. Pemberton," said Kate's aunt,
+tactfully; and the girl's teeth clicked together, in her effort to
+control her irritation. "And in some ways she is much older than her
+years. She will graduate, you know, this year at the head of her class;
+she passed first in the examination, and really, in a family where there
+are so many girls&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, I know," interrupted the great man. "You told me all about
+that, and I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And you've had time to realize just how extraordinary a creature I
+am and how pitiful a case ours is! Am I too brilliant altogether
+to <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 322]</span>be wasted on school-teaching?"
+Wrath tingled in Kate's voice. She heard Miss Madigan's gasp of horror,
+and could imagine the fishy disconsolateness of her expression. And she
+saw the red-faced little man opposite her start, as at the injection of
+a foreign tongue into the interview.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh&mdash;what? Oh, yes," he said dully. "I mean&mdash;no. It'll
+be&mdash;it's all right."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Pemberton, how can I thank you!" Miss Madigan clasped her
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I spoke to Forrest yesterday, and&mdash;and, of course,
+Murchison's willing," went on the little man, gravely. "But there's no
+vacancy just now, so they'll arrange to appoint substitutes. It's the
+way they do in cities, I understand. And Miss Cecilia here will
+be&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My name, Mr. Pemberton, is Kate!"</p>
+
+<p>"And Kate's exceedingly grateful." Miss Madigan gazed amazed at her
+niece; she didn't look grateful.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all; not at all," murmured Pemberton, feeling for his papers
+helplessly. "I'm so busy&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It&mdash;is good of you," stammered Kate, rising. "I am&mdash;very
+much obliged to you." She held out a hand to him that was cold to the
+fingertips. All at once she felt so old, so <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+323]</span>young, so niched forever in a somber, gray life, so settled,
+so bound up by small formalities, so miserably unlike a Madigan!</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Yet the Madigan in Kate waked with a defiant brightness when the
+first call came that took her temporarily over the threshold of the new
+life. She left her own school-room, where her r&ocirc;le was as
+congenial and irresponsible as Sissy's, with an air of importance that
+roused envy in her mates' hearts.</p>
+
+<p>The very pretense rallied her, excited her, inspired her to continue
+to pretend after she had left her audience behind her. And though she
+entered the lower class-room, of which she was to have charge for a day,
+with a terrified feeling of being thrown to the lions, she faced the
+undisciplined mob that licked its lips in anticipation of a feast on raw
+young substitute with a flash in her eye that promised battle first.</p>
+
+<p>And she did make a hit at the beginning, thanks to her sister and
+present pupil, Bessie, who was invariably late to school.</p>
+
+<p>To Bep, the aspect of her own sister in a position of authority was
+the hugest absurdity, and when the blonde twin sauntered in, tardy, as
+usual, she joined the class as one of the lions. She intended to give
+Kate distinctly <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 324]</span>to understand that
+she was mixed primary pupil first and a Madigan afterward; that the
+substitute might expect no mercy from her on the pitiful plea of
+relationship.</p>
+
+<p>Bep's attitude was very Madigan; the only drawback to it was that it
+left out of the reckoning the fact that she had a Madigan to deal
+with.</p>
+
+<p>"Elizabeth Madigan," said the substitute, in the clear, high, formal
+tone that, in itself, was sufficient to sever all bonds of kinship,
+"where is your excuse for being late?"</p>
+
+<p>Bep's blue eyes blinked. The impudence of Kate to talk that way to
+her!</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't got any. Miss Walker never&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Walker isn't teaching to-day," remarked the substitute, in the
+patient tone which the enlightened have for dullness. "She is ill and I
+am teacher here. Where is your excuse?"</p>
+
+<p>Bep felt the silence grow around her. She saw the whole school drop
+its mirth and its employments to watch this duel between Madigans.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you know very well, Kate Madigan&mdash;" she began hotly.</p>
+
+<p>A sharp ring on the bell at the teacher's desk cut Bep's eloquence
+short. "If you have anything to say to me, little girl, you will address
+me as Miss Madigan."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 325]</span>The audacity of it struck Bep
+dumb. Call that slim girl Miss Madigan? She'd like to see herself!</p>
+
+<p>"You will go home, Elizabeth," the substitute continued,
+unconcernedly making her way to the blackboard as though this
+life-and-death affair were a mere incident in her many duties, "and
+bring me back a written excuse for your tardiness."</p>
+
+<p>Bep set her teeth. "You know I had to go an errand for Aunt Anne; you
+saw me yourself," she muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"A <i>written</i> excuse, I said."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't get any." Yet Bep rose. She felt the ground slipping from
+under her.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I am sorry to say," remarked the substitute, firmly, "that I
+shall not be able to have you in my class to-day. Leave the room,
+Bessie.... Now, children, the first thing to do in
+subtraction&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Bessie walked slowly up the aisle and toward the door. With the
+prospect of a double disciplining, at home and at school, too, she dared
+not rebel. Yet wrath smoldered within her. She came to where the
+substitute stood at the board, calmly explaining the process of
+"borrowing," and the resolution to regard her as an undeserving stranger
+was tempered by <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 326]</span>Bep's desire to
+inflict an intimate, personal insult.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't be so afflicted as you," she growled under her breath,
+like a small Mrs. Partington, misapplying her big word in her wrath,
+"for all the world. And I'll get even!"</p>
+
+<p>A gleam of quite unofficial laughter lit the substitute's eye. "You
+mean 'affected,' my little girl, not 'afflicted,'" she said clearly,
+pausing pedagogically, chalk in hand. "Look up the difference in your
+dictionary, and if you can't understand, come to me and I'll explain it
+to you&mdash;after you bring your excuse."</p>
+
+<p>And Bep brought her excuse. The substitute, her cheeks glowing with
+excitement, yet calm-voiced and pretending valiantly, saw the door open
+nearly an hour later, and a hand thrust through waving an envelop, as
+though it were a lightning-rod that might attract the storm of her wrath
+away from the one who carried it.</p>
+
+<p>Gravely, even encouragingly, Miss Kate Madigan read a prayer from
+Miss Anne Madigan that the teacher would kindly excuse the tardiness of
+Elizabeth, her niece. She placed it on file religiously, like a
+confirmed devotee to red tape, and resumed her lesson to the
+baby <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 327]</span>class, with a
+matter-of-course air that completed the routing of Bep.</p>
+
+<p>But there was still another relative in the mixed
+primary&mdash;Frances. For half a day the smallest of Madigans was
+supposed to be doing kindergarten work, with a mild infusion of the
+practical in the shape of a-b-c's.</p>
+
+<p>It did not occur to this young lady to try to disown the substitute.
+On the contrary, she was exceedingly proud of her proprietary interest
+in the teacher. She leaned her plump hand upon that august person's knee
+in all the easy charm of intimacy when the baby class gathered about
+her, and was so intoxicated by reflected glory that she forgot the two
+letters of the alphabet she was supposed to know.</p>
+
+<p>There was one thing no Madigan&mdash;not even Kate&mdash;could
+pretend to: to be patient was beyond them all, talented as they
+were.</p>
+
+<p>"It's 'B,' Frank!" the substitute cried, in her exasperation
+forgetting the dignified demeanor she had adopted. "Say 'B,' 'B,' you
+stupid!"</p>
+
+<p>In that terrible moment Frank realized that there were drawbacks to
+being too well acquainted with the teacher. Her eyes filled with tears
+of chagrin. "'B, B, you stupid!'" she sobbed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 328]</span>And a quick, clear laugh from
+the substitute completed the demoralization of the mixed primary. It was
+not, strictly speaking, "in order" when Mr. Garvan visited it.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Oh, to be out of school, at the end of that first day of adulthood!
+To be unwatched, to be free, to be little and young, if that pleased
+one! To walk up the hill and along the main street, and then, just as
+one was about to turn the corner prosaically and mount still
+higher&mdash;then to come face to face with a creature so elegant, so
+visibly "dressed," that no gambler in town could outshine him. By sheer
+good luck, to have been introduced to this dandy in one's capacity of
+teacher of the mixed primary that very morning, when he had been given
+permission by Mr. Garvan to make an announcement at the school
+concerning special privileges granted school-children at the "high-class
+minstrel performance" given at Lally's Opera House. To be unhampered now
+by the timidities of office, and ready to pick up the gage of coquetry
+his saucy glance threw down. And so, after the smallest second's
+hesitation,&mdash;the woman in one stifling both the child's and the
+substitute's hesitation,&mdash;to allow the gaudy stranger to walk
+beside one the length of C <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 329]</span>Street.
+And though the sidewalk was crowded, for stocks were up, and one had to
+wriggle one's way through the people packed tight in front of the
+brokers' offices, yet, in the very teeth of the townsfolk, to joy
+shamelessly in flirtation with this gorgeous, shining, flattering
+stranger&mdash;a social outlaw, as well as a bird of passage, the very
+disrepute of whose profession made temptation more subtly sweet!</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>"Split," whispered Sissy, her voice muffled with shame,&mdash;it was
+a week later,&mdash;"Kate walked with a minstrel! What shall we do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did she? Who told on her&mdash;Mrs. Ramrod? Well," added Split, out
+of the depths of experience, "it must have been that day she
+substituted."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 330]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="cb">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 331]</span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="OLD_MOTHER_GIBSON" id="OLD_MOTHER_GIBSON"></a>OLD MOTHER GIBSON</h2>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 332]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 333]</span>Imprisoned in skirts, Jack Cody
+was awaiting his mother and relief, when there came a knock at the door,
+and a voice distinctly not Jane Cody's said:</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, I'm sure, but your town's so jolly dark, I
+believe I've lost my way. I'm looking for&mdash;My word, what's
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>A parabola of light had suddenly shot out athwart the soft black
+night. It seemed to come from the hill to the left, and it was
+accompanied by the tinkle of shattered glass.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the Madigans." Jack's voice was wistful and his gaze was turned
+longingly upward.</p>
+
+<p>"Madigans!" exclaimed the stranger, looking in amazement from the
+boyish face surmounting a shapeless woman's gown to the thing it watched
+so yearningly&mdash;a light flaring brightly on the hill, a lot of small
+dancing figures silhouetted blackly against it, the smell of coal-oil,
+and the shrill excited laughter of children.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 334]</span>"Upon my soul, yours is a
+strange country," the man went on&mdash;"stranger even than it looks.
+How in the world did you know that I was looking for the Madigans?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you?" asked the boy, dully. His body might be down in Jane
+Cody's cabin, but his soul was up aloft there where the Madigans held
+high carnival.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am," answered the stranger, his eyes fixed upon the odd
+figure before him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there they are," the boy said, pointing upward to the
+grotesque dancing shadows.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?&mdash;I beg your pardon, I&mdash;I don't understand. Just what
+has happened?" asked the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothin'," said Jack. "The lamp gets tipped over when they're playing
+Old Mother Gibson, and they just throw it out so's not to set the house
+afire."</p>
+
+<p>"Every night?" asked the man, in the polite tone strangers adopt in
+striving to fathom a local mystery.</p>
+
+<p>"Nope," said the boy, in a matter-of-fact tone. "They can't play it
+every night; sometimes their aunt won't let 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"You appear to know them." There was a smile hidden beneath the
+voice; but Jack was thinking, not of the questioner,
+indistinguish<span class="pagenum">[Pg. 335]</span>able in the darkness,
+but of the mad carnival up yonder on the hill.</p>
+
+<p>"Yep. That's Split," he said. "That one&mdash;see&mdash;with the
+bushy lot of hair, singing and cake-walking in front. She can do a
+cake-walk better'n any nigger I ever see."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's Frank, the baby&mdash;the one that's screamin' so. You can
+tell her squeals; they're laughin' ones, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I ought to know. Anyway, I'm glad to be told."</p>
+
+<p>"Over on the side there, where there's a kind of blotch, is the
+twins; they must be fighting. Don, the dog, 's mixed up in it
+somehow."</p>
+
+<p>"My word!" exclaimed the man, softly, to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"That's Kate dancing round on the porch, and the one standing
+high-like, right next to the fire, with her arms up stiff, as if she was
+running the whole show, sort of&mdash;of&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A priestess, say, invocating the Goddess of Kerosene!"</p>
+
+<p>"Huh?&mdash;Well, that's Sissy."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, is it? Tell me&mdash;is she nice&mdash;Sissy?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" asked the boy, so surprised that he withdrew his attention
+from on high and stared out at the man on the door-step.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 336]</span>There came a laugh out of the
+darkness. "It is an odd question, but then everything is so odd out
+here, I half hoped you wouldn't notice it. But you do know them,
+evidently. I wonder&mdash;do you mind going up there with me and showing
+me the way?"</p>
+
+<p>But his last question had suddenly recalled to Jack Cody the reason
+why he wasn't at that moment one of the dancing black figures on the
+hill. The boy looked from his mother's wrapper to the man's face,
+growing more distinct now, out on the door-step, and the amused
+expression he saw there his sore egotism attributed to a personal cause.
+So he promptly slammed the door in the man's face.</p>
+
+<p>There was an instant's pause out in the blackness, made denser now
+that the candle's light from the cabin was cut off; then a short,
+nonplussed laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Miles, old chap," the young man was saying to himself, as he turned
+cautiously to jump from the stoop and mount the hill, "this is Bedlam
+you've fallen into&mdash;this mad little mining-town ten thousand miles
+off in a brand-new corner of the world, all hills and characters! Now,
+what might be the sex of that animal you were talking to? And what in
+the name of peace are these Madigans? Are they the ones you're
+look&mdash;Steps, as I value my im<span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+337]</span>mortal soul!" he exclaimed, rubbing his shin where he had
+struck against the wandering Madigan stairway. "It would not have
+surprised me, now, if I had had to climb that hill on my hands and
+knees, and stand on my head when I got to the door, to knock at it with
+my heels!"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Miss Madigan's demeanor was beautiful to see. Just a bit&mdash;oh,
+the least bit of I-told-you-so in her manner, but also a generous
+willingness to postpone the acceptance of apologies due to one long
+misunderstood, and to take for granted the family's obligation.</p>
+
+<p>"The estate must be worth at least ten thousand a year," she confided
+in her delighted perturbation to Frances, as she curled her hair. And
+Frank looked up at her, soulful and uncomprehending, and a bit
+cross-eyed, for the curl dangling down over her nose. "He'll marry Kate,
+of course&mdash;I had no idea he was so young. He'll just be the savior
+of the whole family. It's a providence,&mdash;Miles Madigan's dying when
+he did,&mdash;and wasn't it fortunate that Nora sent my letter back?...
+You will be good at the table, Frances, and show cousin Miles how nicely
+you can use your fork?... He is practically a cousin.... Have you washed
+your hands?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 338]</span>"Hm-mm," murmured Frank,
+mendaciously. And then, as Aunt Anne appeared to doubt her word, "Just
+you ask God if I haven't," she suggested solemnly, carefully putting her
+hands behind her.</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Madigan had no time to put questions to so distant an
+authority. She had Wong to placate&mdash;Wong with his wash-day face on,
+grim, ill-tempered, hurried, defying the world to put even the smallest
+additional burden on his shoulders on Monday. And Miles Morgan just
+arrived from Ireland!</p>
+
+<p>And Francis talking to him in the library, in that distant, watchful,
+uncompromising way of his, that was just as likely as not to send the
+young man off in a huff.</p>
+
+<p>"One needn't insult a man just because he's rich and a relative!"
+Miss Madigan's exclamation was uttered aloud unconsciously, so excited
+was she. It ended with a gasp, as Sissy collided with her on the way
+from peeking through the half-open library door at her father and his
+guest.</p>
+
+<p>It was the bedroom, Kate's and Irene's, that Sissy was bound for; for
+there, in solemn conclave, the junior Madigans were assembled, waiting
+for their scout's report.</p>
+
+<p>"He's big&mdash;but not so big as the
+Avalanche," <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 339]</span>she began the moment
+she had shut the door behind her and faced the questioning eyes that
+commanded her to stand and deliver. "He's straight, too, but not so
+poker-stiff as Mrs. Ramrod. He's got a big haw-haw voice, and scrubs
+every word he says with a tooth-brush before he says it. His hands are
+as white&mdash;as white; and they're cleaner than Crosby Pemberton's.
+He's got a tan shirt on, plaited in front, and every time Aunt Anne
+moves he's up like a jumping-jack till she gets sat down again. He says
+'My word!' and 'in the States'&mdash;like that. He's got a mustache the
+color of your hair, Split, a scrubby, stiffy little mustache. His eyes
+are little twinkling things, and I believe&mdash;" she paused in her
+indictment to give the criminal the benefit of the doubt&mdash;"I do
+believe he had gloves on when he first came! I won't be sure; but,
+anyway, I hate him."</p>
+
+<p>A gratified sigh rose from the Madigans assembled. It was good to
+have definite information, to know that this Miles Morgan was hatable.
+For the Madigans loved to hate any one who could put them under
+obligations&mdash;when they did not spend their very souls in a passion
+of gratitude to him. But for this interloping, distant relative from
+foreign shores they were prepared. They were ready to outrage
+him, <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 340]</span>to throw his patronage in his
+teeth, if he dared offer it, to out-Madigan the Madigans, if that were
+necessary; to disgust him and satisfy their pride, wounded by the
+insolence of his prosperity. Yes, it was good to hear Sissy's frank
+declaration of war. For war was as the breath of the Madigans' nostrils.
+They knew themselves there, and, though they might have trusted Sissy,
+they had feared for a moment that her report might not be all they had
+hoped.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll show him," said Split.</p>
+
+<p>"A patronizing, affected Irishman!" snorted Sissy, informally now
+that her official duties were ended.</p>
+
+<p>"He thinks he'll come out here and run the whole family," said Fom,
+aggrieved.</p>
+
+<p>"And show off how rich he is, and turn up his nose at things," said
+Bep, "and boss us. I'd like to see him try it!"</p>
+
+<p>"And be shocked at what we don't know, and what we do do, and what we
+haven't seen and learned. I dare him just to say 'abroad' to me!" cried
+Kate, with a flash in her eye.</p>
+
+<p>A chorus of groans went up from the indignant assemblage.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Anne," put in Frank, a bit puzzled, "says he's the savior of
+the fam'ly. What's a&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 341]</span>"The savior of the family! The
+savior!" mocked Sissy, genuflecting sarcastically. "The savior of the
+family will have you sent to a convent, Split, 'where young ladies are
+taught to behave properly.' The savior'll get a nursemaid for you,
+Frank, and you'll have to go about always holding her hand and wearing
+socks in the English style that'll show your bare, naked legs
+and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I won't! I won't!" Tears of terror stood in Frank's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"The savior'll put a stop, Fom, to your&mdash;Kate Madigan, are you
+changing your dress?" Sissy's voice fell suddenly, and she put the
+question in a calm, magisterial tone that sent every eye in the room on
+a query toward the eldest Madigan.</p>
+
+<p>Kate turned at bay. She had slipped off her waist, and the red was
+flushing her long throat and small, spirited face. "Well, miss, suppose
+I am?" she demanded hotly.</p>
+
+<p>"She always changes her dress for dinner, you know," came in a
+sarcastic sneer from Split. "She wants to show our dear cousin how swell
+we are. We all wear low-necked rigs, and father has his swallowtail,
+and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I bring you the curling-iron, Kathy?" mocked Sissy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 342]</span>"Don't you want a rose for your
+hair, Kathleen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Or a ribbon here and there, as Mrs. Ramrod says, Kitty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Anne says," said Frank, feeling that this was some sort of game
+and that her turn had come, "he's going to mawwy you. Is he, Kate?"</p>
+
+<p>The white cashmere with the red-embroidered rosebuds slipped from
+Kate's hand. All innocent of malicious intent, Frank's shot had scored.
+The cry of the Pack that leaped about her could not touch Kate after
+this. She was frozen in by maidenly prudery, by childish
+self-consciousness, by Madigan perversity. When the bell rang she went
+in to dinner in her old pink gingham, her head high, her lips set, her
+eyes unseeing.</p>
+
+<p>"She's got 'em," Sissy whispered to Split.</p>
+
+<p>"Yep, that's the sulks all right," Split nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Kate." Miss Madigan, brave in her new purple gown with the
+lace collar at her throat, shot a reproachful glance at the unadorned
+young lady of the house. "Your cousin, Miles Morgan, Kate."</p>
+
+<p>"Howd' ye do?" Kate said coldly, ignoring his outstretched hand and
+passing on to her seat, where she began busily to serve the butter.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 343]</span>The savior of the family looked
+after her, interested. Though guilty of every count in Sissy's
+indictment, he was not accustomed to being overlooked by such very young
+ladies.</p>
+
+<p>"And this is Irene," said Miss Madigan, a tremor in her voice; she,
+too, knew now that Kate "had 'em." "This one is Cecilia; the twins,
+Bessie and Florence; and Frances, the baby."</p>
+
+<p>The savior of the family glanced along the line of five blank faces,
+and felt the perfunctory touch of five small, slippery hands with
+nothing more human about their clasp than the childish masks above
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, how do you tell one another apart?" he asked, with a sudden
+gleam in his eye, as they passed him and slid into their places.</p>
+
+<p>A dozen pitying eyes looked coldly at him; half a dozen small mouths
+curved disdainfully. His remark seemed to make them more than ever like
+mechanisms&mdash;hostile ones.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Madigan dropped the soup-ladle in her confusion. To that
+experienced lady there was something ominous about so unbroken a union
+of Madigans; she remembered with sorrow the few times any subject had
+found them unanimous.</p>
+
+<p>But Madigan came in just then, took his seat at the head, looked
+mechanically for the ban<span class="pagenum">[Pg. 344]</span>ished dog
+and the cat, and Dusie, chirping madly in her cage to attract his
+attention to the fact of her cruel and unusual imprisonment. He cleared
+his throat and took up the carver&mdash;and immediately Miles Morgan was
+conscious of an unbending of the small Madigans&mdash;a cuddling
+together, so to speak, and a swift interchange of impressions.</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't given me an opportunity to explain, Miss Madigan&mdash;"
+he began, in the pause during which Madigan carved strenuously.</p>
+
+<p>"'Aunt Anne,' if you please, my dear boy," urged Miss Madigan,
+warmly. "The relationship's distant, but now that you are with us we can
+have no ceremony out here in the wilds."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you." The savior, turning toward her, saw the fattest
+little Madigan nudge her red-haired neighbor savagely. She was evidently
+angry at something. "It's good of you to take me in like this. What I
+want to say is that the train was late crawling crookedly up and around
+the mountains. I had no idea of arriving in the evening and coming in
+upon you this way. But when I got here, the town looked so savage, don't
+you know, so&mdash;drear&mdash;and desolate and&mdash;and flimsy, I got
+a bit home-sick&mdash;there! The thought of all you
+people, <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 345]</span>my own people, housed
+somewhere in the spraddling town, called to me. I positively couldn't
+wait till morning. You'll forgive me&mdash;Aunt Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>A suppressed gurgle came from a blonde Madigan on the other side of
+the table, choking over her soup at this endearment. A brunette just her
+height spoke rapidly to her and persuasively, but to no avail. Alarming
+sounds came from the victim till presently a very dignified, small fat
+person rose from her seat, made her way to the nearly suffocated blonde,
+gave her a thump between the shoulder-blades that brought tears of
+another variety to the sufferer's eyes, and walked composedly back to
+her seat.</p>
+
+<p>"How can you be so rough, Sissy!" Aunt Anne exclaimed in an agitated
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;Sissy!" The savior leaned forward, looking across with a
+smile in his eye that might have melted any heart save so savage a
+Madigan's. "So you are Sissy."</p>
+
+<p>"My name," said that young person, meeting his smiling eye coldly,
+"is Cecilia."</p>
+
+<p>"But your friends call you Sissy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my friends do," admitted the perfectionist, with an accent that
+was supposed to be crushing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 346]</span>"And you sign yourself so in
+your letters?" he went on pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>"My letters?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; your informal little notes, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy laid down her spoon. A sudden distaste for eating, for living,
+for breathing had come upon her. She had forgotten her postscript to
+that unhappy letter; it was all so long ago, and Aunt Anne's letters
+never had had a sequel! But before her now the savior's head seemed to
+bob up and down sickeningly, while a voice cried in her ears so loud she
+fancied the whole table must hear it:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"You&mdash;whoever you are&mdash;needn't bother to answer
+this. None of us Madigans wants your help or annybody else's. It's only
+that Aunt Anne's got the scribbles, and we'll thank you to mind your own
+business.</p>
+
+<p class="author1">"<i>Sissy Madigan.</i>"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The savior threw back his head in a quite boyish way and laughed
+aloud as he watched her face.</p>
+
+<p>A cold rage seized Sissy. To be laughed at before the whole table!
+She hated him; she knew she hated him!</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand," said Madigan,
+feeling <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 347]</span>called upon to say
+something that was not vituperative at his own dinner-table. "You could
+never have seen a note of Sissy's, Mr. Morgan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never." The savior lied like a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>But he was mistaken if he supposed that he had placated Cecilia. She
+would not even meet his eyes, those eyes that twinkled so
+enjoyingly.</p>
+
+<p>The savior tried Irene.</p>
+
+<p>"You and I have hair the same color," he said genially. "I hope your
+temper isn't like mine, too."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not," she answered stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed again, that big, amused laugh. Split's eyes shot fire.
+Evidently the Madigans were funnier than they knew.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I wonder," he said, "would that be a compliment or a
+confession?"</p>
+
+<p>"Irene is trying and succeeding better every day in gaining
+self-control," interposed Aunt Anne, with hasty amiability. To discuss
+Irene's temper in committee of the whole, like that&mdash;the temerity
+of the man! "Won't you have some more mutton?" she pressed. "It's
+wash-day, you know, and it's just a pick-up dinner; but we're so glad to
+have you, if you'll excuse&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The apology's due from me, you know," <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+348]</span>he interrupted. "And the good fortune's mine, too. Fancy me
+dining the evening of my arrival at that brick barn they call the hotel
+down yonder! It will be hard enough when I really have to live
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"You do not surely expect&mdash;" began Madigan, pausing over his
+strawberries.</p>
+
+<p>"To live 'out West'? Will you let me tell you how it happened, Mr.
+Madigan? There isn't much to it&mdash;just this: Miles Madigan, as you
+know&mdash;do you know?&mdash;was not the man to leave much behind him.
+Not that he'd deliberately wrong a fellow, poor old chap,
+but&mdash;well&mdash;oh, you understand! Well, when his solicitors got
+through subtracting and dividing and subdividing, the heir&mdash;one
+Miles Morgan, bred to do nothing, and with a talent for that profession,
+I must admit&mdash;found himself poor, with just enough to live on. The
+ten thousand a year had&mdash;just slipped through Miles Madigan's
+fingers."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Miss Madigan's voice was sympathizing, disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>"Then"&mdash;it was Frank's clear treble; she hadn't understood much,
+but she knew what "poor" meant: a Madigan learned that early&mdash;"then
+you're not going to mawwy Kate?"</p>
+
+<p>Kate went white, while Miss Madigan's deli<span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+349]</span>cate face flushed purple, and Split pinched Sissy's arm, in
+her excitement, till that young woman cried aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"Frances&mdash;outside!" stormed Madigan.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Madigan&mdash;please!" deprecated the savior, holding out
+his arms to the whimpering Frances, who jumped into them as to a refuge.
+"No, little girl," he said, bending down to reassure her, "I'm going to
+marry Sissy; that's why I came out here."</p>
+
+<p>A gasp of relief parted Kate's trembling lips. She was very near
+being fond of the detested savior in that moment, in her gratitude to
+him for not having looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>But oh, the disdain of Sissy! It was such a very poor joke, in her
+opinion. Her round little face with its dots for features looked so sour
+and supercilious, as she passed the savior with averted eyes on her way
+out of the dining-room,&mdash;the children were withdrawing
+now,&mdash;that he could not resist putting out a hand to stop her.</p>
+
+<p>"You will have me, Sissy?" he begged with a laugh. "Think of a man
+coming clear out here with so little encouragement as I had. Such
+devotion might appeal to a heart of stone!"</p>
+
+<p>His enemy stood with downcast eyes, the
+red <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 350]</span>slowly mounting to the
+smoothed-back brown hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Sissy's Number One in her class," ventured Frank, as a
+recommendation.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not!" flamed forth Sissy. "I never was, or&mdash;or if I was it
+was because of&mdash;of&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Sissy!" interjected Miss Madigan, grieved.</p>
+
+<p>"Of a mistake of some sort," suggested the savior, soothingly. "Well,
+I suppose I could marry a girl that was only Number Two."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm never Number Two&mdash;never! I'm Number&mdash;Twenty!" Sissy's
+eyes were raised for a moment to his&mdash;a revelation of the insulted
+dignity seething within her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, a Number Twenty wife is good enough; but we'd have to live
+in Ireland, I suppose," said the savior, philosophically.</p>
+
+<p>A passion of wrath at his dullness filled the clever Sissy, and she
+sought for a moment before she found the weapon to hurt him.</p>
+
+<p>"In Ireland, you know," she said, as deliberately as she could for
+fear of breaking into tears before she had delivered the insult, "the
+pigs live in the parlor, and&mdash;and the children have no place to
+sleep and&mdash;go barefooted!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" The savior was stunned for an instant, but he recovered. "No, I
+didn't know. <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 351]</span>But in Nevada, I'm
+told, the Indians eat Irishmen alive, and those that are left are shot
+down by white desperados on C Street every day just at noon! We couldn't
+live here, could we?"</p>
+
+<p>Sissy gasped. She opened her lips as if to speak, but closed them
+again, and suddenly, in the instant's pause, there came an irresistible
+giggle from Split, already out in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy's hands flew to her breast. She shook off her suitor's
+detaining hand and bolted.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't help it," the savior said to Madigan, who was looking at
+him with that perplexed frown which the manifestation of his children's
+eccentricities so often brought to his face. "She is delightful. What
+jolly times we'll have getting acquainted! How fortunate you are, Mr.
+Madigan, to have these&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Madigan threw up his head, a challenge in his eye. Was he even to be
+congratulated upon his misfortunes?</p>
+
+<p>"I always said," the savior went on, with a chuckle,&mdash;"in fact,
+I began to say it before I got into knickerbockers,&mdash;that I
+intended to be the father of a family numbering at least a 'baker's
+dozzen.' I believe I had a vague notion that by means of superabundance
+of paternity I could atone to myself for my lack of
+other <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 352]</span>family ties. I was always so
+beastly alone. Yet no one&mdash;Miles Madigan least of all&mdash;saw the
+pathos of my lot. 'He's young and unencumbered,' he said of me toward
+the last when he was reminded of how little he had left for me. 'He'll
+get along. Besides, there's that wildcat mine out in the States; I'm
+leaving him that.'"</p>
+
+<p>Madigan's pipe fell to the floor; he had been filling it for his
+after-dinner smoke. "You've got the Tomboy!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"That interests you?" Morgan asked.</p>
+
+<p>Kate, who picked up the pipe and handed it to her father, as she
+passed, the last of the line of young Madigans on the way out, saw how
+Francis Madigan's hand shook. Mechanically she paused and listened.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I was swindled out of my share of that mine," he said
+harshly. "Miles Madigan knew that in fairness half of it was mine. I
+found it. I worked for it. I put aside all other opportunities to devote
+myself to developing it. I sacrificed my children and my business to it.
+I gave up the best years of my life to it. I bore disappointment and
+poverty because of it. I was at the end of my tether when Miles Madigan
+went into it with me; and yet when I saw he was bent on freezing me out
+of it, I&mdash;I&mdash; But <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 353]</span>after
+he got it he didn't know what to do with it. He left it to be worked and
+himself fleeced by strangers. But&mdash;it killed my wife, and left me,
+after all those years of litigation, an embittered, beggared, broken
+man!"</p>
+
+<p>"And so it's but fair"&mdash;to Kate, shivering at the revelation in
+her father's voice, Miles Morgan's words seemed like soothing
+music&mdash;"it's but fair that you and I should handle the thing
+together&mdash;what there is of it, Mr. Madigan," he added hastily, as
+Madigan was about to speak; and he leaned forward, holding out his hand
+boyishly. "There may not be much, but I can get English capital to
+develop it, at a sacrifice of half its value now, and its possibilities.
+So that will leave only quarter shares for each of us. I may be offering
+you only a lot of work and a disappointment at the end. But the thing
+seemed worth enough to me, 'way over on the other side, to come out here
+and look into it myself. And one thing that made it seem so was the
+desperate battle you had fought to keep it. I hoped&mdash;I hoped you'd
+like me well enough, when we got to know each other, to help me with
+your experience, and&mdash;frankly, to help yourself in helping me. I
+had no intention of saying all this to-night, but&mdash;allow me, Cousin
+Kate."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 354]</span>He had dropped Madigan's hand
+after a hearty squeeze, and was standing holding open the door for Kate
+to pass.</p>
+
+<p>It was a glorified Kate, for, lo, the veil of ill humor had fallen; a
+treacherous Kate, Sissy would have said, for she shone out now, warm and
+sparkling, upon the man who had had the discrimination to let a brood of
+small Madigans pass without special attention, yet who jumped to his
+feet when the young-lady daughter of the house made her exit, and stood
+looking after her till Madigan hauled him off to the library to talk
+about the Tomboy.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>That certain contentment which followed after an unusually good
+dinner, when the world and the Madigans were young together, had
+inspired Old Mother Gibson. The original couplet, with which all
+Madigans are familiar, is not strictly quotable; it was not invented,
+but adopted, by them. And it served merely to give a name to the game,
+which was half a war-dance, half a cake-walk, accompanied by chanted
+couplets composed by each performer in turn; said couplets being
+necessarily original and relevant locally. The accompaniment&mdash;an
+easy change of chords&mdash;was played on the piano <i>colla voce</i>.
+And no one minded in the least a <span class="pagenum">[Pg.
+355]</span>foot, more or less, at the end of a verse. The joke was the
+thing with the Madigans, and the impromptu rhyme that brought down the
+house was the one that hit hardest.</p>
+
+<p>For Old Mother Gibson was a satire, a pasquinade, a flesh-and-blood
+libel done in rhyme, of wildest license both as to form and matter, and
+set to music&mdash;to be discharged full at the head of the victim. It
+began in an orderly way, every Madigan in her turn playing both parts of
+victim and cartoonist. But it degenerated into an open and shameless
+mimicry of Aunt Anne, of Francis Madigan, of the school-master, Mrs.
+Ramrod, the Misses Blind-Staggers, Professor Trask, Dr. Murchison, Wong,
+Indian Jim, and, finally, each of the other's tenderest folly&mdash;till
+a living caricature too true or too cutting precipitated an appeal to
+arms, and the Lighthouse, which was always in the way, was tipped over
+in the m&ecirc;l&eacute;e, and had to be thrown out of the window, there
+to burn itself into darkness innocuously.</p>
+
+<p>Old Mother Gibson was given by a full cast the night of the savior's
+arrival. Though Jane Cody had been merciless, Jack, tempted beyond his
+powers of resistance by the sounds of revelry upon the hill, was
+stalking about in melancholy masquerade among its personnel.
+Bom<span class="pagenum">[Pg. 356]</span>bey Forrest, her delicate head
+looking like a surprised sunflower upon its masculine stalk, had come
+in, and Crosby Pemberton, looking as much out of place in his immaculate
+linen and small Tuxedo as either of these, was joyous at being among
+Madigans again.</p>
+
+<p>You might have heard&mdash;if you'd stood out on the piazza looking
+in, and happened to have the key to the riddle&mdash;a hint in verse of
+every Madigan escapade, of every Madigan failing, of all the Madigan
+jokes, on Old Mother Gibson nights. You would have seen even
+Kate&mdash;young-lady Kate, who had once substituted in a
+school&mdash;join in this mad revel, with an appetite for fun that
+showed how much of a child she still was.</p>
+
+<p>An impressionable young Irishman, who had come out upon the piazza to
+smoke a cigar and think himself back into his usual poise after a day
+full of new experiences, had his attention attracted by the strumming on
+the piano; and glancing in through the open window, he saw a slender,
+graceful girl, her dark head rising lightly from the sailor collar of a
+pink gingham blouse. She was balancing lightly as she walked, keeping
+time to the rhythm, and followed by a procession of children in single
+file. (A belief in the efficacy of motion to
+stimulate <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 357]</span>one's power of
+improvisation made Old Mother Gibson the liveliest of games.) And
+arriving at the center of the stage, she delivered herself in a singsong
+of the following:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Old Mother Gibson, be on your best behavior,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or you'll surely fail to satisfy the savior."<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It didn't seem a very funny or apposite ditty to Miles Morgan, but,
+to judge by its effect upon those within, it was exquisitely witty. The
+whole company doubled up with laughter. It giggled till its collective
+sides must have ached; then it slowly and gaspingly subsided. When it
+had quieted down, the piano began again, and a red-headed Madigan,
+intoxicated by the music, the license of the time, and the excitement
+accompanying creative work, danced a fantastic <i>pas seul</i>, as she
+flew about in the Mother Gibson merry-go-round.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Old Mother Gibson's savior was a dandy&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He thought he'd buy the Madigans with a stick of candy!"<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>sang Split, and the parlor yelled itself hoarse with uproarious
+delight.</p>
+
+<p>The fat little girl at the piano began to
+play, <span class="pagenum">[Pg. 358]</span>and stopped several times,
+that she might wipe the tears of laughter from her eyes and get her
+breath. At last, with a squaring of her shoulders and a stiffening of
+backbone that seemed queerly familiar to Morgan, watching outside, she
+half drawled, half sang, with an unmistakable accent:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Old Mother Gibson was angry at the Fates;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My word! They sent the savior 'way out to the States!"<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A sudden enlightenment came to Miles Morgan. For a moment the red
+flamed up in his cheek, and if Split could have seen his face she might
+have fancied that some imp had caught her likeness, when her temper had
+got beyond her control, and set it on this man's body.</p>
+
+<p>"The impudent little beggars!" Morgan cried furiously. "My word!" He
+stopped, remembering the use to which his favorite exclamation had been
+put. "But what a saucy lot!" He was laughing before he had finished
+wording his thought.</p>
+
+<p>He was interested now, and listened with a grin to Fom's declaration
+that</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 359]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Old Mother Gibson ought to've known better<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then to come in answer to Aunt Anne's letter."<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He saw even Frank strutting in the ring, though she was capable only
+of a repetition of the classic phrase with which each couplet began. And
+he laughed with the rest at Bep,&mdash;poor, unready Bep, set as by a
+musical time-lock and bound to go off,&mdash;getting slower and slower
+in motion as well as utterance, the accompaniment retarding
+sympathetically as the critical moment approached when she must be
+delivered of her rhyme.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Old Mother Gibson, why do you&mdash;"<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>she began her singsong. "No, no! Wait. I know another. 'T ain't
+fair," she stammered in a prose parenthesis.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Old Mother Gibson had a&mdash;<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Stop laughing, now; wait a minute. You don't give me a chance,
+Sissy. You play faster for me than for anybody else! You do it
+a-purpose, too, just 'cause you know it's easy to bluster me.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 360]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Old Moth-er&mdash;Gib-son&mdash;"<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Bep stopped suddenly, for through the glass doors came the subject of
+her lay. He had a finger to his lips as he glanced at Sissy's
+back&mdash;a hint that the rest of the company seized delightedly. And
+when the music began again, he was not ashamed to make this
+contribution:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Old Mother Gibson, take pity on a cousin<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Left to the tender mercies of the other half-dozen!"<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>At first the accompanist, accustomed to the rodomontade of voice as
+well as gesture of the excited performers, was not aware of the
+interloper. When she finally spun around and saw the savior singing in
+the midst of his libelers, she let him finish the couplet unaccompanied,
+and sat, a fat, shocked statue glued to the piano-stool, staring at
+him.</p>
+
+<p>It was absurd of him, but there was something in Old Mother Gibson,
+as the Madigans sang and played her, that turned the soberest of heads.
+And the savior's forte was not in being staid. He fell upon his knee
+before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, O Sissy, for not being a Madigan," he begged, "and
+receive me into the fold!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg. 361]</span>She looked down at him,
+self-conscious, embarrassed; yet the hidden sentimentality of her nature
+was appealed to by the masculine young face turned half laughing, half
+seriously, to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure," she asked shyly, "that you're not one already?"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It is of record that one evening during that summer when the old
+Tomboy mine was reopened, a young Irishman newly arrived on the Comstock
+escorted down to Fitzmeier's&mdash;where, everybody knows, there is
+ice-cream to be had&mdash;six girls of assorted ages, one boy, and two
+young persons whose garments belied their sex. Yet they all seemed
+rampantly happy and quite unashamed.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Madigans, by Miriam Michelson
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+</body>
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+
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@@ -0,0 +1,7468 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Madigans, by Miriam Michelson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Madigans
+
+Author: Miriam Michelson
+
+Illustrator: Orson Lowell
+
+Release Date: April 27, 2007 [EBook #21243]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MADIGANS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by V. L. Simpson and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    [Illustration:
+      A Few of Irene's "Fathers"]
+
+
+THE MADIGANS
+BY
+MIRIAM MICHELSON
+
+
+
+AUTHOR OF "IN THE BISHOP'S CARRIAGE"
+
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
+BY ORSON LOWELL
+
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+THE CENTURY CO.
+1904
+
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1904, by
+The Century Co.
+
+_Published October, 1904_
+
+The DeVinne Press
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                          PAGE
+
+Cecilia the Pharisee         3
+
+A Pagan and a Puritan       39
+
+A Merry, Merry Zingara      79
+
+The Shut-Ups               115
+
+The Ancestry of Irene      147
+
+The Last Straw             189
+
+A Ready Letter-Writer      219
+
+"The Martyrdom of Man"     265
+
+Kate: A Pretense           297
+
+Old Mother Gibson          331
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+A Few of Irene's "Fathers"                          _Frontispiece_
+
+"That settles Number 10," said Sissy, grimly               7
+
+Left the room with such uncompromising hauteur
+... that her aunt again exploded                          13
+
+"Please, Mr. Garvan," she said                            17
+
+Some of the Madigans                                      23
+
+The Rest of the Madigans                                  29
+
+Seizing Sissy in his arms, he bore her off to bed         35
+
+"Play it, then, you mean thing," she cried, ... "if
+it's going to do you any good!"                           47
+
+"Go and shake hands properly, like a little gentleman,"
+bullied Mrs. Pemberton                                    53
+
+Of the design and construction of which he was quite
+vain                                                      63
+
+The Belle of the Afternoon                                71
+
+She was pronounced a "regular little love" by the
+Misses Bryne-Stivers                                      91
+
+"I don't see how you're going to dance in them"           95
+
+"But is she _very_ sick?"                                101
+
+She glanced up the incline of the see-saw to the height
+whence Irene looked down                                 153
+
+"I want you--come!" the Indian princess announced        163
+
+They had coasted only half a block                       169
+
+"Oh, you needn't glare at me!" exclaimed Bep             183
+
+A train meant domesticity and dignity to Sissy. In
+Split it bred and fostered a spirit of coquetry          223
+
+Stamping ... in a frenzy                                 229
+
+Madigan banged the door behind him as he fled            237
+
+"Here would I rest," she chanted                         253
+
+She walked a step or two with him                        261
+
+
+
+
+THE MADIGANS
+
+
+
+
+CECILIA THE PHARISEE
+
+
+    I, Cecilia Morgan Madigan, being of sound mind and in
+    purfect bodily health, and residing in Virginia City,
+    Nevada, do hereby on this first day of April solemnly
+    promise:
+
+    1. That I will be Number 1 this next month at school.
+
+    2. That I will be pachient with Papa, and try to stand
+    him.
+
+    3. That I will set Bep--yes, and Fom too, even if she is
+    Irene's partner--a good example.
+
+    4. That I will not once this next month pinch Aunt
+    Anne's sensative plant--no matter what she does to me.
+
+    5. That I will dust the back legs of the piano even when
+    Mrs. Pemberton isn't expected.
+
+    6. That I will help Kate controll her temper, and not
+    mock and aggravate her when she sulks.
+
+    7. That I will be a little mother to Frank and teach her
+    to grow up and be a creddit to the famly.
+
+    8. That I will not steal candy out of Kate's
+    pocket--without first begging her very hard to give me
+    some.
+
+    9. That I will practice The Gazelle fathfully every
+    solatary day. And give up reading on the sly while I
+    play 5-finger exercises.
+
+    10. That I will try to bear with Irene. That I will do
+    all I can not to fight with her--but she is a selfish
+    devvil who is always in the wrong.
+
+    And all this I solemnly promise myself without being
+    coersed in any way, of my own free will, without let or
+    hidrance, because I want to be good.
+
+                 _Cecilia Morgan Madigan_ (_called Sissy_),
+                                     Aged 11 last birthday.
+
+    P.S. And I feel sure I can do it all, God helping me,
+    except Number 10--which is the hardest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sissy, who had been sitting writing only half dressed, folded the paper
+reverently, put it to her lips for lack of a seal, and then buttoned it
+firmly inside her corset waist.
+
+She felt so virtuous already that the carrying out of her intentions
+seemed really supererogatory. When she went to Irene to have her button
+her dress in the back, she had such a sensation of holiness, such a
+consciousness of a forbearing, pure, and gentle spirit, that her
+sister's malicious pretense of ignoring her presence appeared to her
+nothing less than sacrilege.
+
+"Ain't you going to button me, Split?" she demanded, indignant that her
+enemy, whom she was going to treat with Christ-like charity, should
+successfully try her temper before the ink was dry on her own promise to
+keep the peace.
+
+"Ask me pretty," grinned Split, whose nickname honored a gymnastic feat
+which no other Madigan, however athletic, could accomplish half so
+successfully as the second. "Say 'please.'"
+
+"I won't do anything of the sort. You know you've got to do it, and
+you've no right to expect me to say 'please' every time. You don't do it
+yourself, you hateful thing!"
+
+"Why don't you cry?"
+
+"Because I won't for you--because you can't make me--because--"
+
+"Because you are crying in spite of yourself! Because anybody can make
+you cry, cry-baby!"
+
+Sissy's hands flew up to her breast. It was a recognized gesture with
+her, a physical holding of herself together in the last minute that
+preceded her temperamental flying to pieces.
+
+Split retreated cautiously, clearing the deck herself for action.
+
+But no first gun was fired in that engagement. A crackling of the
+document hidden over the spot where she thought her heart was came like
+a warning note to Sissy. She struggled against it a moment; then her
+hands fell. Meekly she turned her back upon her tormentor, and in a
+voice of such exquisite holiness as to be almost unearthly, she said:
+
+"Split dear, will you please button me?"
+
+A look of outraged astonishment at the unheard-of endearment came over
+Irene's face. The Madigans regarded demonstrative affection as pure
+affectation at its best; at its worst it was little short of indecent.
+
+"'Split dear?'" mocked Irene as soon as she recovered. "Yes, dear. Turn
+around, dear. Stand straight, dear. Wait a minute, dear--"
+
+Sissy stood in silence, biting her tongue that she might not speak. She
+was so occupied with the desire to keep Number 10 of her compact with
+herself that she did not notice how long it was before Irene really
+began to button her waist. She did note, though, that she began at the
+bottom, a proceeding Split fancied merely because it drove her junior
+nearly frantic. She buttoned with maddening slowness up to the middle,
+when she capriciously left this point and recommenced at the top.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "'That settles Number 10,' said Sissy, grimly"]
+
+Mentally Sissy followed the operation. It was almost complete when
+through the little gap purposely left open Split deftly introduced a
+providentially flattened piece of ice from the window-sill, giving her
+victim a little shake that sent the ice slipping smoothly down her
+squirming body, but escaping before Sissy could turn and rend her.
+
+"That settles Number 10," said Sissy, grimly, to herself, while she
+danced with discomfort. "I'll kill her if I get a chance--that's what
+I'll do. I'll get even, or my name's not Sis Madigan."
+
+She hurried back into her room, which the twins shared, and stood in
+damp martyrdom while Bessie's butter-fingers crept with miserable
+slowness up and down. She suffered so from Bessie's ineptness that,
+despite the requirements of Number 3 of her code, she tore herself
+violently from her and turned her back imploringly to Florence. But Fom
+was a partizan of Split's, and it was against all the ethics of Madigan
+warfare to aid and comfort the enemy. When Sissy, chastened, returned to
+Bep's ministrations, the blonde one of the twins was so hurt and
+offended by the implication of awkwardness--a point upon which she was
+as vulnerable as she was sensitive--that Sissy slapped them both before
+she went at last for relief to Aunt Anne.
+
+This was fatal, as she knew it would be.
+
+"I shall tell your father about Irene," her aunt said, looking up from
+the coffee she was sipping as she lay in bed reading a French book. "But
+it's just as well, for I told you yesterday that that dress was too
+dirty to wear another day. Change it now--"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Anne, it's late already--"
+
+"You'll change that dress, Sissy, or you won't go to school."
+
+"I won't! It's too late. I'll be late. That means one credit off, and
+this month I'm going--" A remembrance of her lofty intentions came
+suddenly to Sissy. All the world seemed bent on compelling her to
+forswear herself.
+
+"Cecilia!" commanded Miss Madigan.
+
+Sissy stiffened.
+
+"You've disturbed my reading enough this morning. If you say another
+word I'll--"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Anne--"
+
+"Go over to the wall, Cecilia, and stand with your back to me for five
+minutes."
+
+With a fiendish light in her eye--a light of such desperate satisfaction
+as betokened one gladly driven to commit the unforgivable Sissy moved
+toward the sensitive-plant in the window.
+
+"Not there! That poor plant seems to suffer sympathetically with your
+badness. Stand over by the bureau."
+
+Sissy obeyed. Her rage at being made ridiculous, her sense of outrage
+that a perfectionist like herself should suffer punishment, added to her
+knowledge of the flight of time on school mornings, strangled her into
+dumbness. But she clasped the paper in her breast as a drowning man
+might a spar from the wreck. At least Number 4 was intact. She had been
+mercifully spared the fracture of this one of her self-made
+commandments.
+
+She was standing with her nose pressed firmly against the green
+wall-paper, her back laid open as by a surgical operation, and a towel,
+which her aunt had forced into the aperture for drying purposes,
+dangling down behind, when Kate, passing the door on her way to
+breakfast, glanced in.
+
+Her sputtering, quickly stifled screech of laughter sent Sissy spinning
+about as a bull does when the banderilla is planted in his quivering
+flesh. She looked at the doorway; it was empty, but she heard scurrying
+footsteps without. Kate was on her way to tell the others.
+
+She looked at Aunt Anne. That severe lady had dropped her book and,
+seized by the contagion, was shaking with silent laughter.
+
+Not a word did Sissy say. Her expression of disgust,--disgust that a
+grown-up should be so silly as to see something funny in absolutely
+nothing; disgust that her aunt should so weaken the effect of her own
+discipline,--reinforced by the green smudge on her nose, rubbed off the
+wall-paper, finished Miss Madigan. The lady no longer attempted to
+conceal the disgraceful fact that she was laughing. She gave an audible
+gurgle, and began to wipe the tears of enjoyment from her eyes.
+
+In that moment the iron entered into Sissy Madigan's soul. She turned
+again to the wall, and taking a pin which had fastened the bow of ribbon
+at her throat, she pricked slowly but relentlessly in the loose
+wall-paper this legend:
+
+  AUNT ANNE--PIG
+
+After which she felt relieved, and, the five minutes being up, left the
+room with such uncompromising hauteur, still splashed with green on the
+nose, still split open down the back, with the towel's fringe dangling
+in dignity behind, that her aunt again exploded.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "Left the room with such uncompromising hauteur ... that
+       her aunt again exploded"]
+
+The fact that she had irretrievably lost one credit through tardiness
+set Sissy's lips in a tight line of determination to guard jealously
+every one of the ninety-and-nine left to her.
+
+At recess she remained at her desk studying her geography with an
+intensity of purpose that made her rivals' hearts quake. She sat at the
+teacher's desk--lifted to this almost regal eminence by his fondness for
+her petulant ways as well as because of that quality of leadership which
+made Sissy her fellows' spokeswoman. Hers was the privilege of using the
+master's pencils, sharpened to a fineness that made neatness a
+dissipation instead of a task. It was she, of course, who originated the
+decorative style of arithmetic-paper much in vogue, on which each
+example was penned off in an inclosure fenced by alternating vertical
+and horizontal double hyphens.
+
+But a queer, conscientious sense of the responsibilities of power and
+place modified Sissy's rapturous delight in her position, so that she
+kept it despite a fiercely jealous class-spirit developed by a strict
+credit-system, by the emulative temper which the rarefied atmosphere of
+the little mining town fostered, and by a young master just out of
+college who looked upon his teaching as a temporary adventure, much as
+a Japanese gentleman regards domestic service.
+
+It was in her capacity of class representative that the master had
+consulted Sissy upon the limits to be observed in the forthcoming public
+oral examination in geography. And she had enlightened him as to what
+would be considered quite "fair." This treaty, into which she entered
+with the seriousness of an ambassador to an unfriendly power arranging a
+settlement of a disputed question, had a character so sacred in her eyes
+that its violation by the master in the course of the afternoon came
+upon her like a blow.
+
+"Cecilia Madigan," asked the master, "what is the highest mountain in
+the world?"
+
+Sissy rose. The imposing array of visitors in school faded out of her
+horizon. All she could see was the eyes of her schoolmates turned in
+accusatory horror upon her. They suspected her of betraying them; of
+using her elevated position to hand down untrustworthy information.
+
+"Please, Mr. Garvan," she said in tones more of sorrow than of anger,
+skilfully showing her knowledge of the answer while denying his right to
+it, "that question isn't on the map of Africa."
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "'Please, Mr. Garvan,' she said"]
+
+A flush of annoyance mounted to the young master's forehead. Out of the
+corner of her eye Sissy saw the preliminary twitch of the corners of his
+lips that served the class for a danger-signal.
+
+"What is the highest mountain, Cecilia?" he repeated sternly.
+
+Sissy stood a moment looking at him. All that she might not say--her
+contempt for pledge-breakers, her shocked hero-worship now forever a
+thing of the past, her outraged school-girl's affection--she shot
+straight at the master from her angry eyes.
+
+Then she sat down.
+
+"I don't know," she said.
+
+He looked up from his book, incredulous. Ten credits out of one hundred
+gone at one fell swoop--ten of Sissy Madigan's credits, for which she
+fought so gallantly and which she cherished so jealously when she once
+had them in her possession.
+
+"I--don't--know," repeated Sissy, disdainfully.
+
+The master passed the question. But as he put it to the next girl, Sissy
+put another question, with her eyes, to the same girl.
+
+"Are you a scab?" her steady gaze challenged. "Are you going to benefit
+by what a mate suffers for principle's sake? Are you a coward who
+doesn't dare to stand up for your class? And--do you know what you'll
+get from me if you are?"
+
+"I--don't--know," faltered the girl.
+
+A glory of triumph shot over Sissy's face. It leaped like a sunrise from
+peak to peak in a mountain-range of obstinacy. "I don't know"--"I don't
+know"--"I don't know"--the shibboleth of the strikers' cause went down
+the line. The master was shamed in public by the banner pupils of his
+school. He writhed, but he put the question steadily to every girl till
+he came to Irene, last in the line.
+
+"What is the highest mountain in the world?" he asked, perfunctorily
+now.
+
+But, to his amazement, she rose, and, looking out of the window up to
+the mountain to the skirts of which the town clung, she answered:
+
+"Mount Davidson."
+
+Sissy's savage joy followed so quickly upon her horror at her own
+sister's defection that the closing of school left her in a trembling
+storm of emotions. In the dressing-room, where the girls were putting on
+their hats, she marched up to Irene, followed by her wrathful adherents
+and feeling like an avenging Brutus.
+
+"You're a sneak, Split Madigan! You're a coward, and--and a stupid
+coward. You don't know enough to betray your class and get the benefit
+of it, but you'd rather be mean than get credits, anyway. Nobody can
+count on you. Changeable Silk, that's what you are--changing color all
+the time, never standing firm! I hate you! Changeable Silk! Changeable
+Silk!"
+
+"Changeable Silk! Changeable Silk!" chanted her following.
+
+The little dressing-room rang with the cry of the mob, so filled with
+significance by the tone in which it was uttered that Irene paled and
+shrank.
+
+But only for a moment. The Madigans never lacked courage long. That
+fierce internecine strife waged by the clan in the old house high on the
+side of the hill made a Madigan quick and resolute.
+
+"Stupid yourself, Sissy! My answer made him madder than your not
+answering."
+
+Sissy looked at her searchingly. "But--did you--" she wavered.
+
+"Of course I did! Who's the stupid now? Do you s'pose I didn't know it
+was--"
+
+"What?--what?" Sissy repeated as her sister hesitated.
+
+Irene turned up her nose insultingly. "I don't--know," she mocked, and
+beat a successful retreat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Francis Madigan dined in a long room, the only man at a table with seven
+women ranging in years from four to forty-four. The accumulation of
+girls in his family was so wanton an outrage upon his desires that he
+rather rejoiced in the completeness of the infliction as an undeniable
+grievance.
+
+He needed a grievance as a shield against which others' grievances might
+be shattered. And in default of a more tangible one, he cited his
+heavily be-daughtered house. It was at dinner-time that he always seemed
+to realize the extent of his disaster. As he took his place at the head,
+his wrathful eye swept from Frances in her high chair, up along the
+line, past the twins, through Cecilia, Irene, and Kate, till it lighted
+upon Miss Madigan's good-humored, placid face. His sister's placidity
+was an ever-present offense to the father of the Madigans,--the most
+irascible of unsuccessful men,--and the snort with which he finished the
+inspection and took up the carving-knife had become a classic in Madigan
+annals long before Sissy brought down the house at the age of eight by
+imitating it one evening in his absence.
+
+    [Illustration:
+       "Some of the Madigans"]
+
+But to-night a most painful and ostentatious respect marked Sissy's
+manner to her parent. She stood markedly,--while the others scrambled
+into their chairs and Wong, the Chinese servant, sped about placing
+everything on the table at once,--waiting for her father to be seated.
+
+She was still waiting politely when his eye lighted upon her. "Sit down,
+Cecilia!" he roared; "what d' ye want, gaping there?"
+
+Sissy sat down. So holy was she that she did not resent (openly) the
+low, delighted giggle Irene gave. She began to be politely attentive to
+Dusie, her father's pet canary, though she loathed the spoiled little
+thing that hopped about the table helping itself.
+
+Madigan had a way of telling himself, in his rare moments of
+introspection, that the tenderness he might have lavished upon a son he
+spent upon the male offspring of more fortunate genera than man. The big
+Newfoundland and the great cat came to meals regularly. They shared
+Madigan's affection with the birds (whose cage, big as a dog's house, he
+had himself nailed up against the side of the wall), that broke into a
+maddening din of song, excited by the rival clatter of young Madigans
+dining.
+
+Protected by this shrill symphony from the sound of his daughters'
+voices, Madigan fed his dog, his cat, and his favorite canary, and with
+his head upon one hand, in token of his abiding disgust with the human,
+daughterful world, ate quickly with the other.
+
+This pose was the signal that freed the feminine Madigan tongue. Usually
+they all broke into conversation at once; but on this evening there
+seemed to be some agreement which held them mute till Irene spoke.
+
+"I am glad to see you be so patient with papa, Sissy," she said gently.
+
+His third daughter glanced apprehensively at Madigan. But her father had
+retired within his shell, and nothing but a cataclysm could reach him
+there.
+
+"Why--" she said, puzzled, "why--I--"
+
+"Promise me that you'll try to stand him," urged Split, joyously.
+
+"And that you'll help me control my temper, and not mock and aggravate
+me when I sulk," chanted Kate.
+
+Sissy dropped her knife and fork, and her hands flew to her bosom, not
+in wrath, but in terror. The crackling testament was gone!
+
+"Split! You--"
+
+"Try to bear with me, won't you, Sis, even if I am a devil?" grinned
+Split.
+
+"And set us a good example, Sissy," piped the twins.
+
+Sissy gasped.
+
+"Be a yittle muvver to Fwank," lisped the baby, prompted by a big
+sister.
+
+"And don't steal candy out of my pocket, will you, Cecilia Morgan?"
+begged her oldest sister.
+
+"And--"
+
+Sissy sprang into the air, as though lifted bodily by the taunts of
+these ungrateful beneficiaries of her good intentions.
+
+"Sit down, you ox!" came in thundering tones from the head of the table.
+
+When one was called an ox among the Madigans the culprit invariably
+subsided, however the epithet might tend to make her sisters rejoice.
+But Sissy had borne too much in that one day--always keeping in mind the
+perfect sanctity with which she had begun it.
+
+With an inarticulate explanation that was at once a sob, a complaint,
+and a trembling defiance, she pushed back her chair and fled to her
+room. Here she sobbed in peace and plenty; sobbed till tears became a
+luxury to be produced by a conscious effort of the will. It had always
+been a grief to Sissy that she could never cry enough. Split, now, could
+weep vocally and by the hour, but all too soon for Sissy the wells of
+her own sorrow ran dry.
+
+Yet tears had ever a chastening effect upon the third of the Madigans.
+In due time she rose, washed her face, and combed back her hair and
+braided it in a tight plait that stuck out at an aggressive angle on the
+side; unaided she could never get it to depend properly from the middle.
+This heightened the feeling of utter peacefulness, of remorse washed
+clean, besides putting her upon such a spiritual elevation as enabled
+her to meet her world with composure, though bitter experience told her
+how long a joke lasted among the Madigans.
+
+She fell upon her knees at last beside her bed. No Madigan of this
+generation had been taught to pray, an aggressive skepticism--the
+tangent of excessive youthful religiosity--having made the girls' father
+an outspoken foe to religious exercise. But to Sissy's emotional,
+self-conscious soul the necessity for worded prayer came quick now and
+imperative.
+
+"O Lord," she pleaded aloud, "help me to keep 'em all--even Number
+10--in spite of Split and the devil. Help--"
+
+She heard the door open behind her.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "The Rest of the Madigans"]
+
+With a bound she was in bed, fully dressed as she was; and pulling the
+covers tight up to her neck, she waited, to all intents and purposes
+fast asleep.
+
+"You little fool!" said Madigan, with a hint of laughter in his heavy
+voice and laying a not ungentle hand on her blazing cheeks. "D' ye think
+I care if you want to kneel and kotow like other idiots? If you're that
+kind--and I suppose you are, being a woman--pray and be--blessed!"
+
+It was the nearest thing to a paternal benediction that had ever come to
+Sissy, but she was too wary a small actress to be moved by it out of her
+role. Nor did her father wait to note the effect of his words. His heavy
+step passed on and out of her room into his own, and the door slammed
+between them.
+
+In a moment Sissy was up; in another moment she had torn off her
+clothes, blown out her candle, and jumped back into bed. She was almost
+asleep when the twins came in, but she feigned the deepest of slumbers
+when Bessie pushed a crackling piece of paper under her pillow, though
+her fingers closed greedily about it as soon as the room was quiet
+again.
+
+She knew what it was--her precious compact with herself, that loyal
+little Bep had recaptured from the enemy. She lay there, lulled by its
+presence; and slowly, slowly she was dropping off into real slumber
+when a sharply agonizing thought, an inescapable mental pin-prick,
+roused her. It was Number 9. She had not touched the piano during the
+whole of that strenuous day.
+
+She withdrew her fingers reproachfully from the insistent reminder of
+virtuous intention, and resolutely she turned her back on it and tried
+to pretend herself to sleep. But every broken section of her treaty had
+a voice, and above them all clamored the call of Number 9 that it was
+not yet too late.
+
+When Sissy rose wearily at last and draped the Mexican quilt about her,
+the house was quiet. All youthful Madigans were abed, and the older ones
+were in secure seclusion.
+
+It was a small Saint Cecilia, with a short, stiff braid standing out
+from one side of her head, and utterly without musical enthusiasm, that
+sat down in the darkness at the old square piano. "La Gazelle" was out
+of the question, for she had no lamp and she did not yet know the trills
+and runs of her new "piece" by heart. But the five-finger exercises and
+the scales that it had been her custom to run over slightingly while she
+read from a paper novel by the Duchess open in front of her music--this
+much of an atonement was still within her power.
+
+With her bare foot on the soft pedal, that none might hear her, Sissy
+played. It was dark and very quiet; the hush-hush of the throbbing mines
+filled the night and stilled it. At times her heart stood still for fear
+that she might be discovered; at other times the longing for a
+sensational uncovering of her belated and extraordinary goodness seized
+her, and her naked foot slipped from the cold pedal only to be hurriedly
+replaced before the jangle of the keys could escape.
+
+How long she practised, and whether she redeemed herself and Number 9,
+Sissy never knew, for she fell asleep at last over the keys and was
+waked by a hoarse scream and a wild cry of "De debbil! De debbil!"
+
+It was Wong, the Chinaman, who had but one name for all things
+supernatural. Coming home from Chinatown, he was passing the glass door
+near which the piano stood when he saw the slender figure in its
+trailing white drapery bowed over the keys.
+
+Sissy looked up, sleep still bewildering her, and yet awake enough to be
+fearful of consequences. She tore open the door and sped after the
+Chinaman to enlighten him, but her pursuit only confirmed Wong's
+conception of that mission of malice which is devil's work on earth. A
+terrified howl burst from him. There was only one being on earth of whom
+he stood in greater awe than the thing he fancied he was fleeing from;
+that one, logically, must be greater than It. Taking his very life in
+his hand, he doubled, darted past the shivering Thing, flew on through
+the open door, and made straight for the master's room.
+
+For Sissy there was nothing to do but to follow.
+
+"I wanted to be good," she wailed, unnerved, when Aunt Anne had her by
+the shoulder and was catechizing her in the presence of a nightgowned
+multitude of excited Madigans.
+
+But succor came from an unexpected quarter. "Let the child alone, Anne,"
+growled Madigan, adjusting the segment of the leg of woolen underwear
+which he wore for a nightcap; and seizing Sissy in his arms, he bore her
+off to bed.
+
+"Papa's pet! Papa's baby!" mouthed Irene, under her breath, as she
+danced tauntingly along behind his back.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "Seizing Sissy in his arms, he bore her off to bed"]
+
+And Sissy, outraged in all the dignity of her eleven years at being
+carried like a child, but unspeakably happy in her father's favor,
+looked over his shoulder with a sheepish, smiling, sleepy face,
+murmuring, "Sour grapes, Split, sour grapes!"
+
+Afterward, encouraged by the darkness and the strangeness of being laid
+in bed from her father's arms, Sissy held him a moment by her side.
+
+"When men make promises on paper that they can't keep, father," she
+whispered, "what do they do?"
+
+"Oh, go to sleep, child! They become bankrupt, I suppose."
+
+"And--and what becomes of the paper?"
+
+"What do you know or care about such things? Will you go to sleep
+to-night?"
+
+"If you had any bankrupt's paper," she pleaded, catching hold of his
+hand as he turned to leave her, "what would you do with it--please,
+father!"
+
+"Why, tear it up, you goose."
+
+With a jump, Sissy was bolt upright in bed and holding up a fluttering,
+much-folded sheet, an almost incredulous joy in her eager voice.
+
+"Take mine and pretend I was bankrupt--please--oh, please!"
+
+To Madigan all children, his own particularly, were such unaccountable
+beings that a vagary more or less could not more hopelessly perplex his
+misunderstanding of them. With a "Tut! tut!" of impatience, he took the
+paper from her and tore it twice across.
+
+A long sigh of relief came from Sissy as the bits fluttered to the
+floor. "You're such a nice father!" she murmured happily, and fell
+asleep, a blissful bankrupt instead of a Pharisee.
+
+
+
+
+A PAGAN AND A PURITAN
+
+
+"Split! Split!"
+
+The morning was warm and young; Mount Davidson's side was golden with
+sunflowers. On the long front piazza Mr. Madigan's canaries, in their
+mammoth cage, were like to burst their throats for joy in the promise of
+summer. Irene, every lithe muscle a-play, was hanging by her knees on
+the swinging-bar, her tawny hair sweeping the woodshed floor as she
+swung.
+
+"Split, I say!"
+
+The tone was commanding--such a tone as Sissy dared assume only on
+Saturday mornings, when her elder sister's necessities delivered Irene
+the Oppressor into her hands.
+
+"Split Madigan!"
+
+In the very exhilaration of effort--the use of her muscles was joy to
+her--Split paused to wish that the house might fall on Sissy; that she
+might suddenly become dumb; that the key to the piano might be
+lost--anything that would avert her own impending doom.
+
+But none of these things happened; they never did happen, no matter how
+passionately the second of the Madigans longed for them on the last day
+of the week.
+
+"Split--you know very well you hear me," the voice cried, coming nearer.
+
+Split burst into song. She was a merry, merry Zingara, she declared in
+sweet, strong cadence, with a boisterous chorus of tra-la-las that
+rivaled the canaries'; and the louder she sang, the faster she swung, so
+that she was really half deaf and wholly giddy when she felt Sissy's
+hand on her ankle.
+
+"Oh, is that you, Sissy?" she asked, sweetly surprised, peering out from
+under her bushy mane.
+
+"Yes, it's me, Sissy!" Cecilia's small, round face was stern. "And
+you've heard me from the very first, and if you want any--"
+
+"Shall I show you how to skin the cat, Sis?" Irene interrupted hastily,
+pulling herself up with a jerk.
+
+But Sissy was fat and had none of her sister's wiry agility. She
+declined; her mind was attuned to other issues just then, and her soul
+was a-quiver with malicious, anticipatory glee; for this was the day of
+Split's music lesson, and her teacher was none other than Sissy herself.
+
+"So, if you want it," the younger sister's voice rose threateningly,
+"you've got to come now."
+
+"Let's leave it till the afternoon." Split's voice came from somewhere
+in the midst of her evolutions.
+
+"Will you come?" demanded Sissy peremptorily. "Once!"
+
+How could Split answer? Her mouth was tight shut; she was pulling
+herself up inch by inch, slowly, slowly, till her chin should rest upon
+the bar.
+
+"Will you come? Twice!"
+
+Split's face was purple, and there was an agonized prayer for delay in
+her eyes.
+
+"Will you come? Third--and la-ast--" Sissy prolonged the note
+quaveringly. It was not her intention to provoke her victim beyond
+endurance. These lessons, which gave her the whip-hand over the doughty
+and invincible Split, were far too precious to her.
+
+"And la-ast," she repeated inexorably.
+
+With a thud Irene dropped to the floor. Leaving all her
+light-heartedness behind in the dusk of the shed, where the trapeze
+still swung, she followed, a sullen captive; while Cecilia, gloating
+like the despot she was, led the way.
+
+"We'll begin with the piece," said Split, eagerly, seating herself
+before the piano.
+
+"No; scales and exercises first," declared Sissy, firmly. "Sit farther
+back, Split, and keep your wrist up."
+
+Split moved the stool a millionth of an inch. Why, oh, why had she
+quarreled with Professor Trask? If some one had only told her that her
+own rebellion would mean the substitution of Cecilia for herself as his
+pupil, and another opportunity for that apt young perfectionist to
+outrank her senior!
+
+With a rattling verve, and a dime on each wrist, which Professor Cecilia
+had placed there to effect a divorce between finger and arm movement,
+Irene attacked her scales and exercises. She loathed five-finger
+exercises. So did the talented but lazy Sissy, who knew well from
+experience what torture would most try her victim's soul. Split merely
+wanted to play well, to outplay Cecilia, to be independent of her and
+play her own accompaniments.
+
+"Lift your fingers, Split. You must raise your wrist," came in an easy
+tone of command. "Repeat that, please. Again. There goes the dime
+again! If you'd keep your wrist steady, it wouldn't fall off. No; you're
+playing altogether too fast. Slowly! slow-ly! Bad fingering! bad
+fingering! Wretched! Wait, I'll mark it for you."
+
+With her nicely pointed long pencil, Sissy, a martinet for technic,
+assumed all the airs of her own professor and prepared to explain the
+obvious.
+
+"No, you don't!" Irene's hand shot out from the keys to the sheet-music,
+scattering the dimes; her wide-spread fingers covered the spot Sissy
+contemplated adorning with prettily made figures.
+
+"Don't what?" asked Sissy.
+
+"Oh, Miss Innocence! Don't be so affected, that's what! Don't put on so
+many airs! Don't pretend you know it all, Sis Madigan!"
+
+"Why, Split! Do you s'pose I _want_ to put the fingering down?"
+
+"You do; but you sha'n't!" exclaimed Split, savagely.
+
+"All I want to do is to help you," said Sissy, with well-bred
+forbearance.
+
+"Well, don't show off, then."
+
+Split withdrew her hand, and the lesson proceeded.
+
+"I'll play your piece for you first, Split, to show you how it ought to
+go." Sissy rose, her calico rustling, to change the professorial chair
+for the stool of the demonstrator.
+
+But Split sat like a rock.
+
+"Professor Trask always does, Split."
+
+There was an abused note in Sissy's voice that deceived her sister. In
+the perennial game of "bluff" these two played, each was alert to detect
+a weakness in the other; and Irene thought she had found one now.
+Ignoring her professor, she placed "In Sweet Dreams" on the rack before
+her, and gaily and loudly, and very badly, began to play.
+
+Sissy rose majestically. Her correct ear was outraged, her small mouth
+was shut tight. Without a word she resigned her post and made for the
+door. She had quite reached it before Split capitulated.
+
+"Play it, then, you mean thing," she cried, flouncing off the stool, "if
+it's going to do you any good!"
+
+Sissy hardened. She had a way of becoming adamant on rare occasions that
+really struck terror to Split's facile soul, which resented a grudge
+promptly and as promptly forgot all about it.
+
+"I don't care to play it," said Sissy, loftily.
+
+"Well--I want you to--now."
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "'Play it, then, you mean thing,' she cried, ... 'if
+      it's going to do you any good!'"]
+
+"But I don't want to."
+
+"Ain't you going to give me my lesson, then?" demanded Split, hoarsely.
+"I thought you were so anxious to help me!"
+
+Sissy was mute. Hers was a strong position, she felt.
+
+"D' ye expect me to get down on my knees?" Irene's wrathful voice rose,
+and her unstable temper rocked threateningly. A Madigan would willingly
+have been flayed alive rather than apologize in so many words.
+
+"I don't expect anything at all," remarked Sissy, coldly.
+
+"Well, you'd better expect, for"--with a swift motion that cut off her
+sister's retreat and put her own back to the door--"you'll play that
+piece before you go out of this room."
+
+Without a word Sissy plumped down on the floor. Unconcernedly she pulled
+her jackstones out of her pocket, and soon their regular click-clock and
+the deft thump of her small, fat fist was all that was heard in the
+room.
+
+It always seemed to Split that the last occasion of a disagreement
+between herself and the sister nearest to her in years, and furthest
+from her in temperament, was the most intolerable. Never in her life,
+she thought, had she so longed to murder Sissy as at this minute.
+She--Split--had no time to waste besieging the impregnable fortress of
+Sissy's mulishness, when the hardening process had really set in. There
+never was time enough on Saturdays to do half what one planned, and
+to-day was the day of Crosby Pemberton's party, besides.
+
+And still Split remained at the door, and still Sissy played jackstones.
+Twice there were skirmishes between besieger and besieged--once when
+Split crept upon Sissy and, with a quick thrust of her slim, straight
+leg, disarranged an elaborate scheme for "putting horses in the stable,"
+and once when there was a strategic sortie from Sissy, which failed to
+catch the enemy napping.
+
+It was Split who finally yielded, as, with rage in her heart, she had
+known from the very beginning would be the case. But no Madigan ever
+laid down her arms and surrendered formally.
+
+Split threw open the door with a bang. "Go out, then, miss! go out!" she
+commanded.
+
+Calmly and skilfully Sissy finished the "devil on a stump," the last of
+those ornamental additions the complexities of which appeal to experts
+in the game; then she gathered up her beloved jackstones and got to her
+feet. But dignity forbade that she should leave the room just when her
+foe had ordered her to go. So she ignored the invitation, and going to
+the piano, sat down in an ostentatiously correct position, requiring
+many adjustments and readjustments, and began to play "The Gazelle."
+
+She played prettily, did this young person, who seemed to Split
+specially designed to infuriate her. And to-day she played "with
+expression," soft-pedaling and lingering upon certain passages in a way
+which the Madigans considered shameless.
+
+"Oh, the affected thing! Just listen to her! How she does put on!"
+sneered Split to the world at large.
+
+Sissy's lips opened, then closed tightly. She had almost answered, for
+no Madigan may be accused of sentimentality and live unavenged. Only a
+moment, though, was she at a loss. Then calmly, prettily, she glided
+into Split's own particular "piece." She knew this would draw blood. And
+it did.
+
+"You sha'n't play it now! You sha'n't!" Split cried, her ungovernable
+temper aroused. She dashed impetuously for the piano and tore the sheet
+of music from the rack.
+
+It was the thing for which she had suffered so many lessons; for which
+she had sat feeling like a mean-spirited imbecile with Sissy's
+impertinent finger under her wrist, while all outdoors was calling to
+her; for which she had forborne often and often during the week, only to
+be more thoroughly bullied on Saturdays. Yet she tore it across and
+recklessly trampled it underfoot. Then with her hands over her ears,
+lest she hear the imperturbable and maddeningly excellent Sissy play "In
+Sweet Dreams" without the notes, Split fled.
+
+Sissy played on till the very last bar; she had an idea that Split might
+be ambushed out in the hall. But when she got to the end and heard no
+sound from there, she decided that the enemy was indeed vanquished, and
+she rose to close the piano. As she did so she got a view of an
+elegantly stout and very upright lady coming up the front steps, with a
+fair, pale boy by her side.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "'Go and shake hands properly, like a little gentleman,'
+      bullied Mrs. Pemberton"]
+
+With an agility commendable in one so round, Sissy dropped beneath the
+piano, and, whipping off her apron, proceeded to wipe the dust from the
+back legs of the instrument with it. This done, she rammed the apron up
+between the wall and the piano, and was seated, breathless, but with a
+bit of very dirty white embroidery in her hands, when the lady entered.
+
+"Ah, Cecilia, busy as usual," she said in an important, throaty voice.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Pemberton," said Sissy, softly.
+
+"You see, Crosby, that even a child may make use of spare moments. Why
+don't you say how-d'-ye-do to Cecilia? Where're your manners?" demanded
+the lady.
+
+"Yes, 'm. How-do, Sissy?" asked the boy, uncomfortably. He was a very
+prim child, immaculately dressed, his smooth hair plastered neatly down
+over his forehead; and he sat bolt upright on the edge of his chair, for
+he knew well his mother's views about lounging.
+
+"Go and shake hands properly, like a little gentleman," bullied Mrs.
+Pemberton.
+
+With a sickly smile Crosby walked over to Sissy and grasped her hand. He
+let it go with an "Ouch!" that made Mrs. Pemberton turn majestically and
+glare at him.
+
+"I'm so sorry I stuck you, Crosby," said Sissy, softly, smoothing out
+her embroidery. "I forgot there was a needle in my work."
+
+Crosby looked at her; he knew just how sorry she was.
+
+"The thing to say, Crosby," thundered his mama, "is, 'Not at all, not at
+all, Cecilia!'"
+
+"Not at all--not at all, Cecilia," squeaked the boy, his thin voice like
+a faint echo of his mother's heavy contralto.
+
+Sissy yearned to beat him; she always did. That she did not invariably
+yield to her desire to express her resentment of so awfully mothered a
+person, was due solely to a sentiment of chivalry: he was so weak and so
+devoted to herself, and it took some courage to be devoted to Sissy.
+
+"I'm ashamed of my son!" thundered Mrs. Pemberton.
+
+Yes, Sissy knew that formula. She had heard the announcement first one
+memorable day at school when she led a revolt against the master--a
+revolt which only the girls of her clique were expected to indorse. But
+Crosby, either because he was so accustomed to playing with girls that
+he considered himself one of them, or because of that dogged devotion
+which even so stern a puritan as Sissy could not sufficiently
+discourage, had taken the cue from her lips. He, too, had failed
+publicly and vicariously, in the very presence of his lion-hearted,
+bull-voiced mother, and sat a white-faced criminal awaiting execution,
+when Mrs. Pemberton, rising in her voluminous black silk skirts, like an
+outraged and peppery hen, stood a moment speechless with wrath, and
+then broke forth with her denunciation before the whole school, visitors
+and all. "Mr. Garvan," she had exclaimed in a deep voice all a-tremble,
+"I am ashamed of my son!" and sailed majestically from the room.
+Crosby's action had really touched Sissy at the time, though, like the
+diplomat she was, she had promptly disowned it.
+
+But to-day Mrs. Pemberton's shame did not too much affect her offspring,
+who sat, not quite so upright now, squeezing the blood from the finger
+that Sissy's needle had pricked.
+
+"Let me look at your embroidery, Cecilia," said the lady, patronizingly.
+
+Sissy rose and brought it to her. Before Crosby she tried not to show
+it, but this little Madigan was really suffering in her perfect soul:
+she embroidered so badly, and knew it so well.
+
+"H'm!" Mrs. Pemberton drew off her glove. "Make your stitches even, and
+keep your work clean--like this--like this--see?"
+
+Sissy saw. Under the firm, big, white hand the strawberry leaves and
+blossoms sprang up and flourished. Mrs. Pemberton loved to embroider;
+her voice was almost gentle when she painted on linen with her needle,
+and then only did she forget to bully her boy.
+
+"Perhaps you will play for us, Cecilia, if I do a bit of your work for
+you?"
+
+Sissy knew it was coming. Mrs. Pemberton always asked her to play, and
+playing for company was pure show-off from a Madigan point of view.
+Split would hear and taunt her with it later, she knew. But though she
+scorned the servile and downtrodden Crosby, Sissy, no more than he,
+dared disobey that grenadier, his mother. She took her seat at the
+piano, opened a Beethoven that Mrs. Pemberton had given her the last
+Christmas, under the impression that she was fostering a taste for the
+classical, and, with a revengeful little hand that couldn't reach the
+octaves, she began to murder the "Funeral March."
+
+Just as the performer let her hands fall upon the last somber chord (her
+puritanical soul enjoying the double dissipation of pretending to
+herself while she afflicted others), she lifted her eyes to the mirror
+over the piano and saw Irene out in the hall. In the mirror their eyes
+met, and the mockery in Irene's was unmistakable as Sissy rose,
+agitated, caught in the very act of showing off, convicted of being
+affected.
+
+"Very pretty; very pretty, indeed!" said Mrs. Pemberton,
+absent-mindedly. "Now play another little waltz."
+
+"Aunt Anne says, Mrs. Pemberton," put in Irene, entering, "will you come
+to her room?"
+
+Mrs. Pemberton rose, her deft hands still calling forth the perfection
+of fruit from the stubborn linen soil upon which Sissy could make
+nothing grow, and sailed across the hall. Crosby immediately jumped from
+his chair.
+
+"I say, Sissy," he cried, "I know an awful swell way to cut paper-doll
+dresses."
+
+Sissy looked at him. For all her sins (and in a hidden corner of her
+heart that she rarely looked into, she knew herself for the hypocrite
+she was, despite all her self-righteous pretense) this girl-boy's
+devotion was her punishment. She did not envy Split her successes; in
+fact, she often disapproved the methods by which they were attained. Her
+pride would permit her neither to make such conquests, nor to enjoy them
+when they were made; but she cursed her fate that Crosby Pemberton had
+fallen to her share. For the love of a really bad boy Sissy felt she
+could have sacrificed much--for a fellow quite out of the pale, a bold,
+wicked pirate of a boy who would say "Darn," and even smoke a cigarette;
+a daredevil, whose people could do nothing with him; a fellow with a
+swagger and a droop to his eyelid and something deliciously sinister in
+his lean, firm jaw and saucy black eye--a boy like Jack Cody, for
+instance, for whom a whole world of short-skirted femininity divided
+itself naturally into two classes: just girls--and Split Madigan. But
+that a forthright, practical, severe person like herself should be made
+ridiculous by Crosby's worship, and that Split, her arch-enemy, should
+be there to hear her adorer make his sexless declaration, was too much!
+Even a Madigan could not bear up under it. When Sissy looked from "Miss
+Crosby" (as the very girls who played with him called him) to Split,
+there were tears of rage trembling in her eyes.
+
+But, with a generosity suspiciously unlike her, Split ignored the signal
+of distress. "What time this afternoon will the party begin, Crosby?"
+she asked.
+
+"Oh, two o'clock. But you'll come early, won't you--Sissy?"
+
+Sissy did not answer. She was waiting to see what Split's next move
+would be.
+
+"I don't know that I can go," said Split, gently. "I haven't any
+gloves--unless--won't you ask father for some, Sissy?"
+
+There was a prompt refusal upon Sissy's lips, but she did not utter it;
+the Pembertons' visit had given the enemy too much material with which
+to regale her fellow-Madigans at the dinner-table in the evening. Sissy
+looked questioningly into Split's eyes, and silently the bargain was
+struck: to so much refraining from ridicule in public on the part of
+one, a certain indebtedness which the other might discharge by facing
+Francis Madigan with a demand for money. It was hard, but Sissy shut her
+teeth and got to her feet.
+
+"Can I come with you, Sissy?" asked Crosby, following her to the door.
+"If you'll let me have your tissue-paper and the scissors, I'll show--"
+
+Sissy's hands flew to her breast. "I wish--I wish you'd never speak to
+me again!" she exclaimed, and Crosby dodged as though he were
+apprehensive that she might beat him.
+
+"It's so kind of you to go the very minute I ask," giggled Split,
+gleefully.
+
+But Sissy shut the door behind her on Crosby's woeful face and Split's
+radiantly happy one, and went to her fate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "Of the design and construction of which he was quite
+      vain"]
+
+Francis Madigan's room was his castle. It was his castle and his
+workshop and his boudoir, his kitchen, his library, and his pantry in
+one. The laxness of the family housekeeping had led him to distrust all
+hands and heads but his own. Everything that he wanted, or that he might
+want in the near future, he kept under his eyes, within reach of his
+hands, where none might borrow or lose or destroy. In order to provide
+for the needs which grew and changed daily, he fitted up rude shelf
+above shelf, till the corners of the room were transformed into rough
+bric-a-brac stands. Mr. Madigan had the unsuccessful man's pride in
+trifling successes in amateur carpentering, in husbandry of any sort
+unrelated to the real issues of his life; and every tool he needed for
+the exercise of his skill he kept under lock and key. He believed in, he
+trusted no Madigan. He had been known to lend his penknife to Sissy, but
+that was when she was ailing long ago. He laid in supplies as though he
+had inside information of a famine near at hand; and his pipes and his
+great cans of tobacco were piled up with his cards and his books on the
+table where he played solitaire all day and read half the night. The
+sweets he liked occasionally, and the day's provision of fruit (for he
+ate fruit only and at this time looked upon a vegetarian as a coarse
+creature who belonged to a dead era), were packed in a small home-made
+pantry of the design and construction of which he was quite vain. His
+bed swathed in sheets; his blankets sewed securely together, as though
+he feared they might escape; a device all his own of great wooden wedges
+raising the lower end of the mattress so that his feet were on a level
+with his pillowed head; the chest of little drawers which his daughters
+called "father's hobby," nailed high on the wall and filled with all
+sorts of odds and ends, the detritus and possible repair-material of
+years of housekeeping--all this Sissy took in with the unseeing eyes one
+has for the familiar.
+
+She did not expect her father's room to be like any one else's; neither
+did she look for an easy and successful termination to her quest.
+Sometimes she got what she asked for, but she asked for little. And
+to-day Francis Madigan had been tinkering at the old house, hammering
+here and patching there, a process that specially tried his temper,
+being a threatening indication of change, which he resented by declaring
+that "everything goes to the devil."
+
+"Father," began Sissy, carefully, as she met his inquiring eye, "do you
+approve of dancing?"
+
+He looked up from his cards. "What nonsense are you talking now?"
+
+"Because Irene and I have a good chance to practise it--dancing--this
+afternoon."
+
+"Well--practise," he growled.
+
+"Shall we? All right. It's Crosby's party, you know. He's thirteen
+to-day. It's his party. His mother's giving it for him at Cooper's Hall.
+And there'll be dancing and--"
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Yes," agreed Sissy, sweetly. "But we'll go if you say so. I won't need
+any dress, and--" she hurried on as he raised his head belligerently,
+"neither will Irene. Isn't that lucky? My brown will do, though the
+over-skirt does jump up when I dance and show the red sham underneath;
+but--"
+
+"What are you bothering me about, then?" he demanded indignantly,
+throwing down his cards.
+
+"Gloves," she said gently. Then quickly, before he could speak, "That's
+all. They don't cost very much. Or, I'll tell you,"--her voice grew
+suddenly most cheerful, as though she had made a discovery that must
+delight him,--"we can wear mitts. I don't mind--and neither will Split.
+Just a pair of blue lace ones for her and pink for me, or--or--" her
+voice wavered, but she was ready to pay the price, "just blue ones for
+Split, father."
+
+He put his hand in his pocket. "Why not just pink ones for Sissy?" he
+asked almost good-naturedly.
+
+Sissy shook her head, but the red rushed to her cheeks. She had won!
+
+"Are you sure you need them?" he asked cautiously in the very act of
+bestowal.
+
+"Sure! Sure!" she cried, throwing her arms gratefully about his neck
+before she danced to the door.
+
+"But you're going, too?" he called after her. "All right, then. Make
+Irene behave. She's an ox--that girl."
+
+An ox, of course, interpreted variously according to Madigan's mood and
+the correlating circumstances, signified this time an indiscreet,
+pleasure-mad child. Sissy understood, and she blushed for her sister. In
+fact, she was always blushing for her sister. She considered it to be
+her duty formally and officially to disavow her senior. So reprehensible
+did she feel Split's conduct to be that some one must blush for it; and
+as blushing was not Split's forte, Sissy did it for her.
+
+And she really did it very well, with an assumption of chagrin that
+could not fail to call attention subtly to the contrast between the
+sisters. When Split failed in her lessons with a completeness, a
+sensational ostentation that was shocking to Sissy, that Number 1
+scholar blushed gently, and, discreetly lowering her head, became
+absorbed in her work. After school, when Split was being kept in and
+disciplined (a process which never failed effectually to discipline the
+hardy individual who attempted it), when she wept and stormed and raged
+and threw caution to the winds as only tempestuous Split could, then was
+Sissy's attitude a marvel of disapproving rectitude. She had a great
+deal of dignity, had Sissy, and the picture of holiness that she
+presented as, with her books on her arm, she walked past the desk where
+the sobbing sinner's head lay with tumbled curls and bloated face, came
+as near as anything could to quench the passion of tears in which
+Split's tempers culminated. On such occasions the infuriated Split was
+wont, for just a moment, to conquer the half-hysterical sobs that
+threatened to choke her as well as inundate the world, and make a face
+at Saint Cecilia as she passed holily by. But Cecilia was a Madigan
+always, as well as a saint temporarily, and her eyes were turned
+prudently away just then, as though she were already studiously
+pondering to-morrow's lesson.
+
+But Sissy blushed her most perfect disapproval when she played chaperon
+to her elder sister. It was a position for which she felt herself
+peculiarly fitted, even without the semi-official commission she held--a
+position which so conscientious a person could not regard in the light
+of a sinecure.
+
+As she danced only the more sedate dances, because of that obtrusive
+tendency of the red sham to her skirt, Sissy was able to chaperon her
+senior all the more effectively at Crosby Pemberton's party. Irene
+danced like a thing whose vocation is motion. She was a twig in a
+rain-storm, a butterfly seeking sweets, a humming-bird whose wing beat
+the air with a very rhapsody of rhythm. She was on the floor with the
+first note Professor Trask struck, and she danced down the side of the
+little hall, when the waltz was over and all the other couples had
+seated themselves, as though the meter of the music had bewitched her
+feet and they might nevermore walk soberly.
+
+"Split--don't!" It was the shocked voice of her young chaperon.
+
+"Sissy--don't!" mocked the mutinous Split.
+
+Even after she took the seat beside Sissy, her heels were lifted and the
+toes of her slippers were beating time. She sat there chattering to a
+group of boys buzzing about her, upon whom her high spirits had the
+effect that dance-music had upon herself.
+
+"You're the prettiest girl I've seen since I left the city, Irene,"
+patronizingly whispered the boy lately from San Francisco, whose
+metropolitan elegances had dazzled the eyes of the mountain maidens.
+
+"I wonder how many girls Will Morrow's said that to this afternoon!"
+came like a sarcastic douche from Sissy, who conceived it to be a
+chaperon's duty to take the conceit out of citified chaps.
+
+Young Morrow turned to find a small woman in brown eying him
+disdainfully.
+
+"Well--well, I never said it to you, anyway," he retorted gallantly.
+
+"Good reason why. You knew I wouldn't believe you," Sissy declared,
+floundering in her anger.
+
+"Neither would anybody else."
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "The Belle of the Afternoon"]
+
+"Why? Because you said it? Didn't know you had such a reputation." Sissy
+was recovering. "Never mind, Split," she added, heavily sarcastic and
+assuming a comforting air that maddened Irene, who desired nothing more
+than to impress her new suitor with the elegant gentility of her manner,
+her family's, and all that was hers. "Just to have a boy from the city
+even pretend to think you're good-looking is worth living for. Boys know
+so much--in the city!" she concluded witheringly.
+
+Mr. Morrow from San Francisco looked bewildered. He had merely paid what
+he considered a very dashing compliment to one girl, when lo! the other
+overwhelmed him with her contempt. He turned for consolation to Irene.
+
+"I'll show you how they dance the two-step in the city," he said,
+holding out his hand as the music began again.
+
+But he had reckoned without that stern censor of sisterly manners,
+Cecilia Madigan; that loyal Comstocker who resented the implication of
+her town's inferiority, quite independent of the fact that the insult
+was not addressed to her but to one who, apparently, welcomed it.
+
+"I think I'll go home now, Split," she remarked carelessly, rising.
+
+A sudden blight fell upon the belle of the afternoon. When Sissy went,
+go she must, too; this was the sole rule of conduct Francis Madigan had
+devised for the guidance of his most headstrong daughter.
+
+"Oh, Sissy--not till after supper!" she pleaded piteously.
+
+"I--I've got some studying to do for the examination Monday," explained
+the exemplary member of Mr. Garvan's class and society at large.
+
+"Just wait till this one dance is over!" Coaxing was not Split Madigan's
+forte; she was accustomed to demand.
+
+But it was just that one dance that Sissy, the pure and patriotic, could
+not countenance.
+
+A quick flash of fury lighted Irene's eye. To be bossed publicly and
+before Mr. Will Morrow of San Francisco! In her heart she swore to be
+avenged; yet she dropped Mr. Morrow's hand and shook her head to all his
+pleadings, as she followed her ruthless tyrant across the floor to the
+little dressing-room.
+
+But as the sisters emerged from the dressing-room door, Crosby Pemberton
+and his cousin Fred stopped them.
+
+"You're not going home, Split?" begged Fred. "I've been looking
+everywhere for you. Oh, come and dance just this one with me!"
+
+"Sissy's going," said Split, the lilting of the music stirring her
+pulses and lifting her feet, despite the unmusical rage she was in, "and
+I've got to go, too."
+
+"Won't you stay--won't you wait just for this one, Sissy?" begged Fred.
+
+"Why--certainly," acquiesced the gentle Sissy.
+
+Split gasped with amazement. But she wasted no time, throwing off her
+jacket with a quick twist of her wrist. Later she might fathom the
+tortuosities of her tyrant's mind. All she knew now was that she might
+dance. With whom was a small matter to Split Madigan.
+
+Sissy watched her dance away, delight and malice in her eye. She was
+watching till Mr. Morrow from the city should behold her revenge. But
+Crosby did not know this, and he had plans of his own.
+
+"Come and play a game over in the corner, just till this dance's over,
+won't you, Sissy?"
+
+"What kind of a game?" she demanded, following him mechanically.
+
+"Oh, a new game. It's lots of fun. I'll show you."
+
+Sissy consented. She could play a game--and she knew she was clever at
+all games--without fear of betrayal from that red sham which she had
+been fiercely sitting upon half the afternoon.
+
+Before long, her emulative spirit got her so interested in this
+particular game that she forgot not only the sham skirt but the sham
+pretense upon which she had bullied Irene. And she played so well that
+there was only one forfeit against her name, though Crosby, who had
+named himself treasurer, held half the bangle bracelets and pins and
+handkerchiefs of the little circle as evidence of dereliction in others.
+
+He called her name first, as he stood with her little turquoise ring in
+his hand and an odd light in his eye that might have enlightened her;
+but she was looking toward the door, where the young gentleman from San
+Francisco, in a Byronic pose, was staring gloomily at Irene dancing with
+a rival, and so joying in the dance that she had forgotten all about
+him.
+
+    "Open your mouth and shut your eyes,
+    And I'll give you something to make you wise,"
+
+chanted Crosby, holding out the ring and beckoning to her.
+
+Closing her eyes upon the spectacle of Mr. Morrow's suffering, Sissy
+opened a mouth about which the malicious smile still lingered.
+
+Crosby hesitated a moment. He was very much afraid of her, but as she
+stood, docile and innocent, before him, with her eyes shut and her tiny
+red mouth open, he could not fancy consequences nearly so well as he
+could picture the thing his wish painted.
+
+In a moment he had realized it, and Sissy, overwhelmed by astonishment,
+dumb and impotent with the audacity of the unexpected, felt his arms
+close about her and his greedy lips upon hers.
+
+Oh, the rage and shame of the proper Sissy! Her mouth fell shut and her
+eyes flew open. And then, if she could, she would have closed them
+forever; for, before her in the sudden silence, towering above the
+triumphant and unrepentant Crosby, stood Mrs. Pemberton, a portentous
+figure of shocked matronly disapproval. And she promptly placed the
+blame where mothers of sons have placed it since the first similar
+impropriety was discovered.
+
+"Cecilia!" she cried in that velvety bass that echoed through the
+room--"Cecilia Madigan, you--teaching my son a vulgar kissing game--you,
+the good one! Oh, you deceitful little thing!"
+
+
+
+
+A MERRY, MERRY ZINGARA
+
+
+It had been Crosby Pemberton's custom to climb the steps that led to
+Madigan's every Wednesday afternoon at four, with his music neatly done
+up in a roll, on his way to play duets with Sissy.
+
+On the Wednesday that followed his birthday party--the mere mention of
+which, after the lapse of four days, was enough to send Sissy into
+hysterics--that young lady was seated in the parlor, ready for her
+guest. She was ready for him in all the senses a Madigan knew how to
+infuse into that frame of mind. She intended to make him as miserable as
+she herself had been ever since that disgraceful episode in which she
+had so innocently played the victim's part. She would show the betrayer
+of trust no mercy--none. She would accept no apology. She would trample
+upon his excuses and tear them limb from limb. She would show him her
+scorn and detestation and make him feel how everlastingly unforgivable
+his offense was; then she would send him forth forever from the house,
+and dare him to so much as speak to her at school.
+
+She pictured him going down the stairs for the last time, utterly
+wretched, broken, despised, condemned. And in order to make the picture
+more real, she glanced out of the window. Suddenly her hands flew in
+terror to her breast, and all her plans for vengeance were left hanging
+in mid-air; for it was not Crosby's trim little figure that was climbing
+the steps, but the stately solidity of Mrs. Pemberton herself.
+
+In her extremity, Sissy did not even stop to look at the back legs of
+the piano; she sped across the room and made a flying leap through the
+low west window. Mrs. Pemberton, glancing in through the open door as
+she rang the bell, got a glimpse of two plump disappearing legs, but
+when she and Miss Madigan entered, there was no trace of Sissy except
+her jackstones. They stumbled over these, lying scattered on the floor,
+where she had been sitting waiting for Crosby and concocting schemes of
+punishment.
+
+"I come to explain--" said Mrs. Pemberton, stiffly and a bit out of
+breath, seating herself with a rigidity of backbone that would have
+justified Sissy's bestowal upon her of the nickname Mrs. Ramrod, if she
+could have seen it. But Sissy, lying attentive beneath the open window,
+could not see; she could only hear. "I am here to tell you, Miss
+Madigan, why Crosby did not come to-day to play duets."
+
+"Dear me! didn't he come?" asked Miss Madigan, absently. "He isn't sick,
+is he? Irene complains of headache and backache, and she's so languid
+she let Sissy get the wish-bone--I call it the bone of contention--at
+dinner yesterday without a struggle. I'm half afraid she'll not be able
+to sing to-night at Professor Trask's concert; but perhaps it's only
+that she danced too much at Crosby's party. She al--"
+
+"It's about that--about the party that I wanted to speak to you,"
+interrupted Mrs. Pemberton, severely.
+
+"Yes? Such a lovely party, the girls say! I'm sure, Mrs. Pemberton, it's
+just--"
+
+"Did they tell you what--occurred?"
+
+Miss Madigan blinked reflectively. Her acquaintance with the stately and
+wealthy Mrs. Warren Pemberton was her most prized social connection.
+What could have occurred?
+
+"Why, of course, of course!" she laughed after a bit, pleasantly, still
+trying to remember what the girls had gossiped about. "Delightful,
+wasn't it?"
+
+Mrs. Pemberton lifted her plumed head with a slow and terrible
+solemnity. "De-lightful, Miss Madigan, de-lightful!"
+
+The smile vanished from Miss Madigan's face. "I hope, dear Mrs.
+Pemberton, that the girls did nothing that--that--They're such madcaps,
+and their father never will--"
+
+Miss Madigan's distress touched her august visitor. "I trust this," she
+said significantly, "will be a lesson to Mr. Madigan."
+
+"What--what will? If there's a lesson for Madigan, let him have it
+direct, Mrs. Pemberton."
+
+Lying flat on her stomach beneath the window, Sissy heard her father's
+voice come clanging harshly on the lighter-timbred dialogue. Cautiously
+she raised herself on her elbow and let a single eye peer through the
+curtain at the group within. There, with his paint-pot in his hand, his
+brush and his pipe in the other, his unique nightcap rakishly on one
+side and drawn over his white head to protect it from the paint, Madigan
+stood in his overalls and heavy shirt--his Michelangelo costume, Kate
+had called it. He had been regilding an old mirror in his room, and
+having some gilt left at the bottom of his can, he was going about the
+house in search of tarnished articles of virtue.
+
+"Oh, Francis!" exclaimed his sister.
+
+"Why, how do you do, Mr. Madigan?" said Mrs. Pemberton, bravely, putting
+out her hand. "I did not know you were within hearing."
+
+"Or you wouldn't have offered the lesson? Well, give it to me, now that
+I am here. No, I won't shake hands; mine are all sticky with gilt." He
+rested his elbow on his hip and stood at ease.
+
+A savage delight at this outrage upon gentility in Mrs. Ramrod's very
+presence possessed that red republican Sissy. She giggled within
+herself, Madigan's attitude, his streaked and gilded face, his confident
+voice, showed such delightful indifference to the effect his
+unconventional attire must have upon this Priestess of Form.
+
+"I must beg your pardon, Mr. Madigan," said that lady, in her most
+official tone, "for using the expression I did. The matter I wished to
+bring to Miss Madigan's attention--and to yours, now that you are
+here--concerns one of your daughters. I should have come to tell you of
+it before, as was my duty, as I would wish any mother to do for me were
+it my daughter; but I have been busy helping the Misses Bryne-Stivers
+and Professor Trask with this concert for to-night. This must be my
+apology for the delay. For speaking--for telling you what I have to
+tell, no mother could apologize."
+
+"H'm!" Madigan cleared his throat threateningly, and out in the
+sage-brush Sissy shook with apprehension. She knew that preliminary
+bugle-call to battle.
+
+"I assure you, my dear Mrs. Pemberton, we can have only the kindest
+feelings for any one who will take an interest in those motherless--"
+
+"Let Mrs. Pemberton go on, Anne," interrupted Madigan, harshly. "Just
+what is it, ma'am? Out with it."
+
+Mrs. Pemberton rose, rustling her heavy silks.
+
+"Merely, Mr. Madigan, that with my own eyes I saw your daughter take
+part in a vulgar kissing game--the only occurrence of any kind that
+marred the perfect propriety of my son's birthday party."
+
+There was a long silence inside. Sissy, without, her heart beating so
+loud that she was afraid it might drown all other sounds, heard, despite
+it, Aunt Anne's gasp of horror, the tinkle of the jet on Mrs.
+Pemberton's heavy gown, the squeaking of her father's paint-spotted
+slippers as he shifted his weight.
+
+Finally it came. "That ox!" exclaimed Madigan, in a rage.
+
+Mrs. Pemberton moved in majesty toward the door. "My son," she said
+slowly, "chivalrously tries to take the blame from her and insists that
+he proposed the game himself. But I know Crosby to be incapable of such
+a thing."
+
+"H'm! Yes. So do I," assented Madigan.
+
+Miss Madigan turned to her brother, and in a voice that suggested long
+years of martyrdom, said: "You will send her to the convent now,
+Francis? You positively must now. I really admire you for the way you
+have discharged a most unpleasant duty, Mrs. Pemberton. For years I've
+insisted that Irene must--"
+
+"Irene? Yes, if it had been Irene, one could expect it," remarked Mrs.
+Pemberton, funereally.
+
+"But it wasn't--it couldn't be--"
+
+"It was Cecilia." Mrs. Pemberton's grief-stricken tones conveyed all the
+disappointment she felt.
+
+Cecilia, on her quaking knees, now peering through the window, saw a
+quick change come over her father's dread countenance. It smoothed, it
+wrinkled, it twitched, and his shoulders began to shake silently.
+
+"No! Sissy?" he exclaimed, with an appreciative chuckle, which made that
+young perfectionist outside feel seasick, as though the hillside had
+swelled up beneath her. "And who was the boy, might I ask?"
+
+"It was"--Mrs. Pemberton paused to mark both her shocked surprise at Mr.
+Madigan's reception of the news, as well as the further enormity
+involved in its completion--"my son Crosby."
+
+"No! Ha! ha! ha!" Madigan's rare laugh rang out.
+
+Mechanically Sissy turned down her thumb to mark the number of times she
+had heard it, since Split and she had made a wager on it. Inwardly,
+though, she was nauseated by the thought that she was being laughed at.
+As nearly destitute as a Madigan could be of humor, she would so much
+rather have been flayed alive, she thought in the depths of her
+puritanical soul, than suffer ridicule.
+
+"Crosby--eh?" Madigan was recovering. "Congratulate him for me. I didn't
+know the little milksop had it in him. You ought to thank Sissy, ma'am,
+for proving that he is not really stuffed with sawdust. Where is she,
+anyway?"
+
+Lying flat, her blushing face buried in the sage-brush, was Sissy at
+that moment, while Mrs. Ramrod rustled out of the room, precisely as she
+had done the day Crosby failed in the public oral examination in
+geography, Miss Madigan hurrying placatingly after.
+
+But outside Sissy wept and would not be comforted. Her purist's pride
+was wounded; her prudish maiden's modesty was outraged--that her own
+father should believe it of her! And she must not open the subject or
+try to alter his opinion, for fear of the ridicule which seared her very
+soul!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A taste for the ethereally symbolic had not strongly manifested itself
+in Virginia City, yet under Professor Trask's direction "The Cantata of
+the Flowers" had been in active rehearsal for weeks. The professor
+relied upon the school-children for chorus material, and upon the
+Madigans to fill those lieutenancies without which the spectacular
+features of his production must be a failure--this last as a matter of
+course. For there were many Madigans, and those of them that were not
+leaders by instinct had developed leadership through force of
+environment, a natural desire to bully others being not the least
+important by-product of being bullied. Besides, the reputation they had
+of being talented the professor knew to be almost as efficacious in
+lending children self-confidence as talent itself.
+
+Kate, therefore, who could not sing a note, but who was grace embodied,
+led a chorus of Poppies, whose red tissue-paper garments creaked and
+rustled as they swayed, waving their star-tipped wands and chanting
+"Breathe we now our charmed fragrance."
+
+Florence and Bessie, whom the curse of being twins linked like
+galley-slaves, were Heather-bells in a childish chorus which piped forth
+the information "We are the Heather-bells: list to our song," but which
+was almost ruined by their common desire to get away from each other and
+lead in two different directions.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "She was pronounced a 'regular little love' by the Misses
+      Bryne-Stivers"]
+
+Quite self-possessed (even if she was very much off key), Sissy, who was
+the best "speaker" in her class, warbled her part of a sanctimonious
+little duet in which Heliotrope and Mignonette voiced the sentiment--
+
+    "'Tis not in beauty alone we may find
+    Purity, goodness, and wisdom combined"
+
+Even small Frances, most self-conscious of Madigans, in a costume so
+inadequate that Bep's doll would have been scandalized at the idea of
+wearing it, posed and attitudinized as a Dewdrop. She was pronounced a
+"regular little love" by the Misses Bryne-Stivers, whom the Madigans had
+nicknamed the Misses Blind-Staggers--a resentful play upon their
+hyphenated name, as well as a delicate reference to their blue goggles
+that might have served as blinkers.
+
+For Irene, though, as the unquestioned possessor of a voice, a solo had
+been interpolated. She was to repeat, for the first time on the
+professional stage, that renowned success in "The Zingara" which school
+exhibitions had made famous.
+
+Just before the time came for Split to sing, Sissy was hovering about
+the prima donna in the dressing-room. As Miss Heliotrope she wore the
+dark-purple gown which Aunt Anne had made over from her own wardrobe.
+(Being Comstock-born, Sissy knew no flower intimately, and could easily
+be imposed upon as to their habits and colors.) Above it her round
+little dark face looked almost sallow, in spite of the excited red that
+flamed in her cheeks.
+
+The atmosphere of a theater was like wine to the Madigans. The smell of
+escaping gas in the dark was, in itself, enough to transport them by
+association of ideas out of the workaday world; and emotion due to a
+dramatic situation was the one evidence of sensibility they permitted
+themselves.
+
+Yet Sissy, who was tying the ribbons on Split's tambourine, looked in
+vain for a reflection of that fever of delight which possessed herself.
+Split was cross. She was languid. She was dull. She did not seem to
+enjoy even the pair of slippers she was pulling on. They had been given
+to Sissy by Henrietta Blind-Staggers, and their newness and beauty had
+tempted the poor Zingara. But if Sissy had not felt that the family
+fortunes were at stake, as she always did in the matter of a public
+appearance, she would never have made so generous an offer of her
+cherished property.
+
+"But they seem awful tight, Split," she suggested.
+
+"They're nothing of the sort," snapped Split, wincing as she rose to her
+feet.
+
+"I don't see how you're going to dance in them."
+
+"Will you just leave that to me, Miss Cecilia Morgan Madigan, and mind
+your own business?"
+
+   [Illustration:
+     "'I don't see how you're going to dance in them'"]
+
+Deeply offended, Sissy withdrew. No one called her Cecilia Morgan
+Madigan who did not want to wound her to the soul and remind her of an
+incident it were more generous to forget. She went out to the wings and
+stood there looking upon the stage and Professor Trask, who, as the
+Recluse, was gowned in mysterious flowing black, while he chanted "Here
+would I rest" in a hollow bass. But Sissy was worried. Not even being
+behind the scenes could still her apprehensions about Split. She longed
+to confide in some fellow-Madigan, but Kate was on the other side of the
+stage, and to all her winks and beckonings turned an uninterested back.
+Then, all at once, sooner than she expected, the Recluse departed, the
+scenes shifted; there, alone on the stage, looking white in the glare of
+the footlights, was a bedizened, big-eyed, panting little Zingara, and
+the syncopated prelude began.
+
+Sissy's fingers thrummed it sympathetically upon her knee, but Trask,
+who was playing the accompaniment behind the scenes, had put an
+unfamiliar accent upon the notes. Out on the stage the Zingara was
+beating her tambourine sadly out of time and was longing, with a panicky
+fear, for the familiar touch of Sissy's hand upon the piano.
+
+"Dum--dum-de-dum-dum--dum-dum--dum-dum!"
+
+The notes came like a warning signal. The Zingara's throat was parched,
+her feet ached excruciatingly merely from carrying her weight--how, oh,
+how was she going to dance?
+
+"Dum--dum-de-dum-dum--dum-dum--dum-dum!"
+
+The last note prolonged itself into a summons. The Zingara's eye,
+turning from the faces that danced before her, sent appealing glances to
+the wings, where Sissy yearned toward her, all rivalry drowned in a
+mothering anxiety for her success.
+
+"'I'm a--mer-ry, meh-hi-ri-y--Zin-ga-ra!'" wailed Split, trying to get
+her breath. "'From a--gold-e-en--clime I come!'"
+
+Sissy's hands flew to her breast, then with a wild gesture up over her
+ears, and she fled back to the dressing-room. Split the redoubtable,
+Split the invincible, the impudent, ready, pugnacious Split had
+stage-fright! The world rocked beneath Sissy's feet. Time stopped, and
+all the world stood agape witnessing a Madigan's failure! It seemed to
+the third of them that she could never bear to lift her head again and
+meet a Comstocker's eye and see there that shameful record against the
+family. But she scrambled quickly to her feet when Irene came running
+in, "The Zingara" all unsung.
+
+Irene's face was white and her eyes glittered. Sissy did not dare meet
+them, for, to a Madigan, to put a shame in words or looks was to double
+and triple it. She did not dare to condole; she had no heart to accuse.
+So she bent down again, ostensibly to tie her shoe, in order to give the
+furious little Zingara time to recover and to begin to undress. She
+heard the tambourine's tingling clatter as it was cast to the floor. She
+looked anywhere but at her sister, but she heard buttons give and
+buttonholes rend, and bowed her head to the storm.
+
+"I must say," she remarked in a scornfully careless tone when the
+silence became oppressive, "that Trask plays funny accompaniments." And
+she lifted her head, fancying herself rather clever in finding a
+scapegoat.
+
+She ducked immediately, but not in time. One of her own slippers,--oh,
+the irony of things!--torn off and thrown by Split's impatient hand,
+struck her in the face.
+
+Sissy's cheek flamed. "Did you do that on purpose, Split Madigan?"
+
+Split Madigan had not done it on purpose, for the reason mainly that it
+had not occurred to her. But now that it was done, it was not in her
+present fury against all the world to disclaim intention to insult so
+small a part of it. Glad of an excuse to outrage some one, any
+one,--and, even then, preferably Sissy,--to make her sister share some
+of that hurt and sting and smart that burned within herself, she met
+Sissy's eye maliciously, triumphantly, significantly.
+
+Sissy gasped. She took the slipper in her hand and made for her enemy.
+She intended, she believed, to ram her own best Sunday slipper down
+Split Madigan's throat! And she got quite close before she could have
+been made to believe that anything on earth or anywhere else could alter
+her intention. But a little thing did; merely the sound of voices
+outside the door and a swift, piteous change of expression in that
+defiant face opposite.
+
+Sissy dropped the slipper and flew to the door. She had a glimpse--which
+she pretended not to have seen--of the Merry Zingara crumbling in a
+passion of regretful sobs to the floor. Then she was standing outside,
+her back to the closed door, a determined, fat little Horatius in
+purple, with two red cheeks,--one, indeed, redder than the other where
+the slipper had struck,--vowing to hold the bridge against all comers,
+so that Split might mourn in peace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "'But is she _very_ sick?'"]
+
+"But is she _very_ sick?" came the eager question.
+
+"Well--pretty sick," said the doctor, gravely.
+
+"Not very?" Sissy's voice fell disappointedly. She opened the door for
+him and stood at the head of the steps as he prepared cautiously to
+descend.
+
+"You don't want your sister to be dangerously ill, do you?" Dr.
+Murchison demanded sharply, turning upon her.
+
+"N-no," said Sissy.
+
+"Well, see that you don't squabble with her. Your aunt ought to have
+sent for me five days ago, instead of which she lets a sick, nervous,
+half-crazy child dance and sing on the stage. All poppycock!"
+
+"Can I help you down the first step, doctor?" asked Sissy, gratefully.
+
+She was so thankful for his words. No one--not even a Madigan,
+accustomed to be held strictly accountable--could be to blame for a
+failure if she had been ill at the time. The family was almost
+rehabilitated, it seemed to Sissy.
+
+The doctor's dim old eyes looked curiously at her. "I believe you've got
+some deviltry in your head, Sissy. Now, you mind me and let your sister
+alone. There! I'm all right now. I can go all right the rest of the way
+when I'm once started down your infernal stairs. I ought to charge your
+father double rates for risking my old bones on them. Yes, it's all
+right now. It's only the first step that bothers me. It's always the
+first step that costs--eh, Sissy?"
+
+She looked blankly up at him.
+
+He bent down and patted her head. "See here," he said, "I'll bet you've
+got more sense than you want us to believe."
+
+Sissy blushed. It was a tardy tribute, she felt, but as welcome as it
+was deserved.
+
+"With a lot of common sense and a physique like yours, you ought to make
+a good nurse. Take care of your sister," he added almost appealingly,
+divided between his knowledge of how poor a nurse Miss Madigan was and
+how impossible it was to tell this to her niece. "She'll be cross and
+irritable and--even worse than usual," he said, with a grim smile that
+recognized the battle-ground upon which the Madigans spent their lives;
+and this recognition made him seem more human to them than any other
+adult. "But you just treat her like a teething baby. She's got a hard
+row to hoe, that poor, bad Split. She must sleep, and you understand
+her--Lord! Lord! the care these queer little devils need!" he muttered,
+shaking his shoulders as he went on down the steps, as though physically
+to throw off responsibility.
+
+Sissy turned and went back into the house. It was a queer house, she
+thought. To her alert impressibility, the sickness and apprehension it
+inclosed were something tangible. She could taste the odors of the
+sick-room. She could feel the weight of the odd stillness that filled
+it. The sharpness of sound when it did come, the strangeness of
+suppressed excitement, the unfamiliar place with Split's quick figure
+missing, the loneliness of being without her, the boredom of lacking a
+playmate or a fighting-mate--it all affected Sissy as the prelude of a
+drama the end of which has something terrifyingly fascinating in it. It
+must be wonderful to die, thought Sissy, with a swift, satisfying vision
+of pretty young death--herself in white and the mysterious glamour of
+the silent sleep. Poor Sissy, who had never been ill!
+
+Split, with shorn head and with wide-open eyes and hard, flushed
+cheeks, lay tossing on the big bed in the room off the parlor, which had
+seldom been used since Frances was born there. "Mother's bed" the
+Madigans always called it, and they crept into it when ailing, as though
+it still held something of the old curative magic for childish aches,
+though all but Kate had forgotten the mother's face as it was before she
+lay down there the last time. Split had a big hot silver dollar in one
+hand,--Francis Madigan's way of recognizing and sympathizing with a
+child's illness,--and in the other an undivided orange, evidence enough
+of an extraordinary occasion in the Madigan household. But she was not
+waking. She was not sleeping. She was not dreaming. She knew that Sissy
+had come in and had squatted on the floor with Bep and Fom, playing
+dolls, probably. Yet she felt that numb, gradual, terrifying enlargement
+of her fingertips, of her limbs, of her tongue, her body, her head, that
+she had been told again and again was mere fancy. With a self-control
+that was unlike her, an unnatural product of her unnatural state, she
+locked her jaws together that she might not scream this once. And in the
+eery stillness that followed the effort, which had made her ears buzz
+and her temples throb, she heard quite sanely Florence's denial of some
+charge her twin had brought against her.
+
+"I didn't do any such thing," she whispered.
+
+"You did," said Bep.
+
+"I didn't."
+
+"Cross your heart to die?"
+
+The scream burst from Irene then--not the cry of delirium, but a sharp,
+terrified, if inarticulate, call for help. If there was one thing Split
+did respect, it was that Reaper whose name she could never hear without
+a quick indrawn breath. Yet--in her heart--she knew that, though others
+might fall at the touch of that fearful scythe, she, Split Madigan, as
+fleet of limb as a coyote and as sound of heart as a young pine-cone,
+could never, never die; that the world could never be when her quick red
+blood should be quiet and her mountain-bred lungs should be stilled.
+
+With a bound Sissy pushed the twins out of the door. She was at the
+bedside when Miss Madigan entered.
+
+"Go outside, Sissy!" she commanded. "Can't you see you're exciting her?
+Isn't it hard enough for me to take care of her when she's so cross?
+She's not to be excited. She's to be kept quiet. There, there,
+Irene--it's only fancy, I tell you! Look at your fingers; they're
+thinner, littler than they ever were. Look at Sissy's; see how much
+bigger they are."
+
+Irene lifted her fingers that had caught Sissy's. She looked from her
+own fevered hand to Sissy's dimpled one and was comforted. But her hold
+on her old enemy did not relax. She had something tangible now to
+reassure her; something that spoke to her in her own language. Her eyes
+closed, her tense little hand dropped wearily, but she held Sissy fast.
+
+When she thought her patient was asleep, Miss Madigan tried to open her
+fingers, but, with something of her old waywardness, Irene resisted. And
+Sissy, with an old-fashioned nod of advice, motioned her aunt to let
+things be. She curled herself up on a corner of the bed, and--it being
+quite safe, no other Madigan being present but this unnatural one lying
+prone, half conscious, half dazed--she put her other hand over the one
+that held hers, and sat there quietly waiting.
+
+The minutes came to seem like hours, but Sissy sat motionless and Miss
+Madigan left the room. Presently an eery humming came from Split's lips.
+Then, mechanically, Sissy's fingers picked out on the spread the simple
+little melody Split sang as in a dream.
+
+"Play it," the sick girl whispered, pushing away the hand she had held.
+
+Sissy jumped as though she had been discovered indulging in gross and
+inexcusable sentimentality. She looked down at Split with a puzzled,
+sheepish smile, wondering how long it had been since her sister had come
+into the real world out of that fantastic one where marvelous things
+might happen.
+
+"Play it!" repeated Split, fretfully.
+
+Sissy rose and walked softly into the front room. She fancied if she
+took a long time, yet appeared about to obey, Split would forget her
+desire and, left alone in the silence, would fall asleep. She opened the
+piano softly and pulled out the stool. Then leisurely she pretended to
+arrange the light and the piano-cover.
+
+Split, quieted by her apparent compliance, lay back with a sigh of
+content. Her mind, whose very apprehension of the delirium had excluded
+other thoughts, dwelt now restfully upon the combination of easy mental
+effort and soothing melody her "piece" meant to her. Besides, she was
+ordering her junior about, using her illness as a club to beat down
+remonstrance. Split was really on the way to being herself again.
+
+After a bit she found that she was almost dozing off, and waked with an
+indignant start to see Sissy stealing softly out of the room.
+
+"Where are you going?" she demanded. "Why don't you play it when I tell
+you to?"
+
+For an instant Sissy rebelled. Then she looked at the passionate little
+figure sitting tensely upright, at the white fever-circle about the dry
+lips, at the short hair and the unnaturally bright, angry eyes. She went
+back to the piano, sat down, and with her foot on the soft pedal, that
+Aunt Anne might not hear, she began to play.
+
+The melody was simple and light, with a little break in its sweetness.
+Sissy's touch was childlike, but her impressionable temperament,
+quickened by the strangeness of that dark room behind her, overflowed
+into the melody her fingers brought out. The accompanying bass was
+rhythmic, and the nervous, fevered child found mental and physical
+occupation in letting the fingers of her left hand pick out its detail
+upon the pillow which she had lately thrown in a passion against the
+wall because it had been so hot and she so miserably uncomfortable.
+
+Sissy had begun the second part, the changing bass of which had been
+poor Split's _pons asinorum_. It was the part to which Sissy had always
+given a dramatic touch--partly because, it being simpler music than she
+was accustomed to, she could safely do so, and partly because it
+irritated Irene, to whom the most forthright interpretation was
+difficult. Her foot slipped now, through force of habit, upon the hard
+pedal, and in a moment she heard the whirring of Aunt Anne's skirts.
+
+"Sissy, are you crazy, you--" she heard behind her, and then there came
+a sudden, an unaccountable stop.
+
+Sissy turned. Behind and above Miss Madigan towered tall old Dr.
+Murchison. He had come back, as usual, up the long flight of steps, for
+his forgotten spectacles. One of his hands was clapped with good-humored
+firmness over the lady's mouth; the other was pointing to Split,
+sleeping like a Madigan again, while over Aunt Anne's head the doctor
+nodded and bobbed encouragingly to Sissy, like a benignant musical
+conductor deprived of the use of his arms.
+
+Sissy turned again to the piano. It was a beautiful opportunity for her
+to affect disgust with the situation; to register a silent, but
+expressive, exception to being compelled to entertain Irene; and to
+pose, not only before her aunt but before the doctor, too, as a very
+important personage, whose services were in urgent demand, and who
+yielded under protest. But as a matter of fact she was too happy. There
+was no misconceiving the light that illumined the doctor's round, rosy
+face. Something her undisciplined, childish imagination had been
+coquetting with, as an untried experience, though never admitting its
+full, dread significance, was carried out of her horizon by the shining
+look of success in old Murchison's face; something that shook her strong
+little body with a long shiver, as she realized, in the second when she
+could almost feel the lift of its dark wings taking flight, the thing
+that might have been.
+
+So Sissy played "In Sweet Dreams" "with expression."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later she played it, and over and over again, with the salt tears
+trickling down her nose and splashing on the keys; played it with tired,
+fat fingers and a rebellious, burning heart. But this was during Split's
+convalescence--a reign of terror for the whole household; for to the
+natural taste she possessed for bullying, Split Madigan then added the
+whims and caprices of the invalid, who uses her weaknesses as a cat of a
+hundred tails with which to scourge her victims into compliance.
+
+She was loath to get well, this tyrannical, hot-tempered, short-haired
+Zingara, who led her people such a merry dance, and she left the
+self-indulgent land of convalescence and the bed in the big back room
+with regret.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHUT-UPS
+
+
+It was an early-morning rite practised by the twins, its performance
+hidden from everybody but each other, to see whether Dr. Murchison's
+prophecy had come true.
+
+"There were once two little girls--twins," began the old doctor,
+significantly, the day Bep and Fom were vaccinated, after battling
+desperately against precedence, in the doctor's very office. "Now all
+twins love each other dearly."
+
+The twins looked at him pityingly. To be so old and so ignorant!
+
+"Yes, they do," he insisted. "Everybody knows they're fonder of each
+other than the closest sisters."
+
+Bep glanced at Fom and Fom looked at Bep; there was something almost
+Chinese in the irony of their eyes; they knew just how fond of each
+other sisters can be! But they politely suppressed their incredulous
+grins.
+
+"Well," resumed the old doctor, realizing how lacking in conviction his
+comparison might seem to a Madigan, "well, these twins were the
+exception: they did not love each other."
+
+There was an interested movement from Bep.
+
+"They hated each other."
+
+Fom looked up eagerly; there was something human about such a tale. She
+felt her respect for Dr. Murchison reviving.
+
+"They fought from morning till night. There was never a moment's peace
+when the two were together. Each was so jealous of the other that she
+would rather do without, herself, than share with her twin. It was
+disgraceful."
+
+The twins leaned forward, charmed.
+
+The doctor looked over his spectacles at them; there was no mistaking
+the effect he had produced. "Everybody warned them that unless they
+stopped squabbling, something dreadful would happen to them. But they
+never believed it till one day--"
+
+The twins held their breath. Dr. Murchison went to the library and took
+out a book. He knew the value of a dramatic pause.
+
+"--till one day they waked up in the morning and found that they
+were--stuck--fast--together--for life! Everything the dark one had she
+just had to share with her twin. And everywhere she went her lazy blonde
+sister had to go, too. People made up a terrible name for them. They
+called them"--he lowered his voice to the apologetic tone one has for
+not quite proper subjects--"the 'Siamese Twins,' and--if you don't
+believe me, here's their picture!" With a quick movement he opened the
+book before them.
+
+The twins' faces went gray; in that second they even looked alike, so
+tense were both with the same emotion. Instinctively they made a swift
+motion, a dumb prayer for sympathy, toward each other; then as swiftly
+shuddered apart as though temporary contact might become lifelong
+bondage.
+
+But as the months went by and they remained mercifully unattached
+(though battling still in their double capacity of Madigans and twins),
+they almost outgrew their credulity; yet still, on occasions, observed
+the morning ceremony of self-inspection.
+
+In fact, though, nothing held them in peace together except sleep, when
+nature must have reunited them in dreams; for, no matter in what
+positions they were relatively when they closed their eyes, morning
+found their arms about each other, their breath intermingled, their
+little bodies intercurved like well-packed sardines.
+
+On their birthday morning--the twins were born on Christmas--Fom waked
+very early, alarmed to find Bep's arm about her. She never remembered in
+the morning that at night her last hazy thought had been to reach for
+it, pull down the sleeve of its nightgown, and cuddle close to her twin.
+She threw it from her now with unusual violence, and, sitting up in bed,
+slipped off her gown that she might closely examine her right side--the
+side that had been nearest Bep.
+
+The blonde twin woke while this process was going on, and its dread
+significance shook the haze of slumber from her eyes. She, too, slipped
+her gown from her shoulders and, shivering with the cold, passed an
+apprehensive hand along her left ribs.
+
+"Do you?" she whispered.
+
+"N-no. I don't think so. I--I dreamed that it was there, though. Do
+you?"
+
+An assenting shudder shook Bep's body.
+
+"Where--oh, where? I don't believe it!" cried Fom. "You're just a
+'fraid-cat trying to frighten me."
+
+Bep pointed to her side. There it was unmistakably--a round
+black-and-blue mark.
+
+A wail escaped Florence. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she cried, "what in the
+world shall we do?"
+
+Bep did not answer. She sat stupefied, staring at the evidence of
+calamity.
+
+"If it's commenced on you, it's bound to commence on me before long. I
+wonder--how fast it grows?"
+
+Bep shook her head. "It wasn't there when I went to sleep."
+
+"If it grows on you toward me, and on me toward you that quick, why, in
+a week--we'll be--stuck fast--won't we?"
+
+Bep nodded miserably.
+
+"Some morning," mourned Fom, wriggling unhappily, "we'll wake and it'll
+be all done. You'll just have to study hard, Bessie Madigan, and be in
+my class in school; I won't go back into the mixed primary--I just
+won't! Oh, Bep, why will you put your arm around me at night?"
+
+"I don't. I always go to sleep with my back to you. You know I do. And
+in the morning, the first thing I know you're flinging my arm off. I
+believe you pull my arm over you yourself. I believe you want to get
+stuck together and be Chemise Twins!" Bep scolded tearfully, with her
+usual ill luck with unfamiliar words.
+
+There was a sorrow-smitten pause.
+
+"I say, Beppy," the termination was a sign of sudden good humor in Fom,
+"didn't you tumble down yesterday when you and Bombey Forrest were
+driving the Grayson kids round the block in your relay race?"
+
+The light of hope leaped up in Bessie's eyes. "Could it be that?"
+
+"Of course it could; it is, you silly!"
+
+"I'm not a silly. You were scared yourself," retorted the blonde twin,
+relieved but pugnacious.
+
+"Pooh! I only pretended, to frighten you," jeered Fom.
+
+"Not much you didn't. I ain't anybody's dope."
+
+"Anybody's what?"
+
+"Anybody's dope," answered Bep, uncertainly; she knew how little words
+were to be trusted.
+
+"What's 'dope'?" demanded Florence.
+
+"Why--what Kate said yesterday."
+
+An enjoying giggle came from Sissy's bed. She had waked. "_Dupe_, you
+goosy--_dupe_!" she chuckled.
+
+"Yah! Yah!" sneered Fom, happy in her twin's discomfiture.
+
+Bep blushed with mortification. "Don't you trophy over me, Fom
+Madigan!" she cried wrathfully.
+
+Sissy's giggle became a shout of laughter, and straightway she sallied
+forth, benightgowned as she was, to carry the news of Bep's latest to
+the Madigans--while Bep, aware that she had Partingtoned again, without
+knowing just how, cried furiously after her: "I didn't say it! I
+didn't!"
+
+Bep's talent was dear to the Madigans. They seized upon each blunder she
+made, and held it up, shrinking and bare, under the light of their
+laughter-loving eyes. They ridiculed it interminably, and were
+unflaggingly entertained by it, repeating it for the edification of each
+new-comer so often and so faithfully that from conscious mimicry they
+turned to use of it without quotation-marks, till, insensibly, at last
+it was received into their vocabulary--which fact, by the way, made the
+Madigan dialect at times difficult for strangers to master.
+
+For instance, the rare rainy days in Nevada were always "glummy" among
+Madigans, because the blonde twin had once been so affected by their
+gloom that she spelled it that way. An over-credulous person was a
+"sucher" since the day she had written it so. Jack Cody lived in the
+"vikinty" of their house, because Bep Partington had so decreed. "Don't
+greed" had become a classic since the day Aunt Anne issued her infamous
+ukase, compelling that twin who (wilfully speculating upon her sister's
+envy) kept goodies to the last to divide said last precious morsel with
+the gloating other. And the Madigan who (taking base advantage of the
+fact that Bep was at an age when to bite into a hard red winter apple
+was to leave a shaky tooth behind) obligingly took the first bite, but
+made that bite include nearly half the apple--that rapacious betrayer of
+confiding helplessness deserved to be called a harpy. But she wasn't;
+she was known as "a regular harper!"
+
+The Madigans trooped back into the twins' room in a body to "trophy"
+over Bep, whose double misfortune it was not only to be a Partington,
+but to strenuously deny her kinship with the family of that name. Bessie
+Madigan could not be got to admit that she had ever misused a word. And
+though the expressions she coined became part of Madigan history, though
+each piece was stamped undeniably by poor Bep her awkward mark, she
+never ceased insisting that they were counterfeit, issued for the
+express purpose of discrediting her well-known familiarity with elegant
+English.
+
+Yet she it was who had first miscalled her shadow a "shabby"; who had
+asked to be "merinded to merember," like her absent-minded Aunt Anne;
+and who had unconsciously parodied Split's passionate rendering of a
+line of the old song, "I feel his presence near" into "I feel his
+pleasant sneer"!
+
+It was rarely that the Madigans could keep peace among themselves long
+enough to make an onslaught in a body. But when they did, the lone
+victim of their attack knew better than to struggle against her fate.
+Poor Bep, her protests borne down, all her old sins of diction raked up
+and, joined to the new ones, marshaled against her, became sulky. She
+turned her back upon the enemy and retreated to a corner to find out
+what Santa Claus and her own particular patron saint had to offer for
+the double celebration.
+
+There was a dictionary from Kate--an added insult. But, to compensate,
+there was a whole orange from Aunt Anne, a bag of Chinese nuts from
+Wong, and from Split and Sissy (a separate donation from each) an
+undivided half-interest in the white kitten known as Spitfire.
+
+When she had summed up the gifts of the gods to herself, Bep's eyes
+turned quickly to Fom's pile.
+
+There was an assortment of hair-ribbons, more or less the worse for
+wear, from Kate, whose braids were coiled around her head these days.
+(Bep didn't envy her twin these, for the excellent reason that a
+back-comb was all that was necessary to keep her short blonde hair in
+order.) Then there was, from Sissy, a pen-wiper, whose cruelly twisted
+shape was a reflection of that needlewoman's agonies in its composition;
+upon it were embroidered figures and colors of things never seen on sea
+or land. (Fom might have that.) From Split--but Bep knew, of course,
+what there was from Split. Every year regularly, since the second of the
+Madigans had put away childish things, she had bestowed upon her
+faithful retainer her favorite doll Dora,--the large one, with waxen
+head and dark-brown tresses,--only to take it back at the first symptom
+of revolt, for a caprice, or merely to feel her power. She was an Indian
+giver, was Split. (Fom might have Dora, Bep said to herself, as long as
+she could keep her.)
+
+But then Fom, too, had a large, fair, yellow orange and a bag of strange
+candies from Chinatown. As to these ...
+
+The twins must be pardoned, but circumstances had soured them. They had
+been cheated out of either a birthday or a Christmas--they had not
+decided which was the crueler wrong, so had not yet adopted and
+proclaimed their grievance. Besides this sorrow, each, by an interfering
+and unprovoked intrusion, had defrauded the other of the child's
+inalienable right to the center of the stage at least once a year. And
+when one remembers how crowded was the Madigan stage with jealous
+performers, any actor at all desirous of an opportunity must sympathize
+with them.
+
+It was not etiquette for the twins to remember each other's birthday
+with a gift, one reason being that they were incapable of such a piece
+of hypocrisy. Another was that it would have seemed too like the rigid
+reciprocity of the Misses Blind-Staggers, whom it had been their custom
+to parody since the day they had been invited down to the cottage to see
+those ladies' strictly mutual Christmas presents. They played "From
+Maude to Etta" and "From Etta to Maude," as they called it; Fom handing
+to Bep, with great ceremony, a shoe, a stocking, or any other thing
+traveling in pairs, with the legend "From Maude to Etta," and receiving
+in return the mate of said shoe or stocking, "From Etta to Maude."
+
+As for Francis Madigan, his daughters appreciated the fact that a girl's
+birthday could be looked upon only as a day of wrath and mourning; it
+came to be considered delicate, therefore, to mention the matter in his
+presence. Christmas, of course, was "nonsense"--a blanket term of
+disapproval behind which no one peered for reasons for its application.
+
+On Miss Madigan anniversaries acted as a stimulant to an already
+sufficiently fecund pen. They awakened in her that sense of
+responsibility for her nieces' future, which nothing but an
+exceptionally heartrending letter of appeal for financial assistance for
+them could put comfortably to sleep again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out in the woodshed a disemboweled chest of drawers had been turned into
+an apartment-house for dolls. All the dolls that had dwelt in the
+Madigan family since Kate's babyhood (with the exception of Split's
+Dora, whom Fom, according to the preordained penchant of mothers, loved
+best because for her sake she suffered most) had descended to the twins.
+
+On the top floor Mrs. Guy St. Gerald Clair lived with her husband and an
+only daughter. Mrs. Clair was an elegant matron, quite new, a small
+blonde who could turn her head. Florence's skilful fingers kept this
+lady most beautifully gowned. And Split--whose favorite of the small-fry
+dolls she had once been--still remembered her fondly, and passed over to
+Fom the most wonderful patches. These she got from Jack Cody, the
+washerwoman's son, who bribed his mother by promises of good conduct to
+beg samples of their gowns from her aristocratic patrons.
+
+Mr. Guy St. Gerald Clair was an unfortunate gentleman, tall,
+low-spirited, loose-jointed, with fixed blue eyes and knobby black hair.
+His melancholy, Bep was assured, was due to two things--the superiority
+of his wife in the matter of a movable head, and the impossibility of
+ever getting a pair of trousers that would come near to him in the seat
+and stay away from him at the ankle. Fom's theory--a hypothesis that
+enraged Bep--was that Mrs. Guy St. Gerald was the wealthy member of the
+family, and that her husband basely envied her her good fortune. She had
+a way, had Fom, of carrying on imaginary conversations with Mr. Clair
+upholding this idea, which made her twin long to rend her, and the doll
+too, limb from limb.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Clair! Yes, thank you. Mrs. Clair not in?... I'm sorry. Gone
+off to Newport, has she, to sell her marble palace? What about the one
+on Fifth Avenue?... You don't say! Making it bigger? Well, well! And
+made a million in stocks, too. How delightful! You wish that you had
+some money--yes, I suppose--"
+
+"He does not! He does not!" The interruption came fiercely from Bep.
+"You talk to your own doll and leave mine alone."
+
+"Pouf! If you're afraid he'll tell me how poor he is--"
+
+"He ain't poor."
+
+"What does he wear such trousers for, then? Tell me that!"
+
+Bep looked unutterable things at her twin. "Just you make men's clothes
+for a while, Fom Madigan, and see how 't is yourself!" she cried.
+
+"Put Mrs. Clair in men's clothes?" demanded Fom, purposely
+misunderstanding. "I'd like to see myself! The very richest lady in New
+York in men's clothes--why, you could get arrested for that!"
+
+"I'll change--" began Bep, quickly.
+
+"No, thank you. You couldn't suit Mrs. Clair. She's that particular
+about her things!"
+
+"Well, just the same, I won't make men's clothes any more." Bep rolled
+her head threateningly.
+
+"Going to let Mr. Clair go naked?" inquired Fom, pleasantly. "He'll have
+to be sent to the poorhouse, then."
+
+"He sha'n't! He'll go to bed sick first, and then Mrs. Clair'll just
+have to stay home in an old wrapper and nurse him."
+
+"No; she'll take Anita and go off to the country.... Are you so sick,
+Mr. Clair?" began Fom, while her slower twin danced with apprehension of
+the outcome of this one-sided dialogue. "I'm awful sorry. Smallpox? Oh,
+how dreadful! And that's why Mrs. Clair and Anita have gone--"
+
+"'T ain't! 'T ain't smallpox! 'T ain't! 'T ain't! 'T ain't!" Bep hopped
+about on one foot in her excitement.
+
+"How do you know?" asked Fom, calmly. "Are you the doctor?"
+
+The doctor lived in the flat below. He was a ready-dressed gentleman,
+still stylish if a bit seedy, and his large family overflowed down into
+the next two shelves. He was summoned.
+
+"I have called you, doctor,"--began Fom.
+
+"I've sent for you, doctor,"--interrupted Bep.
+
+"Well!" exclaimed Fom, stiffly, "I think you might be polite enough to
+let Mrs. Clair speak to the doctor about her own husband."
+
+"What's she going to say?" demanded Bep.
+
+"How should I know?" asked Fom, airily; and then, hurrying on, while she
+made Mrs. Clair bow low before the ready-made physician, "I am Mrs.
+Clair, doctor, the rich Mrs. Guy St. Gerald Clair who has all the
+money--"
+
+"It's no such thing! It's no such thing!" shrieked Bep.
+
+"Well, Miss Florence Madigan!" exclaimed Mrs. Clair by proxy, "if your
+sister Bessie ain't the rudest!"
+
+"I'll smash her if she says that again!" came in a bellow from Bep.
+
+"You touch my doll!" Daringly Fom placed Mrs. Clair within tempting
+distance of Bep's hand.
+
+"Well--just you let her say it again!"
+
+"I don't need to. She's told me, so now I know it."
+
+"You may go down-stairs again, doctor. It's a mistake," said Bep,
+addressing the medical man. (The twins always tried to keep up
+appearances before their dolls.) "Mr. Clair--the awfully rich Mr. Guy
+St. Gerald Clair--is not sick at all. But you can send your bill to him
+anyway, he won't care. It must have been some poor relation of Mrs.
+Clair's--she didn't have a dress to her name before she married, you
+know."
+
+"Oh--oh! Bessie Madigan!"
+
+"Well, she didn't," said Bep, stoutly.
+
+"I'll bet you--I'll bet you a shut-up. There!" Cautious Fom rarely
+hazarded so great a stake; but she felt that the occasion demanded
+something adequate.
+
+"All right; I'll leave it to Sissy." It was from Sissy that Bep had
+inherited Mr. Clair. She would know.
+
+Laying down stiff all-china Anita Clair, whose shoes she was painting
+red to match her sash, Bep followed her twin into the house.
+
+But the omnivorous Sissy was reading "The Boys of England"--a thing
+Sissy loved to do; for it was a magazine not permitted to enter Mrs.
+Pemberton's immaculate house, a recommendation in itself, and, besides,
+Split, to whom Jack Cody had loaned it, was doubtless looking all over
+for it at this very moment. Lying luxuriously flat upon the floor and
+eating chocolate, Sissy had just got to that part where Jack Harkaway
+"with one flash of Abu Hadji's ruby-incrusted simitar decapitated the
+unfortunate Arab, and Dick Lightheart, seizing the bewitching Haidee,
+had mounted his horse"--when the belligerent twins found her.
+
+"Now, let me say it," began Fom.
+
+"No; you won't ask it fair.... Sissy, tell me, wasn't Mr.--"
+
+"Tra--la--la--la!" sang Fom, shrilly, drowning Bep's voice.
+
+"Say!" Sissy looked up. Her cheeks were flaming with excitement, for any
+bit of print, however crude, had the power to move her as reality could
+not. At eleven she shivered and glowed over pseudo-sentiment, while a
+tragedy in the mine--whose tall chimneys she could see from her
+window--was as intangibly distant and irrelevant as weekly statistics of
+the superintendent's mining reports.
+
+Her juniors harkened respectfully; but neither would permit the other to
+ask the question, for fear of its revealing the nature of the answer
+hoped for. So they withdrew for a period, returning with the following
+query, which Bep allowed Fom to put, so sure was she of the response:
+
+"Did or did not Mrs. Clair ever have a dress before she married Mr.
+Clair?"
+
+To this the oracle gave answer:
+
+She did not, for how could she, she being Mr. Clair's second wife; his
+first, an accomplished lady, but all-solid china, having fallen from
+the top story of the apartment-house and smashed herself into bits, and
+the widower having himself accompanied Sissy and Split to the shop to
+select her successor, whose first gown was, of course, a heavy mourning
+robe.
+
+Bep heaved a deep sigh of content. She ran back to the woodshed so
+relieved that, although she had won a valuable shut-up, she did not care
+to "trophy" in her victory. Fom followed. But her grief for Mrs. Clair
+was bitterer even than her own disappointment.
+
+"I want the Smith twins," she said stiffly, when they got back to the
+dolls' sky-scraper. And Bep understood.
+
+The Smith twins were an invention of technical Fom's that had become an
+institution with herself and her playmate. Two tiny china dolls dressed
+in baby long clothes (the better to hide the fact that they were
+legless), the one with pink, the other with a blue sash, were brought up
+from the lowest story, where broken-nosed Mrs. Smith lived with her
+family of cripples.
+
+They were dolls of bad omen, these two, but following instead of
+prophesying a storm. When it became absolutely necessary for one Madigan
+twin to be "mad" at the other, and yet that the business of playing be
+uninterrupted, the Smith twins invariably made their appearance. They
+were supposed to save one's dignity; in reality, they lent piquancy to
+games and rendered "making up" delightful.
+
+Occasionally Bep and Fom did disown each other and adopt a chum from the
+outside world. One Beulah, known as "Bombey," Forrest was always ready
+obligingly to serve either or both of them in the capacity of dearest
+friend. But other playmates were tame after being accustomed to a
+Madigan; and each twin was so jealously afraid of the other's having a
+good time without her that she spent most of the period of estrangement
+trying to spy out what the other and her interloping companion were
+doing.
+
+The Smith twins were easier.
+
+"Tell Bep," said Florence to the pink-sashed small Smith, "that I think
+she's a nasty mean thing, and Mrs. Clair'll never forgive her."
+
+"Tell Fom," returned Bep, with spirit, putting the blue-sashed Smith
+baby in her pocket as a sort of emergency battery, so that the wires of
+communication might be set up at any time between her twin and herself,
+"that I don't care a 'article for what she thinks. And Mrs. Clair's
+nothing but a beggar. I wonder that Mr. Clair married her!"
+
+The war was on.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Down on the dump, that fascinating mountain of soft, glittering waste
+rock, the godless twins went to dig on Christmas afternoon. The mining
+operations were elaborate that they projected there, particularly after
+Jack Cody's brother Peter joined them. While Peter was rigging up
+windlasses with pieced-out cord, Fom, with a couple of tin cups
+purloined from Wong's kitchen, brought up the rock, piling it in
+miniature dumps at the mouth of their shaft. Bep's awkward fingers could
+be trusted only with the preliminary scooping out of the ground where a
+new shaft was to be sunk.
+
+"Tell Fom," she said to the blue-sashed Smith twin in her pocket, "that
+I want the scooper; my hands are all sore."
+
+"Tell Bep," returned Fom, quickly, "that she can't have it till Pete an'
+I get through running our drift."
+
+The excuse did not seem legitimate to Bep, whose grimy hands ached to
+the fingertips from being used as both pick and shovel. She made a dart
+for the "scooper"--a heavy china cup which had been smashed in so
+fortunate a manner as to be ideally fitted for emptying ore by hand.
+
+But Fom was slim, and quick as a cat. She threw herself bodily upon both
+scooper and pick--the latter an old fork with but one tine left. Bep
+promptly threw herself on top of her twin, while Peter, a laconic lad,
+calmly set himself to rehabilitating the hind wheel of a battered tin
+toy express which served as a dump-cart.
+
+"Little folks shouldn't quarrel," suddenly said a slow voice above the
+struggling arms and legs of the twins.
+
+Fom looked up, still pressing her body hard against the tools in
+dispute, while Bep got to her feet, red-faced and panting. "We're not
+quarreling," said Florence, calmly.
+
+Superintendent Warren Pemberton, still in his oilskins from a trip down
+the mine, looked down at her and gasped. He did not know the Madigan
+brunette twin, and actually thought she was lying. But Fom was never
+known to lie; she only pettifogged.
+
+"You're not quarreling!"
+
+"Nope."
+
+"Didn't I see you with my own eyes?" he demanded, piqued.
+
+"People don't see people quarreling," said Fom, didactically. "They hear
+them."
+
+"Oh, that's it! Well, didn't I hear--"
+
+"No, you didn't; for we're mad and don't speak to each other."
+
+"But you're not quarreling?"
+
+"Nope," repeated Fom, stoutly, "we're not."
+
+Mr. Pemberton shook his head helplessly. "What are you doing?"
+
+"I'm running a drift"--Fom misunderstood the drift of his
+question--"from the Silver King to the Diamond Heart, and the earth
+keeps coming down. Then Bep tries to make it harder by grabbing for the
+tools and--"
+
+"Why don't you timber?" suggested Pemberton, gravely.
+
+"'Cause I don't have to," answered Fom, quite as seriously.
+
+"Oh, you don't!" Pemberton, a man with no sense of humor, had been
+unusually expansive; but he shrank angrily into himself now, as though
+from a cold douche. It took some time for one to get accustomed to Fom's
+way of instructing authorities upon the subjects which they were
+supposed to know most about.
+
+"No, that's silly," remarked Fom, superbly. "If the ground's sticky
+enough, and you're not butter-fingered,"--with an insulting glance at
+Bep,--"you can manage all right."
+
+"But I'm not butter-fingered and I always timber." Warren Pemberton was
+a slow man, but a dogged one; the elusiveness of this pert child
+irritated him.
+
+"That's 'cause you don't know any better," came from the expert, who had
+returned to her task, the excited flourishes of her uplifted legs
+betraying its difficulties.
+
+"You're a little fool!" declared the superintendent. "Do you know who I
+am? My name's Pemberton, and I--"
+
+"Why don't you make your wife leave Crosby alone, then?" demanded Fom,
+without seeming much impressed.
+
+Warren Pemberton looked down upon her little body with an expression
+that made Bep wonder why he refrained from stamping upon it.
+
+"You don't think Mrs. Pemberton knows her business, either?" His ruddy,
+full face looked apoplectic.
+
+"Nope. Sissy says if she was Crosby she'd run away to sea. And she's
+going to put him up to it, too, if--"
+
+But Bep, frightened by the growing anger in the great man's face,
+interposed. "Shall I shut her up for you, Mr. Pemberton?" she asked.
+
+"What--what d' ye say? I wish to God you would, or that somebody could!"
+
+"Fom," said Bep, authoritatively, "shut up!"
+
+Fom jumped to her feet. There was appeal, wrath, rebellion in her
+crimson face. She opened her lips as if to protest.
+
+"Shut up, Fom," repeated Bep, distinctly. "I said _shut up_."
+
+There came a deadly silence. Pemberton, in the act of stalking
+ill-temperedly away, turned bewildered to regard the miracle.
+
+"Say," asked Peter Cody, driven to speech by curiosity. "Say, Fom, do
+you let your sister boss you like that? I thought you was twins."
+
+Fom looked appealingly at Bep. If Bep would but explain the nature of a
+shut-up--its power of suddenly depriving one of speech; of making one
+temporarily dumb in the very midst of a sentence, at the bidding of the
+winner of a wager, whenever, wherever the caprice to collect the debt of
+honor occurred to her!
+
+But Bep, after accompanying Mr. Pemberton a few steps, striving to
+untell him what Fom had betrayed, turned her attention again to mining
+matters. She knew well what Fom's eyes begged, but hid her head in the
+Silver King, whence a subterranean giggle came, revealing her enjoyment
+of the situation.
+
+Fom's stormy eyes filled and the Silver King and the Diamond Heart
+jigged back and forth till the tears splashed down and cleared her
+vision.
+
+"Ho--cry-baby!" called Peter Cody. Peter was one of those gallant
+gentlemen who are never afraid of a playmate when some one else has
+demonstrated that he can be downed.
+
+At the taunt, a revengeful passion seized Fom, standing there--a lingual
+Samson shorn of her tongue, two dirty channels plowed down her cheeks by
+her tears. Deliberately lifting her foot, she brought it down, stamping
+with all her might again and again.
+
+The soft, loosely packed earth slid smoothly down. The Diamond Heart
+caved in completely, the almost finished connecting tunnel was a wreck,
+and the still rolling, moist gravel swept over Bep's head, filling up
+the Silver King clear to the surface.
+
+By the time Peter had realized their utter ruin, and Bep had shaken the
+particles of sand and gravel from her hair and ears and throat, Fom was
+nowhere in sight.
+
+"Let's kill her," suggested Bep.
+
+"Shall we?" asked Peter, with an air of stern justice.
+
+They debated the question, fully realizing the make-believe of it, yet
+taking pleasure in at least the mention of revenge.
+
+Suddenly Bep gave a cry of triumph and picked up something from the
+ground.
+
+"What is it?" asked Peter.
+
+"It's Fom's doll. It must have dropped out of her pocket when she was
+digging and sassing Mr. Pemberton. We'll play there's been an
+accident,--a cave in the mine,--and the doll'll be buried alive down
+there. Wouldn't Fom howl?"
+
+She rolled up her sleeve and thrust a round arm far down in the clean,
+moist gravel, leaving the poor Smith twin in the murderous depths of the
+Silver King. Then both set to work. Poor Fom, half-way down the dump,
+beside the mysterious "flush" of seething, boiling, foaming waste water,
+whose tide went low or high with the breathing of the great mine, heard
+a laugh or a whistle now and then; and a miserable feeling of loneliness
+oppressed her. But she lay there sobbing quietly, while on top the
+valiant rescuers emptied the mines, carried on conversations with the
+entombed men, and at last, with a fine pretense of amazement and grief,
+discovered the dead miner. Reverently he was borne to the surface, Bep
+holding the bucket steady while Peter wound the cord. And then they
+buried the unfortunate man. There was an imposing funeral, and the
+three-wheeled dump-cart was filled with imaginary mourners. At the grave
+hymns were sung by Bep, when she could be spared from mourner's duties,
+and a prayer by Peter concluded the impressive services.
+
+It had been Fom's intention to lie there half-way down the dump till she
+died of hunger--when Bep would be sorry for her cruel treatment. The
+self-pitying tears were in Florence's eyes as she thought out the
+details of Bep's grief, and the unanimous reprobation of the family for
+the bad blonde twin. But she grew hungrier and hungrier, and at last
+resolved to go home to lunch.
+
+First, though, she would see how much damage she had done in her
+short-lived anger, for her heart was sore when she thought how proud
+they two had been of their mines. She scrambled to the top. There was
+the new shaft, the Tomboy, almost completed. The Diamond Heart was in
+working order. Peter's dexterous fingers had triumphed over the
+shifting rock, and he had modestly taken a hint as to timbering from
+Warren Pemberton. The tunnel was an accomplished fact, while over the
+frail hoisting-works of the Silver King a tiny flag--a corner torn from
+Bep's handkerchief--fluttered at half-mast.
+
+
+
+
+THE ANCESTRY OF IRENE
+
+
+In her heart Irene was confident that, though among the Madigans, she
+was not of them. The color of her hair, the shape of her nose, the
+tempestuousness of her disposition, the difficulty she experienced in
+fitting her restless and encroaching nature into what was merely one of
+a number of jealously frontiered interstices in a large family--all this
+forbade tame acceptance on her part of so ordinary and humble an origin
+as Francis Madigan's fatherhood connoted.
+
+"No," she said firmly to herself the day she and Florence were
+see-sawing in front of the woodshed after school, "he's only just my
+foster-father; that's all."
+
+How this foster-father--she loved the term, it sounded so delightfully
+haughty--had obtained possession of one whose birthright would place her
+in a station so far above his own, she had not decided. But she was
+convinced that, although poor and peculiar and incapable of
+comprehending the temperament and necessities of the nobly born, he was,
+in his limited way, a worthy fellow. And she had long ago resolved that
+when her real father came for her, she would bend graciously and
+forgivingly down from her seat in the carriage, to say good-by to poor
+old Madigan.
+
+"Thank you very, very much, Mr. Madigan," she would sweetly say, "for
+all your care. My father, the Count, will never forget what you have
+done for his only child. As for myself, I promise you that I will have
+an eye upon your little girls. I am sure his Grace the Duke will gladly
+do anything for them that I recommend. I am very much interested in
+little Florence, and shall certainly come for her some day in my golden
+chariot to take her to my castle for a visit, because she is such a
+well-behaved child and knew me, in her childish way, for a noble lady in
+disguise. Cecilia? Which one is that? Oh, the one her sisters call
+Sissy! She needs disciplining sadly, Mr. Madigan, sadly. Much as he
+loves me, my father, the Prince, would not care to have me know her--as
+she is now. But she will improve, if you will be very, very strict with
+her. Good-by! Good-by, all! No, I shall not forget you. Be good and obey
+your aunty. Good-by!"
+
+The milk-white steeds would fly down the steep, narrow, unpaved streets.
+On each side would stand the miners, bowing, hat in hand, hurrahing for
+the great Emperor and his beautiful daughter--she who had so strangely
+lived among them under the name of Split Madigan. They would speak,
+realizing now, of certain royal traits they had always noted in her--her
+haughty spirit that never brooked an insult, her independence, her utter
+fearlessness, the reckless bravery of a long line of kings, and--and
+even that very disinclination for study which they had stupidly fancied
+indicated that Sissy Madigan was her superior! What would Princess Irene
+want with vulgar fractions, a common denominator, and such low subjects?
+
+"What makes you wrinkle up your nose that way, Split?" Florence's voice
+broke in complainingly on her sister's reverie. She glanced up the
+incline of the see-saw to the height whence Irene looked down,
+physically as well as socially, upon her faithful retainer and the
+straggling little town.
+
+Irene did not answer. She was busy dreaming, and her dreams were of the
+turned-up-nose variety.
+
+"Don't, Split! It makes you look like a--what Sissy just now called
+you." The smaller sister's eyes fell, as though seeking corroboration
+from the middle of the board, where Sissy had been so lately acting as
+"candle-stick"--lately, for the incident had ended (no game being
+enticing enough to hold these two long in an unnatural state of
+neutrality) in Split's washing Sissy's face vigorously in the snow, and
+Sissy's calling her elder sister "nothing but an old Indian!" as she ran
+weeping into the house with the familiar parting threat to get even
+before bedtime. No Madigan could bear that the sun should set on her
+wrath; she preferred that all scores should be paid off, so that the
+slate might be clean for to-morrow's reckonings.
+
+"Fom," said her big sister, slowly, when she was quite ready to speak,
+"I think you'd better call me 'Irene.' You'd feel gladder about it when
+I'm gone."
+
+"Where?" At this minute it was Fom's turn to be dangerously high, and
+she wriggled to the uttermost end of the plank to counterbalance her
+sister's weight.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "She glanced up the incline of the see-saw to the height
+      whence Irene looked down"]
+
+A mysterious smile overspread Irene's face. It became broadly triumphant
+as she rose presently on the short end of the board, her arms daringly
+outspread, her toes upturned in front of her, her agile body well
+balanced, her spirit exulting in the sense of danger without and
+superiority within.
+
+"When?" asked Florence, with that amiable readiness to consider a
+question unasked, so becoming to the vassal. "When are you going?"
+
+"To-night--maybe." Her own words startled Irene. She loved to play upon
+Fom's fears, but she had not really intended committing herself so far.
+"He may call for me to-night," she added, with qualifying emphasis.
+
+"Who? Not--not--"
+
+"Yes, my father. I must be ready at any time, you know."
+
+Fom looked alarmed. She had heard long ago and in strict confidence
+about Split's lofty parentage. She had even accepted drafts upon her
+future, rendering services which were unusual in a Madigan fag, with the
+understanding that when the Princess Split should come into her own, she
+would richly repay. But she had never before heard her speak so
+positively or set a time when their relationship must cease.
+
+A feeling of utter loneliness came over Split's faithful ally. She saw
+the balance of power in the Madigan oligarchy rudely disturbed. She
+beheld, in a swift, dread vision, the undisputed supremacy of the party
+of Sissy. Dismay entered her soul and shook her body, for with the
+brunette of the twins emotion and action were synonymous. "Oh, don't go,
+Split!" she begged, squirming unhappily at her end of the plank. "Don't
+go!"
+
+High up in the air, Split smiled superbly. There was _noblesse oblige_
+in that smile; also the strong teasing tincture which no Madigan could
+resist using, even upon her closest ally.
+
+"Oh, Split--o-o-oh, Split!" wailed Fom, forgetting in her wriggling
+misery how close she already was to the end of the plank.
+
+A crash and a bump and a squeal told it to her all at once. She had slid
+clear off, getting an instantaneous effect of her haughty sister
+unsupported at a dizzy eminence, before Split came bumping down to
+earth, the see-saw giving that regal head a parting, stunning tap as the
+long end finally settled down and the short one went up to stay.
+
+It was never in the ethics of Madigan warfare to explain the
+inexplicable. Florence was on her feet, flying as though for her very
+life, before Split, shaken down from her dreams, quite realized what had
+happened. And she was still sitting as she had fallen when Jim, the
+Indian, came for the sawbuck.
+
+Jim limped, his eyes were sore and watery, and it took him two weeks to
+conquer the Madigan woodpile, which any other Piute in town could have
+leveled in half the time.
+
+"Him fall, eh?" he asked, dismantling the see-saw with that careful
+leisureliness that accounted for the Chinaman Wong's contempt for
+Indians.
+
+"Not him; _her_, Jim."
+
+Split possessed a passion for imparting knowledge, of which she had
+little, and which was hard for her to attain.
+
+Jim grinned.
+
+"She no got little gal like you teach her Inglis," he said, gently
+apologetic.
+
+"Not she, Jim; _he_. How old is your little girl?" Split remembered that
+a genteel interest in the lower classes is becoming to the well-born.
+
+"He just big like you," Jim responded mournfully, drawing the back of
+his brown hand across his nose. "But he all gone."
+
+"Dead?" Split crossed her legs uneasily as she squatted, and lowered her
+voice reverently.
+
+"He no dead," Jim said, lifting the sawbuck and easing it on his
+shoulder. "One Washoe squaw steal him--little papoose, nice little
+papoose. Much white--like you, missy. So white, squaw say no sure
+Injun."
+
+"Jim!"
+
+"Take him down Tluckee valley. Take him 'way. Jim see squaw one day long
+time 'go--Washoe Lake--shoot ducks. Heap shoot squaw. He die, but he say
+white Faginia man got papoose."
+
+"Jim!" It was the faintest echo of the first terrified exclamation.
+
+"Come Faginia, look papoose. No find. Chop wood long time. Heap
+hogady--not much dinner. Nice papoose--white, like you."
+
+Jim paused. He expected sympathy, but he hoped for dinner. When he saw
+he was to get neither, he hunched his lame hip; scratched his head,
+balanced the sawbuck, and shuffled away.
+
+Too overcome to move, Split sat looking after him. Her father! This,
+then, was her father! She was dazed, helpless, too overwhelmed even to
+be unhappy yet.
+
+There came a shrill call for her from Kate, and Split, with unaccustomed
+meekness, staggered obediently to her feet. What was left for her but to
+be a slave, she said stonily to herself. She was an Indian like--like
+her father! And Sissy had noticed the resemblance that very afternoon!
+
+"It's the bell, Split," explained Kate, who was reading "The Spanish
+Gypsy" in the low, hall-like library.
+
+She had begun to read the book for the reason that no one in her class
+at school had read it--usually a compelling reason for the eldest of the
+Madigans; but the poetic beauty, the extravagance of the romance, had
+whirled the girl away from her pretentious pose, and she was finishing
+it now because she could not help it; chained to it, it seemed to her,
+till she should know the end.
+
+"Shall I go?" asked Split, humbly, looking up at her sister.
+
+Kate looked up, too surprised by her sister's docility to do anything
+but nod. She had anticipated a battle, a ring at the door-bell being the
+signal for a flying wedge of Madigans tearing through the hall, with
+inquisitive Irene at its apex--except when she was asked to answer it.
+
+The sisters' eyes met: those of the elder, in her thin, dark, flushed
+face, hazy with romantic happiness; those of the younger bright with
+romantic suffering, demanding a share of that felicity which
+transfigured her senior.
+
+"What're you reading, anyway, Kate?" she asked.
+
+As well tap the bung of a cask and ask what it holds. Kate began
+chanting:
+
+    "'Father, your child is ready! She will not
+    Forsake her kindred: she will brave all scorn
+    Sooner than scorn herself. Let Spaniards all,
+    Christians, Jews, Moors, shoot out the lip and say,
+    "Lo, the first hero in a tribe of thieves!"
+    Is it not written so of them? They, too,
+    Were slaves, lost, wandering, sunk beneath a curse,
+    Till Moses, Christ, and Mahomet were born,
+    Till beings lonely in their greatness lived,
+    And lived to save their people.'"
+
+It poured from Kate's lips, the story of the lady Fedalma and her Gipsy
+father, a stream of winy romance, a sugared impossibility preserved in
+the very spirits of poetry.
+
+Again the old bell jangled, and again. Kate was glutted, drunk with the
+sound of the verbal music that had been chorusing behind her lips; while
+for Irene every word seemed charged with the significance of special
+revelation. The light seemed to leap from her sister's eyes to kindle a
+conflagration in her own.
+
+"Read it again--that part--Kate! Read it!" she cried.
+
+And Kate, not a bit loath, turned the page and repeated:
+
+    "'Lay the young eagle in what nest you will,
+      The cry and swoop of eagles overhead
+      Vibrate prophetic in its kindred frame,
+      And make it spread its wings and poise itself
+      For the eagle's flight.'"
+
+Split breathed again, a full, deep breath of satisfaction. An
+Indian--she, Split Madigan? Perhaps; but an Indian princess, then, with
+a mission as great, glorious, and impossible as Fedalma's own.
+
+When at last she did turn mechanically to answer the bell, she saw that
+Sissy had anticipated her and was showing old Professor Trask into the
+parlor. Ordinarily Irene loved to listen at the door while Sissy's
+lesson was in progress; for Trask was a nervous, disappointed wreck,
+whose idea of teaching music seemed to be to make his pupils as much
+like himself as harried youth can be like worried age. But on this great
+day the joy of hearing the perfect Sissy rated had not the smallest
+place in her enemy's thoughts. A poet's words had lifted Irene in an
+instant from child hell to heaven, had fired her imagination, had
+rekindled her pride, had given back her dreams.
+
+Reality was not altogether so pleasant, she found, when she went into
+the kitchen, skirmished with the Chinese cook for Jim's dinner, and
+went out to the woodpile to give it to him herself.
+
+She did not wait to see him eat it--she was not poet enough for that;
+and, that impersonal, composite father, her tribe, was calling her.
+
+Pulling on her hood and jacket, with her mittens dangling from a red
+tape on each side, she flew out and down the long, rickety stairs which
+a former senator from Nevada had built up the mountain's side, when he
+planned for his home a magnificent view of the mountains and desert off
+toward the east.
+
+Split did not look at either, though they shone, the one like a billowy
+moonlit sea, the other like a lake of silver, because of the snow that
+covered them. She half ran, half slid down the hilly street till she
+came to a box-like miner's cabin, where Jane Cody, the washerwoman,
+lived with her son. In front of it she halted and called imperiously:
+
+"Jack!"
+
+For this same Jack was her own, her discovery, her possession, who
+acknowledged her thrall and was proud of it.
+
+But the green shutters over the one window remained fast, and the door
+tight closed.
+
+"Jack?" There was a suggestion of incredulity in Split's voice.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "'I want you--come!' the Indian princess announced"]
+
+The whistles burst forth in a medley of throaty roars (it was
+five-o'clock "mining-time"), but the bird-like whistle of Jack was
+missing.
+
+"Jack Cody!" Split stamped her high arctics in the snow.
+
+The door was opened a little, and a round black head was cautiously
+thrust forth.
+
+"I want you--come!" the Indian princess announced. "And get your sled."
+
+"I can't," replied the head.
+
+"But I want you."
+
+The head wagged dolefully.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+The head hung down.
+
+"Tell me."
+
+The head's negative was sorrowful but determined.
+
+"If you don't tell me I'll--never speak to you again 's long as I live,
+Jack Cody!"
+
+The head stretched out its long neck and sent an agonized glance toward
+her.
+
+"Tell me--right now!" she commanded.
+
+"Well--she's took my clothes with her," wailed the head, and jerked
+itself within, while the door was slammed behind it.
+
+Split walked up the stoop.
+
+"Jack," she called, her mouth at the keyhole, "who took 'em? Your
+mother? Why? But she can't keep you in that way. Never mind. What _have_
+you got on?"
+
+The door was opened an inch or two, and the head started to look out.
+But at sight of Split so near it withdrew in such turtle-like alarm that
+she laughed aloud.
+
+"What're you laughing at?" growled the boy.
+
+"What's that you got on?" said she.
+
+"My--my mother's wrapper."
+
+A peal of laughter burst from the Indian princess. But it ceased
+suddenly. For the door was thrown open with such violence that it made
+Jane Cody's wax flowers shake apprehensively under their glass bell, and
+a figure stalked out such as might haunt a dream--long, gaunt, awkward,
+inescapably boyish, yet absurdly feminine, now that the dark calico
+wrapper flapped at its big, awkward heels and bound and hindered its
+long legs.
+
+Split looked from the heavily shod feet to the round, short-shaven black
+head, and a premonitory giggle shook her.
+
+"Don't you laugh--don't you dare laugh at me! Don't you, Split--will
+you?" The phrases burst from him, a threat at the beginning, an appeal
+at the end.
+
+"No," said Split, choking a bit; "no, I won't. You don't look very--"
+she gulped--"very funny, Jack. And it's getting so dark that nobody'd
+know--really they wouldn't."
+
+"Sure?"
+
+Split nodded.
+
+"Get your sled quick, the big, long one, the leg-breaker, and take me
+down--I'll tell you where. Get it, won't you?"
+
+"In this, this--like this?" Jack faltered.
+
+"It's so important, Jack. Please! It's always you that asks me,
+remember."
+
+The boy threw his hands out with a gesture that strained the narrow
+garment he wore almost to bursting. He began to talk, to argue, to
+plead; then suddenly he yielded, and turned and ran, a grotesque,
+long-legged shape, toward the back of the house.
+
+When he whistled, Split joined him, and together they plowed their way
+through the high snow to the beaten-down street beyond. At the top of
+the hill, Split sat down well to the front of the low, rakish-looking
+leg-breaker. Behind her the boy, hitching up his skirts, threw himself
+with one knee bent beneath him, and, with a skilful ruddering of the
+other long, untrousered leg, started the sled.
+
+They had coasted only half a block--Virginia City runs downhill--when
+they heard the shrill yelp of the Comstock boy on the trail of his prey.
+As Jack stopped the sled a swift volley of snowballs from a cross-street
+struck the figure of a tall, timid, stooping man in an old-fashioned
+cape, such as no Comstock boy had ever seen on anything masculine.
+
+"It's Professor Trask," breathed Irene, keen delight in persecution
+lending to her aggressive, bright face that savage sharpness of feature
+which Sissy Madigan called Indian. "Don't you wish you hadn't got that
+dress on, Jack?" she asked, as the tall, black mark for a good shot
+still stood hesitating to cross the polished, steep street, down which
+many sleds had slipped for days past. "You could get him every time,
+couldn't you?"
+
+Despite the ignoble garment that cramped it, the boy's breast swelled
+with pride in his lady's approval.
+
+"You could just fire one at him from here, anyway," suggested Irene,
+adaptable as her sex is to contemporary standards and customs.
+
+"Ye-es," said the boy, hesitating; "but he's such a poor old luny."
+
+Split turned her imperial little hooded head questioningly.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "They had coasted only half a block"]
+
+"He is--really luny," said the boy, apologetically. "Since his little
+girl wandered away one day from home and never came back, he gets
+spells, you know. He was telling ma one day when she went over to do his
+washing. But--but I will land one on him if you want, Split."
+
+But Split had suddenly pivoted clear around and sat now facing him, an
+eager, mittened hand staying his hard, skilful, obedient fingers,
+already making the snowball.
+
+"How--how old would that little girl be, Jack?" she gasped.
+
+"Why, 'bout twelve--thirteen. Why?"
+
+"And what would be the color of her hair?"
+
+"Red, I s'pose, like his; not--not like yours--Split," he added shyly,
+glancing at the brown fire of the curls that escaped from her hood.
+
+But Irene was no longer listening. She was looking over to the other
+side of the street, where that shrinking, pitiable old figure in its
+threadbare neatness trembled; not daring to seek safety across the
+dangerously smooth street, nor daring to remain exposed here, where it
+ducked ridiculously every now and then to avoid the whizzing balls that
+sang about it.
+
+Irene breathed hard. A coward for a father, a scarecrow, a butt for a
+gang of miners' boys! This, this was her father! Why, even crippled old
+Jim, the wood-chopper, seen in retrospect and haloed by copper-colored
+dreams of romantic rehabilitation--even Jim seemed regrettable.
+
+But she did not hesitate, any more than Fedalma did. She, too, knew a
+daughter's duty--to a hitherto unknown, just-discovered father. A merely
+ordinary, every-day parent like Francis Madigan was, as a matter of
+course, the common enemy, and no self-respecting Madigan would waste the
+poetry of filial feeling upon any one so realistic.
+
+"You wait for me here, Jack," she said, with unhesitating reliance upon
+his obedience.
+
+"Where're you going? I thought you were in a hurry to get down to the
+wickiups."
+
+She did not hear him. She had spun off the sled, and with the
+sure-footed speed of the hill-child she was crossing the street.
+
+Old Trask, his short-sighted eyes blinking beneath his twitching, bushy
+red eyebrows, looked down as upon a miracle when a red-mittened hand
+caught his and he heard a confident voice--the clear voice children use
+to enlighten the stupidity of adults:
+
+"I'll help you across; take my hand."
+
+"Eh--what?"
+
+He leaned down, failing to recognize her. Children had no identity to
+him. They were merely brats, he used to say, unless they happened to
+have some musical aptitude. But he accepted her aid, his battered old
+hat rocking excitedly upon his high bony forehead, as he ducked and
+turned and shivered at the oncoming balls. "Bad boys--bad boys!" he
+ejaculated. "Boys are the devil!"
+
+"Yes," agreed Split, craftily. "Girls are best. Your little girl,
+now--father--" she began softly.
+
+"Eh--what?" he exclaimed. "Who's your father? My respects to him."
+
+"I have no father," she answered softly. A plan had sprung full-born
+from her quick brain. She would win this erratic father back to memory
+of his former life and her place in it--somewhat as did one Lucy
+Manette, a favorite heroine of Split's that Sissy had read about and
+told her of. That would be a fine thing to do--almost as fine, and
+requiring the center of the stage as much, as rehabilitating the Red
+Man.
+
+"I have no father," she murmured, "if you won't be mine."
+
+"What? What? No!" Trask was across now and brushing the snowy traces of
+battle from his queer old cape. "No; I don't want any children. I had
+one once--a daughter."
+
+Split's heart beat fast.
+
+"She was a brat, with the temper of a little fiend, and no
+ear--absolutely none--for music; played like an elephant."
+
+How terribly confirmatory!
+
+"And what--what became of her?" whispered Split.
+
+"She ran away two years ago and--"
+
+"Two years!"
+
+"I said two, didn't I?" demanded the old professor, irascibly.
+
+Disgusted, Split turned her back on him. Why, two years ago Sissy had
+first called her an Indian; how right she had been! Two years ago she,
+Split, was making over all her dolls to Fom. Two years ago she had
+already discovered Jack Cody's fleet strength, his wonderful aptness at
+making swift sleds, in which her reckless spirit reveled, his mastership
+of other boys of his gang, and--her mastery of him.
+
+She turned and beckoned to him. His sweet whistle rang out in answer
+like a vocal salute, and in a moment she was seated again in front of
+him, with that deft, tail-like left leg of his steering them down, down
+over cross-street, through teams and sleighs and unwary pedestrians;
+past the miners coming off shift; past the lamplighter making his rounds
+in the crisp, clear cold of the evening; past the heavy-laden squaws,
+with their bowed heads, their papooses on their backs, their weary arms
+bearing home the spoils of a hard day's work, and the sore-eyed yellow
+dogs trudging, too, wearily and dejectedly at their heels, toward the
+rest of the wickiup and the acrid warmth of the sage-brush camp-fire.
+
+In short, swift sentences, as they hurdled over artificially raised
+obstructions, or slid along the firm-packed snow, or grated on the muddy
+cross-streets, Princess Split told her plan--with reservations. She was
+not prepared to admit to so humble a worshiper the secret of her birth,
+but the magnanimous self-sacrifice of a beautiful nature, the heroine
+concealed beneath a frivolous exterior--these she was willing Jack Cody
+should suspect and admire.
+
+"We'll lift them up, you and I, Jack. I'm going 'to--to be the angel of
+a homeless tribe,' or something like that," she quoted, as it grew
+darker and the sled slowed down a bit, where the slant of the
+hill-street became gentler and she need not hold on tight. "You'll be
+their general and I their princess. You'll teach them to be fine
+soldiers, so that the people in town will be afraid of them and have to
+give them back their lands--and the mines, too. They're theirs, and
+they shall have them and be millionaires. And, of course, so will we.
+We'll own all the stocks and brokers' offices, and after a few years,
+when they're quite civilized, we'll come up to town to live. We'll take
+Bob Graves's 'Castle' and--Jack! Ah!"
+
+A long scream burst from her. Never in her life had Split Madigan
+screamed like that. For an incredibly fleet instant she actually saw
+above her head a struggling horse's hoofs. In the next, her
+calico-wrappered knight had thrown himself and his lady out into the
+great drifts on the side. Split felt the cold fleeciness of new-fallen
+snow on her face, down her neck, up her sleeves. She was smothered,
+drowned in it, when with another tug the boy whirled her to her feet,
+and swaying unsteadily, she looked up into the face of the man whose
+horses had so nearly crushed her life out.
+
+It was her father--she knew it was. Else why had fate so strangely
+thrown them together? Yes, this was her true father. No other girl's
+father could have so handsome a fur coat as that reaching from the tips
+of this very tall man's ears to his heels. No other could have a sleigh
+so fine, and silver-belled horses fit for a king. No other could have
+such bright brown eyes beneath heavy sandy brows, such red, red cheeks,
+and so long and silver-white a beard which the sun could still betray
+into confession of its youthful ruddiness. What if he did have, too, a
+brogue so soft, so wheedling that men had long called him Slippery Uncle
+Sammy?
+
+Split waked with a humiliating start from her lesser, less genteel
+dreams. Of course this bonanza king driving up from the mine was her
+real father, and she a bonanza princess, happier, more fortunate than a
+merely political one; for princesses have to live in Europe, where
+Madigans cannot see and envy them.
+
+With the mien of one who has come at last into her own, Split accepted
+his invitation to carry her up to town, and, with a facetious twinkle in
+his eyes that added to his likeness to a stately Santa Claus (though his
+was not a reputation for benevolence), he lifted her and set her down
+under the silky fur rugs.
+
+Split nestled back in perfect content: at last she was fitly placed.
+
+"Hitch on behind, Jack," she cried patronizingly, and the bonanza king's
+sleigh went up the hill with its queer freight: queer, for this was that
+one of them whose strength was subtlety, whose forte was guile, whose
+left hand knew not the charitable acts of his right--and neither did
+the right, for that matter.
+
+Thoroughly sophisticated are Comstock children as to the character of
+the masters of their masters, and Split Madigan knew how foreign to this
+man's nature a lovable action was. All the more, then, she valued the
+distinction which chance--fate--had made hers. And all the more did a
+something fierce and lawless and proud in herself leap to recognize the
+tyrant in him. Kings should be above law, as princesses were, was
+Split's creed; else why be kings and princesses?
+
+"An' where would ye be a-goin' to, down this part o' the world so late?"
+she heard the unctuous voice above her inquire.
+
+Split was silent. That the daughter of a bonanza king should have
+fancied for a moment that Indian Jim could be her father!
+
+"An' who's the gyurl with ye--the witch ye call Jack?"
+
+"'T isn't a girl." That virility which Split's wild nature respected and
+admired forbade her denying the boy his sex. "It's a boy--Jack--Jack
+Cody."
+
+King Sammy laughed. His was rich, strong laughter, and men who heard it
+on C Street (they had reached the main thoroughfare now, so fleet were
+these kingly horses of Split's father) knew it--and knew, too, what
+poor, mean thoughts lay behind it.
+
+"An' this Cody," he said, turning his handsome head to look down at the
+boy on his sled behind. "Cody--Cody, now," he continued, with royalty's
+marvelous memory, "your father killed in the Ophir--eh? Time of the fire
+on the 1800--yes--yes! An' I was goin' to give him a point that very
+day. Well--well!"
+
+"Ye did!" The boy looked up resentful, and met those smiling, crafty
+eyes.
+
+"No! An' he sold short? Too bad! Too bad! I thought sure that stock was
+goin' down. My, the bad man that told me it was! I hope he didn't lose?"
+he chuckled.
+
+"All we had," said the boy.
+
+"Tut--tut--tut! What a pity! Haven't I always said it's wicked to deal
+in stocks!" The king shook his sorrowful old head, then turned to the
+princess beside him. "An' it's out for a ride ye'd be, sweetheartin' on
+the sly, eh?"
+
+"He's not! I was not!" Split's cheeks grew hotter. He was her father,
+this splendid, handsome king, yet never had she felt for poor Francis
+Madigan what she felt now for the man beside her.
+
+"What, then?"
+
+"I was going down for--for a reason," she stammered.
+
+"To be sure! To be sure!" chuckled his old Majesty. "An' ye've told your
+father an' mother ye were goin', no doubt."
+
+"No, I--didn't. I--couldn't."
+
+"Coorse not; coorse not, but ye--"
+
+"Let me out!" cried Split.
+
+The sneer in his voice had set her aflame. She rose in the sleigh, cast
+off the furs, and, stamping like a fury, tried to seize the reins.
+
+"Ho! Ho!" The old monarch's bowed broad shoulders shook with laughter as
+he caught her trembling hands and held them. "What a little spitfire! A
+divvle of a temper ye've got, my dear. Cody, now, does he like gyurls
+with such a temper?"
+
+"Will you let me out?" Her voice was hoarse with anger.
+
+"Can't ye wait till we get t' a crossin', ye little termagant?"
+
+"No--no!" She tore her hands from him, and, with a quick, lithe leap
+from the low sleigh, landed, a bit dazed, in the snow banked high on the
+side of the street.
+
+Uncle Sammy stared after her a moment. Then he remembered the boy
+behind.
+
+"Hi--there!" he cried, looking over his shoulder as he reached for his
+whip. "Git!"
+
+But Cody had the street-boy's quickness. All he had to do was to let go
+the end of rope he held, and the leg-breaker slipped smoothly back,
+while the king's runnered chariot shot ahead, drawn by the flying horses
+on whose backs the whip had descended.
+
+"Ugh!" shivered Split, as she made her way out of the drift. "It's cold,
+Jack. Let's run."
+
+Together they hauled the leg-breaker up the hill, parting at the
+snow-caked, wandering flights of steps, which seemed weary and worn with
+their endless task of climbing the mountain to Madigan's door.
+
+Irene mounted them quickly. She was cold, and it had grown very dark and
+late; so late that the lamp shone out from the dining-room, warning her
+that it must be dangerously near to dinner-time. She had reached the
+last flight when Sissy came flying out along the porch to meet her.
+
+"Split--ssh!" she cautioned, with a friendliness that surprised Split,
+who remembered how well she had washed that round, innocent face in the
+snow only a few hours ago--the face of Sissy, the unforgiving. "Dinner's
+ready," she went on, "but father isn't down yet. Go round the back way,
+and you can get in without his knowing how late you are."
+
+Split did not budge. The sight of Sissy had made her a Madigan again,
+prepared for any emergency the appearance of her arch-enemy might
+portend. "What are you up to?" she demanded suspiciously.
+
+"Oh!" Sissy turned haughtily on her heel. "If you want to go in and
+catch it--go."
+
+But Split did not want to catch it. Her day's experience had made her
+content to bear the eccentricities of her humble foster-father, but she
+was by no means anxious to be the instrument that should provoke a
+characteristic expression of them.
+
+She slipped around the back way, passing through Wong's big kitchen, the
+heat and odors of which were grateful messages of cheer to her chilled
+little body. She flew up-stairs and tore off her wet clothing, and was
+out in the hall, buttoning hastily as she walked, when the door-bell
+rang.
+
+In some previous existence Split Madigan must have been a most
+intelligent horse in some metropolitan fire department. It was her
+instinct still to run at the sound of the bell; every other Madigan,
+therefore, delighted in preventing that impulse's gratification. But
+this time Bessie came hurriedly to meet her and even speed her on her
+errand.
+
+     [Illustration:
+       "'Oh, you needn't glare at me!' exclaimed Bep"]
+
+"Quick--it's your father, Split!" she cried.
+
+Split looked at her. She trusted Bep no more than she did Sissy, whose
+lieutenant the blonde twin was.
+
+"Oh, you needn't glare at me!" exclaimed Bep, her guilty conscience
+sensitive to accusation by implication. "Fom told me all you told her
+about him. She was 'fraid you were coming after her for letting you fall
+off the see-saw, and she told me the whole thing. She said you expected
+him to-night--don't you?"
+
+"How--do you know it's--my father that's at the door?" demanded Split,
+all the warier of the enemy because of her acquaintance with her secret.
+
+"Why!" Bep opened clear, china-blue eyes, as shallow and baffling as
+bits of porcelain. "Hasn't he been here once for you already, while you
+were out?"
+
+Split turned and ran down the hall. In the minute this took she had
+lived through a long, heart-breaking, childish regret--regret for the
+familiar, apprehension of the unknown. It was so warm and snug in this
+Madigan house; she seemed so to belong there. Why must that unknown
+parent come to claim her just now, when her spirit was still sorely
+vexed with the failings of the various fathers she had borne with in
+one short afternoon!
+
+She got to the top of the staircase that led down to the front door,
+when she saw that some one had preceded her. It was Madigan, who was on
+his way down to dinner; poor old Madigan, with his slippered, slow, but
+positive tread, his straight, assertive back expressing indignation, as
+it always did when his door-bell was rung. Oh, that familiar old back!
+Something swelled in Split's throat and held her choking, as she grasped
+the banister and gazed yearningly down upon him. For a moment she had
+the idea of flying down past him to save him from what was coming. But
+it was too late; already he had his hand on the door-knob. Did he know
+who it was for whom he was opening his door? Split gasped. Did he
+anticipate what was coming? Some one ought to tell him--to break it to
+him--to--
+
+But evidently Split herself could not have done this, for in almost the
+identical moment that Madigan resentfully threw open the door, a stream
+of water was dashed into his astonished face.
+
+From her point of vantage on the stairway Split saw a paralyzed Sissy,
+the empty pitcher in her guilty hand, the grin of satisfaction frozen
+on her panic-stricken round face; while, before she fled, her eyes shot
+one quick, hunted glance over Madigan's dripping head to the joyous
+enemy above.
+
+And Split was joyous. Her explosive laugh pealed out in the second
+before fear of her father stifled it. So this was how Sissy had planned
+to get even; so this was the plot behind Bep's baffling blue eyes! And
+only the accident of Madigan's going to the door had saved Split--and
+confounded her enemy.
+
+Oh, it was good to be a Madigan! Standing there dry and triumphant,
+Split hugged herself--her very own self--her individuality, which at
+this minute she would not have changed for anything the world had to
+offer. To be a Madigan, one's birthright to laugh and do battle with
+one's peers; and to win, sometimes through strength, sometimes through
+guile, sometimes through sheer luck--but to win!
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST STRAW
+
+
+Young as she was, Frances Madigan had known a great sorrow. She
+remembered (or fancied she did, having heard the circumstance so often
+related) how Francis Madigan had seized and confiscated her cradle as
+soon as her sex had been avowed.
+
+"It's too bad, Madigan!" was the form in which Dr. Murchison had made
+the announcement of her birth.
+
+"It's the last straw--that's what it is," Madigan answered grimly,
+bearing the cradle out to the woodshed. There he chopped it to pieces,
+as though defying a perverse destiny to send him another daughter.
+
+With tears running down her cheeks, Frances had witnessed the pathetic
+sight--or, if she had not, she believed she had; which was quite as
+effective in her narrative of the occurrence.
+
+"And he took my cwadle," Frank was accustomed to relate, with an abused
+sniff to punctuate each phrase, "and he chopped it wif the hatchet all
+in little bits o' pieces."
+
+"How big, Frank?" Sissy liked to ask.
+
+"Teeny-weeny bits--little as that," Frank whined, still in character,
+and showing a small finger-nail. "And--"
+
+"And then what did you do?" prompted Sissy.
+
+Frank stamped her foot. The cynical tone of the question grated upon an
+artistic temperament at the crucial moment when it was composing and
+acting at the same time. "Don't you say it, Sissy Madigan!" she cried
+petulantly. "I can say it myself. And then"--turning to Maude
+Bryne-Stivers, to whom she was telling the touching incident, with a
+resumption of her first manner, and her most heartrending tone--"and
+then I looked first at my cwadle and then at my father, and I cwied--and
+cwied--and cwied--and--"
+
+One is limited at four and is apt to strive for emphasis by the simple
+method of repetition. Frank always "cwied and cwied" till some
+interruption came to the rescue and furnished a climax.
+
+"You dear little lump of sugar!" cried Miss Bryne-Stivers at the proper
+moment, lifting the chubby mourner off her feet and out of her pose at
+the same time.
+
+And Frank, seated on the lady's lap, was content with her effect.
+
+It was a small matter, anyway, with Frank Madigan--the loss of a pose or
+two; she had so many. A parody of parodies was the smallest Madigan, and
+her jokes were the shadows of shades of jokes handed down ready-made to
+her. Yet she was convinced that they were good; otherwise the Madigans
+would not have laughed at them long before she adopted them.
+
+She herself was a victim--as was the gentleman after whom she was
+named--of a surplusage of femininity about the house. All female
+children are mothers before they are girls, the earliest sex-tendency
+having a scientific precedence over others; and the Madigans "played
+with" their smallest sister bodily, as with a doll whose mechanism
+presented more possibilities than that of any mechanical toy they had
+seen--in some other child's possession. Later they were charmed--if but
+for a while--by the field her mentality provided for experimental work.
+There were times when Frances Madigan had a mother for every day in the
+week; there were days when she had no mother at all; and there were
+occasions when she was adopted as a whole, and for a stated time, by
+some Madigan with a theory, which was tried upon her with all the
+remorselessness of a faddist before she was given over as completely to
+its successor.
+
+Thus Sissy had taken possession of her and made of her, in the short
+time her enthusiasm lasted, a visible replica of that which Sissy tried
+to delude herself into thinking was her own character. In those days she
+cut poor Frank's curls off and plastered the child's hair down in a
+strong-minded fashion. She insisted upon her disciple's pronouncing
+clearly and distinctly. She inaugurated a regime of practical common
+sense, small rewards and severe punishments, and taught Frank how to
+count. But not to spell; for Sissy had introduced the fashion among
+Madigans of spelling out the word which was the key-note of a
+sentence--a proceeding that exasperated Frank. "Don't you let her have
+any c-a-n-d-y; Aunt Anne says 't ain't good for her," was a sample of
+the abuses that drove Frank nearly mad with curiosity and indignation.
+
+But finally Sissy joined the Salvation Army with her protegee (religion
+had all the attraction of the impliedly forbidden to the Madigans), and
+was discovered by Francis Madigan one evening on C Street, putting up a
+fluent prayer in a nasal tremolo--an excellent imitation of the
+semi-hysterical falsetto of the bonneted enthusiast who had preceded
+her.
+
+Madigan looked from Sissy--her hypocritical eyes upcast, while her soul
+was ravished by the whispered comment upon her precocity, to which she
+lent an encouraging ear--to Frank, kneeling angelically beside her.
+Something in himself, his enthusiastic, emotional, long-forgotten,
+youthful self, felt the tug of sympathy at the sight, and, after his
+first irritated start, he stood there behind the watching crowd with no
+thought of interference.
+
+"You can thank your stars, you unco guid lassie," he said within
+himself, his sarcastic eyes on Sissy's holy face, "that you've not a
+more religious and more conventional man for a father. 'T is one like
+that would yank you out of your play-acting preaching, or my name's not
+Madigan--ahem!"
+
+He did not know that the exclamation had been uttered aloud. Their
+father was unaware of the habit; but his daughters knew well that
+stentorian clearing of the throat which served for a warning that he was
+about to speak, and also a notification that he had spoken and would
+permit no difference of opinion. In the midst of her religio-dramatic
+ecstasy, Sissy heard that sound behind her, and jumped to her feet as
+though brought painfully back to a sorrowing, sinful world.
+
+"And he tooked her," said Frances later, in relating the affair to an
+eager audience of Madigans, "and he whipped her awful!"
+
+"With his whole hand?" asked Bep, feeling it to be the partizan's duty
+to doubt.
+
+"Uh-huh!" The small fabricator nodded her head in slow and awful
+confirmation.
+
+"That shows, Frank Madigan!" said Bep, scornfully turning her back. "He
+never whips with more than two fingers."
+
+And yet it was the confident belief of the Madigans that if it had been
+anybody but Sissy, that somebody would have been eaten alive!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Split who next adopted the Last Straw. Under her tutelage Frank
+learned to climb her sister's body and stand upright and fearless on her
+shoulders. She was also initiated into the great game of "fats," which
+the Madigans played winter evenings on the crumb-cloth in the
+dining-room; said crumb-cloth being printed in large squares of red and
+white, one of which was chalked off for the ring.
+
+Frank's induction into the game led to a grand battle between Split and
+Sissy, the latter contending that the baby's fingers could not properly
+handle and shoot the marbles. But Sissy ought to have known better than
+to make such a point, as the Madigans had a peculiar way of playing
+fats, for which Frank--being a Madigan--was as fitted by nature as any
+of her seniors.
+
+It consisted, first, in hauling out the big box of marbles, in which the
+booty won by the whole family was kept--the Madigans were gamblers, of
+course, as was everything born on the Comstock. Second, in a desperate
+controversy as to how the marbles were to be divided. Third, in a
+compromise, which necessitated that a complete count be made of every
+marble in the box--and the Madigans' unfeminine skill made this a
+question of handling hundreds of them, of suspiciously watching one
+another, of losing and of finding; and it all took time. Fourth, a
+decision as to handicaps. Fifth, a heated discussion of the relative
+values of puries, pottries, agates, crystals, and 'dobies. Sixth, a
+fiery attack from Sissy on Split's lucky taw. Seventh, the falling
+asleep of Frank squarely over the ring. And eighth, the sending of the
+whole tribe to bed by Aunt Annethe entire evening having been taken up
+with arranging an order of business, and not a stroke of business
+accomplished.
+
+But the Split sphere of influence over the disputed territory of Frances
+was considerably circumscribed by the affair of the stagecoach. It
+stood--a dusty, lumbering vehicle that made daily trips down from the
+mountain to the small towns in the canon--upon a raised platform in
+front of Baldy Bob's. Baldy Bob, who departed with it the first thing in
+the morning and returned late in the afternoon, hauled it each day up on
+to the platform, intending to get out the hose and wash it off--after
+dinner when he came back from downtown. But he never came back till time
+to hitch up and start down the canon again. So the old coach was left
+high and dry, while the sun went down behind Mount Davidson and the
+brightest stars in all the world shone out from a black-blue firmament
+unmarred by the smallest haze.
+
+Till Split discovered it.
+
+To Split, who had never traveled by any means other than her own lithe
+limbs and Jack Cody's sled, the coach's big, low, dusty body, its heavy
+high wheels, its dusky interior smelling of heated leather and
+twig-scented, summer-sunned country dust, were romance incarnate. It
+meant voyaging to her, this coach: strange sights, queer peoples, the
+sea that she had never seen, the rippling of rivers she had never heard,
+the smell of pasture-land, of pine forests, of lake-dipped willows, of
+flowers--valleys full of flowers, like those that bloomed in Mrs.
+Pemberton's garden, but unlike those enchanted blossoms in not being
+irrevocably attached to the bush on which they grew, and unguarded by
+any Mrs. Ramrod, whose most gracious act was to hold up a rose on its
+stalk between forefinger and thumb and permit a flower-hungry girl to
+bend down and sniff it. On the same principle, Mrs. Ramrod _showed_ her
+preserves, but she never bestowed a rose "for keeps," nor did it ever
+seem to occur to her that one might want a taste of that which made her
+glass jars so temptingly beautiful.
+
+Split "took a dare" the first time she mounted Baldy Bob's coach. She
+climbed up to the driver's high seat in front with as much hidden
+trepidation but as unhesitatingly as she would have plunged down a
+shaft, to show Sissy, who was a coward, how brave her sister was.
+
+But after she got up there, Sissy faded out of the world. In Baldy Bob's
+coach Split was seized with _Wanderlust_. She sat erect and still up
+there in front, her hands clasped in her lap, her shining eyes averted
+from the motionless tongue below and fixed on the unrolling landscapes
+of the world; on plains and valleys, on villages nestling in trees and
+flying past, on great rolling fields of grain--perhaps a smooth, light,
+continuous sort of sage-brush, wrinkling in the wind as the sunflowers
+seem to when one looks up at the mountain from the sluice-box.
+
+Yet with the advent of Frances into this strange game of rapt silences
+there came a change. Frank's imagination did not tempt her abroad
+strange countries for to see; she merely wanted to ride down and off the
+platform.
+
+"Make it go, Split," she begged, with a trust in her big sister's
+capacity that Split would have perished rather than admit to be
+unfounded.
+
+"Will you hold on tight?" she asked Frances.
+
+The child nodded, grasping the dashboard firmly. With the ease of long
+practice, Split got to the big wheel and leaped to the ground. She had
+noticed the big stone which Baldy Bob had slipped in front of the hind
+wheel, and she fancied it was part of the reason why the stagecoach
+could not be moved.
+
+She was mistaken: it was the whole reason. And when Split had pushed and
+tugged and kicked with all her strength, laying herself flat at last and
+bracing her toes against the other wheel to get a leverage, her first
+feeling when she saw the coach move above her head was of delight at the
+unexpected. Her second was of unmixed terror; for, gaining an impetus
+from its descent on the inclined plane that led from the platform, the
+coach rattled briskly down Sutton Avenue, headed for the canon, with
+Frank clutching the dashboard and laughing aloud in glee.
+
+Split Madigan had always fancied she could run. She never knew how
+impotent human fleetness is till she saw that lumbering coach go
+plunging swiftly and more swiftly away from her, across B Street, and
+tearing down the next hill with a speed that made her puny efforts
+laughable.
+
+Baldy Bob, emerging from the saloon on the corner with that feverishly
+distorted view of the world due to never going back home after dinner
+downtown, saw his coach come down upon him as if to demand the washing
+so long promised. If it had been morning, he would have been properly
+afraid of getting in the way of the monster let loose. But in the
+evening Bob was accustomed to the occurrence of peculiar things. So he
+ran--at that time of day he could run better than walk--out to the
+middle of the street, threw up his arms, and called hoarsely upon the
+mad thing to stop.
+
+It did--for a moment, when it came in contact with his body; but it was
+long enough for its course to be deflected from the steep hill below and
+turned northward down the comparatively level cross street.
+
+When Bob picked himself up and followed, he found a thin, white-faced,
+red-haired girl running swiftly beside him. Later he accompanied her and
+the plucky little Frank (still smiling and chuckling over her fine ride)
+up the hill to the home of Mr. Francis Madigan, where he demanded
+damages--both personal and mechanical.
+
+"And fa-ther tooked her in his own room," Frank said with shuddering
+unction, as she told the tale, "and she's in there yet!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Fom who awakened a sense of the beautiful in Frank. She and Bep
+were continually playing London Bridge, in the course of which it became
+necessary to demand:
+
+"Which would you rather have (that means, like best): a diamond horse
+covered with stars, or a golden cradle with red silk pillows?"
+
+Sentiment and the sad experience of her babyhood always prompted Frank
+to choose the cradle, of course. After which, her preference promptly
+became of no importance whatever; the whole beautiful business was put
+aside, and she was bidden to get behind Fom. She discovered later that
+whether she preferred diamonds and stars to gold and red silk, it was
+all the same: she invariably had to get behind one twin or the other,
+clasp her tightly about the waist, and pull--and pull--till the whole
+universe gave way and she plumped down on the ground with a big twin
+falling on top of her.
+
+But there was another phase of the beautiful which was far more
+satisfactory to Frank, while it lasted. Fom discovered it one day when
+Split took Dora away from her, just because the brunette twin preferred
+her lunch to the burned potatoes Split had baked in the back yard when
+they were playing emigrants. It was then, in the depths of her grief,
+that the inspiration came to her.
+
+"Shall Fom make you look awful pretty, Frank?" she asked, in the form
+which children suppose wheedles babies most successfully.
+
+Frank didn't know; she was suspicious of the hollowness of the
+beautiful and the inutility of choosing. Besides, she was making dolls'
+biscuit just then from a piece of dough Wong had given her, cutting out
+each individual bun with Aunt Anne's thimble.
+
+But Florence coaxed and threatened and bribed, and when Francis Madigan
+got home that night to dinner, he found his big porch covered with
+children gathered from blocks around. Each held in his or her hand one
+pin or more--the price of admission to the show. (Fom was a most thrifty
+and businesslike Madigan.) And the show, which he as well as they saw in
+the interval between the opening of his front door and its swift
+closing, was Frances's plump, naked body draped in a sheet, posing, with
+uplifted arms and an uncertain, apprehensive smile, on a tottering
+draped pedestal, which fell with a crash when Fom, who was crouched
+behind steadying it, beheld her father's face.
+
+"And he tooked her," with bated breath Frank repeated the monotonous
+refrain of her saga, "and he made her thwow evewy--pin--she'd made--out
+the fwont window!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As a Madigan, Frances should have been above fear. She was--except of
+the tank in the back room up-stairs. Its gurglings and chucklings were
+more than mortal four-years-old could bear at night in the dark,
+particularly after Bep had taught her to be superstitious.
+
+Bep's nature was spongy with a capacity for saturation. She took in
+every new child fad and folly. She believed in a multiplicity of
+remedies, and was ready to try a new one--on somebody else--whenever the
+occasion offered. When Frank got the whooping-cough, and used to march
+around the dining-room table, stamping in her paroxysms of coughing and
+of speechless anger at the Madigans who followed mimicking her, Bep
+decided that she would try the latest cure she had heard of. So she
+wandered down to the gas-works one day, Frank's hand in hers, to give
+her patient the benefit of breathing the heavily charged atmosphere down
+there.
+
+"How-do, Mrs. Grayson?" she greeted the gas-man's wife amiably, as she
+opened the kitchen door.
+
+Mrs. Grayson, her babies leaving her side to cluster interestedly around
+Frank, replied that she and the children were well; that the epidemic of
+whooping-cough had not reached them because they lived so far out of
+town.
+
+"Yes," assented Bep, politely; "and then, the smell of gas is so good
+for whooping-cough. That keeps 'em well. And that's why I brought Frank
+down here."
+
+Mrs. Grayson's excitable motherhood took alarm. "I never heard," she
+said quickly, "that breathing in coal-tar smells kept off
+whooping-cough."
+
+"No, neither did I, though p'r'aps it does. But it cures--I know that."
+
+"You don't mean to say--" Mrs. Grayson flew like a terrified hen for her
+chicks, lifting two by an arm each clear from the ground and hustling
+the third into the kitchen before her.
+
+"Yep, she's got it," said Bep, proudly. And Frank, feeling called upon
+to be interesting, burst into a convulsive corroboration of the glad
+tidings.
+
+"You nasty little minx!" exclaimed Mrs. Grayson, as she shut the door in
+Bep's face.
+
+"What's 'minx'?" Frank asked her sister, as they toiled up toward town
+again.
+
+"Oh, it's a wild animal," answered Bep, readily; "but she don't know how
+to say it. She's going to have bad luck, though; anybody can tell that
+by the way she walked under that ladder. I shouldn't be a bit surprised
+if every last one of her children gets the whooping-cough!"
+
+And Frank felt sorry for the Graysons. For she was sure that Bep knew
+whereof she spoke. She knew the laws of the superstitious country in
+which she dwelt, did Bep: a country where if you sing before you eat,
+you're bound to cry before you sleep; where, if you put your
+corset-waist on wrong side out, and are hardy enough to change it, you
+deserve what you're likely to get; where no sane girl will tempt
+Providence by walking on a crack; where, if you lose something, you have
+only to spit in the palm of your hand,--if you're dowered in the matter
+of saliva,--strike the tiny pool sharply, and say:
+
+    "Spit, spit, spider!
+    If you show me where my pencil is
+    I'll give you a keg of cider!"
+
+Then note the direction which the escaping particles of saliva take, and
+there you are! or, rather, there it is--the lost article.
+
+Or there it ought to be, unless you have been guilty of some inexcusable
+act, such as omitting to wish at the very instant a star is falling, or
+the first time you taste each new fruit in season, or if you have
+forgotten to say:
+
+    "Star light, star bright,
+    First star I've seen to-night,
+    I wish I may, I wish I might
+    Have the wish I wish to-night!"
+
+It was Bep who taught Frank to count white horses; to pick up a pin when
+its head was turned toward her, to let it lie when it pointed the other
+way; to bite the tea-grounds left in a cup, and declare gravely, if
+soft, that a female visitor might be expected, and, if hard, a male;
+never to cut friendship by giving or accepting a knife, a pin--indeed,
+anything sharp; and never, by any chance, to tempt the devil of bad luck
+by going out of a house by a different door than that by which she had
+entered.
+
+The versatile Frank was most teachable. When Bep was "collecting bows,"
+Frances would obligingly bow and bob for her minutes at a time, like a
+Chinese mandarin, or like some small priestess observing a solemn rite.
+What the Bad Luck was, the terrible alternative of all these
+precautions, poor Frank could form no idea. But she had come to
+associate it with the babbling tank, which seemed at night, when all was
+still, to be gurgling, "Bad Luck--Bad Luck!" threateningly at her.
+
+Then she would go over her conduct during the day, carefully
+scrutinizing her every action that might have given this chuckling Bad
+Luck a hold over her.
+
+Not a crack had been stepped on that she could remember; not a pin
+picked up that should have been let lie; not--
+
+The scream that burst from Frances one Sunday night during this
+self-catechism brought Madigan and all the family to her bedside.
+
+"What is it--what is it, child?" demanded her father.
+
+And Frank repeated like a Maeterlinck or a bobolink, holding up a
+shaking small hand whose nails Aunt Anne had trimmed that very morning:
+
+    "Monday for health,
+    Tuesday for wealth,
+    Wednesday the best day of all.
+    Thursday for cwosses,
+    Fwiday for losses--
+    Saturday no day at all.
+    And better the child had never been bawn
+    That pared its nails on a Sunday mawn!"
+
+"And fa-ther tooked Bep," remarked Frank the next day, the light of
+desire fulfilled in her eye, "and he said 'You ox!' and smacked her wif
+two fingers!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss Madigan, who was a congenital sentimentalist, her tendency
+confirmed by a long course of novel-reading, would have loved a female
+Fauntleroy, and hoped to find it in each of her brother's children in
+turn--only to be bitterly disappointed when they came to an expressing
+age.
+
+It occurred to her once to satisfy her maternal cravings--so perversely
+left ungratified amid much material that lacked mothering--with an
+imported angel-child. She chose Bombey Forrest's three-year-old brother
+for the purpose; a small manikin manufactured according to recipe by his
+mother, whom he had been taught to call "Dear-rust" in imitation of his
+pernicious progenitor; whose curls were as long, whose trousers were as
+short, whose collars were as big, whose sashes were as flaunting as
+feminine folly could make them.
+
+The Madigans hailed his advent with delight the night he was loaned to
+their aunt, in their mistaken glee fancying his visit was to themselves.
+Miss Madigan soon undeceived them. At table he sat next to that devoted
+lady, who heaped the choicest bits upon his plate of a menu which had
+been ordered solely with regard to infantile tastes. Afterward this
+maiden lady (whose genius for mothering cruel fate had condemned to
+waste its sweetness upon half a dozen mere Madigans) built card houses
+for her borrowed baby, read him the nursery rhymes that Sissy used to
+tell to Frances, confiscated Fom's Dora for his pleasure, and Split's
+book of interiors made of illustrated advertisements of furniture, which
+she had cut out and arranged tastefully upon a tissue-paper background.
+She dangled her old-fashioned enameled watch before his jaded eyes, and
+even permitted him to hold Dusie, the canary, who pecked furiously at
+the presuming hand that detained her.
+
+At this the borrowed baby set up a howl of alarm, whereupon he was given
+Sissy's jackstones--not altogether to that young lady's sorrow, for at
+that moment Split was collecting a cruel pinch or bestowing a stinging
+slap for every point in the game she had just won.
+
+To the bathing of the child Miss Madigan gave her personal attention,
+while Kate waited for the tub, into which it was her nightly task to
+coax Frances. Then, when her charge was ready for bed, the devoted aunt
+of other children sat rocking the borrowed baby softly till he fell
+asleep. The whole household hushed that night when Baby Fauntleroy
+Forrest's eyelids fell. An indignant lot of young Madigans were hustled
+off to bed that his slumbers might not be disturbed; and yet the moment
+Miss Madigan laid him, with infinite care and a sentimental smile, in
+her own bed, his eyes flew open, like the disordered orbs of a wax doll
+that has forgotten it was made to open its eyes when in a vertical
+position and keep them shut when placed horizontally. He saw a strange
+face bending over him, and he howled with terror.
+
+Miss Madigan tried to comfort him, babbling fondest baby-talk in vain.
+
+"I yant to go home!" wailed Aunt Anne's Fauntleroy.
+
+Why, no; he didn't want to go home, the lady to whom he had been loaned
+assured him. Mama was asleep and daddy was asleep and Bombey was asleep
+and the pussy was--
+
+"I yant to go home!" bellowed the borrowed baby.
+
+But how could he go home? the lady, a bit impatiently, demanded. Wasn't
+he all undressed? Did he want to go through the streets all
+undressed--fie, fie, for shame!
+
+"I yant to go home!" screamed Fauntleroy Forrest.
+
+"Sissy--Irene--some one come here and amuse this child!" called Aunt
+Anne, at her wits' end. Fauntleroy was black in the face from holding
+his breath, and his borrower was nervously exhausted by the tension of a
+day spent in attendance upon the lovely child.
+
+A troop of nightgowned Madigans came joyously in. For the edification of
+Fauntleroy, sitting up wide-eyed now in Aunt Anne's big bed, the tears
+still on his cheeks, the Madigans made monkeys of themselves till he
+dropped off asleep at last, when they were dismissed by a frazzled
+maiden lady, who was left looking at the small thing lying in her bed as
+at some strange animal whose waking she dreaded.
+
+In the middle of the night and again toward morning the Madigans heard
+Fauntleroy's frightened scream, and chuckled like the depraved young
+things they were. But when Francis Madigan got up and, candle in hand,
+his queer nightcap tumbling over his left eye, and his gaunt shadow
+covering the wall and wavering over the ceiling, came to demand of Miss
+Madigan what in thousand devils was the matter, the borrowed baby was
+thrown into convulsions; while Don, the big Newfoundland, awakened by
+the din, burst into hoarse barks that the mountains echoed and reechoed.
+After this it seemed best to Aunt Anne to sit up in bed for the rest of
+the night, making shadow-pictures on the wall for Fauntleroy.
+
+Miss Madigan's high color had faded the next morning. Accustomed to
+unbroken sleep, she had not rested half an hour the whole night. It
+seemed that Fauntleroy Forrest was in the habit of lying across his bed
+instead of along it, and he had so terrorized the poor lady that she had
+not dared to move him, when he did fall asleep toward morning and she
+felt his toes digging into her ribs, lest he wake.
+
+"Hurry with your breakfast, Sissy," she said faintly, sipping her tea,
+"so that you can take him home before school."
+
+"Don't yant to go home!" whimpered the baby, whom the morning light and
+the presence of many small Madigans had reassured.
+
+"He could stay and play with Frank, couldn't he, Aunt Anne?" suggested
+Sissy, sweetly.
+
+Miss Madigan's look spoke volumes.
+
+"Yes, yes," cried Fauntleroy. "Don't yant to go home!"
+
+His papa would be lonesome, Miss Madigan told him, archly; and his mama
+would be lonesome, and Bombey--
+
+"Don't yant to go home!" wept the baby.
+
+"There! There!... Take him, Frank, into my room and amuse him--anything,
+only don't let him cry!" exclaimed Miss Madigan. "I'm going into Kate's
+room to lie down. I'm exhausted and--"
+
+"Did Fauntleroy disturb you, Aunt Anne?" asked Kate, sympathetically.
+
+But Miss Madigan hurried away. She was so unnerved she feared that she
+might weep. But, after nearly half an hour's trying, she found she was
+too tired to sleep, after all, and rising wearily, she went back to her
+room for the book she had been reading.
+
+The sight that met her eyes, as she opened the door, completed her
+undoing. There was Fauntleroy, with an uncomprehending grin on his
+cherubic face, pinching each separate leaf of her cherished
+sensitive-plant. Evidently the borrowed baby did not exactly understand
+the desperately funny quality of the act, but he knew it must be the
+funniest thing in the world, for the Madigans were writhing grotesquely
+in the unbounded merriment it caused.
+
+With a cry, Miss Madigan flew forward and sharply slapped the
+destructive baby hands.
+
+"I yant to go home!" screamed Fauntleroy.
+
+"Yes; and I want you to go, too," Miss Madigan declared, incensed. "Get
+his things, Sissy, this minute."
+
+"But I want him to play wif," whimpered Frank. She was not so slow but
+that she could learn the lesson Fauntleroy's success taught.
+
+Miss Madigan looked at her a moment. "Oh, you do!" she ejaculated
+sarcastically. "You haven't sisters enough--you want more noise and
+confusion in this house!"
+
+The wise Madigans looked from her to one another and merely thought
+things. There was sadly little of the "angel child" about them. Their
+intuition was keen enough to penetrate their aunt's secret wishes and
+tastes, and they were occasionally tempted, for the spoils to be gotten
+out of it, to play up to that lady's ideals. But Aunt Anne was
+considered almost too easy by the Madigans, whom honor restricted to
+those foemen worthy of their steel. Frances was the only one who could,
+without losing caste, cater to her aunt's well-known and deeply detested
+sentimentality.
+
+She did for a time, and it was from Miss Madigan that she learned her
+famous accomplishment. It was sung, or rather droned, and it went like
+this:
+
+    "B--A--Ba,
+    B--E--Be,
+    B--I--Bi--
+    Ba--Be--Bi;
+    B--O--Bo,
+    Ba--Be--Bi--Bo,
+    B--U--Bu,
+    Ba--Be--Bi--Bo--Bu!"
+
+Intoxicated by success, Frank sang this subtle ditty one day for Francis
+Madigan. He listened to it with that puzzled expression which his
+children's vagaries brought to his lined, stern face.
+
+"Who taught you that nonsense, Frances?" he demanded sternly when she
+had finished.
+
+Frank began to whimper. This was not the effect she had intended to
+produce.
+
+"Who told you to say that gibberish?" her father repeated angrily.
+
+Frank stammered the answer.
+
+"And he tooked her--" she began her account of the incident afterward.
+
+"Oh, you awful little liar!" interrupted a chorus of Madigans.
+
+And Frank laughed with them. How she would have completed the sentence,
+if she had been permitted, she herself did not know.
+
+
+
+
+A READY LETTER-WRITER
+
+
+Split threw herself with a bump against Miss Madigan's door. It remained
+unansweringly closed.
+
+"Where's Aunt Anne?" she asked Sissy, whom she had nearly walked over as
+she sat playing jackstones in the hall.
+
+Sissy looked up. Assuming a rigidly erect position and scholastically
+correct finger-movement, she mimicked her aunt at her desk so faithfully
+that Split could almost see the close-lined pages of Miss Madigan's
+ornate handwriting on the carpet where her disrespectful niece pretended
+to trace it.
+
+"Scribbling, huh?" Split asked.
+
+Sissy nodded.
+
+Split shrugged her shoulders impatiently. She had intended to ask a
+favor of Aunt Anne, but she knew how useless it would be now. So she
+pushed past Sissy, entered the room softly, and returned with a
+long-trained grenadine skirt.
+
+Sissy's round eyes opened enviously. "Did she say you could have it?"
+she asked.
+
+A muffled sound which could be variously interpreted came from Split,
+who was throwing the skirt over her head.
+
+"Did she?" persisted Sissy, putting her jackstones in her pocket and
+rising emulatively.
+
+But Irene was doubling fold after fold of the skirt in front to shorten
+it; behind her the train billowed with an elegance that sent ecstatic
+thrills through her and a passion of envy through her sister.
+
+"Is she writing yet?" Sissy asked at length.
+
+Irene nodded. She was cinching her sash tight about the waist, so that
+her trained skirt might not come off in the ardor of "playing lady."
+When Sissy disappeared, and reappeared with her aunt's claret-colored
+poplin, Split was catching up her train with a grace that was simply
+ravishing as she rustled away.
+
+"What'll you say to her--afterward?" called Sissy after her, prudently
+facing the future, even in the height of delight induced by feeling
+ruffles about her feet.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "A train meant domesticity and dignity to Sissy. In
+      Split it bred and fostered a spirit of coquetry"]
+
+"Pouf!" A train meant domesticity and dignity to Sissy. In Split it bred
+and fostered a spirit of coquetry; she believed herself to be very
+French in long skirts. "I'll just say she said 'Yes' when I asked her.
+She never knows what she says when she's writing."
+
+Sissy nodded understandingly, and rustled in a most ladylike manner
+after her senior. The twins saw the two beautiful creatures swishing
+down the front steps, bound for the street to show their glory and feel
+the peacock's delight in dragging his tail in the dust.
+
+"Did she say you could have 'em?" they shrieked.
+
+And Sissy responded with that quick imitative gesture that signified
+scribbling.
+
+With a light on their faces such as the Goths might have worn when
+pillaging Rome, the twins made for the treasure-house. A few moments
+later they rustled gorgeously down the steps, followed by Frances,
+wearing her aunt's embroidered red flannel petticoat. Unfortunately,
+Frank's heels caught in this, as she too strutted worldward, and down
+she fell, bumping from step to step, gaining momentum as she bumped, and
+threatening to roll clear down to Taylor Street, and so on down, down
+into the canon, if she had not bumped safely at last into the twins.
+They, hearing her coming, had turned their backs and joined hands, and
+catching hold of the shaky banister on each side, presented a natural
+bulwark beyond which Frances and her bumps and shrieks might not pass.
+
+And through it all Miss Madigan wrote.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss Madigan was writing letters. Indeed, Miss Madigan was always
+writing letters. In any emergency she might be trusted to concoct a long
+and literary epistle, which she rephrased, edited, and copied till she
+felt all an author's satisfaction.
+
+For the Madigans' Aunt Anne was afflicted with _cacoethes scribendi_,
+and was never so happy as when there was a letter to be written--except
+when she was actually writing it. But the heartlessness of the merely
+literary was very far indeed from Miss Madigan's ideal. She had the
+happiness to believe that, besides being very beautiful, her letters
+were most useful--in fact, indispensable. When everything else failed
+she wrote a letter. When that failed she wrote another.
+
+A Malthusian consequence of her epistolary fertility, it might be
+feared, would be the necessary exhaustion of correspondents. But Miss
+Madigan's was a soul above the inevitable, as well as a pen divorced
+from the practical. On those occasions when the future of her nieces
+pressed itself questioningly upon that lady's mind she met the threat by
+declaring firmly to herself that she would "do her duty to those
+motherless children." It happened that her duty was her pleasure. It was
+her dissipation to suffer--on paper. In letters she enjoyed being
+miserable. No relative, therefore, however distant, no acquaintance,
+however slight, was exempt from this epistolary plague. To take the
+darkest view, most genteelly expressed; to make the most forthright and
+pitiful appeal in a ladylike and polished phrase; to picture the
+inevitable and speedy alternative if her plea were disregarded; and then
+to sign herself, "With a thousand apologies, and the assurance that only
+the extreme need of some one's doing something for poor Francis's
+children would bring me to trouble you again,"--this was Miss Madigan's
+vice. And she was as intemperate in yielding to it as only the viciously
+good can be.
+
+A rebuff, absolute silence, even the return of her letter unopened,
+produced in her not the slightest diminution of faith in the power of
+her pen. Invariably when she mailed a letter she was so struck by her
+own summing up of the situation that she felt there could not be the
+smallest doubt of a favorable response. He who read it must be
+convinced. If he was not, why, there was but one thing to do--write to
+him again. If not to him, to another. And the Madigans were a prolific
+family, its members widely scattered and differentiated--an ideal
+clientele for a ready letter-writer.
+
+So Miss Madigan wrote. Her wardrobe was pillaged, her privacy violated,
+yet she knew it not, or knew it only as one is aware of the buzzing of
+gnats when he rides his hobby through a cloud of them.
+
+But there came an interruption which she was compelled to heed.
+
+"Anne, I say!"
+
+Miss Madigan's busy pen paused. It seemed to her that there was unusual
+irritation in her brother's irascible voice. Was it possible that he had
+knocked before, or was there--
+
+The door opened in answer to her call, and Madigan stalked in. At sight
+of the open letter he held, Miss Madigan hastily covered the one she was
+writing.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "Stamping ... in a frenzy"]
+
+"Perhaps," said her brother, suppressed rage vibrating in his voice, "it
+may be a change for you to _read_ letters. Read that!" He threw the page
+on the desk before her, banging his knuckles upon it in an excess of
+fury.
+
+She took up the letter, a pretty rosy pink dyeing her cheeks (she was
+one of those old maids whose exquisitely delicate complexions retain a
+babylike freshness) as her eyes met the expression:
+
+    Anne was always a sot where her pen was concerned. The
+    habit's growing on her; she can evidently no more
+    resist it than Miles could the bottle.
+
+"It must be from Nora Madigan," she exclaimed, recognizing the touch.
+
+"Yes, it is from Nora, and it incloses one of your own. There it is."
+
+He threw down before the ready letter-writer a composition which had
+cost her much labor, the thought of many days, upon which she had based
+unnumbered hopes and built air-castles galore, none of which, to do the
+poor lady justice, was intended directly for her own habitation.
+
+She took the letter and spread it out carefully before her; these
+epistolary children of hers were tenderly dear to Miss Madigan. Her eye
+caught a phrase here and there that appeared to be singularly
+felicitous. This one, for instance:
+
+    Poor Francis, of course, knows nothing about this
+    letter. I am writing to you, my dear cousin, relying as
+    much upon your discretion as upon your generosity.
+
+Or this one:
+
+    And Cecilia--she is really talented, though a commonplace
+    creature like myself can hardly give you an idea in just
+    what direction.
+
+Or this one:
+
+    As to Irene, apart from her voice, which is really
+    exceptional, she is Francis over again--Francis as he
+    was, a high-spirited, reckless, devil-may-care fellow,
+    winning and tyrannical, as we all remember him in the
+    old days when the world was young.
+
+Or even this:
+
+    I am afraid Kate will have to teach school, young as
+    she is. I can't tell you how I dread the long years of
+    drudgery I see before this slender, spirited child--she
+    is little more than that. Think, Miles, of these
+    motherless children growing up in this wretched hole
+    without the smallest advantage, and, if you can, help
+    them; or get some one else to. Couldn't you take Kate
+    into your own family? I'm sure she'd marry well, and
+    Nora wouldn't be troubled with her long. She's really
+    very pretty. Or couldn't you send me a little something
+    to spend on clothes for her? Or couldn't Nora be
+    persuaded to send her--
+
+"Well," thundered Madigan, standing over her, "it must be pretty
+familiar to you. Suppose you read what Nora says."
+
+Miss Madigan put her own letter away with a sigh. It was really
+unaccountable that Miles could have resisted it.
+
+     "Miles passed away six weeks ago,"
+
+she read aloud in an awed voice.
+
+    "He had been ailing all spring. This letter, which came
+    a fortnight since, I opened, of course, and return it
+    to you that you may be made aware (if you are not
+    already) of the demands Anne makes upon comparative
+    strangers.
+
+    "For myself, I regret very much that your affairs are in
+    such a bad state. Anne says that there are six of your
+    children, all girls; but that can't be true--she always
+    loved to exaggerate miseries; it must be that her
+    writing is so illegible that--"
+
+Miss Madigan's voice rebelled. She could read aloud adverse opinions
+upon her common sense, her judgment, or her pride, but to impugn her
+penmanship was to commit the unforgivable.
+
+"I think Nora is distinctly insulting," she declared.
+
+"No!" Madigan laughed wrathfully. "Do you, now? Why, what has she said?
+Only that you're a beggar, and I'm a coward as well as a beggar, because
+I don't dare to beg in my own name."
+
+"Does she say that?" exclaimed the literal Miss Madigan, shocked.
+"Where?" Her eyes sought the letter again.
+
+"'Where'! Thousand devils--'where'!" Madigan tore it from her and threw
+it to the floor, stamping upon it in a frenzy.
+
+Sighing, Miss Madigan leaned her head on her hand. It was hard enough to
+find one's most hopeful appeal wasted, without Francis's flying into
+such a rage.
+
+A silence followed.
+
+"Look here, Anne,"--Madigan's voice was manifestly struggling to be
+calm,--"you must quit this infernal letter-writing. How could you write
+to Miles Madigan for charity, knowing that he cheated me out of my share
+of the Tomboy? Half the mine was mine. You know that, and yet you hurt
+my--"
+
+"I fail to see," responded Miss Madigan, with dignity, "why I should
+not write to my own relatives; why I should not try, for my nieces'
+sake, to knit close again the raveled ties which your eccentricities
+have--"
+
+"In order to get a box of old duds sent clear from Ireland!"
+
+"Has Nora sent a box?" asked Miss Madigan, eager as a child. "You see,
+my letter did touch her, in spite of herself. And they won't be old
+duds. They'll be handsome garments, Francis, just the thing for the
+girls' winter wardrobe. Now that Nora's in mourning--"
+
+With a crash that sent Miss Madigan's sensitive-plant rolling from its
+stand to the floor, Madigan banged the door behind him as he fled.
+
+Miss Madigan flew to the rescue, and she had begun to scoop up the
+scattered earth when her eye lighted upon a line at the end of Nora's
+letter:
+
+    As you know, Miles had only a life-interest in the
+    estate. At his death everything went to Miles Morgan.
+    Perhaps Anne would do well to apply to him. The little
+    matter of her never having seen him would not, of
+    course, stand in her way.
+
+"Of course not. Why should it?" Miss Madigan asked herself.
+
+She knelt down upon the floor in the midst of the debris and took from
+her pocket the letter that Miles Madigan had never read. With the
+slightest change, the recopying of the first page or so, why could not--
+
+Miss Madigan sat down at her desk. In a moment the steady, slow, studied
+pace of her pen was all that was heard in the disordered room, where the
+sensitive-plant lay half uprooted on the floor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Madigans were up and out. All A Street was alive with tales of them.
+In a cloud of dust due to their sweeping trains, they had swooped down
+like the gay Hieland folk they were, and captured the admiration and
+imitation of the slower, prosaic Lowlander.
+
+They had not intended to go so far, accoutred as they were; but the
+attention they attracted first challenged, then seduced the vain things
+farther and farther, till they threw caution to the winds (and a
+boisterous Washoe zephyr was abroad) and sallied shamelessly forth. In
+their immediate train they carried Jack Cody, clothed and in his right
+sex, and Bombey Forrest, beating her drum. Crosby Pemberton slunk
+unrecognized in the rear.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "Madigan banged the door behind him as he fled"]
+
+In the van was Sissy victrix. She had cut her adorer dead, dead, dead,
+and she now felt that resultant reckless uplift of spirits which is the
+feminine corollary to demonstration of power (preferably unjust and
+tyrannical) over the other sex.
+
+"Let's try to see the walking-match," she suggested to Split.
+
+"How can we, with all that tagging after us?"
+
+With a sweeping gesture to the rear, Split indicated the trained twins
+and Frances holding up her torn petticoat. Frank was bruised but
+beaming; in fact, she had never felt so much a Madigan, for she had
+never before been out on a raid.
+
+"Let 'em tag," cried Sissy, gaily; her blood was up, and she knew no
+obstacles.
+
+Down a clay-bank, into a vacant lot strewn with tin cans, slid the
+Madigans. Their trains hampered them, and, once started, only speed
+could save them. But they were not Comstockers and Madigans for nothing.
+Jack Cody, who had arrived first on the field, caught each whirling,
+dwarf-like figure as it came flying down, holding it a moment to steady
+it before he put it aside in order to receive the next female
+projectile.
+
+Sissy was the last, and Cody, by way of flourish to mark the conclusion
+of his labors, lifted Split's little sister, train and all, as he caught
+her, with a whoop of satisfaction.
+
+His whoop was cut short abruptly, and he set her down, his ears
+tingling. For Sissy, outraged in her sense of dignity as well as in the
+offish prudery that characterized her, declined to accept patronage as
+anybody's little sister, and boxed his ears as well as she could in the
+short time given to her.
+
+Cody looked at her. It was really the first time he had regarded her as
+an unrelated individual. "Ye know what a boy does when a girl strikes
+him," he threatened, a laughing glitter in his bold black eye that made
+Sissy's heart jump.
+
+But she held herself very primly, and the masking puritan in her voice
+quelled him. "If he's a coward--yes," she responded haughtily, hurrying
+on.
+
+The boy looked after her as he joined Split. "She's funny--your sister,"
+he said lamely.
+
+"Who--Sissy? Oh, she's always cranky," said Irene, with Madigan candor
+when a relative was criticized.
+
+They hurried on. The barn-like opera-house is built uphill, like all
+buildings on Virginia City's cross-streets, and it seems to burrow into
+as well as climb the hill. In the rear, on the side where its boards
+were unpainted and unplaned, certain knots had been converted into
+knot-holes by the initiated.
+
+Sissy was already on her knees, her eye glued to one of these apertures.
+All she could see was a short curve of empty seats, a man's shoulder and
+another's hat, a long space, and then the passing of a neat, long pair
+of women's gaiters unhidden by skirts, and soon after the nervous
+following of a smaller pair of women's ties.
+
+"Why," she said, with a deep blush, fixing one eye upon the company,
+while the other blinked from the strain put upon it, "they're women!
+It's a women's walking-match."
+
+"Sure," said Cody, without withdrawing his attention for a moment from
+the view inside. "The big, long feet belong to the one they call La
+Tourtillotte. She's French. The German one's Von Hagen."
+
+"I think it's a shame," gasped Sissy. "Let's go home, Split."
+
+Split, at her own particular knot-hole, affected not to hear. But Crosby
+Pemberton, perched in the elbow of some long scantlings bracing the
+building, took heart at Sissy's words.
+
+"It isn't respectable, Sissy," he called to her. "No ladies go. Your
+aunt wouldn't like it."
+
+This was fatal. At his voice Sissy hardened, and with a gulp of disgust
+she resolutely turned her attention to her knot-hole. In fact, as Crosby
+reiterated his advice, she felt called upon more spectacularly to ignore
+it, and seeing a more commanding and spacious knot-hole farther up, she
+mounted upon a big dry-goods box, and from there seated herself in a
+lone poplar, the apple of the proprietor's eye.
+
+This was better, and in a sense it was also worse; for Sissy could
+plainly see La Tourtillotte, a gaunt, businesslike creature in short
+rainy-day skirt and sweater, her long, thin arms going like
+pump-handles, her dark, tense face set upon a goal which seemed ever to
+flee before her as her weary feet carried her slowly and still more
+slowly around the circular track.
+
+Despite her shocked sense of propriety,--and the lawless young Madigans
+had very strict ideas as to the conventions for adults,--the ardor of
+the struggle, the uncertainty of the issue, seized upon Sissy. She heard
+a swift call from Irene, some distance below, and was vaguely aware that
+the company, skirted and otherwise, was beating a retreat. But the
+smaller of the two contestants, on the other side of the knot-hole, had
+just come within the field of Sissy's rude lens. It was pitiable to see
+the haggard look on the German woman's plump face, the childish
+breakdown imminent behind the woman's staring eyes that met the bored
+glance of the male spectators doggedly, though her stout little body was
+still being carried resolutely, sluggishly, painfully along.
+
+Sissy's hands flew to her breast. Something hurt her there, cried out to
+her, threatened her. She was furious with rage and choked with
+sympathetic sobs. She wanted to hurt somebody, and Jack Cody's insistent
+whistle, which kept sounding the retreat, so irritated and confused her
+that she fancied it was he that she would have liked to beat, as a
+representative of his cruel sex. But when she looked down, at last awake
+to the world on this side of the knot-hole, she saw Crosby Pemberton on
+the box at her feet, and knew who it was that she longed to punish for
+his own sins and every other man's.
+
+"Quick--quick, Sissy! He's coming!" he cried, tugging at her skirt.
+
+"Who? Go 'way!" Sissy stamped viciously, as she stood clinging to a
+limb; yet in that very instant she had seen that all the Madigans and
+their train had fled, save this poor servitor at her feet.
+
+"Jan Lally--oh, hurry!"
+
+Around the corner of the opera-house came a short-legged, bald little
+German, so stout and so loosely put together that, as he ran, his
+jelly-like flesh shook as though it was about to break the loose bag of
+skin that held it. It was Lally's opera-house, and Lally was come to
+catch trespassers in the act of seeing without paying.
+
+Sissy's heart jumped to her throat. In the course of their maraudings,
+the Madigans were not unaccustomed to a stern-chase and a lively one,
+yet now it seemed to her that strategy was the watchword. Perched high
+up in the tree, hidden by its foliage, who would notice her--if only
+Crosby would go away!
+
+But Crosby would not budge. He begged, he implored, he became confused
+in trying to explain to her her danger, and at last burst into bitter
+tears as he felt Lally's fat, moist hand upon his collar, and saw a
+hereafter peopled with wrathful motherly faces in various stages of
+disgust and despair.
+
+"You come vid me. I gif you to Riddle. He lock you oop, you bat boy!"
+
+A suppressed giggle of pleasure, at the thought of neat little Crosby
+in the hands of the constable, shook Sissy, perched snugly like a
+malicious little bird in the tree. It served him right, she said to
+herself gleefully, ascribing the basest motives to Crosby, as one loves
+to do when one's friends are not in good standing with one's self. He
+had had no business to hang around and point the way to her
+hiding-place!
+
+"Oh, I say, Jan, let me off!" begged Crosby, white with terror of the
+jail--and his lady mother. "I'll never peek again, sure I won't!"
+
+"Nu! You come vid me. And _you_, too!"
+
+Sissy looked down. Was it possible there was another laggard whom she
+had not seen?
+
+"I say--you, too!" bellowed Lally. "Vill you come now?"
+
+In the very certainty of security a sudden panic fell upon Sissy. If she
+only dared to move, to reassure herself! Of course it couldn't mean
+herself--oh!
+
+She felt a sudden tug that almost dislodged her. "You t'ink I don't
+see--huh?" shouted the perspiring Teuton below. "What for you leave dis
+trail hang down den--hey?" And he tugged again.
+
+With a sickly remnant of dignity Sissy stepped down and out. She had
+forgotten her train--the train that had been at once her pride and her
+undoing.
+
+"We--I was playing lady," she explained, trembling.
+
+"Oop a tree--huh? Peeking t'rough knot-holes--yes? A fine lady! I fix
+you."
+
+A glow of defiance came to Sissy's cheeks. "I don't care," she cried,
+stamping her foot as she stood enthroned on the dry-goods box, her train
+about her. "It's a nasty, cruel show, anyway, and you couldn't hire me
+to come and see it. You ought to be ashamed, Mr. Lally! How'd you like
+it if your wife was staggering along in there without sleeping or eating
+for six days?"
+
+Mr. Jan Lally's purple face looked as though it had been slapped. What
+had Mrs. Lally, with all her babies and busy housekeeping, to do with
+business? He was so astonished and perplexed by the sudden onslaught
+that the wriggling Crosby managed to slip out of his grasp, and got to a
+safe distance before Lally realized it.
+
+"Nu!" he grunted. "I cou'n't hire you--no? Vell, you come mitout hire. I
+show _you_."
+
+Sissy felt herself lifted down without ceremony and dragged off. Her
+round face was white, her heart was beating like the stamps at the
+Chollar pan-mill. Yet her train trailed after her still in mock dignity.
+So did Crosby, at a respectful distance, fearing to follow, yet, though
+helpless, incapable of desertion. But at the entrance to the opera-house
+the door was shut in his face.
+
+Sissy and her captor entered. The stage had been built out over the pit,
+and in the very first row of the dress-circle, the rim of which was the
+boundary of the contestants' suffering feet, Jan Lally sat down, with
+Sissy at his side.
+
+Ah, to sit in the front row of the dress-circle! To feel the opulence of
+one's enviable position, as well as the artistic delight of being
+properly placed where one could miss nothing, while the brass band
+outside the opera-house played its third and last quick, jubilant
+invitation to pleasure--so tantalizing to the outsider, so gratifying to
+the fortunate one within!
+
+Many and many a time had Sissy Madigan waited, during first and second
+bands, for some miracle to set her where she now sat! Many a time had
+the third selection been played, the players with their instruments
+filed into Paradise, and the poor Madigan peri remained shut outside.
+
+But now Cecilia hung her head, shamed by being caught; shamed by
+punishment; shamed trebly by the fact that, apart from those poor
+sexless, half-maddened machines tottering feverishly around and forever
+around, she, Sissy Madigan, the proud, the pure, the proper, was the one
+thing womanly in the house!
+
+It was not a full house by any means, and only the men immediately next
+to her seemed aware of her presence. Yet, with a consciousness that
+seared her soul and humbled the pride of the childish prude as with a
+stain upon her purity, Sissy felt the compounded, composite gaze of man
+upon woman out of place. It withered, it scorched, it stung her.
+
+But finally Von Hagen, the little German woman, going the round of her
+maddening treadmill, reached the spot where Sissy sat. The sight of a
+child there, of a bare, bowed, neat little head in the midst of that
+inclosure of men's cold eyes, seemed to be the last touch needed to
+overthrow her tottering reason. She stopped, swaying from the
+unaccustomed cessation of motion, and held out her arms, smiling
+vacantly and babbling baby-talk in German as though to a dearly loved
+little _Maedchen_ of her own.
+
+Swift horror piled on Sissy. She had never looked into eyes from which
+sense had fled, and the sight stamped itself upon her brain with
+terrible vividness as food for future nightmares. So frightened was she
+that she was not aware of Jan Lally's relaxed hold upon her arm, which
+ached from the tight grip he had had upon it. But when the overtaxed
+body of the German woman fell in a heap almost at her feet, fright
+became action in Sissy. She flew past old Jan (his one concern now being
+for his walking-match), past the knees of the staring men, up the
+interminable center aisle, her poor train switching behind her as she
+stumbled, yet ran on, so absorbed by her suffering that she was unaware
+of the attention her queer little figure attracted, till she was out at
+last in the free air.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, punish me!" she said, when she found Aunt Anne waiting for her at
+the head of the long steps fifteen minutes later.
+
+It was a good deal for a Madigan--the nearest they ever got to _mea
+culpa_: they were not Christians.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sissy's arrival was hailed by a populous nightgowned world, sent, like
+herself, supperless for its sins to the purgatory of early bedtime.
+Split came stealing in from the other room, bringing Frank along that
+she might not cry and betray her elder sister's movements--a successful
+sort of blackmail the youngest Madigan often practised. And later, Kate,
+looking most conventional and full-dressed in this nightgowned society,
+brought succor for the starving. They munched chocolate and camped
+comfortably, three on each bed, while Sissy told her adventures. When
+she came to the description of Von Hagen's fall, though still shuddering
+at the memory, she acted the incident so dramatically that Frances set
+up a howl, which was, however, most fortunately drowned by the ringing
+of the front-door bell.
+
+Split started to answer it, but her nightgowned state gave her pause.
+"Perhaps father'll go," she suggested.
+
+Kate shook her head. "He didn't come to dinner; he's been shut up in his
+room all day."
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Sissy. An old look, that washed all the
+self-satisfaction from her round face, came over it now.
+
+Kate shrugged her shoulders. "Something he and Aunt Anne talked about
+to-day," she answered, as she went out into the hall with the air of a
+martyr.
+
+Sissy looked owlishly after her. Though Francis Madigan rarely ate
+anything that was prepared for the family dinner, she could remember
+the rare times when he had absented himself from it, and feel again the
+usually ignored undercurrent of the realities upon which their young
+lives flowed full and free.
+
+But things happened too quickly at the Madigans', and to be preoccupied
+to the exclusion of one's sisters was one of the forms of affectation
+not to be tolerated. Split threw a pillow at her head, and the fight was
+in progress when Kate called for volunteers to bring in a big box from
+Ireland, left by a drayman who was fiercely resentful of the
+extraordinary approach to the Madigan house.
+
+Like a lot of white-robed Lilliputians, they tugged and hauled till they
+got it into the parlor. But when they had lighted the tall,
+old-fashioned lamp that they called "the lighthouse" they were disgusted
+to find that the box was addressed to "Miss Madigan, Virginia City,
+Nevada, California, U. S. A."
+
+"Some people don't know anything about geography," sniffed Sissy.
+
+"Well,--" Kate had been thinking,--"I'm Miss Madigan."
+
+"Whoop--hooray!" The shout came from the twins. They were off into the
+kitchen for Wong's hatchet, and when they pressed it obligingly into
+Kate's hand, that young lady saw no way but to make use of it.
+
+"Girls--it's clothes!" she exclaimed, her starved femininity reveling in
+the quantity of material before her.
+
+"Boys' clothes," said Split, holding up a full-kneed pair of
+knickerbockers and a belted jacket. "Well!" With a philosophical grin,
+she began to put them on.
+
+"And ladies' clothes!" cried Sissy, dragging forth a long black cape.
+"'Here would I rest,'" she chanted, draping it about her and
+lugubriously mimicking Professor Trask as the Recluse in "The Cantata of
+the Flowers."
+
+"Let's do it! Let's sing 'The Flowers,'" cried Irene, shaking herself
+into some Irish boy's jacket.
+
+"Not much!" Sissy planted herself against the door, as though physical
+compulsion had been threatened.
+
+"Oh, yes, Sissy," begged Fom. "Bep and I can sing the Heliotrope and
+Mignonette. Frank can be a Poppy, and we can double up and--"
+
+"I'll be the Rose," put in Kate, quickly. She had a much-feathered hat
+on her head and a crocheted lace shawl about her shoulders.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "'Here would I rest,' she chanted"]
+
+"_I_'ll be the Rose." Split, corrupted by her body's boyish environment,
+stretched her legs apart defiantly. "You can't sing it; you know you
+can't, Kate. You never could get up to G. If I'm not the Rose--"
+
+"Oh, well," said Kate, drawing on a pair of soiled, long light gloves
+she had pulled out of the box, "I'll be the Lily, then. Come on, Sis."
+
+"I won't," said Sissy, almost weeping. She knew she would. "I won't be
+the Recluse! I won't be the Recluse every time, just because you two are
+so greedy and--"
+
+"You know," said Kate, smothering a giggle, but not very successfully,
+"no one can do it as well as you."
+
+"And it's really a very important part, and the very first solo,"
+chuckled Irene. "Else why did Professor Trask take it himself?"
+
+"If it's so important," put in Sissy, grasping at a straw, "you'd better
+take it yourself. Why must I always take a man's part? And I can't sing,
+anyway."
+
+"Why, Sissy!" Split's tone was flattery incarnate, but the irony in her
+eye made her junior dance.
+
+"You know I can't," she sniffled.
+
+"But my voice and Split's go so well together in the Rose and Lily
+duet," said Kate, putting the book of the cantata upon the piano-rack
+and opening it persuasively.
+
+"You promise me every time," wailed the downtrodden Recluse, reluctantly
+moving forward, "that I won't have to be it the next time."
+
+"Well, you won't next time," said Kate, generously. "Will she, Split?"
+
+"Well, I won't sing it this time," declared Sissy, seating herself at
+the piano, yet making a last stand at the very guns.
+
+But Kate and Irene burst forth in the opening chorus with all the verve
+in the world. The Madigans never scorned expression when it was
+understood that they were acting. And the twins, still pulling stage
+properties out of the box, and even Frances, fantastically decorated
+with a torn Irish lace fichu over the bifurcated, footed white garment
+she still wore o' nights, joined joyfully in:
+
+    "'We are the flowers,
+    The fair young flowers,
+    That come at the voice of spring--'
+    DING--DONG!"
+
+It was a familiar old Madigan joke, always greeted with a shriek of
+laughter, to shout out the two notes of the accompaniment that
+punctuated the musical phrases. Its observance now put even Sissy in
+good humor, so that when the time came for the Recluse to make his
+appearance, she left the piano, and stalking miserably about with the
+preliminary cough with which the unfortunate Professor Trask was
+afflicted, she sang her doleful recitative.
+
+The Madigans were never literalists. They were of the impressionistic
+school, which requires of the audience, as well as of the artist, high
+imaginative powers. And here the audience of one moment was the actor of
+the next, whose duty it was not to mind too closely the letter that
+killeth, but to mimic irreverently, to exaggerate, to make of themselves
+caricatures of the mannerisms of others, to nickname, to seize upon
+every peculiarity with their quick, observant, cruel young eyes and
+paint it in flesh-and-blood cartoons.
+
+Thus, when the Rose, that "gentle flower in which a thorn is oft
+concealed," sang her duet with the Nightingale (Sissy trilling weakly on
+the piano, while Frank fluted her fingers affectedly as she had seen it
+done that memorable night) it was done in the hollow, throaty tones of
+the elder Miss Blind-Staggers, who had created the role; while the Lily
+sang through her nose, which she wiped every now and then in a manner
+unmistakably that of Henrietta Blind-Staggers.
+
+"The Cantata of the Flowers" was never brought to a glorious completion
+by the Madigans, even though they skipped uninteresting and difficult
+parts, and, like the early Elizabethans, permitted no intermission
+between acts. It was very often laughed to death. At times it became a
+saturnalia of extravagant action, and it frequently ended in a free
+fight, when the Rose and the Lily hinted too openly at the Recluse's
+incurable tendency to sing off key. But that night it might have dragged
+its saccharine length of melody to the coronation of the Rose and a
+quick curtain if Miss Madigan had not walked right into the thick of it.
+
+"Golly!" gasped Sissy, while Irene dodged behind Kate, who quickly
+turned down the lamp, and a hush fell upon the rest.
+
+But Miss Madigan had been writing, or rather rewriting, letters. She had
+completely forgotten the heinous offense of the afternoon.
+
+"Will you mail a letter for me, Sissy, the first thing in the morning?"
+she asked, still preoccupied. "Why are you in the dark?"
+
+"We're just going to bed," remarked Sissy, with soothing demureness,
+taking the envelope from her aunt's hand and falling in with her mood,
+as one does with the mentally afflicted.
+
+When Miss Madigan, fatigued with the labor of composition, had gone back
+to her room, Kate turned up the light again. "Same thing, I s'pose?" she
+asked. "Circumstances-letter--huh?"
+
+"I s'pose so. 'T ain't sealed," said Sissy, with resignation. "But she
+always forgets to seal 'em." Then, suddenly inspired, she caught up
+Professor Trask's pencil lying on the piano, and on the vacant half-page
+at the end of Miss Madigan's letter she wrote in her best school-girl
+hand:
+
+    You--whoever you are--needn't bother to answer this.
+    None of us Madigans wants your help or annybody else's.
+    It 't only that Aunt Anne's got the scribbles, and
+    we'll thank you to mind your own buisness.
+
+                                           _Sissy Madigan._
+
+She read her composition to the startled but, on the whole, approving
+Madigans, sealed the letter, and was ready for bed.
+
+They were all scampering through the long hall playing leap-frog--a
+specialty of Split's which her present costume facilitated--when
+Francis Madigan, candle in hand, came out of his room on his usual tour
+of nightly inspection. His short-sighted eyes fell upon Irene, a pretty,
+lithe, wavy-haired boy, before she and the twins bolted.
+
+"What boy have you got there?" he demanded. "Send him home."
+
+Kate took Frances up in her arms and covered the retreat; she knew how
+much the better part of valor was discretion.
+
+Sissy remained standing, looking up at him. When she was alone with her
+father she was conscious of her poor little barren favoriteship, though
+she dared not impose upon it. In the candle-light his harsh, rugged
+features stood out marked with lines of suffering.
+
+"It's all right, father," she said, with a quick choice of the lesser
+irritation for him. "He'll go--right away. Good night."
+
+"Good night, child."
+
+But she walked a step or two with him, slipping her hand at last into
+his, and pressing it tenderly.
+
+"Is--anything the matter, father?" she whispered.
+
+    [Illustration:
+      "She walked a step or two with him"]
+
+He threw back his head as though some one had struck him. It was not
+difficult to guess from whom the Madigans had inherited their fanatical
+desire to conceal emotion.
+
+Sissy was terrified at what she had done, yet the vague trouble lay
+quivering before her, though still unnamed, in his working face.
+
+"Father--I'm sorry," she sobbed.
+
+He pushed her from him, but gently, and she crept into her bed and
+pulled the clothes over her head, that the twins might not hear her
+strangled sobbing.
+
+
+
+
+"THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN"
+
+
+With a shrill whistle of recognition, Jack Cody ran down the hill to
+meet Split toiling up.
+
+The air is like ethereal champagne in Virginia City, and on a late
+summer's evening, after the sun's honeyed freshness has been strained
+through miles of it, it has a quality that makes playing outdoors
+intoxicating.
+
+Split, though, had not been playing. There was business on hand and she
+had been downtown to buy eggs for the picnic, with the usual result. She
+had never yet succeeded in bringing home an unbroken dozen, nor did she
+ever hope to; but she was really out of temper at the extraordinary
+dampness of the paper bag, to which her two hands adhered stickily. She
+walked slowly upward, holding the eggs far in front of her like a votive
+offering to the culinary gods, unconscious of the betraying yellow
+streaks that beaded her blue gingham apron.
+
+"Where you been, Split?" asked Cody, by way of an easy opening.
+
+"Down to the grocery. Mrs. Pemberton's not laying decently these days."
+
+"Mrs. Pemberton!"
+
+"Sissy's gray hen, you know. Sissy called her that 'cause she's so
+stuck-up and thinks she's better than any other hen in the yard.
+Besides, she's got only one chicken, and bosses him for all the world
+like Crosby."
+
+Cody nodded. "What time you going to start in the morning? Six?"
+
+"Uh-huh." Split dared not lift her eyes from the sticky trail that
+exuded from her.
+
+"Sure?" the boy demanded.
+
+"Sure--if only father don't keep us so long to-night that we can't get
+ready. We've got to be martyred to-night," she added gloomily.
+
+Cody looked his resentment and sympathy. Delicacy and the fear of
+betraying some social disability on his own part of which he was
+unaware--some neglect of training which might be considered essential in
+well-regulated families--forbade his inquiring precisely what the
+process was. To him "martyring" meant some queer rite whose main and
+malicious purpose it was to keep Split indoors of an evening when the
+high mountain twilight was going to be long, long; and when the moon
+that followed it would be so brilliant that one might read by its
+light--if he weren't too wise, and too fond of hide-and-seek--out in the
+silver-flooded streets made vocal by childish cries.
+
+"But it can't last the whole evening?" he asked appealingly, as she
+prepared to mount the steps, always accompanied by the silent yellow
+witness of her passing.
+
+She shook her head hopelessly, sniffing in a manner that showed plainly
+how little reliance she placed upon the generosity and judgment of
+adults. And Cody walked away, haunted by the tormenting vision of Split
+flying before him through the moonlit night: the only girl in town who
+had any originality about choosing hiding-places, or who could make a
+race worth while.
+
+The family was assembled when Split reached the library and sat down,
+rebelliously sullen, beside Sissy. That young woman, though, wore an
+expression of purified patience, a submissive willingness to kiss the
+rod, that was eminently appropriate, however infuriating to the junior
+Madigans. But Sissy had known that it was coming. She could have
+foretold the martyrdom; all the signs of yesterday prophesied it, and
+she was reconciled.
+
+It followed invariably that after the rare occasions when the pitiful
+curtain of his egotism had been blown aside by some chance breeze of
+destiny, and Francis Madigan had stood for a moment face to face with
+himself and his shirked responsibilities, he made the spasmodic effort
+to fulfil his paternal obligations, which the Madigans had learned to
+call their "martyring." He took from his library the book which had been
+most to him, which he had read all his life: for inspiration when he had
+been young and hopeful, for philosophy now that he was old and a
+failure. He was sincere in offering to his children the fruit of a great
+mind with comments by one that was sympathetic, able if not deep, and
+genuinely eager, for the moment, to share its enthusiasm.
+
+But the sight of all this helpless though secretly critical womanhood
+disposed attentively about him invariably, through association of ideas,
+brought to his mind every similar and abortive attempt he had made in
+this direction. When he opened the book to read aloud to them, he was
+always irritated, with that deep-seated irascibility which has its
+foundation in self-discontent, however externals may influence or add to
+it.
+
+Whatever Francis Madigan might have been, he was never intended for a
+pedagogue. His impatience of stupidity, his irritation at the slow,
+stumbling steps of immaturity, not to speak of his lack of judgment in
+his selection and his determination to persevere in reading aloud from
+the book of his choice, if he had to ram undigested wisdom whole into
+the mental stomachs of his offspring--all this would have deterred a
+less obstinate man. But Madigan, who had become a bully through weakness
+(forced to domineer unsuccessfully in his home by the conquering
+softness of his sister's disposition), had the bully's despairing
+consciousness of being in the wrong at the very moment of superficial
+victory; of being powerless in the very act of imposing himself upon his
+poor little women-folk; of recognizing the fact that, although he might
+lead them to the fountain of knowledge, he was unable to make them
+drink; and yet not daring to hesitate in his bullying, for fear that he
+might do nothing at all if he did not do this.
+
+Now that his conscience was quickened, Madigan insisted to himself that
+the culture of his daughters' minds must be attended to. So he read
+aloud from "The Martyrdom of Man"; and enjoyed the sound of his
+voice--the irresistible accents of the cultured Irishman--a pleasure
+which the world shared with him; but not a martyred world of small
+women, over whose heads the long-sounding, musical periods of the
+poet-historian rolled, dropping only an occasional light shower of
+intelligence upon the untilled minds below.
+
+"We will begin where we left off the last time," Madigan said harshly.
+He remembered how long it had been since "last time," and how much his
+audience had had time to forget. "Where was that? Were any of you
+interested enough to remember?"
+
+Miss Madigan looked up from her work, like an amiable but very silly hen
+who pretends to make a mental effort, yet, unfortunately, has nothing to
+make that effort with. Kate, with the consciousness that she was really
+the only one of Madigan's children capable of following the line of the
+historian's thought, flushed guiltily. Irene sat like a prisoner,
+looking out into the balmy evening. She could hear cries of "Free home!
+Free home!" from down yonder in the paradise of the streets, in Crosby
+Pemberton's voice. Even Crosby, whose unnatural mother was the only lady
+of Split's acquaintance who was prejudiced against playing in the
+streets--even Crosby was out. While she--
+
+"It was the fall of Carthage, wasn't it, father?" asked Sissy, sweetly.
+
+If a glance from Split could have slain, Sissy had been dead. It was not
+the Madigan policy to encourage Francis Madigan in his belief that the
+seeds he sought to sow fell on fertile soil. If they had to be martyred
+in one sense, they declined to be in another. Besides, they knew and
+detested Sissy's hypocritical desire to "show off."
+
+"It was, indeed, Cecilia," said Madigan, with a pathetic softening of
+his whole being. "'Tis a fine, stirring, terrible picture the historian
+gives us of the doomed city. Ahem!... 'And then, as if the birds of the
+air had carried the news, it became known all over northern Africa that
+Carthage was about to fall. And then, from the dark and dismal corners
+of the land, from the wasted frontiers of the desert, from the snowy
+lairs and caverns of the Atlas, there came creeping and crawling to the
+coast the most abject of the human race--black, naked, withered beings,
+their bodies covered with red paint, their hair cut in strange fashions,
+their language composed of muttering and whistling sounds. By day they
+prowled around the camp, and fought with the dogs for the offal and the
+bones. If they found a skin, they roasted it on ashes, and danced
+around it in glee, wriggling their bodies and uttering abominable cries.
+When the feast was over, they cowered together on their hams, and fixed
+their gloating eyes upon the city, and expanded their blubber-lips and
+showed their white fangs. At last-'"
+
+A piercing scream came from Frances.
+
+"Thousand devils!" Madigan burst forth, enraged at the interruption.
+
+It was only that Bep and Fom, in the midst of a finger conversation
+carried on politely with a deaf-and-dumb alphabet, had had their
+attention attracted by the ghastly word-picture made so vivid by their
+father's voice. So, wearying of the innocuous desuetude of things, it
+occurred to them to present for Frank's entertainment a bodily
+representation of what the words meant to their minds. Safe in the
+obscurity of the table-cloth's circular shadow, down on the floor they
+wriggled, they prowled, they cowered and gloated and expanded their
+blubber-lips and showed their fangs. If they did not utter abominable
+cries, it was only because that particular detail was not needed to send
+the smallest Madigan into hysterics.
+
+"Leave the room!" cried Madigan. "Leave the room, you ox!" looking
+wrathfully, but generally, down at the disturbance.
+
+And three small Madigans, feeling that they had paid a small price for
+freedom, crept and crawled to the door--the most abject of the Madigan
+race till they were fairly outside, when they became the most jubilant.
+
+"'At last,'" went on Madigan, a lingering growl of resentment in his
+voice, "'the day came. The harbor walls were carried by assault and the
+Roman soldiers passed into--'"
+
+"Father," interrupted Sissy, with the exasperating air of one who knows
+how soothing she is (like many a talented person, she was irretrievably
+ruined by her first success and she felt very intelligent)--"father, in
+what part of Rome was Carthage?"
+
+Behind her father's back Split mouthed a threat of vengeance and shook
+her fist at the interested Sissy for wilfully prolonging the session.
+But at Madigan's snort of disgust, the Indian profile of Split, below
+its bushy crown of red, shone out malevolently. She did not know what
+Sissy had done; she knew only that she had done something.
+
+Sissy met her glance, and returned it with dignity. "I didn't mean that,
+father, you know," she said priggishly. "I meant, of course, in what
+part of Carthage was Rome."
+
+"Oh, you did!" Madigan's smile was not pleasant.
+
+"Ye-es," said Sissy, uncertainly.
+
+"Well," said Madigan, explosively, "Rome was in the same part of
+Carthage as Carthage was of Rome."
+
+His jaw was set now, and his glowing dark eyes beneath their white
+shaggy brows as he sought his place in the book were not encouraging.
+But the enigmatic character of his response was not enough for Sissy,
+dazed, yet greedy for glory. She glanced from Split, in whose ear Kate
+was whispering something that seemed vastly to delight her, to her
+father, who had begun to read again.
+
+"I don't remember, father, please," she said as he paused a moment to
+clear his throat. "What part was that?"
+
+A sputtering giggle broke from Split. It was unlucky, for it turned
+Madigan's wrath upon her.
+
+"Outside!" he commanded, pointing to the door. "Outside, you ox!..."
+
+"'Six days passed thus,'" the reading began again. (In almost the moment
+the door had closed behind her, Split could be heard flying down the
+outside steps two at a time. That he was sorely tried, Madigan's voice
+showed plainly, and his shrunken audience looked apprehensively at one
+another). "'Six days passed thus and only the citadel was left. It was
+a steep rock in the middle of the town; a temple of the god of healing
+crowned the summit.' The god of healing, Cecilia," he put in, with a
+contempt that mantled the perfectionist's check with a resentful red,
+"means that particular deity--"
+
+A soft little snore came from Miss Madigan. Her head had fallen to one
+side, and the lamp-light shone on her soft, pretty, high-colored face,
+placid in its repose as a baby's.
+
+In the moment that Madigan paused and looked at her, Sissy's hand sought
+Kate's in terror. But the reader controlled himself with an effort,
+remembering possibly that, after all, it was not his sister but his
+daughters he was educating.
+
+"'The rock was covered with people,'" he went on, skipping the
+explanation he had intended giving to Sissy. And he read on for some
+minutes without interruption, becoming more and more interested himself
+in the vivid picture as it unrolled, and half declaiming it in his
+enthusiasm, with a verve that accounted for Sissy's successful rendition
+of "The Polish Boy" at school entertainments. "'The trumpets sounded,'"
+he sang out. "'The soldiers, clashing their bucklers with their swords
+and uttering the war-cry _Alala! Alala!_ advanced in--'"
+
+"Mercy me!" exclaimed Miss Madigan, waked by his realistic shout, and
+blinking her bright little eyes to accustom them to the light.
+
+"Anne," said Madigan, tensely, "if you are not interested, you--are not
+obliged to listen, of course. But it would be more--civil to withdraw
+if--"
+
+"Not interested?" she repeated, with gentle surprise, as she took up her
+crocheting again. "Why, it's very interesting--most interesting; don't
+you find it so, Kate?"
+
+"'A man dressed in purple rushed out of the temple with an olive-branch
+in his hand,'" Madigan began again, all the ardor gone from his voice.
+"'This was Hasdrubal, the commander-in-chief, and the Robespierre of the
+Reign of Terror. His--'"
+
+"Missy Kate--want chocolate--picnic--" Wong stood open-mouthed in the
+doorway. Consciousness of having interrupted the master, as well as
+amazement at beholding him out of his own room after dinner, was too
+much for him.
+
+"What do you want, Wong?" demanded Madigan, harshly.
+
+"Notting--oh, notting," murmured Wong, deprecatingly. "One picnic,
+sabe, t'-malla morning."
+
+"Irene--I mean Cecilia--Thousand devils!--Kate," stormed Madigan, in his
+rage forgetting his daughter's precise appellation, "go out into the
+kitchen and give your orders. If you had the least grain of common sense
+you'd know that the first duty of a housekeeper is to have some system
+about her work; to do things at the right time and not to interrupt the
+evening's entertainment." He gulped a bit at this, though Kate's dropped
+lids quickly hid the ironical gleam in her eye. "Well, why don't you
+go--and stay? You might as well, or you'll forget something else and
+interrupt us again."
+
+A desire to make herself look very numerous, intelligent, and
+appreciative possessed Sissy as the door closed on her big sister. She
+was in the familiar frame of mind in which she disapproved of her
+sisters, yet she was terrified lest, if she gave him time, her father
+might draw the same inference that she had.
+
+"Perhaps you'll let me read aloud for a while, father. Mr. Garvan often
+has me read things to the class," she suggested quickly, when she saw he
+was about to close the book.
+
+Madigan hesitated. A succession of infuriating trifles had beat upon
+his temper till it was worn thin. But Sissy's outstretched hand
+conquered merely by suggestion. He put the book before her, pointed to
+the place, got to his feet, and began pacing to and fro.
+
+"'Carthage burned seventeen days before it was entirely consumed,'" read
+Sissy. "'Then the plow was passed over the soil to put an end in legal
+form to the existence of the city. House might never be built, corn
+might never be sown, upon the ground where it had stood.'"
+
+She read well, did Sissy, as she did most things. Little by little
+Madigan's sharp, quick steps became less and less the bodily expression
+of exasperated nerves, and tuned themselves to the meter of that pretty,
+childish voice, intelligently giving utterance to the thoughtful
+philosophy that had always soothed him. It lost some of its familiarity
+and gained a new charm, coming from that small, round mouth which had an
+almost faultless instinct for pronunciation. A feeble germ of fatherly
+pride began to sprout beneath the soil upon which the child's
+intelligent reading fell like a warm, spring rain.
+
+"One moment, Cecilia." Madigan stopped in his walk, lifting an
+apologetic hand to excuse the interruption. "You read just now of 'the
+Britons of Cornwall gathering on high places and straining their eyes
+toward the west; the ships which had brought them beads and purple cloth
+would come again no more.' Now, to what does that refer?"
+
+Sissy's hands flew to her breast; and before she had time to conceal, to
+pretend, to affect, he had seen the blank expression of her face. You
+see, she had been merely reading; not thinking. The sound of her own
+voice had drowned the sense. To read intelligently a thing the
+comprehension of which was far over her head was the utmost this
+eleven-year-old could do. She had not the vaguest idea what she had been
+reading. It was all a blank!
+
+Madigan stood petrified; and the last little martyred ox, stuffing her
+apron into her mouth, that she might not weep aloud, hurried from the
+room.
+
+A moment longer Madigan stood. Then he looked at Miss Madigan. That
+lady's placid face had not changed a particle. She sat crocheting what
+she called a fascinator, her white bone needle moving harmoniously in
+and out of the blue wool. Had she heard a word that had been read? Her
+brother knew better than to ask. Did it make the least difference to
+her whether he read from "The Martyrdom of Man" or not?
+
+Madigan shut the book with a bang. The "martyring," boomerang that it
+had proved, was over.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The world seems new-born every summer morning in Virginia City. This
+little mining-town, dry, sterile, and unlovely, and built at an absurd
+angle up the mountain, is the poor relation of her fortunate cousins of
+the high Alps; yet shares with them their birthright--an open, boundless
+breadth of view, an endless depth of unpolluted, sparkling air, the
+fresh, shining virginity of the new-created.
+
+It was the sense of a nature-miracle, and the desire to penetrate still
+farther and higher into the crystalline sky that crowned it, which sent
+the Madigans every summer toiling up Mount Davidson. They did not know
+it, but yearly the _Wanderlust_ seized them, and as all things in
+Virginia point one way, they followed that suggestion--upward.
+
+They were spared the usual struggle with Frances (who, after being
+coaxed, bribed, threatened, and bullied, had at last annually to be run
+away from), for the reason that Frank had not slept well after the
+martyring, and was still dreaming of creeping, crawling things with
+blubber-lips and gloating eyes when, in the pellucid dawn, Jack Cody
+found the Madigans waiting, in clean calicoes, perched on their
+bottommost step.
+
+The sun was barely over the top of Sugar Loaf, and the town, scantily
+shrubberied (for water costs as many dollars in Virginia as there are
+weeks in the year), lay sleeping in soft chill shadow below them,
+looking oddly picturesque and strange in the unfamiliar light.
+
+"Say," said Cody, "I think I see that Pemberton kid coming up Taylor. Is
+he coming along?"
+
+"No," said Sissy, promptly.
+
+"Yes," said Split, firmly.
+
+"Well, _I_ didn't ask him," from Sissy, with a haughty air of saying the
+last word. The Madigans were quite accustomed to being social arbiters
+in their own small world.
+
+"Well, I did," remarked Split, easily.
+
+A pugnacious red overshot Sissy's face. Crosby was her property, to
+browbeat and maltreat as seemed best to her. She felt that Irene's
+interference in a matter that was purely personal was unwarranted as it
+was intolerable.
+
+"He always has such good cream-tarts," explained Split.
+
+"Well, he can have 'em and keep 'em," declared Sissy, savagely, turning
+her back as Crosby yodeled a greeting and waved his hat gaily to her.
+
+Cody grinned. "I think that kid better stay at home. It won't be much
+picnic for him, will it, Sissy?"
+
+Sissy sniffed. "He's Split's company," she said loftily. "She'll make
+things pleasant for him."
+
+But Crosby, glad to be among the enticing Madigans at any price, and
+innocently joying in the picnic spirit that possessed him, came whooping
+to his fate.
+
+"Say," he said eagerly, putting down his basket with the air of one who
+has a good story to tell, "do you know, I almost got caught this
+morning. Ma said I wasn't to go, but I bet I wouldn't stay at home. So I
+told Delia to put up my lunch last night, and to put in a lot of those
+cream-tarts you like, Sissy--you used to like, Sissy...."
+
+But Sissy, actuated by a delicate desire not to interfere in the
+slightest with Split's plans for the entertainment of her guest, was
+deep in conversation with Jack Cody. Crosby's jaw fell. He saw her give
+her round tin lunch-bucket--the one he had so often carried to school
+for her--to Cody, to sling with his own upon a leather strap. And as he
+watched her start up the ravine carrying one end of the strap, and the
+washerwoman's boy the other, he wondered passionately within himself at
+the faithlessness and ingratitude of women.
+
+Wasn't it enough to have a reckoning with Madam Pemberton at the end of
+his day, without having that precious time utterly spoiled? He felt like
+turning back. Sissy knew well that there could be no picnic for him
+within the pale of her displeasure. The mountain air might be never so
+sweet with the wild sage perfuming it; the sun striping the shadowy town
+below with bloody bands might be never so promising; the mountain's
+peak, soft and deceitfully near, might be never so tempting--with Sissy
+chattering gaily in advance, ostentatiously ignorant of his very
+existence, the glory was cut out of Crosby's morn. It seemed, too, to
+him that he had never been so fond of her. His mother's disapproval of
+this Madigan since a certain episode (to avenge which cruel Sissy's
+thirst could never be slaked) had put the last touch to his devotion.
+That matron's pleasure in their intercourse hitherto had been the one
+drawback to his delight in it. In his eyes, his inamorata walked now
+with the crown of the forbidden upon her haughty little head; and that
+Crosby was more of a natural boy than his effeminate tastes indicated is
+proven by the fact that he loved Sissy far more for this than for being
+"the good one" his mother had once thought and proclaimed her.
+
+At the sluice-box which circles Mount Davidson, bringing the purest of
+water from a mountain lake, the party halted and was joined by other
+brave mountaineers, big and little; the latter in calico skirts, and
+shirts and knickerbockers. Bombey Forrest was the only one who came
+under neither of these heads. She was a slender slip of a girl whose
+mother, to the scandal of conventional folk, believed that for the first
+decade or so of child-life the boy's costume is fitter than the girl's.
+So Bombey wore a knickerbockered sailor-suit with a broad collar and
+white braid; wore it with a bit of a conscious air, yet with that grace
+which long use and habit lend; with piquancy, too, for she was the least
+masculine of girls in mind and manner, and her delicate face with its
+golden curls bloomed like a flower on a strange stalk, above the
+assertive masculinity of her attire.
+
+It was to Bombey that Crosby Pemberton turned for solace. (Split had
+promptly deserted him for Kate, whom she suspected of a contemptible
+desire to cut loose from the Madigans as children, and join the older
+members of the party.) He had not had the courage to forgo the picnic,
+though he knew his mistress well enough to be sure that by the end of
+the day he would realize that that course would have been the least
+painful. He carried Bombey's basket, like the little gentleman he was;
+not in the division-of-labor fashion, from which Cody's and Sissy's
+jangling buckets extracted a sort of cow-bell music as they ran merrily
+along, far in advance.
+
+Cody spied the two below when he and Sissy sat down to rest on a huge
+boulder. Jack never knew how to treat Bombey Forrest, always feeling
+that the most decent thing to do was not to look at her. Despite his own
+bitter and recurring experiences (which, one might fancy, would have
+made him tender to the vicissitudes of sex as warranted by clothing),
+something in him felt outraged and resentful at the sight of her.
+
+"Look at the girl-boy and the boy-girl!" he sneered. "See how they poke
+along. They'll never get to the top."
+
+Sissy's shoes were hot and dusty. The strong odor of sage-brush was in
+her nostrils. Her skirt was torn, and the short-stemmed desert-lilies
+she held in a moist hand were wilted. But she was happy, for she was
+outdoing, she was pretending, and she was punishing. The only thing that
+detracted from her pleasure was to be obliged to concur in Cody's
+opinion. That roused her perversity. She loved to lead or to oppose--not
+to agree.
+
+"Let's go on," she said imperiously. "What are you stopping for?"
+
+As the sun climbed higher, the mountain's top got farther and farther
+away. But Cody, who had scaled not only its summit, but the flagpole
+that tipped it, knew its habit of piling one small hill up behind the
+other, as though, like a grotesque Gulliver playing a practical joke, it
+delighted in fatiguing and disappointing the Liliputians that swarmed up
+from its base. Crosby and Bombey and the twins, with the Misses
+Blind-Staggers,--blinder than ever to-day for the glare on their blue
+goggles,--had yielded long since. They were camping patiently in a
+ravine far below, where a tiny spring hinted at dining-room
+conveniences. The rest of the party, with Irene revenging herself upon
+Kate's disloyalty by sticking like a burr to that young lady (whom,
+Split thought, Mr. Garvan was treating altogether too much like a young
+lady), was close on the vanguard's heels. And Sissy and Cody, panting
+now, but toiling doggedly on, had reached the cool little cup-shaped
+hollow in the cone where the snow lies.
+
+From here to the top was but a few minutes' run. Cody was all for
+halting and snow-balling the party as it came up, but Sissy was too
+exhausted to stop now.
+
+"We'll rest at the top of the hill," she decided impatiently, and
+hurried him on, both a bit out of temper.
+
+No beauty of winding river and peaceful valley checkered with fields of
+grain, no low-lying gardens and climbing forests, reward the scaler of
+the heights behind the Comstock--only the bare little brown town far
+down, digging tenacious heels into the mountain's side and propped up
+with spindle-shanked foothold, the great white inverted cones of steam
+rising from the mines, the naked and scarred majesty of the gray
+mountains all about, the desert gleaming like a lake in the east, and
+Washoe Lake gleaming like a desert in the west.
+
+Yet Sissy held her breath. Something in the still purity of the air, the
+savage grandeur of the mountains, the great arch of liquid blue above
+her, caught and held her impressionable spirit. She stretched out her
+hands--a small, petticoated Balboa--to the world she had discovered.
+"It--it makes you want to scream," she stammered.
+
+"Booh!" It was a yell from Cody, delivered full in her ear. "If you want
+to scream, darn it, scream!" was his practical advice as he spat out the
+sunflower-seeds he had been chewing and prepared to climb the pole.
+
+Sissy stood looking at him, the color flooding her face. And as he noted
+her expression, the boy suddenly remembered that he did not like Split's
+sister. But his mild memory of distaste was as nothing to the disgust
+that possessed Sissy. In her ecstasy she had unwittingly lifted a corner
+of the lid that she kept tight over her emotions. Logically, she hated
+the unimpressed and profane witness of the phenomenon.
+
+She turned her back on him, refusing even to look at his progress up the
+high pole. She would not see when, at its top, small as a fly at the
+point of a pencil, he waved his hat and, ululating brassily, gave vent
+to the desire to be noisily vocal which had clutched Sissy's throat into
+silence. At luncheon, she found a spot that was farthest from him; and
+when he and Split tore noisily down the mountain's side on the way
+back, she submitted rather to be outdone than to join a party of which
+he was one.
+
+Crosby Pemberton, bracing himself for the derision he expected from her,
+was delighted to see her come sliding down alone to the ravine, where
+the successful ones paused to take up the rest of the party. Her
+solitary state encouraged him, and he sought her where she sat knocking
+the sand out of her shoe.
+
+"Sissy," he said softly, holding out a peace-offering, "I saved some
+cream-puffs for you."
+
+But the ruthless Sissy was not to be so easily placated. "You mean for
+Split, don't you?" she said, scarcely looking at him, and diligently
+lacing her shoe. "She asked you to come, you know. I didn't."
+
+With the look of a wounded dove, Crosby turned, and Sissy saw Irene a
+moment later, her teeth gluttonously closed over one of Delia's biggest
+puffs, a heart-breaking amount of "filling" gushing over her cheeks and
+chin.
+
+But to do without for the sake of principle was ever rapture to the
+purist. Sissy placed the pangs of desire to the credit side of Crosby's
+account; this was only one thing more she owed her victim. In fact, as
+the party started on, so engaged was she in inventing and perfecting
+tortures for him that she followed the procession on its unusual detour
+without demur. It was only when it was too late that she saw Bullion
+Ravine ahead of her, and the swaying high trestle over which the flume
+is carried.
+
+Split's malicious face as that most sure-footed of Madigans touched the
+first plank made Sissy realize the test to which she was to be put. Her
+terror of giddy heights was treated as an absurd affectation by the
+steady-headed Madigans, and as such requiring discipline, which, with
+truly sisterly foresight, Split had provided. She ran across now with
+the joy of a thing that feels itself flying. Jack Cody turned a
+handspring in the very middle; and the sight so nauseated Sissy that she
+had to stand aside and let those immediately behind her pass first. Yet
+she dared not remain till the last, for a panicky picture in her mind
+showed her to herself paralyzed forever on the brink. As she put her
+foot on the first board, beneath which she could hear the running water
+chuckling and gurgling as it ran, she swore to herself that she would
+not look down. And, indeed, she did keep her eyes on Crosby Pemberton's
+straw hat, as he walked some distance in front of her. But the moment
+his foot touched the ground on the other side, the light structure,
+relieved of his weight, changed its rhythmic swaying, which had measured
+the steady strength of his step. Its rebound, exaggerated by Sissy's
+tense nerves, seemed sickeningly high; its fall ghastly low. Swung there
+from mountain to mountain, its slender supports looked frail as a
+spider's woof, and seemed to tremble with every gasping breath she drew.
+In spite of herself, her eye caught the silvery glitter of the thread of
+water far below in the stony bed of the nearly dry creek.
+
+It was all over with Sissy. Trembling with terror, she sat down,
+clutching the edge of the board beneath her, the world swimming away
+before her shut eyes, just as it did when one looked too long through a
+knot-hole at the flowing race in the flume beneath.
+
+Irene's giggle came faintly to her; she was too terrified to resent it.
+The murmur of voices that called her name, encouragingly, warningly,
+angrily, was not so loud as the chuckling of the water in the box which
+seemed to hurry her senses away. She lived through years of agony, in
+which she found herself wishing that she could only fall and end it.
+Then she felt the trestle bound beneath her, and she was waked by the
+touch of Crosby's hand.
+
+"Get up!" he said in a tone of command that reminded her of that
+grenadier his mother.
+
+She opened her eyes and saw that his face was white, but the glitter of
+determination in his eyes was so new and curious that it held her
+attention for the moment necessary to give her strength to obey. He
+almost pulled her to her feet, and then half dragged, half ran with her
+across. Yet within ten feet of the end, the trembling of his hand had
+communicated itself to her whole body. She watched the drops of
+perspiration fall from his pale face and, fascinated, followed them down
+with her eyes. Then wrenching her hand from his, she almost fell down
+again. It seemed to her her head swayed back and forth with such force
+as might bear her whole body with it, and she squatted down, shivering.
+
+It was a most humiliating finish to an exciting adventure, for when he
+strove to compel her again to rise, Crosby found that terror is
+contagious. He himself dared not stand. He squatted down in front of
+her, and on all fours the two crawled toward the bank. Sissy could have
+kissed the earth when her hands touched it.
+
+But it took her some time to recover. The sympathetic fussing of the
+Misses Bryne-Stivers she endured as in a dream. She even permitted Mr.
+Garvan to take her hand and help her walk for a time. But when they
+reached the first house and had turned down Taylor Street, she was so
+thoroughly herself that she contrived to let the rest pass her, and she
+rested till Crosby came up. She was walking beside him, with a sudden
+flattering kindness that almost turned his head, when he looked in the
+direction in which her eyes were fixed, and saw his mother in her
+phaeton pull up and beckon to him.
+
+He looked shyly at Sissy. He would have given much to be told that this
+forgiveness was not to be merely temporary, like others that had
+preceded it whenever Mrs. Pemberton might see and disapprove; that he
+was no longer to be flouted and scorned when there was nobody but Sissy
+herself to be glad of it.
+
+"The shadow of the guillotine is over you!" said Sissy, in a bombastic
+whisper addressed to Mrs. Pemberton--a comforting formula the Madigans
+had invented to still their envy of those who rode in carriages. But her
+smiling face, when it turned toward Crosby, had no threat in it.
+
+Relieved, forgiven, reinstated,--for there was a promise without words
+in his tyrant's good humor,--Crosby laughed out gaily. At that moment
+he had no more fear for Madam Pemberton than for the invoked Madame
+Guillotine.
+
+"S' long, Sissy," he cried, waving his basket to her as he went, a young
+aristocrat, to meet his fate.
+
+That night Sissy said her prayers in a rush. She wanted to give her
+undivided attention to plans of revenge on Split.
+
+
+
+
+KATE: A PRETENSE
+
+
+The lesser Madigans meant to stand no nonsense from Kate. Other girls'
+big sisters had been known to assume superiority as their skirts
+lengthened, and to imply an esoteric something in their experience which
+younger sisters could not comprehend, and privileges which they might
+not share. But for them, the Madigans, though they were graciously
+willing to count Kate out of such outdoor sports as were incompatible
+with lengthened skirts, she might come no pretense of young-ladyhood
+over them. They were on the watch for the smallest affectation, the
+least sentimentality; and as for beaus per se--just let Kate try it!
+
+Kate did, being human, a Comstock girl when girls were in a delightful
+minority, and a Madigan. But, realizing the argus-eyed watch put upon
+her, and the forthright methods of her sister Madigans, she tried it
+secretly.
+
+To be sure, there was old Westlake,--he was at least thirty-five years
+old--whose intentions were quite apparent. He came up to play whist at
+the house whenever he was in town, upon which occasions Kate was always
+his partner; and he scolded her with the same proprietary freedom for
+leading a "sneak" suit as Francis Madigan did his sister--a lady who was
+never known to know what was trumps, and who smiled and blinked and
+blushed and made the same mistakes over and over again with a
+complacency that Madigan's fiercest thumps upon the table could not
+shake.
+
+But the Madigans forgave Kate her Westlake, for the pleasure she took in
+guying him, and the loyal frankness with which she let them into all the
+moves of the game. He was "The Avalanche" to her and to them, because of
+his avoirdupois, his slow movements, and the imperviousness to a joke
+with which he was credited; because he could not take in all the little
+infinity of homely facetiae in which the Madigans lived and had their
+being. Besides, it was pleasant and exciting, being leagued with Kate
+against Aunt Anne, who was known to have positively had the indecency to
+speak openly upon the subject, and in favor of it, to her oldest niece!
+
+"Fly, the Avalanche is upon you!" was Sissy's dramatic way of warning
+her big sister that her suitor had been spied by the outpost coming up
+the steps.
+
+And on such occasions Kate could slip out of the side door and be safely
+inside the Misses Blind-Staggers's sitting-room by the time Westlake's
+heavy step made the porch shake--and Sissy, too--with laughter. But this
+was before she went to open the door.
+
+"Is your sister at home?" old Westlake asked confidently.
+
+"Which one--Irene? Yes, she's home." Sissy's small round face was
+simplicity and candor incarnate.
+
+"No," said old Westlake, uncomfortably. He had seen shrewdness once or
+twice behind the eyes where innocence now dwelt, and he only half
+trusted this demure, blank-faced child. "I mean your sister Katherine."
+
+"Oh!" Cecilia exclaimed, in gentle surprise. "Oh, no, sir, she's out."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+Old Westlake fancied he heard a mocking "indeed" that followed. In fact,
+an echo that had the queer effect of making him hear double seemed to
+accompany all his words. It came from the portieres, which were
+suspiciously bulky, and shook as though something more than the wind
+moved them.
+
+"And how soon will she be home?" he asked.
+
+"Kate? You mean Kate? Oh, I really do not know." Sissy pronounced her
+words with pedantic care--a permissible thing among Madigans when adults
+were to be guyed.
+
+Old Westlake (he was rather a handsome old fellow, with his regular
+features, his blond mustache, and prominent blue eyes) fidgeted
+uneasily. There must be some way, he felt, of moderating this
+half-chilly, half-critical atmosphere on the part of the smaller
+Madigans. But children were riddles to him, and the solutions his small
+experience offered were either too simple or too complex.
+
+"She can't be intending to spend the whole day out?" he asked, conscious
+that he presented a ridiculous figure to the childish gray eyes lifted
+to his.
+
+"No, I don't suppose she can," agreed Sissy. "Won't you come in?"
+
+He followed her hesitatingly into the parlor and sat down, his eyes
+fixed upon the portieres over the front windows, which still appeared to
+be strangely agitated.
+
+"You--do you think it will be worth while--my waiting?" he asked
+helplessly, as Cecilia was modestly about to withdraw.
+
+She looked up at him with the bland look of intelligence which it takes
+a clever child to counterfeit.
+
+"Worth while waiting for Kate?" she asked in accents half puzzled, half
+reproachful.
+
+Old Westlake blushed to the roots of his close-cropped fair hair. He
+fancied he heard a muffled gurgle behind the portieres that wasn't
+soothing.
+
+"Oh--you mean, is she likely to come home soon?" added Sissy, gravely,
+eying his discomfiture. "I really do not know."
+
+"Is Miss Madigan in?" asked the desperate man.
+
+"Why, do you call her that? I told you she was out."
+
+"No; you told me Katherine was out. Is she in?" he asked eagerly.
+
+Sissy stared at him stupidly. He returned her stare contemplatively. He
+yearned to bribe her, but he didn't dare. She looked too old to be
+bought, too young to understand; yet he was sure she was neither.
+
+"Katherine, Kate, and Miss Madigan are out," said Sissy, didactically.
+"So are Kitty, Kathleen, and even Kathy--that's her latest; she wrote it
+that way in Henrietta Bryne-Stivers's autograph-album."
+
+The visitor looked bewildered. "I asked you whether your aunt is in,"
+he said, with some impatience.
+
+"I beg your pardon," retorted Sissy, ceremoniously. No Madigan begged
+pardon unless intending to be doubly offensive thereafter. "You asked me
+whether my sister was in."
+
+"Is--your--aunt--in?" demanded Westlake, with insulting clearness.
+
+"She--is--in. I'll--tell--her--you're--here."
+
+"Please." Westlake bit the word out, promising himself that his first
+post-nuptial act would be to shake this small sister-in-law well for her
+impertinence.
+
+And this was the pathos, as well as the absurdity of old Westlake--he
+was so confident.
+
+But he was not so confident that he did not long for an ally. And when
+Split stepped out from behind the portieres, with a barefaced pretense
+of having just come through the long French window from the porch, he
+straightway invited her to go to the circus that evening with him and
+Kate.
+
+There happened to be two sties on Split's left eye just then, and a
+third on the upper eyelid of the right one. But this, of course, was no
+reason for discouraging the overtures of a poor old man like Westlake,
+who, it appeared to Split, had some virtues, after all.
+
+That evening Sissy, who was playing holey down on Taylor (a famous
+button-string had Sissy, as token of her prowess; it had a sample of
+almost every buttoned frock worn in Virginia for the past ten years),
+watched the three as they set out for the tent far down at the foot of
+the hill. And three things occurred to her, as she stood looking after
+them, Bombey Forrest waiting vainly, meanwhile, for her to shoot: First,
+that if his desire was to propitiate the clan, old Westlake had selected
+the wrong Madigan: Split being not nearly so tenacious an enemy nor so
+loyal a friend as herself. Second, that that same Split looked "like a
+silly" with the white handkerchief bound over her left eye, and her
+right one swollen and teary. She wondered, did Sissy, that they should
+take such a fright with them. And thirdly, the censor of the family sins
+made a mental note to the effect that Kate Madigan was putting on
+altogether too many airs as she pulled on her gloves; there was an
+inexcusable self-consciousness about her manner toward the Avalanche;
+and as for old Westlake himself, he was clearly taking advantage of
+Split's blindness and casting such glances at that giddy Kate as she,
+Sissy, would certainly not have tolerated--if she had been invited to go
+to the circus. If only she had!
+
+It must not be supposed that the esthetic side of life for the Madigans
+was represented wholly by women's walking-matches and the circus. There
+was also the Tridentata.
+
+Of course the Tridentata--the name was supposed to have something
+to do with sage-brush--was very select. Naturally, for it had had
+its origin in Mrs. Pemberton's strenuous estheticism and double
+parlors--possessions of which few Comstockers could boast. But after the
+infant literary society had learned to stand alone, it adopted migratory
+habits, meeting now at the Misses Bryne-Stivers's cottage, now at Mrs.
+Forrest's over-furnished rooms, and occasionally even at the Madigans'.
+
+There was at least room enough at the Madigans; it was the one
+particular in which they were never stinted. The long, shabby parlor had
+sufficient seating-capacity, even if the chairs were not all, strictly
+speaking, presentable.
+
+"Shall I bring in the Versiye fotoy?" asked Split on one of the
+occasions when the meeting of the Tridentata necessitated a real
+house-cleaning in which the full corps of Madigans took part.
+
+"The Versailles _fauteuil_, Irene," replied Miss Madigan, doubtfully,
+"is not reliable. If I wasn't sure that Mrs. Pemberton, who has seen
+the real ones, would be sure to ask where it is, I'd keep it out; for
+the last time she came so near sitting on it while I was reading my
+paper on 'Home-keeping' that I got so nervous I left out all that part
+about the housewife's duty being, above all, to make a spiritual home:
+to diffuse about herself a home atmosphere, so that wherever she sat,
+wherever two or three gathered about her, there was the Sanctuary of the
+Church of Home, so to speak. And--"
+
+"Then you want me to bring it in?" Split had too much to do to listen to
+Tridentata culture. Her humble office was merely to make ready for the
+literary feast and modest bodily refreshment to come.
+
+It was one of the contradictions of Split's nature--her intense
+occasional domesticity and the practical good sense that marked her home
+economies. She rose now, basin in hand. Her sleeves were rolled up, her
+bushy hair, a troublesome half-length now, was bound up in a towel. She
+had been scrubbing and polishing the zinc under the stove, and she was
+as happy as she was executive. She flew about trilling "The Zingara,"
+with a smudge on her chin and a big kitchen-apron tied about her waist,
+looking like a dirty little slavey; yet putting the mark of her
+thoroughness upon everything she touched and Miss Madigan overlooked.
+
+"The big rug from your room is to go over the hole by the window?" she
+asked perfunctorily, being half-way through the hall at the time.
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad you remembered it," said Miss Madigan. "Mrs. Forrest
+tripped in that hole the last time. I thought it was exceedingly
+impolite of her to call attention to it that way, because--"
+
+"Shall I turn the couch-cover?" demanded Split.
+
+"I don't see how you can," said Miss Madigan, helplessly. "It's worn on
+the other side."
+
+But with a tug Split had drawn it off, pillows and all, and she flew
+up-stairs, carrying Kate in her wake to help her pull down a portiere
+which she intended transforming into a couch-cover.
+
+Things sentient as well as material were accustomed to doing double duty
+at the Madigans' on Tridentata nights. When Francis Madigan, forewarned
+that his bell would often be rung that evening, but that he was not
+expected to resent the insult, had retreated to his castle and pulled up
+the drawbridge behind him, the slavey, with Sissy as assistant, became
+doorkeeper, and, later, butler. Critics, of course, these two were ex
+officio; and from their station out in the chilly hall, they listened to
+and mocked at the literary program, which Miss Madigan had entitled, "A
+Night of All Nations."
+
+The opening duet between Maude and Henrietta Bryne-Stivers they had
+heard before. Few people in Virginia, indeed, had not.
+
+"Trash!" Sissy pronounced it in Professor Trask's best manner.
+
+The reading from "Sodom's Ende," in the original, by the traveled Mrs.
+Pemberton, was fiercely resented by her audience outside the gates. It
+always made a Madigan furious to hear a foreign tongue; for, apart from
+the affectation of strange pronunciations, the deliberate mouthing of
+words (and you couldn't make Sissy Madigan believe that Mrs. Ramrod
+understood half of what she was reading in that guttural, heavy tongue),
+there was the impugnment of other people's lack of linguistic
+accomplishment.
+
+The critical paper on Daudet that followed was read by Miss Henrietta
+Bryne-Stivers. While it was in progress the two Madigans out in the hall
+each read an imaginary paper on the same topic, finishing with that
+identical courtesy which Henrietta had imported from Miss Jessup's
+school in the city. But Split tripped Sissy as she was bowing over low,
+and she fell, as softly as she could, to the floor. Miss Madigan looked
+out with a "S--sh!" Sissy cast off all blame in virtuous dumb-show, and
+in the pause the two heard Dr. Murchison's voice as Henrietta passed him
+and the door, on her triumphant way back to her seat.
+
+"Allow me to compliment you, Miss Henrietta," said the old doctor,
+pleasantly excited by so youthful a lady's literary discrimination. "You
+are really fond of Daudet, then?"
+
+Henrietta blushed. "Oh, no, indeed, doctor!" she said deprecatingly. "At
+Miss Jessup's we girls were not permitted to read him, you know."
+
+"Ah, I see," murmured the doctor. "Only to write about him?"
+
+"Miss Jessup thought it was more--fitting, with the French authors,"
+observed Henrietta.
+
+"So it is," agreed Murchison, dryly. "So it is. The excellent Miss
+Jessups--how well they know!"
+
+"He's guying her," chuckled Sissy, making a mental vow to read Daudet or
+die in the attempt. "And she doesn't know it."
+
+"Hush!" came from Split.
+
+In a tenor a bit foggy, but effectively sympathetic, old Westlake was
+singing, "Oh, would that we two were maying!"
+
+Sissy put her eye to the crack of the door, and Split, watching her, saw
+her round face grow red and indignant.
+
+"What is it?" she whispered, squirming till she too had an eye glued to
+the crack.
+
+"Look!" exclaimed Sissy, disgustedly.
+
+Straight in their line of vision sat Kate, and upon her old Westlake's
+eyes were ardently fixed as he sang.
+
+"It's--it's not decent," declared Sissy, wrathfully.
+
+"He does look like a calf." Split grinned. Kate looked very pretty in
+that white cashmere embroidered in red rosebuds, which had been made
+over from the box from Ireland, Split said to Sissy, and so was
+deserving of forgiveness, she hinted; for when one had a new frock--
+
+Sissy, the sensible, snorted unbelievingly. What gown had ever affected
+her?
+
+"But I'll get even with him," she said, stealing on tiptoe down the
+hall. "Just you watch!"
+
+Split, her nose in the crack of the door, watched. The Avalanche had
+finished his first verse and begun the second, when Sissy appeared in
+the parlor, very modest and retiring, walking behind chairs and effacing
+herself with an ostentation that could not but attract all eyes. She
+stopped at Miss Madigan's chair, asked a question,--which Split knew
+well was utterly irrelevant and immaterial,--and received an answer in
+Aunt Anne's company manner: a compound of sweetness and flustered
+inattention which no one could mimic better than Sissy herself.
+
+Then she withdrew, slowly and by a tortuous route which brought her just
+beside him at the moment Westlake stopped singing. Without a word, yet
+with a gracious instinct for the momentary confusion in which the
+performer found himself, his seat having been taken while he sang,
+Cecilia pulled out another from the wall and moved it slightly toward
+him.
+
+The little attention was offered so naturally, with such engaging
+demureness, that Mrs. Pemberton--whom the social amenities in children
+ever delighted--almost loved Sissy Madigan at that moment. So, by the
+way, did Split, out in the hall, her eye at the crack of the door, her
+feet lifting alternately with anticipative rapture. For it was the
+Versailles _fauteuil_ that Sissy had so sweetly selected for old
+Westlake. And when the big fellow came down to earth with a crash,
+rising red and confused from the debris, Sissy was already out in the
+hall. She arrived at the crack in time to see Kate stuff her
+handkerchief into her mouth and hurry to the window, her shoulders
+shaking, while Miss Madigan flew to the rescue.
+
+It took a recitation in Italian by Mrs. Forrest to rob Sissy Madigan,
+judge and executioner, of her complacency after this. Then Aunt Anne
+recited "The Bairnies Cuddle Doon" charmingly, as she always did, but
+most Hibernianly, with that clean accent that makes Irish-English the
+prettiest tongue in the world. After which she received with smiling
+complacency the compliments of Mrs. Forrest, who told her that an ideal
+mother had been lost to the world in her.
+
+Outside, two cynics listened with a bored air. They felt that they
+required a stimulant after this, so they made a hurried visit to the
+dining-room, thereby escaping Mr. Garvan's reading of "Father Phil's
+Collection." But when Henrietta Bryne-Stivers delivered "Blow, Bugle,
+Blow," changing from speaking voice to the sung chorus with a composure
+that was really shameless, the critics out in the hall received that
+insulting shock which novelty inflicts upon the provincial, which is
+the childish, mind. They revenged themselves in their own way, mouthing
+and attitudinizing, caricaturing every pose which Miss Henrietta had
+been taught, by the instructor of Delsarte at Miss Jessup's, was grace.
+They were caught in the midst of their saturnalia of ridicule by Kate,
+who promptly exploded at their uncouth, dumb merriment.
+
+"Aunt Anne wants you, Sissy," she said when she got her breath.
+
+In an instant Sissy was sobered. It wasn't possible that she was to be
+sent to bed before supper! To be a waiter was the height of happiness
+for Sissy.
+
+"It's because of the Versiye fotoy," giggled Split, as she ran off to
+the dining-room.
+
+"It isn't, is it?" whispered Sissy to Kate. And Kate shook her head
+reassuringly, and waved her in. She couldn't answer audibly, for Dr.
+Murchison was tuning up his sweet old violin, while Maude Bryne-Stivers
+offered to accompany him on the piano.
+
+But Murchison knew too much of the manners and methods of Jessup's
+Seminary, as revealed by its showiest pupil.
+
+"Thank you, thank you, Miss Maude, but this is a very old-fashioned and
+a very simple entertainment I'm going to give. Just the things that I
+play to myself when I'm weary of listening to humanity tell of its ills
+and aches--the egotist! Then I look down into the beautifully clean
+inside of my fiddle, its good old mechanism without a flaw, and listen
+to the things it has to tell.... Thank you, just the same, Miss Maude;
+this is not a theme worthy of your brilliant rendition, but, as I said,
+a simple, old-fashioned playing of the fiddle. I'll supply the
+old-fashioned part, and Sissy here can do the simple accompaniment, if
+she will."
+
+If she would! Sissy was so gaspingly happy and proud that she forgot
+even to pretend that she wasn't. Seating herself, she let her trembling
+fingers sink into the opening chord, while the old doctor's bow sought
+the strains of "Kathleen Mavourneen," of "Annie Laurie," the "Blue Bells
+of Scotland," and "Rose Marie."
+
+The unspoken sympathy that existed between these two flowed now from the
+bow to Sissy's fingers, and made a harmony as pretty as was the sight of
+the old man and the happy child looking up at him. Sissy Madigan was
+conscious that the doctor knew her--almost; that, nevertheless, she
+occupied a place quite unique in his heart. And she loved passionately
+to be loved, this hypocrite of a Madigan, who jeered and jibed at any
+demonstration of affection. A sense of being utterly at harmony with the
+world possessed her now; the fact that she was "showing off" was far,
+far in the background of her consciousness, when all at once she
+happened to glance out through the hall door.
+
+She had left it ajar behind her, expecting Kate to follow her in. But
+Kate, evidently, had not followed. She stood out there alone with Mr.
+Garvan, her arms behind her, her slender figure drawn up beneath the
+swinging hall lamp, her pert little head, circled by the braids she wore
+coiled clear around it when she wanted to be very grown-up, upturned to
+the master, her every feature stamped with coquetry.
+
+Sissy shut her lips firmly--and the wrong note she struck marred the
+doctor's finale. It was evident that Kate Madigan needed looking after.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She did; and yet no one but Kate and those she experimented upon could
+help her to find herself.
+
+A wilful Madigan, intoxicated with her first taste of a new pleasure,
+was Kate. She had outgrown her short skirts with regret; she was
+preparing to make them still longer with delight. She had the maturity
+of her motherless and quasi-fatherless state to add to the natural
+precocity of the mining-town girl, and of the eldest sister who has been
+pushed out of her childhood by the press of numbers behind her. And yet
+the wine of romance kept her almost babyishly young. She had a way of
+proclaiming the fact that she read everything her father did. (Madigan,
+marooned by his misfortunes in the most picturesque setting, where men
+were living the most picturesque lives, turned his back upon it all and
+found the action his dull days were denied in the elder Dumas.) By this
+Kate intended to show how proud and unrestrained a Madigan was; hoped,
+too, perhaps, that there might attach a bit--the least bit--of
+suggestive license to the phrase. And all the while she was pitiably
+unconscious of how innocuous the old romanticist's tales of adventure
+may be, read in translation, by the light of such purity and innocence
+as hers.
+
+But she was pert, was Kate, and piquant; she presumed upon her youth,
+upon her age. She was a child when you expected her to be a woman, and a
+woman where you looked for the child. No dream of romance was romantic
+enough to hold her fickle soul constant to it--to satisfy the hopes of
+her heart. Every man she met was a prince; yet was he, too, bare and
+poor and mean compared with The Man to come. The child in her was gauche
+and crude, sitting in judgment--as cynical, as critical a spectator as
+Sissy herself--upon the very hopes the woman awakened. In her eyes the
+flash of coquetry was succeeded by the blank, childish irony which
+denied the emotion hardly passed. She loved to shock pretense, yet she
+was the most absurd and innocent of pretenders, for the terms in which
+convention speaks were Greek to her. She was masterful, being a Madigan,
+and daring and impertinent. A creature utterly impatient of forms, with
+a boy-like chivalry, revealing how incomplete the work of sex was yet,
+for the woman misunderstood--whom she, in her crude purity, understood
+least of all. This was Kate, ready, at fifteen, to battle single-handed
+with windmills, with world-old problems, with world-young prejudices; to
+burn intolerance to ashes in the white flame of her brave young
+innocence; to cry aloud the word that older, wiser cowards whisper or
+stifle in their hearts; to make no compromise; to know that black is
+black and white is white; to be unforgiving, as only cruel young
+inexperience can be; to flame at a wrong and glow at its righting; and
+yet to have her contradictions cased in a body of such vivid grace, a
+mind leavened by humor, and a heart of such sweetness as made her the
+irresistibly lovable Pretense she was.
+
+Pretending to be a child, to annoy her Aunt Anne; pretending to be a
+woman, to infuriate her younger sisters; pretending to be a saint,
+pretending to be a sinner; pretending to scorn the world, yet quaffing
+its first sweet draughts of individual power and experience with
+full-opened throat; pretending to be mannish--driven to that extremity
+by the super-femininity of Henrietta Bryne-Stivers; pretending to be
+frivolous, to shock rigid Mrs. Pemberton; pretending to be a
+blue-stocking with a passion for the solid and heavy in literature;
+pretending to be a Spartan who must rise at dawn and, after a plunge in
+ice-cold mountain water, climb, with only big Don, the Newfoundland, for
+company, up to the sluice-box; there to pretend she was an esthete to
+whom the sunrise, while she communed alone with nature, revealed things
+invisible to the world below.
+
+But Reality's day came. Miss Madigan went out into the future, sent
+thither by her auntly sense of responsibility, and brought it back with
+her. It led them straight to Warren Pemberton's office, and Pretense
+fled like a shy shadow before the sun when Reality looked at her
+through Pemberton's cold, dull eyes.
+
+"Miss Madigan, Mr. Pemberton. My niece Kate," was the lady's
+introduction as they entered.
+
+The red-faced, heavy little man, too important a personage to be
+expected to contribute socially to the life of the town, had been
+looking at Miss Madigan as though he knew he ought to remember having
+met her. She wanted something, of course. Everybody wanted something
+from Warren Pemberton, King Sammy's viceroy, in charge of his mining
+interests and his political plantations. But he brightened at the
+formula, recollecting having heard it before from the same lady's lips,
+and promptly placed her in the category of small political favors.
+
+"I remember you, Miss Madigan--of course," he stammered. "Remember the
+little girl, too. Crosby's flame, eh?"
+
+Kate flushed, struck dumb with the insult, and her black-gray eyes
+gleamed handsomely with anger. After getting herself up in her most
+mature fashion to be mistaken for Sissy!
+
+"Why, Mr. Pemberton," exclaimed Miss Madigan, flustered by propinquity
+to greatness, "this is Kate, the Miss Madigan who--for whom--"
+
+"Oh, excuse me." Pemberton sat rubbing his chin and silently blinking at
+the Miss Madigan for whom his influence had been invoked. She felt he
+was weighing her youth and inexperience against the thing that had been
+asked for her. And the Madigan in her fiercely resented it; was tempted
+to confirm his doubts by a saucy flippancy that would relieve her
+impatience of a false position. But there was that other Madigan in her
+to be reckoned with, that new one, on the reverse of whose shining,
+romantic shield a plain, dull, tenacious sense of duty was slowly
+spelling itself into legibility.
+
+"Kate's really very clever, Mr. Pemberton," said Kate's aunt, tactfully;
+and the girl's teeth clicked together, in her effort to control her
+irritation. "And in some ways she is much older than her years. She will
+graduate, you know, this year at the head of her class; she passed first
+in the examination, and really, in a family where there are so many
+girls--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," interrupted the great man. "You told me all about
+that, and I--"
+
+"And you've had time to realize just how extraordinary a creature I am
+and how pitiful a case ours is! Am I too brilliant altogether to be
+wasted on school-teaching?" Wrath tingled in Kate's voice. She heard
+Miss Madigan's gasp of horror, and could imagine the fishy
+disconsolateness of her expression. And she saw the red-faced little man
+opposite her start, as at the injection of a foreign tongue into the
+interview.
+
+"Eh--what? Oh, yes," he said dully. "I mean--no. It'll be--it's all
+right."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Pemberton, how can I thank you!" Miss Madigan clasped her
+hands.
+
+"Yes; I spoke to Forrest yesterday, and--and, of course, Murchison's
+willing," went on the little man, gravely. "But there's no vacancy just
+now, so they'll arrange to appoint substitutes. It's the way they do in
+cities, I understand. And Miss Cecilia here will be--"
+
+"My name, Mr. Pemberton, is Kate!"
+
+"And Kate's exceedingly grateful." Miss Madigan gazed amazed at her
+niece; she didn't look grateful.
+
+"Not at all; not at all," murmured Pemberton, feeling for his papers
+helplessly. "I'm so busy--"
+
+"It--is good of you," stammered Kate, rising. "I am--very much obliged
+to you." She held out a hand to him that was cold to the fingertips. All
+at once she felt so old, so young, so niched forever in a somber, gray
+life, so settled, so bound up by small formalities, so miserably unlike
+a Madigan!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet the Madigan in Kate waked with a defiant brightness when the first
+call came that took her temporarily over the threshold of the new life.
+She left her own school-room, where her role was as congenial and
+irresponsible as Sissy's, with an air of importance that roused envy in
+her mates' hearts.
+
+The very pretense rallied her, excited her, inspired her to continue to
+pretend after she had left her audience behind her. And though she
+entered the lower class-room, of which she was to have charge for a day,
+with a terrified feeling of being thrown to the lions, she faced the
+undisciplined mob that licked its lips in anticipation of a feast on raw
+young substitute with a flash in her eye that promised battle first.
+
+And she did make a hit at the beginning, thanks to her sister and
+present pupil, Bessie, who was invariably late to school.
+
+To Bep, the aspect of her own sister in a position of authority was the
+hugest absurdity, and when the blonde twin sauntered in, tardy, as
+usual, she joined the class as one of the lions. She intended to give
+Kate distinctly to understand that she was mixed primary pupil first
+and a Madigan afterward; that the substitute might expect no mercy from
+her on the pitiful plea of relationship.
+
+Bep's attitude was very Madigan; the only drawback to it was that it
+left out of the reckoning the fact that she had a Madigan to deal with.
+
+"Elizabeth Madigan," said the substitute, in the clear, high, formal
+tone that, in itself, was sufficient to sever all bonds of kinship,
+"where is your excuse for being late?"
+
+Bep's blue eyes blinked. The impudence of Kate to talk that way to her!
+
+"I ain't got any. Miss Walker never--"
+
+"Miss Walker isn't teaching to-day," remarked the substitute, in the
+patient tone which the enlightened have for dullness. "She is ill and I
+am teacher here. Where is your excuse?"
+
+Bep felt the silence grow around her. She saw the whole school drop its
+mirth and its employments to watch this duel between Madigans.
+
+"Why, you know very well, Kate Madigan--" she began hotly.
+
+A sharp ring on the bell at the teacher's desk cut Bep's eloquence
+short. "If you have anything to say to me, little girl, you will address
+me as Miss Madigan."
+
+The audacity of it struck Bep dumb. Call that slim girl Miss Madigan?
+She'd like to see herself!
+
+"You will go home, Elizabeth," the substitute continued, unconcernedly
+making her way to the blackboard as though this life-and-death affair
+were a mere incident in her many duties, "and bring me back a written
+excuse for your tardiness."
+
+Bep set her teeth. "You know I had to go an errand for Aunt Anne; you
+saw me yourself," she muttered.
+
+"A _written_ excuse, I said."
+
+"I can't get any." Yet Bep rose. She felt the ground slipping from under
+her.
+
+"Then I am sorry to say," remarked the substitute, firmly, "that I shall
+not be able to have you in my class to-day. Leave the room, Bessie....
+Now, children, the first thing to do in subtraction--"
+
+Bessie walked slowly up the aisle and toward the door. With the prospect
+of a double disciplining, at home and at school, too, she dared not
+rebel. Yet wrath smoldered within her. She came to where the substitute
+stood at the board, calmly explaining the process of "borrowing," and
+the resolution to regard her as an undeserving stranger was tempered by
+Bep's desire to inflict an intimate, personal insult.
+
+"I wouldn't be so afflicted as you," she growled under her breath, like
+a small Mrs. Partington, misapplying her big word in her wrath, "for all
+the world. And I'll get even!"
+
+A gleam of quite unofficial laughter lit the substitute's eye. "You mean
+'affected,' my little girl, not 'afflicted,'" she said clearly, pausing
+pedagogically, chalk in hand. "Look up the difference in your
+dictionary, and if you can't understand, come to me and I'll explain it
+to you--after you bring your excuse."
+
+And Bep brought her excuse. The substitute, her cheeks glowing with
+excitement, yet calm-voiced and pretending valiantly, saw the door open
+nearly an hour later, and a hand thrust through waving an envelop, as
+though it were a lightning-rod that might attract the storm of her wrath
+away from the one who carried it.
+
+Gravely, even encouragingly, Miss Kate Madigan read a prayer from Miss
+Anne Madigan that the teacher would kindly excuse the tardiness of
+Elizabeth, her niece. She placed it on file religiously, like a
+confirmed devotee to red tape, and resumed her lesson to the baby
+class, with a matter-of-course air that completed the routing of Bep.
+
+But there was still another relative in the mixed primary--Frances. For
+half a day the smallest of Madigans was supposed to be doing
+kindergarten work, with a mild infusion of the practical in the shape of
+a-b-c's.
+
+It did not occur to this young lady to try to disown the substitute. On
+the contrary, she was exceedingly proud of her proprietary interest in
+the teacher. She leaned her plump hand upon that august person's knee in
+all the easy charm of intimacy when the baby class gathered about her,
+and was so intoxicated by reflected glory that she forgot the two
+letters of the alphabet she was supposed to know.
+
+There was one thing no Madigan--not even Kate--could pretend to: to be
+patient was beyond them all, talented as they were.
+
+"It's 'B,' Frank!" the substitute cried, in her exasperation forgetting
+the dignified demeanor she had adopted. "Say 'B,' 'B,' you stupid!"
+
+In that terrible moment Frank realized that there were drawbacks to
+being too well acquainted with the teacher. Her eyes filled with tears
+of chagrin. "'B, B, you stupid!'" she sobbed.
+
+And a quick, clear laugh from the substitute completed the
+demoralization of the mixed primary. It was not, strictly speaking, "in
+order" when Mr. Garvan visited it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Oh, to be out of school, at the end of that first day of adulthood! To
+be unwatched, to be free, to be little and young, if that pleased one!
+To walk up the hill and along the main street, and then, just as one was
+about to turn the corner prosaically and mount still higher--then to
+come face to face with a creature so elegant, so visibly "dressed," that
+no gambler in town could outshine him. By sheer good luck, to have been
+introduced to this dandy in one's capacity of teacher of the mixed
+primary that very morning, when he had been given permission by Mr.
+Garvan to make an announcement at the school concerning special
+privileges granted school-children at the "high-class minstrel
+performance" given at Lally's Opera House. To be unhampered now by the
+timidities of office, and ready to pick up the gage of coquetry his
+saucy glance threw down. And so, after the smallest second's
+hesitation,--the woman in one stifling both the child's and the
+substitute's hesitation,--to allow the gaudy stranger to walk beside one
+the length of C Street. And though the sidewalk was crowded, for stocks
+were up, and one had to wriggle one's way through the people packed
+tight in front of the brokers' offices, yet, in the very teeth of the
+townsfolk, to joy shamelessly in flirtation with this gorgeous, shining,
+flattering stranger--a social outlaw, as well as a bird of passage, the
+very disrepute of whose profession made temptation more subtly sweet!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Split," whispered Sissy, her voice muffled with shame,--it was a week
+later,--"Kate walked with a minstrel! What shall we do?"
+
+"Did she? Who told on her--Mrs. Ramrod? Well," added Split, out of the
+depths of experience, "it must have been that day she substituted."
+
+
+
+
+OLD MOTHER GIBSON
+
+
+Imprisoned in skirts, Jack Cody was awaiting his mother and relief, when
+there came a knock at the door, and a voice distinctly not Jane Cody's
+said:
+
+"I beg your pardon, I'm sure, but your town's so jolly dark, I believe
+I've lost my way. I'm looking for--My word, what's that!"
+
+A parabola of light had suddenly shot out athwart the soft black night.
+It seemed to come from the hill to the left, and it was accompanied by
+the tinkle of shattered glass.
+
+"It's the Madigans." Jack's voice was wistful and his gaze was turned
+longingly upward.
+
+"Madigans!" exclaimed the stranger, looking in amazement from the boyish
+face surmounting a shapeless woman's gown to the thing it watched so
+yearningly--a light flaring brightly on the hill, a lot of small dancing
+figures silhouetted blackly against it, the smell of coal-oil, and the
+shrill excited laughter of children.
+
+"Upon my soul, yours is a strange country," the man went on--"stranger
+even than it looks. How in the world did you know that I was looking for
+the Madigans?"
+
+"Are you?" asked the boy, dully. His body might be down in Jane Cody's
+cabin, but his soul was up aloft there where the Madigans held high
+carnival.
+
+"Yes, I am," answered the stranger, his eyes fixed upon the odd figure
+before him.
+
+"Well, there they are," the boy said, pointing upward to the grotesque
+dancing shadows.
+
+"Eh?--I beg your pardon, I--I don't understand. Just what has happened?"
+asked the stranger.
+
+"Nothin'," said Jack. "The lamp gets tipped over when they're playing
+Old Mother Gibson, and they just throw it out so's not to set the house
+afire."
+
+"Every night?" asked the man, in the polite tone strangers adopt in
+striving to fathom a local mystery.
+
+"Nope," said the boy, in a matter-of-fact tone. "They can't play it
+every night; sometimes their aunt won't let 'em."
+
+"You appear to know them." There was a smile hidden beneath the voice;
+but Jack was thinking, not of the questioner, indistinguishable in the
+darkness, but of the mad carnival up yonder on the hill.
+
+"Yep. That's Split," he said. "That one--see--with the bushy lot of
+hair, singing and cake-walking in front. She can do a cake-walk better'n
+any nigger I ever see."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"That's Frank, the baby--the one that's screamin' so. You can tell her
+squeals; they're laughin' ones, you know."
+
+"I suppose I ought to know. Anyway, I'm glad to be told."
+
+"Over on the side there, where there's a kind of blotch, is the twins;
+they must be fighting. Don, the dog, 's mixed up in it somehow."
+
+"My word!" exclaimed the man, softly, to himself.
+
+"That's Kate dancing round on the porch, and the one standing high-like,
+right next to the fire, with her arms up stiff, as if she was running
+the whole show, sort of--of--"
+
+"A priestess, say, invocating the Goddess of Kerosene!"
+
+"Huh?--Well, that's Sissy."
+
+"Oh, is it? Tell me--is she nice--Sissy?"
+
+"What?" asked the boy, so surprised that he withdrew his attention from
+on high and stared out at the man on the door-step.
+
+There came a laugh out of the darkness. "It is an odd question, but then
+everything is so odd out here, I half hoped you wouldn't notice it. But
+you do know them, evidently. I wonder--do you mind going up there with
+me and showing me the way?"
+
+But his last question had suddenly recalled to Jack Cody the reason why
+he wasn't at that moment one of the dancing black figures on the hill.
+The boy looked from his mother's wrapper to the man's face, growing more
+distinct now, out on the door-step, and the amused expression he saw
+there his sore egotism attributed to a personal cause. So he promptly
+slammed the door in the man's face.
+
+There was an instant's pause out in the blackness, made denser now that
+the candle's light from the cabin was cut off; then a short, nonplussed
+laugh.
+
+"Miles, old chap," the young man was saying to himself, as he turned
+cautiously to jump from the stoop and mount the hill, "this is Bedlam
+you've fallen into--this mad little mining-town ten thousand miles off
+in a brand-new corner of the world, all hills and characters! Now, what
+might be the sex of that animal you were talking to? And what in the
+name of peace are these Madigans? Are they the ones you're look--Steps,
+as I value my immortal soul!" he exclaimed, rubbing his shin where he
+had struck against the wandering Madigan stairway. "It would not have
+surprised me, now, if I had had to climb that hill on my hands and
+knees, and stand on my head when I got to the door, to knock at it with
+my heels!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss Madigan's demeanor was beautiful to see. Just a bit--oh, the least
+bit of I-told-you-so in her manner, but also a generous willingness to
+postpone the acceptance of apologies due to one long misunderstood, and
+to take for granted the family's obligation.
+
+"The estate must be worth at least ten thousand a year," she confided in
+her delighted perturbation to Frances, as she curled her hair. And Frank
+looked up at her, soulful and uncomprehending, and a bit cross-eyed, for
+the curl dangling down over her nose. "He'll marry Kate, of course--I
+had no idea he was so young. He'll just be the savior of the whole
+family. It's a providence,--Miles Madigan's dying when he did,--and
+wasn't it fortunate that Nora sent my letter back?... You will be good
+at the table, Frances, and show cousin Miles how nicely you can use your
+fork?... He is practically a cousin.... Have you washed your hands?"
+
+"Hm-mm," murmured Frank, mendaciously. And then, as Aunt Anne appeared
+to doubt her word, "Just you ask God if I haven't," she suggested
+solemnly, carefully putting her hands behind her.
+
+But Miss Madigan had no time to put questions to so distant an
+authority. She had Wong to placate--Wong with his wash-day face on,
+grim, ill-tempered, hurried, defying the world to put even the smallest
+additional burden on his shoulders on Monday. And Miles Morgan just
+arrived from Ireland!
+
+And Francis talking to him in the library, in that distant, watchful,
+uncompromising way of his, that was just as likely as not to send the
+young man off in a huff.
+
+"One needn't insult a man just because he's rich and a relative!" Miss
+Madigan's exclamation was uttered aloud unconsciously, so excited was
+she. It ended with a gasp, as Sissy collided with her on the way from
+peeking through the half-open library door at her father and his guest.
+
+It was the bedroom, Kate's and Irene's, that Sissy was bound for; for
+there, in solemn conclave, the junior Madigans were assembled, waiting
+for their scout's report.
+
+"He's big--but not so big as the Avalanche," she began the moment she
+had shut the door behind her and faced the questioning eyes that
+commanded her to stand and deliver. "He's straight, too, but not so
+poker-stiff as Mrs. Ramrod. He's got a big haw-haw voice, and scrubs
+every word he says with a tooth-brush before he says it. His hands are
+as white--as white; and they're cleaner than Crosby Pemberton's. He's
+got a tan shirt on, plaited in front, and every time Aunt Anne moves
+he's up like a jumping-jack till she gets sat down again. He says 'My
+word!' and 'in the States'--like that. He's got a mustache the color of
+your hair, Split, a scrubby, stiffy little mustache. His eyes are little
+twinkling things, and I believe--" she paused in her indictment to give
+the criminal the benefit of the doubt--"I do believe he had gloves on
+when he first came! I won't be sure; but, anyway, I hate him."
+
+A gratified sigh rose from the Madigans assembled. It was good to have
+definite information, to know that this Miles Morgan was hatable. For
+the Madigans loved to hate any one who could put them under
+obligations--when they did not spend their very souls in a passion of
+gratitude to him. But for this interloping, distant relative from
+foreign shores they were prepared. They were ready to outrage him, to
+throw his patronage in his teeth, if he dared offer it, to out-Madigan
+the Madigans, if that were necessary; to disgust him and satisfy their
+pride, wounded by the insolence of his prosperity. Yes, it was good to
+hear Sissy's frank declaration of war. For war was as the breath of the
+Madigans' nostrils. They knew themselves there, and, though they might
+have trusted Sissy, they had feared for a moment that her report might
+not be all they had hoped.
+
+"We'll show him," said Split.
+
+"A patronizing, affected Irishman!" snorted Sissy, informally now that
+her official duties were ended.
+
+"He thinks he'll come out here and run the whole family," said Fom,
+aggrieved.
+
+"And show off how rich he is, and turn up his nose at things," said Bep,
+"and boss us. I'd like to see him try it!"
+
+"And be shocked at what we don't know, and what we do do, and what we
+haven't seen and learned. I dare him just to say 'abroad' to me!" cried
+Kate, with a flash in her eye.
+
+A chorus of groans went up from the indignant assemblage.
+
+"Aunt Anne," put in Frank, a bit puzzled, "says he's the savior of the
+fam'ly. What's a--"
+
+"The savior of the family! The savior!" mocked Sissy, genuflecting
+sarcastically. "The savior of the family will have you sent to a
+convent, Split, 'where young ladies are taught to behave properly.' The
+savior'll get a nursemaid for you, Frank, and you'll have to go about
+always holding her hand and wearing socks in the English style that'll
+show your bare, naked legs and--"
+
+"I won't! I won't!" Tears of terror stood in Frank's eyes.
+
+"The savior'll put a stop, Fom, to your--Kate Madigan, are you changing
+your dress?" Sissy's voice fell suddenly, and she put the question in a
+calm, magisterial tone that sent every eye in the room on a query toward
+the eldest Madigan.
+
+Kate turned at bay. She had slipped off her waist, and the red was
+flushing her long throat and small, spirited face. "Well, miss, suppose
+I am?" she demanded hotly.
+
+"She always changes her dress for dinner, you know," came in a sarcastic
+sneer from Split. "She wants to show our dear cousin how swell we are.
+We all wear low-necked rigs, and father has his swallowtail, and--"
+
+"Shall I bring you the curling-iron, Kathy?" mocked Sissy.
+
+"Don't you want a rose for your hair, Kathleen?"
+
+"Or a ribbon here and there, as Mrs. Ramrod says, Kitty?"
+
+"Aunt Anne says," said Frank, feeling that this was some sort of game
+and that her turn had come, "he's going to mawwy you. Is he, Kate?"
+
+The white cashmere with the red-embroidered rosebuds slipped from Kate's
+hand. All innocent of malicious intent, Frank's shot had scored. The cry
+of the Pack that leaped about her could not touch Kate after this. She
+was frozen in by maidenly prudery, by childish self-consciousness, by
+Madigan perversity. When the bell rang she went in to dinner in her old
+pink gingham, her head high, her lips set, her eyes unseeing.
+
+"She's got 'em," Sissy whispered to Split.
+
+"Yep, that's the sulks all right," Split nodded.
+
+"This is Kate." Miss Madigan, brave in her new purple gown with the lace
+collar at her throat, shot a reproachful glance at the unadorned young
+lady of the house. "Your cousin, Miles Morgan, Kate."
+
+"Howd' ye do?" Kate said coldly, ignoring his outstretched hand and
+passing on to her seat, where she began busily to serve the butter.
+
+The savior of the family looked after her, interested. Though guilty of
+every count in Sissy's indictment, he was not accustomed to being
+overlooked by such very young ladies.
+
+"And this is Irene," said Miss Madigan, a tremor in her voice; she, too,
+knew now that Kate "had 'em." "This one is Cecilia; the twins, Bessie
+and Florence; and Frances, the baby."
+
+The savior of the family glanced along the line of five blank faces, and
+felt the perfunctory touch of five small, slippery hands with nothing
+more human about their clasp than the childish masks above them.
+
+"I say, how do you tell one another apart?" he asked, with a sudden
+gleam in his eye, as they passed him and slid into their places.
+
+A dozen pitying eyes looked coldly at him; half a dozen small mouths
+curved disdainfully. His remark seemed to make them more than ever like
+mechanisms--hostile ones.
+
+Miss Madigan dropped the soup-ladle in her confusion. To that
+experienced lady there was something ominous about so unbroken a union
+of Madigans; she remembered with sorrow the few times any subject had
+found them unanimous.
+
+But Madigan came in just then, took his seat at the head, looked
+mechanically for the banished dog and the cat, and Dusie, chirping
+madly in her cage to attract his attention to the fact of her cruel and
+unusual imprisonment. He cleared his throat and took up the carver--and
+immediately Miles Morgan was conscious of an unbending of the small
+Madigans--a cuddling together, so to speak, and a swift interchange of
+impressions.
+
+"You haven't given me an opportunity to explain, Miss Madigan--" he
+began, in the pause during which Madigan carved strenuously.
+
+"'Aunt Anne,' if you please, my dear boy," urged Miss Madigan, warmly.
+"The relationship's distant, but now that you are with us we can have no
+ceremony out here in the wilds."
+
+"Oh, thank you." The savior, turning toward her, saw the fattest little
+Madigan nudge her red-haired neighbor savagely. She was evidently angry
+at something. "It's good of you to take me in like this. What I want to
+say is that the train was late crawling crookedly up and around the
+mountains. I had no idea of arriving in the evening and coming in upon
+you this way. But when I got here, the town looked so savage, don't you
+know, so--drear--and desolate and--and flimsy, I got a bit
+home-sick--there! The thought of all you people, my own people, housed
+somewhere in the spraddling town, called to me. I positively couldn't
+wait till morning. You'll forgive me--Aunt Anne?"
+
+A suppressed gurgle came from a blonde Madigan on the other side of the
+table, choking over her soup at this endearment. A brunette just her
+height spoke rapidly to her and persuasively, but to no avail. Alarming
+sounds came from the victim till presently a very dignified, small fat
+person rose from her seat, made her way to the nearly suffocated blonde,
+gave her a thump between the shoulder-blades that brought tears of
+another variety to the sufferer's eyes, and walked composedly back to
+her seat.
+
+"How can you be so rough, Sissy!" Aunt Anne exclaimed in an agitated
+voice.
+
+"Ah--Sissy!" The savior leaned forward, looking across with a smile in
+his eye that might have melted any heart save so savage a Madigan's. "So
+you are Sissy."
+
+"My name," said that young person, meeting his smiling eye coldly, "is
+Cecilia."
+
+"But your friends call you Sissy?"
+
+"Yes, my friends do," admitted the perfectionist, with an accent that
+was supposed to be crushing.
+
+"And you sign yourself so in your letters?" he went on pleasantly.
+
+"My letters?"
+
+"Yes; your informal little notes, you know."
+
+Sissy laid down her spoon. A sudden distaste for eating, for living, for
+breathing had come upon her. She had forgotten her postscript to that
+unhappy letter; it was all so long ago, and Aunt Anne's letters never
+had had a sequel! But before her now the savior's head seemed to bob up
+and down sickeningly, while a voice cried in her ears so loud she
+fancied the whole table must hear it:
+
+    "You--whoever you are--needn't bother to answer this.
+    None of us Madigans wants your help or annybody else's.
+    It's only that Aunt Anne's got the scribbles, and we'll
+    thank you to mind your own business.
+
+                                           _"Sissy Madigan."_
+
+The savior threw back his head in a quite boyish way and laughed aloud
+as he watched her face.
+
+A cold rage seized Sissy. To be laughed at before the whole table! She
+hated him; she knew she hated him!
+
+"I don't understand," said Madigan, feeling called upon to say
+something that was not vituperative at his own dinner-table. "You could
+never have seen a note of Sissy's, Mr. Morgan?"
+
+"Never." The savior lied like a gentleman.
+
+But he was mistaken if he supposed that he had placated Cecilia. She
+would not even meet his eyes, those eyes that twinkled so enjoyingly.
+
+The savior tried Irene.
+
+"You and I have hair the same color," he said genially. "I hope your
+temper isn't like mine, too."
+
+"I hope not," she answered stiffly.
+
+He laughed again, that big, amused laugh. Split's eyes shot fire.
+Evidently the Madigans were funnier than they knew.
+
+"Now, I wonder," he said, "would that be a compliment or a confession?"
+
+"Irene is trying and succeeding better every day in gaining
+self-control," interposed Aunt Anne, with hasty amiability. To discuss
+Irene's temper in committee of the whole, like that--the temerity of the
+man! "Won't you have some more mutton?" she pressed. "It's wash-day, you
+know, and it's just a pick-up dinner; but we're so glad to have you, if
+you'll excuse--"
+
+"The apology's due from me, you know," he interrupted. "And the good
+fortune's mine, too. Fancy me dining the evening of my arrival at that
+brick barn they call the hotel down yonder! It will be hard enough when
+I really have to live there."
+
+"You do not surely expect--" began Madigan, pausing over his
+strawberries.
+
+"To live 'out West'? Will you let me tell you how it happened, Mr.
+Madigan? There isn't much to it--just this: Miles Madigan, as you
+know--do you know?--was not the man to leave much behind him. Not that
+he'd deliberately wrong a fellow, poor old chap, but--well--oh, you
+understand! Well, when his solicitors got through subtracting and
+dividing and subdividing, the heir--one Miles Morgan, bred to do
+nothing, and with a talent for that profession, I must admit--found
+himself poor, with just enough to live on. The ten thousand a year
+had--just slipped through Miles Madigan's fingers."
+
+"Oh!" Miss Madigan's voice was sympathizing, disappointed.
+
+"Then"--it was Frank's clear treble; she hadn't understood much, but she
+knew what "poor" meant: a Madigan learned that early--"then you're not
+going to mawwy Kate?"
+
+Kate went white, while Miss Madigan's delicate face flushed purple, and
+Split pinched Sissy's arm, in her excitement, till that young woman
+cried aloud.
+
+"Frances--outside!" stormed Madigan.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Madigan--please!" deprecated the savior, holding out his arms
+to the whimpering Frances, who jumped into them as to a refuge. "No,
+little girl," he said, bending down to reassure her, "I'm going to marry
+Sissy; that's why I came out here."
+
+A gasp of relief parted Kate's trembling lips. She was very near being
+fond of the detested savior in that moment, in her gratitude to him for
+not having looked at her.
+
+But oh, the disdain of Sissy! It was such a very poor joke, in her
+opinion. Her round little face with its dots for features looked so sour
+and supercilious, as she passed the savior with averted eyes on her way
+out of the dining-room,--the children were withdrawing now,--that he
+could not resist putting out a hand to stop her.
+
+"You will have me, Sissy?" he begged with a laugh. "Think of a man
+coming clear out here with so little encouragement as I had. Such
+devotion might appeal to a heart of stone!"
+
+His enemy stood with downcast eyes, the red slowly mounting to the
+smoothed-back brown hair.
+
+"Sissy's Number One in her class," ventured Frank, as a recommendation.
+
+"I'm not!" flamed forth Sissy. "I never was, or--or if I was it was
+because of--of--"
+
+"Why, Sissy!" interjected Miss Madigan, grieved.
+
+"Of a mistake of some sort," suggested the savior, soothingly. "Well, I
+suppose I could marry a girl that was only Number Two."
+
+"I'm never Number Two--never! I'm Number--Twenty!" Sissy's eyes were
+raised for a moment to his--a revelation of the insulted dignity
+seething within her.
+
+"Oh, well, a Number Twenty wife is good enough; but we'd have to live in
+Ireland, I suppose," said the savior, philosophically.
+
+A passion of wrath at his dullness filled the clever Sissy, and she
+sought for a moment before she found the weapon to hurt him.
+
+"In Ireland, you know," she said, as deliberately as she could for fear
+of breaking into tears before she had delivered the insult, "the pigs
+live in the parlor, and--and the children have no place to sleep and--go
+barefooted!"
+
+"Oh!" The savior was stunned for an instant, but he recovered. "No, I
+didn't know. But in Nevada, I'm told, the Indians eat Irishmen alive,
+and those that are left are shot down by white desperados on C Street
+every day just at noon! We couldn't live here, could we?"
+
+Sissy gasped. She opened her lips as if to speak, but closed them again,
+and suddenly, in the instant's pause, there came an irresistible giggle
+from Split, already out in the hall.
+
+Sissy's hands flew to her breast. She shook off her suitor's detaining
+hand and bolted.
+
+"I couldn't help it," the savior said to Madigan, who was looking at him
+with that perplexed frown which the manifestation of his children's
+eccentricities so often brought to his face. "She is delightful. What
+jolly times we'll have getting acquainted! How fortunate you are, Mr.
+Madigan, to have these--"
+
+Madigan threw up his head, a challenge in his eye. Was he even to be
+congratulated upon his misfortunes?
+
+"I always said," the savior went on, with a chuckle,--"in fact, I began
+to say it before I got into knickerbockers,--that I intended to be the
+father of a family numbering at least a 'baker's dozzen.' I believe I
+had a vague notion that by means of superabundance of paternity I could
+atone to myself for my lack of other family ties. I was always so
+beastly alone. Yet no one--Miles Madigan least of all--saw the pathos of
+my lot. 'He's young and unencumbered,' he said of me toward the last
+when he was reminded of how little he had left for me. 'He'll get along.
+Besides, there's that wildcat mine out in the States; I'm leaving him
+that.'"
+
+Madigan's pipe fell to the floor; he had been filling it for his
+after-dinner smoke. "You've got the Tomboy!" he exclaimed.
+
+"That interests you?" Morgan asked.
+
+Kate, who picked up the pipe and handed it to her father, as she passed,
+the last of the line of young Madigans on the way out, saw how Francis
+Madigan's hand shook. Mechanically she paused and listened.
+
+"I--I was swindled out of my share of that mine," he said harshly.
+"Miles Madigan knew that in fairness half of it was mine. I found it. I
+worked for it. I put aside all other opportunities to devote myself to
+developing it. I sacrificed my children and my business to it. I gave up
+the best years of my life to it. I bore disappointment and poverty
+because of it. I was at the end of my tether when Miles Madigan went
+into it with me; and yet when I saw he was bent on freezing me out of
+it, I--I--But after he got it he didn't know what to do with it. He
+left it to be worked and himself fleeced by strangers. But--it killed my
+wife, and left me, after all those years of litigation, an embittered,
+beggared, broken man!"
+
+"And so it's but fair"--to Kate, shivering at the revelation in her
+father's voice, Miles Morgan's words seemed like soothing music--"it's
+but fair that you and I should handle the thing together--what there is
+of it, Mr. Madigan," he added hastily, as Madigan was about to speak;
+and he leaned forward, holding out his hand boyishly. "There may not be
+much, but I can get English capital to develop it, at a sacrifice of
+half its value now, and its possibilities. So that will leave only
+quarter shares for each of us. I may be offering you only a lot of work
+and a disappointment at the end. But the thing seemed worth enough to
+me, 'way over on the other side, to come out here and look into it
+myself. And one thing that made it seem so was the desperate battle you
+had fought to keep it. I hoped--I hoped you'd like me well enough, when
+we got to know each other, to help me with your experience,
+and--frankly, to help yourself in helping me. I had no intention of
+saying all this to-night, but--allow me, Cousin Kate."
+
+He had dropped Madigan's hand after a hearty squeeze, and was standing
+holding open the door for Kate to pass.
+
+It was a glorified Kate, for, lo, the veil of ill humor had fallen; a
+treacherous Kate, Sissy would have said, for she shone out now, warm and
+sparkling, upon the man who had had the discrimination to let a brood of
+small Madigans pass without special attention, yet who jumped to his
+feet when the young-lady daughter of the house made her exit, and stood
+looking after her till Madigan hauled him off to the library to talk
+about the Tomboy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That certain contentment which followed after an unusually good dinner,
+when the world and the Madigans were young together, had inspired Old
+Mother Gibson. The original couplet, with which all Madigans are
+familiar, is not strictly quotable; it was not invented, but adopted, by
+them. And it served merely to give a name to the game, which was half a
+war-dance, half a cake-walk, accompanied by chanted couplets composed by
+each performer in turn; said couplets being necessarily original and
+relevant locally. The accompaniment--an easy change of chords--was
+played on the piano _colla voce_. And no one minded in the least a
+foot, more or less, at the end of a verse. The joke was the thing with
+the Madigans, and the impromptu rhyme that brought down the house was
+the one that hit hardest.
+
+For Old Mother Gibson was a satire, a pasquinade, a flesh-and-blood
+libel done in rhyme, of wildest license both as to form and matter, and
+set to music--to be discharged full at the head of the victim. It began
+in an orderly way, every Madigan in her turn playing both parts of
+victim and cartoonist. But it degenerated into an open and shameless
+mimicry of Aunt Anne, of Francis Madigan, of the school-master, Mrs.
+Ramrod, the Misses Blind-Staggers, Professor Trask, Dr. Murchison, Wong,
+Indian Jim, and, finally, each of the other's tenderest folly--till a
+living caricature too true or too cutting precipitated an appeal to
+arms, and the Lighthouse, which was always in the way, was tipped over
+in the melee, and had to be thrown out of the window, there to burn
+itself into darkness innocuously.
+
+Old Mother Gibson was given by a full cast the night of the savior's
+arrival. Though Jane Cody had been merciless, Jack, tempted beyond his
+powers of resistance by the sounds of revelry upon the hill, was
+stalking about in melancholy masquerade among its personnel. Bombey
+Forrest, her delicate head looking like a surprised sunflower upon its
+masculine stalk, had come in, and Crosby Pemberton, looking as much out
+of place in his immaculate linen and small Tuxedo as either of these,
+was joyous at being among Madigans again.
+
+You might have heard--if you'd stood out on the piazza looking in, and
+happened to have the key to the riddle--a hint in verse of every Madigan
+escapade, of every Madigan failing, of all the Madigan jokes, on Old
+Mother Gibson nights. You would have seen even Kate--young-lady Kate,
+who had once substituted in a school--join in this mad revel, with an
+appetite for fun that showed how much of a child she still was.
+
+An impressionable young Irishman, who had come out upon the piazza to
+smoke a cigar and think himself back into his usual poise after a day
+full of new experiences, had his attention attracted by the strumming on
+the piano; and glancing in through the open window, he saw a slender,
+graceful girl, her dark head rising lightly from the sailor collar of a
+pink gingham blouse. She was balancing lightly as she walked, keeping
+time to the rhythm, and followed by a procession of children in single
+file. (A belief in the efficacy of motion to stimulate one's power of
+improvisation made Old Mother Gibson the liveliest of games.) And
+arriving at the center of the stage, she delivered herself in a singsong
+of the following:
+
+    "Old Mother Gibson, be on your best behavior,
+    Or you'll surely fail to satisfy the savior."
+
+It didn't seem a very funny or apposite ditty to Miles Morgan, but, to
+judge by its effect upon those within, it was exquisitely witty. The
+whole company doubled up with laughter. It giggled till its collective
+sides must have ached; then it slowly and gaspingly subsided. When it
+had quieted down, the piano began again, and a red-headed Madigan,
+intoxicated by the music, the license of the time, and the excitement
+accompanying creative work, danced a fantastic _pas seul_, as she flew
+about in the Mother Gibson merry-go-round.
+
+    "Old Mother Gibson's savior was a dandy--
+    He thought he'd buy the Madigans with a stick of candy!"
+
+sang Split, and the parlor yelled itself hoarse with uproarious delight.
+
+The fat little girl at the piano began to play, and stopped several
+times, that she might wipe the tears of laughter from her eyes and get
+her breath. At last, with a squaring of her shoulders and a stiffening
+of backbone that seemed queerly familiar to Morgan, watching outside,
+she half drawled, half sang, with an unmistakable accent:
+
+    "Old Mother Gibson was angry at the Fates;
+    My word! They sent the savior 'way out to the States!"
+
+A sudden enlightenment came to Miles Morgan. For a moment the red flamed
+up in his cheek, and if Split could have seen his face she might have
+fancied that some imp had caught her likeness, when her temper had got
+beyond her control, and set it on this man's body.
+
+"The impudent little beggars!" Morgan cried furiously. "My word!" He
+stopped, remembering the use to which his favorite exclamation had been
+put. "But what a saucy lot!" He was laughing before he had finished
+wording his thought.
+
+He was interested now, and listened with a grin to Fom's declaration
+that
+
+    "Old Mother Gibson ought to 've known better
+    Then to come in answer to Aunt Anne's letter."
+
+He saw even Frank strutting in the ring, though she was capable only of
+a repetition of the classic phrase with which each couplet began. And he
+laughed with the rest at Bep,--poor, unready Bep, set as by a musical
+time-lock and bound to go off,--getting slower and slower in motion as
+well as utterance, the accompaniment retarding sympathetically as the
+critical moment approached when she must be delivered of her rhyme.
+
+    "Old Mother Gibson, why do you--"
+
+she began her singsong. "No, no! Wait. I know another. 'T ain't fair,"
+she stammered in a prose parenthesis.
+
+    "Old Mother Gibson had a--
+
+"Stop laughing, now; wait a minute. You don't give me a chance, Sissy.
+You play faster for me than for anybody else! You do it a-purpose, too,
+just 'cause you know it's easy to bluster me.
+
+    "Old Moth-er--Gib-son--"
+
+Bep stopped suddenly, for through the glass doors came the subject of
+her lay. He had a finger to his lips as he glanced at Sissy's back--a
+hint that the rest of the company seized delightedly. And when the music
+began again, he was not ashamed to make this contribution:
+
+    "Old Mother Gibson, take pity on a cousin
+    Left to the tender mercies of the other half-dozen!"
+
+At first the accompanist, accustomed to the rodomontade of voice as well
+as gesture of the excited performers, was not aware of the interloper.
+When she finally spun around and saw the savior singing in the midst of
+his libelers, she let him finish the couplet unaccompanied, and sat, a
+fat, shocked statue glued to the piano-stool, staring at him.
+
+It was absurd of him, but there was something in Old Mother Gibson, as
+the Madigans sang and played her, that turned the soberest of heads. And
+the savior's forte was not in being staid. He fell upon his knee before
+her.
+
+"Forgive me, O Sissy, for not being a Madigan," he begged, "and receive
+me into the fold!"
+
+She looked down at him, self-conscious, embarrassed; yet the hidden
+sentimentality of her nature was appealed to by the masculine young face
+turned half laughing, half seriously, to her.
+
+"Are you sure," she asked shyly, "that you're not one already?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is of record that one evening during that summer when the old Tomboy
+mine was reopened, a young Irishman newly arrived on the Comstock
+escorted down to Fitzmeier's--where, everybody knows, there is ice-cream
+to be had--six girls of assorted ages, one boy, and two young persons
+whose garments belied their sex. Yet they all seemed rampantly happy and
+quite unashamed.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Madigans, by Miriam Michelson
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