The Madigans | Page 4

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