The Madigans | Page 7

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