The Madigans | Page 8

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