The Madigans | Page 4

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