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.

"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