Part 10 (1/2)

”I'm not a silly. You were scared yourself,” retorted the blonde twin, relieved but pugnacious.

”Pooh! I only pretended, to frighten you,” jeered Fom.

”Not much you didn't. I ain't anybody's dope.”

”Anybody's what?”

”Anybody's dope,” answered Bep, uncertainly; she knew how little words were to be trusted.

”What's 'dope'?” demanded Florence.

”Why--what Kate said yesterday.”

An enjoying giggle came from Sissy's bed. She had waked. ”_Dupe_, you goosy--_dupe_!” she chuckled.

”Yah! Yah!” sneered Fom, happy in her twin's discomfiture.

Bep blushed with mortification. ”Don't you trophy over me, Fom Madigan!” she cried wrathfully.

Sissy's giggle became a shout of laughter, and straightway she sallied forth, benightgowned as she was, to carry the news of Bep's latest to the Madigans--while Bep, aware that she had Partingtoned again, without knowing just how, cried furiously after her: ”I didn't say it! I didn't!”

Bep's talent was dear to the Madigans. They seized upon each blunder she made, and held it up, shrinking and bare, under the light of their laughter-loving eyes. They ridiculed it interminably, and were unflaggingly entertained by it, repeating it for the edification of each new-comer so often and so faithfully that from conscious mimicry they turned to use of it without quotation-marks, till, insensibly, at last it was received into their vocabulary--which fact, by the way, made the Madigan dialect at times difficult for strangers to master.

For instance, the rare rainy days in Nevada were always ”glummy” among Madigans, because the blonde twin had once been so affected by their gloom that she spelled it that way. An over-credulous person was a ”sucher” since the day she had written it so. Jack Cody lived in the ”vikinty” of their house, because Bep Partington had so decreed. ”Don't greed” had become a cla.s.sic since the day Aunt Anne issued her infamous ukase, compelling that twin who (wilfully speculating upon her sister's envy) kept goodies to the last to divide said last precious morsel with the gloating other. And the Madigan who (taking base advantage of the fact that Bep was at an age when to bite into a hard red winter apple was to leave a shaky tooth behind) obligingly took the first bite, but made that bite include nearly half the apple--that rapacious betrayer of confiding helplessness deserved to be called a harpy. But she wasn't; she was known as ”a regular harper!”

The Madigans trooped back into the twins' room in a body to ”trophy”

over Bep, whose double misfortune it was not only to be a Partington, but to strenuously deny her kins.h.i.+p with the family of that name. Bessie Madigan could not be got to admit that she had ever misused a word. And though the expressions she coined became part of Madigan history, though each piece was stamped undeniably by poor Bep her awkward mark, she never ceased insisting that they were counterfeit, issued for the express purpose of discrediting her well-known familiarity with elegant English.

Yet she it was who had first miscalled her shadow a ”shabby”; who had asked to be ”merinded to merember,” like her absent-minded Aunt Anne; and who had unconsciously parodied Split's pa.s.sionate rendering of a line of the old song, ”I feel his presence near” into ”I feel his pleasant sneer”!

It was rarely that the Madigans could keep peace among themselves long enough to make an onslaught in a body. But when they did, the lone victim of their attack knew better than to struggle against her fate.

Poor Bep, her protests borne down, all her old sins of diction raked up and, joined to the new ones, marshaled against her, became sulky. She turned her back upon the enemy and retreated to a corner to find out what Santa Claus and her own particular patron saint had to offer for the double celebration.

There was a dictionary from Kate--an added insult. But, to compensate, there was a whole orange from Aunt Anne, a bag of Chinese nuts from Wong, and from Split and Sissy (a separate donation from each) an undivided half-interest in the white kitten known as Spitfire.

When she had summed up the gifts of the G.o.ds to herself, Bep's eyes turned quickly to Fom's pile.

There was an a.s.sortment of hair-ribbons, more or less the worse for wear, from Kate, whose braids were coiled around her head these days.

(Bep didn't envy her twin these, for the excellent reason that a back-comb was all that was necessary to keep her short blonde hair in order.) Then there was, from Sissy, a pen-wiper, whose cruelly twisted shape was a reflection of that needlewoman's agonies in its composition; upon it were embroidered figures and colors of things never seen on sea or land. (Fom might have that.) From Split--but Bep knew, of course, what there was from Split. Every year regularly, since the second of the Madigans had put away childish things, she had bestowed upon her faithful retainer her favorite doll Dora,--the large one, with waxen head and dark-brown tresses,--only to take it back at the first symptom of revolt, for a caprice, or merely to feel her power. She was an Indian giver, was Split. (Fom might have Dora, Bep said to herself, as long as she could keep her.)

But then Fom, too, had a large, fair, yellow orange and a bag of strange candies from Chinatown. As to these ...

The twins must be pardoned, but circ.u.mstances had soured them. They had been cheated out of either a birthday or a Christmas--they had not decided which was the crueler wrong, so had not yet adopted and proclaimed their grievance. Besides this sorrow, each, by an interfering and unprovoked intrusion, had defrauded the other of the child's inalienable right to the center of the stage at least once a year. And when one remembers how crowded was the Madigan stage with jealous performers, any actor at all desirous of an opportunity must sympathize with them.

It was not etiquette for the twins to remember each other's birthday with a gift, one reason being that they were incapable of such a piece of hypocrisy. Another was that it would have seemed too like the rigid reciprocity of the Misses Blind-Staggers, whom it had been their custom to parody since the day they had been invited down to the cottage to see those ladies' strictly mutual Christmas presents. They played ”From Maude to Etta” and ”From Etta to Maude,” as they called it; Fom handing to Bep, with great ceremony, a shoe, a stocking, or any other thing traveling in pairs, with the legend ”From Maude to Etta,” and receiving in return the mate of said shoe or stocking, ”From Etta to Maude.”

As for Francis Madigan, his daughters appreciated the fact that a girl's birthday could be looked upon only as a day of wrath and mourning; it came to be considered delicate, therefore, to mention the matter in his presence. Christmas, of course, was ”nonsense”--a blanket term of disapproval behind which no one peered for reasons for its application.