Part 19 (1/2)

”But I want him to play wif,” whimpered Frank. She was not so slow but that she could learn the lesson Fauntleroy's success taught.

Miss Madigan looked at her a moment. ”Oh, you do!” she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed sarcastically. ”You haven't sisters enough--you want more noise and confusion in this house!”

The wise Madigans looked from her to one another and merely thought things. There was sadly little of the ”angel child” about them. Their intuition was keen enough to penetrate their aunt's secret wishes and tastes, and they were occasionally tempted, for the spoils to be gotten out of it, to play up to that lady's ideals. But Aunt Anne was considered almost too easy by the Madigans, whom honor restricted to those foemen worthy of their steel. Frances was the only one who could, without losing caste, cater to her aunt's well-known and deeply detested sentimentality.

She did for a time, and it was from Miss Madigan that she learned her famous accomplishment. It was sung, or rather droned, and it went like this:

”B--A--Ba, B--E--Be, B--I--Bi-- Ba--Be--Bi; B--O--Bo, Ba--Be--Bi--Bo, B--U--Bu, Ba--Be--Bi--Bo--Bu!”

Intoxicated by success, Frank sang this subtle ditty one day for Francis Madigan. He listened to it with that puzzled expression which his children's vagaries brought to his lined, stern face.

”Who taught you that nonsense, Frances?” he demanded sternly when she had finished.

Frank began to whimper. This was not the effect she had intended to produce.

”Who told you to say that gibberish?” her father repeated angrily.

Frank stammered the answer.

”And he tooked her--” she began her account of the incident afterward.

”Oh, you awful little liar!” interrupted a chorus of Madigans.

And Frank laughed with them. How she would have completed the sentence, if she had been permitted, she herself did not know.

A READY LETTER-WRITER

Split threw herself with a b.u.mp against Miss Madigan's door. It remained unansweringly closed.

”Where's Aunt Anne?” she asked Sissy, whom she had nearly walked over as she sat playing jackstones in the hall.

Sissy looked up. a.s.suming a rigidly erect position and scholastically correct finger-movement, she mimicked her aunt at her desk so faithfully that Split could almost see the close-lined pages of Miss Madigan's ornate handwriting on the carpet where her disrespectful niece pretended to trace it.

”Scribbling, huh?” Split asked.

Sissy nodded.

Split shrugged her shoulders impatiently. She had intended to ask a favor of Aunt Anne, but she knew how useless it would be now. So she pushed past Sissy, entered the room softly, and returned with a long-trained grenadine skirt.

Sissy's round eyes opened enviously. ”Did she say you could have it?”

she asked.

A m.u.f.fled sound which could be variously interpreted came from Split, who was throwing the skirt over her head.

”Did she?” persisted Sissy, putting her jackstones in her pocket and rising emulatively.

But Irene was doubling fold after fold of the skirt in front to shorten it; behind her the train billowed with an elegance that sent ecstatic thrills through her and a pa.s.sion of envy through her sister.