Part 22 (1/2)

Sissy's arrival was hailed by a populous nightgowned world, sent, like herself, supperless for its sins to the purgatory of early bedtime.

Split came stealing in from the other room, bringing Frank along that she might not cry and betray her elder sister's movements--a successful sort of blackmail the youngest Madigan often practised. And later, Kate, looking most conventional and full-dressed in this nightgowned society, brought succor for the starving. They munched chocolate and camped comfortably, three on each bed, while Sissy told her adventures. When she came to the description of Von Hagen's fall, though still shuddering at the memory, she acted the incident so dramatically that Frances set up a howl, which was, however, most fortunately drowned by the ringing of the front-door bell.

Split started to answer it, but her nightgowned state gave her pause.

”Perhaps father'll go,” she suggested.

Kate shook her head. ”He didn't come to dinner; he's been shut up in his room all day.”

”What's the matter?” asked Sissy. An old look, that washed all the self-satisfaction from her round face, came over it now.

Kate shrugged her shoulders. ”Something he and Aunt Anne talked about to-day,” she answered, as she went out into the hall with the air of a martyr.

Sissy looked owlishly after her. Though Francis Madigan rarely ate anything that was prepared for the family dinner, she could remember the rare times when he had absented himself from it, and feel again the usually ignored undercurrent of the realities upon which their young lives flowed full and free.

But things happened too quickly at the Madigans', and to be preoccupied to the exclusion of one's sisters was one of the forms of affectation not to be tolerated. Split threw a pillow at her head, and the fight was in progress when Kate called for volunteers to bring in a big box from Ireland, left by a drayman who was fiercely resentful of the extraordinary approach to the Madigan house.

Like a lot of white-robed Lilliputians, they tugged and hauled till they got it into the parlor. But when they had lighted the tall, old-fas.h.i.+oned lamp that they called ”the lighthouse” they were disgusted to find that the box was addressed to ”Miss Madigan, Virginia City, Nevada, California, U. S. A.”

”Some people don't know anything about geography,” sniffed Sissy.

”Well,--” Kate had been thinking,--”I'm Miss Madigan.”

”Whoop--hooray!” The shout came from the twins. They were off into the kitchen for Wong's hatchet, and when they pressed it obligingly into Kate's hand, that young lady saw no way but to make use of it.

”Girls--it's clothes!” she exclaimed, her starved femininity reveling in the quant.i.ty of material before her.

”Boys' clothes,” said Split, holding up a full-kneed pair of knickerbockers and a belted jacket. ”Well!” With a philosophical grin, she began to put them on.

”And ladies' clothes!” cried Sissy, dragging forth a long black cape.

”'Here would I rest,'” she chanted, draping it about her and lugubriously mimicking Professor Trask as the Recluse in ”The Cantata of the Flowers.”

”Let's do it! Let's sing 'The Flowers,'” cried Irene, shaking herself into some Irish boy's jacket.

”Not much!” Sissy planted herself against the door, as though physical compulsion had been threatened.

”Oh, yes, Sissy,” begged Fom. ”Bep and I can sing the Heliotrope and Mignonette. Frank can be a Poppy, and we can double up and--”

”I'll be the Rose,” put in Kate, quickly. She had a much-feathered hat on her head and a crocheted lace shawl about her shoulders.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”'Here would I rest,' she chanted”]

”_I_'ll be the Rose.” Split, corrupted by her body's boyish environment, stretched her legs apart defiantly. ”You can't sing it; you know you can't, Kate. You never could get up to G. If I'm not the Rose--”

”Oh, well,” said Kate, drawing on a pair of soiled, long light gloves she had pulled out of the box, ”I'll be the Lily, then. Come on, Sis.”

”I won't,” said Sissy, almost weeping. She knew she would. ”I won't be the Recluse! I won't be the Recluse every time, just because you two are so greedy and--”

”You know,” said Kate, smothering a giggle, but not very successfully, ”no one can do it as well as you.”

”And it's really a very important part, and the very first solo,”

chuckled Irene. ”Else why did Professor Trask take it himself?”