taggers, 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.

On Miss Madigan anniversaries acted as a stimulant to an already
sufficiently fecund pen. They awakened in her that sense of
responsibility for her nieces' future, which nothing but an
exceptionally heartrending letter of appeal for financial assistance for
them could put comfortably to sleep again.

* * * * *

Out in the woodshed a disemboweled chest of drawers had been turned into
an apartment-house for dolls. All the dolls that had dwelt in the
Madigan family since Kate's babyhood (with the exception of Split's
Dora, whom Fom, according to the preordained penchant of mothers, loved
best because for her sake she suffered most) had descended to the twins.

On the top floor Mrs. Guy St. Gerald Clair lived with her husband and an
only daughter. Mrs. Clair was an elegant matron, quite new, a small
blonde who could turn her head. Florence's skilful fingers kept this
lady most beautifully gowned. And Split--whose favorite of the small-fry
dolls she had once been--still remembered her fondly, and passed over to
Fom the most wonderful patches. These she got from Jack Cody, the
washerwoman's son, who bribed his mother by promises of good conduct to
beg samples of their gowns from her aristocratic patrons.

Mr. Guy St. Gerald Clair was an unfortunate gentleman, tall,
low-spirited, loose-jointed, with fixed blue eyes and knobby black hair.
His melancholy, Bep was assured, was due to two things--the superiority
of his wife in the matter of a movable head, and the impossibility of
ever getting a pair of trousers that would come near to him in the seat
and stay away from him at the ankle. Fom's the