ressing-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 absenc