s such as the Goths might have worn when
pillaging Rome, the twins made for the treasure-house. A few moments
later they rustled gorgeously down the steps, followed by Frances,
wearing her aunt's embroidered red flannel petticoat. Unfortunately,
Frank's heels caught in this, as she too strutted worldward, and down
she fell, bumping from step to step, gaining momentum as she bumped, and
threatening to roll clear down to Taylor Street, and so on down, down
into the canon, if she had not bumped safely at last into the twins.
They, hearing her coming, had turned their backs and joined hands, and
catching hold of the shaky banister on each side, presented a natural
bulwark beyond which Frances and her bumps and shrieks might not pass.

And through it all Miss Madigan wrote.

* * * * *

Miss Madigan was writing letters. Indeed, Miss Madigan was always
writing letters. In any emergency she might be trusted to concoct a long
and literary epistle, which she rephrased, edited, and copied till she
felt all an author's satisfaction.

For the Madigans' Aunt Anne was afflicted with _cacoethes scribendi_,
and was never so happy as when there was a letter to be written--except
when she was actually writing it. But the heartlessness of the merely
literary was very far indeed from Miss Madigan's ideal. She had the
happiness to believe that, besides being very beautiful, her letters
were most useful--in fact, indispensable. When everything else failed
she wrote a letter. When that failed she wrote another.

A Malthusian consequence of her epistolary fertility, it might be
feared, would be the necessary exhaustion of correspondents. But Miss
Madigan's was a soul above the inevitable, as well as a pen divorced
from the practical. On those occasions when the future of her nieces
pressed itself questioningly upon that lady's mind she met the threat by
declaring firmly to herself that she would "do her duty to those
motherless children." It happened that her duty was her pleasure. It was
her dissipation to suffer--on paper. In letters she enjoyed being
miserable. No relative, therefore, however distant, no acquaintance,
however slight, was exempt from this epistolary plague. To take the
darkest view, most genteelly expressed; to make the most forthright and
pitiful appeal in a ladylike and polished phrase; to picture the
inevitable and speedy alternative if her plea were disregarded; and then
to sign herself