ank," lisped the baby, prompted by a big
sister.

"And don't steal candy out of my pocket, will you, Cecilia Morgan?"
begged her oldest sister.

"And--"

Sissy sprang into the air, as though lifted bodily by the taunts of
these ungrateful beneficiaries of her good intentions.

"Sit down, you ox!" came in thundering tones from the head of the table.

When one was called an ox among the Madigans the culprit invariably
subsided, however the epithet might tend to make her sisters rejoice.
But Sissy had borne too much in that one day--always keeping in mind the
perfect sanctity with which she had begun it.

With an inarticulate explanation that was at once a sob, a complaint,
and a trembling defiance, she pushed back her chair and fled to her
room. Here she sobbed in peace and plenty; sobbed till tears became a
luxury to be produced by a conscious effort of the will. It had always
been a grief to Sissy that she could never cry enough. Split, now, could
weep vocally and by the hour, but all too soon for Sissy the wells of
her own sorrow ran dry.

Yet tears had ever a chastening effect upon the third of the Madigans.
In due time she rose, washed her face, and combed back her hair and
braided it in a tight plait that stuck out at an aggressive angle on the
side; unaided she could never get it to depend properly from the middle.
This heightened the feeling of utter peacefulness, of remorse washed
clean, besides putting her upon such a spiritual elevation as enabled
her to meet her world with composure, though bitter experience told her
how long a joke lasted among the Madigans.

She fell upon her knees at last beside her bed. No Madigan of this
generation had been taught to pray, an aggressive skepticism--the
tangent of excessive youthful religiosity--having made the girls' father
an outspoken foe to religious exercise. But to Sissy's emotional,
self-conscious soul the necessity for worded prayer came quick now and
imperative.

"O Lord," she pleaded aloud, "help me to keep 'em all--even Number
10--in spite of Split and the devil. Help--"

She heard the door open behind her.

[Illustration:
"The Rest of the Madigans"]

With a bound she was in bed, fully dressed as she was; and pulling the
covers tight up to her neck, she waited, to all intents and purposes
fast asleep.

"You little fool!" said Madigan, with a hint of laughter in his heavy
voice and laying a not ungentle hand on her blazing cheeks. "D'