had a much-feathered hat
on her head and a crocheted lace shawl about her shoulders.

[Illustration:
"'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?"

"If it's so important," put in Sissy, grasping at a straw, "you'd better
take it yourself. Why must I always take a man's part? And I can't sing,
anyway."

"Why, Sissy!" Split's tone was flattery incarnate, but the irony in her
eye made her junior dance.

"You know I can't," she sniffled.

"But my voice and Split's go so well together in the Rose and Lily
duet," said Kate, putting the book of the cantata upon the piano-rack
and opening it persuasively.

"You promise me every time," wailed the downtrodden Recluse, reluctantly
moving forward, "that I won't have to be it the next time."

"Well, you won't next time," said Kate, generously. "Will she, Split?"

"Well, I won't sing it this time," declared Sissy, seating herself at
the piano, yet making a last stand at the very guns.

But Kate and Irene burst forth in the opening chorus with all the verve
in the world. The Madigans never scorned expression when it was
understood that they were acting. And the twins, still pulling stage
properties out of the box, and even Frances, fantastically decorated
with a torn Irish lace fichu over the bifurcated, footed white garment
she still wore o' nights, joined joyfully in:

"'We are the flowers,
The fair young flowers,
That come at the voice of spring--'
DING--DONG!"

It was a familiar old Madigan joke, always greeted with a shriek of
laughter, to shout out the two notes of the accompaniment that
punctuated the musical phrases. Its observance now put even Sissy in
good humor, so that when the time came for the Recl