on school-teaching?" Wrath tingled in Kate's voice. She heard
Miss Madigan's gasp of horror, and could imagine the fishy
disconsolateness of her expression. And she saw the red-faced little man
opposite her start, as at the injection of a foreign tongue into the
interview.

"Eh--what? Oh, yes," he said dully. "I mean--no. It'll be--it's all
right."

"Oh, Mr. Pemberton, how can I thank you!" Miss Madigan clasped her
hands.

"Yes; I spoke to Forrest yesterday, and--and, of course, Murchison's
willing," went on the little man, gravely. "But there's no vacancy just
now, so they'll arrange to appoint substitutes. It's the way they do in
cities, I understand. And Miss Cecilia here will be--"

"My name, Mr. Pemberton, is Kate!"

"And Kate's exceedingly grateful." Miss Madigan gazed amazed at her
niece; she didn't look grateful.

"Not at all; not at all," murmured Pemberton, feeling for his papers
helplessly. "I'm so busy--"

"It--is good of you," stammered Kate, rising. "I am--very much obliged
to you." She held out a hand to him that was cold to the fingertips. All
at once she felt so old, so young, so niched forever in a somber, gray
life, so settled, so bound up by small formalities, so miserably unlike
a Madigan!

* * * * *

Yet the Madigan in Kate waked with a defiant brightness when the first
call came that took her temporarily over the threshold of the new life.
She left her own school-room, where her role was as congenial and
irresponsible as Sissy's, with an air of importance that roused envy in
her mates' hearts.

The very pretense rallied her, excited her, inspired her to continue to
pretend after she had left her audience behind her. And though she
entered the lower class-room, of which she was to have charge for a day,
with a terrified feeling of being thrown to the lions, she faced the
undisciplined mob that licked its lips in anticipation of a feast on raw
young substitute with a flash in her eye that promised battle first.

And she did make a hit at the beginning, thanks to her sister and
present pupil, Bessie, who was invariably late to school.

To Bep, the aspect of her own sister in a position of authority was the
hugest absurdity, and when the blonde twin sauntered in, tardy, as
usual, she joined the class as one of the lions. She intended to give
Kate distinctly to understand that she was mixed primary pupil first
and a Madigan afterward; that the substitute