something. "It's good of you to take me in like this. What I want to
say is that the train was late crawling crookedly up and around the
mountains. I had no idea of arriving in the evening and coming in upon
you this way. But when I got here, the town looked so savage, don't you
know, so--drear--and desolate and--and flimsy, I got a bit
home-sick--there! The thought of all you people, my own people, housed
somewhere in the spraddling town, called to me. I positively couldn't
wait till morning. You'll forgive me--Aunt Anne?"

A suppressed gurgle came from a blonde Madigan on the other side of the
table, choking over her soup at this endearment. A brunette just her
height spoke rapidly to her and persuasively, but to no avail. Alarming
sounds came from the victim till presently a very dignified, small fat
person rose from her seat, made her way to the nearly suffocated blonde,
gave her a thump between the shoulder-blades that brought tears of
another variety to the sufferer's eyes, and walked composedly back to
her seat.

"How can you be so rough, Sissy!" Aunt Anne exclaimed in an agitated
voice.

"Ah--Sissy!" The savior leaned forward, looking across with a smile in
his eye that might have melted any heart save so savage a Madigan's. "So
you are Sissy."

"My name," said that young person, meeting his smiling eye coldly, "is
Cecilia."

"But your friends call you Sissy?"

"Yes, my friends do," admitted the perfectionist, with an accent that
was supposed to be crushing.

"And you sign yourself so in your letters?" he went on pleasantly.

"My letters?"

"Yes; your informal little notes, you know."

Sissy laid down her spoon. A sudden distaste for eating, for living, for
breathing had come upon her. She had forgotten her postscript to that
unhappy letter; it was all so long ago, and Aunt Anne's letters never
had had a sequel! But before her now the savior's head seemed to bob up
and down sickeningly, while a voice cried in her ears so loud she
fancied the whole table must hear it:

"You--whoever you are--needn't bother to answer this.
None of us Madigans wants your help or annybody else's.
It's only that Aunt Anne's got the scribbles, and we'll
thank you to mind your own business.

_"Sissy Madigan."_

The savior threw back his head in a quite boyish way and laughed aloud
as he watched her face.

A cold rage seized Sissy. To be laughed at before the