ect upon those within, it was exquisitely witty. The
whole company doubled up with laughter. It giggled till its collective
sides must have ached; then it slowly and gaspingly subsided. When it
had quieted down, the piano began again, and a red-headed Madigan,
intoxicated by the music, the license of the time, and the excitement
accompanying creative work, danced a fantastic _pas seul_, as she flew
about in the Mother Gibson merry-go-round.

"Old Mother Gibson's savior was a dandy--
He thought he'd buy the Madigans with a stick of candy!"

sang Split, and the parlor yelled itself hoarse with uproarious delight.

The fat little girl at the piano began to play, and stopped several
times, that she might wipe the tears of laughter from her eyes and get
her breath. At last, with a squaring of her shoulders and a stiffening
of backbone that seemed queerly familiar to Morgan, watching outside,
she half drawled, half sang, with an unmistakable accent:

"Old Mother Gibson was angry at the Fates;
My word! They sent the savior 'way out to the States!"

A sudden enlightenment came to Miles Morgan. For a moment the red flamed
up in his cheek, and if Split could have seen his face she might have
fancied that some imp had caught her likeness, when her temper had got
beyond her control, and set it on this man's body.

"The impudent little beggars!" Morgan cried furiously. "My word!" He
stopped, remembering the use to which his favorite exclamation had been
put. "But what a saucy lot!" He was laughing before he had finished
wording his thought.

He was interested now, and listened with a grin to Fom's declaration
that

"Old Mother Gibson ought to 've known better
Then to come in answer to Aunt Anne's letter."

He saw even Frank strutting in the ring, though she was capable only of
a repetition of the classic phrase with which each couplet began. And he
laughed with the rest at Bep,--poor, unready Bep, set as by a musical
time-lock and bound to go off,--getting slower and slower in motion as
well as utterance, the accompaniment retarding sympathetically as the
critical moment approached when she must be delivered of her rhyme.

"Old Mother Gibson, why do you--"

she began her singsong. "No, no! Wait. I know another. 'T ain't fair,"
she stammered in a prose parenthesis.

"Old Mother Gibson had a--

"Stop laughing, now; wait a minute. You don't give me a chance, Sissy.
You play faster for me