The Madigans Part 3

"Why, tear it up, you goose."

With a jump, Sissy was bolt upright in bed and holding up a fluttering, much-folded sheet, an almost incredulous joy in her eager voice.

"Take mine and pretend I was bankrupt--please--oh, please!"

To Madigan all children, his own particularly, were such unaccountable beings that a vagary more or less could not more hopelessly perplex his misunderstanding of them. With a "Tut! tut!" of impatience, he took the paper from her and tore it twice across.

A long sigh of relief came from Sissy as the bits fluttered to the floor. "You're such a nice father!" she murmured happily, and fell asleep, a blissful bankrupt instead of a Pharisee.

A PAGAN AND A PURITAN

"Split! Split!"

The morning was warm and young; Mount Davidson's side was golden with sunflowers. On the long front piazza Mr. Madigan's canaries, in their mammoth cage, were like to burst their throats for joy in the promise of summer. Irene, every lithe muscle a-play, was hanging by her knees on the swinging-bar, her tawny hair sweeping the woodshed floor as she swung.

"Split, I say!"

The tone was commanding--such a tone as Sissy dared a.s.sume only on Sat.u.r.day mornings, when her elder sister's necessities delivered Irene the Oppressor into her hands.

"Split Madigan!"

In the very exhilaration of effort--the use of her muscles was joy to her--Split paused to wish that the house might fall on Sissy; that she might suddenly become dumb; that the key to the piano might be lost--anything that would avert her own impending doom.

But none of these things happened; they never did happen, no matter how pa.s.sionately the second of the Madigans longed for them on the last day of the week.

"Split--you know very well you hear me," the voice cried, coming nearer.

Split burst into song. She was a merry, merry Zingara, she declared in sweet, strong cadence, with a boisterous chorus of tra-la-las that rivaled the canaries'; and the louder she sang, the faster she swung, so that she was really half deaf and wholly giddy when she felt Sissy's hand on her ankle.

"Oh, is that you, Sissy?" she asked, sweetly surprised, peering out from under her bushy mane.

"Yes, it's me, Sissy!" Cecilia's small, round face was stern. "And you've heard me from the very first, and if you want any--"

"Shall I show you how to skin the cat, Sis?" Irene interrupted hastily, pulling herself up with a jerk.

But Sissy was fat and had none of her sister's wiry agility. She declined; her mind was attuned to other issues just then, and her soul was a-quiver with malicious, antic.i.p.atory glee; for this was the day of Split's music lesson, and her teacher was none other than Sissy herself.

"So, if you want it," the younger sister's voice rose threateningly, "you've got to come now."

"Let's leave it till the afternoon." Split's voice came from somewhere in the midst of her evolutions.

"Will you come?" demanded Sissy peremptorily. "Once!"

How could Split answer? Her mouth was tight shut; she was pulling herself up inch by inch, slowly, slowly, till her chin should rest upon the bar.

"Will you come? Twice!"

Split's face was purple, and there was an agonized prayer for delay in her eyes.

"Will you come? Third--and la-ast--" Sissy prolonged the note quaveringly. It was not her intention to provoke her victim beyond endurance. These lessons, which gave her the whip-hand over the doughty and invincible Split, were far too precious to her.

"And la-ast," she repeated inexorably.

With a thud Irene dropped to the floor. Leaving all her light-heartedness behind in the dusk of the shed, where the trapeze still swung, she followed, a sullen captive; while Cecilia, gloating like the despot she was, led the way.

"We'll begin with the piece," said Split, eagerly, seating herself before the piano.

"No; scales and exercises first," declared Sissy, firmly. "Sit farther back, Split, and keep your wrist up."

Split moved the stool a millionth of an inch. Why, oh, why had she quarreled with Professor Trask? If some one had only told her that her own rebellion would mean the subst.i.tution of Cecilia for herself as his pupil, and another opportunity for that apt young perfectionist to outrank her senior!

With a rattling verve, and a dime on each wrist, which Professor Cecilia had placed there to effect a divorce between finger and arm movement, Irene attacked her scales and exercises. She loathed five-finger exercises. So did the talented but lazy Sissy, who knew well from experience what torture would most try her victim's soul. Split merely wanted to play well, to outplay Cecilia, to be independent of her and play her own accompaniments.

"Lift your fingers, Split. You must raise your wrist," came in an easy tone of command. "Repeat that, please. Again. There goes the dime again! If you'd keep your wrist steady, it wouldn't fall off. No; you're playing altogether too fast. Slowly! slow-ly! Bad fingering! bad fingering! Wretched! Wait, I'll mark it for you."

With her nicely pointed long pencil, Sissy, a martinet for technic, a.s.sumed all the airs of her own professor and prepared to explain the obvious.

"No, you don't!" Irene's hand shot out from the keys to the sheet-music, scattering the dimes; her wide-spread fingers covered the spot Sissy contemplated adorning with prettily made figures.

"Don't what?" asked Sissy.

"Oh, Miss Innocence! Don't be so affected, that's what! Don't put on so many airs! Don't pretend you know it all, Sis Madigan!"

"Why, Split! Do you s'pose I _want_ to put the fingering down?"

"You do; but you sha'n't!" exclaimed Split, savagely.

"All I want to do is to help you," said Sissy, with well-bred forbearance.

"Well, don't show off, then."

Split withdrew her hand, and the lesson proceeded.

"I'll play your piece for you first, Split, to show you how it ought to go." Sissy rose, her calico rustling, to change the professorial chair for the stool of the demonstrator.

But Split sat like a rock.

"Professor Trask always does, Split."

There was an abused note in Sissy's voice that deceived her sister. In the perennial game of "bluff" these two played, each was alert to detect a weakness in the other; and Irene thought she had found one now.

Ignoring her professor, she placed "In Sweet Dreams" on the rack before her, and gaily and loudly, and very badly, began to play.

Sissy rose majestically. Her correct ear was outraged, her small mouth was shut tight. Without a word she resigned her post and made for the door. She had quite reached it before Split capitulated.

"Play it, then, you mean thing," she cried, flouncing off the stool, "if it's going to do you any good!"