The Madigans Part 30

"Yep, that's the sulks all right," Split nodded.

"This is Kate." Miss Madigan, brave in her new purple gown with the lace collar at her throat, shot a reproachful glance at the unadorned young lady of the house. "Your cousin, Miles Morgan, Kate."

"Howd' ye do?" Kate said coldly, ignoring his outstretched hand and pa.s.sing on to her seat, where she began busily to serve the b.u.t.ter.

The savior of the family looked after her, interested. Though guilty of every count in Sissy's indictment, he was not accustomed to being overlooked by such very young ladies.

"And this is Irene," said Miss Madigan, a tremor in her voice; she, too, knew now that Kate "had 'em." "This one is Cecilia; the twins, Bessie and Florence; and Frances, the baby."

The savior of the family glanced along the line of five blank faces, and felt the perfunctory touch of five small, slippery hands with nothing more human about their clasp than the childish masks above them.

"I say, how do you tell one another apart?" he asked, with a sudden gleam in his eye, as they pa.s.sed him and slid into their places.

A dozen pitying eyes looked coldly at him; half a dozen small mouths curved disdainfully. His remark seemed to make them more than ever like mechanisms--hostile ones.

Miss Madigan dropped the soup-ladle in her confusion. To that experienced lady there was something ominous about so unbroken a union of Madigans; she remembered with sorrow the few times any subject had found them unanimous.

But Madigan came in just then, took his seat at the head, looked mechanically for the banished dog and the cat, and Dusie, chirping madly in her cage to attract his attention to the fact of her cruel and unusual imprisonment. He cleared his throat and took up the carver--and immediately Miles Morgan was conscious of an unbending of the small Madigans--a cuddling together, so to speak, and a swift interchange of impressions.

"You haven't given me an opportunity to explain, Miss Madigan--" he began, in the pause during which Madigan carved strenuously.

"'Aunt Anne,' if you please, my dear boy," urged Miss Madigan, warmly.

"The relationship's distant, but now that you are with us we can have no ceremony out here in the wilds."

"Oh, thank you." The savior, turning toward her, saw the fattest little Madigan nudge her red-haired neighbor savagely. She was evidently angry at 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 whole table! She hated him; she knew she hated him!

"I don't understand," said Madigan, feeling called upon to say something that was not vituperative at his own dinner-table. "You could never have seen a note of Sissy's, Mr. Morgan?"

"Never." The savior lied like a gentleman.

But he was mistaken if he supposed that he had placated Cecilia. She would not even meet his eyes, those eyes that twinkled so enjoyingly.

The savior tried Irene.

"You and I have hair the same color," he said genially. "I hope your temper isn't like mine, too."

"I hope not," she answered stiffly.

He laughed again, that big, amused laugh. Split's eyes shot fire.

Evidently the Madigans were funnier than they knew.

"Now, I wonder," he said, "would that be a compliment or a confession?"

"Irene is trying and succeeding better every day in gaining self-control," interposed Aunt Anne, with hasty amiability. To discuss Irene's temper in committee of the whole, like that--the temerity of the man! "Won't you have some more mutton?" she pressed. "It's wash-day, you know, and it's just a pick-up dinner; but we're so glad to have you, if you'll excuse--"

"The apology's due from me, you know," he interrupted. "And the good fortune's mine, too. Fancy me dining the evening of my arrival at that brick barn they call the hotel down yonder! It will be hard enough when I really have to live there."

"You do not surely expect--" began Madigan, pausing over his strawberries.

"To live 'out West'? Will you let me tell you how it happened, Mr.

Madigan? There isn't much to it--just this: Miles Madigan, as you know--do you know?--was not the man to leave much behind him. Not that he'd deliberately wrong a fellow, poor old chap, but--well--oh, you understand! Well, when his solicitors got through subtracting and dividing and subdividing, the heir--one Miles Morgan, bred to do nothing, and with a talent for that profession, I must admit--found himself poor, with just enough to live on. The ten thousand a year had--just slipped through Miles Madigan's fingers."

"Oh!" Miss Madigan's voice was sympathizing, disappointed.

"Then"--it was Frank's clear treble; she hadn't understood much, but she knew what "poor" meant: a Madigan learned that early--"then you're not going to mawwy Kate?"

Kate went white, while Miss Madigan's delicate face flushed purple, and Split pinched Sissy's arm, in her excitement, till that young woman cried aloud.

"Frances--outside!" stormed Madigan.

"Oh, Mr. Madigan--please!" deprecated the savior, holding out his arms to the whimpering Frances, who jumped into them as to a refuge. "No, little girl," he said, bending down to rea.s.sure her, "I'm going to marry Sissy; that's why I came out here."

A gasp of relief parted Kate's trembling lips. She was very near being fond of the detested savior in that moment, in her grat.i.tude to him for not having looked at her.

But oh, the disdain of Sissy! It was such a very poor joke, in her opinion. Her round little face with its dots for features looked so sour and supercilious, as she pa.s.sed the savior with averted eyes on her way out of the dining-room,--the children were withdrawing now,--that he could not resist putting out a hand to stop her.

"You will have me, Sissy?" he begged with a laugh. "Think of a man coming clear out here with so little encouragement as I had. Such devotion might appeal to a heart of stone!"