them in the capacity of dearest
friend. But other playmates were tame after being accustomed to a
Madigan; and each twin was so jealously afraid of the other's having a
good time without her that she spent most of the period of estrangement
trying to spy out what the other and her interloping companion were
doing.

The Smith twins were easier.

"Tell Bep," said Florence to the pink-sashed small Smith, "that I think
she's a nasty mean thing, and Mrs. Clair'll never forgive her."

"Tell Fom," returned Bep, with spirit, putting the blue-sashed Smith
baby in her pocket as a sort of emergency battery, so that the wires of
communication might be set up at any time between her twin and herself,
"that I don't care a 'article for what she thinks. And Mrs. Clair's
nothing but a beggar. I wonder that Mr. Clair married her!"

The war was on.

* * * * *

Down on the dump, that fascinating mountain of soft, glittering waste
rock, the godless twins went to dig on Christmas afternoon. The mining
operations were elaborate that they projected there, particularly after
Jack Cody's brother Peter joined them. While Peter was rigging up
windlasses with pieced-out cord, Fom, with a couple of tin cups
purloined from Wong's kitchen, brought up the rock, piling it in
miniature dumps at the mouth of their shaft. Bep's awkward fingers could
be trusted only with the preliminary scooping out of the ground where a
new shaft was to be sunk.

"Tell Fom," she said to the blue-sashed Smith twin in her pocket, "that
I want the scooper; my hands are all sore."

"Tell Bep," returned Fom, quickly, "that she can't have it till Pete an'
I get through running our drift."

The excuse did not seem legitimate to Bep, whose grimy hands ached to
the fingertips from being used as both pick and shovel. She made a dart
for the "scooper"--a heavy china cup which had been smashed in so
fortunate a manner as to be ideally fitted for emptying ore by hand.

But Fom was slim, and quick as a cat. She threw herself bodily upon both
scooper and pick--the latter an old fork with but one tine left. Bep
promptly threw herself on top of her twin, while Peter, a laconic lad,
calmly set himself to rehabilitating the hind wheel of a battered tin
toy express which served as a dump-cart.

"Little folks shouldn't quarrel," suddenly said a slow voice above the
struggling arms and legs of the twins.

Fom looked up, still pressing her body hard