or Sissy had introduced the fashion among
Madigans of spelling out the word which was the key-note of a
sentence--a proceeding that exasperated Frank. "Don't you let her have
any c-a-n-d-y; Aunt Anne says 't ain't good for her," was a sample of
the abuses that drove Frank nearly mad with curiosity and indignation.

But finally Sissy joined the Salvation Army with her protegee (religion
had all the attraction of the impliedly forbidden to the Madigans), and
was discovered by Francis Madigan one evening on C Street, putting up a
fluent prayer in a nasal tremolo--an excellent imitation of the
semi-hysterical falsetto of the bonneted enthusiast who had preceded
her.

Madigan looked from Sissy--her hypocritical eyes upcast, while her soul
was ravished by the whispered comment upon her precocity, to which she
lent an encouraging ear--to Frank, kneeling angelically beside her.
Something in himself, his enthusiastic, emotional, long-forgotten,
youthful self, felt the tug of sympathy at the sight, and, after his
first irritated start, he stood there behind the watching crowd with no
thought of interference.

"You can thank your stars, you unco guid lassie," he said within
himself, his sarcastic eyes on Sissy's holy face, "that you've not a
more religious and more conventional man for a father. 'T is one like
that would yank you out of your play-acting preaching, or my name's not
Madigan--ahem!"

He did not know that the exclamation had been uttered aloud. Their
father was unaware of the habit; but his daughters knew well that
stentorian clearing of the throat which served for a warning that he was
about to speak, and also a notification that he had spoken and would
permit no difference of opinion. In the midst of her religio-dramatic
ecstasy, Sissy heard that sound behind her, and jumped to her feet as
though brought painfully back to a sorrowing, sinful world.

"And he tooked her," said Frances later, in relating the affair to an
eager audience of Madigans, "and he whipped her awful!"

"With his whole hand?" asked Bep, feeling it to be the partizan's duty
to doubt.

"Uh-huh!" The small fabricator nodded her head in slow and awful
confirmation.

"That shows, Frank Madigan!" said Bep, scornfully turning her back. "He
never whips with more than two fingers."

And yet it was the confident belief of the Madigans that if it had been
anybody but Sissy, that somebody would have been eaten alive!

* * *