d a sense of the beautiful in Frank. She and Bep
were continually playing London Bridge, in the course of which it became
necessary to demand:

"Which would you rather have (that means, like best): a diamond horse
covered with stars, or a golden cradle with red silk pillows?"

Sentiment and the sad experience of her babyhood always prompted Frank
to choose the cradle, of course. After which, her preference promptly
became of no importance whatever; the whole beautiful business was put
aside, and she was bidden to get behind Fom. She discovered later that
whether she preferred diamonds and stars to gold and red silk, it was
all the same: she invariably had to get behind one twin or the other,
clasp her tightly about the waist, and pull--and pull--till the whole
universe gave way and she plumped down on the ground with a big twin
falling on top of her.

But there was another phase of the beautiful which was far more
satisfactory to Frank, while it lasted. Fom discovered it one day when
Split took Dora away from her, just because the brunette twin preferred
her lunch to the burned potatoes Split had baked in the back yard when
they were playing emigrants. It was then, in the depths of her grief,
that the inspiration came to her.

"Shall Fom make you look awful pretty, Frank?" she asked, in the form
which children suppose wheedles babies most successfully.

Frank didn't know; she was suspicious of the hollowness of the
beautiful and the inutility of choosing. Besides, she was making dolls'
biscuit just then from a piece of dough Wong had given her, cutting out
each individual bun with Aunt Anne's thimble.

But Florence coaxed and threatened and bribed, and when Francis Madigan
got home that night to dinner, he found his big porch covered with
children gathered from blocks around. Each held in his or her hand one
pin or more--the price of admission to the show. (Fom was a most thrifty
and businesslike Madigan.) And the show, which he as well as they saw in
the interval between the opening of his front door and its swift
closing, was Frances's plump, naked body draped in a sheet, posing, with
uplifted arms and an uncertain, apprehensive smile, on a tottering
draped pedestal, which fell with a crash when Fom, who was crouched
behind steadying it, beheld her father's face.

"And he tooked her," with bated breath Frank repeated the monotonous
refrain of her saga, "and he made her thwow evewy--pin--she'd made--out
the fwo