that burst from Frances one Sunday night during this
self-catechism brought Madigan and all the family to her bedside.

"What is it--what is it, child?" demanded her father.

And Frank repeated like a Maeterlinck or a bobolink, holding up a
shaking small hand whose nails Aunt Anne had trimmed that very morning:

"Monday for health,
Tuesday for wealth,
Wednesday the best day of all.
Thursday for cwosses,
Fwiday for losses--
Saturday no day at all.
And better the child had never been bawn
That pared its nails on a Sunday mawn!"

"And fa-ther tooked Bep," remarked Frank the next day, the light of
desire fulfilled in her eye, "and he said 'You ox!' and smacked her wif
two fingers!"

* * * * *

Miss Madigan, who was a congenital sentimentalist, her tendency
confirmed by a long course of novel-reading, would have loved a female
Fauntleroy, and hoped to find it in each of her brother's children in
turn--only to be bitterly disappointed when they came to an expressing
age.

It occurred to her once to satisfy her maternal cravings--so perversely
left ungratified amid much material that lacked mothering--with an
imported angel-child. She chose Bombey Forrest's three-year-old brother
for the purpose; a small manikin manufactured according to recipe by his
mother, whom he had been taught to call "Dear-rust" in imitation of his
pernicious progenitor; whose curls were as long, whose trousers were as
short, whose collars were as big, whose sashes were as flaunting as
feminine folly could make them.

The Madigans hailed his advent with delight the night he was loaned to
their aunt, in their mistaken glee fancying his visit was to themselves.
Miss Madigan soon undeceived them. At table he sat next to that devoted
lady, who heaped the choicest bits upon his plate of a menu which had
been ordered solely with regard to infantile tastes. Afterward this
maiden lady (whose genius for mothering cruel fate had condemned to
waste its sweetness upon half a dozen mere Madigans) built card houses
for her borrowed baby, read him the nursery rhymes that Sissy used to
tell to Frances, confiscated Fom's Dora for his pleasure, and Split's
book of interiors made of illustrated advertisements of furniture, which
she had cut out and arranged tastefully upon a tissue-paper background.
She dangled her old-fashioned enameled watch before his jaded eyes, and
even permitted him to hold