e the
funniest thing in the world, for the Madigans were writhing grotesquely
in the unbounded merriment it caused.

With a cry, Miss Madigan flew forward and sharply slapped the
destructive baby hands.

"I yant to go home!" screamed Fauntleroy.

"Yes; and I want you to go, too," Miss Madigan declared, incensed. "Get
his things, Sissy, this minute."

"But I want him to play wif," whimpered Frank. She was not so slow but
that she could learn the lesson Fauntleroy's success taught.

Miss Madigan looked at her a moment. "Oh, you do!" she ejaculated
sarcastically. "You haven't sisters enough--you want more noise and
confusion in this house!"

The wise Madigans looked from her to one another and merely thought
things. There was sadly little of the "angel child" about them. Their
intuition was keen enough to penetrate their aunt's secret wishes and
tastes, and they were occasionally tempted, for the spoils to be gotten
out of it, to play up to that lady's ideals. But Aunt Anne was
considered almost too easy by the Madigans, whom honor restricted to
those foemen worthy of their steel. Frances was the only one who could,
without losing caste, cater to her aunt's well-known and deeply detested
sentimentality.

She did for a time, and it was from Miss Madigan that she learned her
famous accomplishment. It was sung, or rather droned, and it went like
this:

"B--A--Ba,
B--E--Be,
B--I--Bi--
Ba--Be--Bi;
B--O--Bo,
Ba--Be--Bi--Bo,
B--U--Bu,
Ba--Be--Bi--Bo--Bu!"

Intoxicated by success, Frank sang this subtle ditty one day for Francis
Madigan. He listened to it with that puzzled expression which his
children's vagaries brought to his lined, stern face.

"Who taught you that nonsense, Frances?" he demanded sternly when she
had finished.

Frank began to whimper. This was not the effect she had intended to
produce.

"Who told you to say that gibberish?" her father repeated angrily.

Frank stammered the answer.

"And he tooked her--" she began her account of the incident afterward.

"Oh, you awful little liar!" interrupted a chorus of Madigans.

And Frank laughed with them. How she would have completed the sentence,
if she had been permitted, she herself did not know.

A READY LETTER-WRITER

Split threw herself with a bump against Miss Madigan's door. It remained
unansweringly closed.

"Where's Aunt Anne?" she asked Sissy, whom she had nearly walked over as
she sat play