, why could not--

Miss Madigan sat down at her desk. In a moment the steady, slow, studied
pace of her pen was all that was heard in the disordered room, where the
sensitive-plant lay half uprooted on the floor.

* * * * *

The Madigans were up and out. All A Street was alive with tales of them.
In a cloud of dust due to their sweeping trains, they had swooped down
like the gay Hieland folk they were, and captured the admiration and
imitation of the slower, prosaic Lowlander.

They had not intended to go so far, accoutred as they were; but the
attention they attracted first challenged, then seduced the vain things
farther and farther, till they threw caution to the winds (and a
boisterous Washoe zephyr was abroad) and sallied shamelessly forth. In
their immediate train they carried Jack Cody, clothed and in his right
sex, and Bombey Forrest, beating her drum. Crosby Pemberton slunk
unrecognized in the rear.

[Illustration:
"Madigan banged the door behind him as he fled"]

In the van was Sissy victrix. She had cut her adorer dead, dead, dead,
and she now felt that resultant reckless uplift of spirits which is the
feminine corollary to demonstration of power (preferably unjust and
tyrannical) over the other sex.

"Let's try to see the walking-match," she suggested to Split.

"How can we, with all that tagging after us?"

With a sweeping gesture to the rear, Split indicated the trained twins
and Frances holding up her torn petticoat. Frank was bruised but
beaming; in fact, she had never felt so much a Madigan, for she had
never before been out on a raid.

"Let 'em tag," cried Sissy, gaily; her blood was up, and she knew no
obstacles.

Down a clay-bank, into a vacant lot strewn with tin cans, slid the
Madigans. Their trains hampered them, and, once started, only speed
could save them. But they were not Comstockers and Madigans for nothing.
Jack Cody, who had arrived first on the field, caught each whirling,
dwarf-like figure as it came flying down, holding it a moment to steady
it before he put it aside in order to receive the next female
projectile.

Sissy was the last, and Cody, by way of flourish to mark the conclusion
of his labors, lifted Split's little sister, train and all, as he caught
her, with a whoop of satisfaction.

His whoop was cut short abruptly, and he set her down, his ears
tingling. For Sissy, outraged in her sense of dignity as well as in the
of