fish prudery that characterized her, declined to accept patronage as
anybody's little sister, and boxed his ears as well as she could in the
short time given to her.

Cody looked at her. It was really the first time he had regarded her as
an unrelated individual. "Ye know what a boy does when a girl strikes
him," he threatened, a laughing glitter in his bold black eye that made
Sissy's heart jump.

But she held herself very primly, and the masking puritan in her voice
quelled him. "If he's a coward--yes," she responded haughtily, hurrying
on.

The boy looked after her as he joined Split. "She's funny--your sister,"
he said lamely.

"Who--Sissy? Oh, she's always cranky," said Irene, with Madigan candor
when a relative was criticized.

They hurried on. The barn-like opera-house is built uphill, like all
buildings on Virginia City's cross-streets, and it seems to burrow into
as well as climb the hill. In the rear, on the side where its boards
were unpainted and unplaned, certain knots had been converted into
knot-holes by the initiated.

Sissy was already on her knees, her eye glued to one of these apertures.
All she could see was a short curve of empty seats, a man's shoulder and
another's hat, a long space, and then the passing of a neat, long pair
of women's gaiters unhidden by skirts, and soon after the nervous
following of a smaller pair of women's ties.

"Why," she said, with a deep blush, fixing one eye upon the company,
while the other blinked from the strain put upon it, "they're women!
It's a women's walking-match."

"Sure," said Cody, without withdrawing his attention for a moment from
the view inside. "The big, long feet belong to the one they call La
Tourtillotte. She's French. The German one's Von Hagen."

"I think it's a shame," gasped Sissy. "Let's go home, Split."

Split, at her own particular knot-hole, affected not to hear. But Crosby
Pemberton, perched in the elbow of some long scantlings bracing the
building, took heart at Sissy's words.

"It isn't respectable, Sissy," he called to her. "No ladies go. Your
aunt wouldn't like it."

This was fatal. At his voice Sissy hardened, and with a gulp of disgust
she resolutely turned her attention to her knot-hole. In fact, as Crosby
reiterated his advice, she felt called upon more spectacularly to ignore
it, and seeing a more commanding and spacious knot-hole farther up, she
mounted upon a big dry-goods box, and from there seated herself in a
lon