ad gone back
to her room, Kate turned up the light again. "Same thing, I s'pose?" she
asked. "Circumstances-letter--huh?"

"I s'pose so. 'T ain't sealed," said Sissy, with resignation. "But she
always forgets to seal 'em." Then, suddenly inspired, she caught up
Professor Trask's pencil lying on the piano, and on the vacant half-page
at the end of Miss Madigan's letter she wrote in her best school-girl
hand:

You--whoever you are--needn't bother to answer this.
None of us Madigans wants your help or annybody else's.
It 't only that Aunt Anne's got the scribbles, and
we'll thank you to mind your own buisness.

_Sissy Madigan._

She read her composition to the startled but, on the whole, approving
Madigans, sealed the letter, and was ready for bed.

They were all scampering through the long hall playing leap-frog--a
specialty of Split's which her present costume facilitated--when
Francis Madigan, candle in hand, came out of his room on his usual tour
of nightly inspection. His short-sighted eyes fell upon Irene, a pretty,
lithe, wavy-haired boy, before she and the twins bolted.

"What boy have you got there?" he demanded. "Send him home."

Kate took Frances up in her arms and covered the retreat; she knew how
much the better part of valor was discretion.

Sissy remained standing, looking up at him. When she was alone with her
father she was conscious of her poor little barren favoriteship, though
she dared not impose upon it. In the candle-light his harsh, rugged
features stood out marked with lines of suffering.

"It's all right, father," she said, with a quick choice of the lesser
irritation for him. "He'll go--right away. Good night."

"Good night, child."

But she walked a step or two with him, slipping her hand at last into
his, and pressing it tenderly.

"Is--anything the matter, father?" she whispered.

[Illustration:
"She walked a step or two with him"]

He threw back his head as though some one had struck him. It was not
difficult to guess from whom the Madigans had inherited their fanatical
desire to conceal emotion.

Sissy was terrified at what she had done, yet the vague trouble lay
quivering before her, though still unnamed, in his working face.

"Father--I'm sorry," she sobbed.

He pushed her from him, but gently, and she crept into her bed and
pulled the clothes over her head, that the twins might not hear her
strangl