Sissy, gravely,
eying his discomfiture. "I really do not know."

"Is Miss Madigan in?" asked the desperate man.

"Why, do you call her that? I told you she was out."

"No; you told me Katherine was out. Is she in?" he asked eagerly.

Sissy stared at him stupidly. He returned her stare contemplatively. He
yearned to bribe her, but he didn't dare. She looked too old to be
bought, too young to understand; yet he was sure she was neither.

"Katherine, Kate, and Miss Madigan are out," said Sissy, didactically.
"So are Kitty, Kathleen, and even Kathy--that's her latest; she wrote it
that way in Henrietta Bryne-Stivers's autograph-album."

The visitor looked bewildered. "I asked you whether your aunt is in,"
he said, with some impatience.

"I beg your pardon," retorted Sissy, ceremoniously. No Madigan begged
pardon unless intending to be doubly offensive thereafter. "You asked me
whether my sister was in."

"Is--your--aunt--in?" demanded Westlake, with insulting clearness.

"She--is--in. I'll--tell--her--you're--here."

"Please." Westlake bit the word out, promising himself that his first
post-nuptial act would be to shake this small sister-in-law well for her
impertinence.

And this was the pathos, as well as the absurdity of old Westlake--he
was so confident.

But he was not so confident that he did not long for an ally. And when
Split stepped out from behind the portieres, with a barefaced pretense
of having just come through the long French window from the porch, he
straightway invited her to go to the circus that evening with him and
Kate.

There happened to be two sties on Split's left eye just then, and a
third on the upper eyelid of the right one. But this, of course, was no
reason for discouraging the overtures of a poor old man like Westlake,
who, it appeared to Split, had some virtues, after all.

That evening Sissy, who was playing holey down on Taylor (a famous
button-string had Sissy, as token of her prowess; it had a sample of
almost every buttoned frock worn in Virginia for the past ten years),
watched the three as they set out for the tent far down at the foot of
the hill. And three things occurred to her, as she stood looking after
them, Bombey Forrest waiting vainly, meanwhile, for her to shoot: First,
that if his desire was to propitiate the clan, old Westlake had selected
the wrong Madigan: Split being not nearly so tenacious an enemy nor so
loyal a friend as herself. Second, that that sam