ld! They become bankrupt, I suppose."

"And--and what becomes of the paper?"

"What do you know or care about such things? Will you go to sleep
to-night?"

"If you had any bankrupt's paper," she pleaded, catching hold of his
hand as he turned to leave her, "what would you do with it--please,
father!"

"Why, tear it up, you goose."

With a jump, Sissy was bolt upright in bed and holding up a fluttering,
much-folded sheet, an almost incredulous joy in her eager voice.

"Take mine and pretend I was bankrupt--please--oh, please!"

To Madigan all children, his own particularly, were such unaccountable
beings that a vagary more or less could not more hopelessly perplex his
misunderstanding of them. With a "Tut! tut!" of impatience, he took the
paper from her and tore it twice across.

A long sigh of relief came from Sissy as the bits fluttered to the
floor. "You're such a nice father!" she murmured happily, and fell
asleep, a blissful bankrupt instead of a Pharisee.

A PAGAN AND A PURITAN

"Split! Split!"

The morning was warm and young; Mount Davidson's side was golden with
sunflowers. On the long front piazza Mr. Madigan's canaries, in their
mammoth cage, were like to burst their throats for joy in the promise of
summer. Irene, every lithe muscle a-play, was hanging by her knees on
the swinging-bar, her tawny hair sweeping the woodshed floor as she
swung.

"Split, I say!"

The tone was commanding--such a tone as Sissy dared assume only on
Saturday mornings, when her elder sister's necessities delivered Irene
the Oppressor into her hands.

"Split Madigan!"

In the very exhilaration of effort--the use of her muscles was joy to
her--Split paused to wish that the house might fall on Sissy; that she
might suddenly become dumb; that the key to the piano might be
lost--anything that would avert her own impending doom.

But none of these things happened; they never did happen, no matter how
passionately the second of the Madigans longed for them on the last day
of the week.

"Split--you know very well you hear me," the voice cried, coming nearer.

Split burst into song. She was a merry, merry Zingara, she declared in
sweet, strong cadence, with a boisterous chorus of tra-la-las that
rivaled the canaries'; and the louder she sang, the faster she swung, so
that she was really half deaf and wholly giddy when she felt Sissy's
hand on her ankle.

"Oh, is that you, Sissy?" she asked, sweetly surprised, p