s--outside!" stormed Madigan.

"Oh, Mr. Madigan--please!" deprecated the savior, holding out his arms
to the whimpering Frances, who jumped into them as to a refuge. "No,
little girl," he said, bending down to reassure her, "I'm going to marry
Sissy; that's why I came out here."

A gasp of relief parted Kate's trembling lips. She was very near being
fond of the detested savior in that moment, in her gratitude to him for
not having looked at her.

But oh, the disdain of Sissy! It was such a very poor joke, in her
opinion. Her round little face with its dots for features looked so sour
and supercilious, as she passed the savior with averted eyes on her way
out of the dining-room,--the children were withdrawing now,--that he
could not resist putting out a hand to stop her.

"You will have me, Sissy?" he begged with a laugh. "Think of a man
coming clear out here with so little encouragement as I had. Such
devotion might appeal to a heart of stone!"

His enemy stood with downcast eyes, the red slowly mounting to the
smoothed-back brown hair.

"Sissy's Number One in her class," ventured Frank, as a recommendation.

"I'm not!" flamed forth Sissy. "I never was, or--or if I was it was
because of--of--"

"Why, Sissy!" interjected Miss Madigan, grieved.

"Of a mistake of some sort," suggested the savior, soothingly. "Well, I
suppose I could marry a girl that was only Number Two."

"I'm never Number Two--never! I'm Number--Twenty!" Sissy's eyes were
raised for a moment to his--a revelation of the insulted dignity
seething within her.

"Oh, well, a Number Twenty wife is good enough; but we'd have to live in
Ireland, I suppose," said the savior, philosophically.

A passion of wrath at his dullness filled the clever Sissy, and she
sought for a moment before she found the weapon to hurt him.

"In Ireland, you know," she said, as deliberately as she could for fear
of breaking into tears before she had delivered the insult, "the pigs
live in the parlor, and--and the children have no place to sleep and--go
barefooted!"

"Oh!" The savior was stunned for an instant, but he recovered. "No, I
didn't know. But in Nevada, I'm told, the Indians eat Irishmen alive,
and those that are left are shot down by white desperados on C Street
every day just at noon! We couldn't live here, could we?"

Sissy gasped. She opened her lips as if to speak, but closed them again,
and suddenly, in the instant's pause, there came an irresistible g