eering out from
under her bushy mane.

"Yes, it's me, Sissy!" Cecilia's small, round face was stern. "And
you've heard me from the very first, and if you want any--"

"Shall I show you how to skin the cat, Sis?" Irene interrupted hastily,
pulling herself up with a jerk.

But Sissy was fat and had none of her sister's wiry agility. She
declined; her mind was attuned to other issues just then, and her soul
was a-quiver with malicious, anticipatory glee; for this was the day of
Split's music lesson, and her teacher was none other than Sissy herself.

"So, if you want it," the younger sister's voice rose threateningly,
"you've got to come now."

"Let's leave it till the afternoon." Split's voice came from somewhere
in the midst of her evolutions.

"Will you come?" demanded Sissy peremptorily. "Once!"

How could Split answer? Her mouth was tight shut; she was pulling
herself up inch by inch, slowly, slowly, till her chin should rest upon
the bar.

"Will you come? Twice!"

Split's face was purple, and there was an agonized prayer for delay in
her eyes.

"Will you come? Third--and la-ast--" Sissy prolonged the note
quaveringly. It was not her intention to provoke her victim beyond
endurance. These lessons, which gave her the whip-hand over the doughty
and invincible Split, were far too precious to her.

"And la-ast," she repeated inexorably.

With a thud Irene dropped to the floor. Leaving all her
light-heartedness behind in the dusk of the shed, where the trapeze
still swung, she followed, a sullen captive; while Cecilia, gloating
like the despot she was, led the way.

"We'll begin with the piece," said Split, eagerly, seating herself
before the piano.

"No; scales and exercises first," declared Sissy, firmly. "Sit farther
back, Split, and keep your wrist up."

Split moved the stool a millionth of an inch. Why, oh, why had she
quarreled with Professor Trask? If some one had only told her that her
own rebellion would mean the substitution of Cecilia for herself as his
pupil, and another opportunity for that apt young perfectionist to
outrank her senior!

With a rattling verve, and a dime on each wrist, which Professor Cecilia
had placed there to effect a divorce between finger and arm movement,
Irene attacked her scales and exercises. She loathed five-finger
exercises. So did the talented but lazy Sissy, who knew well from
experience what torture would most try her victim's soul. Split merely
wanted to p