than for anybody else! You do it a-purpose, too,
just 'cause you know it's easy to bluster me.

"Old Moth-er--Gib-son--"

Bep stopped suddenly, for through the glass doors came the subject of
her lay. He had a finger to his lips as he glanced at Sissy's back--a
hint that the rest of the company seized delightedly. And when the music
began again, he was not ashamed to make this contribution:

"Old Mother Gibson, take pity on a cousin
Left to the tender mercies of the other half-dozen!"

At first the accompanist, accustomed to the rodomontade of voice as well
as gesture of the excited performers, was not aware of the interloper.
When she finally spun around and saw the savior singing in the midst of
his libelers, she let him finish the couplet unaccompanied, and sat, a
fat, shocked statue glued to the piano-stool, staring at him.

It was absurd of him, but there was something in Old Mother Gibson, as
the Madigans sang and played her, that turned the soberest of heads. And
the savior's forte was not in being staid. He fell upon his knee before
her.

"Forgive me, O Sissy, for not being a Madigan," he begged, "and receive
me into the fold!"

She looked down at him, self-conscious, embarrassed; yet the hidden
sentimentality of her nature was appealed to by the masculine young face
turned half laughing, half seriously, to her.

"Are you sure," she asked shyly, "that you're not one already?"

* * * * *

It is of record that one evening during that summer when the old Tomboy
mine was reopened, a young Irishman newly arrived on the Comstock
escorted down to Fitzmeier's--where, everybody knows, there is ice-cream
to be had--six girls of assorted ages, one boy, and two young persons
whose garments belied their sex. Yet they all seemed rampantly happy and
quite unashamed.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Madigans, by Miriam Michelson

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MADIGANS ***

***** This file should be named 21243.txt or 21243.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/2/4/21243/

Produced by V. L. Simpson and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creat