t's going to do you any good!'"]

"But I don't want to."

"Ain't you going to give me my lesson, then?" demanded Split, hoarsely.
"I thought you were so anxious to help me!"

Sissy was mute. Hers was a strong position, she felt.

"D' ye expect me to get down on my knees?" Irene's wrathful voice rose,
and her unstable temper rocked threateningly. A Madigan would willingly
have been flayed alive rather than apologize in so many words.

"I don't expect anything at all," remarked Sissy, coldly.

"Well, you'd better expect, for"--with a swift motion that cut off her
sister's retreat and put her own back to the door--"you'll play that
piece before you go out of this room."

Without a word Sissy plumped down on the floor. Unconcernedly she pulled
her jackstones out of her pocket, and soon their regular click-clock and
the deft thump of her small, fat fist was all that was heard in the
room.

It always seemed to Split that the last occasion of a disagreement
between herself and the sister nearest to her in years, and furthest
from her in temperament, was the most intolerable. Never in her life,
she thought, had she so longed to murder Sissy as at this minute.
She--Split--had no time to waste besieging the impregnable fortress of
Sissy's mulishness, when the hardening process had really set in. There
never was time enough on Saturdays to do half what one planned, and
to-day was the day of Crosby Pemberton's party, besides.

And still Split remained at the door, and still Sissy played jackstones.
Twice there were skirmishes between besieger and besieged--once when
Split crept upon Sissy and, with a quick thrust of her slim, straight
leg, disarranged an elaborate scheme for "putting horses in the stable,"
and once when there was a strategic sortie from Sissy, which failed to
catch the enemy napping.

It was Split who finally yielded, as, with rage in her heart, she had
known from the very beginning would be the case. But no Madigan ever
laid down her arms and surrendered formally.

Split threw open the door with a bang. "Go out, then, miss! go out!" she
commanded.

Calmly and skilfully Sissy finished the "devil on a stump," the last of
those ornamental additions the complexities of which appeal to experts
in the game; then she gathered up her beloved jackstones and got to her
feet. But dignity forbade that she should leave the room just when her
foe had ordered her to go. So she ignored the invitation, and going to