dresses."

Sissy looked at him. For all her sins (and in a hidden corner of her
heart that she rarely looked into, she knew herself for the hypocrite
she was, despite all her self-righteous pretense) this girl-boy's
devotion was her punishment. She did not envy Split her successes; in
fact, she often disapproved the methods by which they were attained. Her
pride would permit her neither to make such conquests, nor to enjoy them
when they were made; but she cursed her fate that Crosby Pemberton had
fallen to her share. For the love of a really bad boy Sissy felt she
could have sacrificed much--for a fellow quite out of the pale, a bold,
wicked pirate of a boy who would say "Darn," and even smoke a cigarette;
a daredevil, whose people could do nothing with him; a fellow with a
swagger and a droop to his eyelid and something deliciously sinister in
his lean, firm jaw and saucy black eye--a boy like Jack Cody, for
instance, for whom a whole world of short-skirted femininity divided
itself naturally into two classes: just girls--and Split Madigan. But
that a forthright, practical, severe person like herself should be made
ridiculous by Crosby's worship, and that Split, her arch-enemy, should
be there to hear her adorer make his sexless declaration, was too much!
Even a Madigan could not bear up under it. When Sissy looked from "Miss
Crosby" (as the very girls who played with him called him) to Split,
there were tears of rage trembling in her eyes.

But, with a generosity suspiciously unlike her, Split ignored the signal
of distress. "What time this afternoon will the party begin, Crosby?"
she asked.

"Oh, two o'clock. But you'll come early, won't you--Sissy?"

Sissy did not answer. She was waiting to see what Split's next move
would be.

"I don't know that I can go," said Split, gently. "I haven't any
gloves--unless--won't you ask father for some, Sissy?"

There was a prompt refusal upon Sissy's lips, but she did not utter it;
the Pembertons' visit had given the enemy too much material with which
to regale her fellow-Madigans at the dinner-table in the evening. Sissy
looked questioningly into Split's eyes, and silently the bargain was
struck: to so much refraining from ridicule in public on the part of
one, a certain indebtedness which the other might discharge by facing
Francis Madigan with a demand for money. It was hard, but Sissy shut her
teeth and got to her feet.

"Can I come with you, Sissy?" asked Crosby, fol