digan_ (_called Sissy_),
Aged 11 last birthday.

P.S. And I feel sure I can do it all, God helping me,
except Number 10--which is the hardest.

* * * * *

Sissy, who had been sitting writing only half dressed, folded the paper
reverently, put it to her lips for lack of a seal, and then buttoned it
firmly inside her corset waist.

She felt so virtuous already that the carrying out of her intentions
seemed really supererogatory. When she went to Irene to have her button
her dress in the back, she had such a sensation of holiness, such a
consciousness of a forbearing, pure, and gentle spirit, that her
sister's malicious pretense of ignoring her presence appeared to her
nothing less than sacrilege.

"Ain't you going to button me, Split?" she demanded, indignant that her
enemy, whom she was going to treat with Christ-like charity, should
successfully try her temper before the ink was dry on her own promise to
keep the peace.

"Ask me pretty," grinned Split, whose nickname honored a gymnastic feat
which no other Madigan, however athletic, could accomplish half so
successfully as the second. "Say 'please.'"

"I won't do anything of the sort. You know you've got to do it, and
you've no right to expect me to say 'please' every time. You don't do it
yourself, you hateful thing!"

"Why don't you cry?"

"Because I won't for you--because you can't make me--because--"

"Because you are crying in spite of yourself! Because anybody can make
you cry, cry-baby!"

Sissy's hands flew up to her breast. It was a recognized gesture with
her, a physical holding of herself together in the last minute that
preceded her temperamental flying to pieces.

Split retreated cautiously, clearing the deck herself for action.

But no first gun was fired in that engagement. A crackling of the
document hidden over the spot where she thought her heart was came like
a warning note to Sissy. She struggled against it a moment; then her
hands fell. Meekly she turned her back upon her tormentor, and in a
voice of such exquisite holiness as to be almost unearthly, she said:

"Split dear, will you please button me?"

A look of outraged astonishment at the unheard-of endearment came over
Irene's face. The Madigans regarded demonstrative affection as pure
affectation at its best; at its worst it was little short of indecent.

"'Split dear?'" mocked Irene as soon as she rec