interrupted Mrs. Pemberton, severely.

"Yes? Such a lovely party, the girls say! I'm sure, Mrs. Pemberton, it's
just--"

"Did they tell you what--occurred?"

Miss Madigan blinked reflectively. Her acquaintance with the stately and
wealthy Mrs. Warren Pemberton was her most prized social connection.
What could have occurred?

"Why, of course, of course!" she laughed after a bit, pleasantly, still
trying to remember what the girls had gossiped about. "Delightful,
wasn't it?"

Mrs. Pemberton lifted her plumed head with a slow and terrible
solemnity. "De-lightful, Miss Madigan, de-lightful!"

The smile vanished from Miss Madigan's face. "I hope, dear Mrs.
Pemberton, that the girls did nothing that--that--They're such madcaps,
and their father never will--"

Miss Madigan's distress touched her august visitor. "I trust this," she
said significantly, "will be a lesson to Mr. Madigan."

"What--what will? If there's a lesson for Madigan, let him have it
direct, Mrs. Pemberton."

Lying flat on her stomach beneath the window, Sissy heard her father's
voice come clanging harshly on the lighter-timbred dialogue. Cautiously
she raised herself on her elbow and let a single eye peer through the
curtain at the group within. There, with his paint-pot in his hand, his
brush and his pipe in the other, his unique nightcap rakishly on one
side and drawn over his white head to protect it from the paint, Madigan
stood in his overalls and heavy shirt--his Michelangelo costume, Kate
had called it. He had been regilding an old mirror in his room, and
having some gilt left at the bottom of his can, he was going about the
house in search of tarnished articles of virtue.

"Oh, Francis!" exclaimed his sister.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Madigan?" said Mrs. Pemberton, bravely, putting
out her hand. "I did not know you were within hearing."

"Or you wouldn't have offered the lesson? Well, give it to me, now that
I am here. No, I won't shake hands; mine are all sticky with gilt." He
rested his elbow on his hip and stood at ease.

A savage delight at this outrage upon gentility in Mrs. Ramrod's very
presence possessed that red republican Sissy. She giggled within
herself, Madigan's attitude, his streaked and gilded face, his confident
voice, showed such delightful indifference to the effect his
unconventional attire must have upon this Priestess of Form.

"I must beg your pardon, Mr. Madigan," said that lady, in her most
official tone, "f