overed. "Yes, dear. Turn
around, dear. Stand straight, dear. Wait a minute, dear--"

Sissy stood in silence, biting her tongue that she might not speak. She
was so occupied with the desire to keep Number 10 of her compact with
herself that she did not notice how long it was before Irene really
began to button her waist. She did note, though, that she began at the
bottom, a proceeding Split fancied merely because it drove her junior
nearly frantic. She buttoned with maddening slowness up to the middle,
when she capriciously left this point and recommenced at the top.

[Illustration:
"'That settles Number 10,' said Sissy, grimly"]

Mentally Sissy followed the operation. It was almost complete when
through the little gap purposely left open Split deftly introduced a
providentially flattened piece of ice from the window-sill, giving her
victim a little shake that sent the ice slipping smoothly down her
squirming body, but escaping before Sissy could turn and rend her.

"That settles Number 10," said Sissy, grimly, to herself, while she
danced with discomfort. "I'll kill her if I get a chance--that's what
I'll do. I'll get even, or my name's not Sis Madigan."

She hurried back into her room, which the twins shared, and stood in
damp martyrdom while Bessie's butter-fingers crept with miserable
slowness up and down. She suffered so from Bessie's ineptness that,
despite the requirements of Number 3 of her code, she tore herself
violently from her and turned her back imploringly to Florence. But Fom
was a partizan of Split's, and it was against all the ethics of Madigan
warfare to aid and comfort the enemy. When Sissy, chastened, returned to
Bep's ministrations, the blonde one of the twins was so hurt and
offended by the implication of awkwardness--a point upon which she was
as vulnerable as she was sensitive--that Sissy slapped them both before
she went at last for relief to Aunt Anne.

This was fatal, as she knew it would be.

"I shall tell your father about Irene," her aunt said, looking up from
the coffee she was sipping as she lay in bed reading a French book. "But
it's just as well, for I told you yesterday that that dress was too
dirty to wear another day. Change it now--"

"Oh, Aunt Anne, it's late already--"

"You'll change that dress, Sissy, or you won't go to school."

"I won't! It's too late. I'll be late. That means one credit off, and
this month I'm going--" A remembrance of her lofty intention