elf into a summons. The Zingara's eye,
turning from the faces that danced before her, sent appealing glances to
the wings, where Sissy yearned toward her, all rivalry drowned in a
mothering anxiety for her success.

"'I'm a--mer-ry, meh-hi-ri-y--Zin-ga-ra!'" wailed Split, trying to get
her breath. "'From a--gold-e-en--clime I come!'"

Sissy's hands flew to her breast, then with a wild gesture up over her
ears, and she fled back to the dressing-room. Split the redoubtable,
Split the invincible, the impudent, ready, pugnacious Split had
stage-fright! The world rocked beneath Sissy's feet. Time stopped, and
all the world stood agape witnessing a Madigan's failure! It seemed to
the third of them that she could never bear to lift her head again and
meet a Comstocker's eye and see there that shameful record against the
family. But she scrambled quickly to her feet when Irene came running
in, "The Zingara" all unsung.

Irene's face was white and her eyes glittered. Sissy did not dare meet
them, for, to a Madigan, to put a shame in words or looks was to double
and triple it. She did not dare to condole; she had no heart to accuse.
So she bent down again, ostensibly to tie her shoe, in order to give the
furious little Zingara time to recover and to begin to undress. She
heard the tambourine's tingling clatter as it was cast to the floor. She
looked anywhere but at her sister, but she heard buttons give and
buttonholes rend, and bowed her head to the storm.

"I must say," she remarked in a scornfully careless tone when the
silence became oppressive, "that Trask plays funny accompaniments." And
she lifted her head, fancying herself rather clever in finding a
scapegoat.

She ducked immediately, but not in time. One of her own slippers,--oh,
the irony of things!--torn off and thrown by Split's impatient hand,
struck her in the face.

Sissy's cheek flamed. "Did you do that on purpose, Split Madigan?"

Split Madigan had not done it on purpose, for the reason mainly that it
had not occurred to her. But now that it was done, it was not in her
present fury against all the world to disclaim intention to insult so
small a part of it. Glad of an excuse to outrage some one, any
one,--and, even then, preferably Sissy,--to make her sister share some
of that hurt and sting and smart that burned within herself, she met
Sissy's eye maliciously, triumphantly, significantly.

Sissy gasped. She took the slipper in her hand and made for her