Part 47

"Trash!" Sissy pronounced it in Professor Trask's best manner.

The reading from "Sodom's Ende," in the original, by the traveled Mrs. Pemberton, was fiercely resented by her audience outside the gates. It always made a Madigan furious to hear a foreign tongue; for, apart from the affectation of strange pronunciations, the deliberate mouthing of words (and you couldn't make Sissy Madigan believe that Mrs. Ramrod understood half of what she was reading in that guttural, heavy tongue), there was the impugnment of other people's lack of linguistic accomplishment.

The critical paper on Daudet that followed was read by Miss Henrietta Bryne-Stivers. While it was in progress the two Madigans out in the hall each read an imaginary paper on the same topic, finishing with that identical courtesy which Henrietta had imported from Miss Jessup's school in the city. But Split tripped Sissy as she was bowing over low, and she fell, as softly as she could, to the floor. Miss Madigan looked out with a "S--sh!" Sissy cast off all blame in virtuous dumb-show, and in the pause the two heard Dr. Murchison's voice as Henrietta passed him and the door, on her triumphant way back to her seat.

"Allow me to compliment you, Miss Henrietta," said the old doctor, pleasantly excited by so youthful a lady's literary discrimination. "You are really fond of Daudet, then?"

Henrietta blushed. "Oh, no, indeed, doctor!" she said deprecatingly. "At Miss Jessup's we girls were not permitted to read him, you know."

"Ah, I see," murmured the doctor. "Only to write about him?"

"Miss Jessup thought it was more--fitting, with the French authors," observed Henrietta.

"So it is," agreed Murchison, dryly. "So it is. The excellent Miss Jessups--how well they know!"

"He's guying her," chuckled Sissy, making a mental vow to read Daudet or die in the attempt. "And she doesn't know it."

"Hush!" came from Split.

In a tenor a bit foggy, but effectively sympathetic, old Westlake was singing, "Oh, would that we two were maying!"

Sissy put her eye to the crack of the door, and Split, watching her, saw her round face grow red and indignant.

"What is it?" she whispered, squirming till she too had an eye glued to the crack.

"Look!" exclaimed Sissy, disgustedly.

Straight in their line of vision sat Kate, and upon her old Westlake's eyes were ardently fixed as he sang.

"It's--it's not decent," declared Sissy, wrathfully.

"He does look like a calf." Split grinned. Kate looked very pretty in that white cashmere embroidered in red rosebuds, which had been made over from the box from Ireland, Split said to Sissy, and so was deserving of forgiveness, she hinted; for when one had a new frock--

Sissy, the sensible, snorted unbelievingly. What gown had ever affected her?

"But I'll get even with him," she said, stealing on tiptoe down the hall. "Just you watch!"

Split, her nose in the crack of the door, watched. The Avalanche had finished his first verse and begun the second, when Sissy appeared in the parlor, very modest and retiring, walking behind chairs and effacing herself with an ostentation that could not but attract all eyes. She stopped at Miss Madigan's chair, asked a question,--which Split knew well was utterly irrelevant and immaterial,--and received an answer in Aunt Anne's company manner: a compound of sweetness and flustered inattention which no one could mimic better than Sissy herself.

Then she withdrew, slowly and by a tortuous route which brought her just beside him at the moment Westlake stopped singing. Without a word, yet with a gracious instinct for the momentary confusion in which the performer found himself, his seat having been taken while he sang, Cecilia pulled out another from the wall and moved it slightly toward him.

The little attention was offered so naturally, with such engaging demureness, that Mrs. Pemberton--whom the social amenities in children ever delighted--almost loved Sissy Madigan at that moment. So, by the way, did Split, out in the hall, her eye at the crack of the door, her feet lifting alternately with anticipative rapture. For it was the Versailles fauteuil that Sissy had so sweetly selected for old Westlake. And when the big fellow came down to earth with a crash, rising red and confused from the debris, Sissy was already out in the hall. She arrived at the crack in time to see Kate stuff her handkerchief into her mouth and hurry to the window, her shoulders shaking, while Miss Madigan flew to the rescue.

It took a recitation in Italian by Mrs. Forrest to rob Sissy Madigan, judge and executioner, of her complacency after this. Then Aunt Anne recited "The Bairnies Cuddle Doon" charmingly, as she always did, but most Hibernianly, with that clean accent that makes Irish-English the prettiest tongue in the world. After which she received with smiling complacency the compliments of Mrs. Forrest, who told her that an ideal mother had been lost to the world in her.

Outside, two cynics listened with a bored air. They felt that they required a stimulant after this, so they made a hurried visit to the dining-room, thereby escaping Mr. Garvan's reading of "Father Phil's Collection." But when Henrietta Bryne-Stivers delivered "Blow, Bugle, Blow," changing from speaking voice to the sung chorus with a composure that was really shameless, the critics out in the hall received that insulting shock which novelty inflicts upon the provincial, which is the childish, mind. They revenged themselves in their own way, mouthing and attitudinizing, caricaturing every pose which Miss Henrietta had been taught, by the instructor of Delsarte at Miss Jessup's, was grace. They were caught in the midst of their saturnalia of ridicule by Kate, who promptly exploded at their uncouth, dumb merriment.

"Aunt Anne wants you, Sissy," she said when she got her breath.

In an instant Sissy was sobered. It wasn't possible that she was to be sent to bed before supper! To be a waiter was the height of happiness for Sissy.

"It's because of the Versiye fotoy," giggled Split, as she ran off to the dining-room.

"It isn't, is it?" whispered Sissy to Kate. And Kate shook her head reassuringly, and waved her in. She couldn't answer audibly, for Dr. Murchison was tuning up his sweet old violin, while Maude Bryne-Stivers offered to accompany him on the piano.