Part 52

"The savior'll put a stop, Fom, to your--Kate Madigan, are you changing your dress?" Sissy's voice fell suddenly, and she put the question in a calm, magisterial tone that sent every eye in the room on a query toward the eldest Madigan.

Kate turned at bay. She had slipped off her waist, and the red was flushing her long throat and small, spirited face. "Well, miss, suppose I am?" she demanded hotly.

"She always changes her dress for dinner, you know," came in a sarcastic sneer from Split. "She wants to show our dear cousin how swell we are. We all wear low-necked rigs, and father has his swallowtail, and--"

"Shall I bring you the curling-iron, Kathy?" mocked Sissy.

"Don't you want a rose for your hair, Kathleen?"

"Or a ribbon here and there, as Mrs. Ramrod says, Kitty?"

"Aunt Anne says," said Frank, feeling that this was some sort of game and that her turn had come, "he's going to mawwy you. Is he, Kate?"

The white cashmere with the red-embroidered rosebuds slipped from Kate's hand. All innocent of malicious intent, Frank's shot had scored. The cry of the Pack that leaped about her could not touch Kate after this. She was frozen in by maidenly prudery, by childish self-consciousness, by Madigan perversity. When the bell rang she went in to dinner in her old pink gingham, her head high, her lips set, her eyes unseeing.

"She's got 'em," Sissy whispered to Split.

"Yep, that's the sulks all right," Split nodded.

"This is Kate." Miss Madigan, brave in her new purple gown with the lace collar at her throat, shot a reproachful glance at the unadorned young lady of the house. "Your cousin, Miles Morgan, Kate."

"Howd' ye do?" Kate said coldly, ignoring his outstretched hand and passing on to her seat, where she began busily to serve the butter.

The savior of the family looked after her, interested. Though guilty of every count in Sissy's indictment, he was not accustomed to being overlooked by such very young ladies.

"And this is Irene," said Miss Madigan, a tremor in her voice; she, too, knew now that Kate "had 'em." "This one is Cecilia; the twins, Bessie and Florence; and Frances, the baby."

The savior of the family glanced along the line of five blank faces, and felt the perfunctory touch of five small, slippery hands with nothing more human about their clasp than the childish masks above them.

"I say, how do you tell one another apart?" he asked, with a sudden gleam in his eye, as they passed him and slid into their places.

A dozen pitying eyes looked coldly at him; half a dozen small mouths curved disdainfully. His remark seemed to make them more than ever like mechanisms--hostile ones.

Miss Madigan dropped the soup-ladle in her confusion. To that experienced lady there was something ominous about so unbroken a union of Madigans; she remembered with sorrow the few times any subject had found them unanimous.

But Madigan came in just then, took his seat at the head, looked mechanically for the banished dog and the cat, and Dusie, chirping madly in her cage to attract his attention to the fact of her cruel and unusual imprisonment. He cleared his throat and took up the carver--and immediately Miles Morgan was conscious of an unbending of the small Madigans--a cuddling together, so to speak, and a swift interchange of impressions.

"You haven't given me an opportunity to explain, Miss Madigan--" he began, in the pause during which Madigan carved strenuously.

"'Aunt Anne,' if you please, my dear boy," urged Miss Madigan, warmly. "The relationship's distant, but now that you are with us we can have no ceremony out here in the wilds."

"Oh, thank you." The savior, turning toward her, saw the fattest little Madigan nudge her red-haired neighbor savagely. She was evidently angry at something. "It's good of you to take me in like this. What I want to say is that the train was late crawling crookedly up and around the mountains. I had no idea of arriving in the evening and coming in upon you this way. But when I got here, the town looked so savage, don't you know, so--drear--and desolate and--and flimsy, I got a bit home-sick--there! The thought of all you people, my own people, housed somewhere in the spraddling town, called to me. I positively couldn't wait till morning. You'll forgive me--Aunt Anne?"

A suppressed gurgle came from a blonde Madigan on the other side of the table, choking over her soup at this endearment. A brunette just her height spoke rapidly to her and persuasively, but to no avail. Alarming sounds came from the victim till presently a very dignified, small fat person rose from her seat, made her way to the nearly suffocated blonde, gave her a thump between the shoulder-blades that brought tears of another variety to the sufferer's eyes, and walked composedly back to her seat.

"How can you be so rough, Sissy!" Aunt Anne exclaimed in an agitated voice.

"Ah--Sissy!" The savior leaned forward, looking across with a smile in his eye that might have melted any heart save so savage a Madigan's. "So you are Sissy."

"My name," said that young person, meeting his smiling eye coldly, "is Cecilia."

"But your friends call you Sissy?"

"Yes, my friends do," admitted the perfectionist, with an accent that was supposed to be crushing.