Part 53

"And you sign yourself so in your letters?" he went on pleasantly.

"My letters?"

"Yes; your informal little notes, you know."

Sissy laid down her spoon. A sudden distaste for eating, for living, for breathing had come upon her. She had forgotten her postscript to that unhappy letter; it was all so long ago, and Aunt Anne's letters never had had a sequel! But before her now the savior's head seemed to bob up and down sickeningly, while a voice cried in her ears so loud she fancied the whole table must hear it:

"You--whoever you are--needn't bother to answer this. None of us Madigans wants your help or annybody else's. It's only that Aunt Anne's got the scribbles, and we'll thank you to mind your own business.

"Sissy Madigan."

The savior threw back his head in a quite boyish way and laughed aloud as he watched her face.

A cold rage seized Sissy. To be laughed at before the whole table! She hated him; she knew she hated him!

"I don't understand," said Madigan, feeling called upon to say something that was not vituperative at his own dinner-table. "You could never have seen a note of Sissy's, Mr. Morgan?"

"Never." The savior lied like a gentleman.

But he was mistaken if he supposed that he had placated Cecilia. She would not even meet his eyes, those eyes that twinkled so enjoyingly.

The savior tried Irene.

"You and I have hair the same color," he said genially. "I hope your temper isn't like mine, too."

"I hope not," she answered stiffly.

He laughed again, that big, amused laugh. Split's eyes shot fire. Evidently the Madigans were funnier than they knew.

"Now, I wonder," he said, "would that be a compliment or a confession?"

"Irene is trying and succeeding better every day in gaining self-control," interposed Aunt Anne, with hasty amiability. To discuss Irene's temper in committee of the whole, like that--the temerity of the man! "Won't you have some more mutton?" she pressed. "It's wash-day, you know, and it's just a pick-up dinner; but we're so glad to have you, if you'll excuse--"

"The apology's due from me, you know," he interrupted. "And the good fortune's mine, too. Fancy me dining the evening of my arrival at that brick barn they call the hotel down yonder! It will be hard enough when I really have to live there."

"You do not surely expect--" began Madigan, pausing over his strawberries.

"To live 'out West'? Will you let me tell you how it happened, Mr. Madigan? There isn't much to it--just this: Miles Madigan, as you know--do you know?--was not the man to leave much behind him. Not that he'd deliberately wrong a fellow, poor old chap, but--well--oh, you understand! Well, when his solicitors got through subtracting and dividing and subdividing, the heir--one Miles Morgan, bred to do nothing, and with a talent for that profession, I must admit--found himself poor, with just enough to live on. The ten thousand a year had--just slipped through Miles Madigan's fingers."

"Oh!" Miss Madigan's voice was sympathizing, disappointed.

"Then"--it was Frank's clear treble; she hadn't understood much, but she knew what "poor" meant: a Madigan learned that early--"then you're not going to mawwy Kate?"

Kate went white, while Miss Madigan's delicate face flushed purple, and Split pinched Sissy's arm, in her excitement, till that young woman cried aloud.

"Frances--outside!" stormed Madigan.

"Oh, Mr. Madigan--please!" deprecated the savior, holding out his arms to the whimpering Frances, who jumped into them as to a refuge. "No, little girl," he said, bending down to reassure her, "I'm going to marry Sissy; that's why I came out here."

A gasp of relief parted Kate's trembling lips. She was very near being fond of the detested savior in that moment, in her gratitude to him for not having looked at her.

But oh, the disdain of Sissy! It was such a very poor joke, in her opinion. Her round little face with its dots for features looked so sour and supercilious, as she passed the savior with averted eyes on her way out of the dining-room,--the children were withdrawing now,--that he could not resist putting out a hand to stop her.

"You will have me, Sissy?" he begged with a laugh. "Think of a man coming clear out here with so little encouragement as I had. Such devotion might appeal to a heart of stone!"