Part 8

"Split--you know very well you hear me," the voice cried, coming nearer.

Split burst into song. She was a merry, merry Zingara, she declared in sweet, strong cadence, with a boisterous chorus of tra-la-las that rivaled the canaries'; and the louder she sang, the faster she swung, so that she was really half deaf and wholly giddy when she felt Sissy's hand on her ankle.

"Oh, is that you, Sissy?" she asked, sweetly surprised, peering out from under her bushy mane.

"Yes, it's me, Sissy!" Cecilia's small, round face was stern. "And you've heard me from the very first, and if you want any--"

"Shall I show you how to skin the cat, Sis?" Irene interrupted hastily, pulling herself up with a jerk.

But Sissy was fat and had none of her sister's wiry agility. She declined; her mind was attuned to other issues just then, and her soul was a-quiver with malicious, anticipatory glee; for this was the day of Split's music lesson, and her teacher was none other than Sissy herself.

"So, if you want it," the younger sister's voice rose threateningly, "you've got to come now."

"Let's leave it till the afternoon." Split's voice came from somewhere in the midst of her evolutions.

"Will you come?" demanded Sissy peremptorily. "Once!"

How could Split answer? Her mouth was tight shut; she was pulling herself up inch by inch, slowly, slowly, till her chin should rest upon the bar.

"Will you come? Twice!"

Split's face was purple, and there was an agonized prayer for delay in her eyes.

"Will you come? Third--and la-ast--" Sissy prolonged the note quaveringly. It was not her intention to provoke her victim beyond endurance. These lessons, which gave her the whip-hand over the doughty and invincible Split, were far too precious to her.

"And la-ast," she repeated inexorably.

With a thud Irene dropped to the floor. Leaving all her light-heartedness behind in the dusk of the shed, where the trapeze still swung, she followed, a sullen captive; while Cecilia, gloating like the despot she was, led the way.

"We'll begin with the piece," said Split, eagerly, seating herself before the piano.

"No; scales and exercises first," declared Sissy, firmly. "Sit farther back, Split, and keep your wrist up."

Split moved the stool a millionth of an inch. Why, oh, why had she quarreled with Professor Trask? If some one had only told her that her own rebellion would mean the substitution of Cecilia for herself as his pupil, and another opportunity for that apt young perfectionist to outrank her senior!

With a rattling verve, and a dime on each wrist, which Professor Cecilia had placed there to effect a divorce between finger and arm movement, Irene attacked her scales and exercises. She loathed five-finger exercises. So did the talented but lazy Sissy, who knew well from experience what torture would most try her victim's soul. Split merely wanted to play well, to outplay Cecilia, to be independent of her and play her own accompaniments.

"Lift your fingers, Split. You must raise your wrist," came in an easy tone of command. "Repeat that, please. Again. There goes the dime again! If you'd keep your wrist steady, it wouldn't fall off. No; you're playing altogether too fast. Slowly! slow-ly! Bad fingering! bad fingering! Wretched! Wait, I'll mark it for you."

With her nicely pointed long pencil, Sissy, a martinet for technic, assumed all the airs of her own professor and prepared to explain the obvious.

"No, you don't!" Irene's hand shot out from the keys to the sheet-music, scattering the dimes; her wide-spread fingers covered the spot Sissy contemplated adorning with prettily made figures.

"Don't what?" asked Sissy.

"Oh, Miss Innocence! Don't be so affected, that's what! Don't put on so many airs! Don't pretend you know it all, Sis Madigan!"

"Why, Split! Do you s'pose I want to put the fingering down?"

"You do; but you sha'n't!" exclaimed Split, savagely.

"All I want to do is to help you," said Sissy, with well-bred forbearance.

"Well, don't show off, then."