To Madigan all children, his own particularly, were such unaccountable beings that a vagary more or less could not more hopelessly perplex his misunderstanding of them. With a "Tut! tut!" of impatience, he took the paper from her and tore it twice across. A long sigh of relief came from Sissy as the bits fluttered to the floor. "You're such a nice father!" she murmured happily, and fell asleep, a blissful bankrupt instead of a Pharisee. A PAGAN AND A PURITAN "Split! Split!" The morning was warm and young; Mount Davidson's side was golden with sunflowers. On the long front piazza Mr. Madigan's canaries, in their mammoth cage, were like to burst their throats for joy in the promise of summer. Irene, every lithe muscle a-play, was hanging by her knees on the swinging-bar, her tawny hair sweeping the woodshed floor as she swung. "Split, I say!" The tone was commanding--such a tone as Sissy dared assume only on Saturday mornings, when her elder sister's necessities delivered Irene the Oppressor into her hands. "Split Madigan!" In the very exhilaration of effort--the use of her muscles was joy to her--Split paused to wish that the house might fall on Sissy; that she might suddenly become dumb; that the key to the piano might be lost--anything that would avert her own impending doom. But none of these things happened; they never did happen, no matter how passionately the second of the Madigans longed for them on the last day of the week. "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.