"Did or did not Mrs. Clair ever have a dress before she married Mr. Clair?" To this the oracle gave answer: She did not, for how could she, she being Mr. Clair's second wife; his first, an accomplished lady, but all-solid china, having fallen from the top story of the apartment-house and smashed herself into bits, and the widower having himself accompanied Sissy and Split to the shop to select her successor, whose first gown was, of course, a heavy mourning robe. Bep heaved a deep sigh of content. She ran back to the woodshed so relieved that, although she had won a valuable shut-up, she did not care to "trophy" in her victory. Fom followed. But her grief for Mrs. Clair was bitterer even than her own disappointment. "I want the Smith twins," she said stiffly, when they got back to the dolls' sky-scraper. And Bep understood. The Smith twins were an invention of technical Fom's that had become an institution with herself and her playmate. Two tiny china dolls dressed in baby long clothes (the better to hide the fact that they were legless), the one with pink, the other with a blue sash, were brought up from the lowest story, where broken-nosed Mrs. Smith lived with her family of cripples. They were dolls of bad omen, these two, but following instead of prophesying a storm. When it became absolutely necessary for one Madigan twin to be "mad" at the other, and yet that the business of playing be uninterrupted, the Smith twins invariably made their appearance. They were supposed to save one's dignity; in reality, they lent piquancy to games and rendered "making up" delightful. Occasionally Bep and Fom did disown each other and adopt a chum from the outside world. One Beulah, known as "Bombey," Forrest was always ready obligingly to serve either or both of them in the capacity of dearest friend. But other playmates were tame after being accustomed to a Madigan; and each twin was so jealously afraid of the other's having a good time without her that she spent most of the period of estrangement trying to spy out what the other and her interloping companion were doing. The Smith twins were easier. "Tell Bep," said Florence to the pink-sashed small Smith, "that I think she's a nasty mean thing, and Mrs. Clair'll never forgive her." "Tell Fom," returned Bep, with spirit, putting the blue-sashed Smith baby in her pocket as a sort of emergency battery, so that the wires of communication might be set up at any time between her twin and herself, "that I don't care a 'article for what she thinks. And Mrs. Clair's nothing but a beggar. I wonder that Mr. Clair married her!" The war was on. * * * * *