It did--for a moment, when it came in contact with his body; but it was long enough for its course to be deflected from the steep hill below and turned northward down the comparatively level cross street. When Bob picked himself up and followed, he found a thin, white-faced, red-haired girl running swiftly beside him. Later he accompanied her and the plucky little Frank (still smiling and chuckling over her fine ride) up the hill to the home of Mr. Francis Madigan, where he demanded damages--both personal and mechanical. "And fa-ther tooked her in his own room," Frank said with shuddering unction, as she told the tale, "and she's in there yet!" * * * * * It was Fom who awakened a sense of the beautiful in Frank. She and Bep were continually playing London Bridge, in the course of which it became necessary to demand: "Which would you rather have (that means, like best): a diamond horse covered with stars, or a golden cradle with red silk pillows?" Sentiment and the sad experience of her babyhood always prompted Frank to choose the cradle, of course. After which, her preference promptly became of no importance whatever; the whole beautiful business was put aside, and she was bidden to get behind Fom. She discovered later that whether she preferred diamonds and stars to gold and red silk, it was all the same: she invariably had to get behind one twin or the other, clasp her tightly about the waist, and pull--and pull--till the whole universe gave way and she plumped down on the ground with a big twin falling on top of her. But there was another phase of the beautiful which was far more satisfactory to Frank, while it lasted. Fom discovered it one day when Split took Dora away from her, just because the brunette twin preferred her lunch to the burned potatoes Split had baked in the back yard when they were playing emigrants. It was then, in the depths of her grief, that the inspiration came to her. "Shall Fom make you look awful pretty, Frank?" she asked, in the form which children suppose wheedles babies most successfully. Frank didn't know; she was suspicious of the hollowness of the beautiful and the inutility of choosing. Besides, she was making dolls' biscuit just then from a piece of dough Wong had given her, cutting out each individual bun with Aunt Anne's thimble.