Irene nodded. She was cinching her sash tight about the waist, so that her trained skirt might not come off in the ardor of "playing lady." When Sissy disappeared, and reappeared with her aunt's claret-colored poplin, Split was catching up her train with a grace that was simply ravishing as she rustled away. "What'll you say to her--afterward?" called Sissy after her, prudently facing the future, even in the height of delight induced by feeling ruffles about her feet. [Illustration: "A train meant domesticity and dignity to Sissy. In Split it bred and fostered a spirit of coquetry"] "Pouf!" A train meant domesticity and dignity to Sissy. In Split it bred and fostered a spirit of coquetry; she believed herself to be very French in long skirts. "I'll just say she said 'Yes' when I asked her. She never knows what she says when she's writing." Sissy nodded understandingly, and rustled in a most ladylike manner after her senior. The twins saw the two beautiful creatures swishing down the front steps, bound for the street to show their glory and feel the peacock's delight in dragging his tail in the dust. "Did she say you could have 'em?" they shrieked. And Sissy responded with that quick imitative gesture that signified scribbling. With a light on their faces such as the Goths might have worn when pillaging Rome, the twins made for the treasure-house. A few moments later they rustled gorgeously down the steps, followed by Frances, wearing her aunt's embroidered red flannel petticoat. Unfortunately, Frank's heels caught in this, as she too strutted worldward, and down she fell, bumping from step to step, gaining momentum as she bumped, and threatening to roll clear down to Taylor Street, and so on down, down into the canon, if she had not bumped safely at last into the twins. They, hearing her coming, had turned their backs and joined hands, and catching hold of the shaky banister on each side, presented a natural bulwark beyond which Frances and her bumps and shrieks might not pass. And through it all Miss Madigan wrote. * * * * * Miss Madigan was writing letters. Indeed, Miss Madigan was always writing letters. In any emergency she might be trusted to concoct a long and literary epistle, which she rephrased, edited, and copied till she felt all an author's satisfaction. For the Madigans' Aunt Anne was afflicted with _cacoethes scribendi_, and was never so happy as when there was a letter to be written--except when she was actually writing it. But the heartlessness of the merely literary was very far indeed from Miss Madigan's ideal. She had the happiness to believe that, besides being very beautiful, her letters were most useful--in fact, indispensable. When everything else failed she wrote a letter. When that failed she wrote another.