"Of course I did! Who's the stupid now? Do you s'pose I didn't know it was—"
"What?—what?" Sissy repeated as her sister hesitated.
Irene turned up her nose insultingly. "I don't—know," she mocked, and beat a successful retreat.
Francis Madigan dined in a long room, the only man at a table with seven women ranging in years from four to forty-four. The accumulation of girls in his family was so wanton an outrage upon his desires that he rather rejoiced in the completeness of the infliction as an undeniable grievance.
He needed a grievance as a shield against which others' grievances might be shattered. And in default of a more tangible one, he cited his heavily be-daughtered house. It was at dinner-time that he always seemed to realize the extent of his disaster. As he took his place at the head, his wrathful eye swept from Frances in her high chair, up along the line, past the twins, through Cecilia, Irene, and Kate, till it lighted upon Miss Madigan's good-humored, placid face. His sister's placidity was an ever-present offense to the father of the Madigans,—the most irascible of unsuccessful men,—and the snort with which he finished the inspection and took up the carving-knife had become a classic in Madigan annals long before Sissy brought down the house at the age of eight by imitating it one evening in his absence.
"Some of the Madigans"
But to-night a most painful and ostentatious respect marked Sissy's manner to her parent. She stood markedly,—while the others scrambled into their chairs and Wong, the Chinese servant, sped about placing everything on the table at once,—waiting for her father to be seated.
She was still waiting politely when his eye lighted upon her. "Sit down, Cecilia!" he roared; "what d' ye want, gaping there?"