"Split! You—"
"Try to bear with me, won't you, Sis, even if I am a devil?" grinned Split.
"And set us a good example, Sissy," piped the twins.
Sissy gasped.
"Be a yittle muvver to Fwank," lisped the baby, prompted by a big sister.
"And don't steal candy out of my pocket, will you, Cecilia Morgan?" begged her oldest sister.
"And—"
Sissy sprang into the air, as though lifted bodily by the taunts of these ungrateful beneficiaries of her good intentions.
"Sit down, you ox!" came in thundering tones from the head of the table.
When one was called an ox among the Madigans the culprit invariably subsided, however the epithet might tend to make her sisters rejoice. But Sissy had borne too much in that one day—always keeping in mind the perfect sanctity with which she had begun it.