"I don't see how you can," said Miss Madigan, helplessly. "It's worn on the other side."
But with a tug Split had drawn it off, pillows and all, and she flew up-stairs, carrying Kate in her wake to help her pull down a portière which she intended transforming into a couch-cover.
Things sentient as well as material were accustomed to doing double duty at the Madigans' on Tridentata nights. When Francis Madigan, forewarned that his bell would often be rung that evening, but that he was not expected to resent the insult, had retreated to his castle and pulled up the drawbridge behind him, the slavey, with Sissy as assistant, became doorkeeper, and, later, butler. Critics, of course, these two were ex officio; and from their station out in the chilly hall, they listened to and mocked at the literary program, which Miss Madigan had entitled, "A Night of All Nations."
The opening duet between Maude and Henrietta Bryne-Stivers they had heard before. Few people in Virginia, indeed, had not.
"Trash!" Sissy pronounced it in Professor Trask's best manner.
The reading from "Sodom's Ende," in the original, by the traveled Mrs. Pemberton, was fiercely resented by her audience outside the gates. It always made a Madigan furious to hear a foreign tongue; for, apart from the affectation of strange pronunciations, the deliberate mouthing of words (and you couldn't make Sissy Madigan believe that Mrs. Ramrod understood half of what she was reading in that guttural, heavy tongue), there was the impugnment of other people's lack of linguistic accomplishment.
The critical paper on Daudet that followed was read by Miss Henrietta Bryne-Stivers. While it was in progress the two Madigans out in the hall each read an imaginary paper on the same topic, finishing with that identical courtesy which Henrietta had imported from Miss Jessup's school in the city. But Split tripped Sissy as she was bowing over low, and she fell, as softly as she could, to the floor. Miss Madigan looked out with a "S—sh!" Sissy cast off all blame in virtuous dumb-show, and in the pause the two heard Dr. Murchison's voice as Henrietta passed him and the door, on her triumphant way back to her seat.
"Allow me to compliment you, Miss Henrietta," said the old doctor, pleasantly excited by so youthful a lady's literary discrimination. "You are really fond of Daudet, then?"
Henrietta blushed. "Oh, no, indeed, doctor!" she said deprecatingly. "At Miss Jessup's we girls were not permitted to read him, you know."
"Ah, I see," murmured the doctor. "Only to write about him?"