"It's because of the Versiye fotoy," giggled Split, as she ran off to the dining-room.
"It isn't, is it?" whispered Sissy to Kate. And Kate shook her head reassuringly, and waved her in. She couldn't answer audibly, for Dr. Murchison was tuning up his sweet old violin, while Maude Bryne-Stivers offered to accompany him on the piano.
But Murchison knew too much of the manners and methods of Jessup's Seminary, as revealed by its showiest pupil.
"Thank you, thank you, Miss Maude, but this is a very old-fashioned and a very simple entertainment I'm going to give. Just the things that I play to myself when I'm weary of listening to humanity tell of its ills and aches—the egotist! Then I look down into the beautifully clean inside of my fiddle, its good old mechanism without a flaw, and listen to the things it has to tell.... Thank you, just the same, Miss Maude; this is not a theme worthy of your brilliant rendition, but, as I said, a simple, old-fashioned playing of the fiddle. I'll supply the old-fashioned part, and Sissy here can do the simple accompaniment, if she will."
If she would! Sissy was so gaspingly happy and proud that she forgot even to pretend that she wasn't. Seating herself, she let her trembling fingers sink into the opening chord, while the old doctor's bow sought the strains of "Kathleen Mavourneen," of "Annie Laurie," the "Blue Bells of Scotland," and "Rose Marie."
The unspoken sympathy that existed between these two flowed now from the bow to Sissy's fingers, and made a harmony as pretty as was the sight of the old man and the happy child looking up at him. Sissy Madigan was conscious that the doctor knew her—almost; that, nevertheless, she occupied a place quite unique in his heart. And she loved passionately to be loved, this hypocrite of a Madigan, who jeered and jibed at any demonstration of affection. A sense of being utterly at harmony with the world possessed her now; the fact that she was "showing off" was far, far in the background of her consciousness, when all at once she happened to glance out through the hall door.
She had left it ajar behind her, expecting Kate to follow her in. But Kate, evidently, had not followed. She stood out there alone with Mr. Garvan, her arms behind her, her slender figure drawn up beneath the swinging hall lamp, her pert little head, circled by the braids she wore coiled clear around it when she wanted to be very grown-up, upturned to the master, her every feature stamped with coquetry.
Sissy shut her lips firmly—and the wrong note she struck marred the doctor's finale. It was evident that Kate Madigan needed looking after.
She did; and yet no one but Kate and those she experimented upon could help her to find herself.