"I don't expect anything at all," remarked Sissy, coldly.
"Well, you'd better expect, for"—with a swift motion that cut off her sister's retreat and put her own back to the door—"you'll play that piece before you go out of this room."
Without a word Sissy plumped down on the floor. Unconcernedly she pulled her jackstones out of her pocket, and soon their regular click-clock and the deft thump of her small, fat fist was all that was heard in the room.
It always seemed to Split that the last occasion of a disagreement between herself and the sister nearest to her in years, and furthest from her in temperament, was the most intolerable. Never in her life, she thought, had she so longed to murder Sissy as at this minute. She—Split—had no time to waste besieging the impregnable fortress of Sissy's mulishness, when the hardening process had really set in. There never was time enough on Saturdays to do half what one planned, and to-day was the day of Crosby Pemberton's party, besides.
And still Split remained at the door, and still Sissy played jackstones. Twice there were skirmishes between besieger and besieged—once when Split crept upon Sissy and, with a quick thrust of her slim, straight leg, disarranged an elaborate scheme for "putting horses in the stable," and once when there was a strategic sortie from Sissy, which failed to catch the enemy napping.
It was Split who finally yielded, as, with rage in her heart, she had known from the very beginning would be the case. But no Madigan ever laid down her arms and surrendered formally.
Split threw open the door with a bang. "Go out, then, miss! go out!" she commanded.
Calmly and skilfully Sissy finished the "devil on a stump," the last of those ornamental additions the complexities of which appeal to experts in the game; then she gathered up her beloved jackstones and got to her feet. But dignity forbade that she should leave the room just when her foe had ordered her to go. So she ignored the invitation, and going to the piano, sat down in an ostentatiously correct position, requiring many adjustments and readjustments, and began to play "The Gazelle."
She played prettily, did this young person, who seemed to Split specially designed to infuriate her. And to-day she played "with expression," soft-pedaling and lingering upon certain passages in a way which the Madigans considered shameless.
"Oh, the affected thing! Just listen to her! How she does put on!" sneered Split to the world at large.