And Split was joyous. Her explosive laugh pealed out in the second before fear of her father stifled it. So this was how Sissy had planned to get even; so this was the plot behind Bep's baffling blue eyes! And only the accident of Madigan's going to the door had saved Split—and confounded her enemy.
Oh, it was good to be a Madigan! Standing there dry and triumphant, Split hugged herself—her very own self—her individuality, which at this minute she would not have changed for anything the world had to offer. To be a Madigan, one's birthright to laugh and do battle with one's peers; and to win, sometimes through strength, sometimes through guile, sometimes through sheer luck—but to win!
THE LAST STRAW
Young as she was, Frances Madigan had known a great sorrow. She remembered (or fancied she did, having heard the circumstance so often related) how Francis Madigan had seized and confiscated her cradle as soon as her sex had been avowed.
"It's too bad, Madigan!" was the form in which Dr. Murchison had made the announcement of her birth.
"It's the last straw—that's what it is," Madigan answered grimly, bearing the cradle out to the woodshed. There he chopped it to pieces, as though defying a perverse destiny to send him another daughter.
With tears running down her cheeks, Frances had witnessed the pathetic sight—or, if she had not, she believed she had; which was quite as effective in her narrative of the occurrence.
"And he took my cwadle," Frank was accustomed to relate, with an abused sniff to punctuate each phrase, "and he chopped it wif the hatchet all in little bits o' pieces."
"How big, Frank?" Sissy liked to ask.