"Teeny-weeny bits—little as that," Frank whined, still in character, and showing a small finger-nail. "And—"
"And then what did you do?" prompted Sissy.
Frank stamped her foot. The cynical tone of the question grated upon an artistic temperament at the crucial moment when it was composing and acting at the same time. "Don't you say it, Sissy Madigan!" she cried petulantly. "I can say it myself. And then"—turning to Maude Bryne-Stivers, to whom she was telling the touching incident, with a resumption of her first manner, and her most heartrending tone—"and then I looked first at my cwadle and then at my father, and I cwied—and cwied—and cwied—and—"
One is limited at four and is apt to strive for emphasis by the simple method of repetition. Frank always "cwied and cwied" till some interruption came to the rescue and furnished a climax.
"You dear little lump of sugar!" cried Miss Bryne-Stivers at the proper moment, lifting the chubby mourner off her feet and out of her pose at the same time.
And Frank, seated on the lady's lap, was content with her effect.
It was a small matter, anyway, with Frank Madigan—the loss of a pose or two; she had so many. A parody of parodies was the smallest Madigan, and her jokes were the shadows of shades of jokes handed down ready-made to her. Yet she was convinced that they were good; otherwise the Madigans would not have laughed at them long before she adopted them.
She herself was a victim—as was the gentleman after whom she was named—of a surplusage of femininity about the house. All female children are mothers before they are girls, the earliest sex-tendency having a scientific precedence over others; and the Madigans "played with" their smallest sister bodily, as with a doll whose mechanism presented more possibilities than that of any mechanical toy they had seen—in some other child's possession. Later they were charmed—if but for a while—by the field her mentality provided for experimental work. There were times when Frances Madigan had a mother for every day in the week; there were days when she had no mother at all; and there were occasions when she was adopted as a whole, and for a stated time, by some Madigan with a theory, which was tried upon her with all the remorselessness of a faddist before she was given over as completely to its successor.
Thus Sissy had taken possession of her and made of her, in the short time her enthusiasm lasted, a visible replica of that which Sissy tried to delude herself into thinking was her own character. In those days she cut poor Frank's curls off and plastered the child's hair down in a strong-minded fashion. She insisted upon her disciple's pronouncing clearly and distinctly. She inaugurated a régime of practical common sense, small rewards and severe punishments, and taught Frank how to count. But not to spell; for Sissy had introduced the fashion among Madigans of spelling out the word which was the key-note of a sentence—a proceeding that exasperated Frank. "Don't you let her have any c-a-n-d-y; Aunt Anne says 't ain't good for her," was a sample of the abuses that drove Frank nearly mad with curiosity and indignation.
But finally Sissy joined the Salvation Army with her protégée (religion had all the attraction of the impliedly forbidden to the Madigans), and was discovered by Francis Madigan one evening on C Street, putting up a fluent prayer in a nasal tremolo—an excellent imitation of the semi-hysterical falsetto of the bonneted enthusiast who had preceded her.