With a cry, Miss Madigan flew forward and sharply slapped the destructive baby hands.
"I yant to go home!" screamed Fauntleroy.
"Yes; and I want you to go, too," Miss Madigan declared, incensed. "Get his things, Sissy, this minute."
"But I want him to play wif," whimpered Frank. She was not so slow but that she could learn the lesson Fauntleroy's success taught.
Miss Madigan looked at her a moment. "Oh, you do!" she ejaculated sarcastically. "You haven't sisters enough—you want more noise and confusion in this house!"
The wise Madigans looked from her to one another and merely thought things. There was sadly little of the "angel child" about them. Their intuition was keen enough to penetrate their aunt's secret wishes and tastes, and they were occasionally tempted, for the spoils to be gotten out of it, to play up to that lady's ideals. But Aunt Anne was considered almost too easy by the Madigans, whom honor restricted to those foemen worthy of their steel. Frances was the only one who could, without losing caste, cater to her aunt's well-known and deeply detested sentimentality.
She did for a time, and it was from Miss Madigan that she learned her famous accomplishment. It was sung, or rather droned, and it went like this:
"B—A—Ba,
B—E—Be,
B—I—Bi—
Ba—Be—Bi;
B—O—Bo,
Ba—Be—Bi—Bo,
B—U—Bu,
Ba—Be—Bi—Bo—Bu!"
Intoxicated by success, Frank sang this subtle ditty one day for Francis Madigan. He listened to it with that puzzled expression which his children's vagaries brought to his lined, stern face.
"Who taught you that nonsense, Frances?" he demanded sternly when she had finished.