The Madigans Part 32

It was absurd of him, but there was something in Old Mother Gibson, as the Madigans sang and played her, that turned the soberest of heads. And the savior's forte was not in being staid. He fell upon his knee before her.

"Forgive me, O Sissy, for not being a Madigan," he begged, "and receive me into the fold!"

She looked down at him, self-conscious, embarra.s.sed; yet the hidden sentimentality of her nature was appealed to by the masculine young face turned half laughing, half seriously, to her.

"Are you sure," she asked shyly, "that you're not one already?"

It is of record that one evening during that summer when the old Tomboy mine was reopened, a young Irishman newly arrived on the Comstock escorted down to Fitzmeier's--where, everybody knows, there is ice-cream to be had--six girls of a.s.sorted ages, one boy, and two young persons whose garments belied their s.e.x. Yet they all seemed rampantly happy and quite unashamed.