Looloo, who alone seemed the least bit awed by the presence of her dazzling cousin, undertook to explain.

"She's Mamie Willis, Cally,--I don't believe you know her. Well, you see she's always making the most atrocious puns, and is very proud of them--thinks she's quite a wit. So, you see, when anybody makes an awfully bad pun, like Hen's--"

"Brightest thing I've heard to-night," screamed Hen, defiantly, through the curtains.

"Aw, Loo!" came her mother's soft voice from the unseen. "Run upstairs and get half a dozen napkins, my child. The wash is in the basket on my bed."

"We always pretend like we're repeating it to Miss Mamie, just for fun,"

concluded Looloo. "Yes'm, mother!"

"Oh! I see," said Carlisle.

She had donned for the coming to supper a plain house-dress of soft dark-green silk, two summers old and practically discarded. ("This old thing, my dear! Why, it positively belongs in the _rag-bag!_") She never dressed much for the c.o.o.neys. Also, by wholly mechanical processes of adjustment to environment, her manner and air became simpler, somewhat unkeyed: she unconsciously folded away her more shining wings.

Nevertheless, there was about her to-night a fleeting kind of radiance which had caught the notice of more than one of her cavalier cousins, notably of pretty little Looloo, who had kissed the visitor shyly (for a c.o.o.ney) at greeting, and said, "Oh, Cally! You do look _so_ lovely!"

Cally herself was aware of an inner buoyance oddly at variance with the drab c.o.o.ney _milieu_. Recent progress in the great game had more than blotted out all memory of little mishaps at the Beach....

Starting aloft for the napkins, Looloo was adroitly tripped by Tee Wee, and fell back upon him with a little shriek. Instead of checking the tumult that followed, Major c.o.o.ney, including Carlisle in the proceedings with a mischievous wink, called out: "Give it to him, Loo!

Give it to him!" Loo, having got her small hand in his hair, gave it to him, good-fashion. Tee Wee moaned, and Chas made a fairly successful effort to gag him with the newspaper. In the midst of the uproar, Mrs.

c.o.o.ney's gentle voice could be heard calling, "Supper, supper," and Hen, entering with a large dinner-bell, conceived the whimsey of ringing it loudly in everybody's ear.

Presently, after much noise and confusion, they were seated at the antique mahogany, with the dent near one edge where a Yankee cavalryman had rested his spurred foot too carelessly once upon a time. It was then observed that Hen, having silenced her great clapper, was un.o.btrusively gone from the midst. The circ.u.mstance proved of interest to the younger c.o.o.neys.

"She's nursing a little bunch of violets she got three days ago," Tee Wee explained to Carlisle. "Says she's going to wear 'em to the Masons'

to-morrow, though anybody can see they can't possibly live through the night."

"I thought I saw a purple box in the front window as I drove up," said Carlisle. "Is it a secret who sent them?"

"'Bout forty," said Chas, making a fine one-hand catch of a napkin.

"You'd hardly call 'em a bunch, Tee Wee--more like a nosegay."

"Pa.s.s this coffee to Cally, son."

"Bob Dunn sent 'em, Cally, down at the bookstore," said Looloo, sweetly.

"And he wrote Hen a love-letter Thanksgiving beginning, 'Darling Miss c.o.o.ney.'"

"That so?" said Tee Wee, who was just home from the University for Christmas and not up on all the news yet. "How'd he sign it--'Your loving Mr. Dunn'?"

"'Ave some werry nice 'am, Cally?"

"Yes--thank you. But do go on and tell me about Mr. Dunn. Does Hen like him?"

"No, but she loves violets," said Tee Wee. "Made me sit up half of last night, fanning 'em for her."

"Loo, pa.s.s Charles's plate, daughter."

Carlisle surveyed the noisy table as from some lofty peak. She knew that the c.o.o.ney habit of monopolizing all conversation, and dashing straight through every topic, was only their poor-but-proud way of showing off: sometimes it was a little irritating, but to-night only rather fatiguing to the ear-drums. The children came two years apart, as regular as some kind of biannual publication; Looloo, seventeen, being the youngest, and also the best-looking and the most popular in the family. But then all the c.o.o.neys were good-looking, including the Major, and all were popular in the family. In fact, they were more like a house-party than a family at all: and in some ways they rather resembled a queer little secret fraternity, enjoying strange delights and responding with shrieks to unintelligible catchwords.

To-night the talk was more than usually disjointed, owing to the regrettable absence of Hortense. There was constant jumping up, infinite "pa.s.sing." Mr. Tee Wee, manipulating the water-pitcher from the side-table, complained aside to his mother at the universal thirst.

Chas, it seemed, had charge of the heating-up of the later crops of biscuits: he kept springing off to the kitchen, now and then returning with a heaping platter of what he called his little brown beauties.

In the midst of the confusion, Hen strode in, looking somewhat defiant, and instantly drew the fires of all.

"How're the little patients, Hen? Number 9 looked pretty sick to me this--"

"Best thing I know is running 'em up and down the hall, and then brisk ma.s.sage--"

"Gargled 'em yet, Hen?"

Hen, laughing wildly, stood her ground.

"That's all right!" she retorted to the last sally, which happened to be Chas's. "There are swains in this town who might boost their standing a little if only _they'd_ patronize the florist once in a while!"

This drew loud approbation, and Chas (who was understood to be very attentive to a Miss Leither--_Leither!_--of the Woman's Exchange), laughing with the majority, threw up his hands, saying, "h.e.l.lup! h.e.l.lup!"

He fled to the kitchen to look after his little brown beauties. The noisy supper proceeded. Presently Major c.o.o.ney, the easy-going and reminiscent, gave the conversation a new tack.

"And where are your violets, Cally, my dear?" he asked, directing one of his mischievous winks at Looloo. "You must have a flower-shop full at home, if what we hear is true."

Carlisle, on the point of saying something slightly caustic about Chas as a swain, found the tables abruptly turned. All the c.o.o.neys were looking at her. She said with equanimity that, on the contrary, she got so few flowers that when she did have any, she sat up at night with them just like Hen.

"And I'll wear 'em to the Masons' to-morrow night, too!" said Hen, throwing round a look which challenged contradiction.

"Now, cousin, what's the use?" said Chas, reentering with his platter.

"The Visitor is giving you the rush of your young life, and we're all on. Take a handful of my beauties."

"You mean Mr. Canning? My dear Chas, if he only were!"

There was no rebuffing the c.o.o.neys. They began their little third-degree system.

"He called on you last Thursday afternoon, didn't he, Cally?" said Looloo, laughing, with a little face for her daring.

"One call, my dear child!"

"You went motoring with him on Friday," said Theodore, gravely, "and stopped for tea at the Country Club at 6.20, you taking chocolate--"

"One motor-ride!"

"You dined with him at the Arlington on Monday night, table decorations being small diamond necklaces--"

"Good heavens!" laughed Carlisle, coloring a little. "All this is terribly circ.u.mstantial! I had no idea my movements were--"

"Movement is useless--don't move, lady! We have you covered--"

"There, there, children!--stop showing your jealousy," laughed Mrs.

c.o.o.ney; and her eyes rested with a brief wistfulness on the shining niece who plumed eagle's feathers for flights where her daughters would never follow. "You'd all give your eye-teeth to be half as pretty and attractive as Cally ..."

"Yes'm," said Chas. "Well, then, Cally, have one more sardine, _please_.

Nothing on earth for the complexion like these fat saline fellows that mother catches fresh every morning with her little hook and line.--Mind, _Loo_! You're joggling The Bowl."