Aunt Rose Hopwood's going home to-morrow."

"First I've heard of it. Frankly I doubt your word."

For that Hen idly smote Chas's shins with her silver-handled umbrella
(Carlisle's gift three Christmases before), at which Chas cried _ouch_
in such a manner as to attract the attention of bystanders. Henrietta
liked this umbrella very much and commonly carried it, like a cane,
through all droughts.

"But," said she, reconsidering, "I think Hortense'll be off to-morrow,
that's so. Well, come the first soon night you feel like it--"

Carlisle had been doing some considering also, her conscience pricking
her on account of the cousinly duty, long overdue.

"I've an engagement to-morrow--so sorry," she said, rather hastily. "But
how about one night early next week, say--Thursday, if that
would suit--?"

Chas and Hen agreed that it would do perfectly. Pot-luck at seven. Sorry
she wouldn't walk on with them. Bully day for Shanks's mares. And
so forth....

Carlisle, an eye-catching figure in her calling costume (assuming that
this is what it was) glanced after her poor relations from the Byrds'
vestibule, and was amused by her thought. How exactly like the Cooneys'
lively cheek (and nobody else's) to propose a country walk with them as
a perfectly satisfactory substitute for an hour's _tete-a-tete_ with
Hugo Canning!

VII

How the Great Parti, pursued or pursuing to Cousin Willie
Kerr's apartment, begins thundering again.

Bellingham Court was the very newest of those metropolitan-looking
apartment hotels which the rapid growth and complicating "standards" of
the city was then calling into being. It was on the most fashionable
street, Washington, in one of the most fashionable parts of it. And it
had bell-boys, onyxine vestibules, and hot and cold water in nearly
every room.

It also had a fat black hall-porter in a conductor's uniform, and this
functionary informed Mrs. Heth that Mr. Kerr was momentarily detained at
the bank, but had telephoned orders that any callers he might have were
to be shown right up. The Heth ladies were shown right up.

Willie's new apartment consisted of a sitting-room, a fair-sized
bedroom, and a very small bath. About the sitting-room the ladies
wandered, glancing disinterestedly at the Kerr Penates. Presently Mrs.
Heth opened doors and peeped into what lay beyond.

"It's a good thing he's small," said she. "H'm, that thing looks like a
foot-tub."

Carlisle, l