ars to beat
the expensive smell. A large and very popular group of family jokes
centred about the plant of the legman.

Carlisle Heth "came to supper" with the Cooneys, as agreed, on the
Thursday following the magic afternoon at Willie's apartment. The week
intervening had been, as it chanced, one of the most interesting and
titillating periods of her life; by the same token, never had family
duty seemed more drearily superfluous. However, this periodic, say
quarterly, mark of kinsman's comity was required of her by her father,
a clannish man by inheritance, and one who, feeling unable to "do"
anything especial for his sister's children, yet shrank from the
knocking suspicion of snobbery. In the matter of intermealing,
reciprocity was formally observed between the two families. Four times
per annum the Cooneys were invited in a body to dine at the House of
Heth, Mrs. Heth on these occasions speaking caustically of her consort's
relatives, and on Christmas sending gifts of an almost offensively
utilitarian nature.

The noisy cousins filled the dingy little parlor to overflowing; this,
though Mrs. Cooney and Hen, having rushed out for the welcome, had at
once rushed back to the preparations for supper. For it appeared that
Hortense was absent once again, having asked to "git to git" a night
off, to see her step-daughter allianced to a substitute Pullman porter.
The two ladies, however, were only gone before, not lost, and through
the portieres joined freely in the conversation, which rattled on
incessantly in the Cooney style.

Carlisle sat on the rusty sofa, listening absently to the chatter. Her
unaspiring uncle-in-law, the Major, who was vaguely understood to be "in
insurance" at present, parted his long coat-tails before the Baltimore
heater, and drifted readily to reminiscence. Louise and Theodore (as the
family Bible too stiffly knew Looloo and Tee Wee) sat together on a
divan, indulging in banter, with some giggling from Looloo--none from
grave Theodore. Chas informally skimmed an evening paper in a corner,
with comments: though the truth was that precious little ever appeared
in any newspaper which was news to the keen young Cooneys....

"And I said to Hen," observed Major Cooney to his fashionable niece,
having now got his short history of the world down as far as the
'80s--"now stop your whining around me, Miss. If you've got to whine, go
down to the cellar and stand in the corner. Well--"

"Why could she