hout being called a homicide
by--by eccentric medical men?"

Hen hesitated, and then began: "Well, business is hard, Cally, and men
in business--"

"Why doesn't your friend try attending to his own, then, the medical
business, instead of interfering all the time with other people's?"

The Cooney answered quite easily: "You see, he'd say this _was_ his
business." Then she smiled a little, thoughtfully, and said: "He'd say,
Cally, that the world's all one family, and everybody's responsible for
everybody else. The cute part about it is that he absolutely believes
it.... And it worries him that people aren't as happy as they ought to
be, the poor because they haven't anything to be happy with, the rich
because they have too much. He and Mr. Beirne argue about that for
hours. He's absolutely the only person I ever saw who really doesn't
care for--"

"Why, my _dear_!" interrupted Carlisle, smiling rather dangerously.
"You'll make me believe that you _admire_ the man immensely."

Hen laughed, and replied enigmatically: "Well, it's nice to feel free to
admire what's admirable, don't you think so?"

"You do admire him very much?"

"I think he's perfectly precious," said Henrietta Cooney.

A peal of triumph from the rear room indicated that Major Cooney had
reached the king-row in the teeth of bitter opposition. The peal came
from Looloo, who should have been reading "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme"
with a big dictionary instead of hanging over her father's shoulder.
Footsteps above suggested that Chas and Aunt Molly were making a careful
toilet indeed for his call upon the obscure inamorata.

In the Cooney parlor, the two girls looked at each other. Carlisle tried
hard to stare Hen down, and failed. In this moment she felt that she
positively disliked her commonly negligible cousin. She had proved and
re-proved to her own almost complete satisfaction that the man who had
spoken the affronting words to her in the summer-house was a virulent
religious fanatic, or (since she had read the piece) a crazy Socialist,
like the man who had thrown the brick at papa, or both; almost certainly
both. She was, it might be said, deeply and irrevocably committed to
these beliefs: they settled and explained everything, and no more need
to think or worry. It was simply not to be endured that Henrietta Cooney
should cheekily sit there and try to unsettle everything, pretending....

"But understand me, Cally," Henrietta was saying, with provo