hion. Tee Wee moaned, and Chas made a fairly successful
effort to gag him with the newspaper. In the midst of the uproar, Mrs.
Cooney'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 unobtrusively
gone from the midst. The circumstance proved of interest to the
younger Cooneys.

"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."

"Pass 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 Cooney.'"

"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, pass Charles's plate, daughter."

Carlisle surveyed the noisy table as from some lofty peak. She knew
that the Cooney 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 Cooneys 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 s