the odd Cooney
characteristics. Conversation seemed about to languish; but Mrs. Cooney,
as if to show that the episode was closed, said equably:

"By the way, Cally, Cousin Martha Heth is coming next week to make us
quite a visit. If you are not too busy, do try to come in some time, and
cheer her up. She is going to take treatment for her nose and also for
flatfoot, and I fear is very miserable."

After supper Carlisle sat on the sofa, feeling rather sardiney, and had
an irritating talk with Aunt Molly, the subject being Chas's affair with
his Leither, for the furtherance of which he was reported to be even now
arraying himself upstairs. The complacence with which Aunt Molly
regarded the threatened alliance--all possible objections being answered
in her mind by a helpless, "If she is the girl he loves?"--was most
provokingly characteristic of the Cooneys' fatal shiftlessness. And they
were popular, too, in their way, and Chas might easily have married some
socially prominent girl with money, instead of bringing a nameless
saleslady into the family. It was impossible for Carlisle not to
contrast her aunt's flabby sentimentalism with her own and her mother's
sane, brilliant ambitiousness. If nothing succeeds like success, how
doubly true it was that nothing fails like failure.

Carlisle had reached a point where she longed to shake her aunt, when
Hen, who had been "scrapping up" with Looloo, came in, putting an end to
the futile talk.

To her mother's demand if they had stayed to wash the dishes, Hen
replied that they thought they might just as well: there weren't many,
and the water was nice and hot. And Chas, hearing the clatter from
aloft, had slipped down the backstairs in his suspenders, and lent a
hand with the wiping. Mrs. Cooney chided, saying the dishes should have
been left for Hortense, to-morrow morning before breakfast. She asked
Hen whether Chas knew that his white vest had come in with the wash, and
though Hen was pretty sure he did, Aunt Molly presently made an excuse
and slipped away upstairs. She was a great hand for being by when the
children were dressing to go out, and no one in the family, not even
Chas, could tie a white lawn bow half so well as mother....

Looloo lingered in the dining-room, the family sitting-room of evenings,
where Theodore had engaged his father at checkers. Hen, dropping into a
chair by the sofa as if she were rather tired, asked Cally for gossip of
the gay world, but Ca