unkeyed: she unconsciously folded away her more shining wings.
Nevertheless, there was about her to-night a fleeting kind of radiance
which had caught the notice of more than one of her cavalier cousins,
notably of pretty little Looloo, who had kissed the visitor shyly (for a
Cooney) at greeting, and said, "Oh, Cally! You do look _so_ lovely!"
Cally herself was aware of an inner buoyance oddly at variance with the
drab Cooney _milieu_. Recent progress in the great game had more than
blotted out all memory of little mishaps at the Beach....
Starting aloft for the napkins, Looloo was adroitly tripped by Tee Wee,
and fell back upon him with a little shriek. Instead of checking the
tumult that followed, Major Cooney, including Carlisle in the
proceedings with a mischievous wink, called out: "Give it to him, Loo!
Give it to him!" Loo, having got her small hand in his hair, gave it to
him, good-fashion. 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."
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