He spoke in loverly vein, and Cally was able to answer soothingly.  She mentioned that she would probably withdraw from the dinner, too; so that even mamma’s table would not be upset at all.  He would be much missed, of course.  The suggestion emerged, or perhaps it was merely in the air, that Hugo was to come in, if he could, in the later evening.

Cally was at the telephone some three minutes.  Turning away, she did not go at once to rest, though now halfway to her room.  If she was not going to dinner, there was more time, of course.  Or possibly her head had taken a slight turn for the better.  The girl leaned against the banisters in the quiet upper hall, full of depression.  And then she said aloud, with a resolution that was perhaps not so sudden as it seemed: 

“I’ll go and see Hen Cooney!”

     XXIX

     One Hour, in which she apologizes twice for her Self, her
     Life and Works; and once she is beautifully forgiven, and
     once she never will be, this Side of the Last Trump.

The Cooneys’ door was opened, after the delay usual with the poor, by Henrietta herself, this moment returned from the bookstore.  Hen wore her hat, but not her coat, and it was to be observed that one hand held a hot-water bottle, imperfectly concealed behind her back.

“Hurrah!—­Cally!” cried she.  “We were talking of you at dinner to-day, wondering what had become of you.  Come into the house, and don’t mind a bit if this bottle leaks all over you.  Such troubles!”

“How is Chas to-day?  I just heard that he hadn’t been at work for a week.”

“Chas?...  Chas is better—­Cousin Martha’s worse—­father’s just the same—­Looloo’s dancing the floor with a toothache.”  Hen recited this in the manner of a chant, and added, as she ushered her Washington Street cousin into the little parlor:  “But for that, we’re all doing nicely—­thank you!”

“Gracious, Hen!  I’d no idea you had such a hospital.  Why, what’s the matter with Uncle John?”

“Oh, just his lumbago.  He’s complaining, but out and about—­fighting over the Seven Days around Richmond with an old comrade somewhere, I doubt not....  Sit down, my dear,” added Hen, who had been looking at Cally just a little curiously, “and excuse me while I run upstairs.  I forgot to explain that this bottle is for mother, who’s down with a splitting headache.  Back in a jiffy....”

Thus Miss Cooney, not knowing that for one moment, at least, her society had been preferred above that of a Canning.  Such was the odd little development.  Carlisle, having been more with Henrietta in the past five weeks than she had commonly been in a year, had discovered her as undoubtedly a person you could talk things over with—­the only person in the world, perhaps, that you could talk this over with....

Possibly Hen, being a lynx-eyed Cooney, had somehow gathered that her lovely cousin had not dropped in merely to “inquire”; for when she returned to the parlor, having doubtless put her hot-water bottle where it would do the most good, she did not expend much time on reporting upon her invalids, or become involved in the minor doings of the day.  Very soon she deflected, saying: