"How's Uncle Thornton?" said Hen, holding her hat on with a hand that looked hard-worked. "I don't believe I've seen him since that day we all came to dinner--"
"Oh, he's well, I suppose, but he's out of spirits a good deal of the time, which I will say is unusual for papa. I think he's probably worried about business or ... Who was that old man that stared at me so? He looked as if I ought to know him."
"Where?" said Hen, glancing back. "Oh!--there under the tree? Why, that's Colonel Dalhousie. You know--"
"Oh!" said Cally, immediately regretting having spoken. To relieve the baldness of her exclamation, she added: "I thought he was a rather younger man than that."
"He's broken dreadfully in the last few months--that's probably why you didn't recognize him," said Hen, cheeringly. "They say the poor old man's grieving himself to death."
Through Cally quivered an angry wonder why it was that only disagreeable things happened nowadays. Why, why, when everything else was just as abominable as possible, need that old man go prowling around the streets, stopping on corners to stare at her?...
She went on quickly with a tinge of light bitterness in her voice:
"I'm sure it must be business, for there's a hard-times atmosphere hanging over the house, all of a sudden, and mamma is constantly remarking that there's a limit to my extravagance, etc., etc. She and I happen to be on dreadfully formal terms just at present, which is another of the joys of home. And to cap the climax," she added, with a burst of confidence only half mocking, "I'm in an absolutely suitorless condition--not a blessed swain to my name! I was never so destitute and forlorn in my life!"
Hen, struck from the beginning with the unusual note in her brilliant cousin's manner, laughed. She perceived that Cally wished to talk about herself, and talk complainingly, and Hen didn't mind.
"First time I ever heard such a complaint in this quarter. Is J. Forsythe Avery dead without my knowledge?"