For that Hen idly smote Chas's shins with her silver-handled umbrella (Carlisle's gift three Christmases before), at which Chas cried ouch in such a manner as to attract the attention of bystanders. Henrietta liked this umbrella very much and commonly carried it, like a cane, through all droughts.
"But," said she, reconsidering, "I think Hortense'll be off to-morrow, that's so. Well, come the first soon night you feel like it--"
Carlisle had been doing some considering also, her conscience pricking her on account of the cousinly duty, long overdue.
"I've an engagement to-morrow--so sorry," she said, rather hastily. "But how about one night early next week, say--Thursday, if that would suit--?"
Chas and Hen agreed that it would do perfectly. Pot-luck at seven. Sorry she wouldn't walk on with them. Bully day for Shanks's mares. And so forth....
Carlisle, an eye-catching figure in her calling costume (assuming that this is what it was) glanced after her poor relations from the Byrds' vestibule, and was amused by her thought. How exactly like the Cooneys' lively cheek (and nobody else's) to propose a country walk with them as a perfectly satisfactory substitute for an hour's tête-à-tête with Hugo Canning!
VII
How the Great Parti, pursued or pursuing to Cousin Willie Kerr's apartment, begins thundering again.
Bellingham Court was the very newest of those metropolitan-looking apartment hotels which the rapid growth and complicating "standards" of the city was then calling into being. It was on the most fashionable street, Washington, in one of the most fashionable parts of it. And it had bell-boys, onyxine vestibules, and hot and cold water in nearly every room.