He gave her a look, and, turning, swung wide the door for the chaperon.
VIII
Supper with the Cooneys: Poor Relations, but you must be Nice to them; of Hen Cooney's friend V.V., as she irritatingly calls him; also relating how Cally is asked for her Forgiveness, and can't seem to think what to say.
The Heths' poor relations, the Cooneys, lived in a two-story frame house on Centre Street, four doors from a basement dry-cleaning establishment, and staring full upon the show-window of an artificial-limb manufactory, lately opened for the grisly trade.
The interval between the families of Heth and Cooney was as these facts indicate. If Thornton Heth had married an ambitious woman, and he had, his sister Molly had displayed less acumen. The Cooney stock, unlike the Thompson as it was, deplorably resembled a thousand other stocks then reproducing its kind in this particular city. The War had flattened it out, cut it half through at the roots, and it had never recovered, as economists count recovery, and wouldn't, for a generation or two at the least. Accursed contentment flowed in the young Cooneys' blood. They had abilities enough, but the sane acquisitive gift was not in them. They were poor, but unashamed. They were breezy, keen, adventurous, without fatigue. They claimed the gasoline-cleaning establishment as their private garage, challenging any car under six thousand dollars to beat the expensive smell. A large and very popular group of family jokes centred about the plant of the legman.
Carlisle Heth "came to supper" with the Cooneys, as agreed, on the Thursday following the magic afternoon at Willie's apartment. The week intervening had been, as it chanced, one of the most interesting and titillating periods of her life; by the same token, never had family duty seemed more drearily superfluous. However, this periodic, say quarterly, mark of kinsman's comity was required of her by her father, a clannish man by inheritance, and one who, feeling unable to "do" anything especial for his sister's children, yet shrank from the knocking suspicion of snobbery. In the matter of intermealing, reciprocity was formally observed between the two families. Four times per annum the Cooneys were invited in a body to dine at the House of Heth, Mrs. Heth on these occasions speaking caustically of her consort's relatives, and on Christmas sending gifts of an almost offensively utilitarian nature.
The noisy cousins filled the dingy little parlor to overflowing; this, though Mrs. Cooney and Hen, having rushed out for the welcome, had at once rushed back to the preparations for supper. For it appeared that Hortense was absent once again, having asked to "git to git" a night off, to see her step-daughter allianced to a substitute Pullman porter. The two ladies, however, were only gone before, not lost, and through the portières joined freely in the conversation, which rattled on incessantly in the Cooney style.
Carlisle sat on the rusty sofa, listening absently to the chatter. Her unaspiring uncle-in-law, the Major, who was vaguely understood to be "in insurance" at present, parted his long coat-tails before the Baltimore heater, and drifted readily to reminiscence. Louise and Theodore (as the family Bible too stiffly knew Looloo and Tee Wee) sat together on a divan, indulging in banter, with some giggling from Looloo--none from grave Theodore. Chas informally skimmed an evening paper in a corner, with comments: though the truth was that precious little ever appeared in any newspaper which was news to the keen young Cooneys....
"And I said to Hen," observed Major Cooney to his fashionable niece, having now got his short history of the world down as far as the '80s--"now stop your whining around me, Miss. If you've got to whine, go down to the cellar and stand in the corner. Well--"