In the May-time, once, Hugo had asked her to name a day, and she had named the seventeenth of October.  And now the seventeenth was here, to-day.  Her wedding-day it might have been, but for this or that:  and behold, her high banquet was laid at the board of the Cooneys, cold corned beef and baked potatoes, with sliced peaches such as turn nicely from the can for an unexpected guest.

Cally was glad to be with her cousins to-day.  The simple and friendly atmosphere here was mightily comfortable.  Never had they seemed so poor to her, never so fine and merry in their poverty.  Her heart went out to them.

They were all well now, the Cooneys, and the table was their clearing-house.  There was much talk, of the new Works and other matters; great argument.  Two faces were missing:  Tee Wee, who pursued his studies at the University, and Chas, who was lunching from a box at his desk, snowed under with work accumulated during his sickness.  In their places, however, sat Cousin Martha Heth, who was described as “very miserable” with her various ailments, but whose strength at conversation, regarding symptoms, seemed as the strength of ten.

Round Cally the Cooney talk rattled on; family jokes kept flickering up; strange catchwords evoked unexpected laughter.  The woman of all work waited spasmodically upon the table; she proved to be Lugene, none other than the girl Hen and Cally had found on Dunbar Street, that day long ago....  Old times; so, too, when the Major told with accustomed verve how papa, a little shaver then, had brought the note from Aunt Molly down to camp, fifty years ago....

Across the table sat Looloo, the best-looking of all the good-looking Cooneys.  She had lucid gray eyes, with the prettiest black lashes; and Cally found herself continually looking at them....  Strange how expressive eyes could be, how revealing, looking things unspoken that influenced one’s whole life.  Imagine somebody with eyes something like Looloo’s, say, to have had totally different ones; small, glassy black eyes like shoe-buttons, for instance, or to have worn thick blue-tinged glasses, like Evey’s grandmother....

A hand waved before her own eyes; a voice of raillery said:  “Come back!”

“I’m right here....  What did you say?”

“You were picking flowers ten thousand miles away.  ’Cause why?  ’Not any, thank you,’ isn’t the right reply to ‘Please give me the salt.’”

“She’s in love,” said the Major, a gallant in his day.

Cally, handing the salt to Hen, said:  “I am, indeed,—­with Looloo.  Don’t you notice that she’s getting prettier every day?”

Looloo, fair as a lily, proved that blushes made her prettier still; the Major said finely, “Praise from Sir Hubert”; and Aunt Molly, giving the same truth a sound wholesome turn, observed that Loo needn’t get set up, for she’d never be as pretty as Cally, no matter how she improved.

Cousin Martha’s remark was:  “But to go back to what I was saying, Cally.  That Wednesday night was the worst I ever spent....”