"What on earth are _you_ doing, Hen," asked her cousin, but hardly as if the matter interested her much--"up here at this time!" "Servant chasing!" cried Hen, gaily. "My favorite outdoor sport. Hortense's left us. I got out early on purpose. You're looking mighty well, Cally." Cally made a weary little face, which seemed to say that such matters as looks were very far from being of interest to her. It happened to be the fact, indeed, that she had never felt more depressed and bereft in her life: witness her hailing Hen Cooney, whom she had never cared much for, and less than ever after the way Hen had shown her real nature about the Works. Time's chances had brought her to this, that she preferred Hen's society above the company of her own thoughts. Gray and empty had been Cally's days since a New Year's moment in the library.... "But you'll not find any servants up here, my dear!--unless you expect to throw bags over their heads and kidnap them?" "I'd like to," laughed Hen, friendly elbows on the car door. "And then give them the bastinado every hour on the hour. Think of Hortense's doing us so when we've all been perfect mothers to her for a year. But I've come up here just to get an address, from Mrs. J.T. Carney, and now I'm off to Little Africa, pleasant but determined." "Jackson Ward?" "No," said Hen, producing and consulting a scrap of paper, "it's South Africa this time--106A Dunbar Street. You know--down along the Canal." "Hop in," said Cally, listlessly. "I'll drive you down there." "Perish the thought!" ejaculated Hen, in some surprise. "You don't want to go exploring the slum districts, finding out how the other half lives. I'll like the walk--" But Carlisle insisted, being out only because she was bored with being in, and Hen hopped in, not altogether reluctantly. By request she repeated the Ethiopian address to the chauffeur, himself of that tongue and nation; and off the cousins bowled. "Bored? How's this, Cally? I hear on all sides that it's the gayest winter in ten years. You're not tired of parties, at your age?" "Oh, I'm crazy about them," said Cally, indifferently, yet drawing comfort from the sound of her own voice. "But one can't have parties every hour of the day, you know. There are always chinks to be filled up, and that is where one's background comes in. My background has a violent attack of indigestion just now. Everything's horrid.--_Ohh_! Why _will_ a dog take chances like that?..." "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--"