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This was the end of the world. He had trusted the Heths too far. And how strange and void it was at the world's end, how deadly still but for the faint roarings of waters far off. She was walking toward her father. Through the roaring there came a voice, so little and so remote. "Papa, you must come up to bed.... I'll telephone for the doctor."
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.
The tall electric light four doors below, which so irritated the Heths when they sat on their flowered balcony on summer nights, shone now full upon the old family enemy. It was observed that he wore, with his new blue suit, a quaint sprigged waistcoat which looked as if it also might have come down from his Uncle Armistead, along with the money he had given away.
Now, with the half-holiday at hand and a Sabbath to follow, a few others beside the Heths and the Willie Kerr select party had deemed it worth while to go down to the sea where the breezes blow. Only a few, though: the desolate quiet of a summer place out of season yet clung and hung over all. In a solitary corner of the vast piazza four coatless men sat idly drinking the rickeys of summer.
"Oho!... You've met the Heths personally?" "I've met some of them personally, as you call it, far as that goes." O'Neill, puffing again, digested this information speculatively. Presently he looked knowing and laughed. "Say, remember my saying to you, time you wrote that letter, that if you knew any of these yellow captains and horse-leeches' daughters personally, you'd feel mighty different "
And all this was to their credit, proving efficiency in the supreme art, that of living. For the Heths, of course, were not rich at all as the word means nowadays: they were far indeed from being the richest people in that town. Their merit it was that they spent all they had, and sometimes a little more; and few persons lived who could surpass Mrs.
A ramshackle hack invited and received them. And, jogging over streets crowded with a life-time's associations, the Heths presently came to their own house, whose face they had not thought to see again these four months.... Mr. Heth was away, fishing, in a spot dear to his heart, but remote from railroad or telegraph.
Most of the table service was quite familiar to Carlisle, not a little of it having started life as Christmas presents from the Heths. But this crockery piece was new, and, upon Chas's admonition, its shiny hideousness caught and riveted her attention. "Aunt Rose Hopwood's parting gift," said Tee Wee, softly, following her fascinated gaze. "Oh, Cally, ain't it boo'ful!"
That Wednesday night was the worst I ever spent...." And Cally felt apologetic to her poor relative to-day, a good deal ashamed before her. The Heths had not built walls around their little island for nothing.... They were in the limousine, she and Hen, driving down to Saltman's. Hen said she would be delighted to come in that evening, and play bridge with Uncle Thornton.
He says they'd hold hundreds more machines if he only had the room " "Well, he knows.... He's he's had the strain figured out. Of course." So had Time, the master-humorist, reversed positions between Heths and Vivians. The old Arraigner, for his part, seemed to feel now that, to all intents and purposes, papa had put up the building six years ago....
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