the paint-mine was on it,
but because the old house was--and the graves. Well," said Lapham, as
if unwilling to give himself too much credit, "there wouldn't been any
market for it, anyway. You can go through that part of the State and
buy more farms than you can shake a stick at for less money than it
cost to build the barns on 'em. Of course, it's turned out a good
thing. I keep the old house up in good shape, and we spend a month or
so there every summer. M' wife kind of likes it, and the girls.
Pretty place; sightly all round it. I've got a force of men at work
there the whole time, and I've got a man and his wife in the house.
Had a family meeting there last year; the whole connection from out
West. There!" Lapham rose from his seat and took down a large warped,
unframed photograph from the top of his desk, passing his hand over it,
and then blowing vigorously upon it, to clear it of the dust. "There
we are, ALL of us."

"I don't need to look twice at YOU," said Bartley, putting his finger
on one of the heads.

"Well, that's Bill," said Lapham, with a gratified laugh. "He's about
as brainy as any of us, I guess. He's one of their leading lawyers,
out Dubuque way; been judge of the Common Pleas once or twice. That's
his son--just graduated at Yale--alongside of my youngest girl.
Good-looking chap, ain't he?"

"SHE'S a good-looking chap," said Bartley, with prompt irreverence. He
hastened to add, at the frown which gathered between Lapham's eyes,
"What a beautiful creature she is! What a lovely, refined, sensitive
face! And she looks GOOD, too."

"She is good," said the father, relenting.

"And, after all, that's about the best thing in a woman," said the
potential reprobate. "If my wife wasn't good enough to keep both of us
straight, I don't know what would become of me." "My other daughter,"
said Lapham, indicating a girl with eyes that showed large, and a face
of singular gravity. "Mis' Lapham," he continued, touching his wife's
effigy with his little finger. "My brother Willard and his
family--farm at Kankakee. Hazard Lapham and his wife--Baptist preacher
in Kansas. Jim and his three girls--milling business at Minneapolis.
Ben and his family--practising medicine in Fort Wayne."

The figures were clustered in an irregular group in front of an old
farm-house, whose original ugliness had been smartened up with a coat
of Lapham's own paint, and heightened with an incongruous piazza. The
photo