e at home here. House I'm building."

"Oh, indeed?" returned the young man; and he came promptly up the
steps, and through its ribs into the reception-room.

"Have a trestle?" asked the Colonel, while the girls exchanged little
shocks of terror and amusement at the eyes.

"Thank you," said the young man simply, and sat down.

"Mrs. Lapham is upstairs interviewing the carpenter, but she'll be down
in a minute."

"I hope she's quite well," said Corey. "I supposed--I was afraid she
might be out of town."

"Well, we are off to Nantasket next week. The house kept us in town
pretty late."

"It must be very exciting, building a house," said Corey to the elder
sister.

"Yes, it is," she assented, loyally refusing in Irene's interest the
opportunity of saying anything more.

Corey turned to the latter. "I suppose you've all helped to plan it?"

"Oh no; the architect and mamma did that."

"But they allowed the rest of us to agree, when we were good," said
Penelope.

Corey looked at her, and saw that she was shorter than her sister, and
had a dark complexion.

"It's very exciting," said Irene.

"Come up," said the Colonel, rising, "and look round if you'd like to."

"I should like to, very much," said the young man. He helped the young
ladies over crevasses of carpentry and along narrow paths of planking,
on which they had made their way unassisted before. The elder sister
left the younger to profit solely by these offices as much as possible.
She walked between them and her father, who went before, lecturing on
each apartment, and taking the credit of the whole affair more and more
as he talked on.

"There!" he said, "we're going to throw out a bay-window here, so as
get the water all the way up and down. This is my girls' room," he
added, looking proudly at them both.

It seemed terribly intimate. Irene blushed deeply and turned her head
away.

But the young man took it all, apparently, as simply as their father.
"What a lovely lookout!" he said. The Back Bay spread its glassy sheet
before them, empty but for a few small boats and a large schooner, with
her sails close-furled and dripping like snow from her spars, which a
tug was rapidly towing toward Cambridge. The carpentry of that city,
embanked and embowered in foliage, shared the picturesqueness of
Charlestown in the distance.

"Yes," said Lapham, "I go in for using the best rooms in your house
yourself. If people come to stay with you,