grapher had not been able to conceal the fact that they were all
decent, honest-looking, sensible people, with a very fair share of
beauty among the young girls; some of these were extremely pretty, in
fact. He had put them into awkward and constrained attitudes, of
course; and they all looked as if they had the instrument of torture
which photographers call a head-rest under their occiputs. Here and
there an elderly lady's face was a mere blur; and some of the younger
children had twitched themselves into wavering shadows, and might have
passed for spirit-photographs of their own little ghosts. It was the
standard family-group photograph, in which most Americans have figured
at some time or other; and Lapham exhibited a just satisfaction in it.
"I presume," he mused aloud, as he put it back on top of his desk,
"that we sha'n't soon get together again, all of us."

"And you say," suggested Bartley, "that you stayed right along on the
old place, when the rest cleared out West?"

"No o-o-o," said Lapham, with a long, loud drawl; "I cleared out West
too, first off. Went to Texas. Texas was all the cry in those days.
But I got enough of the Lone Star in about three months, and I come
back with the idea that Vermont was good enough for me."

"Fatted calf business?" queried Bartley, with his pencil poised above
his note-book.

"I presume they were glad to see me," said Lapham, with dignity.
"Mother," he added gently, "died that winter, and I stayed on with
father. I buried him in the spring; and then I came down to a little
place called Lumberville, and picked up what jobs I could get. I
worked round at the saw-mills, and I was ostler a while at the hotel--I
always DID like a good horse. Well, I WA'N'T exactly a college
graduate, and I went to school odd times. I got to driving the stage
after while, and by and by I BOUGHT the stage and run the business
myself. Then I hired the tavern-stand, and--well to make a long story
short, then I got married. Yes," said Lapham, with pride, "I married
the school-teacher. We did pretty well with the hotel, and my wife she
was always at me to paint up. Well, I put it off, and PUT it off, as a
man will, till one day I give in, and says I, 'Well, let's paint up.
Why, Pert,'--m'wife's name's Persis,--'I've got a whole paint-mine out
on the farm. Let's go out and look at it.' So we drove out. I'd let
the place for seventy-five dollars a year to a shif'less kind of a
Kanuck th