that he knew you were humorous."

"Is it possible? It must be so, if the Grand Mogul said it. Why didn't
you tell me so before, and not let me keep on going round just like a
common person?"

Irene laughed as if she liked to have her sister take his praises in
that way rather than another.

"I've got such a stiff, prim kind of mouth," she said, drawing it down,
and then looking anxiously at it.

"I hope you didn't put on that expression when he offered you the
shaving. If you did, I don't believe he'll ever give you another
splinter."

The severe mouth broke into a lovely laugh, and then pressed itself in
a kiss against Penelope's cheek.

"There! Be done, you silly thing! I'm not going to have you accepting
ME before I've offered myself, ANYWAY." She freed herself from her
sister's embrace, and ran from her round the room.

Irene pursued her, in the need of hiding her face against her shoulder
again. "O Pen! O Pen!" she cried.

The next day, at the first moment of finding herself alone with her
eldest daughter, Mrs. Lapham asked, as if knowing that Penelope must
have already made it subject of inquiry: "What was Irene doing with
that shaving in her belt yesterday?"

"Oh, just some nonsense of hers with Mr. Corey. He gave it to her at
the new house." Penelope did not choose to look up and meet her
mother's grave glance.

"What do you think he meant by it?"

Penelope repeated Irene's account of the affair, and her mother
listened without seeming to derive much encouragement from it.

"He doesn't seem like one to flirt with her," she said at last. Then,
after a thoughtful pause: "Irene is as good a girl as ever breathed,
and she's a perfect beauty. But I should hate the day when a daughter
of mine was married for her beauty."

"You're safe as far as I'm concerned, mother."

Mrs. Lapham smiled ruefully. "She isn't really equal to him, Pen. I
misdoubted that from the first, and it's been borne in upon me more and
more ever since. She hasn't mind enough." "I didn't know that a man
fell in love with a girl's intellect," said Penelope quietly.

"Oh no. He hasn't fallen in love with Irene at all. If he had, it
wouldn't matter about the intellect."

Penelope let the self-contradiction pass.

"Perhaps he has, after all."

"No," said Mrs. Lapham. "She pleases him when he sees her. But he
doesn't try to see her."

"He has no chance. You won't let father bring him here."

"He would find exc