say anything of what had happened till he
was alone with her in their own room; but he was very gay the whole
evening, and made several jokes which Penelope said nothing but very
great prosperity could excuse: they all understood these moods of his.

"Well, what is it, Silas?" asked his wife when the time came. "Any
more big-bugs wanting to go into the mineral paint business with you?"

"Something better than that."

"I could think of a good many better things," said his wife, with a
sigh of latent bitterness. "What's this one?"

"I've had a visitor."

"Who?"

"Can't you guess?"

"I don't want to try. Who was it?"

"Rogers."

Mrs. Lapham sat down with her hands in her lap, and stared at the smile
on her husband's face, where he sat facing her.

"I guess you wouldn't want to joke on that subject, Si," she said, a
little hoarsely, "and you wouldn't grin about it unless you had some
good news. I don't know what the miracle is, but if you could tell
quick----"

She stopped like one who can say no more.

"I will, Persis," said her husband, and with that awed tone in which he
rarely spoke of anything but the virtues of his paint. "He came to
borrow money of me, and I lent him it. That's the short of it. The
long----"

"Go on," said his wife, with gentle patience.

"Well, Pert, I was never so much astonished in my life as I was to see
that man come into my office. You might have knocked me down with--I
don't know what."

"I don't wonder. Go on!"

"And he was as much embarrassed as I was. There we stood, gaping at
each other, and I hadn't hardly sense enough to ask him to take a
chair. I don't know just how we got at it. And I don't remember just
how it was that he said he came to come to me. But he had got hold of
a patent right that he wanted to go into on a large scale, and there he
was wanting me to supply him the funds."

"Go on!" said Mrs. Lapham, with her voice further in her throat.

"I never felt the way you did about Rogers, but I know how you always
did feel, and I guess I surprised him with my answer. He had brought
along a lot of stock as security----"

"You didn't take it, Silas!" his wife flashed out.

"Yes, I did, though," said Lapham. "You wait. We settled our
business, and then we went into the old thing, from the very start.
And we talked it all over. And when we got through we shook hands.
Well, I don't know when it's done me so much good to shake hands with
anybo