such a thing, Silas, I'll never speak to you again!
It's no USE! It's NO use! I did think, after you'd behaved so well
about Rogers, I might trust you a little. But I see I can't. I presume
as long as you live you'll have to be nosed about like a perfect--I
don't know what!"

"What are you making such a fuss about?" demanded Lapham, terribly
crestfallen, but trying to pluck up a spirit. "I haven't done anything
yet. I can't ask your advice about anything any more without having
you fly out. Confound it! I shall do as I please after this."

But as if he could not endure that contemptuous atmosphere, he got up,
and his wife heard him in the dining-room pouring himself out a glass
of ice-water, and then heard him mount the stairs to their room, and
slam its door after him.

"Do you know what your father's wanting to do now?" Mrs. Lapham asked
her eldest daughter, who lounged into the parlour a moment with her
wrap stringing from her arm, while the younger went straight to bed.
"He wants to invite Mr. Corey's father to a fish dinner at Taft's!"

Penelope was yawning with her hand on her mouth; she stopped, and, with
a laugh of amused expectance, sank into a chair, her shoulders shrugged
forward.

"Why! what in the world has put the Colonel up to that?"

"Put him up to it! There's that fellow, who ought have come to see him
long ago, drops into his office this morning, and talks five minutes
with him, and your father is flattered out of his five senses. He's
crazy to get in with those people, and I shall have a perfect battle to
keep him within bounds."

"Well, Persis, ma'am, you can't say but what you began it," said
Penelope.

"Oh yes, I began it," confessed Mrs. Lapham. "Pen," she broke out,
"what do you suppose he means by it?"

"Who? Mr. Corey's father? What does the Colonel think?"

"Oh, the Colonel!" cried Mrs. Lapham. She added tremulously: "Perhaps
he IS right. He DID seem to take a fancy to her last summer, and now
if he's called in that way . . ." She left her daughter to distribute
the pronouns aright, and resumed: "Of course, I should have said once
that there wasn't any question about it. I should have said so last
year; and I don't know what it is keeps me from saying so now. I
suppose I know a little more about things than I did; and your father's
being so bent on it sets me all in a twitter. He thinks his money can
do everything. Well, I don't say but what it can, a good many. And