indolently with it,
looked at her sister. "You don't think it'll be necessary for anybody
to come down from the office and take orders from him while he's laid
up, do you, mother?" she inquired.

"Pen!" cried Irene.

"He'll be well enough to go up on the ten o'clock boat," said the
mother sharply.

"I think papa works too hard all through the summer. Why don't you
make him take a rest, mamma?" asked Irene.

"Oh, take a rest! The man slaves harder every year. It used to be so
that he'd take a little time off now and then; but I declare, he hardly
ever seems to breathe now away from his office. And this year he says
he doesn't intend to go down to Lapham, except to see after the works
for a few days. I don't know what to do with the man any more! Seems
as if the more money he got, the more he wanted to get. It scares me
to think what would happen to him if he lost it. I know one thing,"
concluded Mrs. Lapham. "He shall not go back to the office to-day."

"Then he won't go up on the ten o'clock boat," Pen reminded her.

"No, he won't. You can just drive over to the hotel as soon as you're
through, girls, and telegraph that he's not well, and won't be at the
office till to-morrow. I'm not going to have them send anybody down
here to bother him."

"That's a blow," said Pen. "I didn't know but they might send----" she
looked demurely at her sister--"Dennis!"

"Mamma!" cried Irene.

"Well, I declare, there's no living with this family any more," said
Penelope.

"There, Pen, be done!" commanded her mother. But perhaps she did not
intend to forbid her teasing. It gave a pleasant sort of reality to
the affair that was in her mind, and made what she wished appear not
only possible but probable.

Lapham got up and lounged about, fretting and rebelling as each boat
departed without him, through the day; before night he became very
cross, in spite of the efforts of the family to soothe him, and
grumbled that he had been kept from going up to town. "I might as well
have gone as not," he repeated, till his wife lost her patience.

"Well, you shall go to-morrow, Silas, if you have to be carried to the
boat."

"I declare," said Penelope, "the Colonel don't pet worth a cent."

The six o'clock boat brought Corey. The girls were sitting on the
piazza, and Irene saw him first.

"O Pen!" she whispered, with her heart in her face; and Penelope had no
time for mockery before he was at the steps.

"I hope Colon