el Lapham isn't ill," he said, and they could hear their
mother engaged in a moral contest with their father indoors.

"Go and put on your coat! I say you shall! It don't matter HOW he sees
you at the office, shirt-sleeves or not. You're in a gentleman's house
now--or you ought to be--and you shan't see company in your
dressing-gown."

Penelope hurried in to subdue her mother's anger.

"Oh, he's very much better, thank you!" said Irene, speaking up loudly
to drown the noise of the controversy.

"I'm glad of that," said Corey, and when she led him indoors the
vanquished Colonel met his visitor in a double-breasted frock-coat,
which he was still buttoning up. He could not persuade himself at once
that Corey had not come upon some urgent business matter, and when he
was clear that he had come out of civility, surprise mingled with his
gratification that he should be the object of solicitude to the young
man. In Lapham's circle of acquaintance they complained when they were
sick, but they made no womanish inquiries after one another's health,
and certainly paid no visits of sympathy till matters were serious. He
would have enlarged upon the particulars of his indisposition if he had
been allowed to do so; and after tea, which Corey took with them, he
would have remained to entertain him if his wife had not sent him to
bed. She followed him to see that he took some medicine she had
prescribed for him, but she went first to Penelope's room, where she
found the girl with a book in her hand, which she was not reading.

"You better go down," said the mother. "I've got to go to your father,
and Irene is all alone with Mr. Corey; and I know she'll be on pins and
needles without you're there to help make it go off."

"She'd better try to get along without me, mother," said Penelope
soberly. "I can't always be with them."

"Well," replied Mrs. Lapham, "then I must. There'll be a perfect
Quaker meeting down there."

"Oh, I guess 'Rene will find something to say if you leave her to
herself. Or if she don't, HE must. It'll be all right for you to go
down when you get ready; but I shan't go till toward the last. If he's
coming here to see Irene--and I don't believe he's come on father's
account--he wants to see her and not me. If she can't interest him
alone, perhaps he'd as well find it out now as any time. At any rate,
I guess you'd better make the experiment. You'll know whether it's a
success if he comes again