he architect; he's a
bachelor, and he's building their house, Tom says."

Her voice fell a little when she mentioned her son's name, and she told
him of her plan, when he came home in the evening, with evident
misgiving.

"What are you doing it for, mother?" he asked, looking at her with his
honest eyes.

She dropped her own in a little confusion. "I won't do it at all, my
dear," she said, "if you don't approve. But I thought--You know we
have never made any proper acknowledgment of their kindness to us at
Baie St. Paul. Then in the winter, I'm ashamed to say, I got money
from her for a charity I was interested in; and I hate the idea of
merely USING people in that way. And now your having been at their
house this summer--we can't seem to disapprove of that; and your
business relations to him----"

"Yes, I see," said Corey. "Do you think it amounts to a dinner?"

"Why, I don't know," returned his mother. "We shall have hardly any
one out of our family connection."

"Well," Corey assented, "it might do. I suppose what you wish is to
give them a pleasure."

"Why, certainly. Don't you think they'd like to come?"

"Oh, they'd like to come; but whether it would be a pleasure after they
were here is another thing. I should have said that if you wanted to
have them, they would enjoy better being simply asked to meet our own
immediate family."

"That's what I thought of in the first place, but your father seemed to
think it implied a social distrust of them; and we couldn't afford to
have that appearance, even to ourselves."

"Perhaps he was right."

"And besides, it might seem a little significant."

Corey seemed inattentive to this consideration. "Whom did you think of
asking?" His mother repeated the names. "Yes, that would do," he said,
with a vague dissatisfaction.

"I won't have it at all, if you don't wish, Tom."

"Oh yes, have it; perhaps you ought. Yes, I dare say it's right. What
did you mean by a family dinner seeming significant?"

His mother hesitated. When it came to that, she did not like to
recognise in his presence the anxieties that had troubled her. But "I
don't know," she said, since she must. "I shouldn't want to give that
young girl, or her mother, the idea that we wished to make more of the
acquaintance than--than you did, Tom."

He looked at her absent-mindedly, as if he did not take her meaning.
But he said, "Oh yes, of course," and Mrs. Corey, in the uncertainty in