jingled peremptorily, and the girl left waiting on the
table to go and answer it. She returned at once with a note for Mrs.
Lapham, which she read, and then, after a helpless survey of her
family, read again.

"Why, what IS it, mamma?" asked Irene, while the Colonel, who had taken
up his carving-knife for another attack on the ham, held it drawn half
across it.

"Why, I don't know what it does mean," answered Mrs. Lapham
tremulously, and she let the girl take the note from her.

Irene ran it over, and then turned to the name at the end with a joyful
cry and a flush that burned to the top of her forehead. Then she began
to read it once more.

The Colonel dropped his knife and frowned impatiently, and Mrs. Lapham
said, "You read it out loud, if you know what to make of it, Irene."
But Irene, with a nervous scream of protest, handed it to her father,
who performed the office.

"DEAR MRS. LAPHAM:

"Will you and General Lapham----"

"I didn't know I was a general," grumbled Lapham. "I guess I shall
have to be looking up my back pay. Who is it writes this, anyway?" he
asked, turning the letter over for the signature.

"Oh, never mind. Read it through!" cried his wife, with a kindling
glance of triumph at Penelope, and he resumed--

"--and your daughters give us the pleasure of your company at dinner on
Thursday, the 28th, at half-past six.

"Yours sincerely,

"ANNA B. COREY."

The brief invitation had been spread over two pages, and the Colonel
had difficulties with the signature which he did not instantly
surmount. When he had made out the name and pronounced it, he looked
across at his wife for an explanation.

"I don't know what it all means," she said, shaking her head and
speaking with a pleased flutter. "She was here this afternoon, and I
should have said she had come to see how bad she could make us feel. I
declare I never felt so put down in my life by anybody."

"Why, what did she do? What did she say?" Lapham was ready, in his
dense pride, to resent any affront to his blood, but doubtful, with the
evidence of this invitation to the contrary, if any affront had been
offered. Mrs. Lapham tried to tell him, but there was really nothing
tangible; and when she came to put it into words, she could not make
out a case. Her husband listened to her excited attempt, and then he
said, with judicial superiority, "I guess nobody's been trying to make
you feel bad, Persis. What would she go right ho