consciousness."

"I will not deny the soft impeachment," said the architect, with a
modest air.

"I dare say. And you'll own that it's very handsome of me to say this,
after your unjustifiable attack on Mrs. Corey's property."

Bromfield Corey addressed himself again to Mrs. Lapham, and the talk
subdivided itself as before. It lapsed so entirely away from the
subject just in hand, that Lapham was left with rather a good idea, as
he thought it, to perish in his mind, for want of a chance to express
it. The only thing like a recurrence to what they had been saying was
Bromfield Corey's warning Mrs. Lapham, in some connection that Lapham
lost, against Miss Kingsbury. "She's worse," he was saying, "when it
comes to appropriations than Seymour himself. Depend upon it, Mrs.
Lapham, she will give you no peace of your mind, now she's met you,
from this out. Her tender mercies are cruel; and I leave you to supply
the content from your own scriptural knowledge. Beware of her, and all
her works. She calls them works of charity; but heaven knows whether
they are. It don't stand to reason that she gives the poor ALL the
money she gets out of people. I have my own belief"--he gave it in a
whisper for the whole table to hear--"that she spends it for champagne
and cigars."

Lapham did not know about that kind of talking; but Miss Kingsbury
seemed to enjoy the fun as much as anybody, and he laughed with the
rest.

"You shall be asked to the very next debauch of the committee, Mr.
Corey; then you won't dare expose us," said Miss Kingsbury.

"I wonder you haven't been down upon Corey to go to the Chardon Street
home and talk with your indigent Italians in their native tongue," said
Charles Bellingham. "I saw in the Transcript the other night that you
wanted some one for the work."

"We did think of Mr. Corey," replied Miss Kingsbury; "but we reflected
that he probably wouldn't talk with them at all; he would make them
keep still to be sketched, and forget all about their wants."

Upon the theory that this was a fair return for Corey's pleasantry, the
others laughed again.

"There is one charity," said Corey, pretending superiority to Miss
Kingsbury's point, "that is so difficult, I wonder it hasn't occurred
to a lady of your courageous invention."

"Yes?" said Miss Kingsbury. "What is that?"

"The occupation, by deserving poor of neat habits, of all the
beautiful, airy, wholesome houses that stand empty the whol