in order to counteract his indifference.

"Well, I can tell you," she said, "that if you think they were not the
nicest people you ever saw, you're mightily mistaken. They had about
the best manners; and they had been everywhere, and knew everything. I
declare it made me feel as if we had always lived in the backwoods. I
don't know but the mother and the daughters would have let you feel so
a little, if they'd showed out all they thought; but they never did;
and the son--well, I can't express it, Silas! But that young man had
about perfect ways."

"Seem struck up on Irene?" asked the Colonel.

"How can I tell? He seemed just about as much struck up on me. Anyway,
he paid me as much attention as he did her. Perhaps it's more the way,
now, to notice the mother than it used to be."

Lapham ventured no conjecture, but asked, as he had asked already, who
the people were.

Mrs. Lapham repeated their name. Lapham nodded his head. "Do you know
them? What business is he in?"

"I guess he ain't in anything," said Lapham.

"They were very nice," said Mrs. Lapham impartially.

"Well, they'd ought to be," returned the Colonel. "Never done anything
else."

"They didn't seem stuck up," urged his wife.

"They'd no need to--with you. I could buy him and sell him, twice
over."

This answer satisfied Mrs. Lapham rather with the fact than with her
husband. "Well, I guess I wouldn't brag, Silas," she said.

In the winter the ladies of this family, who returned to town very
late, came to call on Mrs. Lapham. They were again very polite. But
the mother let drop, in apology for their calling almost at nightfall,
that the coachman had not known the way exactly.

"Nearly all our friends are on the New Land or on the Hill."

There was a barb in this that rankled after the ladies had gone; and on
comparing notes with her daughter, Mrs. Lapham found that a barb had
been left to rankle in her mind also.

"They said they had never been in this part of the town before."

Upon a strict search of her memory, Irene could not report that the
fact had been stated with anything like insinuation, but it was that
which gave it a more penetrating effect.

"Oh, well, of course," said Lapham, to whom these facts were referred.
"Those sort of people haven't got much business up our way, and they
don't come. It's a fair thing all round. We don't trouble the Hill or
the New Land much."

"We know where they are," suggested his