"He's got to tell me every word, or there'll be no sleep for him THIS night.""Well, ma'am," said Penelope, breaking down in one of her queer laughs, "I shouldn't be a bit surprised if you were right.""Go on and dress, Irene," ordered her mother, "and then you and Pen come out into the parlour.They can have just two hours for business, and then we must all be there to receive him.You haven't got headache enough to hurt you.""Oh, it's all gone now," said the girl.
At the end of the limit she had given the Colonel, Mrs.Lapham looked into the dining-room, which she found blue with his smoke.
"I think you gentlemen will find the parlour pleasanter now, and we can give it up to you.""Oh no, you needn't," said her husband."We've got about through." Corey was already standing, and Lapham rose too."I guess we can join the ladies now.
We can leave that little point till to-morrow."Both of the young ladies were in the parlour when Corey entered with their father, and both were frankly indifferent to the few books and the many newspapers scattered about on the table where the large lamp was placed.
But after Corey had greeted Irene he glanced at the novel under his eye, and said, in the dearth that sometimes befalls people at such times: "I see you're reading Middlemarch.
Do you like George Eliot?"
"Who?" asked the girl.
Penelope interposed."I don't believe Irene's read it yet.I've just got it out of the library; I heard so much talk about it.I wish she would let you find out a little about the people for yourself," she added.
But here her father struck in--
"I can't get the time for books.It's as much as I can do to keep up with the newspapers; and when night comes, I'm tired, and I'd rather go out to the theatre, or a lecture, if they've got a good stereopticon to give you views of the places.But I guess we all like a play better than 'most anything else.I want something that'll make me laugh.
I don't believe in tragedy.I think there's enough of that in real life without putting it on the stage.
Seen 'Joshua Whitcomb'?"
The whole family joined in the discussion, and it appeared that they all had their opinions of the plays and actors.
Mrs.Lapham brought the talk back to literature."I guess Penelope does most of our reading.""Now, mother, you're not going to put it all on me!"said the girl, in comic protest.
Her mother laughed, and then added, with a sigh: "I used to like to get hold of a good book when I was a girl;but we weren't allowed to read many novels in those days.
My mother called them all LIES.And I guess she wasn't so very far wrong about some of them.""They're certainly fictions," said Corey, smiling.
"Well, we do buy a good many books, first and last,"said the Colonel, who probably had in mind the costly volumes which they presented to one another on birthdays and holidays."But I get about all the reading I want in the newspapers.And when the girls want a novel, I tell 'em to get it out of the library.That's what the library's for.Phew!" he panted, blowing away the whole unprofitable subject."How close you women-folks like to keep a room! You go down to the sea-side or up to the mountains for a change of air, and then you cork yourselves into a room so tight you don't have any air at all.
Here! You girls get on your bonnets, and go and show Mr.Corey the view of the hotels from the rocks."Corey said that he should be delighted.The girls exchanged looks with each other, and then with their mother.
Irene curved her pretty chin in comment upon her father's incorrigibility, and Penelope made a droll mouth, but the Colonel remained serenely content with his finesse.
"I got 'em out of the way," he said, as soon as they were gone, and before his wife had time to fall upon him, "because I've got through my talk with him, and now I want to talk with YOU.It's just as I said, Persis; he wants to go into the business with me.""It's lucky for you," said his wife, meaning that now he would not be made to suffer for attempting to hoax her.
But she was too intensely interested to pursue that matter further."What in the world do you suppose he means by it?""Well, I should judge by his talk that he had been trying a good many different things since he left college, and he hain't found just the thing he likes--or the thing that likes him.It ain't so easy.And now he's got an idea that he can take hold of the paint and push it in other countries--push it in Mexico and push it in South America.
He's a splendid Spanish scholar,"--this was Lapham's version of Corey's modest claim to a smattering of the language,--"and he's been among the natives enough to know their ways.
And he believes in the paint," added the Colonel.
"I guess he believes in something else besides the paint,"said Mrs.Lapham.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, Silas Lapham, if you can't see NOW that he's after Irene, I don't know what ever CAN open your eyes.
That's all."
The Colonel pretended to give the idea silent consideration, as if it had not occurred to him before."Well, then, all I've got to say is, that he's going a good way round.
I don't say you're wrong, but if it's Irene, I don't see why he should want to go off to South America to get her.
