our. "But I was walking down street this afternoon, and
happened to look round at a new house some one was putting up, and I
saw the whole family in the window. It appears that Mr. Lapham is
building the house."

The elder Corey knocked the ash of his cigarette into the holder at his
elbow. "I am more and more convinced, the longer I know you, Tom, that
we are descended from Giles Corey. The gift of holding one's tongue
seems to have skipped me, but you have it in full force. I can't say
just how you would behave under peine forte et dure, but under ordinary
pressure you are certainly able to keep your own counsel. Why didn't
you mention this encounter at dinner? You weren't asked to plead to an
accusation of witchcraft."

"No, not exactly," said the young man. "But I didn't quite see my way
to speaking of it. We had a good many other things before us."

"Yes, that's true. I suppose you wouldn't have mentioned it now if I
hadn't led up to it, would you?"

"I don't know, sir. It was rather on my mind to do so. Perhaps it was
I who led up to it."

His father laughed. "Perhaps you did, Tom; perhaps you did. Your
mother would have known you were leading up to something, but I'll
confess that I didn't. What is it?"

"Nothing very definite. But do you know that in spite of his syntax I
rather liked him?"

The father looked keenly at the son; but unless the boy's full
confidence was offered, Corey was not the man to ask it. "Well?" was
all that he said.

"I suppose that in a new country one gets to looking at people a little
out of our tradition; and I dare say that if I hadn't passed a winter
in Texas I might have found Colonel Lapham rather too much."

"You mean that there are worse things in Texas?"

"Not that exactly. I mean that I saw it wouldn't be quite fair to test
him by our standards."

"This comes of the error which I have often deprecated," said the elder
Corey. "In fact I am always saying that the Bostonian ought never to
leave Boston. Then he knows--and then only--that there can BE no
standard but ours. But we are constantly going away, and coming back
with our convictions shaken to their foundations. One man goes to
England, and returns with the conception of a grander social life;
another comes home from Germany with the notion of a more searching
intellectual activity; a fellow just back from Paris has the absurdest
ideas of art and literature; and you revert to us from the co