the consequences to imagination, and Penelope replied with her
mock soberness--

"Well, the Colonel does seem to be on his high horse, ma'am. But you
mustn't ask me what his business with Mr. Corey is, for I don't know.
All that I know is that I met them at the landing, and that they
conversed all the way down--on literary topics."

"Nonsense! What do you think it is?"

"Well, if you want my candid opinion, I think this talk about business
is nothing but a blind. It seems a pity Irene shouldn't have been up
to receive him," she added.

Irene cast a mute look of imploring at her mother, who was too much
preoccupied to afford her the protection it asked.

"Your father said he wanted to go into the business with him."

Irene's look changed to a stare of astonishment and mystification, but
Penelope preserved her imperturbability.

"Well, it's a lucrative business, I believe."

"Well, I don't believe a word of it!" cried Mrs. Lapham. "And so I
told your father."

"Did it seem to convince him?" inquired Penelope.

Her mother did not reply. "I know one thing," she said. "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.