t suppose she was expected to have any friends. I can't say I
liked her. But I don't think I disliked her so much as the author
does. She's pretty hard on her good-looking"--he was going to say
girls, but as if that might have been rather personal, he
said--"people."

"Yes, that's what Pen says. She says she doesn't give her any chance
to be good. She says she should have been just as bad as Rosamond if
she had been in her place."

The young man laughed. "Your sister is very satirical, isn't she?"

"I don't know," said Irene, still intent upon the convolutions of the
shaving. "She keeps us laughing. Papa thinks there's nobody that can
talk like her." She gave the shaving a little toss from her, and took
the parasol up across her lap. The unworldliness of the Lapham girls
did not extend to their dress; Irene's costume was very stylish, and
she governed her head and shoulders stylishly. "We are going to have
the back room upstairs for a music-room and library," she said abruptly.

"Yes?" returned Corey. "I should think that would be charming."

"We expected to have book-cases, but the architect wants to build the
shelves in."

The fact seemed to be referred to Corey for his comment.

"It seems to me that would be the best way. They'll look like part of
the room then. You can make them low, and hang your pictures above
them."

"Yes, that's what he said." The girl looked out of the window in
adding, "I presume with nice bindings it will look very well."

"Oh, nothing furnishes a room like books."

"No. There will have to be a good many of them."

"That depends upon the size of your room and the number of your
shelves."

"Oh, of course! I presume," said Irene, thoughtfully, "we shall have to
have Gibbon."

"If you want to read him," said Corey, with a laugh of sympathy for an
imaginable joke.

"We had a great deal about him at school. I believe we had one of his
books. Mine's lost, but Pen will remember."

The young man looked at her, and then said, seriously, "You'll want
Greene, of course, and Motley, and Parkman."

"Yes. What kind of writers are they?"

"They're historians too."

"Oh yes; I remember now. That's what Gibbon was. Is it Gibbon or
Gibbons?"

The young man decided the point with apparently superfluous delicacy.
"Gibbon, I think."

"There used to be so many of them," said Irene gaily. "I used to get
them mixed up with each other, and I couldn't tell them from the poe