ng in the world for their acquaintance. We
shouldn't be a bit better off. We don't know the same people they do,
and we don't care for the same kind of things."

Lapham was breathless with resentment of his wife's implication.
"Don't I tell you," he gasped, "that I don't want to know them? Who
began it? They're friends of yours if they're anybody's."

"They're distant acquaintances of mine," returned Mrs. Lapham quietly;
"and this young Corey is a clerk of yours. And I want we should hold
ourselves so that when they get ready to make the advances we can meet
them half-way or not, just as we choose."

"That's what grinds me," cried her husband. "Why should we wait for
them to make the advances? Why shouldn't we make 'em? Are they any
better than we are? My note of hand would be worth ten times what
Bromfield Corey's is on the street to-day. And I made MY money. I
haven't loafed my life away."

"Oh, it isn't what you've got, and it isn't what you've done exactly.
It's what you are."

"Well, then, what's the difference?"

"None that really amounts to anything, or that need give you any
trouble, if you don't think of it. But he's been all his life in
society, and he knows just what to say and what to do, and he can talk
about the things that society people like to talk about, and
you--can't."

Lapham gave a furious snort. "And does that make him any better?"

"No. But it puts him where he can make the advances without demeaning
himself, and it puts you where you can't. Now, look here, Silas Lapham!
You understand this thing as well as I do. You know that I appreciate
you, and that I'd sooner die than have you humble yourself to a living
soul. But I'm not going to have you coming to me, and pretending that
you can meet Bromfield Corey as an equal on his own ground. You can't.
He's got a better education than you, and if he hasn't got more brains
than you, he's got different. And he and his wife, and their fathers
and grandfathers before 'em, have always had a high position, and you
can't help it. If you want to know them, you've got to let them make
the advances. If you don't, all well and good."

"I guess," said the chafed and vanquished Colonel, after a moment for
swallowing the pill, "that they'd have been in a pretty fix if you'd
waited to let them make the advances last summer."

"That was a different thing altogether. I didn't know who they were,
or may be I should have waited. But all I say