. You just go round to
White's or Jordan & Marsh's, and ask for a dinner dress. I guess
that'll settle it; they'll know. Get some of them imported dresses. I
see 'em in the window every time I pass; lots of 'em."

"Oh, it ain't the dress!" said Mrs. Lapham. "I don't suppose but what
we could get along with that; and I want to do the best we can for the
children; but I don't know what we're going to talk about to those
people when we get there. We haven't got anything in common with them.
Oh, I don't say they're any better," she again made haste to say in
arrest of her husband's resentment. "I don't believe they are; and I
don't see why they should be. And there ain't anybody has got a better
right to hold up their head than you have, Silas. You've got plenty of
money, and you've made every cent of it."

"I guess I shouldn't amounted to much without you, Persis," interposed
Lapham, moved to this justice by her praise.

"Oh, don't talk about ME!" protested the wife. "Now that you've made
it all right about Rogers, there ain't a thing in this world against
you. But still, for all that, I can see--and I can feel it when I
can't see it--that we're different from those people. They're
well-meaning enough, and they'd excuse it, I presume, but we're too old
to learn to be like them."

"The children ain't," said Lapham shrewdly.

"No, the children ain't," admitted his wife, "and that's the only thing
that reconciles me to it."

"You see how pleased Irene looked when I read it?"

"Yes, she was pleased."

"And I guess Penelope'll think better of it before the time comes."

"Oh yes, we do it for them. But whether we're doing the best thing for
'em, goodness knows. I'm not saying anything against HIM. Irene'll be
a lucky girl to get him, if she wants him. But there! I'd ten times
rather she was going to marry such a fellow as you were, Si, that had
to make every inch of his own way, and she had to help him. It's in
her!"

Lapham laughed aloud for pleasure in his wife's fondness; but neither
of them wished that he should respond directly to it. "I guess, if it
wa'n't for me, he wouldn't have a much easier time. But don't you
fret! It's all coming out right. That dinner ain't a thing for you to
be uneasy about. It'll pass off perfectly easy and natural."

Lapham did not keep his courageous mind quite to the end of the week
that followed. It was his theory not to let Corey see that he was set
up abou