any how he had said to his wife the first
time he saw that fellow that he could make a man of him if he had him
in the business; and he guessed he was not mistaken. He began to tell
stories of the different young men he had had in his employ. At last
he had the talk altogether to himself; no one else talked, and he
talked unceasingly. It was a great time; it was a triumph.

He was in this successful mood when word came to him that Mrs. Lapham
was going; Tom Corey seemed to have brought it, but he was not sure.
Anyway, he was not going to hurry. He made cordial invitations to each
of the gentlemen to drop in and see him at his office, and would not be
satisfied till he had exacted a promise from each. He told Charles
Bellingham that he liked him, and assured James Bellingham that it had
always been his ambition to know him, and that if any one had said when
he first came to Boston that in less than ten years he should be
hobnobbing with Jim Bellingham, he should have told that person he
lied. He would have told anybody he lied that had told him ten years
ago that a son of Bromfield Corey would have come and asked him to take
him into the business. Ten years ago he, Silas Lapham, had come to
Boston a little worse off than nothing at all, for he was in debt for
half the money that he had bought out his partner with, and here he was
now worth a million, and meeting you gentlemen like one of you. And
every cent of that was honest money,--no speculation,--every copper of
it for value received. And here, only the other day, his old partner,
who had been going to the dogs ever since he went out of the business,
came and borrowed twenty thousand dollars of him! Lapham lent it
because his wife wanted him to: she had always felt bad about the
fellow's having to go out of the business.

He took leave of Mr. Sewell with patronising affection, and bade him
come to him if he ever got into a tight place with his parish work; he
would let him have all the money he wanted; he had more money than he
knew what to do with. "Why, when your wife sent to mine last fall," he
said, turning to Mr. Corey, "I drew my cheque for five hundred dollars,
but my wife wouldn't take more than one hundred; said she wasn't going
to show off before Mrs. Corey. I call that a pretty good joke on Mrs.
Corey. I must tell her how Mrs. Lapham done her out of a cool four
hundred dollars."

He started toward the door of the drawing-room to take leave of