re do you want I should go?" he asked, turning the buggy.

"Oh, I don't care. Out Brookline way, I guess. I wish you hadn't
brought this fool of a horse," she gave way petulantly. "I wanted to
have a talk."

"When I can't drive this mare and talk too, I'll sell out altogether,"
said Lapham. "She'll be quiet enough when she's had her spin."

"Well," said his wife; and while they were making their way across the
city to the Milldam she answered certain questions he asked about some
points in the new house.

"I should have liked to have you stop there," he began; but she
answered so quickly, "Not to-day," that he gave it up and turned his
horse's head westward when they struck Beacon Street.

He let the mare out, and he did not pull her in till he left the
Brighton road and struck off under the low boughs that met above one of
the quiet streets of Brookline, where the stone cottages, with here and
there a patch of determined ivy on their northern walls, did what they
could to look English amid the glare of the autumnal foliage. The
smooth earthen track under the mare's hoofs was scattered with flakes
of the red and yellow gold that made the air luminous around them, and
the perspective was gay with innumerable tints and tones.

"Pretty sightly," said Lapham, with a long sign, letting the reins lie
loose in his vigilant hand, to which he seemed to relegate the whole
charge of the mare. "I want to talk with you about Rogers, Persis.
He's been getting in deeper and deeper with me; and last night he
pestered me half to death to go in with him in one of his schemes. I
ain't going to blame anybody, but I hain't got very much confidence in
Rogers. And I told him so last night."

"Oh, don't talk to me about Rogers!" his wife broke in. "There's
something a good deal more important than Rogers in the world, and more
important than your business. It seems as if you couldn't think of
anything else--that and the new house. Did you suppose I wanted to
ride so as to talk Rogers with you?" she demanded, yielding to the
necessity a wife feels of making her husband pay for her suffering,
even if he has not inflicted it. "I declare----"

"Well, hold on, now!" said Lapham. "What DO you want to talk about?
I'm listening."

His wife began, "Why, it's just this, Silas Lapham!" and then she broke
off to say, "Well, you may wait, now--starting me wrong, when it's hard
enough anyway."

Lapham silently turned his whip over a