I haven't been there much myself. He didn't say
anything to me. Does Irene know?"

"No; I left her getting ready to go out shopping. She wants to get a
pin like the one Nanny Corey had on." "O my Lord!" groaned Lapham.

"It's been Pen from the start, I guess, or almost from the start. I
don't say but what he was attracted some by Irene at the very first;
but I guess it's been Pen ever since he saw her; and we've taken up
with a notion, and blinded ourselves with it. Time and again I've had
my doubts whether he cared for Irene any; but I declare to goodness,
when he kept coming, I never hardly thought of Pen, and I couldn't help
believing at last he DID care for Irene. Did it ever strike you he
might be after Pen?"

"No. I took what you said. I supposed you knew."

"Do you blame me, Silas?" she asked timidly.

"No. What's the use of blaming? We don't either of us want anything but
the children's good. What's it all of it for, if it ain't for that?
That's what we've both slaved for all our lives."

"Yes, I know. Plenty of people LOSE their children," she suggested.

"Yes, but that don't comfort me any. I never was one to feel good
because another man felt bad. How would you have liked it if some one
had taken comfort because his boy lived when ours died? No, I can't do
it. And this is worse than death, someways. That comes and it goes;
but this looks as if it was one of those things that had come to stay.
The way I look at it, there ain't any hope for anybody. Suppose we
don't want Pen to have him; will that help Irene any, if he don't want
her? Suppose we don't want to let him have either; does that help
either!"

"You talk," exclaimed Mrs. Lapham, "as if our say was going to settle
it. Do you suppose that Penelope Lapham is a girl to take up with a
fellow that her sister is in love with, and that she always thought was
in love with her sister, and go off and be happy with him? Don't you
believe but what it would come back to her, as long as she breathed the
breath of life, how she'd teased her about him, as I've heard Pen tease
Irene, and helped to make her think he was in love with her, by showing
that she thought so herself? It's ridiculous!"

Lapham seemed quite beaten down by this argument. His huge head hung
forward over his breast; the reins lay loose in his moveless hand; the
mare took her own way. At last he lifted his face and shut his heavy
jaws.

"Well?" quavered his wife.

"We