"Let's all go.
Unless," he added inquiringly, "there's somebody coming here?"

"There's nobody coming," said Penelope.

"Good! Then we'll go. Mother, don't you be late now."

"Oh, I shan't keep you waiting," said Mrs. Lapham. She had thought of
telling what a cheerful letter she had got from Irene; but upon the
whole it seemed better not to speak of Irene at all just then. After
they returned from the theatre, where the Colonel roared through the
comedy, with continual reference of his pleasure to Penelope, to make
sure that she was enjoying it too, his wife said, as if the whole
affair had been for the girl's distraction rather than his, "I don't
believe but what it's going to come out all right about the children;"
and then she told him of the letter, and the hopes she had founded upon
it.

"Well, perhaps you're right, Persis," he consented.

"I haven't seen Pen so much like herself since it happened. I declare,
when I see the way she came out to-night, just to please you, I don't
know as I want you should get over all your troubles right away."

"I guess there'll be enough to keep Pen going for a while yet," said
the Colonel, winding up his watch.

But for a time there was a relief, which Walker noted, in the
atmosphere at the office, and then came another cold wave, slighter
than the first, but distinctly felt there, and succeeded by another
relief. It was like the winter which was wearing on to the end of the
year, with alternations of freezing weather, and mild days stretching
to weeks, in which the snow and ice wholly disappeared. It was none
the less winter, and none the less harassing for these fluctuations,
and Lapham showed in his face and temper the effect of like
fluctuations in his affairs. He grew thin and old, and both at home
and at his office he was irascible to the point of offence. In these
days Penelope shared with her mother the burden of their troubled home,
and united with her in supporting the silence or the petulance of the
gloomy, secret man who replaced the presence of jolly prosperity there.
Lapham had now ceased to talk of his troubles, and savagely resented
his wife's interference. "You mind your own business, Persis," he said
one day, "if you've got any;" and after that she left him mainly to
Penelope, who did not think of asking him questions.

"It's pretty hard on you, Pen," she said.

"That makes it easier for me," returned the girl, who did not otherwise
refer to h