"Well, I can tell you," she said, "that if you think they were not the nicest people you ever saw, you"re mightily mistaken. They had about the best manners; and they had been everywhere, and knew everything. I declare it made me feel as if we had always lived in the backwoods. I don"t know but the mother and the daughters would have let you feel so a little, if they"d showed out all they thought; but they never did; and the son--well, I can"t express it, Silas! But that young man had about perfect ways."
"Seem struck up on Irene?" asked the Colonel.
"How can I tell? He seemed just about as much struck up on me. Anyway, he paid me as much attention as he did her. Perhaps it"s more the way, now, to notice the mother than it used to be."
Lapham ventured no conjecture, but asked, as he had asked already, who the people were.
Mrs. Lapham repeated their name. Lapham nodded his head. "Do you know them? What business is he in?"
"I guess he ain"t in anything," said Lapham.
"They were very nice," said Mrs. Lapham impartially.
"Well, they"d ought to be," returned the Colonel. "Never done anything else."
"They didn"t seem stuck up," urged his wife.
"They"d no need to--with you. I could buy him and sell him, twice over."
This answer satisfied Mrs. Lapham rather with the fact than with her husband. "Well, I guess I wouldn"t brag, Silas," she said.
In the winter the ladies of this family, who returned to town very late, came to call on Mrs. Lapham. They were again very polite. But the mother let drop, in apology for their calling almost at nightfall, that the coachman had not known the way exactly.
"Nearly all our friends are on the New Land or on the Hill."
There was a barb in this that rankled after the ladies had gone; and on comparing notes with her daughter, Mrs. Lapham found that a barb had been left to rankle in her mind also.
"They said they had never been in this part of the town before."
Upon a strict search of her memory, Irene could not report that the fact had been stated with anything like insinuation, but it was that which gave it a more penetrating effect.
"Oh, well, of course," said Lapham, to whom these facts were referred.
"Those sort of people haven"t got much business up our way, and they don"t come. It"s a fair thing all round. We don"t trouble the Hill or the New Land much."
"We know where they are," suggested his wife thoughtfully.
"Yes," a.s.sented the Colonel. "I know where they are. I"ve got a lot of land over on the Back Bay."
"You have?" eagerly demanded his wife.
"Want me to build on it?" he asked in reply, with a quizzical smile.
"I guess we can get along here for a while."
This was at night. In the morning Mrs. Lapham said--
"I suppose we ought to do the best we can for the children, in every way."
"I supposed we always had," replied her husband.
"Yes, we have, according to our light."
"Have you got some new light?"
"I don"t know as it"s light. But if the girls are going to keep on living in Boston and marry here, I presume we ought to try to get them into society, some way; or ought to do something."
"Well, who"s ever done more for their children than we have?" demanded Lapham, with a pang at the thought that he could possibly have been out-done. "Don"t they have everything they want? Don"t they dress just as you say? Don"t you go everywhere with "em? Is there ever anything going on that"s worth while that they don"t see it or hear it? I don"t know what you mean. Why don"t you get them into society? There"s money enough!"
"There"s got to be something besides money, I guess," said Mrs. Lapham, with a hopeless sigh. "I presume we didn"t go to work just the right way about their schooling. We ought to have got them into some school where they"d have got acquainted with city girls--girls who could help them along."
"Nearly everybody at Miss Smillie"s was from some where else."
"Well, it"s pretty late to think about that now," grumbled Lapham.
"And we"ve always gone our own way, and not looked out for the future.
We ought to have gone out more, and had people come to the house.
n.o.body comes."
"Well, is that my fault? I guess n.o.body ever makes people welcomer."
"We ought to have invited company more."
"Why don"t you do it now? If it"s for the girls, I don"t care if you have the house full all the while."
Mrs. Lapham was forced to a confession full of humiliation. "I don"t know who to ask."
"Well, you can"t expect me to tell you."
"No; we"re both country people, and we"ve kept our country ways, and we don"t, either of us, know what to do. You"ve had to work so hard, and your luck was so long coming, and then it came with such a rush, that we haven"t had any chance to learn what to do with it. It"s just the same with Irene"s looks; I didn"t expect she was ever going to have any, she WAS such a plain child, and, all at once, she"s blazed out this way. As long as it was Pen that didn"t seem to care for society, I didn"t give much mind to it. But I can see it"s going to be different with Irene. I don"t believe but what we"re in the wrong neighbourhood."
"Well," said the Colonel, "there ain"t a prettier lot on the Back Bay than mine. It"s on the water side of Beacon, and it"s twenty-eight feet wide and a hundred and fifty deep. Let"s build on it."
Mrs. Lapham was silent a while. "No," she said finally; "we"ve always got along well enough here, and I guess we better stay."
At breakfast she said casually: "Girls, how would you like to have your father build on the New Land?"
The girls said they did not know. It was more convenient to the horse-cars where they were.
Mrs. Lapham stole a look of relief at her husband, and nothing more was said of the matter.
The mother of the family who had called upon Mrs. Lapham brought her husband"s cards, and when Mrs. Lapham returned the visit she was in some trouble about the proper form of acknowledging the civility. The Colonel had no card but a business card, which advertised the princ.i.p.al depot and the several agencies of the mineral paint; and Mrs. Lapham doubted, till she wished to goodness that she had never seen nor heard of those people, whether to ignore her husband in the transaction altogether, or to write his name on her own card. She decided finally upon this measure, and she had the relief of not finding the family at home. As far as she could judge, Irene seemed to suffer a little disappointment from the fact.
For several months there was no communication between the families.
Then there came to Nankeen Square a lithographed circular from the people on the Hill, signed in ink by the mother, and affording Mrs.
Lapham an opportunity to subscribe for a charity of undeniable merit and acceptability. She submitted it to her husband, who promptly drew a cheque for five hundred dollars.
She tore it in two. "I will take a cheque for a hundred, Silas," she said.