"Oh no; the architect and mamma did that."
"But they allowed the rest of us to agree, when we were good," said
Penelope.
Corey looked at her, and saw that she was shorter than her sister, and
had a dark complexion.
"It's very exciting," said Irene.
"Come up," said the Colonel, rising, "and look round if you'd like to."
"I should like to, very much," said the young man. He helped the young
ladies over crevasses of carpentry and along narrow paths of planking,
on which they had made their way unassisted before. The elder sister
left the younger to profit solely by these offices as much as possible.
She walked between them and her father, who went before, lecturing on
each apartment, and taking the credit of the whole affair more and more
as he talked on.
"There!" he said, "we're going to throw out a bay-window here, so as
get the water all the way up and down. This is my girls' room," he
added, looking proudly at them both.
It seemed terribly intimate. Irene blushed deeply and turned her head
away.
But the young man took it all, apparently, as simply as their father.
"What a lovely lookout!" he said. The Back Bay spread its glassy sheet
before them, empty but for a few small boats and a large schooner, with
her sails close-furled and dripping like snow from her spars, which a
tug was rapidly towing toward Cambridge. The carpentry of that city,
embanked and embowered in foliage, shared the picturesqueness of
Charlestown in the distance.
"Yes," said Lapham, "I go in for using the best rooms in your house
yourself. If people come to stay with you, they can put up with the
second best. Though we don't intend to have any second best. There
ain't going to be an unpleasant room in the whole house, from top to
bottom."
"Oh, I wish papa wouldn't brag so!" breathed Irene to her sister, where
they stood, a little apart, looking away together.
The Colonel went on. "No, sir," he swelled out, "I have gone in for
making a regular job of it. I've got the best architect in Boston, and
I'm building a house to suit myself. And if money can do it, guess I'm
going to be suited."
"It seems very delightful," said Corey, "and very original."
"Yes, sir. That fellow hadn't talked five minutes before I saw that he
knew what he was about every time."
"I wish mamma would come!" breathed Irene again. "I shall certainly go
through the floor if papa says anything more."
"They are making a great many very pretty houses nowadays," said the
young man. "It's very different from the old-fashioned building."
"Well," said the Colonel, with a large toleration of tone and a deep
breath that expanded his ample chest, "we spend more on our houses
nowadays. I started out to build a forty-thousand-dollar house. Well,
sir! that fellow has got me in for more than sixty thousand already,
and I doubt if I get out of it much under a hundred. You can't have a
nice house for nothing. It's just like ordering a picture of a
painter. You pay him enough, and he can afford to paint you a
first-class picture; and if you don't, he can't. That's all there is of
it. Why, they tell me that A. T. Stewart gave one of those French
fellows sixty thousand dollars for a little seven-by-nine picture the
other day. Yes, sir, give an architect money enough, and he'll give
you a nice house every time."
"I've heard that they're sharp at getting money to realise their
ideas," assented the young man, with a laugh.
"Well, I should say so!" exclaimed the Colonel. "They come to you with
an improvement that you can't resist. It has good looks and
common-sense and everything in its favour, and it's like throwing money
away to refuse. And they always manage to get you when your wife is
around, and then you're helpless."
The Colonel himself set the example of laughing at this joke, and the
young man joined him less obstreperously. The girls turned, and he
said, "I don't think I ever saw this view to better advantage. It's
surprising how well the Memorial Hall and the Cambridge spires work up,
over there. And the sunsets must be magnificent."
Lapham did not wait for them to reply.
"Yes, sir, it's about the sightliest view I know of. I always did like
the water side of Beacon. Long before I owned property here, or ever
expected to, m'wife and I used to ride down this way, and stop the
buggy to get this view over the water. When people talk to me about
the Hill, I can understand 'em. It's snug, and it's old-fashioned, and
it's where they've always lived. But when they talk about Commonwealth
Avenue, I don't know what they mean. It don't hold a candle to the
water side of Beacon. You've got just as much wind over there, and
you've got just as much dust, and all the view you've got is the view
across the street. No, sir! when you come to the Back Bay at all, give
me the water side of Beacon."
"Oh, I think you're quite right," said the young man. "The view here
is everything."
Irene looked "I wonder what papa is going to say next!" at her sister,
when their mother's voice was heard overhead, approaching the opening
in the floor where the stairs were to be; and she presently appeared,
with one substantial foot a long way ahead. She was followed by the
carpenter, with his rule sticking out of his overalls pocket, and she
was still talking to him about some measurements they had been taking,
when they reached the bottom, so that Irene had to say, "Mamma, Mr.
Corey," before Mrs. Lapham was aware of him.
He came forward with as much grace and speed as the uncertain footing
would allow, and Mrs. Lapham gave him a stout squeeze of her
comfortable hand.
"Why, Mr. Corey! When did you get back?"
"Yesterday. It hardly seems as if I HAD got back. I didn't expect to
find you in a new house."
"Well, you are our first caller. I presume you won't expect I should
make excuses for the state you find it in. Has the Colonel been doing
the honours?"
"Oh yes. And I've seen more of your house than I ever shall again, I
suppose."
"Well, I hope not," said Lapham. "There'll be several chances to see
us in the old one yet, before we leave."
He probably thought this a neat, off-hand way of making the invitation,
for he looked at his woman-kind as if he might expect their admiration.
"Oh yes, indeed!" said his wife. "We shall be very glad to see Mr.
Corey, any time."
"Thank you; I shall be glad to come."
He and the Colonel went before, and helped the ladies down the
difficult descent. Irene seemed less sure-footed than the others; she
clung to the young man's hand an imperceptible moment longer than need
be, or else he detained her. He found opportunity of saying, "It's so
pleasant seeing you again," adding, "all of you."
"Thank you," said the girl. "They must all be glad to have you at home
again."
Corey laughed.
"Well, I suppose they would be, if they were at home to have me. But
the fact is, there's nobody in the house but my father and myself, and
I'm only on my way to Bar Harbour."
"Oh! Are they there?"
"Yes; it seems to be the only place where my mother can get just the
combination of sea and mountain air that she wants."
"We go to Nantasket--it's convenient for papa; and I don't believe we
shall go anywhere else this summer, mamma's so taken up with building.
We do nothing but talk house; and Pen says we eat and sleep house. She
says it would be a sort of relief to go and live in tents for a while."
"She seems to have a good deal of humour," the young man ventured, upon
the slender evidence.
The others had gone to the back of the house a moment, to look at some
suggested change. Irene and Corey were left standing in the doorway.
A lovely light of happiness played over her face and etherealised its
delicious beauty. She had some ado to keep herself from smiling
outright, and the effort deepened the dimples in her cheeks; she
trembled a little, and the pendants shook in the tips of her pretty
ears.
The others came back directly, and they all descended the front steps
together. The Colonel was about to renew his invitation, but he caught
his wife's eye, and, without being able to interpret its warning
exactly, was able to arrest himself, and went about gathering up the
hitching-weight, while the young man handed the ladies into the
phaeton. Then he lifted his hat, and the ladies all bowed, and the
Laphams drove off, Irene's blue ribbons fluttering backward from her
hat, as if they were her clinging thoughts.
"So that's young Corey, is it?" said the Colonel, letting the stately
stepping, tall coupe horse make his way homeward at will with the
beach-wagon. "Well, he ain't a bad-looking fellow, and he's got a good,
fair and square, honest eye. But I don't see how a fellow like that,
that's had every advantage in this world, can hang round home and let
his father support him. Seems to me, if I had his health and his
education, I should want to strike out and do something for myself."
The girls on the back seat had hold of each other's hands, and they
exchanged electrical pressures at the different points their father
made.
"I presume," said Mrs. Lapham, "that he was down in Texas looking after
something."
"He's come back without finding it, I guess."
"Well, if his father has the money to support him, and don't complain
of the burden, I don't see why WE should."
"Oh, I know it's none of my business, but I don't like the principle.
I like to see a man ACT like a man. I don't like to see him taken care
of like a young lady. Now, I suppose that fellow belongs to two or
three clubs, and hangs around 'em all day, lookin' out the
window,--I've seen 'em,--instead of tryin' to hunt up something to do
for an honest livin'."
"If I was a young man," Penelope struck in, "I would belong to twenty
clubs, if I could find them and I would hang around them all, and look
out the window till I dropped."
"Oh, you would, would you?" demanded her father, delighted with her
defiance, and twisting his fat head around over his shoulder to look at
her. "Well, you wouldn't do it on my money, if you were a son of MINE,
young lady."
"Oh, you wait and see," retorted the girl.
This made them all laugh. But the Colonel recurred seriously to the
subject that night, as he was winding up his watch preparatory to
putting it under his pillow.
"I could make a man of that fellow, if I had him in the business with
me. There's stuff in him. But I spoke up the way I did because I
didn't choose Irene should think I would stand any kind of a loafer
'round--I don't care who he is, or how well educated or brought up.
And I guess, from the way Pen spoke up, that 'Rene saw what I was
driving at."
The girl, apparently, was less anxious about her father's ideas and
principles than about the impression which he had made upon the young
man. She had talked it over and over with her sister before they went
to bed, and she asked in despair, as she stood looking at Penelope
brushing out her hair before the glass--
"Do you suppose he'll think papa always talks in that bragging way?"
"He'll be right if he does," answered her sister. "It's the way father
always does talk. You never noticed it so much, that's all. And I
guess if he can't make allowance for father's bragging, he'll be a
little too good. I enjoyed hearing the Colonel go on."
"I know you did," returned Irene in distress. Then she sighed.
"Didn't you think he looked very nice?"
"Who? The Colonel?" Penelope had caught up the habit of calling her
father so from her mother, and she used his title in all her jocose and
perverse moods.
"You know very well I don't mean papa," pouted Irene. "Oh! Mr. Corey!
Why didn't you say Mr. Corey if you meant Mr. Corey? If I meant Mr.
Corey, I should say Mr. Corey. It isn't swearing! Corey, Corey, Co----"
Her sister clapped her hand over her mouth "Will you HUSH, you wretched
thing?" she whimpered. "The whole house can hear you."
"Oh yes, they can hear me all over the square. Well, I think he looked
well enough for a plain youth, who hadn't taken his hair out of
curl-papers for some time."
"It WAS clipped pretty close," Irene admitted; and they both laughed at
the drab effect of Mr. Corey's skull, as they remembered it. "Did you
like his nose?" asked Irene timorously.
"Ah, now you're COMING to something," said Penelope. "I don't know
whether, if I had so much of a nose, I should want it all Roman."
"I don't see how you can expect to have a nose part one kind and part
another," argued Irene.
"Oh, I do. Look at mine!" She turned aside her face, so as to get a
three-quarters view of her nose in the glass, and crossing her hands,
with the brush in one of them, before her, regarded it judicially.
"Now, my nose started Grecian, but changed its mind before it got over
the bridge, and concluded to be snub the rest of the way."
"You've got a very pretty nose, Pen," said Irene, joining in the
contemplation of its reflex in the glass.
"Don't say that in hopes of getting me to compliment HIS, Mrs."--she
stopped, and then added deliberately--"C.!"
Irene also had her hair-brush in her hand, and now she sprang at her
sister and beat her very softly on the shoulder with the flat of it.
"You mean thing!" she cried, between her shut teeth, blushing hotly.
"Well, D., then," said Penelope. "You've nothing to say against D.?
Though I think C. is just as nice an initial."
"Oh!" cried the younger, for all expression of unspeakable things.
"I think he has very good eyes," admitted Penelope.
"Oh, he HAS! And didn't you like the way his sackcoat set? So close to
him, and yet free--kind of peeling away at the lapels?"
"Yes, I should say he was a young man of great judgment. He knows how
to choose his tailor."
Irene sat down on the edge of a chair. "It was so nice of you, Pen, to
come in, that way, about clubs."
"Oh, I didn't mean anything by it except opposition," said Penelope.
"I couldn't have father swelling on so, without saying something."
"How he did swell!" sighed Irene. "Wasn't it a relief to have mamma
come down, even if she did seem to be all stocking at first?"
The girls broke into a wild giggle, and hid their faces in each other's
necks. "I thought I SHOULD die," said Irene.
"'It's just like ordering a painting,'" said Penelope, recalling her
father's talk, with an effect of dreamy absent-mindedness. "'You give
the painter money enough, and he can afford to paint you a first-class
picture. Give an architect money enough, and he'll give you a
first-class house, every time.'"
"Oh, wasn't it awful!" moaned her sister. "No one would ever have
supposed that he had fought the very idea of an architect for weeks,
before he gave in."
Penelope went on. "'I always did like the water side of Beacon,--long
before I owned property there. When you come to the Back Bay at all,
give me the water side of Beacon.'"
"Ow-w-w-w!" shrieked Irene. "DO stop!"
The door of their mother's chamber opened below, and the voice of the
real Colonel called, "What are you doing up there, girls? Why don't you
go to bed?"
This extorted nervous shrieks from both of them. The Colonel heard a
sound of scurrying feet, whisking drapery, and slamming doors. Then he
heard one of the doors opened again, and Penelope said, "I was only
repeating something you said when you talked to Mr. Corey."
"Very well, now," answered the Colonel. "You postpone the rest of it
till to-morrow at breakfast, and see that you're up in time to let ME
hear it."