THE Coreys had always had a house at Nahant, but after letting it for a
season or two they found they could get on without it, and sold it at
the son's instance, who foresaw that if things went on as they were
going, the family would be straitened to the point of changing their
mode of life altogether. They began to be of the people of whom it was
said that they stayed in town very late; and when the ladies did go
away, it was for a brief summering in this place and that. The father
remained at home altogether; and the son joined them in the intervals
of his enterprises, which occurred only too often.
At Bar Harbour, where he now went to find them, after his winter in
Texas, he confessed to his mother that there seemed no very good
opening there for him. He might do as well as Loring Stanton, but he
doubted if Stanton was doing very well. Then he mentioned the new
project which he had been thinking over. She did not deny that there
was something in it, but she could not think of any young man who had
gone into such a business as that, and it appeared to her that he might
as well go into a patent medicine or a stove-polish.
"There was one of his hideous advertisements," she said, "painted on a
reef that we saw as we came down."
Corey smiled. "Well, I suppose, if it was in a good state of
preservation, that is proof positive of the efficacy of the paint on
the hulls of vessels."
"It's very distasteful to me, Tom," said his mother; and if there was
something else in her mind, she did not speak more plainly of it than
to add: "It's not only the kind of business, but the kind of people you
would be mixed up with."
"I thought you didn't find them so very bad," suggested Corey.
"I hadn't seen them in Nankeen Square then."
"You can see them on the water side of Beacon Street when you go back."
Then he told of his encounter with the Lapham family in their new
house. At the end his mother merely said, "It is getting very common
down there," and she did not try to oppose anything further to his
scheme.
The young man went to see Colonel Lapham shortly after his return to
Boston. He paid his visit at Lapham's office, and if he had studied
simplicity in his summer dress he could not have presented himself in a
figure more to the mind of a practical man. His hands and neck still
kept the brown of the Texan suns and winds, and he looked as
business-like as Lapham himself.
He spoke up promptly and briskly in the outer office, and caused the
pretty girl to look away from her copying at him. "Is Mr. Lapham in?"
he asked; and after that moment for reflection which an array of
book-keepers so addressed likes to give the inquirer, a head was lifted
from a ledger and nodded toward the inner office.
Lapham had recognised the voice, and he was standing, in considerable
perplexity, to receive Corey, when the young man opened his painted
glass door. It was a hot afternoon, and Lapham was in his shirt
sleeves. Scarcely a trace of the boastful hospitality with which he
had welcomed Corey to his house a few days before lingered in his
present address. He looked at the young man's face, as if he expected
him to despatch whatever unimaginable affair he had come upon.
"Won't you sit down? How are you? You'll excuse me," he added, in brief
allusion to the shirt-sleeves. "I'm about roasted."