"No. But it puts him where he can make the advances without demeaning
himself, and it puts you where you can't. Now, look here, Silas Lapham!
You understand this thing as well as I do. You know that I appreciate
you, and that I'd sooner die than have you humble yourself to a living
soul. But I'm not going to have you coming to me, and pretending that
you can meet Bromfield Corey as an equal on his own ground. You can't.
He's got a better education than you, and if he hasn't got more brains
than you, he's got different. And he and his wife, and their fathers
and grandfathers before 'em, have always had a high position, and you
can't help it. If you want to know them, you've got to let them make
the advances. If you don't, all well and good."
"I guess," said the chafed and vanquished Colonel, after a moment for
swallowing the pill, "that they'd have been in a pretty fix if you'd
waited to let them make the advances last summer."
"That was a different thing altogether. I didn't know who they were,
or may be I should have waited. But all I say now is that if you've
got young Corey into business with you, in hopes of our getting into
society with his father, you better ship him at once. For I ain't
going to have it on that basis."
"Who wants to have it on that basis?" retorted her husband.
"Nobody, if you don't," said Mrs. Lapham tranquilly.
Irene had come home with the shaving in her belt, unnoticed by her
father, and unquestioned by her mother. But her sister saw it at once,
and asked her what she was doing with it.
"Oh, nothing," said Irene, with a joyful smile of self-betrayal, taking
the shaving carefully out, and laying it among the laces and ribbons in
her drawer.
"Hadn't you better put it in water, 'Rene? It'll be all wilted by
morning," said Pen.
"You mean thing!" cried the happy girl. "It isn't a flower!"
"Oh, I thought it was a whole bouquet. Who gave it to you?"
"I shan't tell you," said Irene saucily.
"Oh, well, never mind. Did you know Mr. Corey had been down here this
afternoon, walking on the beach with me?"
"He wasn't--he wasn't at all! He was at the house with ME. There! I've
caught you fairly."
"Is that so?" drawled Penelope. "Then I never could guess who gave you
that precious shaving."
"No, you couldn't!" said Irene, flushing beautifully. "And you may
guess, and you may guess, and you may guess!" With her lovely eyes she
coaxed her sister to keep on teasing her, and Penelope continued the
comedy with the patience that women have for such things.
"Well, I'm not going to try, if it's no use. But I didn't know it had
got to be the fashion to give shavings instead of flowers. But there's
some sense in it. They can be used for kindlings when they get old,
and you can't do anything with old flowers. Perhaps he'll get to
sending 'em by the barrel."
Irene laughed for pleasure in this tormenting. "O Pen, I want to tell
you how it all happened."
"Oh, he DID give it to you, then? Well, I guess I don't care to hear."
"You shall, and you've got to!" Irene ran and caught her sister, who
feigned to be going out of the room, and pushed her into a chair.
"There, now!" She pulled up another chair, and hemmed her in with it.
"He came over, and sat down on the trestle alongside of me----"
"What? As close as you are to me now?"
"You wretch! I will GIVE it to you! No, at a proper distance. And here
was this shaving on the floor, that I'd been poking with my parasol----"
"To hide your embarrassment."
"Pshaw! I wasn't a bit embarrassed. I was just as much at my ease! And
then he asked me to let him hold the shaving down with his foot, while
I went on with my poking. And I said yes he might----"
"What a bold girl! You said he might hold a shaving down for you?"
"And then--and then----" continued Irene, lifting her eyes absently,
and losing herself in the beatific recollection, "and then----Oh yes!
Then I asked him if he didn't like the smell of pine shavings. And
then he picked it up, and said it smelt like a flower. And then he
asked if he might offer it to me--just for a joke, you know. And I
took it, and stuck it in my belt. And we had such a laugh! We got into
a regular gale. And O Pen, what do you suppose he meant by it?" She
suddenly caught herself to her sister's breast, and hid her burning
face on her shoulder.
"Well, there used to be a book about the language of flowers. But I
never knew much about the language of shavings, and I can't say
exactly----"
"Oh, don't--DON'T, Pen!" and here Irene gave over laughing, and began
to sob in her sister's arms.
"Why, 'Rene!" cried the elder girl.
"You KNOW he didn't mean anything. He doesn't care a bit about me. He
hates me! He despises me! Oh, what shall I do?"
A trouble passed over the face of the sister as she silently comforted
the child in her arms; then the drolling light came back into her eyes.
"Well, 'Rene, YOU haven't got to do ANYthing. That's one advantage
girls have got--if it IS an advantage. I'm not always sure."
Irene's tears turned to laughing again. When she lifted her head it
was to look into the mirror confronting them, where her beauty showed
all the more brilliant for the shower that had passed over it. She
seemed to gather courage from the sight.
"It must be awful to have to DO," she said, smiling into her own face.
"I don't see how they ever can."
"Some of 'em can't--especially when there's such a tearing beauty
around."
"Oh, pshaw, Pen! you know that isn't so. You've got a real pretty
mouth, Pen," she added thoughtfully, surveying the feature in the
glass, and then pouting her own lips for the sake of that effect on
them.
"It's a useful mouth," Penelope admitted; "I don't believe I could get
along without it now, I've had it so long."
"It's got such a funny expression--just the mate of the look in your
eyes; as if you were just going to say something ridiculous. He said,
the very first time he saw you, that he knew you were humorous."
"Is it possible? It must be so, if the Grand Mogul said it. Why didn't
you tell me so before, and not let me keep on going round just like a
common person?"
Irene laughed as if she liked to have her sister take his praises in
that way rather than another.
"I've got such a stiff, prim kind of mouth," she said, drawing it down,
and then looking anxiously at it.
"I hope you didn't put on that expression when he offered you the
shaving. If you did, I don't believe he'll ever give you another
splinter."
The severe mouth broke into a lovely laugh, and then pressed itself in
a kiss against Penelope's cheek.
"There! Be done, you silly thing! I'm not going to have you accepting
ME before I've offered myself, ANYWAY." She freed herself from her
sister's embrace, and ran from her round the room.
Irene pursued her, in the need of hiding her face against her shoulder
again. "O Pen! O Pen!" she cried.
The next day, at the first moment of finding herself alone with her
eldest daughter, Mrs. Lapham asked, as if knowing that Penelope must
have already made it subject of inquiry: "What was Irene doing with
that shaving in her belt yesterday?"
"Oh, just some nonsense of hers with Mr. Corey. He gave it to her at
the new house." Penelope did not choose to look up and meet her
mother's grave glance.
"What do you think he meant by it?"
Penelope repeated Irene's account of the affair, and her mother
listened without seeming to derive much encouragement from it.
"He doesn't seem like one to flirt with her," she said at last. Then,
after a thoughtful pause: "Irene is as good a girl as ever breathed,
and she's a perfect beauty. But I should hate the day when a daughter
of mine was married for her beauty."
"You're safe as far as I'm concerned, mother."
Mrs. Lapham smiled ruefully. "She isn't really equal to him, Pen. I
misdoubted that from the first, and it's been borne in upon me more and
more ever since. She hasn't mind enough." "I didn't know that a man
fell in love with a girl's intellect," said Penelope quietly.
"Oh no. He hasn't fallen in love with Irene at all. If he had, it
wouldn't matter about the intellect."
Penelope let the self-contradiction pass.
"Perhaps he has, after all."
"No," said Mrs. Lapham. "She pleases him when he sees her. But he
doesn't try to see her."
"He has no chance. You won't let father bring him here."
"He would find excuses to come without being brought, if he wished to
come," said the mother. "But she isn't in his mind enough to make him.
He goes away and doesn't think anything more about her. She's a child.
She's a good child, and I shall always say it; but she's nothing but a
child. No, she's got to forget him."
"Perhaps that won't be so easy."
"No, I presume not. And now your father has got the notion in his
head, and he will move heaven and earth to bring it to pass. I can see
that he's always thinking about it."
"The Colonel has a will of his own," observed the girl, rocking to and
fro where she sat looking at her mother.
"I wish we had never met them!" cried Mrs. Lapham. "I wish we had
never thought of building! I wish he had kept away from your father's
business!"
"Well, it's too late now, mother," said the girl. "Perhaps it isn't so
bad as you think."
"Well, we must stand it, anyway," said Mrs. Lapham, with the grim
antique Yankee submission.
"Oh yes, we've got to stand it," said Penelope, with the quaint modern
American fatalism.