"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," assented 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. 

 Prev. P 22/309 next