"I hadn't anything to say to him," replied Lapham sullenly. 

 They stood a while, without looking at the work which they had come to enjoy, and without speaking to each other. 

 "I suppose we might as well go on," said Mrs. Lapham at last, as they returned to the buggy. The Colonel drove recklessly toward the Milldam. His wife kept her veil down and her face turned from him. After a time she put her handkerchief up under her veil and wiped her eyes, and he set his teeth and squared his jaw. 

 "I don't see how he always manages to appear just at the moment when he seems to have gone fairly out of our lives, and blight everything," she whimpered. 

 "I supposed he was dead," said Lapham. 

 "Oh, don't SAY such a thing! It sounds as if you wished it." 

 "Why do you mind it? What do you let him blight everything for?" 

 "I can't help it, and I don't believe I ever shall. I don't know as his being dead would help it any. I can't ever see him without feeling just as I did at first." 

 "I tell you," said Lapham, "it was a perfectly square thing. And I wish, once for all, you would quit bothering about it. My conscience is easy as far as he is concerned, and it always was." 

 "And I can't look at him without feeling as if you'd ruined him, Silas." 

 "Don't look at him, then," said her husband, with a scowl.  "I want you should recollect in the first place, Persis, that I never wanted a partner." 

 "If he hadn't put his money in when he did, you'd 'a' broken down." 

 "Well, he got his money out again, and more, too," said the Colonel, with a sulky weariness. 

 "He didn't want to take it out." 

 "I gave him his choice: buy out or go out." 

 "You know he couldn't buy out then. It was no choice at all." 

 "It was a business chance." 

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