prompt:
Chapter: THE Nova Scotia second-girl who answered Corey's ring said that Lapham
had not come home yet.

"Oh," said the young man, hesitating on the outer step.

"I guess you better come in," said the girl, "I'll go and see when
they're expecting him."

Corey was in the mood to be swayed by any chance.  He obeyed the
suggestion of the second-girl's patronising friendliness, and let her
shut him into the drawing-room, while she went upstairs to announce him
to Penelope.  "Did you tell him father wasn't at home?"

"Yes. He seemed so kind of disappointed, I told him to come in, and I'd
see when he WOULD be in," said the girl, with the human interest which
sometimes replaces in the American domestic the servile deference of
other countries.

A gleam of amusement passed over Penelope's face, as she glanced at
herself in the glass.  "Well," she cried finally, dropping from her
shoulders the light shawl in which she had been huddled over a book
when Corey rang, "I will go down."

"All right," said the girl, and Penelope began hastily to amend the
disarray of her hair, which she tumbled into a mass on the top of her
little head, setting off the pale dark of her complexion with a flash
of crimson ribbon at her throat.  She moved across the carpet once or
twice with the quaint grace that belonged to her small figure, made a
dissatisfied grimace at it in the glass, caught a handkerchief out of a
drawer and slid it into her pocket, and then descended to Corey.

The Lapham drawing-room in Nankeen Square was in the parti-coloured
paint which the Colonel had hoped to repeat in his new house: the trim
of the doors and windows was in light green and the panels in salmon;
the walls were a plain tint of French grey paper, divided by gilt
mouldings into broad panels with a wide stripe of red velvet paper
running up the corners; the chandelier was of massive imitation bronze;
the mirror over the mantel rested on a fringed mantel-cover of green
reps, and heavy curtains of that stuff hung from gilt lambrequin frames
at the window; the carpet was of a small pattern in crude green, which,
at the time Mrs. Lapham bought it, covered half the new floors in
Boston.  In the panelled spaces on the walls were some stone-coloured
landscapes, representing the mountains and canyons of the West, which
the Colonel and his wife had visited on one of the early official
railroad excursions.  In front of the long windows looking into the
Square were statues, kneeling figures which turned their backs upon the
company within-doors, and represented allegories of Faith and Prayer to
people without.  A white marble group of several figures, expressing an
Italian conception of Lincoln Freeing the Slaves,--a Latin negro and
his wife,--with our Eagle flapping his wings in approval, at Lincoln's
feet, occupied one corner, and balanced the what-not of an earlier
period in another.  These phantasms added their chill to that imparted
by the tone of the walls, the landscapes, and the carpets, and
contributed to the violence of the contrast when the chandelier was
lighted up full glare, and the heat of the whole furnace welled up from
the registers into the quivering atmosphere on one of the rare
occasions when the Laphams invited company.

Corey had not been in this room before; the family had always received
him in what they called the sitting-room.  Penelope looked into this
first, and then she looked into the parlour, with a smile that broke
into a laugh as she discovered him standing under the single burner
which the second-girl had lighted for him in the chandelier.

"I don't understand how you came to be put in there," she said, as she
led the way to the cozier place, "unless it was because Alice thought
you were only here on probation, anyway.  Father hasn't got home yet,
but I'm expecting him every moment; I don't know what's keeping him.
Did the girl tell you that mother and Irene were out?"

"No, she didn't say.  It's very good of you to see me." She had not
seen the exaltation which he had been feeling, he perceived with half a
sigh; it must all be upon this lower level; perhaps it was best so.
"There was something I wished to say to your father----I hope," he
broke off, "you're better to-night."

"Oh yes, thank you," said Penelope, remembering that she had not been
well enough to go to dinner the night before.

"We all missed you very much."

"Oh, thank you! I'm afraid you wouldn't have missed me if I had been
there."

"Oh yes, we should," said Corey, "I assure you."

They looked at each other.

"I really think I believed I was saying something," said the girl.

"And so did I," replied the young man.  They laughed rather wildly, and
then they both became rather grave.

He took the chair she gave him, and looked across at her, where she sat
on the other side of the hearth, in a chair lower than his, with her
hands dropped in her lap, and the back of her head on her shoulders as
she looked up at him.  The soft-coal fire in the grate purred and
flickered; the drop-light cast a mellow radiance on her face.  She let
her eyes fall, and then lifted them for an irrelevant glance at the
clock on the mantel.

"Mother and Irene have gone to the Spanish Students' concert."

"Oh, have they?" asked Corey; and he put his hat, which he had been
holding in his hand, on the floor beside his chair.

She looked down at it for no reason, and then looked up at his face for
no other, and turned a little red.  Corey turned a little red himself.
She who had always been so easy with him now became a little
constrained.

"Do you know how warm it is out-of-doors?" he asked.

"No, is it warm? I haven't been out all day."

"It's like a summer night."

She turned her face towards the fire, and then started abruptly.
"Perhaps it's too warm for you here?"

"Oh no, it's very comfortable."

"I suppose it's the cold of the last few days that's still in the
house.  I was reading with a shawl on when you came."

"I interrupted you."

"Oh no.  I had finished the book.  I was just looking over it again."

"Do you like to read books over?"

"Yes; books that I like at all."

"That was it?" asked Corey.

The girl hesitated.  "It has rather a sentimental name.  Did you ever
read it?--Tears, Idle Tears."

"Oh yes; they were talking of that last night; it's a famous book with
ladies.  They break their hearts over it.  Did it make you cry?"

"Oh, it's pretty easy to cry over a book," said Penelope, laughing;
"and that one is very natural till you come to the main point.  Then
the naturalness of all the rest makes that seem natural too; but I
guess it's rather forced."

"Her giving him up to the other one?"

"Yes; simply because she happened to know that the other one had cared
for him first.  Why should she have done it? What right had she?"

"I don't know.  I suppose that the self-sacrifice----"

"But it WASN'T self-sacrifice--or not self-sacrifice alone.  She was
sacrificing him too; and for some one who couldn't appreciate him half
as much as she could.  I'm provoked with myself when I think how I
cried over that book--for I did cry.  It's silly--it's wicked for any
one to do what that girl did.  Why can't they let people have a chance
to behave reasonably in stories?"

"Perhaps they couldn't make it so attractive," suggested Corey, with a
smile.

"It would be novel, at any rate," said the girl.  "But so it would in
real life, I suppose," she added.

"I don't know.  Why shouldn't people in love behave sensibly?"

"That's a very serious question," said Penelope gravely.  "I couldn't
answer it," and she left him the embarrassment of supporting an inquiry
which she had certainly instigated herself.  She seemed to have finally
recovered her own ease in doing this.  "Do you admire our autumnal
display, Mr. Corey?"

"Your display?"

"The trees in the Square.  WE think it's quite equal to an opening at
Jordan & Marsh's."

"Ah, I'm afraid you wouldn't let me be serious even about your maples."

"Oh yes, I should--if you like to be serious."

"Don't you?"

"Well not about serious matters.  That's the reason that book made me
cry."

"You make fun of everything.  Miss Irene was telling me last night
about you."

"Then it's no use for me to deny it so soon.  I must give Irene a
talking to."

"I hope you won't forbid her to talk about you!"

She had taken up a fan from the table, and held it, now between her
face and the fire, and now between her face and him.  Her little
visage, with that arch, lazy look in it, topped by its mass of dusky
hair, and dwindling from the full cheeks to the small chin, had a
Japanese effect in the subdued light, and it had the charm which comes
to any woman with happiness.  It would be hard to say how much of this
she perceived that he felt.  They talked about other things a while,
and then she came back to what he had said.  She glanced at him
obliquely round her fan, and stopped moving it.  "Does Irene talk about
me?" she asked.  "I think so--yes.  Perhaps it's only I who talk about
you.  You must blame me if it's wrong," he returned.

"Oh, I didn't say it was wrong," she replied.  "But I hope if you said
anything very bad of me you'll let me know what it was, so that I can
reform----"

"No, don't change, please!" cried the young man.

Penelope caught her breath, but went on resolutely,--"or rebuke you
for speaking evil of dignities." She looked down at the fan, now flat
in her lap, and tried to govern her head, but it trembled, and she
remained looking down.  Again they let the talk stray, and then it was
he who brought it back to themselves, as if it had not left them.

"I have to talk OF you," said Corey, "because I get to talk TO you so
seldom."

"You mean that I do all the talking when we're--together?" She glanced
sidewise at him; but she reddened after speaking the last word.

"We're so seldom together," he pursued.

"I don't know what you mean----"

"Sometimes I've thought--I've been afraid that you avoided me."

"Avoided you?"

"Yes! Tried not to be alone with me."

She might have told him that there was no reason why she should be
alone with him, and that it was very strange he should make this
complaint of her.  But she did not.  She kept looking down at the fan,
and then she lifted her burning face and looked at the clock again.
"Mother and Irene will be sorry to miss you," she gasped.

He instantly rose and came towards her.  She rose too, and mechanically
put out her hand.  He took it as if to say good-night. "I didn't mean
to send you away," she besought him.

"Oh, I'm not going," he answered simply.  "I wanted to say--to say that
it's I who make her talk about you.  To say I----There is something I
want to say to you; I've said it so often to myself that I feel as if
you must know it." She stood quite still, letting him keep her hand,
and questioning his face with a bewildered gaze.  "You MUST know--she
must have told you--she must have guessed----" Penelope turned white,
but outwardly quelled the panic that sent the blood to her heart.
"I--I didn't expect--I hoped to have seen your father--but I must speak
now, whatever----I love you!"

She freed her hand from both of those he had closed upon it, and went
back from him across the room with a sinuous spring.  "ME!" Whatever
potential complicity had lurked in her heart, his words brought her
only immeasurable dismay.

He came towards her again.  "Yes, you.  Who else?"

She fended him off with an imploring gesture.  "I thought--I--it
was----"

She shut her lips tight, and stood looking at him where he remained in
silent amaze.  Then her words came again, shudderingly.  "Oh, what have
you done?"

"Upon my soul," he said, with a vague smile, "I don't know.  I hope no
harm?"

"Oh, don't laugh!" she cried, laughing hysterically herself.  "Unless
you want me to think you the greatest wretch in the world!"

"I?" he responded.  "For heaven's sake tell me what you mean!"

"You know I can't tell you.  Can you say--can you put your hand on your
heart and say that--you--say you never meant--that you meant me--all
along?"

"Yes!--yes! Who else? I came here to see your father, and to tell him
that I wished to tell you this--to ask him----But what does it matter?
You must have known it--you must have seen--and it's for you to answer
me.  I've been abrupt, I know, and I've startled you; but if you love
me, you can forgive that to my loving you so long before I spoke."

She gazed at him with parted lips.

"Oh, mercy! What shall I do? If it's true--what you say--you must go!"
she said.  "And you must never come any more.  Do you promise that?"

"Certainly not," said the young man.  "Why should I promise such a
thing--so abominably wrong? I could obey if you didn't love me----"

"Oh, I don't! Indeed I don't! Now will you obey."

"No. I don't believe you." "Oh!"

He possessed himself of her hand again.

"My love--my dearest! What is this trouble, that you can't tell it? It
can't be anything about yourself.  If it is anything about any one
else, it wouldn't make the least difference in the world, no matter
what it was.  I would be only too glad to show by any act or deed I
could that nothing could change me towards you."

"Oh, you don't understand!"

"No, I don't. You must tell me."

"I will never do that."

"Then I will stay here till your mother comes, and ask her what it is."

"Ask HER?"

"Yes! Do you think I will give you up till I know why I must?"

"You force me to it! Will you go if I tell you, and never let any human
creature know what you have said to me?"

"Not unless you give me leave."

"That will be never.  Well, then----" She stopped, and made two or
three ineffectual efforts to begin again.  "No, no! I can't. You must
go!"

"I will not go!"

"You said you--loved me.  If you do, you will go."

He dropped the hands he had stretched towards her, and she hid her face
in her own.

"There!" she said, turning it suddenly upon him.  "Sit down there.  And
will you promise me--on your honour--not to speak--not to try to
persuade me--not to--touch me? You won't touch me?"

"I will obey you, Penelope."

"As if you were never to see me again? As if I were dying?"

"I will do what you say.  But I shall see you again; and don't talk of
dying.  This is the beginning of life----"

"No. It's the end," said the girl, resuming at last something of the
hoarse drawl which the tumult of her feeling had broken into those
half-articulate appeals.  She sat down too, and lifted her face towards
him.  "It's the end of life for me, because I know now that I must have
been playing false from the beginning.  You don't know what I mean, and
I can never tell you.  It isn't my secret--it's some one else's.
You--you must never come here again.  I can't tell you why, and you
must never try to know.  Do you promise?"

"You can forbid me.  I must do what you say."

"I do forbid you, then.  And you shall not think I am cruel----"

"How could I think that?"

"Oh, how hard you make it!"

Corey laughed for very despair.  "Can I make it easier by disobeying
you?"

"I know I am talking crazily.  But I'm not crazy."

"No, no," he said, with some wild notion of comforting her; "but try to
tell me this trouble! There is nothing under heaven--no calamity, no
sorrow--that I wouldn't gladly share with you, or take all upon myself
if I could!"

"I know! But this you can't. Oh, my----"

"Dearest! Wait! Think! Let me ask your mother--your father----"

She gave a cry.

"No! If you do that, you will make me hate you! Will you----"

The rattling of a latch-key was heard in the outer door.

"Promise!" cried Penelope.

"Oh, I promise!"

"Good-bye!" She suddenly flung her arms round his neck, and, pressing
her cheek tight against his, flashed out of the room by one door as her
father entered it by another.

Corey turned to him in a daze.  "I--I called to speak with you--about a
matter----But it's so late now.  I'll--I'll see you to-morrow."

"No time like the present," said Lapham, with a fierceness that did not
seem referable to Corey.  He had his hat still on, and he glared at the
young man out of his blue eyes with a fire that something else must
have kindled there.

"I really can't now," said Corey weakly.  "It will do quite as well
to-morrow. Good night, sir."

"Good night," answered Lapham abruptly, following him to the door, and
shutting it after him.  "I think the devil must have got into pretty
much everybody to-night," he muttered, coming back to the room, where
he put down his hat.  Then he went to the kitchen-stairs and called
down, "Hello, Alice! I want something to eat!"

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Tom is met by Penelope when he goes to Lapham's home to reveal his respect and sympathies. While waiting for Silas, they discuss the novel Tears, Idle Tears, which Penelope has recently read. "It's a famous book with the ladies," Tom says. "Did it make you cry?" "Oh, it's pretty easy to cry over a book," says Penelope; "and that one is very natural till you come to the main point. Then the naturalness of all the rest makes that seem natural too; but I guess it's rather forced." "Her giving him up to the other one?" "Yes, simply because she happened to know that the other one had cared for him first. Why should she have done it? What right had she?" "I don't know. I suppose that the self-sacrifice -- " "But it wasn't self-sacrifice -- or not self-sacrifice alone. She was sacrificing him too; and for someone who couldn't appreciate him half as much as she could. I'm provoked with myself when I think how I cried over that book -- for I did cry. It's silly -- it's wicked for anyone to do what that girl did." After pursuing other topics Tom declares his love for Penelope, much to her surprise. Penelope nearly slips and tells Tom that everyone had thought he was in love with Irene. She checks her words, however, but she pleads with Tom to leave and not to mention his feelings to her father.


prompt:
Chapter: "WHAT's the reason the girls never get down to breakfast any more?"
asked Lapham, when he met his wife at the table in the morning.  He had
been up an hour and a half, and he spoke with the severity of a hungry
man.  "It seems to me they don't amount to ANYthing.  Here I am, at my
time of life, up the first one in the house.  I ring the bell for the
cook at quarter-past six every morning, and the breakfast is on the
table at half-past seven right along, like clockwork, but I never see
anybody but you till I go to the office."

"Oh yes, you do, Si," said his wife soothingly.  "The girls are nearly
always down.  But they're young, and it tires them more than it does us
to get up early."

"They can rest afterwards.  They don't do anything after they ARE up,"
grumbled Lapham.

"Well, that's your fault, ain't it?  You oughtn't to have made so much
money, and then they'd have had to work." She laughed at Lapham's
Spartan mood, and went on to excuse the young people.  "Irene's been up
two nights hand running, and Penelope says she ain't well.  What makes
you so cross about the girls? Been doing something you're ashamed of?"

"I'll tell you when I've been doing anything to be ashamed of," growled
Lapham.

"Oh no, you won't!" said his wife jollily.  "You'll only be hard on the
rest of us.  Come now, Si; what is it?"

Lapham frowned into his coffee with sulky dignity, and said, without
looking up, "I wonder what that fellow wanted here last night?" "What
fellow?"

"Corey. I found him here when I came home, and he said he wanted to see
me; but he wouldn't stop."

"Where was he?"

"In the sitting-room."

"Was Pen there?"

"I didn't see her."

Mrs. Lapham paused, with her hand on the cream-jug. "Why, what in the
land did he want? Did he say he wanted you?"

"That's what he said."

"And then he wouldn't stay?"

"Well, then, I'll tell you just what it is, Silas Lapham.  He came
here"--she looked about the room and lowered her voice--"to see you
about Irene, and then he hadn't the courage."

"I guess he's got courage enough to do pretty much what he wants to,"
said Lapham glumly.  "All I know is, he was here.  You better ask Pen
about it, if she ever gets down."

"I guess I shan't wait for her," said Mrs. Lapham; and, as her husband
closed the front door after him, she opened that of her daughter's room
and entered abruptly.

The girl sat at the window, fully dressed, and as if she had been
sitting there a long time.  Without rising, she turned her face towards
her mother.  It merely showed black against the light, and revealed
nothing till her mother came close to her with successive questions.
"Why, how long have you been up, Pen? Why don't you come to your
breakfast? Did you see Mr. Corey when he called last night? Why, what's
the matter with you? What have you been crying about?"

"Have I been crying?"

"Yes! Your cheeks are all wet!"

"I thought they were on fire.  Well, I'll tell you what's happened."
She rose, and then fell back in her chair.  "Lock the door!" she
ordered, and her mother mechanically obeyed.  "I don't want Irene in
here.  There's nothing the matter.  Only, Mr. Corey offered himself to
me last night."

Her mother remained looking at her, helpless, not so much with amaze,
perhaps, as dismay.  "Oh, I'm not a ghost! I wish I was! You had better
sit down, mother.  You have got to know all about it."

Mrs. Lapham dropped nervelessly into the chair at the other window, and
while the girl went slowly but briefly on, touching only the vital
points of the story, and breaking at times into a bitter drollery, she
sat as if without the power to speak or stir.

"Well, that's all, mother.  I should say I had dreamt, it, if I had
slept any last night; but I guess it really happened."

The mother glanced round at the bed, and said, glad to occupy herself
delayingly with the minor care: "Why, you have been sitting up all
night! You will kill yourself."

"I don't know about killing myself, but I've been sitting up all
night," answered the girl.  Then, seeing that her mother remained
blankly silent again, she demanded, "Why don't you blame me, mother?
Why don't you say that I led him on, and tried to get him away from
her?  Don't you believe I did?"

Her mother made her no answer, as if these ravings of self-accusal
needed none.  "Do you think," she asked simply, "that he got the idea
you cared for him?"

"He knew it! How could I keep it from him? I said I didn't--at first!"

"It was no use," sighed the mother.  "You might as well said you did.
It couldn't help Irene any, if you didn't."

"I always tried to help her with him, even when I----"

"Yes, I know.  But she never was equal to him.  I saw that from the
start; but I tried to blind myself to it.  And when he kept coming----"

"You never thought of me!" cried the girl, with a bitterness that
reached her mother's heart.  "I was nobody! I couldn't feel! No one
could care for me!" The turmoil of despair, of triumph, of remorse and
resentment, which filled her soul, tried to express itself in the words.

"No," said the mother humbly.  "I didn't think of you.  Or I didn't
think of you enough.  It did come across me sometimes that may
be----But it didn't seem as if----And your going on so for Irene----"

"You let me go on.  You made me always go and talk with him for her,
and you didn't think I would talk to him for myself.  Well, I didn't!"

"I'm punished for it.  When did you--begin to care for him!"

"How do I know? What difference does it make? It's all over now, no
matter when it began.  He won't come here any more, unless I let him."
She could not help betraying her pride in this authority of hers, but
she went on anxiously enough, "What will you say to Irene? She's safe
as far as I'm concerned; but if he don't care for her, what will you
do?"

"I don't know what to do," said Mrs. Lapham.  She sat in an apathy from
which she apparently could not rouse herself.  "I don't see as anything
can be done."

Penelope laughed in a pitying derision.

"Well, let things go on then.  But they won't go on."

"No, they won't go on," echoed her mother.  "She's pretty enough, and
she's capable; and your father's got the money--I don't know what I'm
saying! She ain't equal to him, and she never was.  I kept feeling it
all the time, and yet I kept blinding myself."

"If he had ever cared for her," said Penelope, "it wouldn't have
mattered whether she was equal to him or not.  I'M not equal to him
either."

Her mother went on: "I might have thought it was you; but I had got
set----Well! I can see it all clear enough, now it's too late.  I don't
know what to do."

"And what do you expect me to do?" demanded the girl.  "Do you want ME
to go to Irene and tell her that I've got him away from her?"

"O good Lord!" cried Mrs. Lapham.  "What shall I do? What do you want I
should do, Pen?"

"Nothing for me," said Penelope.  "I've had it out with myself.  Now do
the best you can for Irene."

"I couldn't say you had done wrong, if you was to marry him to-day."

"Mother!"

"No, I couldn't. I couldn't say but what you had been good and
faithfull all through, and you had a perfect right to do it.  There
ain't any one to blame.  He's behaved like a gentleman, and I can see
now that he never thought of her, and that it was you all the while.
Well, marry him, then! He's got the right, and so have you."

"What about Irene? I don't want you to talk about me.  I can take care
of myself."

"She's nothing but a child.  It's only a fancy with her.  She'll get
over it.  She hain't really got her heart set on him."

"She's got her heart set on him, mother.  She's got her whole life set
on him.  You know that."

"Yes, that's so," said the mother, as promptly as if she had been
arguing to that rather than the contrary effect.

"If I could give him to her, I would.  But he isn't mine to give." She
added in a burst of despair, "He isn't mine to keep!"

"Well," said Mrs. Lapham, "she has got to bear it.  I don't know what's
to come of it all.  But she's got to bear her share of it." She rose
and went toward the door.

Penelope ran after her in a sort of terror.  "You're not going to tell
Irene?" she gasped, seizing her mother by either shoulder.

"Yes, I am," said Mrs. Lapham.  "If she's a woman grown, she can bear a
woman's burden."

"I can't let you tell Irene," said the girl, letting fall her face on
her mother's neck.  "Not Irene," she moaned.  "I'm afraid to let you.
How can I ever look at her again?"

"Why, you haven't done anything, Pen," said her mother soothingly.

"I wanted to! Yes, I must have done something.  How could I help it? I
did care for him from the first, and I must have tried to make him like
me.  Do you think I did? No, no! You mustn't tell Irene! Not--
not--yet! Mother! Yes! I did try to get him from her!" she cried,
lifting her head, and suddenly looking her mother in the face with
those large dim eyes of hers.  "What do you think? Even last night! It
was the first time I ever had him all to myself, for myself, and I know
now that I tried to make him think that I was pretty and--funny. And I
didn't try to make him think of her.  I knew that I pleased him, and I
tried to please him more.  Perhaps I could have kept him from saying
that he cared for me; but when I saw he did--I must have seen it--I
couldn't.  I had never had him to myself, and for myself before.  I
needn't have seen him at all, but I wanted to see him; and when I was
sitting there alone with him, how do I know what I did to let him feel
that I cared for him? Now, will you tell Irene? I never thought he did
care for me, and never expected him to.  But I liked him.  Yes--I did
like him! Tell her that! Or else I will."

"If it was to tell her he was dead," began Mrs. Lapham absently.

"How easy it would be!" cried the girl in self-mockery.  "But he's
worse than dead to her; and so am I. I've turned it over a million
ways, mother; I've looked at it in every light you can put it in, and I
can't make anything but misery out of it.  You can see the misery at
the first glance, and you can't see more or less if you spend your life
looking at it." She laughed again, as if the hopelessness of the thing
amused her.  Then she flew to the extreme of self-assertion. "Well, I
HAVE a right to him, and he has a right to me.  If he's never done
anything to make her think he cared for her,--and I know he hasn't;
it's all been our doing, then he's free and I'm free.  We can't make
her happy whatever we do; and why shouldn't I----No, that won't do! I
reached that point before!" She broke again into her desperate laugh.
"You may try now, mother!"

"I'd best speak to your father first----"

Penelope smiled a little more forlornly than she had laughed.

"Well, yes; the Colonel will have to know.  It isn't a trouble that I
can keep to myself exactly.  It seems to belong to too many other
people."

Her mother took a crazy encouragement from her return to her old way of
saying things.  "Perhaps he can think of something."

"Oh, I don't doubt but the Colonel will know just what to do!"

"You mustn't be too down-hearted about it.  It--it'll all come
right----"

"You tell Irene that, mother."

Mrs. Lapham had put her hand on the door-key; she dropped it, and
looked at the girl with a sort of beseeching appeal for the comfort she
could not imagine herself.  "Don't look at me, mother," said Penelope,
shaking her head.  "You know that if Irene were to die without knowing
it, it wouldn't come right for me."

"Pen!"

"I've read of cases where a girl gives up the man that loves her so as
to make some other girl happy that the man doesn't love.  That might be
done."

"Your father would think you were a fool," said Mrs. Lapham, finding a
sort of refuge in her strong disgust for the pseudo heroism.  "No! If
there's to be any giving up, let it be by the one that shan't make
anybody but herself suffer.  There's trouble and sorrow enough in the
world, without MAKING it on purpose!"

She unlocked the door, but Penelope slipped round and set herself
against it.  "Irene shall not give up!"

"I will see your father about it," said the mother.  "Let me out
now----"

"Don't let Irene come here!"

"No. I will tell her that you haven't slept.  Go to bed now, and try to
get some rest.  She isn't up herself yet.  You must have some
breakfast."

"No; let me sleep if I can.  I can get something when I wake up.  I'll
come down if I can't sleep.  Life has got to go on.  It does when
there's a death in the house, and this is only a little worse."

"Don't you talk nonsense!" cried Mrs. Lapham, with angry authority.

"Well, a little better, then," said Penelope, with meek concession.

Mrs. Lapham attempted to say something, and could not.  She went out
and opened Irene's door.  The girl lifted her head drowsily from her
pillow "Don't disturb your sister when you get up, Irene.  She hasn't
slept well----"

"PLEASE don't talk! I'm almost DEAD with sleep!" returned Irene.  "Do
go, mamma! I shan't disturb her." She turned her face down in the
pillow, and pulled the covering up over her ears.

The mother slowly closed the door and went downstairs, feeling
bewildered and baffled almost beyond the power to move.  The time had
been when she would have tried to find out why this judgment had been
sent upon her.  But now she could not feel that the innocent suffering
of others was inflicted for her fault; she shrank instinctively from
that cruel and egotistic misinterpretation of the mystery of pain and
loss.  She saw her two children, equally if differently dear to her,
destined to trouble that nothing could avert, and she could not blame
either of them; she could not blame the means of this misery to them;
he was as innocent as they, and though her heart was sore against him
in this first moment, she could still be just to him in it.  She was a
woman who had been used to seek the light by striving; she had hitherto
literally worked to it.  But it is the curse of prosperity that it
takes work away from us, and shuts that door to hope and health of
spirit.  In this house, where everything had come to be done for her,
she had no tasks to interpose between her and her despair.  She sat
down in her own room and let her hands fall in her lap,--the hands that
had once been so helpful and busy,--and tried to think it all out.  She
had never heard of the fate that was once supposed to appoint the
sorrows of men irrespective of their blamelessness or blame, before the
time when it came to be believed that sorrows were penalties; but in
her simple way she recognised something like that mythic power when she
rose from her struggle with the problem, and said aloud to herself,
"Well, the witch is in it." Turn which way she would, she saw no escape
from the misery to come--the misery which had come already to Penelope
and herself, and that must come to Irene and her father.  She started
when she definitely thought of her husband, and thought with what
violence it would work in every fibre of his rude strength.  She feared
that, and she feared something worse--the effect which his pride and
ambition might seek to give it; and it was with terror of this, as well
as the natural trust with which a woman must turn to her husband in any
anxiety at last, that she felt she could not wait for evening to take
counsel with him.  When she considered how wrongly he might take it
all, it seemed as if it were already known to him, and she was
impatient to prevent his error.

She sent out for a messenger, whom she despatched with a note to his
place of business: "Silas, I should like to ride with you this
afternoon.  Can't you come home early? Persis." And she was at dinner
with Irene, evading her questions about Penelope, when answer came that
he would be at the house with the buggy at half-past two.  It is easy
to put off a girl who has but one thing in her head; but though Mrs.
Lapham could escape without telling anything of Penelope, she could not
escape seeing how wholly Irene was engrossed with hopes now turned so
vain and impossible.  She was still talking of that dinner, of nothing
but that dinner, and begging for flattery of herself and praise of him,
which her mother had till now been so ready to give.

"Seems to me you don't take very much interest, mamma!" she said,
laughing and blushing at one point.

"Yes,--yes, I do," protested Mrs. Lapham, and then the girl prattled on.

"I guess I shall get one of those pins that Nanny Corey had in her
hair.  I think it would become me, don't you?" "Yes; but Irene--I don't
like to have you go on so, till--unless he's said something to
show--You oughtn't to give yourself up to thinking----" But at this the
girl turned so white, and looked such reproach at her, that she added
frantically: "Yes, get the pin.  It is just the thing for you! But
don't disturb Penelope.  Let her alone till I get back.  I'm going out
to ride with your father.  He'll be here in half an hour.  Are you
through? Ring, then.  Get yourself that fan you saw the other day.
Your father won't say anything; he likes to have you look well.  I
could see his eyes on you half the time the other night."

"I should have liked to have Pen go with me," said Irene, restored to
her normal state of innocent selfishness by these flatteries.  "Don't
you suppose she'll be up in time? What's the matter with her that she
didn't sleep?"

"I don't know.  Better let her alone."

"Well," submitted Irene.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Penelope reveals the predicament to her mother the next day. Mrs. Lapham admits that Irene is not as mentally equal to Tom as Penelope, but she says she did not consider the possibility of Tom loving her older daughter. Although Penelope tried to avoid any personal contact with Tom, she admits that she tried to attract him. Trying to find a solution to the problem, Penelope suggests the possibility of giving up Tom. "I've read of cases where a girl gives up the man that loves her so as to make the other girl happy that the man doesn't love. That might be done," she says. "Your father would think you were a fool," retorts Mrs. Lapham. Persis decides to confer with Silas before she reveals the situation to Irene. She sends a note to Silas, telling him to come home early that afternoon.


prompt:
Chapter: MRS.  LAPHAM went away to put on her bonnet and cloak, and she was
waiting at the window when her husband drove up.  She opened the door
and ran down the steps.  "Don't get out; I can help myself in," and she
clambered to his side, while he kept the fidgeting mare still with
voice and touch.

"Where do you want I should go?" he asked, turning the buggy.

"Oh, I don't care.  Out Brookline way, I guess.  I wish you hadn't
brought this fool of a horse," she gave way petulantly.  "I wanted to
have a talk."

"When I can't drive this mare and talk too, I'll sell out altogether,"
said Lapham.  "She'll be quiet enough when she's had her spin."

"Well," said his wife; and while they were making their way across the
city to the Milldam she answered certain questions he asked about some
points in the new house.

"I should have liked to have you stop there," he began; but she
answered so quickly, "Not to-day," that he gave it up and turned his
horse's head westward when they struck Beacon Street.

He let the mare out, and he did not pull her in till he left the
Brighton road and struck off under the low boughs that met above one of
the quiet streets of Brookline, where the stone cottages, with here and
there a patch of determined ivy on their northern walls, did what they
could to look English amid the glare of the autumnal foliage.  The
smooth earthen track under the mare's hoofs was scattered with flakes
of the red and yellow gold that made the air luminous around them, and
the perspective was gay with innumerable tints and tones.

"Pretty sightly," said Lapham, with a long sigh, letting the reins lie
loose in his vigilant hand, to which he seemed to relegate the whole
charge of the mare.  "I want to talk with you about Rogers, Persis.
He's been getting in deeper and deeper with me; and last night he
pestered me half to death to go in with him in one of his schemes.  I
ain't going to blame anybody, but I hain't got very much confidence in
Rogers.  And I told him so last night."

"Oh, don't talk to me about Rogers!" his wife broke in.  "There's
something a good deal more important than Rogers in the world, and more
important than your business.  It seems as if you couldn't think of
anything else--that and the new house.  Did you suppose I wanted to
ride so as to talk Rogers with you?" she demanded, yielding to the
necessity a wife feels of making her husband pay for her suffering,
even if he has not inflicted it.  "I declare----"

"Well, hold on, now!" said Lapham.  "What DO you want to talk about?
I'm listening."

His wife began, "Why, it's just this, Silas Lapham!" and then she broke
off to say, "Well, you may wait, now--starting me wrong, when it's hard
enough anyway."

Lapham silently turned his whip over and over in his hand and waited.

"Did you suppose," she asked at last, "that that young Corey had been
coming to see Irene?"

"I don't know what I supposed," replied Lapham sullenly.  "You always
said so." He looked sharply at her under his lowering brows.

"Well, he hasn't," said Mrs. Lapham; and she replied to the frown that
blackened on her husband's face.  "And I can tell you what, if you take
it in that way I shan't speak another word."

"Who's takin' it what way?" retorted Lapham savagely.  "What are you
drivin' at?"

"I want you should promise that you'll hear me out quietly."

"I'll hear you out if you'll give me a chance.  I haven't said a word
yet."

"Well, I'm not going to have you flying into forty furies, and looking
like a perfect thunder-cloud at the very start.  I've had to bear it,
and you've got to bear it too."

"Well, let me have a chance at it, then."

"It's nothing to blame anybody about, as I can see, and the only
question is, what's the best thing to do about it.  There's only one
thing we can do; for if he don't care for the child, nobody wants to
make him.  If he hasn't been coming to see her, he hasn't, and that's
all there is to it."

"No, it ain't!" exclaimed Lapham.

"There!" protested his wife.

"If he hasn't been coming to see her, what HAS he been coming for?"

"He's been coming to see Pen!" cried the wife.  "NOW are you
satisfied?" Her tone implied that he had brought it all upon them; but
at the sight of the swift passions working in his face to a perfect
comprehension of the whole trouble, she fell to trembling, and her
broken voice lost all the spurious indignation she had put into it.  "O
Silas! what are we going to do about it? I'm afraid it'll kill Irene."

Lapham pulled off the loose driving-glove from his right hand with the
fingers of his left, in which the reins lay.  He passed it over his
forehead, and then flicked from it the moisture it had gathered there.
He caught his breath once or twice, like a man who meditates a struggle
with superior force and then remains passive in its grasp.

His wife felt the need of comforting him, as she had felt the need of
afflicting him.  "I don't say but what it can be made to come out all
right in the end.  All I say is, I don't see my way clear yet."

"What makes you think he likes Pen?" he asked quietly.

"He told her so last night, and she told me this morning.  Was he at
the office to-day?"

"Yes, he was there.  I haven't been there much myself.  He didn't say
anything to me.  Does Irene know?"

"No; I left her getting ready to go out shopping.  She wants to get a
pin like the one Nanny Corey had on." "O my Lord!" groaned Lapham.

"It's been Pen from the start, I guess, or almost from the start.  I
don't say but what he was attracted some by Irene at the very first;
but I guess it's been Pen ever since he saw her; and we've taken up
with a notion, and blinded ourselves with it.  Time and again I've had
my doubts whether he cared for Irene any; but I declare to goodness,
when he kept coming, I never hardly thought of Pen, and I couldn't help
believing at last he DID care for Irene.  Did it ever strike you he
might be after Pen?"

"No. I took what you said.  I supposed you knew."

"Do you blame me, Silas?" she asked timidly.

"No. What's the use of blaming? We don't either of us want anything but
the children's good.  What's it all of it for, if it ain't for that?
That's what we've both slaved for all our lives."

"Yes, I know.  Plenty of people LOSE their children," she suggested.

"Yes, but that don't comfort me any.  I never was one to feel good
because another man felt bad.  How would you have liked it if some one
had taken comfort because his boy lived when ours died? No, I can't do
it.  And this is worse than death, someways.  That comes and it goes;
but this looks as if it was one of those things that had come to stay.
The way I look at it, there ain't any hope for anybody.  Suppose we
don't want Pen to have him; will that help Irene any, if he don't want
her? Suppose we don't want to let him have either; does that help
either!"

"You talk," exclaimed Mrs. Lapham, "as if our say was going to settle
it.  Do you suppose that Penelope Lapham is a girl to take up with a
fellow that her sister is in love with, and that she always thought was
in love with her sister, and go off and be happy with him?  Don't you
believe but what it would come back to her, as long as she breathed the
breath of life, how she'd teased her about him, as I've heard Pen tease
Irene, and helped to make her think he was in love with her, by showing
that she thought so herself? It's ridiculous!"

Lapham seemed quite beaten down by this argument.  His huge head hung
forward over his breast; the reins lay loose in his moveless hand; the
mare took her own way.  At last he lifted his face and shut his heavy
jaws.

"Well?" quavered his wife.

"Well," he answered, "if he wants her, and she wants him, I don't see
what that's got to do with it." He looked straight forward, and not at
his wife.

She laid her hands on the reins.  "Now, you stop right here, Silas
Lapham! If I thought that--if I really believed you could be willing to
break that poor child's heart, and let Pen disgrace herself by marrying
a man that had as good as killed her sister, just because you wanted
Bromfield Corey's son for a son-in-law----"

Lapham turned his face now, and gave her a look.  "You had better NOT
believe that, Persis! Get up!" he called to the mare, without glancing
at her, and she sprang forward.  "I see you've got past being any use
to yourself on this subject."

"Hello!" shouted a voice in front of him.  "Where the devil you goin'
to?"

"Do you want to KILL somebody!" shrieked his wife.

There was a light crash, and the mare recoiled her length, and
separated their wheels from those of the open buggy in front which
Lapham had driven into.  He made his excuses to the occupant; and the
accident relieved the tension of their feelings, and left them far from
the point of mutual injury which they had reached in their common
trouble and their unselfish will for their children's good.

It was Lapham who resumed the talk.  "I'm afraid we can't either of us
see this thing in the right light.  We're too near to it.  I wish to
the Lord there was somebody to talk to about it."

"Yes," said his wife; "but there ain't anybody."

"Well, I dunno," suggested Lapham, after a moment; "why not talk to the
minister of your church? May be he could see some way out of it."

Mrs. Lapham shook her head hopelessly.  "It wouldn't do.  I've never
taken up my connection with the church, and I don't feel as if I'd got
any claim on him."

"If he's anything of a man, or anything of a preacher, you HAVE got a
claim on him," urged Lapham; and he spoiled his argument by adding,
"I've contributed enough MONEY to his church."

"Oh, that's nothing," said Mrs. Lapham.  "I ain't well enough
acquainted with Dr. Langworthy, or else I'm TOO well.  No; if I was to
ask any one, I should want to ask a total stranger.  But what's the
use, Si? Nobody could make us see it any different from what it is, and
I don't know as I should want they should."

It blotted out the tender beauty of the day, and weighed down their
hearts ever more heavily within them.  They ceased to talk of it a
hundred times, and still came back to it.  They drove on and on.  It
began to be late.  "I guess we better go back, Si," said his wife; and
as he turned without speaking, she pulled her veil down and began to
cry softly behind it, with low little broken sobs.

Lapham started the mare up and drove swiftly homeward.  At last his
wife stopped crying and began trying to find her pocket.  "Here, take
mine, Persis," he said kindly, offering her his handkerchief, and she
took it and dried her eyes with it.  "There was one of those fellows
there the other night," he spoke again, when his wife leaned back
against the cushions in peaceful despair, "that I liked the looks of
about as well as any man I ever saw.  I guess he was a pretty good man.
It was that Mr. Sewell."

He looked at his wife, but she did not say anything.  "Persis," he
resumed, "I can't bear to go back with nothing settled in our minds.  I
can't bear to let you."

"We must, Si," returned his wife, with gentle gratitude.  Lapham
groaned.  "Where does he live?" she asked.

"On Bolingbroke Street.  He gave me his number."

"Well, it wouldn't do any good.  What could he say to us?"

"Oh, I don't know as he could say anything," said Lapham hopelessly;
and neither of them said anything more till they crossed the Milldam
and found themselves between the rows of city houses.

"Don't drive past the new house, Si," pleaded his wife.  "I couldn't
bear to see it.  Drive--drive up Bolingbroke Street.  We might as well
see where he DOES live."

"Well," said Lapham.  He drove along slowly.  "That's the place," he
said finally, stopping the mare and pointing with his whip.

"It wouldn't do any good," said his wife, in a tone which he understood
as well as he understood her words.  He turned the mare up to the
curbstone.

"You take the reins a minute," he said, handing them to his wife.

He got down and rang the bell, and waited till the door opened; then he
came back and lifted his wife out.  "He's in," he said.

He got the hitching-weight from under the buggy-seat and made it fast
to the mare's bit.

"Do you think she'll stand with that?" asked Mrs. Lapham.

"I guess so.  If she don't, no matter."

"Ain't you afraid she'll take cold," she persisted, trying to make
delay.

"Let her!" said Lapham.  He took his wife's trembling hand under his
arm, and drew her to the door.

"He'll think we're crazy," she murmured in her broken pride.

"Well, we ARE," said Lapham.  "Tell him we'd like to see him alone a
while," he said to the girl who was holding the door ajar for him, and
she showed him into the reception-room, which had been the Protestant
confessional for many burdened souls before their time, coming, as they
did, with the belief that they were bowed down with the only misery
like theirs in the universe; for each one of us must suffer long to
himself before he can learn that he is but one in a great community of
wretchedness which has been pitilessly repeating itself from the
foundation of the world.

They were as loath to touch their trouble when the minister came in as
if it were their disgrace; but Lapham did so at last, and, with a
simple dignity which he had wanted in his bungling and apologetic
approaches, he laid the affair clearly before the minister's
compassionate and reverent eye.  He spared Corey's name, but he did not
pretend that it was not himself and his wife and their daughters who
were concerned.

"I don't know as I've got any right to trouble you with this thing," he
said, in the moment while Sewell sat pondering the case, "and I don't
know as I've got any warrant for doing it.  But, as I told my wife
here, there was something about you--I don't know whether it was
anything you SAID exactly--that made me feel as if you could help us.
I guess I didn't say so much as that to her; but that's the way I felt.
And here we are.  And if it ain't all right."

"Surely," said Sewell, "it's all right.  I thank you for coming--for
trusting your trouble to me.  A time comes to every one of us when we
can't help ourselves, and then we must get others to help us.  If
people turn to me at such a time, I feel sure that I was put into the
world for something--if nothing more than to give my pity, my sympathy."

The brotherly words, so plain, so sincere, had a welcome in them that
these poor outcasts of sorrow could not doubt.

"Yes," said Lapham huskily, and his wife began to wipe the tears again
under her veil.

Sewell remained silent, and they waited till he should speak.  "We can
be of use to one another here, because we can always be wiser for some
one else than we can for ourselves.  We can see another's sins and
errors in a more merciful light--and that is always a fairer
light--than we can our own; and we can look more sanely at others'
afflictions." He had addressed these words to Lapham; now he turned to
his wife.  "If some one had come to you, Mrs. Lapham, in just this
perplexity, what would you have thought?"

"I don't know as I understand you," faltered Mrs. Lapham.

Sewell repeated his words, and added, "I mean, what do you think some
one else ought to do in your place?"

"Was there ever any poor creatures in such a strait before?" she asked,
with pathetic incredulity.

"There's no new trouble under the sun," said the minister.

"Oh, if it was any one else, I should say--I should say--Why, of
course! I should say that their duty was to let----" She paused.

"One suffer instead of three, if none is to blame?" suggested Sewell.
"That's sense, and that's justice.  It's the economy of pain which
naturally suggests itself, and which would insist upon itself, if we
were not all perverted by traditions which are the figment of the
shallowest sentimentality.  Tell me, Mrs. Lapham, didn't this come into
your mind when you first learned how matters stood?"

"Why, yes, it flashed across me.  But I didn't think it could be right."

"And how was it with you, Mr. Lapham?"

"Why, that's what I thought, of course.  But I didn't see my way----"

"No," cried the minister, "we are all blinded, we are all weakened by a
false ideal of self-sacrifice. It wraps us round with its meshes, and
we can't fight our way out of it.  Mrs. Lapham, what made you feel that
it might be better for three to suffer than one?"

"Why, she did herself.  I know she would die sooner than take him away
from her."

"I supposed so!" cried the minister bitterly.  "And yet she is a
sensible girl, your daughter?"

"She has more common-sense----"

"Of course! But in such a case we somehow think it must be wrong to use
our common-sense. I don't know where this false ideal comes from,
unless it comes from the novels that befool and debauch almost every
intelligence in some degree.  It certainly doesn't come from
Christianity, which instantly repudiates it when confronted with it.
Your daughter believes, in spite of her common-sense, that she ought to
make herself and the man who loves her unhappy, in order to assure the
life-long wretchedness of her sister, whom he doesn't love, simply
because her sister saw him and fancied him first! And I'm sorry to say
that ninety-nine young people out of a hundred--oh, nine hundred and
ninety-nine out of a thousand!--would consider that noble and beautiful
and heroic; whereas you know at the bottom of your hearts that it would
be foolish and cruel and revolting.  You know what marriage is! And
what it must be without love on both sides."

The minister had grown quite heated and red in the face.

"I lose all patience!" he went on vehemently.  "This poor child of
yours has somehow been brought to believe that it will kill her sister
if her sister does not have what does not belong to her, and what it is
not in the power of all the world, or any soul in the world, to give
her.  Her sister will suffer--yes, keenly!--in heart and in pride; but
she will not die.  You will suffer too, in your tenderness for her; but
you must do your duty.  You must help her to give up.  You would be
guilty if you did less.  Keep clearly in mind that you are doing right,
and the only possible good.  And God be with you!"

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: When Silas is told, he says that Penelope must marry Tom, if she wants him. Mrs. Lapham cannot see how this can be put into effect and believes that Silas wants to be related to the Coreys at the cost of Irene's feelings. Silas seeks the advice of Minister Sewell. He supports Silas' opinion that Tom and Penelope should be married.


prompt:
Chapter: "HE talked sense, Persis," said Lapham gently, as he mounted to his
wife's side in the buggy and drove slowly homeward through the dusk.

"Yes, he talked sense," she admitted.  But she added bitterly, "I
guess, if he had it to DO! Oh, he's right, and it's got to be done.
There ain't any other way for it.  It's sense; and, yes, it's justice."
They walked to their door after they left the horse at the livery
stable around the corner, where Lapham kept it.  "I want you should
send Irene up to our room as soon as we get in, Silas."

"Why, ain't you going to have any supper first?" faltered Lapham with
his latch-key in the lock.

"No. I can't lose a minute.  If I do, I shan't do it at all."

"Look here, Persis," said her husband tenderly, "let me do this thing."

"Oh, YOU!" said his wife, with a woman's compassionate scorn for a
man's helplessness in such a case.  "Send her right up.  And I shall
feel----" She stopped to spare him.

Then she opened the door, and ran up to her room without waiting to
speak to Irene, who had come into the hall at the sound of her father's
key in the door.

"I guess your mother wants to see you upstairs," said Lapham, looking
away.

Her mother turned round and faced the girl's wondering look as Irene
entered the chamber, so close upon her that she had not yet had time to
lay off her bonnet; she stood with her wraps still on her arm.

"Irene!" she said harshly, "there is something you have got to bear.
It's a mistake we've all made.  He don't care anything for you.  He
never did.  He told Pen so last night.  He cares for her."

The sentences had fallen like blows.  But the girl had taken them
without flinching.  She stood up immovable, but the delicate rose-light
of her complexion went out and left her colourless.  She did not offer
to speak.

"Why don't you say something?" cried her mother.  "Do you want to kill
me, Irene?"

"Why should I want to hurt you, mamma?" the girl replied steadily, but
in an alien voice.  "There's nothing to say.  I want to see Pen a
minute."

She turned and left the room.  As she mounted the stairs that led to
her own and her sister's rooms on the floor above, her mother
helplessly followed.  Irene went first to her own room at the front of
the house, and then came out leaving the door open and the gas flaring
behind her.  The mother could see that she had tumbled many things out
of the drawers of her bureau upon the marble top.

She passed her mother, where she stood in the entry.  "You can come
too, if you want to, mamma," she said.

She opened Penelope's door without knocking, and went in.  Penelope sat
at the window, as in the morning.  Irene did not go to her; but she
went and laid a gold hair-pin on her bureau, and said, without looking
at her, "There's a pin that I got to-day, because it was like his
sister's. It won't become a dark person so well, but you can have it."

She stuck a scrap of paper in the side of Penelope's mirror.  "There's
that account of Mr. Stanton's ranch.  You'll want to read it, I
presume."

She laid a withered boutonniere on the bureau beside the pin.  "There's
his button-hole bouquet.  He left it by his plate, and I stole it."

She had a pine-shaving fantastically tied up with a knot of ribbon, in
her hand.  She held it a moment; then, looking deliberately at
Penelope, she went up to her, and dropped it in her lap without a word.
She turned, and, advancing a few steps, tottered and seemed about to
fall.

Her mother sprang forward with an imploring cry, "O 'Rene, 'Rene,
'Rene!"

Irene recovered herself before her mother could reach her.  "Don't
touch me," she said icily.  "Mamma, I'm going to put on my things.  I
want papa to walk with me.  I'm choking here."

"I--I can't let you go out, Irene, child," began her mother.

"You've got to," replied the girl.  "Tell papa ta hurry his supper."

"O poor soul! He doesn't want any supper.  HE knows it too."

"I don't want to talk about that.  Tell him to get ready."

She left them once more.

Mrs. Lapham turned a hapless glance upon Penelope.

"Go and tell him, mother," said the girl.  "I would, if I could.  If
she can walk, let her.  It's the only thing for her." She sat still;
she did not even brush to the floor the fantastic thing that lay in her
lap, and that sent up faintly the odour of the sachet powder with which
Irene liked to perfume her boxes.

Lapham went out with the unhappy child, and began to talk with her,
crazily, incoherently, enough.

She mercifully stopped him.  "Don't talk, papa.  I don't want any one
should talk with me."

He obeyed, and they walked silently on and on.  In their aimless course
they reached the new house on the water side of Beacon, and she made
him stop, and stood looking up at it.  The scaffolding which had so
long defaced the front was gone, and in the light of the gas-lamp
before it all the architectural beauty of the facade was suggested, and
much of the finely felt detail was revealed.  Seymour had pretty nearly
satisfied himself in that rich facade; certainly Lapham had not stinted
him of the means.

"Well," said the girl, "I shall never live in it," and she began to
walk on.

Lapham's sore heart went down, as he lumbered heavily after her.  "Oh
yes, you will, Irene.  You'll have lots of good times there yet."

"No," she answered, and said nothing more about it.  They had not
talked of their trouble at all, and they did not speak of it now.
Lapham understood that she was trying to walk herself weary, and he was
glad to hold his peace and let her have her way.  She halted him once
more before the red and yellow lights of an apothecary's window.

"Isn't there something they give you to make you sleep?" she asked
vaguely.  "I've got to sleep to-night!"

Lapham trembled.  "I guess you don't want anything, Irene."

"Yes, I do! Get me something!" she retorted wilfully.  "If you don't, I
shall die.  I MUST sleep."

They went in, and Lapham asked for something to make a nervous person
sleep.  Irene stood poring over the show-case full of brushes and
trinkets, while the apothecary put up the bromide, which he guessed
would be about the best thing.  She did not show any emotion; her face
was like a stone, while her father's expressed the anguish of his
sympathy.  He looked as if he had not slept for a week; his fat eyelids
drooped over his glassy eyes, and his cheeks and throat hung flaccid.
He started as the apothecary's cat stole smoothly up and rubbed itself
against his leg; and it was to him that the man said, "You want to take
a table-spoonful of that, as long as you're awake.  I guess it won't
take a great many to fetch you." "All right," said Lapham, and paid and
went out.  "I don't know but I SHALL want some of it," he said, with a
joyless laugh.

Irene came closer up to him and took his arm.  He laid his heavy paw on
her gloved fingers.  After a while she said, "I want you should let me
go up to Lapham to-morrow."

"To Lapham? Why, to-morrow's Sunday, Irene! You can't go to-morrow."

"Well, Monday, then.  I can live through one day here."

"Well," said the father passively.  He made no pretence of asking her
why she wished to go, nor any attempt to dissuade her.

"Give me that bottle," she said, when he opened the door at home for
her, and she ran up to her own room.

The next morning Irene came to breakfast with her mother; the Colonel
and Penelope did not appear, and Mrs. Lapham looked sleep-broken and
careworn.

The girl glanced at her.  "Don't you fret about me, mamma," she said.
"I shall get along." She seemed herself as steady and strong as rock.

"I don't like to see you keeping up so, Irene," replied her mother.
"It'll be all the worse for you when you do break.  Better give way a
little at the start."

"I shan't break, and I've given way all I'm going to.  I'm going to
Lapham to-morrow,--I want you should go with me, mamma,--and I guess I
can keep up one day here.  All about it is, I don't want you should say
anything, or LOOK anything.  And, whatever I do, I don't want you
should try to stop me.  And, the first thing, I'm going to take her
breakfast up to her.  Don't!" she cried, intercepting the protest on
her mother's lips.  "I shall not let it hurt Pen, if I can help it.
She's never done a thing nor thought a thing to wrong me.  I had to fly
out at her last night; but that's all over now, and I know just what
I've got to bear."

She had her way unmolested.  She carried Penelope's breakfast to her,
and omitted no care or attention that could make the sacrifice
complete, with an heroic pretence that she was performing no unusual
service.  They did not speak, beyond her saying, in a clear dry note,
"Here's your breakfast, Pen," and her sister's answering, hoarsely and
tremulously, "Oh, thank you, Irene." And, though two or three times
they turned their faces toward each other while Irene remained in the
room, mechanically putting its confusion to rights, their eyes did not
meet.  Then Irene descended upon the other rooms, which she set in
order, and some of which she fiercely swept and dusted.  She made the
beds; and she sent the two servants away to church as soon as they had
eaten their breakfast, telling them that she would wash their dishes.
Throughout the morning her father and mother heard her about the work
of getting dinner, with certain silences which represented the moments
when she stopped and stood stock-still, and then, readjusting her
burden, forced herself forward under it again.

They sat alone in the family room, out of which their two girls seemed
to have died.  Lapham could not read his Sunday papers, and she had no
heart to go to church, as she would have done earlier in life when in
trouble.  Just then she was obscurely feeling that the church was
somehow to blame for that counsel of Mr. Sewell's on which they had
acted.

"I should like to know," she said, having brought the matter up,
"whether he would have thought it was such a light matter if it had
been his own children.  Do you suppose he'd have been so ready to act
on his own advice if it HAD been?"

"He told us the right thing to do, Persis,--the only thing.  We
couldn't let it go on," urged her husband gently.

"Well, it makes me despise Pen! Irene's showing twice the character
that she is, this very minute."

The mother said this so that the father might defend her daughter to
her.  He did not fail.  "Irene's got the easiest part, the way I look
at it.  And you'll see that Pen'll know how to behave when the time
comes."

"What do you want she should do?"

"I haven't got so far as that yet.  What are we going to do about
Irene?"

"What do you want Pen should do," repeated Mrs. Lapham, "when it comes
to it?"

"Well, I don't want she should take him, for ONE thing," said Lapham.

This seemed to satisfy Mrs. Lapham as to her husband, and she said in
defence of Corey, "Why, I don't see what HE'S done.  It's all been our
doing."

"Never mind that now.  What about Irene?"

"She says she's going to Lapham to-morrow. She feels that she's got to
get away somewhere.  It's natural she should."

"Yes, and I presume it will be about the best thing FOR her.  Shall you
go with her?"

"Yes."

"Well." He comfortlessly took up a newspaper again, and she rose with a
sigh, and went to her room to pack some things for the morrow's journey.

After dinner, when Irene had cleared away the last trace of it in
kitchen and dining-room with unsparing punctilio, she came downstairs,
dressed to go out, and bade her father come to walk with her again.  It
was a repetition of the aimlessness of the last night's wanderings.
They came back, and she got tea for them, and after that they heard her
stirring about in her own room, as if she were busy about many things;
but they did not dare to look in upon her, even after all the noises
had ceased, and they knew she had gone to bed.

"Yes; it's a thing she's got to fight out by herself," said Mrs Lapham.

"I guess she'll get along," said Lapham.  "But I don't want you should
misjudge Pen either.  She's all right too.  She ain't to blame."

"Yes, I know.  But I can't work round to it all at once.  I shan't
misjudge her, but you can't expect me to get over it right away."

"Mamma," said Irene, when she was hurrying their departure the next
morning, "what did she tell him when he asked her?"

"Tell him?" echoed the mother; and after a while she added, "She didn't
tell him anything."

"Did she say anything, about me?"

"She said he mustn't come here any more."

Irene turned and went into her sister's room.  "Good-bye, Pen," she
said, kissing her with an effect of not seeing or touching her.  "I
want you should tell him all about it.  If he's half a man, he won't
give up till he knows why you won't have him; and he has a right to
know."

"It wouldn't make any difference.  I couldn't have him after----"

"That's for you to say.  But if you don't tell him about me, I will."

"'Rene!" "Yes! You needn't say I cared for him.  But you can say that
you all thought he--cared for--me."

"O Irene----"

"Don't!" Irene escaped from the arms that tried to cast themselves
about her.  "You are all right, Pen.  You haven't done anything.
You've helped me all you could.  But I can't--yet."

She went out of the room and summoned Mrs. Lapham with a sharp "Now,
mamma!" and went on putting the last things into her trunks.

The Colonel went to the station with them, and put them on the train.
He got them a little compartment to themselves in the Pullman car; and
as he stood leaning with his lifted hands against the sides of the
doorway, he tried to say something consoling and hopeful: "I guess
you'll have an easy ride, Irene.  I don't believe it'll be dusty, any,
after the rain last night."

"Don't you stay till the train starts, papa," returned the girl, in
rigid rejection of his futilities.  "Get off, now."

"Well, if you want I should," he said, glad to be able to please her in
anything.  He remained on the platform till the cars started.  He saw
Irene bustling about in the compartment, making her mother comfortable
for the journey; but Mrs. Lapham did not lift her head.  The train
moved off, and he went heavily back to his business.

From time to time during the day, when he caught a glimpse of him,
Corey tried to make out from his face whether he knew what had taken
place between him and Penelope.  When Rogers came in about time of
closing, and shut himself up with Lapham in his room, the young man
remained till the two came out together and parted in their
salutationless fashion.

Lapham showed no surprise at seeing Corey still there, and merely
answered, "Well!" when the young man said that he wished to speak with
him, and led the way back to his room.

Corey shut the door behind them.  "I only wish to speak to you in case
you know of the matter already; for otherwise I'm bound by a promise."

"I guess I know what you mean.  It's about Penelope."

"Yes, it's about Miss Lapham.  I am greatly attached to her--you'll
excuse my saying it; I couldn't excuse myself if I were not."

"Perfectly excusable," said Lapham.  "It's all right."

"Oh, I'm glad to hear you say that!" cried the young fellow joyfully.
"I want you to believe that this isn't a new thing or an unconsidered
thing with me--though it seemed so unexpected to her."

Lapham fetched a deep sigh.  "It's all right as far as I'm
concerned--or her mother.  We've both liked you first-rate."

"Yes?"

"But there seems to be something in Penelope's mind--I don't know--"
The Colonel consciously dropped his eyes.

"She referred to something--I couldn't make out what--but I hoped--I
hoped--that with your leave I might overcome it--the barrier--whatever
it was.  Miss Lapham--Penelope--gave me the hope--that I
was--wasn't--indifferent to her----"

"Yes, I guess that's so," said Lapham.  He suddenly lifted his head,
and confronted the young fellow's honest face with his own face, so
different in its honesty.  "Sure you never made up to any one else at
the same time?"

"NEVER! Who could imagine such a thing? If that's all, I can easily."

"I don't say that's all, nor that that's it.  I don't want you should
go upon that idea.  I just thought, may be--you hadn't thought of it."

"No, I certainly hadn't thought of it! Such a thing would have been so
impossible to me that I couldn't have thought of it; and it's so
shocking to me now that I don't know what to say to it."

"Well, don't take it too much to heart," said Lapham, alarmed at the
feeling he had excited; "I don't say she thought so.  I was trying to
guess--trying to----"

"If there is anything I can say or do to convince you----"

"Oh, it ain't necessary to say anything.  I'm all right."

"But Miss Lapham! I may see her again? I may try to convince her
that----"

He stopped in distress, and Lapham afterwards told his wife that he
kept seeing the face of Irene as it looked when he parted with her in
the car; and whenever he was going to say yes, he could not open his
lips.  At the same time he could not help feeling that Penelope had a
right to what was her own, and Sewell's words came back to him.
Besides, they had already put Irene to the worst suffering.  Lapham
compromised, as he imagined.  "You can come round to-night and see ME,
if you want to," he said; and he bore grimly the gratitude that the
young man poured out upon him.

Penelope came down to supper and took her mother's place at the head of
the table.

Lapham sat silent in her presence as long as he could bear it.  Then he
asked, "How do you feel to-night, Pen?"

"Oh, like a thief," said the girl.  "A thief that hasn't been arrested
yet."

Lapham waited a while before he said, "Well, now, your mother and I
want you should hold up on that a while."

"It isn't for you to say.  It's something I can't hold up on."

"Yes, I guess you can.  If I know what's happened, then what's happened
is a thing that nobody is to blame for.  And we want you should make
the best of it and not the worst.  Heigh? It ain't going to help Irene
any for you to hurt yourself--or anybody else; and I don't want you
should take up with any such crazy notion.  As far as heard from, you
haven't stolen anything, and whatever you've got belongs to you."

"Has he been speaking to you, father?"

"Your mother's been speaking to me."

"Has HE been speaking to you?"

"That's neither here nor there."

"Then he's broken his word, and I will never speak to him again!"

"If he was any such fool as to promise that he wouldn't talk to me on a
subject"--Lapham drew a deep breath, and then made the plunge--"that I
brought up----"

"Did you bring it up?"

"The same as brought up--the quicker he broke his word the better; and
I want you should act upon that idea.  Recollect that it's my business,
and your mother's business, as well as yours, and we're going to have
our say.  He hain't done anything wrong, Pen, nor anything that he's
going to be punished for.  Understand that.  He's got to have a reason,
if you're not going to have him.  I don't say you've got to have him; I
want you should feel perfectly free about that; but I DO say you've got
to give him a reason."

"Is he coming here?"

"I don't know as you'd call it COMING----"

"Yes, you do, father!" said the girl, in forlorn amusement at his
shuffling.

"He's coming here to see ME----"

"When's he coming?"

"I don't know but he's coming to-night."

"And you want I should see him?"

"I don't know but you'd better."

"All right.  I'll see him."

Lapham drew a long deep breath of suspicion inspired by this
acquiescence.  "What you going to do?" he asked presently.

"I don't know yet," answered the girl sadly.  "It depends a good deal
upon what he does."

"Well," said Lapham, with the hungriness of unsatisfied anxiety in his
tone.  When Corey's card was brought into the family-room where he and
Penelope were sitting, he went into the parlour to find him.  "I guess
Penelope wants to see you," he said; and, indicating the family-room,
he added, "She's in there," and did not go back himself.

Corey made his way to the girl's presence with open trepidation, which
was not allayed by her silence and languor.  She sat in the chair where
she had sat the other night, but she was not playing with a fan now.

He came toward her, and then stood faltering.  A faint smile quivered
over her face at the spectacle of his subjection.  "Sit down, Mr.
Corey," she said.  "There's no reason why we shouldn't talk it over
quietly; for I know you will think I'm right."

"I'm sure of that," he answered hopefully.  "When I saw that your
father knew of it to-day, I asked him to let me see you again.  I'm
afraid that I broke my promise to you--technically----"

"It had to be broken." He took more courage at her words.  "But I've
only come to do whatever you say, and not to be an--annoyance to
you----"

"Yes, you have to know; but I couldn't tell you before.  Now they all
think I should."

A tremor of anxiety passed over the young man's face, on which she kept
her eyes steadily fixed.

"We supposed it--it was--Irene----"

He remained blank a moment, and then he said with a smile of relief, of
deprecation, of protest, of amazement, of compassion--

"OH! Never! Never for an instant! How could you think such a thing? It
was impossible! I never thought of her.  But I see--I see! I can
explain--no, there's nothing to explain! I have never knowingly done or
said a thing from first to last to make you think that.  I see how
terrible it is!" he said; but he still smiled, as if he could not take
it seriously.  "I admired her beauty--who could help doing that?--and I
thought her very good and sensible.  Why, last winter in Texas, I told
Stanton about our meeting in Canada, and we agreed--I only tell you to
show you how far I always was from what you thought--that he must come
North and try to see her, and--and--of course, it all sounds very
silly!--and he sent her a newspaper with an account of his ranch in
it----"

"She thought it came from you."

"Oh, good heavens! He didn't tell me till after he'd done it.  But he
did it for a part of our foolish joke.  And when I met your sister
again, I only admired her as before.  I can see, now, how I must have
seemed to be seeking her out; but it was to talk of you with her--I
never talked of anything else if I could help it, except when I changed
the subject because I was ashamed to be always talking of you.  I see
how distressing it is for all of you.  But tell me that you believe me!"

"Yes, I must.  It's all been our mistake----"

"It has indeed! But there's no mistake about my loving you, Penelope,"
he said; and the old-fashioned name, at which she had often mocked, was
sweet to her from his lips.

"That only makes it worse!" she answered.

"Oh no!" he gently protested.  "It makes it better.  It makes it right.
How is it worse? How is it wrong?"

"Can't you see? You must understand all now! Don't you see that if she
believed so too, and if she----" She could not go on.

"Did she--did your sister--think that too?" gasped Corey.

"She used to talk with me about you; and when you say you care for me
now, it makes me feel like the vilest hypocrite in the world.  That day
you gave her the list of books, and she came down to Nantasket, and
went on about you, I helped her to flatter herself--oh! I don't see how
she can forgive me.  But she knows I can never forgive myself! That's
the reason she can do it.  I can see now," she went on, "how I must
have been trying to get you from her.  I can't endure it! The only way
is for me never to see you or speak to you again!" She laughed
forlornly.  "That would be pretty hard on you, if you cared."

"I do care--all the world!"

"Well, then, it would if you were going to keep on caring.  You won't
long, if you stop coming now."

"Is this all, then? Is it the end?"

"It's--whatever it is.  I can't get over the thought of her.  Once I
thought I could, but now I see that I can't. It seems to grow worse.
Sometimes I feel as if it would drive me crazy."

He sat looking at her with lacklustre eyes.  The light suddenly came
back into them.  "Do you think I could love you if you had been false
to her? I know you have been true to her, and truer still to yourself.
I never tried to see her, except with the hope of seeing you too.  I
supposed she must know that I was in love with you.  From the first
time I saw you there that afternoon, you filled my fancy.  Do you think
I was flirting with the child, or--no, you don't think that! We have
not done wrong.  We have not harmed any one knowingly.  We have a right
to each other----"

"No! no! you must never speak to me of this again.  If you do, I shall
know that you despise me."

"But how will that help her? I don't love HER."

"Don't say that to me! I have said that to myself too much."

"If you forbid me to love you, it won't make me love her," he persisted.

She was about to speak, but she caught her breath without doing so, and
merely stared at him.  "I must do what you say," he continued.  "But
what good will it do her? You can't make her happy by making yourself
unhappy."

"Do you ask me to profit by a wrong?"

"Not for the world.  But there is no wrong!"

"There is something--I don't know what.  There's a wall between us.  I
shall dash myself against it as long as I live; but that won't break
it."

"Oh!" he groaned.  "We have done no wrong.  Why should we suffer from
another's mistake as if it were our sin?"

"I don't know.  But we must suffer."

"Well, then, I WILL not, for my part, and I will not let you.  If you
care for me----"

"You had no right to know it."

"You make it my privilege to keep you from doing wrong for the right's
sake.  I'm sorry, with all my heart and soul, for this error; but I
can't blame myself, and I won't deny myself the happiness I haven't
done anything to forfeit.  I will never give you up.  I will wait as
long as you please for the time when you shall feel free from this
mistake; but you shall be mine at last.  Remember that.  I might go
away for months--a year, even; but that seems a cowardly and guilty
thing, and I'm not afraid, and I'm not guilty, and I'm going to stay
here and try to see you."

She shook her head.  "It won't change anything? Don't you see that
there's no hope for us?"

"When is she coming back?" he asked.

"I don't know.  Mother wants father to come and take her out West for a
while."

"She's up there in the country with your mother yet?"

"Yes."

He was silent; then he said desperately--

"Penelope, she is very young; and perhaps--perhaps she might meet----"

"It would make no difference.  It wouldn't change it for me."

"You are cruel--cruel to yourself, if you love me, and cruel to me.
Don't you remember that night--before I spoke--you were talking of that
book; and you said it was foolish and wicked to do as that girl did.
Why is it different with you, except that you give me nothing, and can
never give me anything when you take yourself away?  If it were anybody
else, I am sure you would say----"

"But it isn't anybody else, and that makes it impossible.  Sometimes I
think it might be if I would only say so to myself, and then all that I
said to her about you comes up----"

"I will wait.  It can't always come up.  I won't urge you any longer
now.  But you will see it differently--more clearly.  Good-bye--no!
Good night! I shall come again to-morrow. It will surely come right,
and, whatever happens, you have done no wrong.  Try to keep that in
mind.  I am so happy, in spite of all!"

He tried to take her hand, but she put it behind her.  "No, no! I can't
let you--yet!"

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Mrs. Lapham forces herself to tell Irene of the situation. Stunned, the girl gives Penelope all her love mementoes: the newspaper clipping telling of the Texas ranch, the pine shaving, and a pin like one worn by one of Tom's sisters. She goes for a long walk with her father, buys a sleeping potion, and returns home to sleep. The next morning, she announces that she will go to the farming community of Lapham, named for Silas. Before she leaves, she instructs Penelope to tell Tom that they all thought he loved her. Tom visits Penelope, who is still quite perplexed. He learns of the mistake and tries to convince Penelope that she must not be silly like the girl in the book, Tears, Idle Tears. However, she will not let him touch her, saying, "No, no! I can't let you-yet!"