prompt:
Chapter: AFTER a week Mrs. Lapham returned, leaving Irene alone at the old
homestead in Vermont.  "She's comfortable there--as comfortable as she
can be anywheres, I guess," she said to her husband as they drove
together from the station, where he had met her in obedience to her
telegraphic summons.  "She keeps herself busy helping about the house;
and she goes round amongst the hands in their houses.  There's
sickness, and you know how helpful she is where there's sickness.  She
don't complain any.  I don't know as I've heard a word out of her mouth
since we left home; but I'm afraid it'll wear on her, Silas."

"You don't look over and above well yourself, Persis," said her husband
kindly.

"Oh, don't talk about me.  What I want to know is whether you can't get
the time to run off with her somewhere.  I wrote to you about Dubuque.
She'll work herself down, I'm afraid; and THEN I don't know as she'll
be over it.  But if she could go off, and be amused--see new people----"

"I could MAKE the time," said Lapham, "if I had to.  But, as it
happens, I've got to go out West on business,--I'll tell you about
it,--and I'll take Irene along."

"Good!" said his wife.  "That's about the best thing I've heard yet.
Where you going?"

"Out Dubuque way."

"Anything the matter with Bill's folks?"

"No. It's business."

"How's Pen?"

"I guess she ain't much better than Irene."

"He been about any?"

"Yes. But I can't see as it helps matters much."

"Tchk!" Mrs. Lapham fell back against the carriage cushions.  "I
declare, to see her willing to take the man that we all thought wanted
her sister! I can't make it seem right."

"It's right," said Lapham stoutly; "but I guess she ain't willing; I
wish she was.  But there don't seem to be any way out of the thing,
anywhere.  It's a perfect snarl.  But I don't want you should be
anyways ha'sh with Pen."

Mrs. Lapham answered nothing; but when she met Penelope she gave the
girl's wan face a sharp look, and began to whimper on her neck.

Penelope's tears were all spent.  "Well, mother," she said, "you come
back almost as cheerful as you went away.  I needn't ask if 'Rene's in
good spirits.  We all seem to be overflowing with them.  I suppose this
is one way of congratulating me.  Mrs. Corey hasn't been round to do it
yet."

"Are you--are you engaged to him, Pen?" gasped her mother.

"Judging by my feelings, I should say not.  I feel as if it was a last
will and testament.  But you'd better ask him when he comes."

"I can't bear to look at him."

"I guess he's used to that.  He don't seem to expect to be looked at.
Well! we're all just where we started.  I wonder how long it will keep
up."

Mrs. Lapham reported to her husband when he came home at night--he had
left his business to go and meet her, and then, after a desolate dinner
at the house, had returned to the office again--that Penelope was fully
as bad as Irene.  "And she don't know how to work it off.  Irene keeps
doing; but Pen just sits in her room and mopes.  She don't even read.
I went up this afternoon to scold her about the state the house was
in--you can see that Irene's away by the perfect mess; but when I saw
her through the crack of the door I hadn't the heart.  She sat there
with her hands in her lap, just staring.  And, my goodness! she JUMPED
so when she saw me; and then she fell back, and began to laugh, and
said she, 'I thought it was my ghost, mother!' I felt as if I should
give way."

Lapham listened jadedly, and answered far from the point.  "I guess
I've got to start out there pretty soon, Persis."

"How soon?"

"Well, to-morrow morning."

Mrs. Lapham sat silent.  Then, "All right," she said.  "I'll get you
ready."

"I shall run up to Lapham for Irene, and then I'll push on through
Canada.  I can get there about as quick."

"Is it anything you can tell me about, Silas?"

"Yes," said Lapham.  "But it's a long story, and I guess you've got
your hands pretty full as it is.  I've been throwing good money after
bad,--the usual way,--and now I've got to see if I can save the
pieces."

After a moment Mrs. Lapham asked, "Is it--Rogers?"

"It's Rogers."

"I didn't want you should get in any deeper with him."

"No. You didn't want I should press him either; and I had to do one or
the other.  And so I got in deeper."

"Silas," said his wife, "I'm afraid I made you!"

"It's all right, Persis, as far forth as that goes.  I was glad to make
it up with him--I jumped at the chance.  I guess Rogers saw that he had
a soft thing in me, and he's worked it for all it was worth.  But it'll
all come out right in the end."

Lapham said this as if he did not care to talk any more about it.  He
added casually, "Pretty near everybody but the fellows that owe ME seem
to expect me to do a cash business, all of a sudden."

"Do you mean that you've got payments to make, and that people are not
paying YOU?"

Lapham winced a little.  "Something like that," he said, and he lighted
a cigar.  "But when I tell you it's all right, I mean it, Persis.  I
ain't going to let the grass grow under my feet, though,--especially
while Rogers digs the ground away from the roots."

"What are you going to do?"

"If it has to come to that, I'm going to squeeze him." Lapham's
countenance lighted up with greater joy than had yet visited it since
the day they had driven out to Brookline.  "Milton K. Rogers is a
rascal, if you want to know; or else all the signs fail.  But I guess
he'll find he's got his come-uppance." Lapham shut his lips so that the
short, reddish-grey beard stuck straight out on them.

"What's he done?"

"What's he done? Well, now, I'll tell you what he's done, Persis, since
you think Rogers is such a saint, and that I used him so badly in
getting him out of the business.  He's been dabbling in every sort of
fool thing you can lay your tongue to,--wild-cat stocks, patent-rights,
land speculations, oil claims,--till he's run through about everything.
But he did have a big milling property out on the line of the P. Y. &
X.,--saw-mills and grist-mills and lands,--and for the last eight years
he's been doing a land-office business with 'em--business that would
have made anybody else rich.  But you can't make Milton K. Rogers rich,
any more than you can fat a hide-bound colt.  It ain't in him.  He'd
run through Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and Tom Scott rolled into one in
less than six months, give him a chance, and come out and want to
borrow money of you.  Well, he won't borrow any more money of ME; and
if he thinks I don't know as much about that milling property as he
does he's mistaken.  I've taken his mills, but I guess I've got the
inside track; Bill's kept me posted; and now I'm going out there to see
how I can unload; and I shan't mind a great deal if Rogers is under the
load when it's off once."

"I don't understand you, Silas."

"Why, it's just this.  The Great Lacustrine & Polar Railroad has leased
the P. Y. & X. for ninety-nine years,--bought it, practically,--and
it's going to build car-works right by those mills, and it may want
them.  And Milton K. Rogers knew it when he turned 'em in on me."

"Well, if the road wants them, don't that make the mills valuable? You
can get what you ask for them!"

"Can I? The P. Y. & X. is the only road that runs within fifty miles of
the mills, and you can't get a foot of lumber nor a pound of flour to
market any other way.  As long as he had a little local road like the
P. Y. & X. to deal with, Rogers could manage; but when it come to a big
through line like the G. L. & P., he couldn't stand any chance at all.
If such a road as that took a fancy to his mills, do you think it would
pay what he asked? No, sir! He would take what the road offered, or
else the road would tell him to carry his flour and lumber to market
himself."

"And do you suppose he knew the G. L. & P. wanted the mills when he
turned them in on you?" asked Mrs. Lapham aghast, and falling
helplessly into his alphabetical parlance.

The Colonel laughed scoffingly.  "Well, when Milton K. Rogers don't
know which side his bread's buttered on! I don't understand," he added
thoughtfully, "how he's always letting it fall on the buttered side.
But such a man as that is sure to have a screw loose in him somewhere."
Mrs. Lapham sat discomfited.  All that she could say was, "Well, I want
you should ask yourself whether Rogers would ever have gone wrong, or
got into these ways of his, if it hadn't been for your forcing him out
of the business when you did.  I want you should think whether you're
not responsible for everything he's done since."

"You go and get that bag of mine ready," said Lapham sullenly.  "I
guess I can take care of myself.  And Milton K. Rogers too," he added.

That evening Corey spent the time after dinner in his own room, with
restless excursions to the library, where his mother sat with his
father and sisters, and showed no signs of leaving them.  At last, in
coming down, he encountered her on the stairs, going up.  They both
stopped consciously.

"I would like to speak with you, mother.  I have been waiting to see
you alone."

"Come to my room," she said.

"I have a feeling that you know what I want to say," he began there.

She looked up at him where he stood by the chimney-piece, and tried to
put a cheerful note into her questioning "Yes?"

"Yes; and I have a feeling that you won't like it--that you won't
approve of it.  I wish you did--I wish you could!"

"I'm used to liking and approving everything you do, Tom.  If I don't
like this at once, I shall try to like it--you know that--for your
sake, whatever it is."

"I'd better be short," he said, with a quick sigh.  "It's about Miss
Lapham." He hastened to add, "I hope it isn't surprising to you.  I'd
have told you before, if I could."

"No, it isn't surprising.  I was afraid--I suspected something of the
kind."

They were both silent in a painful silence.

"Well, mother?" he asked at last.

"If it's something you've quite made up mind to----"

"It is!"

"And if you've already spoken to her----"

"I had to do that first, of course."

"There would be no use of my saying anything, even if I disliked it."

"You do dislike it!"

"No--no! I can't say that.  Of course I should have preferred it if you
had chosen some nice girl among those that you had been brought up
with--some friend or associate of your sisters, whose people we had
known----"

"Yes, I understand that, and I can assure you that I haven't been
indifferent to your feelings.  I have tried to consider them from the
first, and it kept me hesitating in a way that I'm ashamed to think of;
for it wasn't quite right towards--others. But your feelings and my
sisters' have been in my mind, and if I couldn't yield to what I
supposed they must be, entirely----"

Even so good a son and brother as this, when it came to his love
affair, appeared to think that he had yielded much in considering the
feelings of his family at all.

His mother hastened to comfort him.  "I know--I know.  I've seen for
some time that this might happen, Tom, and I have prepared myself for
it.  I have talked it over with your father, and we both agreed from
the beginning that you were not to be hampered by our feeling.
Still--it is a surprise.  It must be."

"I know it.  I can understand your feeling.  But I'm sure that it's one
that will last only while you don't know her well."

"Oh, I'm sure of that, Tom.  I'm sure that we shall all be fond of
her,--for your sake at first, even--and I hope she'll like us."

"I am quite certain of that," said Corey, with that confidence which
experience does not always confirm in such cases.  "And your taking it
as you do lifts a tremendous load off me."

But he sighed so heavily, and looked so troubled, that his mother said,
"Well, now, you mustn't think of that any more.  We wish what is for
your happiness, my son, and we will gladly reconcile ourselves to
anything that might have been disagreeable.  I suppose we needn't speak
of the family.  We must both think alike about them.  They have
their--drawbacks, but they are thoroughly good people, and I satisfied
myself the other night that they were not to be dreaded." She rose, and
put her arm round his neck.  "And I wish you joy, Tom! If she's half as
good as you are, you will both be very happy." She was going to kiss
him, but something in his looks stopped her--an absence, a trouble,
which broke out in his words.

"I must tell you, mother! There's been a complication--a
mistake--that's a blight on me yet, and that it sometimes seems as if
we couldn't escape from.  I wonder if you can help us! They all thought
I meant--the other sister."

"O Tom! But how COULD they?"

"I don't know.  It seemed so glaringly plain--I was ashamed of making
it so outright from the beginning.  But they did.  Even she did,
herself!"

"But where could they have thought your eyes were--your taste? It
wouldn't be surprising if any one were taken with that wonderful
beauty; and I'm sure she's good too.  But I'm astonished at them! To
think you could prefer that little, black, odd creature, with her
joking and----"

"MOTHER!" cried the young man, turning a ghastly face of warning upon
her.

"What do you mean, Tom?"

"Did you--did--did you think so too--that it was IRENE I meant?"

"Why, of course!"

He stared at her hopelessly.

"O my son!" she said, for all comment on the situation.

"Don't reproach me, mother! I couldn't stand it."

"No. I didn't mean to do that.  But how--HOW could it happen?"

"I don't know.  When she first told me that they had understood it so,
I laughed--almost--it was so far from me.  But now when you seem to
have had the same idea--Did you all think so?"

"Yes."

They remained looking at each other.  Then Mrs. Corey began: "It did
pass through my mind once--that day I went to call upon them--that it
might not be as we thought; but I knew so little of--of----"

"Penelope," Corey mechanically supplied.

"Is that her name?--I forgot--that I only thought of you in relation to
her long enough to reject the idea; and it was natural after our seeing
something of the other one last year, that I might suppose you had
formed some--attachment----"

"Yes; that's what they thought too.  But I never thought of her as
anything but a pretty child.  I was civil to her because you wished it;
and when I met her here again, I only tried to see her so that I could
talk with her about her sister."

"You needn't defend yourself to ME, Tom," said his mother, proud to say
it to him in his trouble.  "It's a terrible business for them, poor
things," she added.  "I don't know how they could get over it.  But, of
course, sensible people must see----"

"They haven't got over it.  At least she hasn't. Since it's happened,
there's been nothing that hasn't made me prouder and fonder of her! At
first I WAS charmed with her--my fancy was taken; she delighted me--I
don't know how; but she was simply the most fascinating person I ever
saw.  Now I never think of that.  I only think how good she is--how
patient she is with me, and how unsparing she is of herself.  If she
were concerned alone--if I were not concerned too--it would soon end.
She's never had a thought for anything but her sister's feeling and
mine from the beginning.  I go there,--I know that I oughtn't, but I
can't help it,--and she suffers it, and tries not to let me see that
she is suffering it.  There never was any one like her--so brave, so
true, so noble.  I won't give her up--I can't. But it breaks my heart
when she accuses herself of what was all MY doing.  We spend our time
trying to reason out of it, but we always come back to it at last, and
I have to hear her morbidly blaming herself.  Oh!"

Doubtless Mrs. Corey imagined some reliefs to this suffering, some
qualifications of this sublimity in a girl she had disliked so
distinctly; but she saw none in her son's behaviour, and she gave him
her further sympathy.  She tried to praise Penelope, and said that it
was not to be expected that she could reconcile herself at once to
everything.  "I shouldn't have liked it in her if she had.  But time
will bring it all right.  And if she really cares for you----"

"I extorted that from her."

"Well, then, you must look at it in the best light you can.  There is
no blame anywhere, and the mortification and pain is something that
must be lived down.  That's all.  And don't let what I said grieve you,
Tom.  You know I scarcely knew her, and I--I shall be sure to like any
one you like, after all."

"Yes, I know," said the young man drearily.  "Will you tell father?"

"If you wish."

"He must know.  And I couldn't stand any more of this, just yet--any
more mistake."

"I will tell him," said Mrs. Corey; and it was naturally the next thing
for a woman who dwelt so much on decencies to propose: "We must go to
call on her--your sisters and I. They have never seen her even; and
she mustn't be allowed to think we're indifferent to her, especially
under the circumstances."

"Oh no! Don't go--not yet," cried Corey, with an instinctive perception
that nothing could be worse for him.  "We must wait--we must be
patient.  I'm afraid it would be painful to her now."

He turned away without speaking further; and his mother's eyes followed
him wistfully to the door.  There were some questions that she would
have liked to ask him; but she had to content herself with trying to
answer them when her husband put them to her.

There was this comfort for her always in Bromfield Corey, that he never
was much surprised at anything, however shocking or painful.  His
standpoint in regard to most matters was that of the sympathetic
humorist who would be glad to have the victim of circumstance laugh
with him, but was not too much vexed when the victim could not.  He
laughed now when his wife, with careful preparation, got the facts of
his son's predicament fully under his eye.

"Really, Bromfield," she said, "I don't see how you can laugh.  Do you
see any way out of it?"

"It seems to me that the way has been found already.  Tom has told his
love to the right one, and the wrong one knows it.  Time will do the
rest."

"If I had so low an opinion of them all as that, it would make me very
unhappy.  It's shocking to think of it."

"It is upon the theory of ladies and all young people," said her
husband, with a shrug, feeling his way to the matches on the mantel,
and then dropping them with a sign, as if recollecting that he must not
smoke there.  "I've no doubt Tom feels himself an awful sinner.  But
apparently he's resigned to his sin; he isn't going to give her up."

"I'm glad to say, for the sake of human nature, that SHE isn't
resigned--little as I like her," cried Mrs. Corey.

Her husband shrugged again.  "Oh, there mustn't be any indecent haste.
She will instinctively observe the proprieties.  But come, now, Anna!
you mustn't pretend to me here, in the sanctuary of home, that
practically the human affections don't reconcile themselves to any
situation that the human sentiments condemn.  Suppose the wrong sister
had died: would the right one have had any scruple in marrying Tom,
after they had both 'waited a proper time,' as the phrase is?"

"Bromfield, you're shocking!"

"Not more shocking than reality.  You may regard this as a second
marriage." He looked at her with twinkling eyes, full of the triumph
the spectator of his species feels in signal exhibitions of human
nature.  "Depend upon it, the right sister will be reconciled; the
wrong one will be consoled; and all will go merry as a marriage bell--a
second marriage bell.  Why, it's quite like a romance!" Here he laughed
outright again.

"Well," sighed the wife, "I could almost wish the right one, as you
call her, would reject Tom, I dislike her so much."

"Ah, now you're talking business, Anna," said her husband, with his
hands spread behind the back he turned comfortably to the fire.  "The
whole Lapham tribe is distasteful to me.  As I don't happen to have
seen our daughter-in-law elect, I have still the hope--which you're
disposed to forbid me--that she may not be quite so unacceptable as the
others."

"Do you really feel so, Bromfield?" anxiously inquired his wife.

"Yes--I think I do;" and he sat down, and stretched out his long legs
toward the fire.

"But it's very inconsistent of you to oppose the matter now, when
you've shown so much indifference up to this time.  You've told me, all
along, that it was of no use to oppose it."

"So I have.  I was convinced of that at the beginning, or my reason
was.  You know very well that I am equal to any trial, any sacrifice,
day after to-morrow; but when it comes to-day it's another thing.  As
long as this crisis decently kept its distance, I could look at it with
an impartial eye; but now that it seems at hand, I find that, while my
reason is still acquiescent, my nerves are disposed to--excuse the
phrase--kick. I ask myself, what have I done nothing for, all my life,
and lived as a gentleman should, upon the earnings of somebody else, in
the possession of every polite taste and feeling that adorns leisure,
if I'm to come to this at last? And I find no satisfactory answer.  I
say to myself that I might as well have yielded to the pressure all
round me, and gone to work, as Tom has."

Mrs. Corey looked at him forlornly, divining the core of real
repugnance that existed in his self-satire.

"I assure you, my dear," he continued, "that the recollection of what I
suffered from the Laphams at that dinner of yours is an anguish still.
It wasn't their behaviour,--they behaved well enough--or ill enough;
but their conversation was terrible.  Mrs. Lapham's range was strictly
domestic; and when the Colonel got me in the library, he poured mineral
paint all over me, till I could have been safely warranted not to crack
or scale in any climate.  I suppose we shall have to see a good deal of
them.  They will probably come here every Sunday night to tea.  It's a
perspective without a vanishing-point."

"It may not be so bad, after all," said his wife; and she suggested for
his consolation that he knew very little about the Laphams yet.

He assented to the fact.  "I know very little about them, and about my
other fellow-beings. I dare say that I should like the Laphams better
if I knew them better.  But in any case, I resign myself.  And we must
keep in view the fact that this is mainly Tom's affair, and if his
affections have regulated it to his satisfaction, we must be content."

"Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Corey.  "And perhaps it won't turn out so badly.
It's a great comfort to know that you feel just as I do about it."

"I do," said her husband, "and more too."

It was she and her daughters who would be chiefly annoyed by the Lapham
connection; she knew that.  But she had to begin to bear the burden by
helping her husband to bear his light share of it.  To see him so
depressed dismayed her, and she might well have reproached him more
sharply than she did for showing so much indifference, when she was so
anxious, at first.  But that would not have served any good end now.
She even answered him patiently when he asked her, "What did you say to
Tom when he told you it was the other one?"

"What could I say? I could do nothing, but try to take back what I had
said against her."

"Yes, you had quite enough to do, I suppose.  It's an awkward business.
If it had been the pretty one, her beauty would have been our excuse.
But the plain one--what do you suppose attracted him in her?"

Mrs. Corey sighed at the futility of the question.  "Perhaps I did her
injustice.  I only saw her a few moments.  Perhaps I got a false
impression.  I don't think she's lacking in sense, and that's a great
thing.  She'll be quick to see that we don't mean unkindness, and
can't, by anything we say or do, when she's Tom's wife." She pronounced
the distasteful word with courage, and went on: "The pretty one might
not have been able to see that.  She might have got it into her head
that we were looking down on her; and those insipid people are terribly
stubborn.  We can come to some understanding with this one; I'm sure of
that." She ended by declaring that it was now their duty to help Tom
out of his terrible predicament.

"Oh, even the Lapham cloud has a silver lining," said Corey.  "In fact,
it seems really to have all turned out for the best, Anna; though it's
rather curious to find you the champion of the Lapham side, at last.
Confess, now, that the right girl has secretly been your choice all
along, and that while you sympathise with the wrong one, you rejoice in
the tenacity with which the right one is clinging to her own!" He added
with final seriousness, "It's just that she should, and, so far as I
understand the case, I respect her for it."

"Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Corey.  "It's natural, and it's right." But she
added, "I suppose they're glad of him on any terms."

"That is what I have been taught to believe," said her husband.  "When
shall we see our daughter-in-law elect? I find myself rather impatient
to have that part of it over."

Mrs. Corey hesitated.  "Tom thinks we had better not call, just yet."

"She has told him of your terrible behaviour when you called before?"

"No, Bromfield! She couldn't be so vulgar as that?"

"But anything short of it?"

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

completion: Mrs. Lapham, who has accompanied Irene, returns from Lapham without her. Silas says that he will take the girl with him on a business trip to the West. Lapham must try to sell mills Rogers has put up for collateral. He has lent Rogers too much money to protect the original loan and cannot pay his debts. "Pretty near everybody but the fellows that owe me seem to expect me to do a cash business, all of a sudden," he says. He goes on to tell Persis that the mills Rogers has put up for collateral could have brought a good price until recently when a railroad took a ninety-nine-year lease on the only line going to them. If they decide to buy the mills, Rogers and Lapham would have to take the railroad's offer or carry the lumber and flour to market themselves. Tom Corey, in the meantime, tells his mother the Lapham daughter he wishes to marry is not Irene but Penelope. Although surprised, Mrs. Corey instantly realizes the girl's awkward position, but Bromfield Corey says, "Suppose the wrong sister had died -- would the right one have any scruples in marrying Tom? It's no more shocking than reality. Why it's quite like a romance," he concludes. They both decide to bear up under the situation even though Bromfield says, "When I talked to Silas, he poured mineral paint all over me, 'till I could have been safely warranted not to crack or scale in any climate." Mrs. Corey points out that, at least, Penelope is not lacking in sense. "She'll be quick to see that we don't mean unkindness. The pretty one might have thought we were looking down on her," she says.


prompt:
Chapter: LAPHAM was gone a fortnight.  He was in a sullen humour when he came
back, and kept himself shut close within his own den at the office the
first day.  He entered it in the morning without a word to his clerks
as he passed through the outer room, and he made no sign throughout the
forenoon, except to strike savagely on his desk-bell from time to time,
and send out to Walker for some book of accounts or a letter-file. His
boy confidentially reported to Walker that the old man seemed to have
got a lot of papers round; and at lunch the book-keeper said to Corey,
at the little table which they had taken in a corner together, in
default of seats at the counter, "Well, sir, I guess there's a cold
wave coming."

Corey looked up innocently, and said, "I haven't read the weather
report."

"Yes, sir," Walker continued, "it's coming.  Areas of rain along the
whole coast, and increased pressure in the region of the private
office.  Storm-signals up at the old man's door now."

Corey perceived that he was speaking figuratively, and that his
meteorology was entirely personal to Lapham.  "What do you mean?" he
asked, without vivid interest in the allegory, his mind being full of
his own tragi-comedy.

"Why, just this: I guess the old man's takin' in sail.  And I guess
he's got to.  As I told you the first time we talked about him, there
don't any one know one-quarter as much about the old man's business as
the old man does himself; and I ain't betraying any confidence when I
say that I guess that old partner of his has got pretty deep into his
books.  I guess he's over head and ears in 'em, and the old man's gone
in after him, and he's got a drownin' man's grip round his neck.  There
seems to be a kind of a lull--kind of a dead calm, I call it--in the
paint market just now; and then again a ten-hundred-thousand-dollar man
don't build a hundred-thousand-dollar house without feeling the drain,
unless there's a regular boom.  And just now there ain't any boom at
all.  Oh, I don't say but what the old man's got anchors to windward;
guess he HAS; but if he's GOIN' to leave me his money, I wish he'd left
it six weeks ago.  Yes, sir, I guess there's a cold wave comin'; but
you can't generally 'most always tell, as a usual thing, where the old
man's concerned, and it's ONLY a guess." Walker began to feed in his
breaded chop with the same nervous excitement with which he abandoned
himself to the slangy and figurative excesses of his talks.  Corey had
listened with a miserable curiosity and compassion up to a certain
moment, when a broad light of hope flashed upon him.  It came from
Lapham's potential ruin; and the way out of the labyrinth that had
hitherto seemed so hopeless was clear enough, if another's disaster
would befriend him, and give him the opportunity to prove the
unselfishness of his constancy.  He thought of the sum of money that
was his own, and that he might offer to lend, or practically give, if
the time came; and with his crude hopes and purposes formlessly
exulting in his heart, he kept on listening with an unchanged
countenance.

Walker could not rest till he had developed the whole situation, so far
as he knew it.  "Look at the stock we've got on hand.  There's going to
be an awful shrinkage on that, now! And when everybody is shutting
down, or running half-time, the works up at Lapham are going full chip,
just the same as ever.  Well, it's his pride.  I don't say but what
it's a good sort of pride, but he likes to make his brags that the
fire's never been out in the works since they started, and that no
man's work or wages has ever been cut down yet at Lapham, it don't
matter WHAT the times are.  Of course," explained Walker, "I shouldn't
talk so to everybody; don't know as I should talk so to anybody but
you, Mr. Corey."

"Of course," assented Corey.

"Little off your feed to-day," said Walker, glancing at Corey's plate.

"I got up with a headache."

"Well, sir, if you're like me you'll carry it round all day, then.  I
don't know a much meaner thing than a headache--unless it's earache, or
toothache, or some other kind of ache I'm pretty hard to suit, when it
comes to diseases.  Notice how yellow the old man looked when he came
in this morning? I don't like to see a man of his build look
yellow--much." About the middle of the afternoon the dust-coloured face
of Rogers, now familiar to Lapham's clerks, showed itself among them.
"Has Colonel Lapham returned yet?" he asked, in his dry, wooden tones,
of Lapham's boy.

"Yes, he's in his office," said the boy; and as Rogers advanced, he
rose and added, "I don't know as you can see him to-day. His orders are
not to let anybody in."

"Oh, indeed!" said Rogers; "I think he will see ME!" and he pressed
forward.

"Well, I'll have to ask," returned the boy; and hastily preceding
Rogers, he put his head in at Lapham's door, and then withdrew it.
"Please to sit down," he said; "he'll see you pretty soon;" and, with
an air of some surprise, Rogers obeyed.  His sere, dull-brown whiskers
and the moustache closing over both lips were incongruously and
illogically clerical in effect, and the effect was heightened for no
reason by the parchment texture of his skin; the baldness extending to
the crown of his head was like a baldness made up for the stage.  What
his face expressed chiefly was a bland and beneficent caution.  Here,
you must have said to yourself, is a man of just, sober, and prudent
views, fixed purposes, and the good citizenship that avoids debt and
hazard of every kind.

"What do you want?" asked Lapham, wheeling round in his swivel-chair as
Rogers entered his room, and pushing the door shut with his foot,
without rising.

Rogers took the chair that was not offered him, and sat with his
hat-brim on his knees, and its crown pointed towards Lapham.  "I want
to know what you are going to do," he answered with sufficient
self-possession.

"I'll tell you, first, what I've done," said Lapham.  "I've been to
Dubuque, and I've found out all about that milling property you turned
in on me.  Did you know that the G. L. & P. had leased the P. Y. & X.?"

"I some suspected that it might."

"Did you know it when you turned the property in on me?  Did you know
that the G. L. & P. wanted to buy the mills?"

"I presumed the road would give a fair price for them," said Rogers,
winking his eyes in outward expression of inwardly blinking the point.

"You lie," said Lapham, as quietly as if correcting him in a slight
error; and Rogers took the word with equal sang froid.  "You knew the
road wouldn't give a fair price for the mills.  You knew it would give
what it chose, and that I couldn't help myself, when you let me take
them.  You're a thief, Milton K. Rogers, and you stole money I lent
you." Rogers sat listening, as if respectfully considering the
statements.  "You knew how I felt about that old matter--or my wife
did; and that I wanted to make it up to you, if you felt anyway badly
used.  And you took advantage of it.  You've got money out of me, in
the first place, on securities that wa'n't worth thirty-five cents on
the dollar, and you've let me in for this thing, and that thing, and
you've bled me every time.  And all I've got to show for it is a
milling property on a line of road that can squeeze me, whenever it
wants to, as dry as it pleases.  And you want to know what I'm going to
do? I'm going to squeeze YOU.  I'm going to sell these collaterals of
yours,"--he touched a bundle of papers among others that littered his
desk,--"and I'm going to let the mills go for what they'll fetch.  I
ain't going to fight the G. L. & P."

Lapham wheeled about in his chair and turned his burly back on his
visitor, who sat wholly unmoved.

"There are some parties," he began, with a dry tranquillity ignoring
Lapham's words, as if they had been an outburst against some third
person, who probably merited them, but in whom he was so little
interested that he had been obliged to use patience in listening to his
condemnation,--"there are some English parties who have been making
inquiries in regard to those mills."

"I guess you're lying, Rogers," said Lapham, without looking round.

"Well, all that I have to ask is that you will not act hastily."

"I see you don't think I'm in earnest!" cried Lapham, facing fiercely
about.  "You think I'm fooling, do you?" He struck his bell, and
"William," he ordered the boy who answered it, and who stood waiting
while he dashed off a note to the brokers and enclosed it with the
bundle of securities in a large envelope, "take these down to Gallop &
Paddock's, in State Street, right away.  Now go!" he said to Rogers,
when the boy had closed the door after him; and he turned once more to
his desk.

Rogers rose from his chair, and stood with his hat in his hand.  He was
not merely dispassionate in his attitude and expression, he was
impartial.  He wore the air of a man who was ready to return to
business whenever the wayward mood of his interlocutor permitted.
"Then I understand," he said, "that you will take no action in regard
to the mills till I have seen the parties I speak of."

Lapham faced about once more, and sat looking up into the visage of
Rogers in silence.  "I wonder what you're up to," he said at last; "I
should like to know." But as Rogers made no sign of gratifying his
curiosity, and treated this last remark of Lapham's as of the
irrelevance of all the rest, he said, frowning, "You bring me a party
that will give me enough for those mills to clear me of you, and I'll
talk to you.  But don't you come here with any man of straw.  And I'll
give you just twenty-four hours to prove yourself a swindler again."

Once more Lapham turned his back, and Rogers, after looking
thoughtfully into his hat a moment, cleared his throat, and quietly
withdrew, maintaining to the last his unprejudiced demeanour.

Lapham was not again heard from, as Walker phrased it, during the
afternoon, except when the last mail was taken in to him; then the
sound of rending envelopes, mixed with that of what seemed suppressed
swearing, penetrated to the outer office.  Somewhat earlier than the
usual hour for closing, he appeared there with his hat on and his
overcoat buttoned about him.  He said briefly to his boy, "William, I
shan't be back again this afternoon," and then went to Miss Dewey and
left a number of letters on her table to be copied, and went out.
Nothing had been said, but a sense of trouble subtly diffused itself
through those who saw him go out.

That evening as he sat down with his wife alone at tea, he asked,
"Ain't Pen coming to supper?"

"No, she ain't," said his wife.  "I don't know as I like the way she's
going on, any too well.  I'm afraid, if she keeps on, she'll be down
sick.  She's got deeper feelings than Irene."

Lapham said nothing, but having helped himself to the abundance of his
table in his usual fashion, he sat and looked at his plate with an
indifference that did not escape the notice of his wife.  "What's the
matter with YOU?" she asked.

"Nothing. I haven't got any appetite."

"What's the matter?" she persisted.

"Trouble's the matter; bad luck and lots of it's the matter," said
Lapham.  "I haven't ever hid anything from you, Persis, well you asked
me, and it's too late to begin now.  I'm in a fix.  I'll tell you what
kind of a fix, if you think it'll do you any good; but I guess you'll
be satisfied to know that it's a fix."

"How much of a one?" she asked with a look of grave, steady courage in
her eyes.

"Well, I don't know as I can tell, just yet," said Lapham, avoiding
this look.  "Things have been dull all the fall, but I thought they'd
brisk up come winter.  They haven't.  There have been a lot of
failures, and some of 'em owed me, and some of 'em had me on their
paper; and----" Lapham stopped.

"And what?" prompted his wife.

He hesitated before he added, "And then--Rogers."

"I'm to blame for that," said Mrs. Lapham.  "I forced you to it."

"No; I was as willing to go into it as what you were," answered Lapham.
"I don't want to blame anybody."

Mrs. Lapham had a woman's passion for fixing responsibility; she could
not help saying, as soon as acquitted, "I warned you against him,
Silas.  I told you not to let him get in any deeper with you."

"Oh yes.  I had to help him to try to get my money back.  I might as
well poured water into a sieve.  And now--" Lapham stopped.

"Don't be afraid to speak out to me, Silas Lapham.  If it comes to the
worst, I want to know it--I've got to know it.  What did I ever care
for the money? I've had a happy home with you ever since we were
married, and I guess I shall have as long as you live, whether we go on
to the Back Bay, or go back to the old house at Lapham.  I know who's
to blame, and I blame myself.  It was my forcing Rogers on to you." She
came back to this with her helpless longing, inbred in all Puritan
souls, to have some one specifically suffer for the evil in the world,
even if it must be herself.

"It hasn't come to the worst yet, Persis," said her husband.  "But I
shall have to hold up on the new house a little while, till I can see
where I am."

"I shouldn't care if we had to sell it," cried his wife, in passionate
self-condemnation. "I should be GLAD if we had to, as far as I'm
concerned."

"I shouldn't," said Lapham.

"I know!" said his wife; and she remembered ruefully how his heart was
set on it.

He sat musing.  "Well, I guess it's going to come out all right in the
end.  Or, if it ain't," he sighed, "we can't help it.  May be Pen
needn't worry so much about Corey, after all," he continued, with a
bitter irony new to him.  "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good.
And there's a chance," he ended, with a still bitterer laugh, "that
Rogers will come to time, after all."

"I don't believe it!" exclaimed Mrs. Lapham, with a gleam of hope in
her eyes.  "What chance?"

"One in ten million," said Lapham; and her face fell again.  "He says
there are some English parties after him to buy these mills."

"Well?"

"Well, I gave him twenty-four hours to prove himself a liar."

"You don't believe there are any such parties?"

"Not in THIS world."

"But if there were?"

"Well, if there were, Persis----But pshaw!"

"No, no!" she pleaded eagerly.  "It don't seem as if he COULD be such a
villain.  What would be the use of his pretending? If he brought the
parties to you."

"Well," said Lapham scornfully, "I'd let them have the mills at the
price Rogers turned 'em in on me at.  I don't want to make anything on
'em. But guess I shall hear from the G. L. & P. first.  And when they
make their offer, I guess I'll have to accept it, whatever it is.  I
don't think they'll have a great many competitors."

Mrs. Lapham could not give up her hope.  "If you could get your price
from those English parties before they knew that the G. L. & P. wanted
to buy the mills, would it let you out with Rogers?"

"Just about," said Lapham.

"Then I know he'll move heaven and earth to bring it about.  I KNOW you
won't be allowed to suffer for doing him a kindness, Silas.  He CAN'T
be so ungrateful! Why, why SHOULD he pretend to have any such parties
in view when he hasn't? Don't you be down-hearted, Si.  You'll see that
he'll be round with them to-morrow."

Lapham laughed, but she urged so many reasons for her belief in Rogers
that Lapham began to rekindle his own faith a little.  He ended by
asking for a hot cup of tea; and Mrs. Lapham sent the pot out and had a
fresh one steeped for him.  After that he made a hearty supper in the
revulsion from his entire despair; and they fell asleep that night
talking hopefully of his affairs, which he laid before her fully, as he
used to do when he first started in business.  That brought the old
times back, and he said: "If this had happened then, I shouldn't have
cared much.  I was young then, and I wasn't afraid of anything.  But I
noticed that after I passed fifty I began to get scared easier.  I
don't believe I could pick up, now, from a regular knock-down."

"Pshaw! YOU scared, Silas Lapham?" cried his wife proudly.  "I should
like to see the thing that ever scared you; or the knockdown that YOU
couldn't pick up from!"

"Is that so, Persis?" he asked, with the joy her courage gave him.

In the middle of the night she called to him, in a voice which the
darkness rendered still more deeply troubled: "Are you awake, Silas?"

"Yes; I'm awake."

"I've been thinking about those English parties, Si----"

"So've I."

"And I can't make it out but what you'd be just as bad as Rogers, every
bit and grain, if you were to let them have the mills----"

"And not tell 'em what the chances were with the G. L. & P.? I thought
of that, and you needn't be afraid."

She began to bewail herself, and to sob convulsively: "O Silas! O
Silas!" Heaven knows in what measure the passion of her soul was mired
with pride in her husband's honesty, relief from an apprehended
struggle, and pity for him.

"Hush, hush, Persis!" he besought her.  "You'll wake Pen if you keep on
that way.  Don't cry any more! You mustn't."

"Oh, let me cry, Silas! It'll help me.  I shall be all right in a
minute.  Don't you mind." She sobbed herself quiet.  "It does seem too
hard," she said, when she could speak again, "that you have to give up
this chance when Providence had fairly raised it up for you."

"I guess it wa'n't Providence raised it up," said Lapham.  "Any rate,
it's got to go.  Most likely Rogers was lyin', and there ain't any such
parties; but if there were, they couldn't have the mills from me
without the whole story.  Don't you be troubled, Persis.  I'm going to
pull through all right." "Oh, I ain't afraid.  I don't suppose but what
there's plenty would help you, if they knew you needed it, Si."

"They would if they knew I DIDN'T need it," said Lapham sardonically.

"Did you tell Bill how you stood?"

"No, I couldn't bear to.  I've been the rich one so long, that I
couldn't bring myself to own up that I was in danger."

"Yes."

"Besides, it didn't look so ugly till to-day. But I guess we shan't let
ugly looks scare us."

"No."

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

completion: Walker, Lapham's bookkeeper, senses financial problems and mentions the situation to Tom Corey before Rogers appears. Lapham tells Rogers he has discovered that the mills Rogers put up for collateral are almost worthless because of the strong hold the G.L.&P. has on the railroad going to them. "I'm going to let the mills go for what they'll fetch," Lapham says. Rogers, however, has contacted some English agents who wish to buy the mills. Not believing him, Silas gives him twenty-four hours to produce the parties. "You bring me a party that will give me enough for those mills to clear me of you, and I'll talk to you," Lapham says. Yet, after considering the situation, Lapham begins to wrestle with his conscience over the morality of selling the property at a higher price than it is now worth. He spends the night thinking about it.


prompt:
Chapter: THE morning postman brought Mrs. Lapham a letter from Irene, which was
chiefly significant because it made no reference whatever to the writer
or her state of mind.  It gave the news of her uncle's family; it told
of their kindness to her; her cousin Will was going to take her and his
sisters ice-boating on the river, when it froze.

By the time this letter came, Lapham had gone to his business, and the
mother carried it to Penelope to talk over.  "What do you make out of
it?" she asked; and without waiting to be answered she said, "I don't
know as I believe in cousins marrying, a great deal; but if Irene and
Will were to fix it up between 'em----" She looked vaguely at Penelope.

"It wouldn't make any difference as far as I was concerned," replied
the girl listlessly.

Mrs. Lapham lost her patience.

"Well, then, I'll tell you what, Penelope!" she exclaimed.  "Perhaps
it'll make a difference to you if you know that your father's in REAL
trouble.  He's harassed to death, and he was awake half the night,
talking about it.  That abominable Rogers has got a lot of money away
from him; and he's lost by others that he's helped,"--Mrs. Lapham put
it in this way because she had no time to be explicit,--"and I want you
should come out of your room now, and try to be of some help and
comfort to him when he comes home to-night.  I guess Irene wouldn't
mope round much, if she was here," she could not help adding.

The girl lifted herself on her elbow.  "What's that you say about
father?" she demanded eagerly.  "Is he in trouble? Is he going to lose
his money? Shall we have to stay in this house?"

"We may be very GLAD to stay in this house," said Mrs. Lapham, half
angry with herself for having given cause for the girl's conjectures,
and half with the habit of prosperity in her child, which could
conceive no better of what adversity was.  "And I want you should get
up and show that you've got some feeling for somebody in the world
besides yourself."

"Oh, I'll get UP!" said the girl promptly, almost cheerfully.

"I don't say it's as bad now as it looked a little while ago," said her
mother, conscientiously hedging a little from the statement which she
had based rather upon her feelings than her facts.  "Your father thinks
he'll pull through all right, and I don't know but what he will.  But I
want you should see if you can't do something to cheer him up and keep
him from getting so perfectly down-hearted as he seems to get, under
the load he's got to carry.  And stop thinking about yourself a while,
and behave yourself like a sensible girl."

"Yes, yes," said the girl; "I will.  You needn't be troubled about me
any more."

Before she left her room she wrote a note, and when she came down she
was dressed to go out-of-doors and post it herself.  The note was to
Corey:--

"Do not come to see me any more till you hear from me.  I have a reason
which I cannot give you now; and you must not ask what it is."

All day she went about in a buoyant desperation, and she came down to
meet her father at supper.

"Well, Persis," he said scornfully, as he sat down, "we might as well
saved our good resolutions till they were wanted.  I guess those
English parties have gone back on Rogers."

"Do you mean he didn't come?"

"He hadn't come up to half-past five," said Lapham.

"Tchk!" uttered his wife.  "But I guess I shall pull through without
Mr. Rogers," continued Lapham.  "A firm that I didn't think COULD
weather it is still afloat, and so far forth as the danger goes of
being dragged under with it, I'm all right." Penelope came in.  "Hello,
Pen!" cried her father.  "It ain't often I meet YOU nowadays." He put
up his hand as she passed his chair, and pulled her down and kissed her.

"No," she said; "but I thought I'd come down to-night and cheer you up
a little.  I shall not talk; the sight of me will be enough."

Her father laughed out.  "Mother been telling you? Well, I WAS pretty
blue last night; but I guess I was more scared than hurt.  How'd you
like to go to the theatre to-night?  Sellers at the Park.  Heigh?"

"Well, I don't know.  Don't you think they could get along without me
there?"

"No; couldn't work it at all," cried the Colonel.  "Let's all go.
Unless," he added inquiringly, "there's somebody coming here?"

"There's nobody coming," said Penelope.

"Good! Then we'll go.  Mother, don't you be late now."

"Oh, I shan't keep you waiting," said Mrs. Lapham.  She had thought of
telling what a cheerful letter she had got from Irene; but upon the
whole it seemed better not to speak of Irene at all just then.  After
they returned from the theatre, where the Colonel roared through the
comedy, with continual reference of his pleasure to Penelope, to make
sure that she was enjoying it too, his wife said, as if the whole
affair had been for the girl's distraction rather than his, "I don't
believe but what it's going to come out all right about the children;"
and then she told him of the letter, and the hopes she had founded upon
it.

"Well, perhaps you're right, Persis," he consented.

"I haven't seen Pen so much like herself since it happened.  I declare,
when I see the way she came out to-night, just to please you, I don't
know as I want you should get over all your troubles right away."

"I guess there'll be enough to keep Pen going for a while yet," said
the Colonel, winding up his watch.

But for a time there was a relief, which Walker noted, in the
atmosphere at the office, and then came another cold wave, slighter
than the first, but distinctly felt there, and succeeded by another
relief.  It was like the winter which was wearing on to the end of the
year, with alternations of freezing weather, and mild days stretching
to weeks, in which the snow and ice wholly disappeared.  It was none
the less winter, and none the less harassing for these fluctuations,
and Lapham showed in his face and temper the effect of like
fluctuations in his affairs.  He grew thin and old, and both at home
and at his office he was irascible to the point of offence.  In these
days Penelope shared with her mother the burden of their troubled home,
and united with her in supporting the silence or the petulance of the
gloomy, secret man who replaced the presence of jolly prosperity there.
Lapham had now ceased to talk of his troubles, and savagely resented
his wife's interference.  "You mind your own business, Persis," he said
one day, "if you've got any;" and after that she left him mainly to
Penelope, who did not think of asking him questions.

"It's pretty hard on you, Pen," she said.

"That makes it easier for me," returned the girl, who did not otherwise
refer to her own trouble.

In her heart she had wondered a little at the absolute obedience of
Corey, who had made no sign since receiving her note.  She would have
liked to ask her father if Corey was sick; she would have liked him to
ask her why Corey did not come any more.  Her mother went on--

"I don't believe your father knows WHERE he stands.  He works away at
those papers he brings home here at night, as if he didn't half know
what he was about.  He always did have that close streak in him, and I
don't suppose but what he's been going into things he don't want
anybody else to know about, and he's kept these accounts of his own."

Sometimes he gave Penelope figures to work at, which he would not
submit to his wife's nimbler arithmetic.  Then she went to bed and left
them sitting up till midnight, struggling with problems in which they
were both weak.  But she could see that the girl was a comfort to her
father, and that his troubles were a defence and shelter to her.  Some
nights she could hear them going out together, and then she lay awake
for their return from their long walk.  When the hour or day of respite
came again, the home felt it first.  Lapham wanted to know what the
news from Irene was; he joined his wife in all her cheerful
speculations, and tried to make her amends for his sullen reticence and
irritability.  Irene was staying on at Dubuque.  There came a letter
from her, saying that her uncle's people wanted her to spend the winter
there.  "Well, let her," said Lapham.  "It'll be the best thing for
her."

Lapham himself had letters from his brother at frequent intervals.  His
brother was watching the G. L. & P., which as yet had made no offer for
the mills.  Once, when one of these letters came, he submitted to his
wife whether, in the absence of any positive information that the road
wanted the property, he might not, with a good conscience, dispose of
it to the best advantage to anybody who came along.

She looked wistfully at him; it was on the rise from a season of deep
depression with him.  "No, Si," she said; "I don't see how you could do
that."

He did not assent and submit, as he had done at first, but began to
rail at the unpracticality of women; and then he shut some papers he
had been looking over into his desk, and flung out of the room.

One of the papers had slipped through the crevice of the lid, and lay
upon the floor.  Mrs. Lapham kept on at her sewing, but after a while
she picked the paper up to lay it on the desk.  Then she glanced at it,
and saw that it was a long column of dates and figures, recording
successive sums, never large ones, paid regularly to "Wm. M." The dates
covered a year, and the sum amounted at least to several hundreds.

Mrs. Lapham laid the paper down on the desk, and then she took it up
again and put it into her work-basket, meaning to give it to him.  When
he came in she saw him looking absent-mindedly about for something, and
then going to work upon his papers, apparently without it.  She thought
she would wait till he missed it definitely, and then give him the
scrap she had picked up.  It lay in her basket, and after some days it
found its way under the work in it, and she forgot it.

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

completion: Mrs. Lapham tells Penelope of her father's problems, and the girl immediately regains her composure and begins to think about something besides her problems with Tom Corey and Irene. She writes Tom a note and tells him not to visit her until she asks him. Silas enjoys a period of respite, as the English parties do not show up. During this impasse, to divert their minds, the family attends the theater. On another evening, Silas and Penelope work out business problems together to determine the actual state of affairs. Mrs. Lapham, who is actually better with the problems, is excluded because Silas does not wish her to know about all his business details. After Silas and Penelope finish, Mrs. Lapham finds a slip of paper listing payments made to a "Wm. M." Intending to give it to Silas later, she puts it into her sewing box but forgets it.


prompt:
Chapter: SINCE New Year's there had scarcely been a mild day, and the streets
were full of snow, growing foul under the city feet and hoofs, and
renewing its purity from the skies with repeated falls, which in turn
lost their whiteness, beaten down, and beaten black and hard into a
solid bed like iron.  The sleighing was incomparable, and the air was
full of the din of bells; but Lapham's turnout was not of those that
thronged the Brighton road every afternoon; the man at the
livery-stable sent him word that the mare's legs were swelling.

He and Corey had little to do with each other.  He did not know how
Penelope had arranged it with Corey; his wife said she knew no more
than he did, and he did not like to ask the girl herself, especially as
Corey no longer came to the house.  He saw that she was cheerfuller
than she had been, and helpfuller with him and her mother.  Now and
then Lapham opened his troubled soul to her a little, letting his
thought break into speech without preamble or conclusion.  Once he
said--

"Pen, I presume you know I'm in trouble."

"We all seem to be there," said the girl.

"Yes, but there's a difference between being there by your own fault
and being there by somebody else's."

"I don't call it his fault," she said.

"I call it mine," said the Colonel.

The girl laughed.  Her thought was of her own care, and her father's
wholly of his.  She must come to his ground.  "What have you been doing
wrong?"

"I don't know as you'd call it wrong.  It's what people do all the
time.  But I wish I'd let stocks alone.  It's what I always promised
your mother I would do.  But there's no use cryin' over spilt milk; or
watered stock, either."

"I don't think there's much use crying about anything.  If it could
have been cried straight, it would have been all right from the start,"
said the girl, going back to her own affair; and if Lapham had not been
so deeply engrossed in his, he might have seen how little she cared for
all that money could do or undo.  He did not observe her enough to see
how variable her moods were in those days, and how often she sank from
some wild gaiety into abject melancholy; how at times she was fiercely
defiant of nothing at all, and at others inexplicably humble and
patient.  But no doubt none of these signs had passed unnoticed by his
wife, to whom Lapham said one day, when he came home, "Persis, what's
the reason Pen don't marry Corey?"

"You know as well as I do, Silas," said Mrs. Lapham, with an inquiring
look at him for what lay behind his words.

"Well, I think it's all tomfoolery, the way she's going on.  There
ain't any rhyme nor reason to it." He stopped, and his wife waited.
"If she said the word, I could have some help from them." He hung his
head, and would not meet his wife's eye.

"I guess you're in a pretty bad way, Si," she said pityingly, "or you
wouldn't have come to that."

"I'm in a hole," said Lapham, "and I don't know where to turn.  You
won't let me do anything about those mills----"

"Yes, I'll let you," said his wife sadly.

He gave a miserable cry.  "You know I can't do anything, if you do.  O
my Lord!"

She had not seen him so low as that before.  She did not know what to
say.  She was frightened, and could only ask, "Has it come to the
worst?"

"The new house has got to go," he answered evasively.

She did not say anything.  She knew that the work on the house had been
stopped since the beginning of the year.  Lapham had told the architect
that he preferred to leave it unfinished till the spring, as there was
no prospect of their being able to get into it that winter; and the
architect had agreed with him that it would not hurt it to stand.  Her
heart was heavy for him, though she could not say so.  They sat
together at the table, where she had come to be with him at his belated
meal.  She saw that he did not eat, and she waited for him to speak
again, without urging him to take anything.  They were past that.

"And I've sent orders to shut down at the Works," he added.

"Shut down at the Works!" she echoed with dismay.  She could not take
it in.  The fire at the Works had never been out before since it was
first kindled.  She knew how he had prided himself upon that; how he
had bragged of it to every listener, and had always lugged the fact in
as the last expression of his sense of success.  "O Silas!"

"What's the use?" he retorted.  "I saw it was coming a month ago.
There are some fellows out in West Virginia that have been running the
paint as hard as they could.  They couldn't do much; they used to put
it on the market raw.  But lately they got to baking it, and now
they've struck a vein of natural gas right by their works, and they pay
ten cents for fuel, where I pay a dollar, and they make as good a
paint.  Anybody can see where it's going to end.  Besides, the market's
over-stocked.  It's glutted.  There wa'n't anything to do but to shut
DOWN, and I've SHUT down."

"I don't know what's going to become of the hands in the middle of the
winter, this way," said Mrs. Lapham, laying hold of one definite
thought which she could grasp in the turmoil of ruin that whirled
before her eyes.

"I don't care what becomes of the hands," cried Lapham.  "They've
shared my luck; now let 'em share the other thing.  And if you're so
very sorry for the hands, I wish you'd keep a little of your pity for
ME.  Don't you know what shutting down the Works means?"

"Yes, indeed I do, Silas," said his wife tenderly.

"Well, then!" He rose, leaving his supper untasted, and went into the
sitting-room, where she presently found him, with that everlasting
confusion of papers before him on the desk.  That made her think of the
paper in her work-basket, and she decided not to make the careworn,
distracted man ask her for it, after all.  She brought it to him.

He glanced blankly at it and then caught it from her, turning red and
looking foolish.  "Where'd you get that?"

"You dropped it on the floor the other night, and I picked it up.  Who
is 'Wm. M.'?"

"'Wm. M.'!" he repeated, looking confusedly at her, and then at the
paper.  "Oh,--it's nothing." He tore the paper into small pieces, and
went and dropped them into the fire.  When Mrs. Lapham came into the
room in the morning, before he was down, she found a scrap of the
paper, which must have fluttered to the hearth; and glancing at it she
saw that the words were "Mrs. M." She wondered what dealings with a
woman her husband could have, and she remembered the confusion he had
shown about the paper, and which she had thought was because she had
surprised one of his business secrets.  She was still thinking of it
when he came down to breakfast, heavy-eyed, tremulous, with deep seams
and wrinkles in his face.

After a silence which he did not seem inclined to break, "Silas," she
asked, "who is 'Mrs. M.'?"

He stared at her.  "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't you?" she returned mockingly.  "When you do, you tell me.  Do
you want any more coffee?"

"No."

"Well, then, you can ring for Alice when you've finished.  I've got
some things to attend to." She rose abruptly, and left the room.
Lapham looked after her in a dull way, and then went on with his
breakfast.  While he still sat at his coffee, she flung into the room
again, and dashed some papers down beside his plate.  "Here are some
more things of yours, and I'll thank you to lock them up in your desk
and not litter my room with them, if you please." Now he saw that she
was angry, and it must be with him.  It enraged him that in such a time
of trouble she should fly out at him in that way.  He left the house
without trying to speak to her.  That day Corey came just before
closing, and, knocking at Lapham's door, asked if he could speak with
him a few moments.

"Yes," said Lapham, wheeling round in his swivel-chair and kicking
another towards Corey.  "Sit down.  I want to talk to you.  I'd ought
to tell you you're wasting your time here.  I spoke the other day about
your placin' yourself better, and I can help you to do it, yet.  There
ain't going to be the out-come for the paint in the foreign markets
that we expected, and I guess you better give it up."

"I don't wish to give it up," said the young fellow, setting his lips.
"I've as much faith in it as ever; and I want to propose now what I
hinted at in the first place.  I want to put some money into the
business."

"Some money!" Lapham leaned towards him, and frowned as if he had not
quite understood, while he clutched the arms of his chair.

"I've got about thirty thousand dollars that I could put in, and if you
don't want to consider me a partner--I remember that you objected to a
partner--you can let me regard it as an investment.  But I think I see
the way to doing something at once in Mexico, and I should like to feel
that I had something more than a drummer's interest in the venture."

The men sat looking into each other's eyes.  Then Lapham leaned back in
his chair, and rubbed his hand hard and slowly over his face.  His
features were still twisted with some strong emotion when he took it
away.  "Your family know about this?"

"My Uncle James knows."

"He thinks it would be a good plan for you?"

"He thought that by this time I ought to be able to trust my own
judgment."

"Do you suppose I could see your uncle at his office?"

"I imagine he's there."

"Well, I want to have a talk with him, one of these days." He sat
pondering a while, and then rose, and went with Corey to his door.  "I
guess I shan't change my mind about taking you into the business in
that way," he said coldly.  "If there was any reason why I shouldn't at
first, there's more now."

"Very well, sir," answered the young man, and went to close his desk.
The outer office was empty; but while Corey was putting his papers in
order it was suddenly invaded by two women, who pushed by the
protesting porter on the stairs and made their way towards Lapham's
room.  One of them was Miss Dewey, the type-writer girl, and the other
was a woman whom she would resemble in face and figure twenty years
hence, if she led a life of hard work varied by paroxysms of hard
drinking.

"That his room, Z'rilla?" asked this woman, pointing towards Lapham's
door with a hand that had not freed itself from the fringe of dirty
shawl under which it had hung.  She went forward without waiting for
the answer, but before she could reach it the door opened, and Lapham
stood filling its space.

"Look here, Colonel Lapham!" began the woman, in a high key of
challenge.  "I want to know if this is the way you're goin' back on me
and Z'rilla?"

"What do you want?" asked Lapham.

"What do I want? What do you s'pose I want? I want the money to pay my
month's rent; there ain't a bite to eat in the house; and I want some
money to market."

Lapham bent a frown on the woman, under which she shrank back a step.
"You've taken the wrong way to get it.  Clear out!"

"I WON'T clear out!" said the woman, beginning to whimper.

"Corey!" said Lapham, in the peremptory voice of a master,--he had
seemed so indifferent to Corey's presence that the young man thought he
must have forgotten he was there,--"Is Dennis anywhere round?"

"Yissor," said Dennis, answering for himself from the head of the
stairs, and appearing in the ware-room.

Lapham spoke to the woman again.  "Do you want I should call a hack, or
do you want I should call an officer?"

The woman began to cry into an end of her shawl.  "I don't know what
we're goin' to do."

"You're going to clear out," said Lapham.  "Call a hack, Dennis.  If
you ever come here again, I'll have you arrested.  Mind that! Zerrilla,
I shall want you early to-morrow morning."

"Yes, sir," said the girl meekly; she and her mother shrank out after
the porter.

Lapham shut his door without a word.

At lunch the next day Walker made himself amends for Corey's reticence
by talking a great deal.  He talked about Lapham, who seemed to have,
more than ever since his apparent difficulties began, the fascination
of an enigma for his book-keeper, and he ended by asking, "Did you see
that little circus last night?"

"What little circus?" asked Corey in his turn.

"Those two women and the old man.  Dennis told me about it.  I told him
if he liked his place he'd better keep his mouth shut."

"That was very good advice," said Corey.

"Oh, all right, if you don't want to talk.  Don't know as I should in
your place," returned Walker, in the easy security he had long felt
that Corey had no intention of putting on airs with him.  "But I'll
tell you what: the old man can't expect it of everybody.  If he keeps
this thing up much longer, it's going to be talked about.  You can't
have a woman walking into your place of business, and trying to
bulldoze you before your porter, without setting your porter to
thinking.  And the last thing you want a porter to do is to think; for
when a porter thinks, he thinks wrong."

"I don't see why even a porter couldn't think right about that affair,"
replied Corey.  "I don't know who the woman was, though I believe she
was Miss Dewey's mother; but I couldn't see that Colonel Lapham showed
anything but a natural resentment of her coming to him in that way.  I
should have said she was some rather worthless person whom he'd been
befriending, and that she had presumed upon his kindness."

"Is that so? What do you think of his never letting Miss Dewey's name
go on the books?"

"That it's another proof it's a sort of charity of his.  That's the
only way to look at it."

"Oh, I'M all right." Walker lighted a cigar and began to smoke, with
his eyes closed to a fine straight line.  "It won't do for a
book-keeper to think wrong, any more than a porter, I suppose.  But I
guess you and I don't think very different about this thing."

"Not if you think as I do," replied Corey steadily; "and I know you
would do that if you had seen the 'circus' yourself.  A man doesn't
treat people who have a disgraceful hold upon him as he treated them."

"It depends upon who he is," said Walker, taking his cigar from his
mouth.  "I never said the old man was afraid of anything."

"And character," continued Corey, disdaining to touch the matter
further, except in generalities, "must go for something.  If it's to be
the prey of mere accident and appearance, then it goes for nothing."

"Accidents will happen in the best regulated families," said Walker,
with vulgar, good-humoured obtuseness that filled Corey with
indignation.  Nothing, perhaps, removed his matter-of-fact nature
further from the commonplace than a certain generosity of instinct,
which I should not be ready to say was always infallible.

That evening it was Miss Dewey's turn to wait for speech with Lapham
after the others were gone.  He opened his door at her knock, and stood
looking at her with a worried air.  "Well, what do you want, Zerrilla?"
he asked, with a sort of rough kindness.

"I want to know what I'm going to do about Hen.  He's back again; and
he and mother have made it up, and they both got to drinking last night
after I went home, and carried on so that the neighbours came in."

Lapham passed his hand over his red and heated face.  "I don't know
what I'm going to do.  You're twice the trouble that my own family is,
now.  But I know what I'd do, mighty quick, if it wasn't for you,
Zerrilla," he went on relentingly.  "I'd shut your mother up
somewheres, and if I could get that fellow off for a three years'
voyage----"

"I declare," said Miss Dewey, beginning to whimper, "it seems as if he
came back just so often to spite me.  He's never gone more than a year
at the furthest, and you can't make it out habitual drunkenness,
either, when it's just sprees.  I'm at my wit's end."

"Oh, well, you mustn't cry around here," said Lapham soothingly.

"I know it," said Miss Dewey.  "If I could get rid of Hen, I could
manage well enough with mother.  Mr. Wemmel would marry me if I could
get the divorce.  He's said so over and over again."

"I don't know as I like that very well," said Lapham, frowning.  "I
don't know as I want you should get married in any hurry again.  I
don't know as I like your going with anybody else just yet."

"Oh, you needn't be afraid but what it'll be all right.  It'll be the
best thing all round, if I can marry him."

"Well!" said Lapham impatiently; "I can't think about it now.  I
suppose they've cleaned everything out again?"

"Yes, they have," said Zerrilla; "there isn't a cent left."

"You're a pretty expensive lot," said Lapham.  "Well, here!" He took
out his pocket-book and gave her a note.  "I'll be round to-night and
see what can be done."

He shut himself into his room again, and Zerrilla dried her tears, put
the note into her bosom, and went her way.

Lapham kept the porter nearly an hour later.  It was then six o'clock,
the hour at which the Laphams usually had tea; but all custom had been
broken up with him during the past months, and he did not go home now.
He determined, perhaps in the extremity in which a man finds relief in
combating one care with another, to keep his promise to Miss Dewey, and
at the moment when he might otherwise have been sitting down at his own
table he was climbing the stairs to her lodging in the old-fashioned
dwelling which had been portioned off into flats.  It was in a region
of depots, and of the cheap hotels, and "ladies' and gents'"
dining-rooms, and restaurants with bars, which abound near depots; and
Lapham followed to Miss Dewey's door a waiter from one of these, who
bore on a salver before him a supper covered with a napkin.  Zerrilla
had admitted them, and at her greeting a young fellow in the shabby
shore-suit of a sailor, buttoning imperfectly over the nautical blue
flannel of his shirt, got up from where he had been sitting, on one
side of the stove, and stood infirmly on his feet, in token of
receiving the visitor.  The woman who sat on the other side did not
rise, but began a shrill, defiant apology.

"Well, I don't suppose but what you'll think we're livin' on the fat o'
the land, right straight along, all the while.  But it's just like
this.  When that child came in from her work, she didn't seem to have
the spirit to go to cookin' anything, and I had such a bad night last
night I was feelin' all broke up, and s'd I, what's the use, anyway? By
the time the butcher's heaved in a lot o' bone, and made you pay for
the suet he cuts away, it comes to the same thing, and why not GIT it
from the rest'rant first off, and save the cost o' your fire? s'd I."

"What have you got there under your apron? A bottle?" demanded Lapham,
who stood with his hat on and his hands in his pockets, indifferent
alike to the ineffective reception of the sailor and the chair Zerrilla
had set him.

"Well, yes, it's a bottle," said the woman, with an assumption of
virtuous frankness.  "It's whisky; I got to have something to rub my
rheumatism with."

"Humph!" grumbled Lapham.  "You've been rubbing HIS rheumatism too, I
see."

He twisted his head in the direction of the sailor, now softly and
rhythmically waving to and fro on his feet.

"He hain't had a drop to-day in THIS house!" cried the woman.

"What are you doing around here?" said Lapham, turning fiercely upon
him.  "You've got no business ashore.  Where's your ship? Do you think
I'm going to let you come here and eat your wife out of house and home,
and then give money to keep the concern going?"

"Just the very words I said when he first showed his face here,
yist'day. Didn't I, Z'rilla?" said the woman, eagerly joining in the
rebuke of her late boon companion.  "You got no business here, Hen, s'd
back to your ship, s'd I. That's what I said."

The sailor mumbled, with a smile of tipsy amiability for Lapham,
    something about the crew being discharged.

    "Yes," the woman broke in, "that's always the way with these coasters.
    Why don't you go off on some them long v'y'ges? s'd I. It's pretty hard
    when Mr. Wemmel stands ready to marry Z'rilla and provide a comfortable
    home for us both--I hain't got a great many years more to live, and I
    SHOULD like to get some satisfaction out of 'em, and not be beholden
    and dependent all my days,--to have Hen, here, blockin' the way.  I
    tell him there'd be more money for him in the end; but he can't seem to
    make up his mind to it."

    "Well, now, look here," said Lapham.  "I don't care anything about all
    that.  It's your own business, and I'm not going to meddle with it.
    But it's my business who lives off me; and so I tell you all three, I'm
    willing to take care of Zerrilla, and I'm willing to take care of her
    mother----"

    "I guess if it hadn't been for that child's father," the mother
    interpolated, "you wouldn't been here to tell the tale, Colonel Lapham."

    "I know all about that," said Lapham.  "But I'll tell you what, Mr.
    Dewey, I'm not going to support YOU."

    "I don't see what Hen's done," said the old woman impartially.

    "He hasn't done anything, and I'm going to stop it.  He's got to get a
    ship, and he's got to get out of this.  And Zerrilla needn't come back
    to work till he does.  I'm done with you all."

    "Well, I vow," said the mother, "if I ever heard anything like it!
    Didn't that child's father lay down his life for you? Hain't you said
    it yourself a hundred times?  And don't she work for her money, and
    slave for it mornin', noon, and night? You talk as if we was beholden
    to you for the very bread in our mouths.  I guess if it hadn't been for
    Jim, you wouldn't been here crowin' over us."

    "You mind what I say.  I mean business this time," said Lapham, turning
    to the door.

    The woman rose and followed him, with her bottle in her hand.  "Say,
    Colonel! what should you advise Z'rilla to do about Mr. Wemmel? I tell
    her there ain't any use goin' to the trouble to git a divorce without
    she's sure about him.  Don't you think we'd ought to git him to sign a
    paper, or something, that he'll marry her if she gits it? I don't like
    to have things going at loose ends the way they are.  It ain't sense.
    It ain't right."

    Lapham made no answer to the mother anxious for her child's future, and
    concerned for the moral questions involved.  He went out and down the
    stairs, and on the pavement at the lower door he almost struck against
    Rogers, who had a bag in his hand, and seemed to be hurrying towards
    one of the depots.  He halted a little, as if to speak to Lapham; but
    Lapham turned his back abruptly upon him, and took the other direction.

    The days were going by in a monotony of adversity to him, from which he
    could no longer escape, even at home.  He attempted once or twice to
    talk of his troubles to his wife, but she repulsed him sharply; she
    seemed to despise and hate him; but he set himself doggedly to make a
    confession to her, and he stopped her one night, as she came into the
    room where he sat--hastily upon some errand that was to take her
    directly away again.

    "Persis, there's something I've got to tell you."

    She stood still, as if fixed against her will, to listen.

    "I guess you know something about it already, and I guess it set you
    against me."

    "Oh, I guess not, Colonel Lapham.  You go your way, and I go mine.
    That's all."

    She waited for him to speak, listening with a cold, hard smile on her
    face.

    "I don't say it to make favour with you, because I don't want you to
    spare me, and I don't ask you; but I got into it through Milton K.
    Rogers."

    "Oh!" said Mrs. Lapham contemptuously.

    "I always felt the way I said about it--that it wa'n't any better than
    gambling, and I say so now.  It's like betting on the turn of a card;
    and I give you my word of honour, Persis, that I never was in it at all
    till that scoundrel began to load me up with those wild-cat securities
    of his.  Then it seemed to me as if I ought to try to do something to
    get somewhere even.  I know it's no excuse; but watching the market to
    see what the infernal things were worth from day to day, and seeing it
    go up, and seeing it go down, was too much for me; and, to make a long
    story short, I began to buy and sell on a margin--just what I told you
    I never would do.  I seemed to make something--I did make something;
    and I'd have stopped, I do believe, if I could have reached the figure
    I'd set in my own mind to start with; but I couldn't fetch it.  I began
    to lose, and then I began to throw good money after bad, just as I
    always did with everything that Rogers ever came within a mile of.
    Well, what's the use? I lost the money that would have carried me out
    of this, and I shouldn't have had to shut down the Works, or sell the
    house, or----"

    Lapham stopped.  His wife, who at first had listened with
    mystification, and then dawning incredulity, changing into a look of
    relief that was almost triumph, lapsed again into severity.  "Silas
    Lapham, if you was to die the next minute, is this what you started to
    tell me?"

    "Why, of course it is.  What did you suppose I started to tell you?"

    "And--look me in the eyes!--you haven't got anything else on your mind
    now?"

    "No! There's trouble enough, the Lord knows; but there's nothing else
    to tell you.  I suppose Pen gave you a hint about it.  I dropped
    something to her.  I've been feeling bad about it, Persis, a good
    while, but I hain't had the heart to speak of it.  I can't expect you
    to say you like it.  I've been a fool, I'll allow, and I've been
    something worse, if you choose to say so; but that's all.  I haven't
    hurt anybody but myself--and you and the children."

    Mrs. Lapham rose and said, with her face from him, as she turned
    towards the door, "It's all right, Silas.  I shan't ever bring it up
    against you."

    She fled out of the room, but all that evening she was very sweet with
    him, and seemed to wish in all tacit ways to atone for her past
    unkindness.

    She made him talk of his business, and he told her of Corey's offer,
    and what he had done about it.  She did not seem to care for his part
    in it, however; at which Lapham was silently disappointed a little, for
    he would have liked her to praise him.

    "He did it on account of Pen!"

    "Well, he didn't insist upon it, anyway," said Lapham, who must have
    obscurely expected that Corey would recognise his own magnanimity by
    repeating his offer.  If the doubt that follows a self-devoted
    action--the question whether it was not after all a needless folly--is
    mixed, as it was in Lapham's case, with the vague belief that we might
    have done ourselves a good turn without great risk of hurting any one
    else by being a little less unselfish, it becomes a regret that is hard
    to bear.  Since Corey spoke to him, some things had happened that gave
    Lapham hope again.

    "I'm going to tell her about it," said his wife, and she showed herself
    impatient to make up for the time she had lost.  "Why didn't you tell
    me before, Silas?"

    "I didn't know we were on speaking terms before," said Lapham sadly.

    "Yes, that's true," she admitted, with a conscious flush.  "I hope he
    won't think Pen's known about it all this while."

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

completion: Lapham has nearly decided that he cannot sell the mills at an unfair price even if the English do make an offer. He stops work on the house and shuts down the paint works that have been operating twenty-four hours a day since he began. Heavy competition from an underselling West Virginia paint company and an overstocked market force Silas to admit his defeat. After Silas tells Persis of these new developments, she remembers the slip of paper she has found and returns it to him. She asks who "Wm. M." is. Silas says it is nothing, tears the paper into small pieces, and drops them in the fire. The next morning, Mrs. Lapham finds a scrap of paper on the hearth with the name "Mrs. M." on it. Wondering what dealings her husband could have with a woman, and remembering his confusion about the paper, she asks him who "Mrs. M." is. "I don't know what you're talking about," he answers. "Don't you?" she returns. "When you do, you tell me." The matter is dropped. At the office that day, Silas tells Tom Corey to get out of the business for his own good. Tom offers Lapham a loan, but Silas refuses. After Lapham's conference with Corey, Zerrilla Dewey's mother invades his office to demand money to pay her rent and buy groceries. Lapham forces Mrs. Millon to leave but later gives Zerilla money. Zerrilla reveals the reason for the need of money; her husband, Dewey, returning from a sailing voyage, spent the night before drinking with her mother. Zerrilla tells Silas that she cannot divorce her husband, as she wishes, because he does not drink habitually or leave for longer than a year. Lapham visits Zerrilla's home that evening to tell Dewey that he will support Mrs. Millon and Zerrilla, because Jim Millon took a bullet meant for him; but, he will not support anyone else, including Dewey. Upon returning home, Silas tells Mrs. Lapham that he has lost money in the stock market in addition to his other financial problems. He mentions Tom Corey's offer of a loan, and Mrs. Lapham resolves to tell Penelope of Tom's offer. In the meanwhile, Walker has indicated to Tom Corey that he believes there is something amiss in Lapham's relationship with Mrs. Dewey. Neither he nor Corey know the exact nature of the situation, but Walker says, "Accidents will happen in the best regulated families." He hints that Zerrilla might be Lapham's mistress, yet Corey is not willing to make such a quick assumption.