“O Pen!” she whispered, with her heart in her face; and Penelope had no time for mockery before he was at the steps.
“I hope Colonel Lapham isn’t ill,” he said, and they could hear their mother engaged in a moral contest with their father indoors.
“Go and put on your coat! I say you shall! It don’t matter how he sees you at the office, shirtsleeves or not. You’re in a gentleman’s house now—or you ought to be—and you shan’t see company in your dressing-gown.”
Penelope hurried in to subdue her mother’s anger.
“Oh, he’s very much better, thank you!” said Irene, speaking up loudly to drown the noise of the controversy.
“I’m glad of that,” said Corey, and when she led him indoors the vanquished Colonel met his visitor in a double-breasted frock-coat, which he was still buttoning up. He could not persuade himself at once that Corey had not come upon some urgent business matter, and when he was clear that he had come out of civility, surprise mingled with his gratification that he should be the object of solicitude to the young man. In Lapham’s circle of acquaintance they complained when they were sick, but they made no womanish inquiries after one another’s health, and certainly paid no visits of sympathy till matters were serious. He would have enlarged upon the particulars of his indisposition if he had been allowed to do so; and after tea, which Corey took with them, he would have remained to entertain him if his wife had not sent him to bed. She followed him to see that he took some medicine she had prescribed for him, but she went first to Penelope’s room, where she found the girl with a book in her hand, which she was not reading.
“You better go down,” said the mother. “I’ve got to go to your father, and Irene is all alone with Mr. Corey; and I know she’ll be on pins and needles without you’re there to help make it go off.”
“She’d better try to get along without me, mother,” said Penelope soberly. “I can’t always be with them.”
“Well,” replied Mrs. Lapham, “then I must. There’ll be a perfect Quaker meeting down there.”
“Oh, I guess ’Rene will find something to say if you leave her to herself. Or if she don’t, he must. It’ll be all right for you to go down when you get ready; but I shan’t go till toward the last. If he’s coming here to see Irene—and I don’t believe he’s come on father’s account—he wants to see her and not me. If she can’t interest him alone, perhaps he’d as well find it out now as any time. At any rate, I guess you’d better make the experiment. You’ll know whether it’s a success if he comes again.”
“Well,” said the mother, “may be you’re right. I’ll go down directly. It does seem as if he did mean something, after all.”
Mrs. Lapham did not hasten to return to her guest. In her own girlhood it was supposed that if a young man seemed to be coming to see a girl, it was only common sense to suppose that he wished to see her alone; and her life in town had left Mrs. Lapham’s simple traditions in this respect unchanged. She did with her daughter as her mother would have done with her.
Where Penelope sat with her book, she heard the continuous murmur of voices below, and after a long interval she heard her mother descend. She did not read the open book that lay in her lap, though she kept her eyes fast on the print. Once she rose and almost shut the door, so that she could scarcely hear; then she opened it wide again with a self-disdainful air, and resolutely went back to her book, which again she did not read. But she remained in her room till it was nearly time for Corey to return to his boat.
When they were alone again, Irene made a feint of scolding her for leaving her to entertain Mr. Corey.
“Why! didn’t you have a pleasant call?” asked Penelope.
Irene threw her arms round her. “Oh, it was a splendid call! I didn’t suppose I could make it go off so well. We talked nearly the whole time about you!”
“I don’t think that was a very interesting subject.”
“He kept asking about you. He asked everything. You don’t know how much he thinks of you, Pen. O Pen! what do you think made him come? Do you think he really did come to see how papa was?” Irene buried her face in her sister’s neck.
Penelope stood with her arms at her side, submitting. “Well,” she said, “I don’t think he did, altogether.”
Irene, all glowing, released her. “Don’t you—don’t you really? O Pen! don’t you think he is nice? Don’t you think he’s handsome? Don’t you think I behaved horridly when we first met him this evening, not thanking him for coming? I know he thinks I’ve no manners. But it seemed as if it would be thanking him for coming to see me. Ought I to have asked him to come again, when he said good night? I didn’t; I couldn’t. Do you believe he’ll think I don’t want him to? You don’t believe he would keep coming if he didn’t—want to—”
“He hasn’t kept coming a great deal, yet,” suggested Penelope.
“No; I know he hasn’t. But if he—if he should?”
“Then I should think he wanted to.”
“Oh, would you—would you? Oh, how good you always are, Pen! And you always say what you think. I wish there was someone coming to see you too. That’s all that I don’t like about it. Perhaps—He was telling about his friend there in Texas—”
“Well,” said Penelope, “his friend couldn’t call often from Texas. You needn’t ask Mr. Corey to trouble about me, ’Rene. I think I can manage to worry along, if you’re satisfied.”
“Oh, I am, Pen. When do you suppose he’ll come again?” Irene pushed some of Penelope’s
