It is a serious matter always to the women of his family when a young man gives them cause to suspect that he is interested in some other woman. A son-in-law or brother-in-law does not enter the family; he need not be caressed or made anything of; but the son’s or brother’s wife has a claim upon his mother and sisters which they cannot deny. Some convention of their sex obliges them to show her affection, to like or to seem to like her, to take her to their intimacy, however odious she may be to them. With the Coreys it was something more than an affair of sentiment. They were by no means poor, and they were not dependent money-wise upon Tom Corey; but the mother had come, without knowing it, to rely upon his sense, his advice in everything, and the sisters, seeing him hitherto so indifferent to girls, had insensibly grown to regard him as altogether their own till he should be released, not by his marriage, but by theirs, an event which had not approached with the lapse of time. Some kinds of girls—they believed that they could readily have chosen a kind—might have taken him without taking him from them; but this generosity could not be hoped for in such a girl as Miss Lapham.
“Perhaps,” urged their mother, “it would not be so bad. She seemed an affectionate little thing with her mother, without a great deal of character though she was so capable about some things.”
“Oh, she’ll be an affectionate little thing with Tom too, you may be sure,” said Nanny. “And that characterless capability becomes the most in tense narrow-mindedness. She’ll think we were against her from the beginning.”
“She has no cause for that,” Lily interposed, “and we shall not give her any.”
“Yes, we shall,” retorted Nanny. “We can’t help it; and if we can’t, her own ignorance would be cause enough.”
“I can’t feel that she’s altogether ignorant,” said Mrs. Corey justly.
“Of course she can read and write,” admitted Nanny.
“I can’t imagine what he finds to talk about with her,” said Lily.
“Oh, that’s very simple,” returned her sister. “They talk about themselves, with occasional references to each other. I have heard people ‘going on’ on the hotel piazzas. She’s embroidering, or knitting, or tatting, or something of that kind; and he says she seems quite devoted to needlework, and she says, yes, she has a perfect passion for it, and everybody laughs at her for it; but she can’t help it, she always was so from a child, and supposes she always shall be—with remote and minute particulars. And she ends by saying that perhaps he does not like people to tat, or knit, or embroider, or whatever. And he says, oh, yes, he does; what could make her think such a thing? but for his part he likes boating rather better, or if you’re in the woods camping. Then she lets him take up one corner of her work, and perhaps touch her fingers; and that encourages him to say that he supposes nothing could induce her to drop her work long enough to go down on the rocks, or out among the huckleberry bushes; and she puts her head on one side, and says she doesn’t know really. And then they go, and he lies at her feet on the rocks, or picks huckleberries and drops them in her lap, and they go on talking about themselves, and comparing notes to see how they differ from each other. And—”
“That will do, Nanny,” said her mother.
Lily smiled autumnally. “Oh, disgusting!”
“Disgusting? Not at all!” protested her sister. “It’s very amusing when you see it, and when you do it—”
“It’s always a mystery what people see in each other,” observed Mrs. Corey severely.
“Yes,” Nanny admitted, “but I don’t know that there is much comfort for us in the application.”
“No, there isn’t,” said her mother.
“The most that we can do is to hope for the best till we know the worst. Of course we shall make the best of the worst when it comes.”
“Yes, and perhaps it would not be so very bad. I was saying to your father when I was here in July that those things can always be managed. You must face them as if they were nothing out of the way, and try not to give any cause for bitterness among ourselves.”
“That’s true. But I don’t believe in too much resignation beforehand. It amounts to concession,” said Nanny.
“Of course we should oppose it in all proper ways,” returned her mother.
Lily had ceased to discuss the matter. In virtue of her artistic temperament, she was expected not to be very practical. It was her mother and her sister who managed, submitting to the advice and consent of Corey what they intended to do.
“Your father wrote me that he had called on Colonel Lapham at his place of business,” said Mrs. Corey, seizing her first chance of approaching the subject with her son.
“Yes,” said Corey. “A dinner was father’s idea, but he came down to a call, at my suggestion.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Corey, in a tone of relief, as if the statement threw a new light on the fact that Corey had suggested the visit. “He said so little about it in his letter that I didn’t know just how it came about.”
“I thought it was right they should meet,” explained the son, “and so did father. I was glad that I suggested it, afterward; it was extremely gratifying to Colonel Lapham.”
“Oh, it was quite right in every way. I suppose you have seen something of the family during the summer.”
“Yes, a good deal. I’ve been down at Nantasket rather often.”
Mrs. Corey let her eyes droop. Then she asked: “Are they well?”
“Yes, except Lapham himself, now and
