"I do," said Mrs. Lapham. "And I want him to see
her without any of your connivance, Silas. I'm not
going to have it said that I put my girls at anybody.
Why don't you invite some of your other clerks?"
"He ain't just like the other clerks. He's going to take
charge of a part of the business. It's quite another thing."
"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Lapham vexatiously. "Then you
ARE going to take a partner."
"I shall ask him down if I choose!" returned the Colonel,
disdaining her insinuation.
His wife laughed with the fearlessness of a woman
who knows her husband.
"But you won't choose when you've thought it over, Si."
Then she applied an emollient to his chafed surface.
"Don't you suppose I feel as you do about it? I know
just how proud you are, and I'm not going to have you
do anything that will make you feel meeching afterward.
You just let things take their course. If he wants Irene,
he's going to find out some way of seeing her; and if he
don't, all the plotting and planning in the world isn't going
to make him."
"Who's plotting?" again retorted the Colonel, shuddering at
the utterance of hopes and ambitions which a man hides
with shame, but a woman talks over as freely and coolly
as if they were items of a milliner's bill.
"Oh, not you!" exulted his wife. "I understand what
you want.
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