Corey to let him know the way you feel."
"I never mentioned his father to him!" roared the Colonel.
"That's the way I feel about it!"
"Because it would spoil everything. I wouldn't have
them think we cared the least thing in the world for
their acquaintance. We shouldn't be a bit better off.
We don't know the same people they do, and we don't care
for the same kind of things."
Lapham was breathless with resentment of his wife's implication.
"Don't I tell you," he gasped, "that I don't want to know
them? Who began it? They're friends of yours if they're anybody's."
"They're distant acquaintances of mine," returned Mrs. Lapham
quietly; "and this young Corey is a clerk of yours. And I
want we should hold ourselves so that when they get ready
to make the advances we can meet them half-way or not,
just as we choose."
"That's what grinds me," cried her husband.
"Why should we wait for them to make the advances? Why
shouldn't we make 'em? Are they any better than we are?
My note of hand would be worth ten times what Bromfield
Corey's is on the street to-day. And I made MY money.
I haven't loafed my life away."
"Oh, it isn't what you've got, and it isn't what you've
done exactly. It's what you are."
"Well, then, what's the difference?"
"None that really amounts to anything, or that need give
you any trouble, if you don't think of it.
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