They traced
to the mother the traits of practicality and common-sense
in which he bordered upon the commonplace, and which,
when they had dwelt upon them, made him seem hardly worth
the close inquiry they had given him.
While the summer wore away he came and went methodically
about his business, as if it had been the business
of his life, sharing his father's bachelor liberty
and solitude, and expecting with equal patience the return
of his mother and sisters in the autumn. Once or twice
he found time to run down to Mt. Desert and see them;
and then he heard how the Philadelphia and New York people
were getting in everywhere, and was given reason to regret
the house at Nahant which he had urged to be sold.
He came back and applied himself to his desk with a
devotion that was exemplary rather than necessary;
for Lapham made no difficulty about the brief absences
which he asked, and set no term to the apprenticeship
that Corey was serving in the office before setting off
upon that mission to South America in the early winter,
for which no date had yet been fixed.
The summer was a dull season for the paint as well
as for everything else. Till things should brisk up,
as Lapham said, in the fall, he was letting the new
house take a great deal of his time. AEsthetic ideas
had never been intelligibly presented to him before,
and he found a delight in apprehending them that was very
grateful to his imaginative architect.
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