"I didn't
mean anything. I don't know as I meant ANYthing.
He's just as unassuming as he can be, and I think Irene's
a match for anybody. You just let things go on. It'll be
all right. You never can tell how it is with young people.
Perhaps SHE'S offish. Now you ain't--you ain't going
to say anything?"
Lapham suffered himself to be persuaded, the more easily,
no doubt, because after his explosion he must have perceived
that his pride itself stood in the way of what his pride
had threatened. He contented himself with his wife's
promise that she would never again present that offensive
view of the case, and she did not remain without a certain
support in his sturdy self-assertion.
XII.
MRS. COREY returned with her daughters in the early
days of October, having passed three or four weeks at
Intervale after leaving Bar Harbour. They were somewhat
browner than they were when they left town in June,
but they were not otherwise changed. Lily, the elder
of the girls, had brought back a number of studies of kelp
and toadstools, with accessory rocks and rotten logs,
which she would never finish up and never show any one,
knowing the slightness of their merit. Nanny, the younger,
had read a great many novels with a keen sense of their
inaccuracy as representations of life, and had seen
a great deal of life with a sad regret for its difference
from fiction.
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