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"One in ten million," said Lapham; and her face fell again. "He says there are some English parties after him to buy these mills." "Well?" "Well, I gave him twenty-four hours to prove himself a liar." "You don't believe there are any such parties?" "Not in THIS world." "But if there were?" "Well, if there were, Persis But pshaw!" "No, no!" she pleaded eagerly.
Bromfield Corey addressed himself again to Mrs. Lapham, and the talk subdivided itself as before. It lapsed so entirely away from the subject just in hand, that Lapham was left with rather a good idea, as he thought it, to perish in his mind, for want of a chance to express it. The only thing like a recurrence to what they had been saying was Bromfield Corey's warning Mrs.
That was the end of their son and brother for them; they felt that; and they were not mean or unamiable people. He remained three years away. Some changes took place in that time. One of these was the purchase by the Kanawha Falls Company of the mines and works at Lapham.
Lapham put on a straw hat, gathered up some papers lying on his desk, pulled down its rolling cover, turned the key in it, and gave the papers to an extremely handsome young woman at one of the desks in the outer office. She was stylishly dressed, as Bartley saw, and her smooth, yellow hair was sculpturesquely waved over a low, white forehead.
"Corey's father called this morning." "Did he?" said Mrs. Lapham, willing to humour his feint of indifference. "Did HE want to borrow some money too?" "Not as I understood." Lapham was smoking at great ease, and his wife had some crocheting on the other side of the lamp from him. The girls were on the piazza looking at the moon on the water again.
As James Bellingham had taken so much interest in his troubles from the first, Lapham thought he ought to tell him, before taking the final step, just how things stood with him, and what ho meant to do. Bellingham made some futile inquiries about his negotiations with the West Virginians, and Lapham told him they had come to nothing.
She was a pretty bad assortment," said Lapham, lowering his voice and glancing round at the door to make sure that it was shut, "and she used to lead Jim ONE kind of life. Well, sir," continued Lapham, synthetising his auditors in that form of address, "that fellow used to save every cent of his pay and send it to that woman. Used to get me to do it for him. I tried to stop him.
When folks come in, and kind of smell round, and ask me what I mix it with, I always say, 'Well, in the first place, I mix it with FAITH, and after that I grind it up with the best quality of boiled linseed oil that money will buy." Lapham took out his watch and looked at it, and Bartley perceived that his audience was drawing to a close.
I git off at the same place I got off over at Wunpost; he's trying to freeze me out. So if you want to do me dirt, kid, when I've always been your friend, go to it and sell him your share. Take your paltry twenty thousand and let old Wunpost rustle serves him right, the poor, ignorant fool!" He swayed about and Billy drew away from him, but her answer to Lapham was final.
He put the house at Nankeen Square, with everything else he had, into the payment of his debts, and Mrs. Lapham found it easier to leave it for the old farmstead in Vermont than it would have been to go from that home of many years to the new house on the water side of Beacon.
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