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The renewal of his acquaintance with Persis Dale nearly a year earlier had enlightened him as to the tenacity of certain impressions he had thought obliterated long before. The girl he had loved in his callow youth and had forgotten, still retained something of her old fascination for him.
"Do you mean that you've got payments to make, and that people are not paying YOU?" Lapham winced a little. "Something like that," he said, and he lighted a cigar. "But when I tell you it's all right, I mean it, Persis. I ain't going to let the grass grow under my feet, though, especially while Rogers digs the ground away from the roots." "What are you going to do?"
Persis was too interested to smile. "Then the weather got warm and I changed to another suit and forgot to change the letter. I'd laid several little plots to help her to find it, like sending her to my pocket for postage stamps, but she didn't fall to 'em, and finally the letter got to be an old story. I pretty nearly forgot all about it.
Behind her back she frequently referred to the dressmaker as an "interfering old maid," but in Persis' presence she paid reluctant tribute to the dominating personality. When very angry, Annabel indulged in whatever brutalities of plain speech were suggested by a somewhat limited imagination, but her habitual weapon was innuendo. She shrank from Persis' bluntness as a dog cringes away from a whip.
But at the same time Joel chuckled again, his vocal chords responding uncertainly to the unfamiliar prompting at the same time she was cute. At the supper table the evening before for all his gloomy abstraction, Joel had noticed Betty's engaging prettiness and had thought apropos of Celia, "Persis never picked that young one out for her looks."
A cloudy vision of something unpurchasable, where he had supposed there was nothing, had cowed him in spite of the burly resistance of his pride. "I don't see why he shouldn't be pleasant," said Mrs. Lapham. "He's never done anything else." Lapham looked up consciously, with an uneasy laugh. "Pshaw, Persis! you never forget anything?" "Oh, I've got more than that to remember.
"Earth and air are stuffed with helpfulness, Persis, and the clothes we wear won't give it a chance at us. If the Lord had wanted us to be covered, we'd have come into the world with a shell like a turtle. Now, this rig ain't ideal because we've got to make some concessions to folks' narrowness and prejudice, but it's a long way ahead of ordinary dress." "Joel Dale!"
It was quarter of nine. It occurred to Persis that some one of the neighbors must be ill. There seemed no other explanation for such a summons at that hour. She crossed the room hurriedly and opened the door. A man stood outside, and after a moment of hesitation he entered, putting out his hand. "Good evening, Miss Dale. I hope you haven't forgotten me."
All her life Persis Dale had been a resolutely cheerful person. But that consistent, conscientious optimism was as unlike her present lightness of heart as the heat of a coal fire, carefully fed and tended, differs from the gracious warmth of June. Singularly enough the sight of her satisfaction stirred her brother to instant indignation. Up to this moment a sense of grievance had been upper-most.
Persis went softly down the stairs. Joel waited long enough to make his advent impressive and followed her. She sat as he had seldom seen her, thrown back in the roomy recesses of the big easy chair, her hands lying loosely in her lap. Her attitude suggested the relaxation following fatigue. Her eyes were half closed, her lips smiling. An indefinable rapture radiated from her.
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