"Not just yet," said her mother. "He's asleep, and he'll be all right if he gets his nap out. I don't want you girls should make any great noise." "Oh, we'll be quiet enough," returned Penelope. "Well, I'm glad the Colonel isn't sojering. At first I thought he might be sojering." She broke into a laugh, and, struggling indolently with it, looked at her sister. "You don't think it'll be necessary for anybody to come down from the office and take orders from him while he's laid up, do you, mother?" she inquired. "Pen!" cried Irene. "He'll be well enough to go up on the ten o'clock boat," said the mother sharply. "I think papa works too hard all through the summer. Why don't you make him take a rest, mamma?" asked Irene. "Oh, take a rest! The man slaves harder every year. It used to be so that he'd take a little time off now and then; but I declare, he hardly ever seems to breathe now away from his office. And this year he says he doesn't intend to go down to Lapham, except to see after the works for a few days. I don't know what to do with the man any more! Seems as if the more money he got, the more he wanted to get. It scares me to think what would happen to him if he lost it. I know one thing," concluded Mrs. Lapham. "He shall not go back to the office to-day." "Then he won't go up on the ten o'clock boat," Pen reminded her. "No, he won't. You can just drive over to the hotel as soon as you're through, girls, and telegraph that he's not well, and won't be at the office till to-morrow. I'm not going to have them send anybody down here to bother him." "That's a blow," said Pen. "I didn't know but they might send----" she looked demurely at her sister--"Dennis!" "Mamma!" cried Irene. "Well, I declare, there's no living with this family any more," said Penelope. "There, Pen, be done!" commanded her mother. But perhaps she did not intend to forbid her teasing. It gave a pleasant sort of reality to the affair that was in her mind, and made what she wished appear not only possible but probable. Lapham got up and lounged about, fretting and rebelling as each boat departed without him, through the day; before night he became very cross, in spite of the efforts of the family to soothe him, and grumbled that he had been kept from going up to town. "I might as well have gone as not," he repeated, till his wife lost her patience. "Well, you shall go to-morrow, Silas, if you have to be carried to the boat." "I declare," said Penelope, "the Colonel don't pet worth a cent." The six o'clock boat brought Corey. The girls were sitting on the piazza, and Irene saw him first. "O Pen!" she whispered, with her heart in her face; and Penelope had no time for mockery before he was at the steps. "I hope Colonel Lapham isn't ill," he said, and they could hear their mother engaged in a moral contest with their father indoors.