"You better stick to paint a while yet." The Colonel enjoyed this too, and laughed again with the ease of a man who knows what he is about. A few days after that he came down to Nantasket with the radiant air which he wore when he had done a good thing in business and wanted his wife's sympathy. He did not say anything of what had happened till he was alone with her in their own room; but he was very gay the whole evening, and made several jokes which Penelope said nothing but very great prosperity could excuse: they all understood these moods of his.
"Well, what is it, Silas?" asked his wife when the time came. "Any more big-bugs wanting to go into the mineral paint business with you?"
"Something better than that."
"I could think of a good many better things," said his wife, with a sigh of latent bitterness. "What's this one?"
"I've had a visitor."
"Who?"
"Can't you guess?"
"I don't want to try. Who was it?"
"Rogers."
Mrs. Lapham sat down with her hands in her lap, and stared at the smile on her husband's face, where he sat facing her.