"I guess you wouldn't want to joke on that subject, Si," she said, a little hoarsely, "and you wouldn't grin about it unless you had some good news. I don't know what the miracle is, but if you could tell quick----"
She stopped like one who can say no more.
"I will, Persis," said her husband, and with that awed tone in which he rarely spoke of anything but the virtues of his paint. "He came to borrow money of me, and I lent him it. That's the short of it. The long----"
"Go on," said his wife, with gentle patience.
"Well, Pert, I was never so much astonished in my life as I was to see that man come into my office. You might have knocked me down with--I don't know what."
"I don't wonder. Go on!"
"And he was as much embarrassed as I was. There we stood, gaping at each other, and I hadn't hardly sense enough to ask him to take a chair. I don't know just how we got at it. And I don't remember just how it was that he said he came to come to me. But he had got hold of a patent right that he wanted to go into on a large scale, and there he was wanting me to supply him the funds."
"Go on!" said Mrs. Lapham, with her voice further in her throat.
"I never felt the way you did about Rogers, but I know how you always did feel, and I guess I surprised him with my answer. He had brought along a lot of stock as security----"
"You didn't take it, Silas!" his wife flashed out.