"I don't know as you'd call it wrong. It's what people do all the time. But I wish I'd let stocks alone. It's what I always promised your mother I would do. But there's no use cryin' over spilt milk; or watered stock, either."
"I don't think there's much use crying about anything. If it could have been cried straight, it would have been all right from the start," said the girl, going back to her own affair; and if Lapham had not been so deeply engrossed in his, he might have seen how little she cared for all that money could do or undo. He did not observe her enough to see how variable her moods were in those days, and how often she sank from some wild gaiety into abject melancholy; how at times she was fiercely defiant of nothing at all, and at others inexplicably humble and patient. But no doubt none of these signs had passed unnoticed by his wife, to whom Lapham said one day, when he came home, "Persis, what's the reason Pen don't marry Corey?"
"You know as well as I do, Silas," said Mrs. Lapham, with an inquiring look at him for what lay behind his words.
"Well, I think it's all tomfoolery, the way she's going on. There ain't any rhyme nor reason to it." He stopped, and his wife waited. "If she said the word, I could have some help from them." He hung his head, and would not meet his wife's eye.
"I guess you're in a pretty bad way, Si," she said pityingly, "or you wouldn't have come to that."
"I'm in a hole," said Lapham, "and I don't know where to turn. You won't let me do anything about those mills----"
"Yes, I'll let you," said his wife sadly.
He gave a miserable cry. "You know I can't do anything, if you do. O my Lord!"
She had not seen him so low as that before. She did not know what to say. She was frightened, and could only ask, "Has it come to the worst?"
"The new house has got to go," he answered evasively.