They had ventured--a mother and two daughters--as far
as a rather wild little Canadian watering-place on the
St. Lawrence, below Quebec, and had arrived some days
before their son and brother was expected to join them.
Two of their trunks had gone astray, and on the night
of their arrival the mother was taken violently ill.
Mrs. Lapham came to their help, with her skill as nurse,
and with the abundance of her own and her daughter's wardrobe,
and a profuse, single-hearted kindness. When a doctor could
be got at, he said that but for Mrs. Lapham's timely care,
the lady would hardly have lived. He was a very effusive
little Frenchman, and fancied he was saying something very
pleasant to everybody.

A certain intimacy inevitably followed, and when the
son came he was even more grateful than the others.
Mrs. Lapham could not quite understand why he should
be as attentive to her as to Irene; but she compared
him with other young men about the place, and thought
him nicer than any of them. She had not the means
of a wider comparison; for in Boston, with all her
husband's prosperity, they had not had a social life.
Their first years there were given to careful getting
on Lapham's part, and careful saving on his wife's.
Suddenly the money began to come so abundantly that she
need not save; and then they did not know what to do
with it. A certain amount could be spent on horses,
and Lapham spent it; his wife spent on rich and rather
ugly clothes and a luxury of household appointments.
Lapham had not yet reached the picture-buying stage