“Goodness knows I don’t want to leave him,” she said, “but he insists that I must. He has arranged for everything. I tried to say No, but he won’t listen. He will have his own way, as he always does, I suppose. I know how lonesome he will be. I shall be almost as lonely without him,” she added.
Nabby seemed to be thinking. There was an odd expression upon her face.
“You don’t suppose—” she began, and stopped in the middle of the sentence.
“I don’t suppose what?” Esther asked.
“Oh, nothin’! It’s silly, I guess. I just wondered—it come across my mind—if it might be he was sendin’ you off so’s to get you away from—well, from this Bob Griffin.... Humph! No, ’tain’t likely he’d do that, because—”
Esther broke in. Her face was flushed and her tone indignantly resentful.
“The idea!” she cried. “What do you mean by saying such a thing, Nabby Gifford? How ridiculous! What has Bob Griffin got to do with my going abroad? Uncle and I had planned to go together; we have talked about it ever so many times. What on earth are you talking about?”
Mrs. Gifford hastily protested that she had not meant anything.
“’Twas just a foolish notion, I know,” she admitted. “Don’t know why I said it, I don’t. Of course if Cap’n Foster wanted to get clear of that Cook boy he’d have told him his room was a whole lot better’n his company. He don’t have to let him come here.”
“Oh, stop! Why shouldn’t he come here? He hasn’t anything to do with the old lawsuit. Yes, and so far as that goes, Uncle Foster asked him to call.”