“Humph!” he grunted. “Why, yes, you do seem to be pretty well up to the top notch, that’s a fact. I haven’t seen as much color in your cheeks or snap in your eye for more than a week. What has done it? Been dreaming about singing to all those good-looking Frenchmen, have you?”
She laughed. She was in good spirits, wonderfully so. The color he had mentioned deepened under his gaze.
“Oh, no!” she replied, lightly. “Not exactly that.”
“Must be something. Did you and that Griffin have an especially nice evening?”
This was perilously near the truth. A part of the evening he mentioned had been anything but pleasant, but for hours before falling asleep she had been thinking of Bob’s great news and what it would mean to both of them. Paris alone—or with only Mrs. Carter—had not been too alluring, in spite of its glorious fulfillment of her hope. But Paris with Bob—or at least with Bob not too far away—that was different.
She laughed again, to cover her confusion. She would tell him what Bob intended doing, she had made up her mind to tell him, but before she could speak the maid came in with the breakfast and while she was there telling was, of course, impossible.
And as soon as the maid had gone Foster Townsend began speaking of another subject, that of the letter he had been reading. He picked up the closely written sheets and tapped their edges upon the table.
“Funny how things come around,” he observed, rubbing his beard with his free hand. “Yes, it is so! I read once in a story-book—I don’t read many, haven’t got time to waste on yarns that a man makes up out of his head, but I do read once in a while one—I remember reading how a fellow found a letter his mother, or his best girl or somebody, had written years and years before, and when he read it this time the book said it came to him like a voice out of the past.... Humph! A voice out of the past. That’s a pretty good way to put it, seems to me. And that’s about what this letter here is,” rapping the table with the papers in his hand. “Here’s a man I used to know twenty—no, nearer thirty years ago. He did me a big favor then. He lent me money to go on with a deal that started me up the ladder. I didn’t have a cent scarcely. He was only a few years older, but well-off already, and not a relation or anything, not even a friend, at least I hadn’t counted him that. He let me have the money because he said he believed I had the right stuff in me, and he wouldn’t have charged me a penny interest if I hadn’t made him. I swore then if ever I got the chance to do him a good turn I’d do it no matter what it was. And now—when for all I knew he might be dead with the grass growing over him—here he is writing me to do that good turn. Humph! A voice from the past. Yes, sir! that is what it is. Queer enough!”
Esther was interested. For the moment she forgot Paris—even Bob Griffin and Paris.
“Who is he, Uncle Foster?” she asked.