Foster Townsend had torn open a yellow envelope. Now he threw the telegram upon the table and rose from his chair.
“Bah!” he snorted, disgustedly. “Can’t they let me alone for two days running? I’ve got to go to Ostable this minute. Lawyer business again.... Well, what must be must. The train has gone long ago so I shall have to drive. Want to go with me, Esther?”
His niece shook her head. “I can’t, Uncle Foster,” she answered. “I promised Mr. Colton I would attend a meeting of the Welfare Society. Mrs. Wheeler and Mrs. Snow and ever so many more are to be there. They are thinking of getting up another entertainment of some kind to raise money. Of course I can’t take part because I am going abroad, but I must help as long as I can.”
Foster Townsend sniffed. “All right,” he said. “If you promised you’ll have to be there, I suppose. Well, I can’t stand here. Hitch up the team, Varunas.” Then thrusting the packet of unopened mail matter into his pocket, he added, “I’ll read this after I get there. There’ll be plenty of time. I never broke my back chasing over to that law office yet that I didn’t have to wait for somebody else who hadn’t taken the trouble to break his.... Good-by, Esther.”
He kissed her and hurried through the library to the hatrack in the hall. She called after him.
“You are going to write Mr. Covell and invite his son for that visit, aren’t you, Uncle Foster?” she asked.
“Yes,” he shouted in reply. “Got to, so far as I can see. I’ll write him to-day, from over there. I’ll have time enough for that, too, unless there has been a miracle and the whole crowd is on time for once.”
After he had gone Esther remembered that she had not told him of Bob’s proposed European trip. She would do it that evening. She wondered what he would say. A suggestion of Nabby Gifford’s, made on the morning following Bob’s last call but one, had lingered in her mind, although she had done her best to forget it. It was silly, it was outrageous, it was everything but sane and sensible, but she had not been able to dismiss it entirely from her thoughts. What would her uncle say when he learned that Bob Griffin was to be in Paris during her stay there? Well, she would soon know, for she would tell him as soon as he returned.
CHAPTER XIII
FOSTER TOWNSEND chose this time to dispense with Varunas’s services and society on his drive to Ostable. He piloted the span himself, along the rutted stretches of yellow sand, between villages and over the white-surfaced roads of oyster and clamshell leading through the thickly settled portions of the villages themselves. And in Denboro and South Denboro and East Ostable and Ostable his progress was, as always, noticed and commented upon. Leading citizens bowed politely and called good mornings and the proletariat turned to stare and look after him. He acknowledged the bows and salutes with a careless wave of the hand and the stares he ignored. The universal attention was no novelty. Its absence would have been. He was the great man of his county and reverend recognition of that fact was his due.