“Why was he going to Denboro?”
“Oh, ’cause your Uncle Foster told him to, so Varunas says. Whatever Millard wanted to talk with the cap’n about must have been pretty important, I guess.... But there! probably you know what it was a whole lot better than I do, so I won’t take up your time. Far as I’m concerned I can’t imagine Mil Clark’s talk bein’ important enough to—”
“Nabby! Nabby, stop! What is all this? Tell me.”
Nabby’s air of surprise was a fairly successful counterfeit. “Oh!” she exclaimed, with lifted eyebrows. “Dear me! Don’t you know anything about it? Humph! I cal’lated of course you did. ’Twan’t none of my affairs, I realized that, but I thought you, bein’ one of the family—one of both families, as you might say—would be let in on all the secrets there was goin’. Course the hired help—well, we ain’t expected to—”
“Nabby! Do you want me to shake you? Now tell me the whole story, right away.”
Which Nabby proceeded to do, it being precisely the purpose for which she had been waiting in the library. Millard Clark was on the station platform when the Townsend carriage drew up beside it. At the first opportunity he had seized Foster Townsend by the arm.
“Said he had somethin’ important to say,” went on Mrs. Gifford. “Said he’d been tryin’ hard to get a word with Cap’n Foster for two, three days. Been here to the house a couple of times, he had, but—”
“Wait!” broke in Esther. “Was that true? Has he been here? I didn’t know it.”
Nabby sniffed contemptuously. “Neither did Cap’n Foster, fur’s that goes,” she declared. “Yes, yes, he’s been here a couple of times—yesterday and the day afore ’twas—and he was in a turrible sweat to see your uncle. Well, your uncle wasn’t in and neither was you, but if you had been I don’t know’s I’d bothered you on his account. I never imagined he was worth botherin’ anybody about—much. I judged maybe he’d run short of money. I understand he’s joined in with that good for nothin’ crew that plays high-low-jack all night long at Elbert Peters’ scallop shanty up the beach a mile or so beyond Tobe Eldridge’s—and I guess likely he’d come to see if he couldn’t borrow a couple of dollars. So I never took the trouble to tell you or the cap’n that he’d been here.
“Well, anyhow, there he was at the depot and he grabbed right aholt of your Uncle Foster soon’s ever he got the chance. Varunas was standin’ right alongside—course he wasn’t tryin’ to listen, you understand, but he just heard—and he heard the cap’n say he was busy and for Millard to let him alone. Mil, he wouldn’t let him alone. ‘It’s mighty important,’ says he. ‘It’s somethin’ you’d ought to know, Cap’n Foster. Somethin’ you’ll thank me for tellin’ you when you do know it.’ Varunas says the cap’n turned ’round then and looked at him, kind of funny and more interested, as Varunas thought. ‘What’s it about?’ says he. Now Varunas, he couldn’t hear what Millard said next on account of Millard’s standin’ up on tiptoes and whisperin’ it in your uncle’s ear. Varunas says if he’d realized Mil was goin’ to start in whisperin’ he’d have come over nigher. But he didn’t.”