“I do. And Doctor Bailey ought to know better than to tell you any such silly stuff.... Well, there! I guess you are well enough to be left a few minutes and I must run and help Nabby.... Oh, there is a letter on the table for you. It’s got a French stamp on it. Here it is. Now you behave yourself till I come back.”
CHAPTER XXV
IT was late in August before he was well enough to be about and to take short walks out of doors. Reliance still remained at the big house. He insisted that she do so.
“You stay here,” he ordered, “till I tell you to clear out. Nabby needs somebody to help her, I guess. Anyhow she says she does. And I haven’t by any means decided what I shall do with that house of yours. You are as comfortable as you will be likely to be with that rattle-head Makepeace woman. You stay right here.”
So she stayed on, although she had no intention of prolonging the stay beyond the first of September. He was still far from strong, and was, as Mrs. Gifford called it, “awful cranky,” so Reliance thought it best not to upset his equilibrium by mentioning leaving until the time for leaving came.
She and he had many long talks together. Esther’s letters to her came regularly and she gave them to him to read, or such parts of them as she thought it best for him to see. And every two weeks there was a letter for him. He invariably put these letters in his pocket and she never saw them again, nor did he refer to them. That he read them when alone she felt certain. So far, Esther wrote, he had not replied. “Why doesn’t he write me?” the girl demanded of her aunt. “You say you know he is glad to get my letters. Why doesn’t he answer them? I am afraid you are mistaken and that his feeling toward me has not really changed at all. Oh, I wish it would! Just now especially I should like to know that it had.”
Reliance tried hard to be reassuring.
“It is all right, my dear,” she wrote again and again. “He is coming around, but you must be patient and give him time. I have known him a great many more years than you have and I tell you for Foster Townsend to own up that he is wrong is no easy job. Most of his life he did what he wanted to do and it turned out right, and, what is more, about everybody he knew took pains to tell him it was right. He lost that lawsuit, I know, but there are a good many people even yet who think he was right in that and that the courts made a mistake. He holds his head just as high as he ever did. It is as much as the average person’s life is worth to hint they are sorry for him, or anything like that. Let them say that to him just once and they don’t get the chance to say much of anything to him again. It is stubborn and foolish, perhaps, but I declare it makes me proud of him. I am a little that way myself, I guess. He has never yet told me out and out that I did right in insisting on you and Bob getting married before you left Harniss that night. But I have said it two or three times and he hasn’t contradicted me, and that is a lot—for him. Give him time, Esther, dear. He will write you some day, I am sure. And that he loves you more than all the rest of the world put together, I know. Be patient, and keep on writing him. Only don’t mention the most important thing. Keep that for a surprise.”
She did her best to seem cheerful while in his presence, but there were matters which troubled her—one on the other side of the ocean, although that, in the natural course of events, should end happily—and one, at home in Harniss, which now seemed certain to end disastrously for her. His keen eyes soon noticed, in spite of her pretense, that there was something wrong, and he tried to learn what it was.
“What have you got on your mind, Reliance?” he demanded. “Oh, now, now! don’t say you haven’t got anything because I know better. What is worrying you?”