In spite of her questions and Reliance’s when, later on, the latter came back from the post office, he would not disclose one atom of information as to where he had been so long or why.
“Never you mind,” he insisted, and with surprising good nature. “That’s my business. I am not married to either one of you. I am free and independent. I guess likely I can go off on a spree if I want to without doing my catechism afterwards. I have had a good time and maybe I’ll have a better one by and by. You be satisfied with that.”
They had to be. Neither then, nor the following day, nor the day after that, would he say more. It was tantalizing to the Giffords, but Reliance did not mind so much. She was grave and preoccupied nowadays and Nabby and her husband thought they understood the reason. Captain Townsend, apparently, did not notice her gravity or long intervals of silence.
His trips to the post office were very regular. One noon he came home to dinner with, so Nabby thought, a more than usually satisfied expression. In fact he seemed, for him, almost excited.
“I don’t know what has changed him so lately, Varunas,” she confided. “Must have been that ‘spree’ he went on, whatever it was. He is more like himself—his old smart, lively self, I mean—than I’ve seen him since Esther ran off and married that Griffin thing.”
Varunas had something to say. “You know what that letter was he give me to mail just now?” he asked. “The one he wrote right after dinner? No? Well, I don’t neither, but I know who ’twas to. ’Twas to the Honorable Alpheus Mooney, Trumet, Mass. That’s who ’twas to; and he was mighty anxious I should stop in and mail it on my way to the livery stable. What in time is he writtin’ to Congressman Mooney for? Don’t cal’late he’s goin’ to get some political job, or somethin’, do you—now that he’s lost his money?”
One evening soon afterward, when Reliance Clark came home after locking the post office door, she found Foster Townsend in the library. He was seated in the easy-chair and the Item was in his hand. He looked up and spoke.
“Tired to-night, are you, Reliance?” he asked. “In a special hurry to go aloft and turn in?”
“No, Foster. Why?”
“Because, if you had just as soon, I’d like to have you wait up a while. I am sort of expecting somebody here to see me to-night and I’d rather like to have you around where I can call you if I want you.”