“Be still, Mil Clark!... Oh, when he had the impudence to tell me that he got me that post-office appointment, I—I— Oh, that was the last straw!”
She was sputtering sparks like a pinwheel. Esther tried to soothe her.
“There, there, Auntie,” she protested, “you mustn’t get into such a state. I don’t care at all, really. I’m glad. I don’t want to live with him. Of course I don’t. I want to stay with you, right here in this house, just as I always have. Don’t worry about it any more—please.”
The thunder cloud upon her aunt’s brow was thinning. Her comely face was still crimson, but the fire in her eyes was beginning to die. She walked over to the window, stood there for a moment, and, when she turned, there was a suspicion of a smile at the corners of her lips.
“My!” she exclaimed, with a sigh. “I don’t wonder Millard called me crazy. I haven’t been so upset for I don’t know when. It was findin’ out that he was responsible for my bein’ made postmistress that got me so. The rest of it I kind of expected—that is, I rather guessed he had come to ask for Esther. Yes, I did. Nabby Gifford told me how lonesome he was nowadays and before Arabella Townsend died—a fortni’t or two before she was taken sick—she came to see me about a hat I was makin’ for her, and somethin’ she said then set me thinkin’. She was pretty confidential—she was like that sometimes with me—and she told me that the greatest trial of hers and Foster’s lives was that the only child they had died when it was a baby and that they didn’t have any more. She asked a lot about you, Esther, about what sort of a girl you were and about your singin’ and all, and—well, it made me wonder. And I knew perfectly well that whatever she wanted her husband would let her have. She was the only person on earth who could get past that stubborn streak of his.... Humph! And he called me pig-headed! He did!”
Her half-brother had kept quiet as long as he could.
“Well, well, well!” he cried. “What if he did! He didn’t mean nothin’. You and Esther don’t seem to realize what else he said. He’s offerin’ us a home in the finest house in Ostable County. Horses and teams to ride around in, no bills to pay, nothin’ to worry about, no work—that is, nothin’ except—”
“Oh, do stop! I declare I believe you’d just as soon be a ‘tail’ as anything else. All a tail has to do is brush off flies and that would just suit you.”
“Look here! I don’t care to have you talk to me that way.”
“All right, I’m not talkin’ to you. I’m talkin’ to somebody else. So I wasn’t so surprised when he offered to adopt you, Esther, for adoption is what it amounts to. When he took me aboard too—yes, yes, and you, Millard—I was surprised, but of course I could see why he did it, anybody could. If he hadn’t crowed over me about that post-office appointment! I never once supposed he got it for me.... Oh, I don’t doubt he did! He runs everything in this part of the state. But it hurts my pride—and it makes me just as mad now when I think of it.”