Reliance looked at him. “Then if I was you I’d say it,” she agreed, sweetly. “You go right up to his house to-morrow and tell him that no matter what Esther and I do, you’ll move in before sunset. You tell him that and see what he says about it.... Come, Esther. Don’t you leave that lamp burnin’ all night, Millard.”
She and Esther left the room, and a few moments later, their footsteps were heard upon the stairs. Millard Fillmore Clark, left alone, threw himself into the rocker and relapsed into the pessimistic meditations of a hurt and insulted spirit. For an hour he sat there, scowling and biting his nails. Then he rose and went out into the dining room, where he opened the door of a dark closet and reached down into a corner behind a tall crockery cooky jar. Hidden in that corner was a black bottle. It contained home-made wild-cherry rum and his half-sister had cached it there, fondly believing that he could never find it. He removed the cork, took a long drink, and then another. Soon afterward he, too, went upstairs and to bed.
CHAPTER III
NABBY GIFFORD did not serve her employer’s breakfast next morning. Ellen Dooley, the red-cheeked Irish “second maid,” did that. Nabby cooked the breakfast, of course, and she made it a point to pass through the library after the meal was over. Foster Townsend was seated in the leather easy-chair reading the Item, a copy of which was included in the mail handed him by Millard Clark at the post office the previous evening. Mrs. Gifford lingered by the hall door and the captain looked up at her over his spectacles.
“Well, Nabby,” he inquired, “what is it?”
Nabby affected surprise at the question.
“Why, nothin’,” she said. “I was just goin’ upstairs a minute and I come this way ’cause ’twas the shortest. That’s all.”
“Yes, yes, I know. That’s all—but what is the rest?”
“Well—I was goin’ to tell you that the minister was here last night right after you left.”
“I know he was. I met him downtown and he told me he called. What else?”