She had surprised him again and this time he showed his feeling.
“Humph!” he grunted, frowning. “So she’s going to give me a trial, is she? That’s kind of her. I had an idea it might be the other way around.”
“Yes, you would. Well, it isn’t all that way, not by a good deal. If you think that girl is goin’ to come here and wait for you to say ‘Boo’ and then say it back, like an echo off a stone wall, you don’t know her, that’s all. She’s sensitive and high strung and proud and she’s got a will of her own; she’s a Townsend, too, you mustn’t forget that. You’ve got to handle her the way you handle one of those trottin’ horses of yours, with judgment, not with a whip. You’ve got to be awfully careful, Foster Townsend.”
Not since his early days at sea had any one lectured him in this manner. Even his wife, in her few and rare moments of self-assertion, had never spoken her mind as bluntly or with so little regard for his importance. He resented it.
“Here, here!” he commanded, sharply. “We’ve had about enough of this, seems to me. I’m not begging for the girl. She doesn’t have to say yes, unless she wants to. Yes,” rising to his feet, “and you better tell her I said so. If she’s fool enough not to appreciate what I planned to do for her I don’t want her here. Call the whole thing off. I’m satisfied.”
Miss Clark did not rise. Instead she remained in her chair.
“Oh, dear!” she said, with a sigh of resignation. “It must be a dreadful thing to be bowed down to and worshiped so long that you come to believe you are the Lord of Creation. Foster, stop actin’ like a child. Esther is comin’ here to live; I’ve told you so a dozen times. It is settled that she is. What I’m tryin’ to do is to make you understand how and why she is doin’ it. She’s comin’ because I practically forced her into it; that’s the plain truth. She didn’t want to come.”
“Then she can stay where she is. You’ve said enough. It’s off, so far as I’m concerned.”
“No, it’s only begun. Use your common sense, Foster. Of course she didn’t want to come here. Perhaps in one way she did; she’s wise enough to see what a wonderful chance it was for her to have all the nice things in the world, go on with her music and all that. But so far as you are concerned—why, she hardly knows you. And what she does know, or thinks she knows, isn’t to your credit. Her mother—”
He interrupted. “That’s the meat in the nut, is it,” he growled. “I might have known it. That woman was responsible for Freeling’s going to the devil. I told him, before he married her, that she would be, and that if he did marry her he could go just there; I’d never lift my hand again to stop him. And she lied to her daughter, of course. Told her—”