Before Mr. Clark could reply to this sarcastic counsel his sister and Esther were out of the cottage. The girl’s eyes were wet and even Reliance appeared to be struggling to repress emotion. The pair came down the walk to the gate. There Esther turned, threw her arms about her aunt’s plump neck and burst into sobs, open and unrestrained.
“Oh, won’t you please come, Auntie!” she begged. “I—oh, how can I go without you!”
Reliance patted her shoulder.
“There, there, dearie,” she said, soothingly. “It’s goin’ to be all right, you’ll see. I can’t leave the office now, it’s almost time for the noon mail, but I’ll run up to-morrow mornin’ and see how you are gettin’ along.” Then, catching sight of the Gifford face upon which was written eager and consuming curiosity, her own expression changed. “Come, come, you two!” she snapped, addressing her brother and Varunas. “What are you standin’ there for, with your mouths open? Help her into the carriage, why don’t you. Varunas, you take her up to Cap’n Foster’s; and mind you drive carefully.”
During the short journey to the Townsend mansion Mr. Gifford, whose curiosity was by this time seasoned with a faint suspicion of the astonishing truth, tried more than once to engage his passenger in conversation, but with no satisfactory results. Esther’s replies were brief and monosyllabic. She sat crouched on the rear seat of the democrat, avoided his eye when he turned to look at her, and, as he told Nabby afterward, she hardly as much as said ay, yes or no the whole way.
They turned in on the broad drive and stopped at the portico shading the side door. Foster Townsend opened that door himself and came out.
“Well, well, here you are!” he said, heartily. “Come right in. Varunas, take that trunk and the bag upstairs. Nabby will show you where to put them.”
He helped his niece to alight and conducted her into the house. Mr. Gifford shouldered the trunk, it was not a big one, and marched through the little hall, across the dining room and up the back stairs. His wife was awaiting him on the landing.
“Put it in the pink room,” she ordered. “And fetch up whatever else there is and put that there, too.”
Varunas deposited the trunk in the pink room as directed. Then he turned to his wife.