The closet was as big, almost, as her bedroom in the Clark cottage.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” she said, smiling a little.
He smiled also. “Mother was bound to have plenty of closet-room,” he observed. “Women like ’em big. When you’ve had a sea training, same as I had in my young days, you get used to putting up with snugger quarters. Now—er—let me see. Supper will be ready pretty soon, but just now— Humph! Like to read, do you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Women do, I know. There are lots of books in those cases, lots of ’em. I haven’t read ’em all, but I guess they’re all right. Mother—your Aunt Bella—picked them out and she generally knew what was what. Help yourself—now or any time. What I should like to have you feel,” he went on, obviously embarrassed but very earnest, “is that anything or everything in this house is yours from now on. You are going to live here and—er—you must try to feel that it’s—well, that it is home. You understand what I mean?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“That’s right, that’s right. Well, there are the books. Help yourself.”
She wandered over to the bookcases. The sumptuously bound volumes posed disdainfully behind the glass panes and seemed to dare her to lay plebeian hands upon them. Their titles, Macaulay’s “History of England,” Greeley’s “American Conflict,” Shakespeare’s “Complete Works,” “Poems of Alexander Pope”—they were not particularly alluring. One majestic, gilt-edge tome was labeled, “Ostable County and Its Leading Citizens.” She rather timidly lifted this from the shelf, opened it, and almost immediately found herself facing a steel engraved portrait of her uncle. On the next page but one was another engraving portraying the “Residence of Captain Foster Townsend at Harniss.” The article descriptive of that residence and its owner filled five pages of large print. It began:
“Among the names of prominent men of this thriving and beautiful township that of Captain Foster Bailey Townsend stands at the head. His position in civic and county affairs, his strong and unswerving influence for the highest in political matters, his numerous benefactions—”
She had read this far when Ellen drew the portières and announced that supper was ready.