Of all the vivid impressions of those first days and weeks in her new home, the memory of that first meal still remains clearest in Esther’s mind. It was so different, so strange, so altogether foreign to any previous experience. She sat at one end of the table and he at the other, the prismed hanging lamp above them casting its yellow glow upon the shining silver, the ornately ornamented china—she did not then considerate it ornate, of course, but beautiful—the water glasses, not one nicked and all of the same pattern, the expensive cloth and napkins. Ellen, neatly dressed and silent of step and movement, brought in the food from the kitchen, placed each dish before the captain, who heaped his niece’s plate and handed it to the maid who placed it before her. There was none of the helter-skelter confusion and bustle of the suppers to which she had been accustomed; no jumping up and running to the kitchen; no passing from hand to hand; no hurry in order to get through because it was almost mail time. And, of course, there would be, for her, no clearing away and dishwashing after it was over.
Esther had read a great deal; she was a regular and frequent patron of the public library; she knew that this was the way rich people lived and ate. That she should be doing it—not in imagination; she had imagined herself doing it often enough—but in reality; that she, Esther Townsend, was destined to sit at this table and be thus deferentially waited upon every day, and three times a day, for years and years; that was the amazing, incredible thought. It was like a story; she was like Bella Filfur in “Our Mutual Friend” when her husband, John Harmon, after all their trials and tribulations were ended, brought her to that beautiful house and she discovered that it was to be hers, that she was very, very wealthy and could have anything she wanted—always. Almost like that it was. Why, she herself was rich now, or what amounted to the same thing! She could have anything she wanted, her uncle had said so. For the first time she really began to believe it.
She ate little, so little that Foster Townsend noticed and commented.
“Where’s your appetite?” he asked. “These things are to eat, not to look at. Don’t you feel well?”
She blushed in guilty confusion. “Oh, yes!” she replied, quickly. “It—it isn’t that. I was thinking and—and I guess I forgot. I’m sorry.”
“Thinking, eh? What were you thinking?”
She hesitated. Then she spoke the exact truth.
“I was thinking that—that it couldn’t be real—my being here. It doesn’t seem as if it could.”
He understood; he had been thinking almost the same thing.
“I guess it is,” he said, with a smile. “You are here, and we’ll hope you’re going to stay. A little bit homesick, are you?”