Reliance picked up the bonnet she had been at work upon when their visitors came. She shook her head.
“Who do you think I’ve been thinkin’ about, for goodness sakes?” she demanded. “There, there! get me that ribbon on the shelf behind you. What is that verse I hear the boys sayin’?
“‘The rich they ride in chaises.
The poor they—’”
Miss Makepeace interrupted. “My soul!” she exclaimed, aghast. “That’s a swearin’ piece! I never expected to hear you swear, Reliance Clark.”
“Well, you haven’t heard me yet, have you? I was goin’ to say that the poor had to make bonnets. Let’s make ’em. We’ve lost more than an hour already.”
“I don’t call it losin’.... Humph! I believe you are jealous. I don’t see why you need to be. You are goin’ up there to have dinner next Sunday. I heard him ask you. There’d be plenty of people in Harniss who’ll be jealous of you when they hear that. And it pleased Esther almost to death, his invitin’ you. I could see that it did.”
It had, of course, and the certainty that it would was the reason why Foster Townsend had extended the invitation. Esther had a happy day. That evening she sang and played and her uncle’s praise was even more whole-hearted than on the previous occasion. It was nice of him to say such things. He had been very nice to her all that day. And his calling on her aunt, of his own accord, and asking the latter and Uncle Millard to dinner on Sunday was the nicest of all. It seemed almost as if her mother must have been mistaken in thinking him such a dreadful man. Either that, or he was sorry he had been so proud and unreasonable and stubborn, and was determined to make amends to his brother’s daughter. If he kept on behaving as he had this day she knew she would like him—she could not help it.
Sunday morning he took her to church and, for the first time, she sat, not in the Clark pew away back under the organ gallery, but down in front in the Townsend pew, where the cushions were covered with green plush and the hymn books bore the Townsend name in gold letters on their cover. Asaph Boadley, the sexton, did not greet her with a perfunctory “Hello.” His whispered “Good mornin’” was almost as reverential as his salute of her uncle. The march up the aisle was very trying—they were a trifle late and every eye in the meeting-house was, she knew, fixed upon her. But Captain Benjamin Snow himself leaned over the pew-back to point out to her the hymn they were about to sing.
The dinner at the mansion was the best meal she had ever eaten and it was delightful—and wonderful—to have Miss Clark and Millard Fillmore there to eat it with her. Millard did not talk as much as usual, even he was a little awed by the occasion. He smoked a Townsend cigar after dinner and accepted another to smoke later on. And when he and his half-sister walked back to the cottage he strutted every step of the way.