And I was quite thrilled by the idea that my experience would have a new use; Estelle would certainly need a business manager.
We planned to go back to Palmyra, Alice Yorke and all, by boat at five o’clock that afternoon; and we were all fairly light-hearted, except Octavia, who had left her child to the inquisitors.
She asked me, as we walked along the street, if I did not think she could help Leander Green’s cousin with the hogs’-head-cheese. We had all been invited to luncheon at Peggy Carruthers but had decided to decline the invitation. Octavia and I could not get over the sense of strained relations with the young man who had treated Dave so badly. And Estelle said openly that she never could bear to see him again till the money was paid. We went back to our boarding-place, and after luncheon, while the others were resting and making ready for the journey, I slipped out again.
I felt that I could not go home without knowing whether some one had sent a design from Palmyra for Mr. Solomon Salter’s yacht, and, if so, with what success the design had met. I had a wild idea that I might be able to carry some good news to Dave—Dave, whose patient endurance of the daily grind of uncongenial labor was beginning to seem to me nothing less than heroic, whether he regarded it as a punishment or not.
Only a few rods from our door I met Ned Carruthers. He had a thin package in his hand which he waved triumphantly.
“You can’t refuse to let me in with this!” he cried, in his boyish way. “It’s a drawing that was left in my sister’s studio. She sent me with it. I—I think it’s your sister’s.”
He said this with a blush and a stammer as if it were not a matter of course that it was Estelle’s. But perhaps it was natural that he should be a little embarrassed about the young woman who had treated him to such extremely plain speaking. I hesitated, knowing that it would trouble Estelle to see him. I didn’t want her delight in her hard-won opportunity to be spoiled by any annoyance.
And then, suddenly, a brilliantly business-like idea seized me—at least I felt on the instant that it was such. I shrank from going to see Solomon Salter myself. Although, as I have said, Palmyran conventionalities were different from those of the city, yet I felt that it was not quite proper for a young woman to seek a strange man’s business office on an errand of such purely personal interest that it might seem to savor of impertinence.
“Do you know Mr. Solomon Salter?” I demanded, eagerly.
“I know him, of course, every one does. He’s an inordinately rich old fellow—I beg your pardon—a man of great wealth, and he happens to be a trustee of the estate to which Peggy and I are heirs.”