ESTHER’S second term at the Conservatory ended in June and she came to Harniss for her long vacation. There was to be no traveling this summer. The visit to Paris concerning which she and her uncle had talked so often and which he still declared they should have some day was postponed.
“When we go over there,” Foster Townsend said, “I don’t want to be bothered with time. You are going to study your singing, you know, and you may have to stay a year—yes, or longer. If we went just now those lawyers of mine might be sending for me and I should have to come back and bring you with me. Couldn’t leave you alone over there among all those jabbering Frenchmen, could I? I guess not! Let me get this everlasting lawsuit off my hands and we’ll go in comfort. Confound the thing! I’m getting sick of it. I wish I had bought off Cook in the beginning. I could have done it then, I guess, and saved money.”
She laughed at him. “You know you wouldn’t have bought him off for worlds,” she declared.
“Eh? Well no, maybe I wouldn’t. The Supreme Court will step on his toes, if the case ever gets before it. Now it looks as if it might get there, but when the Lord only knows. Maybe in six months, maybe not for two years. They are in no hurry down in Washington; everybody on that Court is a hundred years old, more or less. What is a year or so to a gang like that? Well, possess your soul in patience, girlie. You and I will make Paris yet, if we don’t die of old age first.”
She was, by this time, fairly well acquainted with the basic details of the famous suit, although there was a great deal which she—and most others except the lawyers—did not understand. Elisha Cook and Foster Townsend had once been partners in the shipping and ship-outfitting business, with offices in Boston and in a Connecticut city. The firm was prosperous. Cook, she gathered, was conservative—a fussy old woman, her uncle had called him. He it was who conducted the Connecticut office; he was, at the time, a legal resident of that state.
Foster Townsend was his exact opposite in character and temperament. He was keen, sharp and inclined to plunge, when, in his opinion, the opportunities for plunging presented themselves. Again and again, so he told his niece, Cook refused to profit by these opportunities and the partners lost thousands which they might easily have gained. In consequence there were increasing disagreements. The “square-rigged” shipping business was falling off. The Civil War hit it a hard blow and, although it recovered in a measure from that blow, there were new obstacles in its path—steam and foreign competition—which, so Townsend believed, would kill it eventually. He advocated other ventures—real estate, for example. Fortunes were being made in Boston land, land in immediate proximity to the city. Townsend, on his own initiative, secured options on a large quantity of that land. Cook, the senior partner, flatly refused his consent to the firm’s taking up those options. The long series of slighter disagreements culminated in this important one. After more wrangling and dispute it was decided to dissolve the partnership, although the terms of dissolution were not actually agreed upon.
Then Cook was taken ill, an illness which lasted for months. During that illness Townsend went ahead, borrowed money, secured the land and held it. He obtained more capital and plunged still deeper. When Cook recovered sufficiently to attend in the least to business matters, the firm of Cook and Townsend ceased to exist. Elisha Cook took over the Connecticut branch, which was the “outfitting” end of the business and was allotted sufficient money and securities to give him a comfortable, if not large, independence. Foster Townsend was left with options, mortgages, debts—and the chance of a fortune.
He won the fortune. He became a rich man and, after a time, retired and came to Harniss to settle down as its leading citizen. Cook, who also had retired, returned to Denboro, Massachusetts, his native village, to spend the remainder of his life.
But before this the legal complications had begun. They were far too involved and technical for Esther’s complete comprehension. Cook claimed his share of the profits from the land deals. There were many questions to be decided. Whose money secured the first options? Was it Townsend alone or Cook and Townsend, who carried on the immensely profitable deals which followed the first one? The determination of the date of dissolution of partnership entered into the affair. Mr. Cook had done something which was called “obtaining service” upon his former partner in a Connecticut court. Townsend, in explaining to his niece, talked of a “bill of equity,” whatever that might be. Townsend contested this “service” and then, when his motion was denied, appealed to a higher court. This appeal also was denied. Then Cook sued, on the Connecticut judgment, in a Massachusetts court. After that Esther lost count. The Massachusetts court did something or other which favored her uncle. Then Mr. Cook went at it again and in a new way. There were appeals and denials and things called “writs of error.” For year after year, the historic Cook-Townsend suit crawled along, until at last it was to receive a final decision by the highest tribunal in the land, when that tribunal should give it place upon its crowded calendar. Its cost so far had been enormous. How Elisha Cook could afford to carry it on had always been a question. The inference was that his attorneys were gambling with him. If he won they would win. Foster Townsend could afford to pay his lawyers—yes. But he, nor few others, could afford to lose the huge sum claimed and fought for by his opponents.
No one in Harniss believed Cook would win. Their faith in the Townsend star never faltered. He always had his own way in everything; he would have it here. And his own serene confidence bolstered theirs. He laughed at the idea of failure. He had laughed always when he referred to the case on the few occasions when he and his niece discussed it. Of late, however, it had seemed to her, that his laugh was not quite as genuine and carefree. She gathered that the granting to the Cook forces of the appeal to the Supreme Court had been most unexpected. He was still serenely confident, or professed to be, but she knew he was disappointed. When he declared himself sick of the whole thing and expressed the wish that he had settled with his former partner in the beginning, she laughed and refused to take the statement seriously; but she was surprised to hear him say it.
She forgot the whole affair very quickly, having, for her, much more interesting matters to occupy her mind. She soon forgot her own disappointment at the postponement of the Paris trip. The summer season in Harniss was beginning and, although it was far from the gay activity of a summer season in that village nowadays, it was lively and interesting. The sojourners from the cities were filling Mrs. Cooper’s fashionable boarding house and the few cottages were opening. It was the Reverend Mr. Colton’s harvest time. His congregations were larger with each succeeding Sunday and the collections larger also. He consulted with his summer parishioners as to the means of raising additional funds for the First Church and it was decided to give an “Old Folks’ Concert.” He came to see Foster Townsend about it, of course. The great man was not too enthusiastic at first.
“Foolishness,” he declared, gruffly. “If I ran my business affairs the way you church people run yours you’d be for having me shut up in an asylum, and I ought to be. You had a fair last winter—just as you have every winter. What did it amount to? All the women worked like blazes making things, or spent money buying things somewhere else, to be sold at that fair. Then every husband came and bought the things the other fellows’ wives had made or donated. That’s all there was to that.”
The minister ventured to protest.
“But, Captain Townsend,” he pleaded, “we made over a hundred dollars at that fair. You have forgotten that.”
“I’ve forgotten nothing. You didn’t really make a cent. All you did was to swap that hundred dollars from one hand to the other.”
The interview took place in the Townsend stables and Mr. Gifford was an interested listener. As a free-born citizen of a democracy he spoke his mind.
“You’re dead right, Cap’n Foster,” he declared. “That’s just what I tell Nabby. Afore that fair last winter she set up night after night makin’ a crazy quilt. Spent four or five dollars for this, that and t’other to make it out of, to say nothin’ of usin’ up my best Sunday necktie and bustin’ a three-dollar pair of spectacles and gettin’ so cranky I didn’t hardly dast to come into the house mealtimes. And when the fair came off ’Rastus Doane bought that quilt for five dollars—not ’cause he needed it; they’ve got more quilts than they have beds twice over—but because he knew he’d be expected to buy somethin’. And I paid two dollars for a doll his wife had worked herself sick dressin’ and that Nabby give me the divil for buyin’. ‘What do you want of a doll?’ says she. ‘You ain’t got any children. What did you waste your money like that for?’ ‘I had to waste it somehow, didn’t I?’ I told her. ‘That’s what a church fair’s for,’ says I, ‘to waste money. I laid out two dollars to waste and I wasted it quick as I could. After that I could say no to all the rest of the gang and have a pretty good time.’”
Townsend chuckled. “There’s your answer, Colton,” he said. “Let your Old Folks’ singing school, or whatever it is, slide. Go around amongst the congregation and the summer crowd and collect two dollars apiece. You’ll have just as much money in the end and no worry or work or hard feelings. Here! here’s my two dollars to begin with.”
Mr. Colton was not satisfied with this lesson in common-sense finance. He smiled deprecatingly, and shook his head.
“Every one isn’t as generous—or practical—as you are, Captain Townsend,” he said. “Of course if you are against having the concert it won’t be given, but the other people, those I have talked with, are very enthusiastic about it. Particularly the summer visitors, the younger element. They will enjoy taking part. Your niece, Esther, is as eager as the others. We had intended to ask her to be our principal soloist. Every one knows of her charming voice, but very few have had the privilege of hearing her sing. I have mentioned the idea to her and she—”
Townsend interrupted. “Oh, Esther is for it, is she?” he observed. “Humph! Well, if that is so I don’t know as I shall stand in the way. It is all foolishness, of course, but— So they want to hear her sing, do they?”
“Indeed they do. The summer people—the very best people—particularly. Your niece has made a great hit with them, Captain Townsend. They have already taken her to their hearts, as the saying goes.”
“Oh, they have, have they? Well, she won’t give ’em heart disease, I guess. I haven’t seen one of their girls yet who is fit to tread the same deck with her.”
There was a hint of tartness in the speech which the reverend gentleman noticed, but thought it best to ignore.
“They like her—and admire her—very much indeed,” he insisted, eagerly. “Why, Mrs. Wheeler—you know the Wheelers, Captain; New Haven people, Professor Wheeler is at Yale—Mrs. Wheeler herself told me only yesterday that she and her daughter had become so fond of Esther. They felt already as if she was one of their own.”
“She did, eh? Well, she isn’t theirs, she is mine.... All right, all right! Have your concert, if you want to. As for Esther’s singing in it, that is for her to settle.”
Varunas furnished the last word.
“If she does sing she’ll make the rest of ’em sound like crows a-hollerin’,” he announced. “Every time Esther starts singin’ in that front parlor of ours even Nabby stops talkin’ to listen. And it takes some singin’ to fetch that around, now, I tell ye.”
So the preparations for the concert went on. The rehearsals were few and Esther enjoyed them. At the meeting, when the question of costumes was brought up for discussion, she was not present, having driven with her uncle to Ostable. But the following day—Sunday—when she stopped in at the cottage for a chat with her Aunt Reliance, she learned an item of news which surprised her.
She had not seen Reliance at all during the week just past. As a matter of fact they did not see each other as frequently nowadays. There was no apparent reason for this—at least Esther could have given none. She would have fiercely resented the insinuation that her love for her aunt was not as deep and sincere as it had always been. Nevertheless—and Reliance was quite aware of it—during her second winter away from Harniss, when she returned for her week-end stays, she no longer hurried down to the Clark house the moment Saturday’s dinner was over. She came Sunday, provided the Clarks were not dining at the mansion, but her calls were shorter and she had always so many other things to do, so many new interests to occupy her time and her thoughts, that the conversation was likely to be confined to these topics. The heart-to-heart talks and intimate confidences and confessions were much rarer.
Reliance noticed the change, of course, but she did not refer to it, nor hint at the heartache which, at times, she could not help feeling. It was what she had foreseen, had known must be the inevitable result of the complete change in the girl’s life. Esther had learned to love and trust her uncle, had become accustomed to wealth and what it gave her, had made new, and quite different friends, was now well on her way to the brilliant future Foster Townsend had planned for her. It was a natural development, that was all. Reliance fully realized this, had recognized it when they parted two years before. And not for worlds would she drop a word which might cause her niece unhappiness or a twinge of conscience. It was only when she was alone—or with Millard, which amounted to the same thing—that she occasionally permitted her thoughts to dwell upon the certainty that the widening gap between Esther and herself would widen more and more as the years passed.
So when the young lady breezed into the little sitting-room that Sunday afternoon, expensively and becomingly gowned, her cheeks aglow and her eyes shining with excitement in prospect of her part in the concert and the praise which—to quote the Reverend Colton—“the best people” had already accorded her singing at the rehearsals, Reliance met her with the usual sunny smile and cheerful every day greeting. They talked of the gratifying sale of tickets—almost everybody in town was going, so Miss Clark said—and then the question of a suitable costume came up.
“What do you think I had better wear, Auntie?” asked Esther. “Would you hire a costume in the city, if you were I? Mrs. Carter would pick one out for me, I know, if I wrote her. Or would it be better to use some of Grandmother Townsend’s things—those she wore when she was a girl? There is a lovely old figured silk in one of the chests in the garret. It doesn’t fit me very well, but it could be made to fit with a little alteration. I thought perhaps you and Abbie would help me make it over, if I decided to wear it. Will you?”
Reliance nodded. “Of course,” she agreed. “I must say I like the idea of usin’ real old things that belonged to real old-time folks better than I do hirin’ new make-believes. I’ve been in Old Folks’ Concerts myself. Oh, yes, I have! There was a time when I used to like to dress up and show off as well as the next one. Dear, dear! Why, I remember one Old Folks’ Concert when I wore my own grandmother’s gown, one she had made as a part of her weddin’ outfit. It was a pretty thing, too, and I looked well in it, at least, so they all said. Your uncle took me up to the hall that night in a buggy he hired at the old livery stable that Elkanah Hammond kept. He wore buff knee breeches and white silk stockings and—”
Esther broke in. “Who did?” she cried, incredulously. “Not—not Uncle Foster?”
“Yes. And his coat was blue, with brass buttons. He— Now what are you laughin’ at?”
Esther had burst into a peal of delighted laughter.
“Oh, it sounds too funny to be true!” she exclaimed. “Imagine Uncle Foster wearing things like that!”
“He looked well in ’em.... But there! that was—oh, twenty-four years ago. You ask him if he remembers it and see what he says. Now about what you shall wear next week. Why don’t you ask Mr. Griffin’s advice? I understand he is goin’ to have charge of that part—the costumes, I mean.”
Esther stared in surprise.
“Who?” she cried. “Mr. Griffin? Who is Mr. Griffin, for goodness’ sake?”
“Why, young Bob Griffin, from Denboro. Elisha Cook’s grandson. You know who he is. You ought to. He stopped you from bein’ run away with at that horse trot two years ago. Didn’t you know they had given him charge of all the dressin’ up?”
Esther did not know it and she demanded particulars. Her aunt supplied them.
“It was decided at the committee meetin’ they had yesterday afternoon,” she said. “You were over in Ostable, weren’t you; I forgot that. It seems there was a great pow wow, some wanted to wear one kind of thing and some another and then Mrs. Wheeler, the one that has the summer place on the Shore Road, she came marchin’ in with Bob Griffin under one arm, as you might say, and a great idea under the other. She knew Bob—I guess her daughter met him in New York or New Haven or somewhere—and she—or the daughter—had remembered that he was an artist and would know all about what she called ‘period dress.’ Accordin’ to what I heard he wasn’t so sure about his wisdom as she was, by a good deal, but he agreed to help if they wanted him to. The older folks hadn’t much objection and all the girls were crazy about it, so he was made superintendent of what to wear. He is to be at the next rehearsal, whenever that is.”
She paused and Esther nodded.
“To-morrow evening,” she said, “in the church vestry.”
“Well, wherever it is he’ll be there and you can ask him what he thinks of Tabitha Townsend’s dress. Yes, Tabby was the name she had to answer to, poor soul; my own grandmother used to tell me a lot about her.”
Esther left the Clark cottage with the same old little thrill of interest she had felt when Millard had mentioned Bob’s name months before. Now the thrill was a trifle keener, for she was to meet him again. She was not greatly stirred by the prospect; nevertheless it was rather attractive. She found herself thinking about him a good deal in the interval before the rehearsal, wondering if he had changed as greatly as she had, in—oh, so many ways, and if he was succeeding as well with his painting as she with her music. Also she wondered if he had forgotten her. Not that it made any difference, of course, whether he had or not.
Her speculations on that score were quickly settled. She was already in the vestry when he entered, chaperoned by Mrs. Wheeler and favored with the giggling confidences of Marjorie, the Wheeler daughter. Mrs. Wheeler beamed upon the assembly.
“Well, here we are,” she announced. “Mr. Griffin informs me that he has given a great deal of thought to the dresses and—er—all that sort of thing, you know, and he has brought over several books of costumes for us to look at. I only hope he realizes how very kind we consider it of him. You have all met him, haven’t you? You know every one here, don’t you, Mr. Griffin?”
Bob smiled assent.
“I think I have that pleasure,” he replied. “I—” Then he paused. Esther, herself a trifle late at the rehearsal, had taken a seat upon one of the rear settees. His eye had caught hers and remained fixed.
Mrs. Wheeler noticed the look.
“Oh!” she cried. “I did forget, after all, didn’t I? There is one you haven’t met. You weren’t here Saturday, were you, Esther? Bob—”
But Bob had not waited for the formal presentation. He was on his way to that rear settee. He held out his hand and Esther took it.
“It is all right, Mrs. Wheeler,” she explained. “Mr. Griffin and I have met before.” To Bob she said: “I wondered if you would remember me.”
She was a trifle confused, for she was quite conscious that every one was looking at them. Griffin, if he was aware of the look, did not appear to mind it in the least. His evident delight at the meeting was plain for all to see.
“Remember?” he repeated. “I should think I did! I was hoping you might be here to-day. Mrs. Wheeler told me you were going to sing at the Concert. I have heard a lot about you, you know. They tell me you are the Patti of the affair.”
She laughed and blushed. She wished he would not look at her so intently. The unconcealed surprise and admiration in his look might be flattering, perhaps, but were undoubtedly embarrassing. She withdrew her hand from his and tried to appear unconcerned and dignified.
“Oh, hardly that,” she said, lightly. “I am going to take part, just as the others are. You are to select our costumes, for us, aren’t you?”
“They have dragged me into it. They will be sorry by and by, and I tell them so.... Yes, Mrs. Wheeler, I’m coming. I was just telling Miss Townsend that every one speaks of her as the star of the show. She doesn’t seem to believe it, but it is so, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Wheeler had bustled after him and was standing at his elbow. Her reply was a trifle curt, so Esther thought.
“Oh, yes, yes! Quite so,” she said. “Miss Townsend is our brightest luminary, of course. Now, Bob, if you are ready to discuss the costumes, we are.... Mr. Griffin is almost like one of the family,” she explained to the girl in an audible aside. “We have seen so much of him at New Haven and in New York. Marjorie and he are great friends.”
Marjorie was the Wheeler daughter. Esther did not like her too well. She had a way of saying mean little things in the sweetest possible manner.
The discussion concerning the costumes was very informal. Griffin exhibited his books of colored plates and offered suggestions.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, in conclusion, “I think the more genuine old things you can wear the better. Unless this town is different from Denboro there must be a lot of tip top old gowns and swallow-tails hidden away in camphor. So long as we don’t exhibit Henry the Eighth on the same platform with General Scott we should make a presentable showing, I should say. Stick to the period between the Declaration of Independence and the Mexican War, that would be my idea.”
The rehearsal followed the discussion. Esther sang her two solos and received her usual dole of compliments, whole-hearted or perfunctory according to the measure of envy in the make-up of the complimenters. When the gathering broke up she rather expected, and to a certain extent dreaded, that Bob Griffin would seek her out and continue their conversation. She would have enjoyed talking with him, but their talk would certainly provoke so much more talk throughout the length and breadth of Harniss that she shrank from the prospect. She was relieved, when she emerged from the vestry, to find him nowhere in sight. Marjorie Wheeler had exercised peremptory claim upon his company, she imagined.
Varunas, driving the span, had brought her to the rehearsal, but she had insisted that she be allowed to walk home. It bade fair to be a beautiful afternoon and early evening, she needed the exercise and would prefer it. Now, however, as she came down the church steps, she was aware that the sky was rapidly being obscured by dark clouds and she could hear the rumble of thunder in the west. She looked about, hoping that her uncle might have noticed the approaching storm and sent Mr. Gifford and the carriage, after all. Apparently he had not, so she started to walk briskly along the sidewalk. She had walked but a little way when a splash of rain fell upon the crown of her new and expensive hat. She fancied that hat, also the new gown she was wearing. Again she paused and looked impatiently up the road for Varunas and the span. They were not visible.
Then she heard her name called and, turning back, saw a masculine form with an umbrella running in her direction. When this person came nearer she recognized him as Bob Griffin. He was out of breath, but cheerful.
“Just caught you in time, didn’t I?” he panted. “I looked around for you when that chatter-mill shut down—the rehearsal, I mean—but Sister Wheeler had me under her wing and I couldn’t get away in a hurry. When I did you had gone. I found this umbrella in the entry. I don’t know whose it is, but it is ours now. Hope the real owner doesn’t get too wet.”
He grinned broadly and lifted the commandeered umbrella over the new hat.
“Now we must move,” he went on. “It is going to rain like blazes. This is what my grand-dad would call a ‘tempest.’”
She took his arm and, partially sheltered by the umbrella, they hurried along the sidewalk. She imagined that eager eyes were watching them from each window they passed, but it was no time for finicky objections. The rain was pouring now and continued to increasingly pour. Her feet were growing damp, so were her skirts. Suddenly her escort stopped.
“Wait!” he ordered. “Great Scott! this isn’t a shower, it’s a flood. We must get under cover somewhere and wait till it lets up. You mustn’t drown—not until after that concert, anyhow. They would hang me if you did. Here! this will do. I don’t know who lives here, but they won’t put us out, I guess. Come!”
He led her in through a gate in a picket fence and they hurried up a weed-grown walk to a rickety front porch. Bob folded the umbrella and turned to the door. There was a glass-knobbed bell-pull at the side of the door and, before she could stop him, he had given it a tug.
“What are you doing that for?” she asked. “This house is empty. No one has lived in it for ever so long.”
He whistled. “You don’t mean it!” he exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me? Well, we’ll go on to the next one then.”
A vivid flash of lightning, almost instantly followed by a thunder peal which caused the windows in the old house to rattle, prevented her reply. The rain seemed to drop from the sky in sheets. It roared upon the shingled roof of the porch. She caught his arm.
“We can’t go out in this,” she said, nervously. “We must stay where we are—and wait.”
He nodded. “I guess you are right,” he agreed. “Heavens! what a deluge. It will ease up in a minute. Then we can go on.”
It did not ease up, however. Instead, it rained harder than ever. The porch roof began to leak and he raised the umbrella once more. She was obliged to stand close beside him to avoid the drip. It grew dark and the lightning flashes seemed more vivid in consequence. He felt her shiver.
“Not frightened, are you?” he asked.
“No-o, I guess not. But I don’t like it very well. Talk, please. Just— Oh, just say something to keep me from thinking about it.”
He laughed. “Good idea,” he declared. “What shall we talk about? Tell me what you have been doing up there in Boston.”
She told him about her studies at the Conservatory, about Mrs. Carter, about the California trip, of the wonderful happenings of the past two years. He asked questions and she answered them. The lightning and thunder punctuated her narrative and the rain on the roof furnished a steady roar of accompaniment.
“There!” she exclaimed, after a time. “I have said every word I can think of. Now tell me about your painting. You have been studying too. Some one—Uncle Millard, I think—told me you had.”
He shook his head. “I’ve been studying—yes,” he admitted. “I haven’t been climbing ahead the way you have, though. And I haven’t had your encouragement at home. When I told grandfather I had made up my mind to paint pictures for a living I thought he was going to have a fit. He has a relapse every once in a while even yet. I should have done it, though—or tried to do it—if he had ordered me out of the house. It was paint or nothing for me. I had rather do it than eat—and I like to eat pretty well,” he added, with another laugh.
His laugh was infectious. Esther laughed, too. “I must say I think your grandfather is very unreasonable,” she declared, with a return to seriousness. “Why shouldn’t you paint, if you want to—and can? It is a wonderful thing to be an artist.”
“So they say. I am far from being one yet, so I can’t speak from experience. Oh, well! I don’t blame the old gentleman for making a row. He doesn’t know. About the only painter he ever had any experience with was the chap who did grandmother’s portrait. That portrait is enough to sour anybody on the whole profession. Grandfather is a good fellow. I’m strong for him.”
She glanced at him in surprise. The few references she had heard made to Elisha Cook—Foster Townsend had made them—were far from classifying him as a “good fellow.”
“Is he!” she exclaimed, involuntarily. “Why, I thought—”
She paused. He nodded.
“You bet he is!” he vowed. “He has been mighty good to me and to lots of others. He doesn’t understand, that’s all. You are lucky, Esther. Your uncle does understand, or seems to. He was willing for you to go on with your singing.”
Her agreement was but partial. “Ye-s,” she said. “Yes, he does understand, in a way. He likes to hear me sing and he helps me to study because it pleases me to do it, you know. Why, the other day I said something about how marvelous it must be to sing in opera. I wish you could have heard him. The things he said about opera and those who sing in it were—well, they were what Nabby Gifford would have called ‘blasphemious.’”
Bob laughed at the word, but he was too much in earnest to laugh long.
“There you are!” he exclaimed. “That’s it. They don’t understand, either of them. They are like all old people, they belong back in another generation.” He spoke as if Elisha Cook and Foster Townsend were nonogenarians. “Granddad—yes, and your uncle, too, I suppose,” he went on, “were brought up to think that nothing counted but business, buying and selling and getting ahead of the other fellow in a trade, all that sort of stuff. Art and music and—and the rest of it they don’t see at all. Well, I do. I don’t want to be a business man. I want to paint. And I am going to paint. I’ll never be a Rembrandt maybe, but I am making a little progress, so my teachers say, and I’m going to stick at it. Some of these days I shall go to Paris, where the big fellows are. That’s the place—Paris!”
She gasped with excitement.
“Oh!” she cried. “Are you going to Paris? I am going there, myself, sometime, to study.”
“You are! Bully! We can see each other over there, can’t we?”
She seemed doubtful. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “My uncle is going to take me there and he—well, I don’t imagine he would be delighted to have you coming to call. You and I belong to—well, to opposite camps, I guess.... I suppose,” she added, thoughtfully, “if he knew you and I were here together now, this minute, he wouldn’t like it a bit. Probably your grandfather wouldn’t be any better pleased.”
Bob snorted. “Foolishness!” he declared. “That confounded lawsuit is a nuisance. I’m not going to let it chain me, hand and foot. Why should it? Or you, either? If we want to see each other and talk to each other like—well, like this—I say let’s do it. We aren’t old fossils and we aren’t kids either. I told grand-dad so. He isn’t going to send me to Paris, though,” he added, with a chuckle. “Perhaps he might if I had kept at him—he will do almost anything for me when it comes to the pinch—but he doesn’t have to. I have a little money of my own, it comes to me from my mother’s people. I can spend that as I please and I am spending it on my art studies. If you and I should be in Paris at the same time, we will meet over there. I’ll see that we do. Come now, Esther! Say that you’ll see to it, too. Come! let’s promise.”
She did not promise. She was still thinking of the feud between the families. Her conscience was troubling her a little.
“Your grandfather—Mr. Cook—wouldn’t like to have you know me, would he?” she insisted. “Honestly, now?”
“Well—well, perhaps he wouldn’t. But—”
“And my uncle wouldn’t like it at all. Uncle Foster has been so kind to me that—why, I can’t begin to tell you how kind he has been. He is the best man in the world.”
“Oh, say! Look here! He isn’t any better than my grandfather.”
“Bob Griffin! How can you say that?”
“But it is so. They are both good men, I guess. But they had a fight and now they have been fighting so long they think all the rest of creation must fight on one side or the other. We don’t have to fight, you and I, just because they do.”
“But Mr. Cook shouldn’t have brought that suit. He was all wrong and it was wicked of him, Uncle Foster says—”
“Now just a minute. You ought to hear what Grandfather says.... Humph! I guess there are two sides to that suit, just as there are to most fights. You haven’t heard but one side, have you?”
It was true, she had not, and she was obliged to admit it.
“No-o,” she confessed, “I suppose I haven’t. But you haven’t, either.”
His laugh was so unaffected and good-humored that, once more, hers joined it.
“I guess you are right there,” he agreed. “Well, let’s do this: Sometime you tell me your side—your uncle’s side, I mean—and then I’ll tell Grandfather’s. We can have a real court argument. And until then we’ll forget the darned thing. And we’re going to see each other in Paris; American lawsuits don’t hold over there. Yes, and we’ll see each other a whole lot before then.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think we had better,” she said. “Besides—how could we?”
“Why, at the rehearsal and the concert. Yes, and afterwards. I haven’t half told you about my painting. I have two or three sketches and things I want to show you. They aren’t so bad—not so awfully bad—honest, they aren’t. And say, I want to try a portrait sketch of you some day. In your costume, perhaps. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”
Before she could answer a rattle of wheels sounded from the road. They had been so engrossed in their conversation that neither had noticed the slackening of the storm. Now it was almost light again, the thunder peals sounded far away, and the rain was but an intermittent patter. Around the corner beyond the church came the Townsend span and covered carriage. Mr. Gifford was on the driver’s seat and peering anxiously about.
“It’s Varunas,” cried Esther. “He is looking for me. Thank you ever so much for the umbrella, Bob.... Here I am, Varunas!”
She ran down the walk. Bob started to run after her and then changed his mind.
“See you at the next rehearsal,” he called. “Don’t forget about Paris—or the sketch.”
Esther did not reply. She climbed into the carriage. Varunas drew a breath of relief.
“Where on earth have you been?” he demanded. “I’ve been huntin’ all over for you. Me and Cap’n Foster, was over to Bayport and that tempest hit on top of us afore we knew ’twas bound down this way. Soon’s we fetched home he sent me out for you. Been standin’ there on that Nickerson piazza all the time, have ye? You don’t look very wet. Who was that along with you?”
Esther did not tell him. What was the use? He would only ask more questions.
“Oh, just some one from the rehearsal,” she said. “We were waiting there until the storm was over. I am not wet at all. Drive home as fast as you can. Uncle Foster will be worried.”
She did not tell her uncle of the meeting and long talk with Bob Griffin. There was no reason why she should not, of course—but perhaps there was less reason why she should.