“Yes,” with a disgusted grunt, “you would have got along; all creation couldn’t stop your doing that, I guess. But what kind of a get-along would it have been? This is why you sublet your house, of course. I knew there was something behind that.... Now you aren’t going boarding down at Abbie Makepeace’s. You are going to stay right here. There is plenty of room. Nabby needs you to help. Yes, you are going to stay. You will stay--at least until the time comes when I put those Hopkinses out of your own place and you go back there to live, where you ought to be.” “No, Foster--” “I say _yes_! Confound it! Let me have my own way once in a while, won’t you?” This was like the old Foster Townsend, the big mogul. Her smile broadened. He noticed it and smiled also. “Sit down over there a minute, Reliance,” he ordered. “I want to talk to you.” She took the rocker so recently vacated by the Honorable Mooney. He sank into the leather chair and stretched his legs. She waited for him to speak, but he did not. “Well, Foster,” she asked, after a moment, “what is it?” He jingled the change in his pocket, the old habit of his. He appeared a little uneasy. “Well?” she repeated. He lifted his head. “What I have got to say is--well, confound it, it is hard to say,” he began. “For me, anyhow. Reliance, I suppose you think I’ve got a grudge against you for--that business of Esther’s. I haven’t.” “I am glad of that, Foster.” She _was_ glad, especially glad to hear him say it. In spite of her assurances to Esther, she had begun to think he never would. “Don’t you misunderstand me,” he went on, sharply. “I am no more in favor of her marrying that Griffin cub than I ever was. She made a big mistake there. If she had left it to me I could have found her a husband that was something more than a picture dauber. You bet I could! And he wouldn’t have been a Cook either.” There was much she might have said, much she wanted to say, but she thought it inadvisable just then. “We all of us make mistakes, Foster,” was her only comment. “Humph! Yes, we do. I have made a lot in my life. Well, if I had it to live over again, I would make the same ones, I shouldn’t wonder. I am built that way. I can no more help bossing other people’s affair than I can help breathing. I like to do it, always did. I don’t know as it pays, though.” “I don’t believe it does, Foster.” “It paid with Mooney just now, didn’t it?... Oh, well, you may be right. I certainly haven’t made what you might call a first-class job of it for the last three or four years.... Well, that wasn’t what I started to say. Reliance, you did one first-class job that night when you made Esther and--and that fellow of hers get married before they left Harniss. Get married right in your own house, with you to stand by and see them sign articles. That saved talk--and dirty, mean talk that might have hung around the girl all her life.” “That is the way I felt about it.”