Foster Townsend was, by this time, entirely satisfied with his handling of the skittish colt. She was well on the way to becoming the stylish and properly paced animal he had set out to make her. It gratified him to notice that she now turned to him for advice and guidance more than to Reliance Clark. He had announced his intention of making her his entirely. He had done it. Life was worth while, after all. If Arabella _did_ know what was going on in this mortal world he was sure she must approve. The inevitable male was always in the offing, of course. Some day the right man would appear. The certainty no longer worried him. Now, he felt sure, Esther would not presume to choose that man without his help. She was high-spirited still and required careful handling, but she was “trotting in harness” and he held the reins. CHAPTER VI 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.