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And here at Sergeant Foster's doorway Esther parted from the elders, and was welcomed by shrieks of joy from three sturdy little cherubs the sergeant's olive branches, and here, as the last notes of tattoo went echoing away under the vast and spangled sky, one by one her charges closed their drooping lids and dropped to sleep and left their gentle friend and reader to her own reflections.
On the 18th of January General Foster's plans were unsettled by a dispatch received from General Grant, dated at Nashville on the 16th, but in some manner delayed in transmittal. It reached Foster just as he had Parke's report of our having most unexpectedly met Longstreet's infantry at Dandridge and of our retreat on Strawberry Plains.
The next speech changed her into a flushed and palpitating girl. "Mr. Gael wishes to know, madam," the man-servant recited his lesson automatically, "if you have seen the exhibition of Foster's water-colors, Fifty-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue. He wants to know if you will be there this afternoon at five o'clock.
"A coral ring set with pearls would be finer, don't you think?" said Guy, gravely. Tommy grinned and said that that was a toothy remark! Lucy blushed, and said laughingly, that she thought Mrs Foster's idea better, whereupon the widow waxed vainglorious, and tried to suggest some improvements.
Then not a word came from Willard for three mortal weeks, but Foster's daily visits to the bank were at last rewarded by a despatch from home bidding him return at once by first steamer, sending him abundant means, and assuring him all would be well.
Sitting alone over his fire in the long winter evenings, the scenes of his past life rose before him; his childhood; his aunt Robson's care of him; his first going to Foster's shop in Monkshaven; Haytersbank Farm, and the spelling lessons in the bright warm kitchen there; Kinraid's appearance; the miserable night of the Corneys' party; the farewell he had witnessed on Monkshaven sands; the press-gang, and all the long consequences of that act of concealment; poor Daniel Robson's trial and execution; his own marriage; his child's birth; and then he came to that last day at Monkshaven: and he went over and over again the torturing details, the looks of contempt and anger, the words of loathing indignation, till he almost brought himself, out of his extreme sympathy with Sylvia, to believe that he was indeed the wretch she had considered him to be.
Then those of the man, alone, went sprinting down the bluff southeastward over the flats some distance south of the Foster's doorway and up the opposite bluff, to a point where four ponies, shoeless, had been huddled for as much, perhaps, as half an hour.
Graham might have come back down the north road in his car and afterwards taken to the moors, but it was difficult to understand how he had found Foster's track. Chance, however, sometimes favored one in a curious way; the fellow might have found out that he had left the road and expected him to stop the night in Bewcastle dale.
'Come, Measter Hepburn, here's Nancy Pratt wi'out ev'n a soul to speak t' her, an' yo' mopin' theere. She says she knows yo' by sight fra' having dealt at Foster's these six year. See if yo' can't find summut t' say t' each other, for I mun go pour out tea.
"About a thousand ships are wrecked, and nearly a thousand lives are lost on the shores of this country every year," was still the burden of Mrs Foster's dreams when she was aroused by a loud knocking at the door of her cottage, and the sound of confused voices and trampling of many feet outside.
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