The Big Mogul

This was the library of the Townsend mansion in Harniss. Mrs. Townsend had so christened it when the mansion was built; or, to be more explicit, the Boston architect who drew th...

In the Harniss post office Reliance Clark was sorting the evening mail. The post office was a small building on the Main Road. It sat back fifteen or twenty feet from that road...

Nabby Gifford did not serve her employer’s breakfast next morning. Ellen Dooley, the red-cheeked Irish “second maid,” did that. Nabby cooked the breakfast, of course, and she ma...

The next morning he sent Varunas to the Clark cottage with a note. The answer, when it came, was to the effect that Esther would be ready just after dinner. At one-thirty Mr. Gi...

The first step in that training was, of course, to inspire the colt with trust and liking for her new master. When that trust and liking were established the next move must be t...

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 whi...

She and Bob met thereafter at the rehearsals. There were few opportunities for confidential chats like that on the Nickerson porch during the storm, but occasionally he saw a ch...

Esther was late in returning home that afternoon. The portrait at last was finished. Even Bob was reluctantly obliged to admit that it was as nearly perfect as he could make it,...

Humble pie is not a tasty dish even to the palate accustomed to it. Foster Townsend’s palate was distinctly not of that kind. Even to himself he seldom acknowledged that his jud...

Mrs. Carter had not yet replied to his letter. He wrote another, stating his case more succinctly and intimating that he expected compliance with his wishes. He even dropped a h...

Esther’s hours of sleep that night were few indeed. She was happy one moment and miserable the next. Bob loved her--he told her so. And she loved him, she was sure of it now. Bu...

When Esther entered the dining room next morning she found her uncle already seated at the breakfast table reading a letter. The remainder of the mail brought up from the post o...

Foster Townsend chose this time to dispense with Varunas’s services and society on his drive to Ostable. He piloted the span himself, along the rutted stretches of yellow sand,...

Foster Townsend drove straight home, turned the horses and carriage over to the care of Varunas and went into the house. There, in the library, with the portières drawn and the...

“If” is one of the shortest words in the English language and also one of the most important. “If” Elisha Cook had not been taken ill with a cold, accompanied by complications t...

Foster Townsend was noticing a change in his niece’s manner and behavior. The change, it seemed to him, dated from the evening when Seymour Covell and Bob Griffin renewed their...

Foster Townsend was, ordinarily, a sound sleeper. Possessed of a good digestion, he seldom lay awake and seldom dreamed. In the small hours of the morning following his return f...

Bob Griffin answered that knock reluctantly. He had half a mind not to answer it at all. He had stopped in at the Eldridge home on his way down from the station--he had come fro...

“Esther,” she said, “your Aunt Reliance Clark is here at the side door. She wants to see you, she says. I told her you was eatin’ your breakfast, but she said never mind, she’d...

At four that afternoon Reliance Clark was alone in the millinery shop at the rear of the post office building, sewing this time not upon the material for a bonnet or hat, but a...

At precisely eight-thirty she turned the key in the side door of the post-office building, and, hurrying to the sidewalk, almost ran along it. Twenty minutes later, when she reë...

She did not sit there long. For a few minutes only she permitted herself the luxury of tears. Then she rose, cleared away the remains of the impromptu wedding feast, hastened ou...

The letter for which Reliance had so anxiously waited came in the evening mail next day. Esther had written it from Boston. She had spent the night at the house of Bob’s cousin...

That telegram was handed to Captain Ben by the depot master who was also the telegraph operator. He watched the expression on the captain’s face during the reading of the dispatch.

The next time she visited the big house she took with her all of Esther’s letters, those written from Boston as well as the later arrivals from Paris. She said little about them.

It was late in August before he was well enough to be about and to take short walks out of doors. Reliance still remained at the big house. He insisted that she do so.