“Don’t see whar he’ll get a wife, then,” said Phoebe.  “He never goes nowhar, and never sees nobody, except p’r’aps Miss Dora Bannister; an’ she’s too high an’ mighty for him.”

“Phoebe, you are stupider than I thought you were.  No lady is too high and mighty for Mr. Haverley.  And if he should happen to fancy Miss Dora, it will be a capital match.  What he needs is to marry a woman of position and means.  But that is not my business, or yours either, and by the way, Phoebe, since you are here, I will get you to take a letter to the post-office for me.  I will go back into this shop and write it.  You can take these two cents and buy an envelope and a sheet of paper, and bring them in to me.”

With this Miss Panney walked into the shop, and having asked the loan of pen and ink, horrified the girl at the counter by proceeding to the table she had left, which, in a corner favored by all customers, had just been prepared for the next comer, and, having pushed aside a knife and fork and plate, made herself ready to write her letter, which was to a friend in Barport, informing her that the writer intended making her a visit.

“I shall get there,” she thought, “about as soon as it does, but it looks better to write.”

Before the letter was finished, Phoebe was nearly as angry as the shop-girl; but at last, with exactly two cents with which to buy a stamp, she departed for the post-office.

“The stingy old thing!” she said to herself as she left the shop; “not a cent for myself, and makes me walk all the way out to that Cobhurst, too!  I see what that old woman is up to.  She’s afraid he’ll marry the young lady what’s out thar, an’ she wants him to marry Miss Dora, an’ git a lot of the Bannister money to fix up his old house, an’ then she expects to go out thar an’ board with ’em, for I reckon she’s gittin’ mighty tired of the way them Wittons live.  She’s always patchin’ up marriages so she can go an’ live with the people when they first begins housekeepin’, an’ things is bran-new an’ fresh.  She did that with young Mr. Witton, but their furniture is gittin’ pretty old an’ worn out now.  If she tries it with Mr. Hav’ley an’ Dora Bannister, I reckon she’ll make as big a botch of it as she did with Mike an’ me.”

CHAPTER XXXVI

A CRY FROM THE SEA

Miss Panney left Thorbury the next morning, but she had to go without seeing Phoebe, who did not appear at the station.  She arrived at Barport in the afternoon, and went directly to the house of the friend to whom she had written, and who, it is to be hoped, was glad to see her.  She deferred making her presence known to the Bannister party until the next morning.  When she called at their hotel about ten o’clock, she was informed that they had all gone down to the beach; and as they could not be expected to return very soon, Miss Panney betook herself to the ocean’s edge to look for them.