The captain smiled.  “Sometimes, I suppose,” said he, “I don’t say enough, and sometimes I say too much, but—­”

“Then I wish he’d struck you more on an average,” interrupted Miss Port.  “But there’s no use talkin’ any more about it.  I hired a horse and a carriage and a boy to come out here this mornin’ to ask you about that man.  And what’s come of it?  You haven’t got a single thing to tell anybody except that he’s big.”

The captain changed the subject again.  “How is your father?” he asked.

“Pop’s just the same as he always is,” was the answer.  “And now, as I don’t want to lose the whole of the seventy-five cents I’ve got to pay, suppose you call in that niece of yours, and let me have a talk with her.  Perhaps I can get something interesting out of her.”

The captain left the room, but he did not move with alacrity.  He found Olive with a book in a hammock at the back of the house.  When he told her his errand she sat up with a sudden bounce, her feet upon the ground.

“Uncle,” she said, “isn’t that woman a horrid person?”

The captain was a merry-minded man, and he laughed.  “It is pretty hard for me to answer that question,” said he; “suppose you go in and find out for yourself.”

Olive hesitated; she was a girl who had a very high opinion of herself and a very low opinion of such a person as this Miss Port seemed to be.  Why should she go in and talk to her?  Still undecided, she left the hammock and made a few steps toward the house.  Then, with a sudden exclamation, she stopped and dropped her book.

“Buggy coming,” she exclaimed, “and that thing is running to take the toll!” With these words she started away with the speed of a colt.

An approaching buggy was on the road; Miss Maria Port, walking rapidly, had nearly reached the back door of the tollhouse when Olive swept by her so closely that the wind of her fluttering garments almost blew away the breath of the elder woman.

“Seven cents!” cried Olive, standing in the covered doorway, but she might have saved herself the trouble of repeating this formula, for the man in the buggy was not near enough to hear her.

When Olive saw it was a man, she turned, and perceiving her uncle approaching the tollhouse, she hurried by him up the garden path, looking neither to the right nor to the left.

“A pretty girl that is of yours!” exclaimed Miss Port.  “She might just as well have slapped me in the face!”

“But what were you going to do in here?” asked Captain Asher.  “You know that’s against the rules.”

“The rules be bothered,” replied the irate Maria.  “I thought it was Mr. Smiley.  He’s been away from his parish for a week, and there are a good many things I want to ask him.”

“Well, it is the Roman Catholic priest from Marlinsville,” said Captain Asher, “and he wouldn’t tell you anything if you asked him.”

The captain had a cheerful little chat with the priest, who was one of his most valued road friends; and when he returned to his garden he found Miss Port walking up and down the main path in a state of agitation.