What right had he to think of his niece in that way?  It was not doing the fair thing by her father, and perhaps by her, for that matter.  For all he knew she might be engaged to somebody out West or down East, or in some other part of the world where she had lived.  But this idea made very little impression on him.  Knowing Olive as he did, he did not believe that she was engaged to anybody anywhere; he did not want to think that she was the kind of girl who would conceal her engagement from him, or who could do it, for that matter.  But, everything considered, he was very glad Olive had gone to Broadstone, for, whatever the young fellow might happen to be, he wanted to know all about him before Olive met him.

Captain Asher firmly believed that there was nothing of the matchmaker in his disposition, but notwithstanding this estimate of himself, he went on thinking of Olive and the son of his old shipmate, both separately and together.  He had never said to anybody, nor intimated to anybody, that he was going to give any of his moderate fortune to his niece.  In fact, before this visit to him he had not thought much about it, nor did it enter his mind that Olive’s Boston aunt, her mother’s sister, had favored this visit of the girl to her toll-gate uncle, hoping that he might think about it.

In consequence of these cogitations, and in spite of the fact that he despised matchmaking, Captain Asher was greatly interested in the coming advent of his shipmate’s son.

When the same phaeton, the same horse, and the same boy that had brought Maria Port to the tollhouse, conveyed there a young man with two valises, one rather large, Captain Asher did not hurry from the house to meet his visitor.  He had seen him coming, and had preferred to stand in his doorway and take a preliminary observation of him.  Having taken this, Captain Asher was obliged to confess to himself that he was disappointed.

The first cause of his disappointment was the fact that the young man wore a colored shirt and no vest, and a yellow leather belt.  Now, Captain Asher for the greater part of his active life had worn colored shirts, sometimes very dark ones, with no vests, but he had not supposed that a young man coming to a house where there was a young lady accustomed to the best society would present himself in such attire.  The captain instantly remembered that his visitor could not know that there was a young lady at the house, but this did not satisfy him.  Such attire was not respectful, even to him.  The leather belt especially offended him.  The captain was not aware of the neglige summer fashions for men which then prevailed.

The next thing that disappointed him was that young Lancaster, seen across the garden, did not appear to be the strapping young fellow he had expected to see.  He was moderately tall, and moderately broad, and handled his valise with apparent ease, but he did not look as though he were his father’s son.  Dick Lancaster had married the daughter of a captain when he was only a second mate, and that piece of good fortune had been generally attributed to his good looks.