“Yes,” said Lancaster.

“Then it was Mrs. Easterfield driving some of her company.  I have seen her with that team.  And by George,” he exclaimed, “I bet my head the other one was Olive!  Of course it was.  And she paid toll!  Well, well, if that isn’t a good one!  Olive paying toll!  I wish I had been here to take it!  That truly would have been a lark!”

Dick Lancaster did not echo this wish of his host.  He was very glad, indeed, that the captain had not been at the toll-gate when the ladies passed through.  Captain Asher was still laughing.

“Olive must have been amazed,” he said.  “It was queer enough for her to go through my gate and pay toll, but to pay it to an Assistant Professor of Theoretical Mathematics was a good deal queerer.  I can’t imagine what she thought about it.”

“She did not know I am that!” exclaimed Dick Lancaster.  “There is nothing of the professor in my outward appearance—­at least, I hope not.”

“No, I don’t think there is,” replied the captain.  “But she must have been amazed, all the same.  I wish I had been here, or old Jane, anyway.  But, of course, when a stranger showed himself she would not have said anything.”

“But who is Olive?” asked Lancaster.

“She’s my niece,” said the captain.  “I don’t think I have mentioned her to you.  She is on a visit to me, but just now she is staying at Broadstone.  I suppose she will be there about a week longer.”

“It’s odd he has not mentioned her to me,” thought Lancaster, and then, as the captain went to ask old Jane if she had seen Olive pass, the young man retired to the arbor with a book which he did not read.

His desire to inform his host that it would be necessary to take leave of him on the morrow had very much abated.  It would be very pleasant, he thought, to be a visitor in a family of which that girl was a member.  But if she were not to return for a week, how could he expect to stay with the captain so long?  There would be no possible excuse for such a thing.  Then he thought it would be very pleasant to be in a country of which that young woman was one of the inhabitants.  Anyway, he hoped the captain would invite him to make a longer stay.  The great blue eyes with which the young lady had regarded him as she paid the toll would not fade out of his mind.

“She must have wondered who it was that took the toll,” said old Jane.  “And there wasn’t no need of it, anyway.  I could have took it as I always have took it when you was not here, and before either of them came.”

“Either of them” struck the captain’s ear strangely.  Here was this old woman coupling these two young people in her mind!