The next morning Captain Asher sat on his little piazza, smoking his pipe and thinking about Olive driving through the gate and paying toll to a stranger.  But he now considered the incident from a different point of view.  Of course, Olive had been surprised when she had seen the young man, but she might also have wondered how he happened to be there and she not know of it.  If he were staying long enough to be entrusted with toll-taking it might—­in fact, the captain thought it probably would—­appear very strange to her that she should not know of it.  So now he asked himself if it would not be a good thing if he were to write her a little note in which he should mention Mr. Lancaster and his visit.  In fact, he thought the best thing he could do would be to write her a playful sort of a note, and tell her that she should feel honored by having her toll taken up by a college professor.  But he did not immediately write the note.  The more he thought about it, the more he wished he had been at the toll-gate when Mrs. Easterfield’s phaeton passed by.

Captain Asher did not write his note at all.  He did not know what to say; he did not want to make too much of the incident, for it was really a trifling matter, only worthy of being mentioned in case he had something more important to write about.  But he had nothing more important; there was no reason why he should write to Olive during her short stay with Mrs. Easterfield.  Besides, she would soon be back, and then he could talk to her; that would be much better.  Now, two strong desires began to possess him; one was for Olive to come home; and the other for Dick Lancaster to go away.  There had been moments when he had had a shadowy notion of bringing the two together, but this idea had vanished.  His mind was now occupied very much with thoughts of his beautiful niece and very little with the young man in the colored shirt and turned-up trousers who was staying with him.

Dick Lancaster, in his arbor, was also thinking a great deal about Olive, and very little about that stalwart sailor, her uncle.  If he had merely seen the young woman, and had never heard anything about her, her face would have impressed him, but the knowledge that she was an inmate of the house in which he was staying could not fail to affect him very much.  He was puzzling his mind about the girl who had given him a quarter of a dollar, and to whom he had handed fifteen cents in change.  He wondered how such a girl happened to be living at such a place.  He wondered if there were any possibility of his staying there, or in the neighborhood, until she should come back; he wondered if there were any way by which he could see her again.  He might have wondered a good many other things if Captain Asher had not approached the arbor.  The captain having been aroused from his mental contemplation of Olive by a man in a wagon, had glanced over at the arbor and had suddenly been struck with the conviction that that young man looked bored, and that, as his host, he was not doing the right thing by him.