“There now!” exclaimed Maria Port, springing to her feet.  “What have you got to say to that?  If that isn’t brazen I never saw brass!”

“What do you mean?” said the captain, rising in his chair.

“Mean?” said Maria Port, leaning over the railing.  “Look there!  Do you see that girl getting away as fast as she can work herself?  That’s your precious niece, Olive Asher, scooting past us with her nose in the air as if we was sticks and stones by the side of the road.  What have you got to say to that, Captain John, I’d like to know?”

The captain ran down the path.  “You don’t mean to say that is Olive!” he cried.

“That’s who it is,” answered Miss Port.  “She looked me square in the face as she dashed by.  Not a word for you, not a word for me.  Impudence!  That doesn’t express it!”

The captain paid no attention to her, but ran into the garden.  Old Jane was standing near the house door.  “Was that Miss Olive?” he cried.  “Did you see her?”

“Yes,” said old Jane, “it was her.  I saw her comin’, and I came out to meet her.  But she just shot through the toll-gate as if she didn’t know there was a toll on bicycles.”

The captain stood still in the garden-path.  He could not believe that Olive had done this to treat him with contempt.  She must have heard some news.  There must be something the matter.  She was going into town at the top of her speed to send a telegram, intending to stop as she came back.  She might have stopped anyway if it had not been for that good-for-nothing Maria Port.  She hated Maria, and he hated her himself, at this moment, as she stood by his side, asking him what was the matter with him.

“It’s no more than you have to expect,” said she.  “She’s a fine lady, a navy lady, a foreign lady, that’s been with the aristocrats!  She’s got good clothes on that she never wore here, and where I guess she had a pretty stupid time, judgin’ from how they carry on at that Easterfield place.  Why in the world should she want to stop and speak to such persons as you and me?”

The captain paid no attention to these remarks.  “If she doesn’t want to send a telegram, I don’t see what she is going to town for in such a hurry.  I suppose she thought she could get there sooner than a man could go on a horse,” he said.

“Telegram!” sneered Miss Port.  “It’s a great deal easier to send telegrams from the gap.”

“Then it is something worse,” he thought.  Perhaps she might be running away, though what in the world she was running from he could not imagine.  Anyway, he must see her; he must find out.  When she came back she must not pass again, and if she did not come back he must go after her.  He ran to the road and put down the bar, calling to old Jane to come there and keep a sharp lookout.  Then he quickly returned to the house.

“What are you going to do” asked Miss Port.  “I never saw a man in such a fluster.”