the pier, and under strong
restraint of locks and gates, to prevent them from rushing on board the
boat and possessing her for the return trip before she had landed her
Nantasket passengers.

"Overload 'em every time," he continued, with a sort of dry, impersonal
concern at the impending calamity, as if it could not possibly include
him. "They take about twice as many as they ought to carry, and about
ten times as many as they could save if anything happened. Yes, sir,
it's bound to come. Hello! There's my girl!" He took out his folded
newspaper and waved it toward a group of phaetons and barouches drawn
up on the pier a little apart from the pack of people, and a lady in
one of them answered with a flourish of her parasol.

When he had made his way with his guest through the crowd, she began to
speak to her father before she noticed Corey. "Well, Colonel, you've
improved your last chance. We've been coming to every boat since four
o'clock,--or Jerry has,--and I told mother that I would come myself
once, and see if I couldn't fetch you; and if I failed, you could walk
next time. You're getting perfectly spoiled."

The Colonel enjoyed letting her scold him to the end before he said,
with a twinkle of pride in his guest and satisfaction in her probably
being able to hold her own against any discomfiture, "I've brought Mr.
Corey down for the night with me, and I was showing him things all the
way, and it took time."

The young fellow was at the side of the open beach-wagon, making a
quick bow, and Penelope Lapham was cozily drawling, "Oh, how do you do,
Mr. Corey?" before the Colonel had finished his explanation.

"Get right in there, alongside of Miss Lapham, Mr. Corey," he said,
pulling himself up into the place beside the driver. "No, no," he had
added quickly, at some signs of polite protest in the young man, "I
don't give up the best place to anybody. Jerry, suppose you let me
have hold of the leathers a minute."

This was his way of taking the reins from the driver; and in half the
time he specified, he had skilfully turned the vehicle on the pier,
among the crooked lines and groups of foot-passengers, and was spinning
up the road toward the stretch of verandaed hotels and restaurants in
the sand along the shore. "Pretty gay down here," he said, indicating
all this with a turn of his whip, as he left it behind him. "But I've
got about sick of hotels; and this summer I made up my mind that I'd
take a