've
heard that sometimes they get out, and spend hours talkin' and smokin'
with you. I guess that's against the rules."

"It is all right between the company and me," replied the captain. "You
know I am a stockholder in a small way."

"You are!" exclaimed Miss Port. "Well, I've got somethin' by comin'
here, anyway." Stowing away this bit of information in regard to the
captain's resources in her mind for future consideration, she continued:
"I don't think much of that niece of your'n. Has she never lived
anywhere where the people had good manners?"

Olive, who had gone to her room in order to be out of the way of this
queer visitor, now sat by an upper window, and it was impossible that
she should fail to hear this remark, made by Miss Port in her most
querulous tones. Olive immediately left the window, and sat down on the
other side of the room.

"Good manners!" she ejaculated, and fell to thinking. Her present
situation had suddenly presented itself to her in a very different light
from that in which she had previously regarded it. She was living in a
very plain house in a very plain way, with a very plain uncle who kept a
tollhouse; but she liked him; and, until this moment, she had liked the
life. But now she asked herself if it were possible for her longer to
endure it if she were to be condemned to intercourse with people like
that thing down in the garden. If her uncle's other friends in Glenford
were of that grade she could not stay here. She smiled in spite of her
irritation as she thought of the woman's words--"Anywhere where the
people had good manners."

Good manners, indeed! She remembered the titled young officers in
Germany with whom she had talked and danced when she was but seventeen
years old, and who used to send her flowers. She remembered the people
of rank in the army and navy and in the state who used to invite her
mother and herself to their houses. She remembered the royal prince who
had wished to be presented to her, and whose acquaintance she had
declined because she did not like what she had heard of him. She
remembered the good friends of her father in Europe and America, ladies
and gentlemen of the army and navy. She remembered the society in which
she had mingled when living with her Boston aunt during the past winter.
Then she thought of Miss Port's question. Good manners, indeed!

"Well," said the perturbed Maria, after having been informed by the
captain that his niece was accust