opposite, their feet sticking out straight in front of them.

When they stopped at the toll-gate Captain Asher came down to collect
the toll--ten cents for two horses and a carriage. Olive was sitting in
the little arbor, reading. She had noticed the approaching equipage and
saw that there was a lady in it, but for some reason or other she was
not so anxious as she had been to collect toll from ladies. If she could
have arranged the matter to suit herself she would have taken toll from
the male travelers, and her Uncle John might attend to the women; she
did not believe that men would have such absurd ideas about people or
ask ridiculous questions.

There was no conversation at the gate on this occasion, for the
carriage was a little late, but as it rolled on Mrs. Margaret said to
Mr. Tom:

"It seems to me as though I have just had a glimpse of Dresden. What do
you suppose could have suggested that city to me?"

Mr. Tom could not imagine, unless it was the dust. She laughed, and said
that he had dust and ballast and railroads on the brain; and when the
oldest little girl asked what that meant, Mrs. Margaret told her that
the next time her father came home she would make him sit down on the
floor and then she would draw on that great bald spot of his head, which
they had so often noticed, a map of the railroad lines in which he was
concerned, and then his daughters would understand why he was always
thinking of railroad-tracks and that sort of thing with the inside of
his head, which, as she had told them, was that part of a person with
which he did his thinking.

"Don't they sell some sort of annual or monthly tickets for this
turnpike?" asked Mr. Tom. "If they do, you would save yourself the
trouble of stopping to pay toll and make change."

"I so seldom use this road," she said, "that it would not be worth
while. One does not stop on returning, you know."

But notwithstanding this speech, when Mrs. Easterfield returned from the
Glenford station, one little girl sitting beside her and the other one
opposite, both of them with their feet sticking out, she ordered her
coachman to stop when he reached the toll-gate.

Olive was still sitting in the arbor, reading. The captain was not
visible, and the wooden-faced Jane, noticing that the travelers were a
lady and two little girls, did not consider that she had any right to
interfere with Miss Olive's prerogatives; so that young lady felt
obliged to go to the toll-