if Olive
had been here. But now it is all right. The young fellow can stay here a
few days, and he will be gone before she gets back. If I like him I can
ask him to come again; but that's my business. Handsome women, like that
Mrs. Easterfield, always bring good luck. I have noticed that many and
many a time."

Then he set himself to work to write a letter to invite young Richard
Lancaster to spend a few days with him.

For the rest of that day, and the greater part of the next, Captain
Asher gave a great deal of thinking time to the consideration of the
young man who was about to visit him, and of whom, personally, he knew
very little. He was aware that Captain Lancaster had a son and no other
children, and he was quite sure that this son must now be a grown-up
young man. He remembered very well that Captain Lancaster was a fine
young fellow when he first knew him, and he did not doubt at all that
the son resembled the father. He did not believe that young Dick was a
sailor, because he and old Dick had often said to each other that if
they married their sons should not go to sea. Of course he was in some
business; and Captain Lancaster ought to be well able to give him a good
start in life; just as able as he himself was to give Olive a good start
in housekeeping when the time came.

"Now, what in the name of common sense," ejaculated Captain Asher, "did
I think of that for? What has he to do with Olive, or Olive with him?"
And then he said to himself, thinking of the young man in the bosom of
his family and without reference to anybody outside of it: "Yes, his
father must be pretty well off. He did a good deal more trading than
ever I did. But after all, I don't believe he invested his money any
better than I did mine, and it is just as like as not if we were to show
our hands, that Olive would get as much as Dick's son. There it is
again. I can't keep my mind off the thing." And as he spoke he knocked
the ashes out of his pipe, and began to stride up and down the garden
walk; and as he did so he began to reproach himself.

What right had he to think of his niece in that way? It was not doing
the fair thing by her father, and perhaps by her, for that matter. For
all he knew she might be engaged to somebody out West or down East, or
in some other part of the world where she had lived. But this idea made
very little impression on him. Knowing Olive as he did, he did not
believe that she was engaged to anybody anywh