. Understand?"

Alas! She understood but too well. Yet if a bomb had exploded at her
feet she could hardly have been more astonished.

CHAPTER VIII

DOROTHY AND THE BASHFUL BUGLER

The main street of pretty Digby runs close to the water. The bluff is
crowned by a grassy sward and a row of well-grown trees, with a driveway
between these and the buildings on the further side.

"Oh! how lovely and how different from our own seaside places, with
their hot sands, board walks, and cityfied shops. I hope no board walk
will ever spoil this charming boulevard!" exclaimed a lady, who stood at
a hotel window overlooking Annapolis Basin, on whose shore nestles the
little town.

"Yes, Mamma! Aren't you glad you came?" asked Monty Stark, entering the
room and joining her at the window.

"I hope I shall be, dear. I'm a little anxious about your friends. I
should greatly object, myself, to having people force themselves upon a
touring party I had organized. But you must understand, Montmorency,
that if I discover the slightest sign of objection to us, I shall go on
my own way and you will have to go with me. I--I am not accustomed to
being patronized or--no matter. I came to please you, my precious boy,
and I hope it will be all right. Let me see if you are quite correct. I
suppose the guests wear evening dress for dinner as in other civilized
places. Though--it looks more like a country village yonder, than a real
watering place."

"But, Mamma, it is a country village. Nothing else, the Judge says. And
somehow I feel rather silly in this rig. I saw the Judge a moment ago
and he wasn't in evening clothes, but he's a 'brick' all right!"

"Montmorency! How can you use such dreadful expressions?"

"Easy as preaching, _chere Maman_!"

"I'm afraid your associates at Brentnor are not all of them as refined
and exclusive as I had supposed. I've observed other phrases that I do
not like. One of them was, I think, 'Shucks!'"

"Yes, I reckon you did. I didn't catch that from a Brentnor, though, but
from Jim Barlow."

"Who is he, pray?"

"Blest if I can tell or he either. He hails from a poorhouse. He was
'bound out' to a woman truck farmer. He's been 'taken up' by Mrs. Cecil
Somerset-Calvert, of Baltimore, and lots of other places. A lady that's
so rich she has homes in ever so many different parts of the country.
But better than that he's a 'trump,' a life-saver, a scholar, and--a
gentleman! One of 'Nature's' you know.