g to her own ideas--to a hero
beyond comparison, she was able to regard young men with mercy, and with
pity, if they had none to love. "How hard you have been at work!" she
said; "it makes us seem so lazy! But we never can find any good thing to
do."

"That's a cut at me," cried the Admiral. "Scudamore, when you come to my
age, be wiser than to have any daughters. Sure enough, they find no good
to do; and they not only put all the fault of that on me, but they make
me the victim of all the mischief they invent. Dolly, my darling, wear
that cap if it fits. But you have not shaken hands with Mr. Scudamore
yet. I hope you will do so, some hundreds of times."

"Not all at once, papa; or how thankful he would be! But stop, I have
not got half my glove off; this fur makes them stick so."

Miss Dolly was proud of her hands, and lost few chances of getting them
looked at. Then with a little smile, partly at herself for petulance,
partly to him for forgiveness, she offered her soft warm rich white
hand, and looked at him beautifully as he took it. Alack and alas for
poor "Captain Scuddy"!

His eyes, with a quick shy glance, met hers; and hers with soft inquiry
answered, "I wonder what you think of me?" Whenever she met a new face,
this was her manner of considering it.

"Scudamore, I shall not allow you any time to think about it," Admiral
Darling broke in suddenly, so that the young man almost jumped.
"Although you have cut the service for a while, because of our stingy
peacefulness, you are sure to come back to us again when England wants
English, not Latin and Greek. I am your commanding officer, and my
orders are that you come to us from Saturday till Monday. I shall send
a boat--or at least I mean a buggy--to fetch you, as soon as you are off
duty, and return you the same way on Monday. Come, girls, 'twill be dark
before we are home; and since the patrols were withdrawn, I hear there's
a highwayman down this road again. That is one of the blessings
of peace, Scudamore; even as Latin and Greek are. 'Apertis otia
portis'--Open the gates for laziness. Ah, I should have done well at old
Winton, they tell me, if I had not happened to run away to sea."

CHAPTER IX

THE MAROON

If yet there remained upon our southern coast a home for the rarer
virtues, such as gratitude, content, liberality (not of other people's
goods alone), faith in a gracious Providence, and strict abstinence from
rash labor, that home and stro