was limping a little, and a shocking twinge took him in his
left shoulder when he attempted to raise his arm. But Dorothy's sudden
shifting to polite personalities was of a nature to choke off his
projected indignant utterance. Yet not feeling by any means prepared
to meet in kind her pleasing manifestation of affection, Mr. Port was a
little put to it to find any suitable form of response. After a moment's
reflection he abandoned the attempt to reply coherently, and contented
himself with grunting.

VI.

Encouraged by the success that was attending her unselfish efforts to
harmonize her own and her uncle's conceptions of the temporal fitness
of things, Miss Lee began to find life at the Pier quite supportable.
"There's not much to do here," she declared, with her customary candor,
"and the hotels--all ugly and all in a row--make it look like an
overgrown charitable institution; and most of the people, I must say,
are such a dismal lot that they might very well be the patients out for
an airing. But, on the whole, I've been in several worse places, Uncle
Hutchinson; and if only you'd take me to a hop now and then, instead of
sitting every evening on the pokey hotel veranda talking Philadelphia
twaddle with that stuffy old Mr. Pennington Brown, I might have rather a
good time here."

"You will oblige me, Dorothy," replied Mr. Port, "by refraining from
using such a word as 'stuffy' in connection with a gentleman who
belongs to one of the oldest and best families in Philadelphia, and who,
moreover, is one of my most esteemed friends."

"But he _is_ stuffy, Uncle Hutchinson. He never talks about anything but
who peoples' grandfathers and grandmothers were; and _Watson's Annals_
seems to be the only book that he ever has heard of. Indeed, I do truly
think that he is the very stuffiest and stupidest old gentleman that I
ever have known."

Mr. Port made no reply to this sally, for his feelings were such that he
deemed it best not to give expression to them in words; but he was not
unnaturally surprised, after such a declaration of sentiments on
the part of his niece, when she begged to be excused on the ensuing
afternoon from her regular drive to the Point, on the ground that she
had promised to make an expedition to the Rocks in Mr. Brown's company.
Had an opportunity been given him Mr. Port would have asked for an
explanation of this phenomenon; but the carriage was in waiting that
was to convey his ward and her