The Captain's Toll-Gate

by Frank R. Stockton

"He is," assented the other.

"And you have always been entirely satisfied with him?"

"Entirely," was the reply, without a smile.

Now Olive turned her face toward her companion and laid her hand upon her arm. "You ought to be a happy woman," she said.

"Now, what is this girl thinking of?" asked Mrs. Easterfield to herself. "Is she imagining that any one of the young fellows who are now besieging her can ever be to her what Tom is to me? Or is she making an ideal of my husband to the disparagement of her own lovers? Whichever way she thinks, she would better give up thinking."

But the somewhat sensitive Mrs. Easterfield need not have troubled herself. The girl had already forgotten the good Mr. Tom, and her mind was intent upon getting to her uncle.

"Will you please ask the man to stop," she said, "before he gets to the gate, and let me out? Then perhaps you will kindly drive on to the tollhouse and wait for me. I will not keep you waiting long."

The carriage stopped, and Olive slipped out, and, before Mrs. Easterfield had any idea of what she was going to do, the girl climbed the rail fence which separated the road from the captain's pasture field. Between this field and the garden was a picket fence, not very high; and, toward a point about midway between the little tollhouse and the dwelling, Olive now ran swiftly. When she had nearly reached the fence she gave a great bound; put one foot on the upper rail to which the pickets were nailed; and then went over. What would have happened if the sharp pales had caught her skirts might well be imagined. But nothing happened.

"That was a fine spring" said Mrs. Easterfield to herself. "She has seen him in the house, and wants to get there before he hears the carriage."

Olive walked quietly through the garden to the house. She knew that her uncle was not at the gate, for from afar she had seen that the little piazza on which he was wont to sit was empty. She went noiselessly into the hall, and looked into the parlor. By a window in the back of the room she saw her uncle writing at a little table. With a rush of air she was at his side before he knew she was in the room. As he turned his head her arms were around his neck, and the pen in his hand made a great splotch of ink upon her white summer dress.