"Perhaps this--this half-uncle may be quite as trying."

"Impossible!" was the father's rather emphatic reply.

"What?" she cried. "Traitor to the family fame?"

"You do not know Cape Cod folk. I do," he told her rather seriously.
"Some of them are quaint and peculiar. I suppose there are just as many
down there with traits of extreme Yankee frugality as elsewhere in New
England. But your mother's people, as I knew them, were the very salt of
the earth. Our wanderings were all that kept you from knowing the old
folk before they passed away."

"You tempt me," was all Louise said. Then the conversation lapsed.

It was the day following that the professor was to go to Boston
preparatory to sailing. At the moment of departure his daughter,
smiling, tucked a sealed note into his pocket.

"Don't open it, daddy-prof, till you are out of sight of Cohasset Rocks,"
she said. "Then you will not know where I am going to spend the time of
your absence until it is too late--either to oppose or to advise."

"You can't worry me," he told her, with admiration in his glance. "I've
every confidence in you, my dear. Have a good time if you can."

She watched him down the long platform between the trains. When she saw
him assisted into the Pullman by the porter she turned with a little
sigh, and walked up the rise toward Forty-second Street. She could