What's the trouble? Another 'heart'?

"No. My heart I can trust, up to certain limits. But I'm afraid of your
head, just as I always was of your father's. And here's one more bit of
advice: Be careful how you treat that country uncle."

"The Admiral! Ho! ho! He's a card."

"He may be the trump that will lose us the trick. Treat him civilly;
yes, even cordially, if you can. And DON'T insult him as you did the
first time you and he met."

The young man crossed his legs, and grunted in resignation.

"Well," he said, "it's going to be a confounded bore, but, at the very
longest, it'll last but a year. Then Caro will be her own mistress."

"Yes. But there are three hundred and sixty-five days in a year;
remember that."

"All right, Mater. You can bet on me. The old hayseed and I will be
bosom pals. Wait and see."

The formalities at the lawyers' took some time. Captain Elisha was
absent from the apartment the better part of the following two days. The
evenings, however, he spent with his niece and nephew, and, if at all
sensitive to sudden changes of the temperature, he must have noticed
that the atmosphere of the library was less frigid. Caroline was not
communicative, did not make conversation, nor was she in the least
familiar; but she answered his questions, did not leave the room when he