“It is for your own good, honey. If I were to stay here and let a resident governess come, she would make you the captive of her bow and spear, and marry you right under my very nose! It will not do, Marcel. The child must be sent to school.” “But she is so young yet. Not nine years old until June. You or I can direct her studies for the next year or two.” “I don’t see it. Besides, who is to look after her out of school hours? I tell you, Marcel, it is not only for her education that she is to be sent from home.” “For what other reason, I pray you?” “To keep her out of bad company.” “‘Bad company?’ Bad company, in this remote, isolated place?” exclaimed the colonel, gazing at the lady in surprise. “Yes! bad company, I say! the very worst company! I think it is a shame, a burning and a crying shame,” exclaimed Miss Grip, firing up at the sound of her own words—“a burning and a crying shame that she, Maria da Gloria de la Vera, a Countess of Portugal by birth, should be left here to run wild like any little savage, with no better companion than a low-born, ignorant fisher-boy! There!” “Lord—bless—my—soul—alive!” cried the colonel, sarcastically. “Where do you suppose I found them?” sharply demanded Miss Grip, whose temper was rising. “Found—whom?” coolly inquired the colonel. “Your niece and ward, the Countess Maria, and your hired servant, David, the fisher-boy.” “I wish you would not be ridiculous, my dear aunt. What good does that title do our poor little girl, here in democratic America? Why, even her father, a Portuguese nobleman by birth, but a staunch republican in principle, dropped his title when he transferred his interests to the United States,” said Marcel. “Then he had no right to do it, and his act is of no consequence to his daughter. She is the Countess de la Vera, and she would be recognized as such in any other civilized country except in democratic America, as you call it. But that is not the point.” “What is the point, then?” “I asked you just now, where you supposed I found them?” “In a boat, on the water?” “No; sitting on an old, overturned boat under the broken sea-wall, side by side, with an open book before them, both their hands on the covers, both faces bent over the same page.” “God bless the child! She was trying to teach the lad!” ejaculated Marcel, with a smile of sympathetic pleasure in his eyes. “I say it is most improper! most indecorous! most objectionable! for the little Countess Maria to be sitting down on an old boat side by side with a low, vulgar, ill-bred fisher-boy!” exclaimed Miss Grip. “Stop, stop, my dear lady! You go too far, indeed! David Lindsay is a poor fisher lad, certainly; but he is not, in any sense of the words, low, vulgar, or ill-bred.” “Now, how can he be anything else?” “By intuition. He has the intuitions of a little gentleman.” “And now, since you talk like that, I am more determined than ever that the child shall go to school,” said Miss Grip.