"What do you mean?" he parried. "Why, I mean the letter I got back looked so _nice_. It looked as though the person who wrote it was--well, sort of rich and lived in a big house and--" Dugald Allan motioned to an overturned dory. "Suppose we sit here where we can see Aunt Achsa when she comes up the road. Now I'll make a confession. _I_ wrote that letter for Aunt Achsa. She didn't feel quite up to the mark, her hand shakes and she's a little uncertain as to her spelling. I did not think at the time that I possibly might be giving you--your family--a wrong impression. Aunt Achsa was so happy at finding a relative, so touched that you knew something of her, that I only thought of furthering her delight. Anyway--" he faced Sidney's amazed eyes squarely; "You say you didn't know anything of Achsa Green except what you--well, you might say, dug out of the attic, weren't you taking a sporting chance when you came?" Sidney flushed under the challenge in his tone. "I--I guess so. You see, I've never done anything _different_--like the other girls have, and I thought it was _my_ turn to use the--the Egg, we call it. I wanted adventure. But I think I know what you mean; I ought not to be disappointed because my cousins aren't just what I thought they'd be--" "Sidney--I've lived--well, a little longer than you have; you see I've had a chance to find out a few things about this world of ours and the people in it. There's one kind of an aristocracy that we find mostly in big cities--it comes up overnight, a sham thing made over with a gilding of money and wit, very grand on the outside but when you scratch it a little you find the common material underneath. Then there's an aristocracy that's the real thing way through--it's so real that it doesn't ever stop to think that it is an aristocracy. You find that mostly in old, forgotten, out-of-the-way places--like on Cape Cod. I think here it's more solid than the most, though it's fast dying; some day it'll be a thing only of romance. But the real Cape Coders are descended from pioneer men who followed the sea for an honest living, who put bravery and justice and charity and how to live humanly with their fellows above money. Most of 'em have been crowded out by a different kind of a commerce than they knew how to deal with; that's Lavender's father's story; others, the young ones, have scattered to inland places; some have saved enough money to keep their positions in their communities, like Captain Phin Davies; a few like your Cousin Achsa have nothing but the honor of their people. Miss Sidney, in your Cousin Achsa's old body there is a spirit that has come to her from men who were like the Vikings of old--she lives by their standards. She's never known anything but work and poverty, but she faces it--square to the wind. And I've never known her to make a complaint or to utter a begrudging word to or of a soul. Isn't that nobility?"