The Captain's Toll-Gate by Frank R. Stockton

Mrs. Easterfield worked steadily at her letter, feeling confident all the time that her secretary was attending conscientiously to the task which had been assigned to her, and which could not fail to be a most congenial one. One of the greatest joys of Miss Raleigh's life was to interfere in other people's business; and to do it under approval and with the feeling that it was her duty was a rare joy.

The letter was to her husband, and Mrs. Easterfield was writing it because she was greatly troubled, and even frightened. In the indulgence of a good-humored and romantic curiosity to know whether or not a grown-up young woman would return to a sentimental attachment of her girlhood, she had brought her husband's secretary to the house with consequences which were appalling. If this navy girl she had on hand had been a mere flirt, Mrs. Easterfield, an experienced woman of society, might not have been very much troubled, but Olive seemed to her to be much more than a flirt; she would trifle until she made up her mind, but when she should come to a decision Mrs. Easterfield believed she would act fairly and squarely. She wanted to marry; and, in her heart, Mrs. Easterfield commended her; without a mother; now more than ever without a father; her only near relative about to marry a woman who was certainly a most undesirable connection; Olive was surely right in wishing to settle in life.