She realized dimly that she should feel very, very badly because her stepfather was dead.  Mrs. Hobbs had told her that she should and seemed to regard her as queerer than ever because she had not cried.  But, according to the housekeeper, Captain Hall was out of his troubles and had gone where he would be happy for ever and ever.  So it seemed to her strange to be expected to cry on his account.  He had not been happy here in Ostable, or, at least, he had not shown his happiness in the way other people showed theirs.  To her he had been a big, bearded giant of a man, whom she saw at infrequent intervals during the day and always at night just before she went to bed.  His room, with the old-fashioned secretary against the wall, and the stuffed gull on the shelf, and the books in the cupboard, and the polished narwhal horn in the corner, was to her a sort of holy of holies, a place where she was led each evening at nine o’clock, at first by Mrs. Bailey and, later, by Mrs. Hobbs, to shake the hand of the big man who looked at her absently over his spectacles and said good night in a voice not unkindly but expressing no particular interest.  At other times she was strictly forbidden to enter that room.

Occasionally, but very rarely, she had eaten Sunday dinner with Marcellus.  She and the housekeeper usually ate together and Mr. Hall’s meals were served in what the child called “the smoke room,” meaning the apartment just described, which was at all times strongly scented with tobacco.  The Sunday dinners were stately and formal affairs and were prefaced by lectures by the housekeeper concerning sitting up straight and not disturbing Cap’n Hall by talking too much.  On the whole Mary-’Gusta was rather glad when the meals were over.  She did not dislike her stepfather; he had never been rough or unkind, but she had always stood in awe of him and had felt that he regarded her as a “pesky nuisance,” something to be fed and then shooed out of the way, as Mrs. Hobbs regarded David, the cat.  As for loving him, as other children seemed to love their fathers; that the girl never did.  She was sure he did not love her in that way, and that he would not have welcomed demonstrations of affection on her part.  She had learned the reason, or she thought she had:  she was a stepchild; that was why, and a stepchild was almost as bad as a “changeling” in a fairy story.

Her mother she remembered dimly and with that recollection were memories of days when she was loved and made much of, not only by Mother, but by Captain Hall also.  She asked Mrs. Bailey, whom she had loved and whose leaving was the greatest grief of her life, some questions about these memories.  Mrs. Bailey had hugged her and had talked a good deal about Captain Hall’s being a changed man since his wife’s death.  “He used to be so different, jolly and good-natured and sociable; you wouldn’t know him now if you seen him then.  When your mamma was took it just seemed to wilt him right down.  He was awful sick himself for a spell, and when he got better he was like he is today.  Seems as if he died too, as you might say, and ain’t really lived since.  I’m awful sorry for Cap’n Marcellus.  You must be real good to him when you grow up, Mary-’Gusta.”