Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter Three The nice young man did more than find my missing trunks; he found a custom-house officer, and, after asking me privately which trunks contained my most valuable possessions and how much I had thought of declaring, he succeeded in having them passed through on my own valuation without any undue exposure of their contents. By this time Dad had grown very respectful. To see his little Elizabeth treated like a queen, while on all sides angry women were having their best gowns pawed over and mussed, was a most wholesome lesson. He paid the thousand and odd dollars duty like a little man. We'd been saved a lot of bother, and nobody hates a lot of bother more than Dad. So when the trunks were locked and strapped and ready to be sent to our hotel, Dad went up to the nice young man and said: "I'm Tom Middleton, from California, and this is my daughter Elizabeth. We're both very grateful to you, and if you should ever happen to come to California, I hope you'll look us up." That's Dad all over! I never saw anybody look so pleased as the young man. "My name's Porter," he said, "Blakely Porter. If mymother were in New York I would ask if she might call on Miss Middleton, but, as it happens, she's in California, where I intend to join her, so I shall look forward to seeing you there." Then Dad did just the right thing. "What's the use of waiting till we get to California?" he said. "Why not dine with us to-night?" There are people, merely conventional people, who could never appreciate the fine directness and simplicity of Dad's nature—not if they lived to be a thousand years old. But Mn Blakely Porter understood perfectly; I know he did for he told me so afterwards. "It was the greatest compliment I ever had paid me in my life," he said. One Couldn't ...