The dust shaken from it still hung in the air.

The captain unbolted and unlocked the big front door.
A girl was standing on the steps between the lines of box hedge--a little girl under a big "grown-up" umbrella.

The wet dripped from the umbrella top and from the hem of the little girl's dress.
Captain Cy stared hard at his visitor; he knew most of the children in Bayport, but he didn't know this one.

Obviously she was a stranger.
Portuguese children from "up Harniss way" sometimes called to peddle huckleberries, but this child was no "Portugee." "Hello!" exclaimed the captain wonderingly.
"Did you ring the bell ?" "Yes, sir," replied the girl.
"Humph! Did, hey?
Why ?" "Why?
Why, I thought--Isn't it a truly bell?
Didn't it ought to ring?
Is anybody sick or dead?
There isn't any crape." "Dead?
Crape ?" Captain Cy gasped.

"What in the world put that in your head ?" "Well, I didn't know but maybe that was why you thought I hadn't ought to have rung it.