"Ain't she pretty, Ira?" cried Prudence, almost girlish herself in her new happiness. "Just like Sarah Honey was when she was Ida May's age. And ain't it sweet, her coming to us this way? She's brought her trunk. She's going to stay."

"And I know I shall be happy here, Uncle Ira," said the girl, giving him her hand.

Cap'n Ira's smile was as ecstatic as that of his wife. He looked sidewise at Tunis, a glance of considerable admiration.

"It takes you to do it, Tunis. I couldn't have brought home a nicer lookin' gal myself. I swan!"

"Now, you hesh your foolin', Ira," cried his wife, while the younger man's blush admitted unmistakably his feelings. "Don't you mind him, Ida May. Come into the house, now, and you, too, Tunis. We'll have supper in a jiffy."

"No," said the captain of the _Seamew_. "I must be getting on. Aunt Lucretia will be expecting me, for, of course, she saw the schooner heading in for the cove. Good night, Ida May." He shook hands with her quietly. "I know you will be happy here, with your own folks."

The girl looked deep into the young man's eyes; nor did she free her hand from his clasp immediately. At one side stood the two old people, both smiling, and not a little knowingly and slyly at each other, while the captain of the _Seamew_ and the girl bade each other good night. Cap'n Ira whispered in his wife's ear:

"Look at that now! How long d'you think we'll be able to keep Ida May with us? I cal'late we'd better build our boundary fence a great sight higher and shut him out o' walkin' across this farm."

But Prudence only struck at him with a gently admonitory hand. Tunis and Ida May had taken down the remainder of the wash and the former carried it into the house before he started on for his own home.

The girl, walking behind the old couple into the homelike kitchen, sensed the warming hospitality of the place. It was just as though she had known all this before, as though, in some past time, she had called the Ball homestead _home_.

"Lay off your hat and coat, Ida May, on the sitting-room lounge,"

said Prudence. "We'll have supper before I show you upstairs. Me and Ira sleep down here, but there's a nice, big room up there I've fixed up for you."

"Before you were sure I could come?" the girl asked in some wonder.

"She's got faith enough to move mountains, Prudence has," broke in Cap'n Ira proudly. "At least, I cal'late she's got enough to move this here Wreckers' Head if she set out to." And he chuckled.

"But you believed Ida May would come, too. You said so, Ira," cried his wife.

"I swan! I had to say it to keep up with you," he returned.

"Otherwise you'd have sailed fathoms ahead of me. However, if you hadn't come, gal, neither of us could have well said to the other them bitterest of all human words: 'I told you so!'"

"How could you suppose I would not come?" asked the girl gayly. "Who would refuse such a generous offer?"

"I knowed you'd see it that way," said Prudence happily.

"But there might have been circ.u.mstances we could not foresee,"

Cap'n Ira said. "You--you didn't have many friends where you was stopping?"

"No _real_ friends."

"Well, there is a difference, I cal'late. No young man, o' course, like Tunis Latham, for instance?"

"Now, Ira!" admonished Prudence.

But Ida May only laughed.

"n.o.body half as nice as Captain Latham," she said with honesty.

"Well, I cal'late he would be hard to beat, even here on the Cape,"

agreed the inquisitive old man.

He took a pinch of snuff and prepared to enjoy it. Suddenly remembering his wife's nervousness, he shouted in a high key:

"Looker--out--Prue! _A-choon!_"

"Good--Well, ye did warn me that time, Ira, for a fact. But if I had a cake in the oven 'stead of biscuit, I guess 'twould have fell flat with that shock. I do wish you could take snuff quiet. Look an'

see, will you, Ida May, if those biscuits are burning?"

The girl opened the oven door to view briefly the two pans of biscuit.

"They are not even brown yet, Aunt Prue. But soon."

"The creamed fish is done. I hope you like salt fish, Ida May?"

"I adore it!"

"Lucky you do," put in Cap'n Ira. "I can't say that I think it is actually 'adorable.' But then, I ain't been eatin' it as a steady sh.o.r.e diet much more'n sixty-five year."

"Don't you run down your victuals, Ira," said his wife.

"No, I don't cal'late to. But if I may be allowed to express my likes and dislikes, I got to be honest and say that there's victuals I eat that would have suited me better for a steady diet than pollack and potatoes. And now we don't even have the potatoes, 'cause we can't raise 'em no more."

"But you have land. I see a garden," said Ida May briskly.

"Yes, it's land," said Cap'n Ira, in the same pessimistic way. "But it ain't had a coat of shack fish for three years and this spring not much seaweed. Besides that, after the potatoes are planted, who is to hoe 'em and knock the bugs off?"

"Oh!" commented Ida May, with a small shudder.

He grinned broadly.

"There's a whole lot o' work to farming. I'd rather plow the sea than plow the land, and that's no idle jest! Never could see how a man could be downright honest when he says he likes to putter with a garden. Why, it's working in one place all the time. When he looks up from his job, there's the same old reefs and shoals he's been beatin' about for years. No matter how often he shoots the sun, the computation's bound to be just the same. He's there, or thereabout."

"That's the way with most longsh.o.r.emen, Ida May," said Prudence, sighing. "They make awful poor farmers if they are good seamen.

Can't seem to combine the two trades."

"I cal'late that's so," agreed Cap'n Ira, his eyes twinkling.

"They'd ought to examine all the babies born on the Cape first off, and them that ain't web-footed ought to be sent to agricultural school 'stead of to the fishing. But that ain't why our potato crop's a failure this year. And as far as I see, talking won't cure many fish, either."

"Can't I help?" asked Ida May in her gentle voice. "You know, I've come here to work. I don't expect to play lady."

"Well, I don't know. It ain't the kind of work you are used to."

"I've been used to work all my life, and all kinds of work,"

interposed the girl bravely.

"But you seem so eddicated," Prudence said.

"Getting an education did not keep me from learning how to use my hands."