"I'd like to get something out of him," growled Tunis, to whom the remark was addressed.

"What's that?"

"Some work, for one thing," said the captain of the _Seamew_. "He's as lazy a fellow as I ever saw. And his tongue's too long."

"Trouble is," Cap'n Ira rejoined, "these trips you take in the schooner are too short to give you any chance to lick your crew into shape. They get back home too often. Too much sh.o.r.e leave, if ye ask me."

"I'd lose Mason Chapin if the _Seamew_ made longer voyages. And I have lost one of the hands already--Tony."

"I swan! What's the matter with him?"

"His mother says Tony is scared to sail again with the _Seamew_.

Some Portygee foolishness."

"I told you them Portygees warn't worth the grease they sop their bread in," declared Cap'n Ira.

The two on the rear seat of the carryall paid no attention to this conversation.

"I'm real pleased," said the old woman, "that you are going to dinner with Lucretia Latham, Ida May. Your mother thought a sight of her, and 'Cretia did of Sarah Honey, too. Sarah was one of the few who seemed to understand Lucretia. She's so dumb. I declare I can't never get used to her myself. I like folks lively about me, and I don't care how much they talk--the more the better.

"Lucretia Latham might have got her a good man and been happily married long ago, if it hadn't been that when a feller dropped in to call on her she sat mum all the evening and never said no more than the cat.

"I remember Silas Payson, who lived over beyond the port, took quite a shine to Lucretia, seeing her at church. Or, at least, we thought he did. Silas began going down to Latham's Folly of an evening, now and then, and setting up with Lucretia. But after a while he left off going and said he cal'lated he'd join the Quakers over to Seetawket. Playing Quaker meeting with just one girl to look at didn't suit, noway." And the old woman laughed placidly.

"Tunis says he understands his aunt," ventured the girl.

"Tunis has had to put up with her. But he can say nothing a good deal himself, if anybody should ask ye. That's the only fault I've found with Tunis. I've heard Ira talk at him for a straight hour in our kitchen, and all the answer Tunis made was to say 'yes' twice."

The girl did not find the captain of the _Seamew_ at all inarticulate later, as they crossed the old fields of the Ball place and walked down the slope into the saucerlike valley where lay Latham's Folly. She had never known Tunis to be more companionable than on this occasion. He seemed to have gained the courage to talk on more intimate topics than at any time since their acquaintanceship had begun.

"I guess you know," he observed, "that most all the money Uncle Peke left me--after what the lawyers got--I put into that schooner.

There's a mortgage on her, too. You see, although the old place will come to me by and by, Aunt Lucretia has rights in it while she lives. It's sort of entailed, you know. I could not raise a dollar on Latham's Folly, if I wanted to. So I am pretty well tied up, you see.

"But the schooner is doing well. That is, I mean, business is good, Ida May. Other things being equal, I will make more money with her the way I am doing now than I could in any other business. My line is the sea; I know that. I am fitted for it.

"And if I had invested Uncle Peke's legacy and kept on fishing, or tried for a berth in a deep bottom somewhere, I would not get ahead any faster or make so much money. Besides, long voyages would take me away from home, and, after all, Aunt Lucretia is my only kin and she would miss me sore."

"I am sure she would," said the girl with sympathy.

"But all ain't plain sailing," added the young skipper wistfully. "I am running too close to the reefs right now to crow any."

"But I am sure you will be successful in the end. Of course you will!"

"That's mighty nice of you," he said, smiling down into her vivid face. "With you and Aunt Lucretia both pulling for me, I ought to win out, sure enough.

"You can't fail to like her," he added. "If you just get the right slant on her character, I mean, Ida May. Hers has been a lonely life. Not that there has not almost always been somebody in the house with her. But she has lived with her own thoughts. She reads a great deal. There is not one topic I can broach of which she has not at least a general knowledge. I was sent away to school, but when I came home vacations I brought my books and she read them all.

"And she is a splendid listener." He laughed. "You'll find that out for yourself, I fancy. And I know she likes people to talk to her--when they have anything to say. Tell her things; that is what she enjoys."

In spite of his a.s.surances, Sheila Macklin approached the old, brown house behind the cedars with much secret trepidation. Although Aunt Lucretia had a neighbor's girl come in to help her almost daily, she had preferred to prepare the dinner on this occasion with her own hands. And, perhaps, she did not care to have the neighbor's child around when the supposed Ida May came to the house for the first time.

They saw her watching from the side door--a tall, angular figure in a black dress. Her hair was done plainly and in no arrangement to soften the gaunt outline of her face, but there was much of it, and Sheila longed to make a change in that grim coiffure.

The woman smiled so warmly when she saw the two approach that almost instantly the girl forgot the grim contour of Aunt Lucretia's face.

That smile was like a flash of sunshine playing over one of those barren, brown fields through which they had pa.s.sed so quickly on the way down from the Ball house.

"This is Ida May, Aunt Lucretia," said Tunis, as they reached the porch.

The smiling woman stretched forth a hand to the girl. Her eyes, peering through the spectacles, were very keen, and when their gaze was centered upon the girl's face it seemed that Aunt Lucretia was suddenly smitten by some thought, or by some discovery about the visitor, which made her greeting slow.

Yet that may have been her usual manner. Tunis did not appear to observe anything extraordinary. But Sheila thought Aunt Lucretia had been about to greet her with a kiss, and then had thought better of it.

CHAPTER XVII

AUNT LUCRETIA

There was nothing thereafter in Aunt Lucretia's manner--surely not in her speech--to lead Sheila to fear the woman did not accept her at face value. Why should she suspect a masquerade when n.o.body else did? The girl took her cue from Tunis and placidly accepted his aunt's manner as natural.

Aunt Lucretia put the dinner on the table at once. They ate, when there was special company, in the dining room. The meal was generous in quant.i.ty and well cooked. It was evident that, like most country housewives, Lucretia Latham took pride in her table. Had the visitor come for the meal alone she would have been amply recompensed.

But the woman seldom uttered a word, and then only brief questions regarding the service of the food. She listened smilingly to the conversation between Tunis and the visitor, but did not enter into it. It was difficult for the girl to feel at ease under these circ.u.mstances.

Especially was this so after dinner, when she asked to help Aunt Lucretia clear off the table and wash and dry the dishes. The woman made no objection; indeed, she seemed to accept the girl's a.s.sistance placidly enough. But while they were engaged in the task--a time when two women usually have much to chatter about, if nothing of great importance--Aunt Lucretia uttered scarcely a word, preferring even to instruct her companion in dumb show where the dried dishes should be placed.

Yet, all the time, the girl could not trace anything in Aunt Lucretia's manner or look which actually suggested suspicion or dislike. Tunis seemed eminently satisfied with his aunt's att.i.tude.

He whispered to Sheila, when they were alone together:

"She certainly likes you, Ida May."

"Are you sure?" the girl asked.

"Couldn't be mistaken. But don't expect her to tell you so in just so many words."

Later they walked about the dooryard and out-buildings--Tunis and the visitor--and Aunt Lucretia watched them from her rocking-chair on the porch. What her thoughts were regarding her nephew and the girl it would be hard to guess, but whatever they were, they made her face no grimmer than usual, and the light in her bespectacled eyes was scarcely one of dislike or even of disapproval. Yet there was a strange something in the woman's look or manner which suggested that she watched the visitor with thoughts or feelings which she wished neither the girl nor Tunis to observe.

Late in the afternoon the two young people started back for the Ball house, taking a roundabout way. They did not even follow the patrol path, well defined along the brink of Wreckers' Head as far as the beach. Instead, they went down by the wagon track to the beach itself, intending to follow the edge of the sea and the channel around to a path that led up the face of the bluff to the Ball homestead. It was a walk the girl had never taken.

The reaction she experienced after having successfully met and become acquainted with Aunt Lucretia put Sheila in high spirits.

Tunis had never seen her in quite this mood. Although she was always cheerful and not a little gay about the Ball homestead, she suddenly achieved a spirit of sportiveness which surprised the captain of the _Seamew_. But he wholly liked and approved of this new mood.

She had made herself a new fall frock and a pretty, close-fitting hat--something entirely different, as he had noticed, from the styles displayed by the other girls of Big Wreck Cove. And he was observant enough to see that this outfit was more like what the girls in Boston wore.

She ran ahead to pick up a sh.e.l.l or pebble that gleamed at the water's edge from a long way off. She escaped a wetting from the surf by a scant margin, and laughed delightedly at the chance she took. Back against the foot of the bluff certain brilliant flowers grew--fall blossoms that equaled any in Prudence Ball's garden--and the girl gathered these and arranged them in an attractive bouquet with a regard for color that delighted her companion.

They came, finally, in sight of a cabin back under the bank on the far side of the little cove, where once Tunis had reaped clams while Cap'n Ira and the Queen of Sheba made their unfortunate slide down the face of the bluff. The sea was so low now that Tunis could aid the girl across the mouth of the tiny inlet on the sand bar which defended it from the sea. There was but one channel over which she need leap with his help.