n that she had done just
right--that without her presence on Wreckers' Head Cap'n Ira and his
wife would be in a very bad way, indeed.

She could see that this was so. Her coming to them had been as great
a blessing in their lives as it had been in her own.

She fully realized that Cap'n Ira and his wife would not have
admitted her to their home and to their hearts had she come in her
own person and identity. This was not so much because of their
strict morality as because of their strict Puritanism. For a puritan
may not be moral always, but he must be just. And justice of that
character is seldom tempered by mercy. What they might have forgiven
the real Ida May they could scarcely be expected to forgive a
stranger.

In spite of this situation, the Balls were being blessed by the
presence of a girl in their household who had been tainted with a
sentence to a reformatory. Even now, when she knew they loved her
and could scarcely imagine what they would do without her, Sheila
Macklin was quite convinced that a whisper about these hidden
miseries would turn Cap'n Ball, and even Prudence, against her.

Therefore she was careful, putting a guard upon her tongue and
almost keeping watch upon her secret thoughts. She never allowed
herself to lapse into reverie in their presence for fear the old
people might suspect that she had a past that would not endure open
discussion.

And, deliberately and with forethought, the intelligent girl went
about strengthening her position with the Balls and making her
identity as Ida May Bostwick unassailable. She had a retentive
memory. Nothing Aunt Prudence ever said in her hearing about Sarah
Honey, her ways when she was young, or what the old woman knew or
surmised about her dead niece's marriage and her life thereafter,
escaped the girl. She treasured it all.

When visitors were by--especially the neighboring women who likewise
remembered Sarah Honey--the masquerader often spoke in a way to
reduce to a minimum any suspicion that she was not the rightful Ida
May. Even a visit from Annabell Coffin--"she who was a Cuttle"--went
off without a remark being made which would yield a grain of doubt.

Mrs. Coffin had heard of Ida May while she visited "his folks" in
Boston, in a most roundabout way. She did say to the girl, however:

"Let's see, Ida May, didn't they tell me that you worked for a spell
in one of them great stores? I wish you could see 'em, Aunt Prue!
The Marshall & Denha