until all the other girls
had come back and related all their adventures--those that had
actually happened and those that they had imagined.

"Ain't you going to take any time off, Ida May?" they asked.

At last she said she expected to visit her folks "down on the Cape."

"You remember that nice-looking farmer that came in to speak to me
that time and took me to lunch at Barquette's?" she asked Miss
Leary.

"I know you _said_ he took you there."

"Well, he did, smarty! He's my cousin--of course, not too close."
And Ida May giggled. "Well, we've been corresponding."

"I hope it's all perfectly proper," grinned Miss Leary.

Ida May Bostwick stuck out her tongue. But she laughed.

"I've got a good mind," she said to her friend, "to go down and see
that fellow's folks. They're well fixed, I guess. And the store pays
you for one week of your vacation. I wouldn't lose much, even if it
did turn out to be a dead-and-alive hole."

CHAPTER XIX

THE ARRIVAL

There was a driving road down past Latham's Folly and on across
certain sand flats and by cranberry bogs to a small settlement where
Prudence had a stepsister still living. This old woman lived with
her granddaughter's husband's kinsfolk, who were so distantly
related to Cap'n Ira's wife that the relationship could scarcely be
followed.

"It takes us Cape Codders," remarked Cap'n Ira, "to study out the
shoals and channels of kinship. It's 'cause we're such good
navigators that we're able to do it."

"And now that we've got Ida May to harness up Queenie for us and
look after the house while we're gone, and you feel so much spryer
yourself, Ira, I don't see why we can't visit our folks a little,"
Prudence said.

He agreed, and they set off in high fettle just before noon,
expecting to return before dark. Sheila was upstairs dusting when,
not long after the noon hour, she saw from one of the windows the
spread canvas of the _Seamew_--there was no mistaking the
schooner--making through the channel into the cove.

"Tunis is coming! Tunis is coming! Tunis is coming soon!"

Her heart sang the refrain over and over again. She fairly danced
about the household tasks she had set herself to do while the old
couple were absent. Now and again she ran to some point where she
could watch the _Seamew_. The memory of Tunis' kisses were on her
lips and in her heart. In the dusk of the previous Monday morning,
when he was on his way to the port to take command of h