her. "I come from your aunt, Mrs.
Ira Ball."

"My aunt? Fancy!"

"She has heard about you," went on Tunis. "I guess she thought a
heap of your mother. She--she'd like to see you, Mrs. Ball would."

The girl patted her hair into place with a languid hand. Her lips
parted in a teasing smile. This "hick" really amused her.

"Just to think! Would she?" she drawled. "Is she in town?"

"Who? Mrs. Ball? I should say not. She's down at Big Wreck Cove, I
tell you."

"Oh, really? I thought by the way you spoke she was outside--in her
car." She tossed her head with that same tantalizing smile, almost a
grimace. "What did you want to tell me?"

Tunis realized that he could not talk to her here, after all. The
idle girls at the end of the counter were already whispering, and
their smiles were poignant javelins of ridicule. The captain of the
_Seamew_ knew that he was far beyond his depth.

"Where can I talk to you?" he asked.

"I get away for my lunch hour in a few minutes. I could talk to you
then. But us girls ain't supposed to entertain our friends at the
counter." She flashed him another amused and quite comprehending
glance.

"I've a message for you from Aunt Prue and the captain. Captain Ira
Ball. He's her husband," explained Tunis jerkily.

"Oh, really? Mr. Judson is coming this way." She flirted open a card
of cheap lace lying on the counter. "Won't this do, sir?"

"Cat's foot! I don't want any lace," growled the captain of the
_Seamew_.

"And I don't want to lose my job," rejoined the girl sharply.

"Where'll I meet you so we can talk?"

"At twelve forty-five," hissed the girl out of the corner of her
mouth, beginning to wind up the lace again. "Back entrance to the
store." Then, aloud: "Sorry, sir. We haven't any cheaper quality in
that pattern."

He knew she was ridiculing him. He was cognizant, however, of the
department head's hard stare and the amused glances of the other
saleswomen. He strode out of the store, and on the sidewalk halted
to mop his face and neck with a blue-bordered handkerchief.

"She's as sassy as a chipmunk. I declare! What would Cap'n Ira and
Aunt Prue do with a girl like her around the house? And the way
she's dressed!"

In his mind the idea germinated that he would be doing a far better
thing if he did not go around to the employees' door and wait for
Ida May Bostwick. What sort of life would she lead the two old
people down there on Wreckers' Head? He actually shrank fro