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 shell 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