salaries they were paid. Marriage meant teamwork,
with the girl working down-town just as hard as ever, and then
working at night when she went home, and on Sundays, even if she and
her bridegroom lived only in a furnished room and did light
housekeeping.

Ida May Bostwick had a brain explosion one day when she considered
these all-too-evident facts. She said:

"I bet _that_ fellow wouldn't expect his wife to stand behind a lace
counter and take the sass of floorwalkers and buyers, as well as
lady customers, all day long. Not much! He's a regular guy, if he is
a hick. My gracious! Don't I wish he'd come back! If I ever get my
claws on him again--"

Just what she might do to Tunis under those circumstances she did
not even explain to herself. But she began to think of Tunis a good
deal. He was a good-looking man, too. And he spent freely. Ida May
Bostwick remembered the lunch at Barquette's.

It was true that Sarah Honey had been all Prudence Ball and Aunt
Lucretia Latham and other Wreckers' Head folk believed her to be.
But she died when Ida May was small, and the girl had been brought
up wholly under the influence of the Bostwicks. That family had
lacked refinement and breeding and graciousness of manner to a
degree that would have amazed and shocked Sarah Honey's relatives
down on the Cape.

Not that the girl thought of Tunis Latham's refinement with any
wistfulness. She thought of his well-filled wallet, that he was
something more than a common sailor, that he undoubtedly owned a
good home, even if it was down at Big Wreck Cove, and that he seemed
"soft" and "easy."

"A girl might wind him right around her finger, if she went at it
right," Ida May Bostwick finally decided. "Some girl will. I wonder
how long it would take to get him to sell out down there and live up
here in town? My mother came from that awful hole, and she caught a
city fellow. I bet I could do this, if it was worth my while. My
goodness! Why not?

"There's property there, too. I wonder how much those old creatures
are worth. And how long they will live. He spoke like they needed
somebody because they were sick. Ugh! I don't like folks when they
are sick. Ma was _awful_. I can remember it. And there was pa, when
he was cripped with rheumatism before he died."

This phase of the matter fairly staggered Ida May Bostwick. She put
the faint glimmerings of the idea out of her mind--or tried to. Yet
that summer she kept delaying her vacation