But the woman seldom uttered a word, and then only brief questions regarding the service of the food. She listened smilingly to the conversation between Tunis and the visitor, but did not enter into it. It was difficult for the girl to feel at ease under these circumstances.
Especially was this so after dinner, when she asked to help Aunt Lucretia clear off the table and wash and dry the dishes. The woman made no objection; indeed, she seemed to accept the girl's assistance placidly enough. But while they were engaged in the task—a time when two women usually have much to chatter about, if nothing of great importance—Aunt Lucretia uttered scarcely a word, preferring even to instruct her companion in dumb show where the dried dishes should be placed.
Yet, all the time, the girl could not trace anything in Aunt Lucretia's manner or look which actually suggested suspicion or dislike. Tunis seemed eminently satisfied with his aunt's attitude. 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.