"Certainly. Sheila Macklin, spinster."
Tunis drew a long breath. That was enough! He would take his chance in the game with any other man as long as she was not promised. But there was no use in spoiling everything by being too precipitate. The captain of the Seamew might be simple, but he was not the man to ruin a thing through impulsiveness. That exhibition in the restaurant was hooked up with wrath.
There had been an undercurrent of thought in his mind ever since he had met this girl for the second time, and it was quite a natural thought, comparing her with Ida May Bostwick. If Sheila Macklin had only been Ida May, after all! It was a ridiculous idea. Not a feature or betrayed trait of character was like any that the disappointing great-niece of Prudence Ball possessed. This girl sitting beside Tunis on the bench and Ida May Bostwick were as little alike as though they were inhabitants of two different worlds.
He had begun to imagine, too, how well this girl beside him would fit into the needs of the old couple living there alone on Wreckers' Head. It was an idle thought, of course. He had no plan, or scheme, or definite suggestion in his mind. It was only a wish, a keen longing for an impossible conjunction of circumstances which would have enabled him to present Sheila Macklin to Cap'n Ira and Prudence and say:
"This is the girl you sent me for."
"Just what will you do now that you have lost that job, Miss Macklin?" Tunis asked abruptly.
"Oh, after I am rested, I will go home!"
He had a sudden flash of the memory of that stark lodging house where Ida May Bostwick lived, and he felt assured this girl's home could be no better. But he did not mention this thought.
"I did not mean it just that way," he told her, smiling. "First you and I will go and get supper somewhere. I did not half finish mine, and you have had none at all."
"I don't know about that," she interposed. "It is generous of you. But ought I to accept?"