“We all know how good you are, Elder Minnett,” Prudence hastened to say.  “But that girl—­”

“That girl,” he interrupted, “is a human being needing help.  I have advised her.  Now I want to advise you.”

“Out with it, Elder,” said Cap’n Ira.  “Good advice ain’t to be sneezed at—­not as I ever heard.”

“I have the other young woman’s promise that she will tell her story to nobody else—­nobody at all—­until I can hear from those whom she says are her employers.  But with the understanding that you will do your part.”

“What’s that?” asked Cap’n Ira quickly.

“She wants to come up here and stay with you.  She says she is sure you are her relatives.  She says if you will let her come, she will be able to prove to you that she is the real niece you expected—­whom you sent for last summer.”

“Why, she’s crazy!” again cried Cap’n Ira.

“I—­I am almost afraid of her,” murmured Prudence, looking from Sheila to her husband.

“I assure you, Sister Ball, she is not insane.  She is harmless.”

“She didn’t talk as though she was when she was here—­not by a jugful,” declared Cap’n Ira bitterly.

“That was because she was angry,” explained Elder Minnett patiently.  “You must not judge her by her appearance when she came here the other day and found—­as she declares—­another girl in her rightful place.”

“I swan!” exclaimed the old shipmaster, bursting out again.  “I won’t stand for that.  Her rightful place, indeed!  Why, if she was forty times Prudence’s niece and we didn’t want her here, what’s to make us take her, I want to know?”

“Do you think we ought to, Elder?” questioned Prudence faintly.

“I think, under all the circumstances, that it is your Christian duty.  Know the girl better.  See if there is not something in her that reminds you—­”

“Avast there!” shouted Cap’n Ira, pounding with his cane on the floor.  “That’s going a deal too far.  ‘Christian duty,’ indeed!  How about our duty to Ida May setting there, and to ourselves?  Prudence is afraid of that crazy gal in the first place.”

“I give you my word she is not insane.”

“That’s your opinion,” said the captain grimly.  “I wouldn’t back it with my word, Elder, unless I was prepared to go the whole v’y’ge.  Do you mean to say that you accept that gal’s story as true—­in all partic’lars?”

“I don’t say that.”

“Then I shall stick to my opinion.  She’s as loony as she can be.  And I am plumb against insulting our Ida May by letting the girl come up here.  What do you say, Prudence?”

The old woman was much perturbed.  Elder Minnett was a minister of the gospel.  To be told by him that it was her Christian duty to take a certain course bore much weight with Prudence Ball.

But when she looked at Sheila, sitting there so pale and silent, and realized that on her head all this was falling, the old woman rose up, burst into tears, and threw herself into the girl’s arms.