“I swan!” he muttered within Sheila’s hearing.  “It’s most like there was a corpse in the house.  This ain’t no way to live.  I do wish Elder Minnett could have minded his own business and let well enough alone.  Let the girl talk, and other folks, too.  Trying to stop gossip is like trying to put your finger on a drop of quicksilver.  There won’t be no good come o’ that girl being here.  That’s as sure as sure.”

The elder’s car came wheezing up the hill again about the middle of the forenoon.  He did not alight himself, but Ida May needed the presence of nobody to lend her assurance.  She hopped out of the car with her bag and flaunted her cheap finery through the gate and in at the front door.

Her reception at this end of the house marked the unmistakable fact that Prudence and Cap’n Ira received her as a stranger rather than in a confidential way.

“Well, Aunt Prue!  For you are my aunt whatever you may say,” was Ida May’s prologue.  “And you are my uncle,” she added, her greenish-brown eyes flashing a glance at the grimly observant captain.  “I must say it’s pretty shabby treatment I’ve got from you so far.  But I don’t blame you—­not at all.  I blame that girl and Tunis Latham.”

“Avast there!” put in Cap’n Ira so sternly and with so threatening a tone of voice and visage that even Ida May was silenced.  “We’ve let you come here, my girl, because Elder Minnett asked us to; and not at all because our opinion of you is changed.  Far from it.  You’re here on sufferance and you’d best be civil spoken while you remain.  Ain’t that the ticket, Prudence?”

His wife nodded, in full accord with his statement of the situation, although she could not bear to look so sternly on any person as Cap’n Ira now looked at Ida May.

“Well!  I like that!” sniffed the girl, tossing her head, but she actually shrank from the captain.

“Furthermore, as regards Tunis Latham, you was to say nothing about him outside of this house if you was let come here.  And I warn you, we don’t care to hear nothing in his disfavor in this house.”

“Oh!  I can see he’s a favorite with you,” muttered Ida May.

“Then trim your sails according,” admonished the old man.  “In addition, you mentioned the young woman we already got here in a way we don’t like none too well.  I want to impress on your mind that it was only through her saying she was agreeable to your coming here that we agreed to the elder’s request and let you come.”

“She did, eh?” cried Ida May, flouncing in her chair.  “Well, I don’t thank her.”

“No.  I cal’late you ain’t of a thanking disposition,” said Cap’n Ira.  “But you like enough won’t drop your bread butter-side down.  That’s all.”

Ida May, startled by his speech, stared with less impudence at the old man.  For his part, the captain watched her pretty closely, and he had met and judged too many people in his day not to form gradually, as the hours passed, a decided opinion regarding Ida May.