“Yes?  I suppose she’s a dear old soul?”

“They are mighty nice folks,” Tunis replied stoutly.  “As nice as any in all Barnstable County.”

“But—­er—­sort of simple?”

The girl asked it with a perfectly innocent countenance.  Tunis flashed her a look that showed comprehension.

“Just about as simple as I am,” he said.

“Oh!”

“Where’ll we go to eat?” he asked cheerfully, considering that he had the best of it so far.

They came out upon Tremont Street and now started downtown.  He desired to get no nearer to that eating house on Scollay Square.  At least, not with his present companion.

“There’s the Barquette,” said Miss Bostwick, with the air of one used daily to the grandeur of such hostelries.

But Tunis had seen her lodgings!  However, her airs amused him, and Tunis Latham was no penny-squeezer.  He headed straight in for the dining room, where a gloriously appareled negro head waiter appraised him as being “all right,” and Ida May got by, without knowing it, upon the captain’s substantial appearance.

While the waiter was away, Tunis bluntly put his errand before her.  He felt it his duty to make the offer as attractive as possible.  But he did not make small the fact that the Balls were old and needed her services.

“Goodness!  What do they want me for—­a nurse?” she demanded tartly.

The question put Tunis on his mettle.  He explained that Cap’n Ira and his wife were comfortably “fixed,” as Cape people considered comfort, with a home free and clear of all encumbrances, and investments that yielded a sufficient support.  Ida May, as he understood it, would share their home and their means.

“And you want I should go down to that place and live on pollack and potatoes till them folks die, for the sake of just a home?” she demanded, her brown eyes snapping.

“I don’t want you to do anything,” he pointed out coolly enough.  “I am merely repeating their offer.  They are your folks.”

“And I know all about what it is down there,” the girl said quickly.  “My mother came from there.  She was glad enough to get away, too, I warrant.  Why should I give up a good job and the city to live in such a dead-and-alive hole?”

“That is for you to decide,” Tunis replied, not without secret relief.

He could not understand her attitude.  He remembered that South End lodging house with secret horror.  But evidently Ida May Bostwick was wedded to the tawdry conveniences and gayeties of city life.  Tunis could not wholly understand why any sane person should assume this attitude; in fact, he suspected a good deal of it was put on.  How could a girl, even one as inconsequential and flighty as Ida May evidently was, hold in contempt the offer he had brought her from Cap’n Ira and his wife?

But he had done all that could be expected of him.  All, indeed, that he thought wise.  Disappointed as the old couple would be by Ida May’s refusal, Tunis felt that to urge her to reconsider the matter would not be in the best interests of her elderly relatives.  They needed a young companion there on Wreckers’ Head, needed one very sorely, but not such a person as Ida May Bostwick.