“That is where you are going to be happy, Ida May,” he said to her softly.

“I wonder,” murmured the girl.

He looked down into her rapt face.  The violet eyes were fixed upon the old house and the brown-and-green fields immediately surrounding it.  Perhaps Cap’n Ira and Prudence were out there now, watching from the front yard the white-winged Seamew threading so saucily the crooked passage into the cove, the sand bars on one hand and the serried teeth of the Lighthouse Point Reef on the other.

Inside the cove the schooner’s canvas was reduced smartly to merely a topsail and jib, the wind in which carried her close enough to Luiz Wharf for a line to be cast ashore.  Tier upon tier of barrels of clams were stored under the open sheds, ready to be packed away in the Seamew’s hold.  Orion loudly acclaimed against a malign fate.

“Hi golly!  Ain’t we goin’ to have no spare time at all?  This running in a coasting packet is plain slavery; that’s what it is!  A man don’t have a chance even to go home and change his socks ’tween trips.”

“Have a clean pair in your duffel bag; then you won’t have to go home for ’em, ’Rion,” advised Tunis.  “We’ve got to make hay while the sun shines.  There’ll be loafing enough to cut into the profits by and by when bad weather breaks.”

Orion grunted pessimistically.  Little in this world ever just suited Orion.

“She’s a hoodooed packet.  I said it from the first,” he muttered to Horry.  “You know well enough what she was before they gave her a lick of paint and a new name.  We’ll all pay high yet for sailin’ in her.”

“I wouldn’t let Cap’n Tunis hear me say that ‘nless I was seekin’ a new berth,” rejoined the old mariner.

Tunis left the mate and Horry to carry on while he took the passenger ashore, meaning to spend the night himself at home with Aunt Lucretia.  He stopped to get Eunez Pareta’s father to harness up his old horse and transfer Miss Bostwick’s trunk and bag to the Ball homestead.  Eunez was in evidence—­as she always was when Tunis came by—­a bird of paradise indeed.  Her languishing glances at Tunis flashed in their change to suspicious glares at the girl waiting in the roadway.

“You have a guest, Tunis Latham?” she asked with a composure which scarcely hid her jealousy and doubt.

“I’m taking her up to the Balls’.  She’s Mrs. Ball’s niece, Eunez,” Tunis said good-naturedly.  He was always friendly with these Portygees.  That was why he got along so well with them and they liked to work for him.  Many of the Big Wreck Cove folk looked upon them even now as “furriners” who had to be shouted at if one would make them understood.

“What does she come for?” asked Eunez sharply.

“They need her up there.  Mrs. Ball is feeble and so is the captain.  She is going to live with them right along.”

“Ah-ha!” whispered Eunez, as he passed her to step outside the house again.  She seized his arm and swung him around to face her, for she was strong.  “You think she is pretty, Tunis?” she demanded.