“That girl at Cap’n Ball’s place, Tunis,” said the Portygee girl.  “Does she like it up there?”

“Oh, yes!  She’s getting on fine,” was his careless response.

“And will they keep her?”

“Of course they will keep her.”  He laughed.  “Who wouldn’t, if they got the chance?”

“Si?” Eunez commented sibilantly.

Naturally, many people besides Eunez Pareta in and about Big Wreck Cove were interested in the coming of the stranger to Cap’n Ira Ball’s.  Those housewives who lived on Wreckers’ Head and in the vicinity were able more easily to call at the Ball homestead for the express purpose of meeting and becoming acquainted with “Sarah Honey’s daughter.”  And they did so.

“I’d got into the way of thinking,” remarked Cap’n Ball dryly, “that most folks—­’ceptin’ John-Ed and his wife—­had got the notion we’d dried up here, Prue and me, and blowed away.  Some of ’em ain’t never come near in six months.  I swan!”

“Now, Ira,” admonished his wife, “do have charity.”

“Charity?  Huh!  I’ll take a pinch of snuff instead.  That’s a warnin’, Prudence! A-choon!”

Not until the second Sunday after the Seamew had brought Ida May from Boston did Big Wreck Cove folk in general get a “good slant,” as they expressed it, at the Balls’ visitor.  There was an ancient carryall in the barn, and on the Saturday previous little John-Ed was caught and made to clean this vehicle, rub up the green-molded harness, and give the Queen of Sheba more than “a lick and a promise” with the currycomb and brush.

At ten o’clock on Sunday morning Sheila herself backed the gray mare out of her stable and harnessed her into the shafts of the carryall.

“For a city gal, you are the handiest creature!” sighed Prudence, marveling.

The girl only smiled.  She was now used to such comments.  They did not make her heart flutter as had any reference to her past life at first.

The bell in the steeple of the green-blinded, white-painted church on the farther edge of the port was tinkling tinnily as the girl drove the old mare down the hill, with Cap’n Ira and Prudence in the rear seat of the carriage.

“We ain’t felt we could undertake churchgoing for months, Ida May,” the old woman said.  “And I miss Elder Minnett’s sermons.”

“So do I,” agreed her husband, with his usual caustic turn of speech.  “I swan!  I can sleep better under the elder’s preaching than I can to home.”

“If you go to sleep to-day, Ira, I shall step on your foot,” warned his wife.

“You’d better take care which one you step on,” rejoined Cap’n Ira.  “I got a corn on one that jumps like an ulcerated tooth.  If you touch that I shall likely surprise you more’n I do when I take snuff.”

The Portygees had a chapel devoted to their faith.  The carriage passed that on the way to the Congregational Church.  A girl, very dark as to features, very red as to lips, and dressed in very gay colors in spite of her destination, was mounting the chapel steps.  She halted to stare particularly at the quietly dressed girl driving the gray mare.