“Oh, you hesh!” exclaimed his wife.

But Sheila giggled delightedly.  The way Cap’n Ira handled the several visitors who thereafter came to Wreckers’ Head continued to amuse the girl immensely.  Nor did the visits cease.  The Ball homestead was no longer a lonely habitation.  Somebody was forever “just stopping by,” as the expression ran; and the path from the port was trodden brown and sere as autumn drew on apace.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HARVEST HOME FESTIVAL

It was not that Sheila Macklin had no graver moments.  There were nights when, in spite of her healthful weariness of body, arising from the work of the household, she lay awake for long hours of restless, anxious thought.  And sometimes her pillow was wet with tears.  Yet she was not of a lachrymose disposition.  She could not invent imaginary troubles or build in her mind gibbets on which remorse and sorrow might hang in chains.

Indeed, how could she be sorrowful?  Why should she feel remorse?  She had taken another girl’s name and claim of parentage, and she filled a place which the other girl might have had.  But the rightful owner of the name had scorned this refuge.  The real Ida May Bostwick had no appreciation of what the Balls had to offer, and she had been unwilling even to open communication with her relatives down on the Cape.

Besides, Tunis Latham always cheered the girl who was playing an imposter’s part with the declaration that she had done just right—­that without her presence on Wreckers’ Head Cap’n Ira and his wife would be in a very bad way, indeed.

She could see that this was so.  Her coming to them had been as great a blessing in their lives as it had been in her own.

She fully realized that Cap’n Ira and his wife would not have admitted her to their home and to their hearts had she come in her own person and identity.  This was not so much because of their strict morality as because of their strict Puritanism.  For a puritan may not be moral always, but he must be just.  And justice of that character is seldom tempered by mercy.  What they might have forgiven the real Ida May they could scarcely be expected to forgive a stranger.

In spite of this situation, the Balls were being blessed by the presence of a girl in their household who had been tainted with a sentence to a reformatory.  Even now, when she knew they loved her and could scarcely imagine what they would do without her, Sheila Macklin was quite convinced that a whisper about these hidden miseries would turn Cap’n Ball, and even Prudence, against her.

Therefore she was careful, putting a guard upon her tongue and almost keeping watch upon her secret thoughts.  She never allowed herself to lapse into reverie in their presence for fear the old people might suspect that she had a past that would not endure open discussion.

And, deliberately and with forethought, the intelligent girl went about strengthening her position with the Balls and making her identity as Ida May Bostwick unassailable.  She had a retentive memory.  Nothing Aunt Prudence ever said in her hearing about Sarah Honey, her ways when she was young, or what the old woman knew or surmised about her dead niece’s marriage and her life thereafter, escaped the girl.  She treasured it all.