“I guess you know,” he observed, “that most all the money Uncle Peke left me—­after what the lawyers got—­I put into that schooner.  There’s a mortgage on her, too.  You see, although the old place will come to me by and by, Aunt Lucretia has rights in it while she lives.  It’s sort of entailed, you know.  I could not raise a dollar on Latham’s Folly, if I wanted to.  So I am pretty well tied up, you see.

“But the schooner is doing well.  That is, I mean, business is good, Ida May.  Other things being equal, I will make more money with her the way I am doing now than I could in any other business.  My line is the sea; I know that.  I am fitted for it.

“And if I had invested Uncle Peke’s legacy and kept on fishing, or tried for a berth in a deep bottom somewhere, I would not get ahead any faster or make so much money.  Besides, long voyages would take me away from home, and, after all, Aunt Lucretia is my only kin and she would miss me sore.”

“I am sure she would,” said the girl with sympathy.

“But all ain’t plain sailing,” added the young skipper wistfully.  “I am running too close to the reefs right now to crow any.”

“But I am sure you will be successful in the end.  Of course you will!”

“That’s mighty nice of you,” he said, smiling down into her vivid face.  “With you and Aunt Lucretia both pulling for me, I ought to win out, sure enough.

“You can’t fail to like her,” he added.  “If you just get the right slant on her character, I mean, Ida May.  Hers has been a lonely life.  Not that there has not almost always been somebody in the house with her.  But she has lived with her own thoughts.  She reads a great deal.  There is not one topic I can broach of which she has not at least a general knowledge.  I was sent away to school, but when I came home vacations I brought my books and she read them all.

“And she is a splendid listener.”  He laughed.  “You’ll find that out for yourself, I fancy.  And I know she likes people to talk to her—­when they have anything to say.  Tell her things; that is what she enjoys.”

In spite of his assurances, Sheila Macklin approached the old, brown house behind the cedars with much secret trepidation.  Although Aunt Lucretia had a neighbor’s girl come in to help her almost daily, she had preferred to prepare the dinner on this occasion with her own hands.  And, perhaps, she did not care to have the neighbor’s child around when the supposed Ida May came to the house for the first time.

They saw her watching from the side door—­a tall, angular figure in a black dress.  Her hair was done plainly and in no arrangement to soften the gaunt outline of her face, but there was much of it, and Sheila longed to make a change in that grim coiffure.

The woman smiled so warmly when she saw the two approach that almost instantly the girl forgot the grim contour of Aunt Lucretia’s face.  That smile was like a flash of sunshine playing over one of those barren, brown fields through which they had passed so quickly on the way down from the Ball house.