Just what she might do to Tunis under those circumstances she did not even explain to herself.  But she began to think of Tunis a good deal.  He was a good-looking man, too.  And he spent freely.  Ida May Bostwick remembered the lunch at Barquette’s.

It was true that Sarah Honey had been all Prudence Ball and Aunt Lucretia Latham and other Wreckers’ Head folk believed her to be.  But she died when Ida May was small, and the girl had been brought up wholly under the influence of the Bostwicks.  That family had lacked refinement and breeding and graciousness of manner to a degree that would have amazed and shocked Sarah Honey’s relatives down on the Cape.

Not that the girl thought of Tunis Latham’s refinement with any wistfulness.  She thought of his well-filled wallet, that he was something more than a common sailor, that he undoubtedly owned a good home, even if it was down at Big Wreck Cove, and that he seemed “soft” and “easy.”

“A girl might wind him right around her finger, if she went at it right,” Ida May Bostwick finally decided.  “Some girl will.  I wonder how long it would take to get him to sell out down there and live up here in town?  My mother came from that awful hole, and she caught a city fellow.  I bet I could do this, if it was worth my while.  My goodness!  Why not?

“There’s property there, too.  I wonder how much those old creatures are worth.  And how long they will live.  He spoke like they needed somebody because they were sick.  Ugh!  I don’t like folks when they are sick.  Ma was awful.  I can remember it.  And there was pa, when he was cripped with rheumatism before he died.”

This phase of the matter fairly staggered Ida May Bostwick.  She put the faint glimmerings of the idea out of her mind—­or tried to.  Yet that summer she kept delaying her vacation until all the other girls had come back and related all their adventures—­those that had actually happened and those that they had imagined.

“Ain’t you going to take any time off, Ida May?” they asked.

At last she said she expected to visit her folks “down on the Cape.”

“You remember that nice-looking farmer that came in to speak to me that time and took me to lunch at Barquette’s?” she asked Miss Leary.

“I know you said he took you there.”

“Well, he did, smarty!  He’s my cousin—­of course, not too close.”  And Ida May giggled.  “Well, we’ve been corresponding.”

“I hope it’s all perfectly proper,” grinned Miss Leary.

Ida May Bostwick stuck out her tongue.  But she laughed.

“I’ve got a good mind,” she said to her friend, “to go down and see that fellow’s folks.  They’re well fixed, I guess.  And the store pays you for one week of your vacation.  I wouldn’t lose much, even if it did turn out to be a dead-and-alive hole.”

CHAPTER XIX

THE ARRIVAL