Sheila of Big Wreck Cove Part 6

"The dear girl!" breathed Prudence.

It never crossed their simple minds that Ida May Bostwick might see this chance they offered her in a different light from that in which they looked at it. The old couple made their innocent plans for the welcoming of the "grandniece," positive that a happy future was in store for both Ida May and themselves.

In Tunis Latham's mind there was more uncertainty regarding the mysterious Ida May Bostwick than there was in the minds of Cap'n Ira and Prudence. Whenever he considered his "errand of mercy" the captain of the _Seamew_ had a flash of that girl with the violet eyes who worked in the restaurant on Scollay Square. The b.a.l.l.s did not know where Ida May worked. Prudence only had obtained the lodging-house address of her young relative from Annabell Coffin, "she who was a Cuttle."

Of course, it was merely a faint and tenuous possibility that Ida May was a waitress. Still fainter was the chance that she would prove to be the girl with the violet eyes that Tunis Latham remembered so distinctly. The b.a.l.l.s knew that she worked in a store, and all stores were the same to them. There might be a few hundred thousand other girls in Boston besides that particular girl whom he had saved from falling on the square.

Nevertheless, when the _Seamew_ had unloaded and been warped to a berth in an outer tier of small craft to await her turn to load barrels and box shooks for a concern at Paulmouth, Captain Tunis started up into the city. He knew his way about Boston as well as any one not a native, and his first objective point was that restaurant on Scollay Square.

It was the dogwatch when Tunis Latham entered the eating place, but the dogwatch here was not at the same time of day as aboard ship.

The captain's first startled glance about the room a.s.sured him that there was not a girl employee in sight, not even at the cashier's desk, and very few customers.

He ordered a late but hearty breakfast of the unshaven waiter in half-spoiled ap.r.o.n and coat who lounged over his table.

"I thought they used to have girl waiters in this place?" the captain said when the man brought the tableware and gla.s.s of water.

"On from 'leven till eight. You're too early if you got a jane in your eye, bo," was the ribald reply. "The boss is a good guy." He sneered in the direction of the black-haired, coa.r.s.e-looking man in the cashier's cage. "He hires them girls for five dollars less a week than he'd have to pay union waiters, and he asks no questions."

He closed his recital with a wink so full of meaning that Tunis'

palm itched to slap him.

But the guest's wind-bitten face betrayed no confusion nor further interest. The waiter judged he had mistaken his man, after all, and sheered off until the ordered viands were ready at the slide.

He hesitated to question that coa.r.s.e man, even to mention Ida May Bostwick's name to him. The waiter had misinterpreted his first remark about the waitresses. The proprietor might hold any question he asked regarding Ida May against the record of the violet-eyed girl, if by any wild possibility that should be her name. There was time still, he thought, to find her at her lodgings before she started for the restaurant, if she worked here.

So Tunis paid his check and strode forth. The lodging of Ida May Bostwick was not in this neighborhood, of course, not even in the West End. In fact, it was in the South End, in one of those streets running more or less parallel to lower Shawmut Avenue. He took a car in the subway and got off near the address Prudence Ball had given him.

To the mind of the Cape man, used as he was to the open s.p.a.ces of both sea and land, these dingy blocks of brick houses, three and four stories in height, all quite alike in smoke and squalor and even in the pattern of the net curtains at their parlor windows, made as dreary a picture as he had ever imagined. He thought of that pale, slender, violet-eyed girl coming back to this ugly block at night, after long hours at the restaurant, having to look forward to nothing more beautiful, in all probability, inside the house where she lodged. Who would not be glad, overjoyed, indeed, to get away from such an environment?

He found the number. The house was no worse and no better than its neighbors. By stains on the blistered bricks beside the door frame he gathered that sc.r.a.ps of paper advertising empty rooms had often been pasted there. He rang the bell at the top of the rail-guarded steps. After a time he rang again.

He could hear the bell jangle somewhere in a distant part of the house. n.o.body came in answer to his summons, not even after his third ring. At length the creaking, iron-barred gate in the area warned him that the main door at which he rang was not in use at that hour of the day. A woman in a house dress as ugly as the street itself, and with untidy gray hair and a bar of s.m.u.t on her cheek, craned her neck from this opening to look up at him.

"There's no use your ringing. I ain't got an empty room, young man,"

she announced.

He descended spryly into the area before she could close the gate.

Her near-sighted scowl misjudged him again, for she added:

"Nor I don't want to buy anything."

"One moment, ma'am," he cried. "I have nothing for sale. I'd like to see somebody who lodges here."

"Who?" asked the woman, peering at him curiously.

"Miss Bostwick."

"You'll have to come this evening."

"Oh! She has--has gone to work already?"

"My stars! Do you know what time it is, young man?" demanded the lodging-house keeper. "It's after ten o'clock."

Already Tunis Latham's hopes began to sink.

"Then--then she goes to work early?"

"Lemme tell you, them that works for Hoskin & Marl have to show up by eight or they lose their jobs."

"And she will not be in until evening?" he repeated.

"'Bout seven. She gets her supper before she comes home. I don't give meals."

"Where is this place she works at?" asked the captain of the _Seamew_, with a suppressed sigh.

"Guess you are a stranger in town, aren't you?" said the curious landlady. "I thought everybody knew Hoskin & Marl's. It's on Tremont Street. The big department store."

"Oh! Miss Bostwick works there?"

"In the laces. You can't know her very well, young man."

"I come from her folks down on the Cape," he thought it his duty to explain. "I've a message for her."

"On the Cape? My stars! I never knowed she had any country relatives. Are they rich? They ain't died and left her a fortune, have they?" were the eager questions.

"The ones I speak of are still alive," Tunis said gravely, backing up the steps to the sidewalk. "Thank you, ma'am. I'll go to that store and speak to her there. Thank you."

Before she could evolve another question, Tunis had escaped. He walked smartly away, not only to outdistance the lodging-house keeper's voice, but because he was confused and disappointed. Ida May Bostwick could not work in a department store and in an eating house as well. Of course not! And now that this point was an established fact in his mind, he admitted that he had been utterly foolish to imagine for a moment that he had already met her, that she was the violet-eyed girl in whom he had taken an interest.

Right at the start he had known that a girl working in an eating house like that was not the sort of person he could introduce to Aunt Lucretia. And so why had he imagined that she would prove to be the great-niece of Prudence Ball? It was ridiculous!

Of course, this Ida May came of good Cape stock. At least, on one side of her family. The Honeys were as good as the Lathams or the b.a.l.l.s.

Thus condemning his foolish fancies he strode downtown again. He knew where Hoskin & Marl's was. He had been in the place. When he reached the department store he marched straight in, meaning to have an immediate interview with the girl at the lace counter.

CHAPTER VI

AN UNSATISFACTORY INTERVIEW

Tunis Latham suffered all the timidity of the average man when he got into the maze of that department store. There is a psychological reason for the haberdashery goods, the line for the mere male, being placed always within sight of a princ.i.p.al exit. The catacombs of Rome would be no more terrifying in prospect for a man than a venture into the farther intricacies of Hoskin & Marl's.

The captain of the _Seamew_ could box the compa.s.s with the next seafarer, but he lost all idea of the points on the card before he had been three minutes in the store, and he had to hail a floor-walker to get his bearings.

"Lace counter? Right this way, sir. Yes, sir. Just over there.

Our--er--Miss Bostwick will serve you, sir. Forward!"