Part 6 (1/2)

”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 s.h.i.+p.

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 cas.h.i.+er'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 cas.h.i.+er'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.”