Part 8 (1/2)

”There's the Barquette,” said Miss Bostwick, with the air of one used daily to the grandeur of such hostelries.

But Tunis had seen her lodgings! However, her airs amused him, and Tunis Latham was no penny-squeezer. He headed straight in for the dining room, where a gloriously appareled negro head waiter appraised him as being ”all right,” and Ida May got by, without knowing it, upon the captain's substantial appearance.

While the waiter was away, Tunis bluntly put his errand before her.

He felt it his duty to make the offer as attractive as possible. But he did not make small the fact that the b.a.l.l.s were old and needed her services.

”Goodness! What do they want me for--a nurse?” she demanded tartly.

The question put Tunis on his mettle. He explained that Cap'n Ira and his wife were comfortably ”fixed,” as Cape people considered comfort, with a home free and clear of all enc.u.mbrances, and investments that yielded a sufficient support. Ida May, as he understood it, would share their home and their means.

”And you want I should go down to that place and live on pollack and potatoes till them folks die, for the sake of just a _home_?” she demanded, her brown eyes snapping.

”_I_ don't want you to do anything,” he pointed out coolly enough.

”I am merely repeating their offer. They are your folks.”

”And I know all about what it is down there,” the girl said quickly.

”My mother came from there. She was glad enough to get away, too, I warrant. Why should I give up a good job and the city to live in such a dead-and-alive hole?”

”That is for you to decide,” Tunis replied, not without secret relief.

He could not understand her att.i.tude. He remembered that South End lodging house with secret horror. But evidently Ida May Bostwick was wedded to the tawdry conveniences and gayeties of city life. Tunis could not wholly understand why any sane person should a.s.sume this att.i.tude; in fact, he suspected a good deal of it was put on. How could a girl, even one as inconsequential and flighty as Ida May evidently was, hold in contempt the offer he had brought her from Cap'n Ira and his wife?

But he had done all that could be expected of him. All, indeed, that he thought wise. Disappointed as the old couple would be by Ida May's refusal, Tunis felt that to urge her to reconsider the matter would not be in the best interests of her elderly relatives. They needed a young companion there on Wreckers' Head, needed one very sorely, but not such a person as Ida May Bostwick.

”Then, that will be your final answer, Miss Bostwick?” he said slowly, as Ida May played with her ice.

”Say! I wouldn't go down to that hole for a million,” scoffed the girl. ”I guess you wouldn't stand it yourself, only you're off on your s.h.i.+p most of the time.”

”I like the Cape,” he said briefly.

”Never lived in the city, did you?”

”I never did.”

”Then you don't know any better,” she told him confidently. ”And you don't really look like such a dead one, at that.”

”Thank you.”

She smiled saucily into his rather grim face. Then she opened her bag and deliberately powdered her nose before rising from the table.

”Thanks for a pleasant hour,” she drawled. ”You tell Auntie and Uncle Josh to get a girl from the poor farm or somewhere to do their ch.o.r.es and tuck 'em in nights. _Me_, I don't mean to live out of sight of movie signs and electric lights. I'd like to see myself!”

She was both rude and common. Tunis was glad to get out of the dining room. Ida May attracted altogether too much attention. And she had quite openly eyed his well-lined wallet when he paid the waiter. To a girl like Ida May, all was fish that swam into her net.

Crude as she considered him, Tunis Latham was a man with some money.

And he evidently knew how to spend it.

”When you're in town I'd be glad to see you any time, Mr. Latham. Or do I say captain?”