Sheila of Big Wreck Cove Part 11

"I--I hope you will forgive me."

"You did just what I should have expected my brother to do, if I had a brother," she replied frankly. "But few girls who work at Sellers'

have brothers."

"No?" Something in her voice, rather than in the words, startled Tunis.

"Let me put it differently," she said, still with that gentle cadence which ameliorated the bitterness of her tone. "Girls who have brothers seldom fall into Sellers' clutches. You see, he is a last resort. He does not demand references, and he poses as a philanthropist."

Tunis felt confused, in a maze. He could not imagine where the girl was tacking. He was keenly aware, however, that there was a mystery about her being employed at all in Sellers' restaurant.

They came out at last upon the brow of the hill overlooking the Common. The lamps glimmered along Tremont Street through an opalescent haze which was stealing over the city from the bay.

Without question they went down the steps side by side. There was a bench in a shadow and, without touching her, Tunis steered the girl's steps toward it.

She sat down with an involuntary sigh of weariness. She had been on her feet most of the time since eleven o'clock. She relaxed in contact with the back of the bench, and he could see the contour of her throat and chin thrown up in relief against the background of shadow. The whole relaxed att.i.tude of her slim body betrayed exhaustion.

"I hope you will not blame me too severely," Tunis stammered.

"I don't blame you."

"I fear you will after you have taken time to think it over.

But--but perhaps there may be some way in which I can repair the damage I have done."

She looked at him levelly, curiously.

"You are a seaman, are you not?"

"I'm Tunis Latham. I own the schooner _Seamew_, and command her. We are going to run back and forth from Boston to the Cape--Cape Cod."

"Oh! I could scarcely fill a position on your schooner, Captain Latham."

She smiled again. It was a weary smile, however, not like the former flash of amus.e.m.e.nt she had shown. Her head drooped as her mind sank into unhappy retrospection. Tunis looked aside at her with a great hunger in his heart to take all her trouble--no matter what it was--upon his own mind and give her the freedom she needed. What or who the girl was did not matter. Even what she had done, or what she had not done meant little to Tunis Latham.

She was the one girl in all this world who had ever interested him beyond a pa.s.sing moment, and he was convinced that she alone would ever interest him. The cheap environment of their meeting meant nothing. If she was free, her own mistress, and he could get her, he meant to make this girl his wife.

"You didn't tell me your name," he said directly. "Won't you? I have been frank with you."

"Why, so you have," said the girl. There might have been a strata of laughter underlying the words; yet her face was sober enough. "If you really wish to know, Captain Latham, my name is Macklin."

"_Miss_ Macklin?" he asked, a positive tremor in his voice.

"Certainly. Sheila Macklin, spinster."

Tunis drew a long breath. That was enough! He would take his chance in the game with any other man as long as she was not promised. But there was no use in spoiling everything by being too precipitate.

The captain of the _Seamew_ might be simple, but he was not the man to ruin a thing through impulsiveness. That exhibition in the restaurant was hooked up with wrath.

There had been an undercurrent of thought in his mind ever since he had met this girl for the second time, and it was quite a natural thought, comparing her with Ida May Bostwick. If Sheila Macklin had only been Ida May, after all! It was a ridiculous idea. Not a feature or betrayed trait of character was like any that the disappointing great-niece of Prudence Ball possessed. This girl sitting beside Tunis on the bench and Ida May Bostwick were as little alike as though they were inhabitants of two different worlds.

He had begun to imagine, too, how well this girl beside him would fit into the needs of the old couple living there alone on Wreckers'

Head. It was an idle thought, of course. He had no plan, or scheme, or definite suggestion in his mind. It was only a wish, a keen longing for an impossible conjunction of circ.u.mstances which would have enabled him to present Sheila Macklin to Cap'n Ira and Prudence and say:

"This is the girl you sent me for."

"Just what will you do now that you have lost that job, Miss Macklin?" Tunis asked abruptly.

"Oh, after I am rested, I will go home!"

He had a sudden flash of the memory of that stark lodging house where Ida May Bostwick lived, and he felt a.s.sured this girl's home could be no better. But he did not mention this thought.

"I did not mean it just that way," he told her, smiling. "First you and I will go and get supper somewhere. I did not half finish mine, and you have had none at all."

"I don't know about that," she interposed. "It is generous of you.

But ought I to accept?"

"You need not question that. We are going to be friends, Miss Macklin. Is it necessary for me to bring you references?"

"It may be necessary for me to obtain a sponsor," she said, quite seriously. "You do not know a thing about me, Captain Latham."

"You know nothing about me, except what I have told you." And he laughed.

"And what I read in your countenance," she said soberly.

He grinned at her, but rather ruefully.

"I never knew my thoughts were advertised in my face."

"Oh, no! Not that! But your character is. Otherwise I would not be sitting here with you."

"I guess that's all right then," he declared with satisfaction.

"Well, let's call it a draw. If you take me at face value, I'll take you at the same rating. Anyhow, we can risk going to supper together."

"Well, somewhere to a quiet place. Don't take me where you are known, Captain Latham."

"No?" He was puzzled again. "But, then, I am not known anywhere in Boston."

"All the better. I ought not to lend myself in any way to making you possible future trouble."

"I do not understand you, Miss Macklin."

He sat up suddenly on the bench to look at her more sharply. There was an underlying, but important, meaning to her speech.

"I know you do not understand," she rejoined gently. She sighed. "I must make you clearly see just who I am and the risk you run in a.s.sociating with me."

"The risk I run!"

He uttered the words in both amazement and ridicule.

"You do not quite understand, Captain Latham," she repeated in the same gentle tone.

There was no raillery in her voice now. She was altogether serious.