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Zeb told him that the girl he had brought to the Pauling house had talked with Elder Minnett and that the elder had later taken her up to the Ball house, where she had remained. There was not much gossip about the matter it seemed. Nobody seemed to know who the young woman was; nor did Zeb know what was going on at the Ball homestead.
But even so I want none o' her. An' I told Elder Minnett so. I got kinder of an idee that the elder won't be so brash, puttin' his spoon into other folks' porridge again." "Hush, Ira! Don't be irreverent. Remember he's a minister." "So he is. So he is," concluded Cap'n Ira. "They say charity covers a multitude of sins; and I expect the call to be a preacher covers a multitude of sinners."
She gave him, too, such a thankful, beaming glance that the old man was almost staggered. For he had not seen one of those smiles for more than two days. "Elder Minnett," Sheila said, and her voice was quite steady, "I think it is my place to speak." "Yes?" was the noncommittal response of the grim old minister. "I should not think for a moment of doubting your judgment in such a matter.
"Don't let her come here, Ira. We don't want her. We don't want anybody but Ida May whom we love so dear, and who we know loves us. We can't do it, Elder Minnett! Why, if they should come and tell me and prove it that Ida May wasn't our niece and that other girl was, I couldn't bear the creature 'round. No, I couldn't. I couldn't forgive anybody that would separate us from this dear, dear girl!"
"I told mom so," reiterated Zeb, with a great sigh of relief. "I know what she said must be a pack of foolishness. But you know how mom is. "She's soft. I know," returned Cap'n Ira. "She's so tender-hearted," explained Zeb. "The girl talks so. She's talked mom not into believing in her, but into kind of listening and sympathizing with her. And now, to-night, she's took her to see Elder Minnett."
"Why, ain't that where you worked, Ida May?" "Yes," was Sheila's faint admission. "You never see her there, did you?" "I do not remember of having seen her until she came here," the girl said quite truthfully. "Ought to be some way of proving up that," muttered Cap'n Ira. "I have written to Hoskin & Marl, at the other young woman's instigation, and have asked about her," said Elder Minnett.
"She didn't talk as though she was when she was here not by a jugful," declared Cap'n Ira bitterly. "That was because she was angry," explained Elder Minnett patiently. "You must not judge her by her appearance when she came here the other day and found as she declares another girl in her rightful place." "I swan!" exclaimed the old shipmaster, bursting out again. "I won't stand for that.
"Avast there!" put in Cap'n Ira so sternly and with so threatening a tone of voice and visage that even Ida May was silenced. "We've let you come here, my girl, because Elder Minnett asked us to; and not at all because our opinion of you is changed. Far from it. You're here on sufferance and you'd best be civil spoken while you remain. Ain't that the ticket, Prudence?"
Any young woman" he looked directly at Sheila again as he said it "will find in me an adviser and a friend whenever she may need my help." "We all know how good you are, Elder Minnett," Prudence hastened to say. "But that girl " "That girl," he interrupted, "is a human being needing help. I have advised her. Now I want to advise you." "Out with it, Elder," said Cap'n Ira.
After her interview with Elder Minnett, although she had refrained from detailing her story and her spiteful comments about Sheila and Tunis Latham to the Paulings, she had not ceased to question Zebedee and his mother about the financial condition of the Balls. She had learned that a couple of thousand dollars would probably buy all the real property the old people owned on Wreckers' Head.
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