The elder was a tall and bony man with a stiff brush of gray beard and bushy hair to match, which seemed as uncompromising as his doctrinal discourses in the pulpit. He was an old-fashioned preacher, but not wholly an old-fashioned thinker.
Sheila had thought, on the few occasions when she had met him away from his pulpit, that there was an undercurrent of humanity in him quite equal to that in Cap"n Ira Ball, but his personal appearance and rather gruff manner made it difficult for one to be sure of the measure of his tenderness.
How Elder Minnett appeared in the sick room or in the house of sorrow, she did not know. She could not very well imagine his being tender at any time with the sinner at whom he thundered from the pulpit. Secretly she trembled at the old clergyman"s approach.
"Well, Elder!" was the warm greeting of Prudence at the front door when the rattling automobile came to a wheezing halt before the gate. "Do tell! Ira said he see you coming up the road, and I was determined you shouldn"t drive by without speaking. Do come in."
"I propose to, Sister Ball," was the grim-lipped reply.
He came into the house and took the proffered chair in the sitting room. They spoke of the weather, of the tide, and of the clam harvest. The farm crops back of Big Wreck Cove did not interest Cap"n Ira.
"Well," said the elder finally, clearing his throat, "I"ve come up here on an errand you can possibly guess, Cap"n Ira and Sister Ball."
"Maybe we can and maybe we can"t," observed the captain with a countenance quite as wooden as the elder himself displayed.
"I come on behalf of that young woman who was here to see you the other day."
"It"s my opinion you"d done better to have gone to the insane asylum folks about her," rejoined Cap"n Ira.
"Now, Ira!" said Prudence softly.
"Seeing it as you do, Cap"n Ira," the elder remarked quite equably, "I conclude that you might think that. But you formed your judgment in the heat of--well, not anger, of course--but without sufficient reflection."
"Humph!" grunted Cap"n Ira noncommittally.
"I have talked with that young woman on two occasions," said the elder.
"With what young woman?" interrupted Cap"n Ira.
"With the girl staying at the Widow Pauling"s. The girl who claims to be your niece."
"You"d better talk with the other young woman," said Cap"n Ira sternly. "Ida May! Just you come in here and sit down. You are as much interested as we be, I guess. _This_ is Ida May Bostwick, Elder Minnett," he added, as Sheila entered.
"Yes, yes. I have had the pleasure," said the elder, bowing gravely without offering to shake hands. He turned abruptly to Prudence.
"You are quite convinced in your own mind, Sister Ball, that the young woman at the Pauling"s is not your niece?"
"Why, Elder Minnett," returned Prudence, "how _can_ she be? Ida May is Sarah Honey"s only child, and Sarah was only distantly related to me. There never was another girl in the family--not like that one that came here the other day, for sure!" And the old woman shook her head emphatically.
"That girl you got down there at the port, Elder, is crazy--crazy as a loon," put in Cap"n Ira harshly.
"I am not so sure of that," the clergyman said shortly.
"I swan! Beg your pardon, Elder. No offense. But you don"t mean to say that she seems sane and sensible to you?"
"Sane--yes! As for being sensible, that is another thing," confessed Elder Minnett.
"Huh! What do you mean by that?" asked Cap"n Ira curiously.
"She has told her story in full to me, and told it twice alike,"
said the grim-visaged minister, looking at Sheila as he answered the query. "An insane person is not so likely to do that, I believe. But she is not what I would call a sensible young woman. Not at all."
"I should say not!" gasped Prudence.
"But I have heard her, and I have reflected on what she has said. I do not see, if she is an impostor, how she could have made up that story."
"Then she _must_ be loony," muttered Cap"n Ira.
"I presume she told the same story to you that she did to me,"
pursued Elder Minnett. "I do not understand Tunis Latham"s part in it, but the rest of her story seems quite reasonable."
"Reasonable?" repeated Prudence, with some warmth. "Do you call it reasonable to say what she did about Ida May?"
"In speaking of the young woman"s reasonableness I mean in regard to the personal details she gave me. What she said in her anger to, or of, other people has no influence whatsoever on my judgment."
"Well, it has on mine!" exclaimed Cap"n Ira. "I"d have drove out a dozen gals that spoke as she did to Prudence and Ida May--crazy or not!"
"You would be wrong, Cap"n Ball," said the elder severely.
"Well, let"s have the p"ints the girl makes!" growled the old shipmaster. "I will listen to "em."
Elder Minnett bowed formally and began Ida May"s story, checking off the several a.s.sertions she had made when she was at the Ball house far more clearly than the girl herself had done. As Sheila listened, her heart sank even lower. It was so very reasonable! How could the b.a.l.l.s fail to be impressed?
But Cap"n Ira and Prudence listened with more of a puzzled expression in their countenances than anything else. It seemed altogether wild and improbable to them. Why! There sat Ida May before them. There could not be two Ida May Bostwicks!
"Say!" exclaimed Cap"n Ira suddenly, after Elder Minnett had concluded, "that girl says she worked at Hoskin & Marl"s?"
"Yes."
"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.
"Well, I never!" gasped Prudence, and her withered, old face grew pink.
"I hope you will not take offense," said the visitor evenly. "You must understand that the young woman has come to me in trouble, and it is my duty to aid her if I can--in any proper way. That is my office. _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. "Good advice ain"t to be sneezed at--not as I ever heard."