Sheila of Big Wreck Cove: A Story of Cape CodCooper, James A.
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Sheila of Big Wreck Cove: A Story of Cape Cod
Cooper, James A.
Cape Cod (Mass.) -- Fiction
Suppose--suppose something had really happened to her mind? People
did go mad, Ida May had heard. She had rather a vague idea as to
what insanity was like, but she felt her mind slipping.
The sure and unafraid expression of the other girl's countenance
gave Ida May no help at all. She was sure that her opponent had not
lost her mind. She was just a wicked, bad, horrid girl who had
somehow got something that belonged to Ida May Bostwick, and meant
to keep it if she could.
Self-pity filled the visitor's mind in place of the fury she had
expended in her first outburst. She dared not attack the other with
tooth and nail, for she saw now that this girl was as much her
superior in physical strength as she was in strength of character.
Therefore, Ida May fell back upon tears. She blubbered right
heartily, and, being really weary after her walk from the port, she
fell back into the spring rocker, which squeaked almost as
protestingly as she did, put her beringed hands before her face, and
gave herself to grief.
Sheila Macklin's expression did not change. She revealed no sympathy
for Ida May Bostwick. If she felt sympathy, it was for that girl
who had been persecuted, unfairly accused of stealing, sent to a
place worse than prison, afterward branded with the stigma of
"jailbird"; that girl whom Tunis Latham had befriended, had rescued
from a situation which she could not think of now without a feeling
of creeping horror.
Was she going to give over without a fight to this new claimant a
place which had been and still was her only refuge? It could not be
expected that she would do this. She had had no warning of this
catastrophe. There had been no opportunity to prepare for a
situation which must have shocked her terribly in any case. But if
she had only had time--
Time? Time for what? To run away? Or to prepare the Balls, for
instance, for the coming of this new claimant? And who knew this
girl who said she was Ida May Bostwick? Sheila Macklin was fully
aware of the history of Sarah Honey, of her marriage which had quite
cut her off from her Cape Cod friends, and of the little that was
known at Big Wreck Cove about her daughter, who, since babyhood, had
never been seen here.
How was one to be sure if this were really the right Ida May? If one
girl could make the claim and carry it through so easily, why not
another? How could this girl, crying in the rocking-chair, prove her
statement that she was Mrs. Ball's niece?
These thoughts seethed in Sheila Macklin's brain. She must keep
cool! She must hold herself down, keep control of her own mind, and
keep the whip hand of this girl before her.
And, then, there was Tunis to think of. The appearance of the real
Ida May Bostwick wrecked all her happiness, of course, with Tunis.
Sheila could not let him continue his association with her. Yet what
course should she pursue to save him? That suddenly became the first
consideration in Sheila Macklin's mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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