Of course, it was merely a faint and tenuous possibility that Ida May was a waitress.  Still fainter was the chance that she would prove to be the girl with the violet eyes that Tunis Latham remembered so distinctly.  The Balls knew that she worked in a store, and all stores were the same to them.  There might be a few hundred thousand other girls in Boston besides that particular girl whom he had saved from falling on the square.

Nevertheless, when the Seamew had unloaded and been warped to a berth in an outer tier of small craft to await her turn to load barrels and box shooks for a concern at Paulmouth, Captain Tunis started up into the city.  He knew his way about Boston as well as any one not a native, and his first objective point was that restaurant on Scollay Square.

It was the dogwatch when Tunis Latham entered the eating place, but the dogwatch here was not at the same time of day as aboard ship.  The captain’s first startled glance about the room assured him that there was not a girl employee in sight, not even at the cashier’s desk, and very few customers.

He ordered a late but hearty breakfast of the unshaven waiter in half-spoiled apron and coat who lounged over his table.

“I thought they used to have girl waiters in this place?” the captain said when the man brought the tableware and glass of water.

“On from ’leven till eight.  You’re too early if you got a jane in your eye, bo,” was the ribald reply.  “The boss is a good guy.”  He sneered in the direction of the black-haired, coarse-looking man in the cashier’s cage.  “He hires them girls for five dollars less a week than he’d have to pay union waiters, and he asks no questions.”  He closed his recital with a wink so full of meaning that Tunis’ palm itched to slap him.

But the guest’s wind-bitten face betrayed no confusion nor further interest.  The waiter judged he had mistaken his man, after all, and sheered off until the ordered viands were ready at the slide.

He hesitated to question that coarse man, even to mention Ida May Bostwick’s name to him.  The waiter had misinterpreted his first remark about the waitresses.  The proprietor might hold any question he asked regarding Ida May against the record of the violet-eyed girl, if by any wild possibility that should be her name.  There was time still, he thought, to find her at her lodgings before she started for the restaurant, if she worked here.

So Tunis paid his check and strode forth.  The lodging of Ida May Bostwick was not in this neighborhood, of course, not even in the West End.  In fact, it was in the South End, in one of those streets running more or less parallel to lower Shawmut Avenue.  He took a car in the subway and got off near the address Prudence Ball had given him.