Right at the first the question had been raised:  where should the visitor be put to sleep?  Ida May was prepared to object strenuously if any slight was put upon her, such as being given some little, tucked-up attic room away from the rest of the family.  Had she dared, she would have demanded the use of the room the false Ida May occupied; only she was not sure, after seeing the position Sheila seemed to hold in the household, that she cared to be put to sleep in the room of the “hired help.”

But Sheila herself settled that question.

“The guest room is ready.  Aunt Prue,” she said to Prudence.  “I cleaned it this week and the little stove is set up in there if it should grow cold overnight.  All the bed needs is aired sheets.  I’ll get them out of the press.”

So Prudence took Ida May to the guest chamber, which was beyond the parlor.  A black-walnut set, which had been the height of magnificence when Cap’n Ira and Prudence were married, filled the shade-drawn room with shadows.  There was an ingrain carpet on the floor of a green groundwork with pale-yellow flowers on it, of a genus known to no botanist.  The tidies on the chair backs were so stiff with starch that it would be a punishment to lay one’s head against them.

On a little marble-topped table between the windows was something made of shells and seaweed in a glass-topped case.  It looked to Ida May like a dead baby in a coffin.

“Of all the junk!” she muttered to herself when Prudence left her to arrange the contents of her bag as she chose.  “And that girl likes it here!  Well, I’ll show her who’s who and what’s what!

“I’d like to know where I ever saw her face before?  I bet it was somewhere she’d no business to be—­just as she has sneaked in here where she doesn’t belong.  The nasty, hateful thing!

“If Bessie Dole or Mayme Leary could only see this dump!” she added, looking over the room again.  “Anyhow, I’ve made ’em give me the best they’ve got.  I’ll show ’em how to treat a real relation that comes to see ’em.”

Supper time came and passed no more cheerfully than had the midday meal.  The society of the old people was anything but enlivening for Ida May.  In desperation she began to talk, and out of sheer perverseness she lighted upon the subject of the establishment of Hoskin & Marl.

Now Prudence found this topic of interest, for since Annabel Coffin—­she who was a Buttle—­had dilated upon those great marts of trade in Boston, the old woman had been vastly curious.  Sheila had never cared to talk of her experiences as saleswoman behind the counter.

“They tell me they sell most everything you could name in those stores,” Prudence said reflectively.  “Heaps of dry goods, I suppose.  Let me see, what did you sell, my dear?”

“I’m in the laces,” said Ida May.  “But Hoskin & Marl sell lots besides dry goods.”

“Oh, yes!  Annabel did say something about automobiles and—­and plasters; didn’t she, Ira?”