"Who is she, Ida May?"
"She says she is your niece," whispered the girl.
"My niece? Land's sake! I ain't got no niece but you, Ida May. Say, Ira, do you know this young woman? She ain't none o' your relations, is she?"
Cap'n Ira came to the ground finally with a thump of his cane. He straightened up and started at the new arrival.
"Red-headed, I swan!" he muttered. "Never was a Ball that I know of with that color topknot. And she looks like one o' these sandpipers ye see along shore. Look at that hat!"
"Ida May says she claims to be our niece," Prudence told him.
"I swan! I told you we was gettin' mighty popular."
Sheila, her limbs now trembling so that she feared she would fall, took Queenie by the head and backed the carriage around. The old mare would have to be put in her stall and the carryall run under cover. But the girl was fearful of moving out of earshot.
Cap'n Ira and Prudence approached the real Ida May. The latter had been staring at them, marveling. Unlike Sheila, almost everything that Ida May Bostwick thought was advertised upon her face.
"My goodness!" considered Ida May. "What a pair of hicks!"