Ida May saw the other girl waiting on Prudence and Cap'n Ira; she observed her tenderness toward them and their delight in her ministrations; and these things which she regarded with her green-glinting eyes made her taste the bitterness of wormwood. She hated Sheila more and more as the day wore on; and she scorned the old people both for what she considered this niggardliness and for their simplicity, as well, in being fooled by this other girl.
For, of course, to Ida May's mind, Sheila's kindness and the love shown for the Balls on her part was all put on. It could not be otherwise. Ida May Bostwick could not, in the first place, imagine any sane girl "falling for the two old hicks."
Prudence could seldom show herself other than kindly toward any person whether she exactly approved of that person or not. So she chatted cheerfully at Ida May, if not with her. She was quite as insistent as Cap'n Ira, however, in keeping away from the vexing question of the identity of the two girls.
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!