to the course
she had set sail upon, and one which would hold her to it to the
bitter end. Her spitefulness and determination to be revenged upon
this unknown girl who had usurped the place originally offered her
by the Balls, and who had stolen her name as well, was quite
sufficient to cause a person of Ida May Bostwick's character to
fight for her rights.

She would be revenged on Tunis, too. Or, at least, she would make
him, as well as the other girl, suffer for the slight he had put
upon her.

Had she not preened her feathers and strutted her very best on the
occasion when he interviewed her at Hoskin & Marl's and taken her
out to lunch? And to no end at all! He had been quite unimpressed by
Ida May's airs and graces.

Yet he would take up with this other girl--a mere nobody. Worse than
a nobody, of course. She must be both a bad and a cunning woman to
have done what it was plain she had done. She had wound Tunis Latham
around her finger, and had hoodwinked the old people in the bargain!

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