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