"
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.
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