With the rest of the Whitford society, the bride did not enter into intimate, or even amicable, relations. She offended most of the worthy matrons who called on her by merely returning her card, and not even asking to be admitted to see them. As to offering any entertainment in return for the hospitalities that were offered to her during the first weeks that she dwelt in Whitford, that, Castalia said, was out of the question. How could more than two persons sit at table in her little dining-room? And how was it possible to receive company in Ivy Lodge? But Whitford was not quite of her opinion in this matter. It was true her rooms were small; but were they smaller than Mrs. Jones's, who gave three tea-parties every year, and received her friends in detachments? Why was Ivy Lodge less adapted for festive purposes than Dr. Smith's house in the High Street?--a queer, ancient, crooked nook of a dwelling, squeezed in between two larger neighbours, with a number of tiny dark rooms like closets; in which, nevertheless, some of the best crumpets and tea-cakes known to that community, not to mention little lobster suppers in the season, had been consumed by the Smiths' friends with much satisfaction. As Mrs. Dockett observed, it was not so much what you gave as the spirit you gave it in that mattered! And she was not ashamed, not she, to recall the time, in the beginning of Mr. Dockett's career, when she had with her own hands prepared a welsh rabbit and a jorum of spiced ale for a little party of friends, having nothing better to offer them for supper. In a word, it was Whitford's creed that even the most indigestible food, freely bestowed, might bless him that gave and him that received; and that if the Algernon Erringtons did not offer anyone so much as a cup of tea in their house, the real reason was to be sought in the lady's proud reserve and a general state of feeling which Mrs. Dockett described as "stuck-upishness."