She gave her mother the invitation and in a voice trembling with emotion said: “Oh, mother, may we go? May we?” Mary and Jeremy, who saw that they also were concerned in this mysterious affair, stopped eating. Mrs. Cole looked at the card. “Mrs. Mulholland! How good of her! And she really hardly knows us! We’ve only exchanged calls.” “Mrs. Mulholland! That’s the woman out at Cleek,” said Aunt Amy, who always liked to feel that she was the real directress of the Cole family affairs. “Has she asked the children to a party?” “Yes—to a dance on the tenth!” “Well, of course they can’t go,” said Aunt Amy decisively. “Cleek’s much too far.” Now it happened that on that particular morning Mr. Cole was feeling considerably irritated by his sister-in-law. He often felt like this and spent many half-hours in wondering why his sister-in-law and his brother-in-law—neither of them at all sympathetic to him—occupied his house. And then he remembered that his sister-in-law at least shared in the expenses of the family, and that without that share finances would be difficult. But this morning even this thought did not overcome his dislike of his sister-in-law. He was ready to contradict anything that she said. He looked over the top of his egg at his wife. “I don’t see why they shouldn’t go. We can have a cab from Poole’s.” Aunt Amy, who, like Mrs. Norris, was very careful with other people’s money, burst out: “But think, Herbert—all the expense of a cab! And it will have to wait to take them back again. And Poole’s charges go up and up. I’m sure the children will do very nicely at home.” How gladly at that moment would Helen, Mary and Jeremy have put poison in Aunt Amy’s tea or stabbed her in the back with a bread-knife! However, little as they realized it, she was doing everything to help their cause. Mr. Cole, looking at Aunt Amy very severely, said: “Thank you, Amy, but that’s my affair. Poor as we are, we can still afford a cab. I think it will be good for the children to go. Mrs. Mulholland’s kindness must not be rejected.” At that moment in came Uncle Samuel, late and unshaven as usual, and the conversation was not continued. The affair was settled by the kindness of a neighbour, Mrs. Carstairs, who, having been also invited to take her small boy, offered to share a cab and chaperon the Cole children. No child of to-day can possibly conceive what it was to us children in the old days in Polchester to be invited to a dance. For the grown-ups in Polchester there were a great many balls—more, perhaps, than there are to-day—but for the children there was very little—some afternoon parties, perhaps one pantomime, little more. To the Cole children an evening dance—a dance out of Polchester with a drive at both ends of it—was wonder beyond wonder. Life was instantly at the merest murmur of its name transformed into something exquisite, rainbow-coloured, fantastical.