Some people in the village (but they were the spiteful ones) used to say that Bethesda Pool might e'en so well be a dummy and done with it, if she never could open her mouth when a person spoke to her. But there were always others who were ready to respond that "it was a comfort there was one woman who knew enough to hold her tongue when she had nothing to say!" This retort was apt to provoke the reply churlish; and many a pretty quarrel had been hatched up over the silence of Bethesda Pool, who never quarrelled herself, because it entailed talking. She was the Lady of the Inn, Miss Bethesda. Her mother, the late Mrs. Pool, had married the inn-keeper, and led a sad life of it. She was a woman of a lively fancy, and had been in the habit of saying that if she had been fool enough to get drownded in a pool, she meant to get all the good she could out of the name! So she named her eldest daughter Siloama (pronounced Silo-amy), her second Bethesda, and the son, who came just after her husband had drowned himself in his special pool of whiskey, Heshbon. The neighbours thought this triflin' with Scriptur', and had their own opinion of Ma'am Pool's eccentricities; but the good lady cared little for anybody's opinion; indeed, if she had had any such care, she would not have married Father Pool, whose failings were well known. All that was long ago, however; Father and Mother Pool were gone to their places, the pensive Silo-amy and the fishy Heshbon had followed, and Miss Bethesda was Queen of the Inn.