She paused for breath; Miss Pool looked at her and nodded. It was an expressive nod, and the girl seemed to feel better for it. She began to cry softly, wiping her pretty eyes with the corner of her shawl. "I'm just beat out!" she said, plaintively. "Be!" said Miss Bethesda, soothingly; she went to the cupboard and brought out some of the famous cookies which a few privileged children were allowed to taste from time to time, but seldom anyone who had passed the boundary of childhood. Nan, who was still a child in some ways, brightened at sight of the cookies, and was soon nibbling them in comparative comfort, sighing from time to time, and glancing up under her long eyelashes at Miss Bethesda, who sat knitting as if her life depended upon it, her lips set very tight, and apparently taking no notice of her guest. But Nan Bradford knew Miss Pool, and was content to wait. She would not have been let in, she knew, if the Lady of the Inn had not been in a good mood. So, she nibbled the cookies, and thought of Will, and was as comfortable as a lovelorn and persecuted damsel could be. Miss Bethesda kept her eyes fixed on her work, but she did not see it. Instead of the gray wool and shining needles, a stalwart figure stood before her, the figure of Buckstone Bradford. He had been her neighbour for all the years of their life; he was four years her senior, and they had been playmates in childhood. A breezy, rosy-cheeked boy he had been, and her sworn ally. The children were apt to divide into two parties: Bethesda and Buckstone on one side, Siloama and Heshbon on the other. Thus arrayed, they were wont to do battle around the yawning gulf of the Tumplety Hole, shouting their respective war-cries, which alluded, in an unfriendly spirit, to the qualities of the enemy. "Gruff and Grum! Deaf and Dumb!" Siloama and Heshbon would pipe shrilly; to which Bethesda and Buckstone would reply, in deeper tones, "Snivelly, Sneaky, Wobbly, Weaky!" A general combat would ensue, in the course of which both parties were apt to fall down the trap-door into the basement room below, and be rescued by Mother Pool, and summarily dealt with by her slipper. Then came the days of youth, when Buckstone courted her, and might have won her if he had gone to work in the right way. But he was headstrong, and she was obstinate; and he didn't get on with Siloama, and he was hard on Heshbon, and so it had all blown over; he had married another wife, and lost her while Nan was a baby. Miss Bethesda had forgotten all about Nan by this time: before her stood the man of her choice, with his feet apart and his chin stuck out, much as her own sometimes was; his brows were knit, his eyes gleamed with sombre fire. "Bethesda," he said, and the words seemed to force the way through his strong white teeth, "Bethesda, I'm going to marry you, anyway, and I'd like to see you get out of it! Mind that!"