Ah, well, that was all men knew! She had got out of it,--was it a sigh that came at the thought, or a sniff of triumph, or a combination of the two? And Buckstone had married a pindlin' soul that hadn't no more life in her than a November chicken--and--that was all there was to it, Miss Bethesda reckoned. And now, here he was hectoring this little girl of his, that always favoured him, and had no look of her mother--hectoring and bullying, just as he used; and Miss Bethesda wondered if the child was a-going to stand it. She wouldn't have stood it, not a day, for her part, if she was his daughter, let alone his--his--wife! And then she found herself wondering whether he would have been so hectoring if she had been--and brought herself up again with an indignant start. Why in Tunkett should she be fretting herself about Buck Bradford's girl, she wanted to know! And yet,--she had got the better of Buckstone Bradford once; it would beat the world if she could put him down again, wouldn't it? While these thoughts were passing through her mind, the Lady of the Inn sat, to all appearance, absorbed in her work, never dropping a stitch, never failing to count with the regularity of a self-respecting clock; and Nan Bradford watched her anxiously over the edge of her cooky. Part II. "Miss Pool asks the pleasure of your company at a social dance, on Thursday evening, at seven o'clock. "Yours truly, "BETHESDA POOL." This was the bomb-shell that fell into every respectable household in the village two days after Nan Bradford's visit. Such a sensation had never been known since old man Pool rode a saw-horse across the common and into meeting the Sunday before he died; and, indeed, that was nothing to be compared to this. Bethesdy Pool! Bethesdy Pool _give a party_!! Well, what next? everybody wanted to know. Half-an-hour after the notes had been delivered by Iry Goodwin (who carried them round in a basket and handed them out as if they were death warrants), every woman in the village, with two exceptions, was in another house than her own. "Have you got one?" "Have you?" "Let me see!" "Lemme see if 'tis like mine?" "Yes, they're all the same!" "Well, I do declare! don't you?" "Is the mile-ennion coming, or what, do you s'pose?" "A social dance! Bethesdy Pool, as hasn't set down to a table, nor yet asked a soul to set down to hers these fifteen years,--well of all! but so't is! You can't tell where to have some folks, even though you've had 'em all your life, as you may say!" The general verdict was that the Pools were all "streaky," and Bethesda the most streakèd of any of them; and that most likely she was going clean out of her mind this time, and there would be an end of it.