"Not from your ain pocket will ye pay. Ye can give the dance--and if ye make it the Fourth of July, with a picnic in the grove, and a dance in the schoolhouse afterwards, 'tis possible Jeanie may come up from Pocatello wi' friends--and twa dollars wad no be too much to ask for a day and a night of entertainment." "Well, mother! When you do--" Mary Hope bit her tongue upon the remainder of the sentence. She had very nearly told her mother that when she did choose to be human she had a great head for business. It was a fine, practical idea, and Mary Hope went energetically about its development. She consulted Mrs. Kennedy. Mrs. Kennedy also had friends in Pocatello, and she obligingly gave the names of them all. She strongly advised written invitations, with a ticket enclosed and the price marked plainly. She said it was a crying shame the way the Lorrigans had conducted their dance, and that Mary Hope ought to be very careful and not include any of that rough bunch in this dance. "Look how that young devil, Lance Lorrigan, abused my Bill, right before everybody!" she cited, shifting her youngest child, who was teething, to her hip that she might gesticulate more freely. "And look how they all piled into our crowd and beat 'em up! Great way to do--give a dance and then beat up the folks that come to it! And look at what Lance done right here in town--as if it wasn't enough, what they done out there! Bill's got a crick in his back yet, where Lance knocked him over the edge of a card table. You pay 'em for the piano, Hope; I'll help yuh scare up a crowd. But don't you have none of the Lorrigans, or there'll be trouble sure!" Mary Hope flushed. "I could hardly ask the Lorrigans to come and help pay for their own present," she pointed out in her prim tone. "I had never intended to ask the Lorrigans." "Well, maybe not. But if you did ask them, I know lots of folks that wouldn't go a step--and my Bill's one," said Mrs. Kennedy. So much depends upon one's point of view. Black Rim gossip, which persisted in linking Mary Hope's name with Lance Lorrigan, grinned among themselves while they mentioned the piano, the schoolhouse, and the library as evidence of Lance's being "stuck on her." The Boyle children had frequently tattled to Mary Hope what they heard at home. Lance had done it all because he was in love with her.