Bessie threw off the big unlaced boots and the other garments of the cow-house, kicking the one into a corner and throwing the others in a disorderly mass on to the bed over her pink-and-white sunbonnet, washed to the waist and then folded her arms over each other in their warmth and roundness and laughed to herself in sheer joy of bounding health and conscious beauty. While doing so she heard her step-father's voice in the kitchen below, loud as usual and as full of protest, but she had a matter of more moment to think of now--what to wear out of her scanty wardrobe. The question was easily decided. After putting on white rubber shoes and white stockings, she drew aside a sheet on the wall that ran on a string and took down a white woollen skirt and a new cream-coloured blouse cut low at the neck like Susie's. But the anchor of her hope was her hat, which she was to wear for the first time, having bought it the day before in Ramsey. It was shaped like a shell, with a round lip in front, and to find the proper angle for it on her head was a perplexing problem. So she stood long and twisted about before an unframed sheet of silvered glass which hung by a nail on the wall, with a lash comb in her hand, a number of hat-pins across her mouth, while the floor creaked under her, and the conversation went on below. She got it right at last, just tilted a little aside, to look pert and saucy, with her black hair, which was long and wavy, creeping up to it like a cushion. And then, standing off from her glass to look at it again over her shoulder, with eyes that danced with delight, she turned to the door and walked with a buoyant step downstairs. III Dan Baldromma also had made an engagement for that day, handbills having been distributed in Ramsey during the morning saying that "Mr. Daniel Collister of Baldromma" would deliver an address in the market-place at seven o'clock in the evening. At five Dan had strapped down the lever which stopped the flow of water on to his overshot wheel and stepped into the dwelling-house, where Liza, his wife, had laid tea for two and was blowing up a fire of dry gorse to boil the kettle. "Tell your girl to put a lil rub on my Sunday boots," he said. "But she's upstairs dressing for Douglas," said Mrs. Collister. "You don't say?" said Dan. "So that's the way she's earning her living?" "Chut, man," said Mrs. Collister. "If a girl's in life she wants aisement sometimes, doesn't she? And her ragging and tearing to keep the farm going, and a big wash coming on next week, too." "Well, that's good! That's rich! I thought it was myself that was keeping the farm going. Douglas, you say? Well, well! I wonder at you, encouraging your girl to go to such places, and you a bound Methodist. Tell her to put a rub on my boots, ma'am." "I'll do it myself, Dan," said Mrs. Collister. "It's little enough time the girl will have to catch the train, and her fixing on her new hat, too." "New hat, eh?"