Mrs. Bates had not yet achieved the peculiar aboriginal function which she had outlined to Jane in the course of their first talk--the reel, the old settlers, and the young squaws to pour firewater were still in the future; but she had entertained the Marshalls at dinner, _en famille_, and she had pushed the subject with still greater insistency in her own house than at David Marshall's office. For the occasion of the Marshall dinner Mrs. Bates put her household on a peace footing. She banished, as far as possible, all traces of social war-paint. She determined to dispense with as many of the men-servants as might be, and to have those who were left over wear their plainest liveries; she even thought of arranging to have the Marshalls' ring answered by a maid instead of a footman. So when David Marshall came, in the dress-coat that had not seen the light for over a year, and Eliza Marshall, in the plum-colored silk whose only recent airing had been at Rosy's coming-out, they had little to contend against save the house itself and its furnishings. Jane accompanied them. "Tom Bingham is going to take you out," Mrs. Bates announced. "He is very much interested in you. He thinks you are quite a clever girl." "All right," replied Jane. "I'm interested in him, too. I think him a person of great discernment." "I had some notion of asking Rosy at first; Billy was so taken with her. But this is really an old folks' party, after all. Besides, Billy had a theatre engagement." "Sorry," said Jane; "I'm sure pa and ma would have liked to meet him." Whatever little plan Mrs. Bates may have been revolving in her mind, Jane was too loyal to throw cold water on it. "So should I myself." Susan Bates gave the Marshalls a short, plain dinner; she had no desire to glorify herself or to embarrass her guests. But Eliza Marshall learned more of contemporanics in that one evening than she had picked up in the previous decade. She learned how people received, how they set their tables and served them, how they built their houses and furnished them. She learned not only the possibilities but the actualities of splendor and luxury in the town where she had led a retired and humdrum existence for nearly a lifetime. She now thrust her head forth from her dim old cavern, and fed her eyes on the flowers and fields and skies and goodly streams of the great world outside. While Jane supported her mother against the lumbering charges of Granger Bates's conversational cavalry, his wife engrossed Marshall's attention for her dormitory. Her plans had taken shape in her own mind, and were now beginning to take shape on paper.