Even her mother approved that plan, though she did not approve dances. “But the folk are that sinfu’ they canna bide wi’ any pleasure save the hoppin’ aboot wi’ their arms around the waist of a woman,” she sighed. “A church social wad be far more tae my liking, Hope––if we had only a church!”
“Well, since there isn’t any church, and people won’t go to anything but a dance, I shall have to get the money with dances,” Mary Hope replied with some asperity. The subject was beginning to wear her nerves. “Pay for it I shall, if it takes all my teacher’s salary for five years! I wish the Lorrigans had minded their own business. I’ve heard nothing but piano ever since it came there. I hate the Lorrigans! Sometimes I almost hate the piano.”
“Ye shud hae thought on all that before ye accepit a ride home wi’ young Lance, wi’ a coat ye didna own on your back, and disobedience in your heart. ’Tis the worst of them a’ ye chose to escort ye, Hope, and if he thought he could safely 200 presume to gi’ ye a present like yon piano, ye hae but yersel’ tae blame for it.”
“He didn’t give it!” cried Mary Hope, her eyes ablaze with resentment. “He wasna here when it came. I havena heard from him and I dinna want to hear from him. It was Belle Lorrigan gave the piano, as I’ve said a million times. And I shall pay for it––”
“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.”