It was a long time since the Widow had seen so many persons round her table as she had now invited.  Better have the plates set and see how they will fill it up with the leaf in.—­A little too scattering with only eight plates set:  if she could find two more people, now, that would bring the chairs a little closer,—­snug, you know,—­which makes the company sociable.  The Widow thought over her acquaintances.  Why how stupid! there was her good minister, the same who had married her, and might—­might—­bury her for aught she anew, and his granddaughter staying with him,—­nice little girl, pretty, and not old enough to be dangerous;—­for the Widow had no notion of making a tea-party and asking people to it that would be like to stand between her and any little project she might happen to have on anybody’s heart,—­not she!  It was all right now; Blanche was married and so forth; Letty was a child; Elsie was his daughter; Helen Darley was a nice, worthy drudge,—­poor thing!—­faded, faded,—­colors wouldn’t wash, just what she wanted to show off against.  Now, if the Dudley mansion-house people would only come,—­that was the great point.

“Here’s a note for us, Elsie,” said her father, as they sat round the breakfast-table.  “Mrs. Rowens wants us all to come to tea.”

It was one of “Elsie’s days,” as old Sophy called them.  The light in her eyes was still, but very bright.  She looked up so full of perverse and wilful impulses, that Dick knew he could make her go with him and her father.  He had his own motives for bringing her to this determination,—­and his own way of setting about it.

“I don’t want to go,” he said.  “What do you say, uncle?”

“To tell the truth, Richard, I don’t mach fancy the Major’s widow.  I don’t like to see her weeds flowering out quite so strong.  I suppose you don’t care about going, Elsie?”

Elsie looked up in her father’s face with an expression which he knew but too well.  She was just in the state which the plain sort of people call “contrary,” when they have to deal with it in animals.  She would insist on going to that tea-party; he knew it just as well before she spoke as after she had spoken.  If Dick had said he wanted to go and her father had seconded his wishes, she would have insisted on staying at home.  It was no great matter, her father said to himself, after all; very likely it would amuse her; the Widow was a lively woman enough,—­perhaps a little comme il ne faut pas socially, compared with the Thorntons and some other families; but what did he care for these petty village distinctions?

Elsie spoke.

“I mean to go.  You must go with me, Dudley.  You may do as you like, Dick.”

That settled the Dudley-mansion business, of course.  They all three accepted, as fortunately did all the others who had been invited.