Ellen followed her sister about, pulling at her skirt.  She was dressed in white, and her hair was crimped, and tied with pink ribbons.  At eight o’clock she was ordered up to bed and there was a great uproar, before, striking out in all directions, she was carried upstairs under Joanna’s stalwart arm.  The Rye Quartet tactfully started playing to drown her screams, which continued for some time in the room overhead.

The party did not break up till eleven, having spent five hours standing squeezed like herrings under the Ansdore beams, eating and drinking and talking, to the strains of “The Blue Danube” and “See Me Dance the Polka.”  Local opinion was a little bewildered by the entertainment—­it had been splendid, no doubt, and high-class to an overwhelming degree, but it had been distinctly uncomfortable, even tiresome, and a great many people were upset by eating too much, since the refreshments had been served untiringly from six to eleven, while others had not had enough, being nervous of eating their food so far from a table, and clinging throughout the evening to their first helpings.

To Joanna, however, the evening was an uncriticized success, and she was inspired to repeat it on a humbler scale for the benefit of her servants.  She knew that at big houses there was often a servants’ ball at Christmas, and though she had at present no definite ambition to push herself into the Manor Class, she was anxious that Ansdore should have every pomp and that things should be “done proper.”  The mere solid comfort of prosperity was not enough for her—­she wanted the glitter and glamour of it as well, she wanted her neighbours not only to realize it but to exclaim about it.

Thus inspired she asked Prickett, Vine, Furnese and other yeomen and tenants of the Marsh to send their hands, men and maids, to Ansdore, for dancing and supper on New Year’s Eve.  She found this celebration even more thrilling than the earlier one.  Somehow these humbler preparations filled more of her time and thought than when she had prepared to entertain her peers.  She would not wear her low dress, of course, but she would have her pink one “done up”—­a fall of lace and some beads sewn on, for she must look her best.  She saw herself opening the ball with Dick Socknersh, her hand in his, his clumsy arm round her waist....  Of course old Stuppeny was technically the head man at Ansdore, but he was too old to dance—­she would see he had plenty to eat and drink instead—­she would take the floor with Dick Socknersh, and all eyes would be fixed upon her.

They certainly were, except when they dropped for a wink at a neighbour.  Joanna waltzing with Socknersh to the trills of Mr. Elphick, the Brodnyx schoolmaster, seated at the tinkling, ancient Collard, Joanna in her pink gown, close fitting to her waist and then abnormally bunchy, with her hair piled high and twisted with a strand of ribbon, with her face flushed, her lips parted and her eyes bright, was a sight from which