The idea had been in the mind of Patience for some time; she had thought about it, and worried over it, until at last she had brought herself to undertake the extraordinary task itself. Distrustful always of anyone young and impulsive, such as she conceived Moira to be, and of anyone, moreover, with no knowledge or experience of life, she had felt that in some fashion or other the girl had blundered in writing to Alice. The Baffalls were people of quality; above all, they were people with money; was it not possible that Moira had let slip something about the narrow life she led with the old woman, and the care with which money had to be watched with an eye to the future. If that were the case--Patience bridled at the thought, and determined to set matters right in her own fashion. Filled with a fiery independence, the old woman seemed to see these people shrugging shoulders and pursing lips, in pity for her and her supposed poverty; she would tell a different tale, with the aid of that highly respectable black-edged paper. Behold her, therefore, with the grimly-edged sheet spread on a newspaper before her on the table, and with Moira's inkstand and pen at her service. Behold her watching the girl furtively while she framed her first sentence. Her worn cheeks were hot at the thought of what she had to do, and what she had to say; feverishly, she wished that the girl would say something, if only something against which she could raise a protest. "What are you going to say?" asked Moira unexpectedly, without glancing up from her needlework. "Don't know yet; it's hard to begin," retorted Patience. "I've put the address at the top, and the day--and 'Dear Madam'--that's as far as I've got." "What do you want to say?" asked Moira, without looking up. "Well"--the thin old hand was guiding the pen over the newspaper, tracing lines in and out among the lines of print--"I want to put it so they'll understand what we do--and the people we see--and--and all that sort of thing." "Surely it's easy to say that," said Moira, with a half smile. "But how will it interest them?" "They've got to be interested," replied the old woman sharply as she looked up. "Anything you've put into their heads has got to be taken out again; they've got to understand that we're doing things rather well--going about--and that sort of thing." Moira dropped her hands, and looked across at Patience with sudden interest. "But why?" she asked. "Because I choose," said Patience stiffly. "Because I'm going to have 'em think different from what you've told 'em. Because I want 'em to know that we hold up our heads with the best of 'em. That's why. If I was younger, and hadn't forgot so many things, I could be able to write down just what I want. But my imagination seems to have got dead somehow." "Are you going to put imagination in the letter?" asked the girl.