"My lawyer fr'en, he says you should write it out about me. A kinda paper, all about how I done work for you. With your name and where you lives on it. Then you don' have to come to court, you just writes it down on a paper." "Come in, Flora, and I'll write something for you." "No'm, I'se going to stand right here." "Wait, then." Catherine wrote a brief, emphatic statement. She had employed Flora Lopez for three years, and always found her reliable, competent, hard working. What do I really know about her, she thought, her pen poised at the end of that sentence. Character--she saw again that neat, respectable flat, eloquent of Flora's ambition, and the little boy. She is a self-respecting woman, who has supported herself and her children. "Just Flora, that former maid of mine," she told her mother. "Wants a recommendation." "There you are." She handed the sheet to Flora. "But Mis' Hammond, my lawyer fr'en, he say you have to get a notary seal onto it, or it ain't good in court." She stared at the writing. "You could mebbe send it by mail to me. I moved to a new place. Folks in that house were too nosy. I'm at----" "I'm going away to-morrow, for a month." Catherine hesitated. "I tell you, we'll go find a notary to-night. There are several along the Avenue, if it isn't too late." Her mother agreed, rather doubtfully, to wait until she returned, unless Charles came in the meantime. "I don't think you ought to go out with that colored woman this time of night," she insisted. But Catherine, hurrying into coat and hat, was off. The notary in the tobacco shop at the corner had gone home. After a cold, slipping walk on sleeted streets to Broadway and down, Catherine found another shop, and a man who could put a seal to her oath. Flora folded the paper. She refused to put it in her pocket. "I got to get it safe to my lawyer fr'en," she insisted. "I is obliged to you, Mis' Hammond." She turned her homely, dark face passionately toward Catherine, her wide mouth moving grotesquely as she spoke. "Mos' folks is cruel mean to you if your luck is bad! Women are the mostest mean. Sayin' I neglects my chile--all 'count of my being a good worker. You got somebody to work for you now?" "Mrs. O'Lay, the janitor's wife. You remember her? She can't cook as you could. Mr. Hammond doesn't eat a meal without wishing you were back." "I--I jus' couldn't come back, Mis' Hammond. I'se obliged to you, but----" "Are you working somewhere?" "Washings, at home. I ain't making so much money. But my lawyer fr'en, he ain't charging me but half rates." "Do you need money?" Catherine's hand moved toward her pocket book. "I'se too much obliged, Mis' Hammond, to need it." She looked away, and suddenly darted out across the street, her arctics flapping, her dirty yellow coat flopping about her awkward flight.