Mahala laid aside her work, and sitting on Jemima’s knee, she kissed her and smoothed her hair and told her how deeply she loved her, how sure she was of her friendship and sympathy. Then she went back to thinking who else there was that had proved a friend in her hour of need. After Jemima, Jason loomed large on her horizon. She had no positive knowledge, but she felt a certainty that he must be amplifying the baskets he delivered to her. She could hear him in the kitchen offering his services for any hard work requiring a man about the premises. Any new food that was sent to the grocery, she was comfortably certain would be advertised with sufficient samples for a meal for the three of them in her basket. Any errand she could delegate to him he seemed delighted to do for her. So Mahala was forced to realize, that outside of her home, the best friend she had in Ashwater was the son of her mother’s washerwoman. Edith Williams had not been to see Mahala on a real, friendly, old-time visit since the day of her catastrophe. She had not been in her home upon any excuse for even a short period since the day of her marriage. Mahala had understood a great deal concerning that marriage. She had realized how hard it would be for Edith to come. She had scarcely expected that she would, and yet, when one is utterly stranded, altogether bereft, one will cling even to straws, and if there was a girl in the town who should have stood staunchly by Mahala, it was Edith Williams. Many times in a day there was a click of the latch of the gate at which Mahala lifted a busy head, and in the beginning, there frequently had been a rush of colour to her cheeks, a light in her eyes. As the weeks went by, very frequently she did not even take the trouble to raise her head. Life had reduced things to the certainty that any one entering her gate came to have a dress remodelled, a hat made over. The last straw was the desertion of Susanna of the outskirts, Susanna who had kept the embroidered petticoat. Thinking on this subject, Mahala fell into a mental habit of saying: “Even Susanna!” In the beginning, Mahala forced her customers to realize quite all that she was worth to them. She did her work conscientiously and honestly. She could not be forced, in remodelling a dress, to make an extremely wide skirt and panniers for a fat woman; she would not put a narrow skirt and a long polonaise on a thin woman. She frequently required changes in hair dressing before she would make a hat for a customer. She flatly refused either to make a hat or to remodel a dress unless she were allowed to use her own taste. When her customers really learned what had happened to them under Mahala’s skilful fingers, they were compelled to admit that she had made such a great improvement in their appearance that they were in her debt.