Mahala stood very still for a second, then she said quietly: “Thank you very much, Mrs. Moreland. For your sake I should like to do what you ask, but it is quite impossible. Mother is still confined to her bed and I never go from the sound of her voice. I’m always here in case she wants me. Surely there is some one else who can help you with Edith.” “Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Moreland, “there are a number of people who could, but you know as well as I do that Edith wouldn’t touch what they did. She’s always sent away for her things and had her dresses made by that woman in Covington who works on a form from her measurements. There isn’t time to wait for her. It’s a matter of life and death, I tell you!” “I’m sorry,” said Mahala, “but I can’t possibly come to your house to work. As I told you before, I don’t want to leave Mother, and in the next place, I can’t afford to miss the work that I might lose by being away.” “So far as that is concerned,” said Mrs. Moreland, “of course, I’m willing to pay you for anything you might possibly lose through helping us to get Edith off. I can’t understand your refusal when you and Edith always have been the dearest friends.” Mahala opened her lips and then she closed them. She looked at Mrs. Moreland intently. “I had supposed,” she said gently, “that every one in Ashwater knew that I haven’t been overburdened with friends of late. When I was in a position where I could not go to my friends and they failed to come to me, I had not the feeling that it was my right to seek them afterward. I took their failure to appear as conclusive evidence that they were not my friends.” “I scarcely think,” said Mrs. Moreland, “that such a criticism applies to me.” “No,” said Mahala, “it does not. You did come, and you were kindness itself. But you happen to be the one woman in town from whose hands I could not accept kindness.” “It seems to me,” said Mrs. Moreland, “that you’re not quite as big and as fine as I always have thought you if you allow anything that has happened to keep you from doing what you can to save a life. I’m sorry if you feel you have reason to blame Mr. Moreland or me for anything that happened concerning your father’s loss of his property. Certainly, you can’t feel that Edith had anything to do with it. She was your friend, and you were hers; and now she is ill and asking for you—such a little favour that you could so well grant—and you refuse. Mahala, I am surprised at you!” It was on Mahala’s lips to tell Mrs. Moreland that she was quite welcome to be surprised or the reverse. That pride that had caused her father’s downfall was a lively part of her inheritance from him. It touched her pride that she should be accused of failing a friend when she was ill. Possibly it was her part to teach Edith the better way. “If you put it in that light,” she said, “I’ll ask Mother. If she thinks she can spare me, I will come.”