Edith hesitated. She opened her lips. She knew what she should say, but she had not quite the moral courage to say it. Seeing Mahala, with the joy of youth wiped from her face, with the dancing sparkle lost from her eyes, her delicate hands roughened through handling contrary material and the constant plying of her needle, hurt her. She wanted to open her arms and cry: “Mahala, forgive me! Let’s be friends again. When I come back, let’s be friends!” Lacking moral courage, as she always had lacked it, what she did say was: “Junior said the money to pay you was in the pocket book he laid beside my coat. Will you hand it to me?” Mahala swung open the door and stepped toward the table. Then she paused and said over her shoulder: “Why, Edith, the pocket book isn’t here. Mrs. Moreland must have taken charge of it.” At that minute Mrs. Moreland entered from the dining room. Edith said to her: “Mother, have you been in the parlour?” Mrs. Moreland shook her head. “No,” she said, “I’m trying to help get a decent dinner on the table for you before you leave.” “That’s strange,” said Edith. “There’s nobody else in the house, is there?” “Not that I know of,” said Mrs. Moreland. Immediately turmoil began. Edith asked Mahala if she had seen the pocket book when she entered the parlour with her hat, and Mahala replied that she had. It was lying in plain sight on the table beside the coat. No one else had been in the room. There was a hush; and then both the Moreland women focussed amazed, questioning eyes upon Mahala. Suddenly it occurred to her that as she was the only one known to have entered the room, they were looking accusingly at her. A gush of red from her outraged heart stained her face and then sank back and left it, by contrast, all the whiter. Both hands clutched her workbag tightly and she cried to Edith: “It is not possible that you think I touched that pocket book?” Edith replied slowly: “I don’t want to think that, Mahala. But since you’re the only person who’s been in the room, and since every one knows that you’ve been needing money so badly, I should say that, at least, it’s up to you to find it.” Mahala lifted her head. All the pride of a long race of proud people was in her blood. Her voice was smooth and even as she said: “You’re quite mistaken, Edith. It is not ‘up to me’ to do anything except to receive the pay for the work I have done for you and then to go home.” Edith’s smile was the most disfiguring her face had ever known. Seeing it, Mahala spoke further. “We were not in a position to see who might have entered the room while I was working on your waist. If you want to search me, I am perfectly willing that you should satisfy yourself that I have not the pocket book before I leave the house.”