“If that’s the way you and Mama feel about it, Papa,” she said quietly, “I’ll pay for one of the felt skirts from my monthly allowance, and I’ll go to-morrow and ask Susanna to accept it instead of Mother’s beautiful work. Certainly I didn’t intend to hurt Mother’s feelings or yours.” Now this was precisely the thing that Mahlon Spellman had determined that Mahala should do, yet when she, herself, proposed making that trip, it touched his egotism from an entirely different point of view. He felt soiled and contaminated, even at the thought of such a thing, when he really came to picture his daughter, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, as being placed in such a humiliating position. “You will do nothing of the kind,” he said grandiloquently. The strain on his tiptoes was crucial, the gesture that ran through his flattened hair raised it beautifully. “You must learn to think before you do a thing in this world,” he admonished Mahala. “I should consider it distinctly humiliating to me, to have a daughter of mine go and ask to be given back a gift that she had seen fit to make. Since Susanna has the petticoat, she must keep it. Simply fix in your consciousness the idea that the next time my daughter is not to be like the foolish little grasshopper that refused to look before it leaped, and so found itself in trouble.” There was a bewildered look in Mahala’s eyes. Her teeth were set rather hard on her under lip. The breath she drew was deep. She turned from her father and laid her hand upon the door. Then she faced him again: “I think,” she said quietly, “that it would save Susanna’s pride as well as ours if you didn’t take this matter up with the church board. She’s as old as I am; she probably would feel as keenly as I should about it. She didn’t want to take the petticoat; I made her do it. But she really needed it, Father, she truly needed it awfully. And she needs a great many other things just as badly. Don’t bring me anything the next time you go to the city, but let me come after school to-morrow and give me the clothing that will make Susanna comfortable. Will you, dear?” When Mahala said, “Will you, dear?” there was not a thing on earth that Mahlon Spellman would not have undertaken to do for her, because it would have broken his heart to admit to her that there was anything on earth that he could not do for her if he chose. “Certainly,” he said suavely. “Most certainly!”