Mahala turned to her father, both hands still occupied with the wreath. “Papa,” she said very quietly, “you just got through saying that I never told you a lie. Do you think it would be any great achievement on your part if you should force me to tell you one right now?” “I am not asking for a lie!” thundered Mahlon. “I demand that you tell me the truth!” “All right,” said Mahala, “I will. As you recall, when you stepped to the door my back was turned. You had a better chance to see any one who might have been in the shrubbery than I had. You have not the faintest notion who made the attack on Junior. Do you think it would be fair for me to answer your demand for the truth with merely a surmise on my part? I didn’t see who threw that piece of brick, so I positively refuse to make any surmise!” Mahala turned again to the mirror and loosened one end of the silver wreath with something very closely resembling a jerk; while Mahlon, studying her back and her shoulders and the set of her yellow head, and catching a flash of the blazing eyes that the mirror reflected, suddenly remembered the advice that had been given him by his wife concerning the petticoat: “Don’t begin anything with Mahala that you can’t finish.” He realized that he had undertaken something that he was not man enough to finish. Maybe there was a man in the world who could have laid rough hands upon Mahala and choked and beaten from her the information he wanted. Because of Mahlon’s inherent refinement he was not the man who, by any possibility, could do this. As gracefully as he ever passed down the church aisle on Sabbath morning with the contribution box, Mahlon arose, and walking over to the mirror, he put his arm around the small emanation of his own self-esteem. “Very well, Mahala,” he said, “as always, Papa accepts your word. If you didn’t see who made this unjustifiable attack on Junior, of course, you cannot tell me who did it. I shall make it my business to find out for myself in some other way.” “Thank you, Papa, that will be fine,” said Mahala, freeing the other end of the wreath. She opened her lips and looked at her father and then she closed them. What she had wanted to say was: “If there is a boy in this world who has the courage to throw a brick when Junior Moreland tries to kiss me, I am very much obliged to him!” But what she desired above everything else at that minute was to stop the discussion, to be left alone. Faintly in the distance, she now visioned a period, and so she stood carefully straightening the wreath, wordless and waiting. Realizing something of this, Mahlon took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly. He told her that he hoped she always would be a good girl, and if, at any time, anything worried her or she was in any way annoyed, she must come straight to Papa, who only wanted what was for her good and that she should grow up into such an exemplary and beautiful woman as her mother was.