“When I need it, I will send for it,” the girl replied.
She turned her back upon them and before they realized it she was gone. She had, indeed, something of the grand manner. She had come to plead guilty to a theft and she had left them all feeling a little like snubbed children. Mrs. Fitzgerald, as soon as the spell of the girl's presence was removed, was one of the first to recover herself. She felt herself beginning to grow hot with renewed indignation.
“A thief!” she exclaimed looking around the room. “Just an ordinary self-convicted thief! That's what I call her, and nothing else. And here we all stood like a lot of ninnies. Why, if I'd done my duty I'd have locked the door and sent for a policeman.”
“Too late now, anyway,” Mrs. Lawrence declared. “She's gone for good, and no mistake. Walked right out of the house. I heard her slam the front door.”
“And a good job, too,” Mrs. Fitzgerald armed. “We don't want any of her sort here—not those who've got things of value about them. I bet she didn't leave America for nothing.”
A little gray-haired lady, who had not as yet spoken, and who very seldom took part in any discussion at all, looked up from her knitting. She was desperately poor but she had charitable instincts.
“I wonder what made her want to steal,” she remarked quietly.
“A born thief,” Mrs. Fitzgerald declared with conviction,—“a real bad lot. One of your sly-looking ones, I call her.”
The little lady sighed.
“When I was better off,” she continued, “I used to help at a soup kitchen in Poplar. I have never forgotten a certain look we used to see occasionally in the faces of some of the men and women. I found out what it meant—it was hunger. Once or twice lately I have passed the girl who has just gone out, upon the stairs, and she almost frightened me. She had just the same look in her eyes. I noticed it yesterday—it was just before dinner, too—but she never came down.”