“What about the leader you have been, dressed in your fine clothes from your father’s bankrupt store?”
Mahala lifted her head and dried her eyes.
“I never cheated any one out of their property,” she said. “My father is only one out of dozens of men whose fortunes have been deliberately wrecked by your father. If I can’t afford the clothing I’m wearing, I’ll take it off and put on what I can, and I’ll earn with my own hands what I need to take care of myself and my father, too!”
Then Junior shouted with rough laughter. He pointed to her hands, and at sight of them, and at the thought of them being forced to work for a living, he tried to catch hold of them.
“And what is it you propose to do with those mighty hands of yours?” he asked.
Mahala held them up and looked at them speculatively.
“I’ll admit that they’re small, and that they’re white,” she said, “but they’re strong as steel, and if you’ll be pleased to observe closely, you’ll notice further that they’re clean.”
Then Junior tried another tack.
“What about your mother?” he said. “Haven’t you got the sense to realize that it will kill your father to lose his business standing, to be stamped a failure before the community? Don’t you know that it will kill your mother to be driven from this house and to try to live in skimpy, ugly poverty? Don’t be a silly fool!”
Then Mahala stepped back.