It was while she was pondering on these things that the grinding of wheels before her door caused her to look up, and to her deep surprise, she saw Mrs. Moreland alighting from her carriage and coming in. Mahala always had been sorry for Mrs. Moreland. She had recognized in her a woman who was trying to do what was right, to live an exemplary life before her community. Through her own distaste for the methods of Martin Moreland and Junior, she had arrived at a realizing sense of how frequently this same distaste must be in the mouth of a right-thinking woman who was trying to live with them daily.
She opened her door and admitted Mrs. Moreland quietly and with the self-possession which always had characterized her. It was evident that her visitor was very much perturbed. She refused to be seated.
Without preliminaries she said: “Mahala, Edith is very sick this morning. She can scarcely breathe. The doctor has said that her only chance depends upon getting her to another climate as promptly as possible. We have planned to start her South and she should go at once, but she positively refuses until she has at least a dress to travel in and a hat of the latest mode. Right away I thought of you. I want you to come and help me get her off as soon as possible.”
Mahala stood very still for a second, then she said quietly: “Thank you very much, Mrs. Moreland. For your sake I should like to do what you ask, but it is quite impossible. Mother is still confined to her bed and I never go from the sound of her voice. I’m always here in case she wants me. Surely there is some one else who can help you with Edith.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Moreland, “there are a number of people who could, but you know as well as I do that Edith wouldn’t touch what they did. She’s always sent away for her things and had her dresses made by that woman in Covington who works on a form from her measurements. There isn’t time to wait for her. It’s a matter of life and death, I tell you!”
“I’m sorry,” said Mahala, “but I can’t possibly come to your house to work. As I told you before, I don’t want to leave Mother, and in the next place, I can’t afford to miss the work that I might lose by being away.”
“So far as that is concerned,” said Mrs. Moreland, “of course, I’m willing to pay you for anything you might possibly lose through helping us to get Edith off. I can’t understand your refusal when you and Edith always have been the dearest friends.”
Mahala opened her lips and then she closed them. She looked at Mrs. Moreland intently.
“I had supposed,” she said gently, “that every one in Ashwater knew that I haven’t been overburdened with friends of late. When I was in a position where I could not go to my friends and they failed to come to me, I had not the feeling that it was my right to seek them afterward. I took their failure to appear as conclusive evidence that they were not my friends.”
“I scarcely think,” said Mrs. Moreland, “that such a criticism applies to me.”