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"Oh, it's you, is it?" she said in a tone so very unpleasant that Pearl thought she must have expected someone else. "Yes'm," Pearl said meekly. "Who were ye expectin'?" Mrs. Motherwell stopped pumping for a minute and looked at Pearl. "Why didn't ye git here earlier?" she asked.
The letters were on the table, Mrs. Motherwell read them to him, read them with tears that almost choked her utterance. "And Polly's dead, Sam!" she cried when she had finished the last one. "Polly's dead, and the poor old mother will be looking, looking for that money, and it will never come. Sam, can't we save that poor old woman from the poorhouse?
"It has old air in it," Pearl said, "and it will give me the fever." Mrs. Motherwell glared at the little girl. She forgot all about the frying pan. "Good gracious!" she said. "It's a queer thing if hired help are going to dictate where they are going to sleep. Maybe you'd like a bed set up for you in the parlour!" "Not if the windies ain't open," Pearl declared stoutly.
"Now I wonder who's writing to him?" she said, laying the two letters down reluctantly. There was one other letter addressed to Mr. Motherwell, which she took to be a twine bill. It was post-marked Brandon. She put it up in the pudding dish on the sideboard. As Tom led the horse to the stable he met Pearl coming in with the eggs. "See here, kid," he said carelessly, handing her the letter.
"You didn't happen to bring anything over with you, did you, for seasickness on the boat?" Mr. Motherwell queried anxiously, holding the lantern above his head. "No, I did not," the young man said laconically. "Turn out at five to-morrow morning then," his employer snapped in evident disappointment, and he lowered the lantern so quickly that it went out. The young man lay down upon his hard bed.
Polly's eyes, dazed, pleading like the lamb's, rose before her; or was it that Other Face, tender, thorn-crowned, that had been looking upon her in love all these long years! She spoke so kindly to Pearl when she went into the kitchen that the little girl looked up apprehensively. "Are ye not well, ma'am?" she asked quickly. Mrs. Motherwell hesitated.
It was not until Pearl came out and picked a handful of them for her dingy little room that they held up their heads once more and waved and nodded, red and handsome. When Tom Motherwell called at the Millford post office one day he got the surprise of his life.
"Yes, ma'am," Pearl answered quickly, "Mrs Francis paid ma with one once for the washing, but I don't know where it might be now." Mrs. Motherwell looked at Pearl keenly. It was not easy to believe that that little girl would steal. Her heart was still tender after Polly's death, she did not want to be hard on Pearl, but the money must be some place. "Pearl, I have lost a two-dollar bill.
"You don't need no lamp," she said, "if you hurry. It is light up there." Mrs. Motherwell was inclined to think well of Pearl. It was not her soft brown eyes, or her quaint speech that had won Mrs. Motherwell's heart. It was the way she scraped the frying-pan.
"Dear Lord," she prayed, clasping her work-worn hands, "help her to find her money, but if anyone did steal it, give him the strength to confess it, dear Lord. Amen." Mrs. Motherwell, downstairs, was having a worse time than Pearl. She could not make herself believe that Pearl had stolen the money, and yet no one had had a chance to take it except Pearl, or Tom, and that, of course, was absurd.
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