"Well?" Gilder insisted querulously, as the girl hesitated.
At once, Mary went on speaking, and now a little increase of
vigor trembled in her tones.
"When you sit in a cell for three months waiting for your trial,
as I did, you think a lot. And, so, I got the idea that if I
could talk to you, I might be able to make you understand what's
really wrong. And if I could do that, and so help out the other
girls, what has happened to me would not, after all, be quite so
awful--so useless, somehow." Her voice lowered to a quick
pleading, and she bent toward the man at the desk. "Mr. Gilder,"
she questioned, "do you really want to stop the girls from
stealing?"
"Most certainly I do," came the forcible reply.
The girl spoke with a great earnestness, deliberately.
"Then, give them a fair chance."
The magnate stared in sincere astonishment over this absurd, this
futile suggestion for his guidance.
"What do you mean?" he vociferated, with rising indignation.
There was an added hostility in his demeanor, for it seemed to
him that this thief of his goods whom he had brought to justice
was daring to trifle with him.
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