Well, we talked.  I told her I didn’t think just being sorry was enough, and I asked her how sorry was she.

“I don’t know,” she said, and then she began on tears again, so I thought I’d better be quick while the feeling lasted.

“Well, you know, Miss Bray,” I began, “Pinkie Moore hasn’t been adopted yet.  She never will be while the ladies think what you told them is true.  You ought to write a letter to the Board and tell them what you said wasn’t so.”

“I can’t!” she said; and then more fountains flowed.  “I can’t tell them I told a story!”

“But that’s what you did,” I said.  “And when you’ve done a mean thing, there isn’t but one way to undo it—­own up and take what comes.  But it’s nothing to a conscience that’s got you, and is never going to let you go until you do the square thing.  If you want peace, it’s the only way to get it.”

“But I can’t write a letter; I’m so nervous I couldn’t compose a line.”  And you never would have known her voice.  It was as quavery as old Doctor Fleury’s, the Methodist preacher who’s laid off from work.

“I’ll write it for you.”  And I hopped for the things in her desk.  “You can copy it when you feel better.”  And, don’t you know, she let me do it!  After three tryings I finished it, then read it out loud: 

Dear ladies,—­If any one applies for Pinkie Moore, I hope you will let her go.  Pinkie is the best and most useful girl in the Asylum.  More than two years ago I said differently.  It was wrong in me, and Pinkie isn’t untruthful.  She hasn’t a bad temper, and never in her life took anything that didn’t belong to her.  I am sorry I said what I did.  She don’t know it and never will, and I hope you will forgive me for saying it.

     Respectfully,

     Mollie E. Bray.

When I was through she cried still harder, and said she’d lose her place.  She knew she would.  I told her she wouldn’t.  I knew she wouldn’t.  And after a while she sat up in bed and copied it.  Some of her tears blotted it, but I told her that didn’t matter, and when I got up to go she looked better already.

I knew how she felt.  Like I did when my tooth that had to come out was out.  And a thing on your mind is worse than the toothache.  One you can tell, the other you can’t.  A thing you can’t tell is like a spook that’s always behind you, and right in the bed with you when you wake up sudden, and lies down with you every time you go to sleep.  I know, for that letter is on my mind.

When I got out of Miss Bray’s room I ran in mine, Miss Katherine being out, and locked the door, and I said: 

“Mary Martha Cary, don’t ever say again there’s no such things as modern miracles.  There’s been a miracle to-day, and you have seen it.  Somebody has been born over.”  And then, because I couldn’t help it, I cried almost as bad as Miss Bray.

But, oh, nobody can ever know how much harm it had done me to believe a lady could go through life telling stories, and doing mean, dishonorable things, and not minding.  And people treating her just the same as if she were honest!