“I don’t think it was fair,” she said slowly.

“Of course it wasn’t fair.  I wouldn’t have believed that a Charleston girl would do such a mean trick,” declared Grace.  “Of course, as we were her company, we can’t let her know that we have found her out.”

“Perhaps she meant to tell us, anyway,” suggested Sylvia hopefully.  “I’m sure she did.  She thought it would make us laugh.”

“Well, then why didn’t she?” asked Grace.

Sylvia’s face clouded; she could not answer this question, but she was sure that Flora had not meant to frighten or really deceive them, and she wanted to defend her absent friend.

“Well, Grace, we know Flora wouldn’t do anything mean.  And, you see, she got hurt, and so she’s just waiting to get well before she tells us of the joke.  You wait and see.  Flora will tell us just as soon as we see her again.”

There was a little note of entreaty in Sylvia’s voice, as if she were pleading with Grace not to blame Flora.

“I know one thing, Sylvia.  You wouldn’t do anything mean, if you are a Yankee,” Grace declared warmly.  “What’s that noise?” she added quickly.

The room was shadowy in the gathering twilight, and the two little girls had been sitting near the window.  As Grace spoke they both turned quickly, for there was a sudden noise of an overturned chair in the further corner of the room, and they could see a dark figure sprawling on the floor.

Before Sylvia could speak she heard the little wailing cry which Estralla always gave when in trouble, and then:  “Don’t be skeered, Missy!  It’s nobuddy.  I jes’ fell over your doll-ladies.”

“Oh, Estralla!  You haven’t broken my dolls!  What were you up here for, anyway?” and Sylvia quite forgot all her plans to rescue Estralla as she ran toward her.

The “doll-ladies,” as the little darky girl had always called Sylvia’s two china dolls which sat in two small chairs in front of a doll’s table in one corner of the room, were both sprawling on the floor, their chairs upset, and the little table with its tiny tea-set overturned.  Grace lit the candles on Sylvia’s bureau, while Sylvia picked up her treasured dolls, “Molly” and “Polly,” which her Grandmother Fulton had sent her on her last birthday.

“I wuz up here, jest a-sittin’ an’ a-lookin’ at ’em, Missy,” wailed Estralla.  “I never layed hand on ’em.  An’ when you an’ Missy Grace comes in I da’sent move.  An’ then when I does move I tumbles over.  I ‘spec’ now I’ll get whipped.”

“Keep still, Estralla.  You know you won’t get whipped,” replied Sylvia, finding that Molly and Polly had not been hurt by their fall, and that none of the little dishes were broken.

“You ought to tell her mother to whip her.  She’s no business up here,” said Grace.

“Don’t, Grace!” Sylvia exclaimed.  “We don’t get whipped every time we make a mistake.  And Estralla hasn’t anything of her own.  Just think, your Uncle Robert can sell her away from her own mother.  You said yourself that you didn’t think that was fair.”