Feeling grateful to Mr. Moseley for letting her take some time off, Lizzy sat back down at her desk and pulled out the big leather-bound account ledger. Between the long drought and the low cotton prices, the farmers had had a difficult time of it in the past few years. Some of Mr. Moseley’s clients had begun paying their legal bills in kind, bringing eggs, boxes of figs, and lard pails full of fresh robbed honeycomb to the office, not to mention a few live chickens. Mr. Moseley always accepted these payments, told Liz how much to credit against what was owing, and then carted everything over to the Presbyterian Church for its Food for the Darling Needy program. This morning, she caught up the accounting quickly, finished typing the notes, then typed two legal documents that would be needed later in the week—with carbons, which she hated, since she had to erase every mistake and retype the correction carefully, to avoid smudging. Typing carbons slowed her down.

The bookkeeping and typing finished, Lizzy got up and went to the stack of case files that were waiting for filing in the gray metal cabinets on either side of the front windows. She was just getting started when she heard hasty footsteps on the stairs, the door opened, and Bessie Bloodworth burst in. She was wearing a lace-colored mauve cambric dress and what looked like a freshly done shampoo and set, her springy, precise salt-and-pepper curls peeking out from under her straw sailor hat.

“Why, hello, Bessie,” Lizzy said. She was surprised, since Bessie didn’t come to the office very often—but then she remembered that she had asked the Dahlias to turn in items for her garden column, which she had to finish by tomorrow. Now that she had the afternoon off, she’d have plenty of time. “Have you brought me a piece for the column?”

“No,” Bessie said. “To tell the truth, I forgot all about that.” She glanced in the direction of Mr. Moseley’s closed door and lowered her voice. “I don’t want to interrupt while you’re working, but do you have a minute, Liz?” Her face was pink with the exertion of climbing the stairs and she sounded excited. “I need to ask you something.”

“Sure,” Lizzy said, and pointed to one of the reception room chairs. “Why don’t you sit down there and catch your breath, Bessie? I can listen and file at the same time.” She picked up the first file, opened a drawer, and dropped it in place. “What’s on your mind?”

“It’s not a what, it’s a who,” Bessie said. She pulled the chair around so she could see Liz and sat down, crossing her thick ankles. “It’s Miss Jamison.”

Lizzy flushed guiltily, thinking of the information she had given to Verna. “What about her?”