After dinner, Jacimbo, the married daughters and their families returned to their own homes. Before he went back to the inn, Frodo tried to speak to Lalina, but when her mother sent for her, her youngest sister emerged from the room they shared to inform them that, "Lally's gone to bed, weeping fit to break her heart." She seemed to blame Frodo as much for this as she did the others at the table.
"There now--you'll have to wait 'til tomorrow," Mrs. Spindlethrift said apologetically once she'd heard what Elfina had to say. "I don't what to do about that girl. The poor lass gets herself worked into a state whenever she hears somebody speaking ill about that lad. I expect that's just what you wanted to ask her about, Mr. Baggins?"
Frodo acknowledged that this was so.
"Well, I can tell you a bit about him. Lally brought him 'round once or twice when she was first walking out with him. I like to see all the lads my girls are sweet on. 'Tis a mother's duty. He didn't seem like a wrong un at first, nice-looking and pleasant-like, but Nondillo's right--he asked an awful lot of questions about our business and it made me wonder if that was what he was after instead o' my Lally." Mrs. Spindlethrift regarded him with a speculative eye, as if she knew there was more on his mind than Lalina's sweetheart. "Is there any o' my other girls you want to talk to, Mr. Baggins?"
"Yes. May I speak to Mulbina, please?" Frodo requested. "I didn't want to question her in front of all your family, but I believe she can tell me more about how those cards got mixed into the weavers' sets than she has."
Mrs. Spindlethrift consented, but whether out of a mother's sense of protectiveness or out of curiosity, she insisted on being there while Frodo questioned her daughter. Frodo doubted that Mulbina would be willing to confide in him fully with her mother present, but he didn't see how he could send his client away without being rude. He accompanied Mrs. Spindlethrift to the back-parlor and waited while Elfina was sent to fetch Mulbina.
Mulbina came in alone and sat down on the sofa, facing him nervously. "You wanted to ask me sommat more, Mr. Baggins?"
"That's right." It seemed to Frodo that the best tactic was to get right to the point. "I want you to tell me the truth, Miss Mulbina. It will save us all a great deal of trouble. Your mother won't be angry if you're honest about what happened." Mrs. Spindlethrift nodded to agree with this. "Tell us, did you make those faulty cards?" he asked. "Were the replacement cards your uncle made somehow lost or accidentally destroyed, so you tried to make your own replacements using that machine of his?"
"No, Mr. Baggins!" Mulbina insisted. "I never touched that precious machine o' Uncle Jacco's. He wouldn't let me. The proper cards was lost--only I didn't lose 'em."
With some coaxing, the story came out. The last time Mulbina had gone into her uncle's workroom to perform her usual task of replacing worn-out cards, the stack of replacements were not on the table where Jacimbo normally left them for her. She'd looked around until she'd found what she believed were the replacements. "But now I think on it, they must've been those bad uns, Mr. Baggins."
"So you put these cards into the sets, and didn't notice that they weren't the right ones?"
"I might've," the girl conceded, "if I was working fast to have the job done and didn't look close at 'em."
"And were you working as fast as that, my lass?" her mother asked her.
"Yes, Mum," Mulbina mumbled.
In spite of her mother's assurance that she wouldn't be angry, the girl would probably have been in for a scolding for this carelessness if Frodo hadn't pursued his own questions before Mrs. Spindlethrift could work herself up to it. "Mulbina," he said, "where did you find this stack of cards that you used for replacements? You said that they weren't on the work-table in the usual place. Did you have to search for them?"
"I did search, Mr. Baggins," said Mulbina. "I looked all over, 'til I found 'em in the drawer in the table, just under the machine. Uncle Jacco keeps it locked most days, but it wasn't locked up then. I thought maybe Uncle tucked 'em away quick-like when somebody came in and forgot to set 'em out for me. It took so long to find 'em, I got behind my time and was going to be late home for dinner. That's why I was working so fast," she explained to her mother. "I didn't stop to notice the new ones I was putting in wasn't the same as the old cards I took out."
After Mulbina was allowed to go, Mrs. Spindlethrift shook her head sadly. "I don't know what to say, Mr. Baggins. It shames me to hear a daughter o' mine could be so flighty over her work. All the same, I would've been glad to hear it was all a mistake of Mulby's, or even Jacco's. That'd be a proper muddle, but it'd be better 'n outright mischief. And that's what it must be. I said so all along."
Frodo had to agree. Someone must have punched out the cards Mulbina had found. If not Jacimbo, then an intruder to his workshop. Had they been left for the apprentice to find and use as she had, or were they not meant to be discovered at all? What purpose had they been made for? He also wondered what happened to the true replacement cards Jacimbo had made.
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