He begs Omine to keep her job, which she contemplated quitting, and asks her to lend him money, as he is indebted to a loan shark whom he must pay on the thirty-first of the month.
Omine agrees to help, announcing that she will ask Mrs. Yamamura either for a loan or an advance on her salary, and tells Yasubei to send Sannosuke at noon on the thirty-first to collect the money.
On the thirty-first, Ishinosuke, Mr. Yamamura's careless son from a previous marriage, shows up at his parents' house after a drunken night out, to the consternation of the other family members.
Omine speculates if Ishinosuke's action was by pure chance and simply for his own purposes, or if he had witnessed her theft and taken the remaining money to protect her.
[1] Biographer and translator Robert Lyons Danly points out a bleak tone and new realism missing in many of her earlier stories.