“It's because it's true I say it, not because it's onpleasant, Miss Caroline.”
“I'm not Miss Caroline, at least from you, Mr. Breggis.”
“Ain't she haughty,—ain't she fierce?” But his colleague would not assent to this judgment, and looked at her with a longing admiration.
“There's her bell again,” cried the girl; “as sure as I live, she's rung forty times this morning;” and she hurried back to the house.
“Why do you think we're not off yet?” asked George.
“It's the way I heerd her talking that shows me,” replied the other. “Whenever she 's really about to leave a place she goes into them fits of laughing and crying and screaming one minute, and a-whimpering the next; and then she tells the people—as it were, unknownst to her—how she hated them all,—how stingy they was,—the shameful way they starved the servants, and such-like. There's some as won't let her into their houses by reason of them fits, for she'll plump out everything she knows of a family,—who ran away with the Misses, and why the second daughter went over to France.”
“You know her better than me, Breggis.”
“I do think I does; it's eight years I 've had of it. Eh, what's that,—was n't that a screech?” and as he spoke a wild shrill scream resounded through the house, followed by a rapid succession of notes that might either have been laughter or crying.
Sewell drew the curtain; and wheeling an arm-chair to the fireside, lit his cigar, and began to smoke.
The house was so small that the noises could be heard easily in every part of it; and for a time the rapid passage of persons overhead, and the voices of many speaking together, could be detected, and, above these, a wild shriek would now and then rise above all, and ring through the house. Sewell smoked on undisturbed; it was not easy to say that he so much as heard these sounds. His indolent attitude, and his seeming enjoyment of his cigar, indicated perfect composure; nor even when the door opened, and his wife entered the room, did he turn his head to see who it was.