Mr. Salter looked at her closely and gently, and seemed to be pleased with the inspection, for he took a small gold box from his pocket, unlocked it and sniffed a pinch of snuff, and then gave a sneeze, which he articulated, plain as speech, into the words: "Jericho! Jericho!" Then placing the box in the pocket of his long coat, he remarked:
"Miss Agnes, as one of the executors is a lady, and another is our venerable friend here, who has no inclination to attend to the settlement of Mr. Zane's estate, it will devolve upon me to examine the whole subject. I am a stranger in the East. As Mr. Van de Lear may have told you, I don't hear anything. Will I be welcome as a boarder under your roof as long as I am looking into my old friend's books and papers?"
"Not only welcome, but a protection to us, sir," answered Agnes.
He took a set of ivory tablets from his pocket, with a pencil, and handing it to her politely, said:
"Please write your answer."
She wrote "Yes."
The deaf lodger gave as little trouble as could have been expected. He had a bedroom, and moved a large secretary desk into it, and sat there all day looking at figures. If he ever wanted to make an inquiry, he wrote it on the tablets, and in the evening had it read and answered. Agnes was a good deal of the time preoccupied, and Podge Byerly, who wrote as neatly as copper-plate, answered these inquiries, and conducted a little conversation of her own. Podge was a slender blonde, with fine blue eyes and a mischievous, sylph-like way of coming and going. Her freedom of motion and address seemed to concern the stranger. One day she wrote, after putting down the answer to a business inquiry:
He hesitated some time and wrote back, "I hope not."
She retorted, "Could one forget if one was married?"