“Be I improved?” she asked, unheedingly.
“Yes,” he replied, promptly. “You have remembered your lesson. You came in quietly. Your voice is low, but you really look too ill to talk this evening. I will just tell you something I have been doing and then send you downstairs to have something to eat and get one of the maids to go home with you. I don’t want you to come here any more in the evenings. Little girls should not be running the streets then. Come to see me in the afternoon, if you wish.”
“Nothin’ would hurt me,” she said, peevishly.
The Judge got up and went to the mantelpiece. “Can you read writing?”
“Yes, sir, if it aint too scrawly.”
“Well, here is a letter that I have written to your mother. I want you to read it, then to take it to her. Perhaps I would better read it to you,” and he sat down again.
Airy languidly dropped her head against the cushions of her chair and listened to him attentively enough at first, then eagerly, and at last with a strained, frantic interest.
CHAPTER XIX
Dallas Takes a Hand at Management
“Mrs. Tingsby, Dear Madam,” began the Judge, in his clear, rounded voice, “Some time ago I went to see a real estate agent in this city, and told him I wanted to invest a certain sum of money in house property. He has bought several houses for me; among them is one cottage situated on the Cloverdale electric railway line. It is only four miles from the post office, so one can easily get into the city from it. The cottage has eight rooms; it is heated by a furnace, there are hot and cold-water pipes, and it has a small stable where a cow could be kept. The outlook is sunny, and the situation is not lonely, for there are other houses about sixty feet away. There is also a good school a quarter of a mile from the cottage. I have as yet no tenant for this cottage, and if you can pay the rent, which is one dollar a month, or twelve dollars a year, I think you should, in justice to your children, at once take possession of it. I must not forget to say that I greatly desire to say that whoever takes the cottage should consent to receive as a boarder an old servant of mine—a washerwoman. She is in poor health, and requires some waiting on. Her board, therefore, will be liberal. I am prepared to offer you for her twelve dollars a week. Let me hear from you at your earliest convenience.
“Yours very truly,