“Titus Sancroft.”
There was a dead silence after the Judge had finished reading the letter. He folded it, put it back in the envelope, then looked at Airy.
Her eyes were fixed, and she was staring strangely at him. At last her jaws moved feebly. It seemed as if she were trying them to see if she could utter a sentence.
“Be that true?” she gasped, in a hoarse voice.
“Yes, child, quite true.”
“Every word of it—house rent twelve dollars a year?”
“O, the pity of it,” and the Judge stifled a groan. At her age, to be so keenly, so terribly alive to the value of a dollar.
“House rent, twelve dollars,” he said.
“House rent, twelve dollars,” she repeated, mechanically, “and boarder’s pay twelve dollars, too. Only one is by the year, and one by the week,” and opening her mouth she began to laugh in a shrill, mechanical voice.
She started low, but she soon got high, and the Judge was beginning to stir uneasily in his chair, when, to his dismay, the laugh ended abruptly and a scream began. It was not an ordinary scream, it was an hysterical screech, and the alarmed man sprang from his seat.