“It was only a small window,” Dan said, startled by the intensity of the woman’s outburst. “But I’ll pay whatever you think it will cost to replace the glass. Two dollars maybe?”
“Two dollars! Why that wouldn’t begin to do it. The damage was enormous! Simply enormous! My husband was furious when he learned of it. For your information, he’s talking to the church trustees about it now.”
Dan could not understand why such a fuss was being made about a window pane. Hadn’t he offered to pay? Why, the incident was being blown up out of all proportion!
“You have a nerve coming here and offering me a dollar!” the woman went on angrily. “But it proves one thing. You admit you did the damage?”
“Why, yes, we broke the window. It was an accident. We were playing with a basketball and it went wild, through the glass.”
“That’s all I want to know.” The woman nodded with grim satisfaction and closed the door in Dan’s face.
A moment later she flung it open again to add severely: “You’ll hear more about this later!”
Then she closed the door again.
Puzzled by the woman’s strange behavior, Dan started slowly home. He was sorely troubled to learn that the Treuhafts meant to make so much of the accident. What sum, he wondered, could they demand for a broken window? If two dollars wasn’t enough to pay for the glass, he’d really have to dig deep into his savings.
“Why, when I drove a baseball through Mrs. Simpson’s basement window last Spring she charged me only seventy-five cents,” he reflected. “I guess a church window must be something special. But that window wasn’t stained glass—just ordinary.”