“Bait?” Miss Frothingham asked, smiling.
“Crusts,” the older woman said in an odd voice.
“Crusts?” echoed the other two, utterly at a loss.
There was that in the doctor’s look that made the moment significant.
“Yes,” said Merle’s mother. And for a full minute there was silence in the attic, Miss Frothingham covertly and somewhat bewilderedly studying her employer’s face, Merle looking from one to the other with round eyes like those of a brunette doll, and the older woman staring into space, as if entirely unconscious of their presence.
The lights stirred, and shadows leaped and moved in answer. Snow made a delicate, tinkling sound outside, in the dark, on the roof beyond the dormers. The bell of Saint Paul’s rang nine o’clock on Christmas Eve.
“I was always a stubborn child, and I hated the crusts of my bread, but they insisted that I eat them,” said Mary Madison suddenly, in an odd, rather low voice. “I used to cry and fight about it, and—and Timmy used to eat them for me.”
“Did he like them, mother?” Merle demanded, highly interested.
“Did he—? No, I don’t know that he did. But he was a very good little brother to me, Merle. And grandmother and Aunt Lizzie used to be stern with me, always trapping me into trouble, getting me into scenes where I screamed at them and they at me.”
Her voice stopped, and for a second she was silent.