"How much?"
"Eight dollars a month?"
"Impossible!" cried the daughter, flushing with excitement. "We pay now all that the three rooms are worth. He knows what my salary is, and that I cannot give any more."
"He says he can get that for the rooms," her mother said.
"Then we will go elsewhere!"
"We cannot!" whispered the mother despairingly, for the first time raising her woeful eyes. "Every place is full. They are going to tear down houses to widen two or three streets, and Mr. Sanborn says that people will have to go out of town to live."
"What are we to do!" exclaimed the girl, pacing excitedly to and fro. "We only just managed to get along before. Did you tell him, mother?"
"I told him everything, Anne; and he said that he was very sorry, but that his family was an expensive one, and it cost him a good deal to live; and, in short, that he must have the eight dollars more."
"He is a villain!" cried Anne Lane. "And I will tell him so. I should think his family was an expensive one. Look at their velvets, and laces, and silks! Look at their pictures and their curtains! One of my scholars told me to-day that Minnie Sanborn said they were going to have a Christmas-tree that will cost five hundred dollars. Think of that! And this is the way they pay for it!"
"Don't say anything to him, Anne," pleaded her mother, in a frightened tone. "Remember, he is one of the committee, and can take your school away from you."