So this grim old woman went on with her tale of horrors. How much of it was exaggeration⁠—who could tell? It was only too plausible. There was that about consumption, for instance. They knew nothing about consumption whatever, except that it made people cough; and for two weeks they had been worrying about a coughing-spell of Antanas. It seemed to shake him all over, and it never stopped; you could see a red stain wherever he had spit upon the floor.

And yet all these things were as nothing to what came a little later. They had begun to question the old lady as to why one family had been unable to pay, trying to show her by figures that it ought to have been possible; and Grandmother Majauszkiene had disputed their figures⁠—“You say twelve dollars a month; but that does not include the interest.”

Then they stared at her. “Interest!” they cried.

“Interest on the money you still owe,” she answered.