n two other rooms. There's the sofa and
the bookcase. But in the other twelve rooms there's not a thing. They
are dark and empty. Rats run around in them day and night and fight
and squeak. People are afraid, but I'm not. It's all the same to me.

An iron sign has been hanging on the gate for ever so long, saying
the house is for sale. But no one wants to buy it. The sign's rusty
already, and the rain has worn the letters away. But no one comes to
buy the house. No one wants an old house. Yet maybe someone will buy
it. Then we'll be going to look for another place to live in. It'll
be a strange place. My mistress will begin to cry, and I dare say, the
old gentleman will too. But I won't. It's all the same to me.

You wonder what's become of all his riches. I don't know. Maybe it
seems strange, but I've been living with other people all my life,
and many is the time I've seen money disappear, quietly running off
through some leak or other. That's the way it has happened to these
folks too. They had a lot, then it got to be a little, and then
nothing at all. People came and bought things. Then they stopped
coming. I once asked my mistress how it came about. She answered:
"People have stopped liking what they used to like; they have stopped
loving what they used to love." "How is that possible?" says I. "How
can people stop liking what they once liked?" She didn't answer and
fell to crying. But I didn't. It's all the same to me. It's all the
same to me.

People say they are surprised at me. It's terrible, they say, to
live in this house; terrible to sit here at night with only the wind
whining in the chimney and the rats squeaking and scuffling. Maybe it
is terrible, I don't know; but I don't think about it. Why should I?
There they sit, the two of them, in their room, looking at each other
and listening to the whining of the wind; and I sit in the kitchen
alone and listen to the whining of the wind. Doesn't the same wind
whine in our ears? Young folks used to come to see their son, and they
would all laugh and sing and go through the empty rooms to chase the
rats. But nobody comes to me, and I sit alone, all alone. There's no
one to talk to, so I talk to myself, and it's all the same to me.

I'm sure they had a hard enough time of it--no need of more ill luck.
But three days ago another misfortune happened to them. The young
gentleman went out walking, his hat cocked, his hair dressed in latest
fashion. And a bad man