The Last Christian

invisible barrier, we watched our elders move about their own especial affairs, like people in a play. We saw, but were not shown; we heard, but were not told. And it was so, necessarily, that I learned all that I did learn of the progress and nature of this book. For three months, or more, the two women sat, every pleasant afternoon, on Miss Avery's porch, alone?Miss Avery smiling, and resting; Mrs. Thursby, the cousin from Boston, reading aloud from her book. I could hear the murmur of her reading from our windows. After that, I saw, Miss Avery waited upon the porch; and Mrs. Thursby, in her close bonnet and purple velvet dress, went visiting in other houses ?carrying her book under her arm. And finally I knew she was going in and out the house of the woman with the weakened spine?the black un- painted house toward the end of the street, where the houses trailed out into the open fields. She went with her book in and out of that house, that was so different from all our other houses. It was damp and black, with rotted clapboards, while all the rest were white and clean. The family that lived there was very poor. But the special mark upon it was the knowledge of that bedroom in the second floor, in which had lain that woman, bedridden now for twenty years. There was never a sound from that room; never a face at the window. In summer-time the windows were partly open. And I glanced up quickly, as I passed it, and saw, with a half shudder, a little patch ...