We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

There was a little silence. I knew that Dunham was scowling, looking at Jim Donell and at Stella and at me, thinking over what he had heard, sorting out the words and deciding what each one meant. “That so?” he said at last. “Listen, you two,” Stella said, but Jim Donell went right on, talking with his back to me, and his legs stretched out so I could not get past him and outside. “I was saying to people only this morning it’s too bad when the old families go. Although you could rightly say a good number of the Blackwoods are gone already.” He laughed, and slapped the counter with his hand. “Gone already,” he said again. The spoon in his cup was still, but he was talking on. “A village loses a lot of style when the fine old people go. Anyone would think,” he said slowly, “that they wasn’t wanted.” “That’s right,” Dunham said, and he laughed. “The way they live up in their fine old private estate, with their fences and their private path and their stylish way of living.” He always went on until he was tired. When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, perhaps because he had very few ideas and had to wring each one dry. Besides, each time he repeated himself he thought it was funnier; I knew he might go on like this until he was really sure that no one was listening any more, and I made a rule for myself: Never think anything more than once, and I put my hands quietly in my lap. I am living on the moon, I told myself, I ha...