This group has been designated for adults age 18 or older. Please sign in and confirm your date of birth in your profile so we can verify your eligibility. You may opt to make your date of birth private.
More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
through the fancy of someone in Philadelphia—and no one ever knew who—the sundial arrived inscribed WHAT IS THIS WORLD?
Intruding purposefully upon the entire scene, an inevitable focus, was the sundial, set badly off center and reading WHAT IS THIS WORLD?
“But none of them has any control over your father’s money.” “Did you marry me for my father’s money?” “Well, that, and the house.”
I am earthly, Mrs. Halloran reminded herself conscientiously, I must look at the sundial like anyone else. I am not inhuman; if the sundial were taken away I, too, would have to avert my eyes until I saw imperfection, a substitute sundial—perhaps a star.
Now I own the house, she thought, and could not speak, for love of it.
“I want to tell you,” Aunt Fanny said and then—to the embarrassed surprise of everyone in the room, none of whom had ever had any occasion to believe that Aunt Fanny was capable of a single, definite, clear-cut, unembellished act—Aunt Fanny fainted.
Fancy was a liar. She had been with Aunt Fanny and dared not admit to running away. She had not been frightened, but she enjoyed teasing people weaker than herself. Not a servant, or an animal, or any child in the village near the house, would willingly go near her.
Evil, and jealousy, and fear, are all going to be removed from us. I told you clearly this morning. Humanity, as an experiment, has failed.” “Well, I’m sure I did the best I could,” Maryjane said.
“The experiment with humanity is at an end,” Aunt Fanny said. “Splendid,” Mrs. Halloran said. “I was getting very tired of all of them.”
“Authority is of some importance to me. I will not be left behind when creatures like Aunt Fanny and her brother are introduced into a new world. I must plan to be there.
There’s no denying, for instance, that my clever Julia is a fool and my lovely Arabella is a—” “Flirt,” Mrs. Halloran said. “Well, I was going to say tart, but it’s your house, after all.
even if the world outside withered and dissolved Mrs. Halloran would face a new world, herself in order, and balanced, relinquishing nothing of what was her own.
