We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

“Can’t you make them stop?” I asked her that day, wondering if there was anything in this woman I could speak to, if she had ever run joyfully over grass, or had watched flowers, or known delight or love. “Can’t you make them stop?”

A spark from his pipe had left a tiny burn on the rose brocade of a chair in the drawing room; Constance had not yet noticed it and I thought not to tell her because I hoped that the house, injured, would reject him by itself.

SLOWLY THE PATTERN OF OUR DAYS GREW, AND SHAPED itself into a happy life.