All roads lead to Rome, and there
were times when it might have struck us that almost every branch
of study or subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground.
Forbidden ground was the question of the return of the dead
in general and of whatever, in especial, might survive,
in memory, of the friends little children had lost.
There were days when I could have sworn that one of them had,
with a small invisible nudge, said to the other:
"She thinks she'll do it this time--but she WON'T!" To "do it"
would have been to indulge for instance--and for once in a way--
in some direct reference to the lady who had prepared them for
my discipline. They had a delightful endless appetite for passages
in my own history, to which I had again and again treated them;
they were in possession of everything that had ever happened to me,
had had, with every circumstance the story of my smallest adventures
and of those of my brothers and sisters and of the cat and the dog
at home, as well as many particulars of the eccentric nature
of my father, of the furniture and arrangement of our house,
and of the conversation of the old women of our village.
There were things enough, taking one with another, to chatter about,
if one went very fast and knew by instinct when to go round.
They pulled with an art of their own the strings of my invention
and my memory; and nothing else perhaps, when I thought
of such occasions afterward, gave me so the suspicion of being
watched from under cover.
Pages:
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110