The Sundial by Shirley Jackson Page A

there may be an opening here for a housemaid.”
    â€œI’m not an idiot,” Mrs. Willow said slowly, “at least not idiot enough to threaten you. I didn’t go sticking a hatpin through your picture—”
    â€œThat was probably Fancy; she’s been told not to come in here.”
    â€œâ€”and yet it seems to me that you could use a friend or so, and particularly someone who’s known you a long time and doesn’t have anything to lose by you, only something to gain. But you might as well know that your sister Fanny—”
    â€œWho hasn’t a cent.”
    â€œâ€”has bidden us welcome to this house; we may stay as long as we like.”
    Mrs. Halloran turned, staring. “Did she
tell
you?”
    â€œPut it,” Mrs. Willow said carefully, “that either we hustle off with a little check in our hands, or we stay, and—” she grinned, “—get born again with all of you.”
    â€œI will not pay you to go, certainly.” Mrs. Halloran’s voice was quiet. “And I will not go against Aunt Fanny, although I believe she is sadly mistaken here. Yet,” she said sadly, “you and I have so little else to hope for.”

4
    Mrs. Halloran, who was a tired and sometimes lonely person, sat by herself in her room before the thin-legged desk; it was late evening, her accounts still undone, and distantly she could hear the voices of the other people in the house, and sometimes laughter. Only human beings and rabid animals turn on their own kind, she was thinking; gratuitous pain is unknown in nature. At what point, she wondered, could I have been brought to deny myself all this? Lose the house? How could I have turned aside? And could I bear to lose it now?
    She told them over softly. Richard, Fanny, Maryjane, Fancy, Augusta Willow, Julia, Arabella. Essex. Miss Ogilvie. Could I really die? she wondered, and then, resolute, turned to her accounts. All things must be neat and shipshape at her hands; 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.
    _____
    Downstairs, they were in the library. In his room Mr. Halloran slept, his nurse nodding beside him, but in the library, Aunt Fanny and Mrs. Willow were playing bridge against Miss Ogilvie and Julia, while Maryjane told Arabella the plot of a movie she had recently seen, and Essex, constrained by Aunt Fanny, advised the play.
    â€œThese are not new cards,” Aunt Fanny said, turning her hand over. “There should always be new cards in the card cupboard, Essex.”
    â€œI’m afraid I took them out,” Miss Ogilvie said. “I took the first I came to.”
    â€œWe must have new cards for my deal,” Aunt Fanny said. “Essex, do you see my cards?”
    â€œYes, Aunt Fanny.”
    â€œMy father never touched a soiled card.”
    â€œI dealt.” Mrs. Willow overrode Aunt Fanny. She looked deeply into her hand, sighed, thought, adjusted a card, sighed again, and put her cards down on the table. “Pass,” she said. “Will Orianna be down tonight?”
    â€œI hardly think so,” Essex said.
    â€œShe is adding up how much we all cost her,” Maryjane said. “Every time she goes up to look over the bills I wish I had bought more in the village.”
    â€œWho dealt?” Miss Ogilvie asked.
    â€œHe was a doctor in
this
movie,” Maryjane said to Arabella, “you know, with a white coat and devoted to his profession? And his wife, you know?”
    â€œI guess I pass,” Miss Ogilvie said.
    â€œReally, partner!” Julia said; she was prepared to suffer much at Miss Ogilvie’s hands.
    â€œTwo hearts,” Aunt Fanny said, “Essex, come and look at this hand.”
    â€œTwo?”
Mrs. Willow said. “
Two
hearts, partner? Essex, does she really mean
two
hearts?”
    â€œMrs. Willow, I was