The Blythes Are Quoted Read Free Page A

interview in confidence later, with her own inimitable little humorous touches. It was rich. If the deacon could have heard her! She is full of fun. She suffers indescribably at times but no one has ever heard her utter a word of complaint.”
    “Has she always been so?”
    “Oh, no. She fell from the barn loft ten years ago. Hunting for eggs or something. She was unconscious for hours ... and has been paralyzed from the hips down ever since.”
    “Have they had good medical advice?”
    “The best. Winthrop Field ... Long Alec’s father ... had specialists from everywhere. They could do nothing for her. She was the daughter of Winthrop’s sister. Her father and mother died when she was a baby ... her father was a clever scamp who died a dipsomaniac, like his father before him ... and the Fields brought her up. Before her accident she was a slim, pretty, shy girl who liked to keep in the background and seldom went about with the other young people. I don’t know that her existence on her uncle’s charity was altogether easy. She feels her helplessness keenly. She can’t even turn herself in bed, Mr. Burns. And she feels that she is a burden on Alec and Lucia. They are very good to her ... I feel sure of that ... but young and healthy people cannot understand fully. Winthrop Field died seven years ago and his wife the next year. Then Lucia gave up her work in Charlottetown ... she was a teacher in the High School ... and came home to keep house for Alec and wait on Alice ... who can’t bear to have strangers handling her, poor soul.”
    “Rather hard on Lucia,” commented Curtis.
    “Well, yes, of course. She is a good girl, I think ... the Blythes think there is no one like her ... and Alec is a fine fellow in many ways. A little stubborn, perhaps. I’ve heard some talk of his being engaged to Edna Pollock ... I know Mrs. Dr. Blythe favours that match ... but it never comes to anything. Well, it’s a fine old place ... the Field farm is the bestin Mowbray Narrows ... and Lucia is a good housekeeper.
    I hope you’ll be comfortable ... but ...”
    Mr. Sheldon stopped abruptly and stood up.
    “Mr. Sheldon, what do you mean by that ‘but’?” said Curtis resolutely. “Some of the rest looked ‘but,’ too ... especially Dr. Blythe ... though they didn’t say it. I want to understand. I don’t like mysteries.”
    “Then you shouldn’t go to board at Long Alec’s,” said Mr. Sheldon dryly.
    “Why not? Surely there’s no great mystery connected with the family on a farm in Mowbray Narrows?”
    “I suppose I’d better tell you. I’d rather you asked Dr. Blythe, though. It always makes me feel like a fool. As you say a plain farm in Mowbray Narrows is no place for any insoluble mystery. Yet there it is. Mr. Burns, there is something very strange about the old Field place. Mowbray Narrows people will tell you that it is ... haunted.”
    “Haunted!” Curtis could not help laughing. “Mr. Sheldon, you don’t tell me that!”
    “I once said ‘haunted’ in just the same tone,” said Mr. Sheldon a little sharply. Even if he were a saint he did not care to be laughed at by boys just out of college. “I never said it so after I spent a certain night there.”
    “Of course, you don’t seriously believe in ghosts, Mr. Sheldon.” Privately, Curtis thought the old man was getting a little childish.
    “Of course I don’t. That is, I don’t believe the strange things that have happened there during the last five or six years are supernatural or caused by supernatural agency. But the things have happened ... there is no doubt whatever of that ... and remember John Wesley ...”
    “What things?”
    Mr. Sheldon coughed.
    “I ... I ... some of them sound a little ridiculous when put into words. But the cumulative effect is not ridiculous ... at least to those who have to live in the house and cannot find any explanation of them ... cannot , Mr. Burns. Rooms are turned upside down ... a cradle is rocked in