The Sundial Read Online Free PDF

go to bed. When my grandmother dies all this is going to belong to me.”
    “And where would we be then?” Essex asked softly. “Fancy?”
    Fancy smiled at him. “When my grandmother dies,” she said, “I am going to smash my doll house. I won’t need it any more.”
    _____
    Essex lay absolutely still in the dark, thinking that if no sound or movement could be heard outside the door he would be safe; always, when he held himself this still he hoped that he might be really dead.
    “Essex,” Aunt Fanny whispered, tapping softly, “Essex, please let me in?”
    At first, sometimes, Essex had tried to answer her. “Go away, Aunt Fanny,” he would say; “Aunt Fanny, go away from here.” Now, however, he knew that he was safer if he did not speak or move; he might even be dead.
    “Essex—I’m only forty-eight years old. Essex?”
    I am enclosed in the tight impersonal weight of a coffin, Essex thought; there is thick earth above me.
    “Orianna is older than I am. Essex?”
    I cannot turn, cannot move my head; if my eyes are open I do not know it; I dare not move my hand to feel the holding wood around me.
    “Essex? Essex?”
    I will try to speak into the deafening silence; I will try to move and turn my head and raise my hands and I will be held tight, tight.
    “Let me in, Essex—you can stay on in the house with me.”
    _____
    It was very early in the morning, so early that there was no clear light. On the terrace and on the long lawn it was dark, and only a certain knowledge that the sun rose every morning could give any hint of brightness. Aunt Fanny, who had sat all night inside her dead mother’s bedroom, and Fancy, who had awakened and stolen softly away from her sleeping mother, met and startled one another on the terrace. At first each of them saw only a dark figure, and then Aunt Fanny said “Fancy?” whispering, “what are you doing out here?”
    “I was playing,” Fancy said evasively.
    “Playing? At this hour?” Aunt Fanny took Fancy’s hand and led her down the terrace steps. “Come away from the house, Fancy; we’ll go into the gardens. What were you playing?”
    Fancy smiled provokingly. “Just playing,” she said.
    “Who told you all of this would belong to you someday?” Aunt Fanny asked suddenly, stopping her walk to stand and look down at Fancy. “Your mother? It must have been. I suppose your mother thinks she has a claim. Let’s walk down the side path, dear; Aunt Fanny likes the secret garden early in the morning. Now, a little girl ten years old with a mother and a grandfather and an Aunt Fanny to look after her shouldn’t be always thinking about what she is going to get someday. We all love you, you know that? Aunt Fanny loves you.”
    It was almost too dark to see the path, but Aunt Fanny could see Fancy’s face turned to her, curiously. She does not have the family charm, Aunt Fanny thought, and sighed. Then Aunt Fanny stumbled, and thought, perhaps it is still too dark to go down these side paths, but now it was as far to go back as to go on. Looking upward, to see if it was getting any lighter, Aunt Fanny made small sounds of irritation. The gardeners were growing careless with these walks far from the house; perhaps they knew that only Aunt Fanny habitually came along these ways, because the hedges beside the path had not been clipped smooth, making a straight green wall on either side; indeed, when Aunt Fanny looked up she could see that the hedges had been allowed to grow almost wild; were, in fact, in some places meeting overhead, darkening the path and giving an air of gloom to a walk which should have been agreeable and refreshing. “My father,” Aunt Fanny said aloud, “would not have tolerated this; Fancy, look there: the turnings of this walk should be perfect, lending themselves to a gentle easy saunter, and here we are slapped and confused. I wish,” Aunt Fanny said, “that my father could see what has been done to the gardens.”
    “There’s a