The Gypsy in the Parlour by Margery Sharp Page A

London, to consult some famous doctor. (I freely proffered advice, and was snubbed for my pains.) The tiny, foolish quarrel in the linen-closet as its first result simply drove me more than ever in on Fanny’s parlour, away from the house.
    Or had I already, subconsciously, felt the house divided? Its citadel of content mind, its golden solidarity split? I find the question hard to answer: yet surely, had my aunts’ abundant mirth still showered like the honey-fountain of old, I must have abandoned Fanny Davis to run out and play in it. I think I felt, long before I consciously recognized them, such changes in the farm’s life as I did not wish to face. Heaven should be immutable.
    I therefore ran to Fanny’s parlour, and shut my eyes.
    My aunts, I am quite sure, did their best to promote my blindness. They did their best to keep their dissension from me. But after I had witnessed that first quarrel—first to me—they grew a little careless, as they grew a little careless of me altogether. They were never unkind, but I felt myself no longer quite so much their pet. (I was Fanny Davis’ pet.) They always tried not to quarrel when I was there, but their bickering grew to be so continual, nothing could conceal the fact that there was now dissension between my aunts.
    It was appalling, it was incredible, but it was so. Only to the outside world did they still present the united front of the three Sylvester women: within doors they were divided—Charlotte ranged against Grace, Rachel an unhappy trimmer. There were days when Charlotte and Grace would not speak to each other. There were days when the quarrel flared—yet could not flare out, into the shouting and loudness that would have relieved them both. I see now how much their natures must have been exasperated by the constant effort after quiet, by the constant frustration of their natural tendency to noise and clatter. They were not naturally quiet women. But how could they shout their day-long argument, when even a banging door made Fanny ill? How, above all, could they shout a quarrel—so, at last I comprehended—of which Fanny Davis was the argument?
    What at last opened my eyes began as no more than a trivial passage of words, such as I was now unhappily accustomed to, between my Aunts Rachel and Grace.
    â€œSee there, now!” mourned my Aunt Rachel—handling a chipped lustre plate above her own private wash-bowl in the kitchen. “If I h’ain’t damaged ’un at last!”
    â€œSo more fool ’ee,” snapped my Aunt Grace. “Why did ’ee ever fetch ’un forth, as I warned ’ee ’gainst, from its rightful situation? Why don’t ’ee put all back and turn the key?”
    â€œFanny sets such store by the use of ’em,” said my Aunt Rachel weakly.
    â€œThen let Fanny save ’em from destruction by swallowing her conceit. However, ’ee knows my opinion ere this.”
    â€œSure as daylight us do: ’ee’ve dinned it often enough in our ears,” said my Aunt Charlotte—who happened also to be in the kitchen, raising pastry for a pie.—So was I in the kitchen too, under the table with a stolen handful of dough. Two inches of oak sheltered me from the storm about to break above: I nonetheless cowered. I sensed, without actually anticipating, the imminence of thunderbolts. For a moment all was still—just as in nature; then I heard my Aunt Grace, who was stuffing a fowl, deliberately throw down, like a gauntlet, her big metal spoon.
    â€œDin it I may have, into ears so deaf as adders’,” said she. “I’ll din it yet again, for the Sylvester good. I’ll say now as I’ve said before: I say go her must and shall.”
    â€œAnd I say, she shall stay,” said my Aunt Charlotte.
    Again there was a pause; then Grace laughed, a short, bitter laugh. It was so unlike her old hilarious gust that had I not known for