Read Online The House of All Sorts by Emily Carr - Free Book Online Page B

voice. It gave the dog comfort.
    Always at noon on Sundays I dined with my sisters in our old home round the corner. I shut Lady Loo in her pen in the basement; I would hurry back. When I re-entered the basement, “Ki-hi!”—a head popped in the window of Loo’s pen. On the pavement outside sat little “Ki-hi.”
    â€œLoo whimpered a little, was lonely when she heard you go. I brought my camp stool and book to keep her company. Ki-hi, Lady Loo! Good luck!” She was away!
    I think that little kindness to my mother Bobtail touched me deeper than anything any tenant ever did for me.

BLIND
    MOTHER AND DAUGHTER came looking for a flat, not in the ordinary way—asking about this and that, looking out of the windows to see what view they would have. They did not note the colour of the walls, but poked and felt everything, smoothed their fingers over surfaces, spaced the distance of one thing from another. I sensed they sought something particular; they kept exchanging glances and nods, asked questions regarding noises. They went away and I forgot about them. Towards evening they came back; they were on their way to the Seattle boat, had decided to take my flat, and wanted to explain something to me. The cab waited while we sat on my garden bench.
    â€œThere will be three people in the flat,” said the woman. “My mother, my daughter and my daughter’s fiancé.”
    â€œIt is necessary to get the young man away from his present environment; he has been very, very ill.”
    She told me that while he was making some experiments recently something had burst in his face, blowing his eyes out. The shock had racked the young man’s nerves to pieces. His fiancée was the only person who could do anything with him. She was devoted. The grandmother would keep house for them. They asked me tobuy and prepare a meal so that they could come straight from the boat next day and not have to go to a restaurant.
    THE MEAL WAS all ready on the table when the girl led the crouching huddle that was her sweetheart into the flat. Old grandmother paddled behind—a regular emporium of curiosities. She looked like the bag stall in a bazaar; she was carrying all kinds—paper, leather, string and cloth. They dangled from her hands by cords and loops, or she could never have managed them all. She hung one bag or two over each door-knob as she passed through the flat, and then began taking off various articles of her clothing. As she took each garment off, she cackled, “Dear me, now I must remember where I put that!” Her hat was on the drainboard, her shoes on the gas stove, her cloak on the writing desk, her dress hung over the top of the cooler door. Her gloves and purse were on the dinner-table, and her spectacles sat on top of the loaf. She looked pathetic, plucked. After complete unbuilding came reconstruction. She attacked the bags, pulling out a dressing sacque, a scarf, an apron and something she put on her head. She seemed conscious of her upper half only, perhaps she used only a hand-mirror. Her leg half was pathetic and ignored. The scant petticoat came only to her knees, there was a little fence of crocheted lace around each knee. Black stockings hung in lengthwise folds around the splinters of legs that were stuck into her body and broke at right angles to make feet. Her face-skin was yellow and crinkled as the shell of an almond—the chin as pointed as an almond’s tip.
    The girl led the boy from room to room. She held one of his hands, with the other he was feeling, feeling everything that he could reach. So were his feet—shuffling over the carpet, over the polished floor. Grannie and I kept up a conversation, turningfrom him when we spoke so that he could hear our voices coming from behind our heads and not feel as if we were watching him.
    Grannie “clucked” them in to dinner; I came away.
    IT WAS NATURAL enough that the blind man should be fussy