"She wasn't never one as kissed you much or hung about like some children do—I always used to say she was the least bother of any child I ever knew. Seemed as if she had company of her own when she sat in her little chair in the corner whispering to herself or just setting quiet." This was a thing Jane always added during all the years in which she told the story. "That was what made me notice. She kept by me and she kept looking at me different from any way I'd seen her look before—not pitiful exactly—but something like it. And once she came up and kissed me and once or twice she just kind of touched my dress or my hand—as I stood by her. SHE knew. No one need tell me she didn't."
But this was an error. The child was conscious only of a tender, wistful feeling, which caused her to look at the affectionate healthy young woman who had always been good to her and whom she belonged to, though she remotely wondered why—the same tenderness impelled her to touch her arm, hand and simple dress, and folding her arms round her neck to kiss her softly. It was an expression of gratitude for all the rough casual affection of the past. All her life had been spent at her side—all her life on earth had sprung from her.
When she went up-stairs to the Closed Room the next day she told her mother she was going before she left the kitchen.
"I'm going up to play with the little girl, mother," she said.
"You don't mind, do you?"
Jane had had an evening of comfortable domestic gossip and joking with Jem, had slept, slept soundly and eaten a hearty breakfast. Life had reassumed its wholly normal aspect. The sun was shining hot and bright and she was preparing to scrub the kitchen floor. She believed that the child was mistaken as to the room she had been in.
"That's all right," she said, turning the hot water spigot over the sink so that the boiling water poured forth at full flow into her pail, with clouds of steam. "But when I've done my scrubbing I'm comin' up to see if it IS the Closed Room you play in. If it is, I guess you'd better play somewhere else—and I want to find out how you get that door open. Run along if you like."
Judith came back to her from the door. "Yes," she said, "come and see. But if she is there," putting her hand on Jane's hip gently, "you mustn't touch her."
Jane turned off the hot water and stared.
"Her!"
"The little girl who plays. I never touch her. She says I must not."