THE BLEEDING HEART
that she only moved her lips, not making any sound. When it was
over and they stood for a moment, dumb and immobile, until the
teacher came to herd them away, a terribly, terribly old man rose
to
his
feet and cried, "Damned brats! Clear them damned brats out
p.d.q." He had bicycle clips on his eleemosynary plus-fours.
She had never actually passed the other house and she was
surprised to find that its fac;ade was altogether different from that of
Number 8 Patriot Road. The paint was a darker shade of red and
instead of two bay windows it had only one, just to the right of
the off-center door. In the windows at Number 8, the landlady kept
ferns and cactuses but there was nothing at all alive in those of
Number 6 and there were no curtains. There was only a solitary
tuberculosis seal from the year before pasted in the lowest middle
pane. Instead of a neat brass letter-slot, there was a raveling raffia
basket which hung on a hammock-hook to hold the mail and there
was no knocker but a bell instead, the kind you rang by turning an
embossed iron handle. She turned it and heard a tinkle and instantly
a voice very near her cried thinly, "Just a minute!" Rose could
not tell where it came from but she waited in discomfort, feeling
that she was being looked at from some vantage point no more than
a foot away. Still, no one came. It was snowing and the big soft
flakes dissolved in beautiful splashes on the glazed green paper that
wrapped the bleeding-heart. She rang again, and again, immediately,
the voice encouragingly said, "Just a minute!" It was a high and
genderless voice and was, she thought, the same one that had laughed
at her when she had knocked on the wall. She was despondent here
in the twilight snowstorm and her fingers clutching the pot were
growing numb. The voice broke its promise for the second time;
several minutes passed and nothing happened. She would try once
more and if still no one came, she would leave the plant on the door–
step even though
it
might freeze. Each moment she hated her role
more, no matter what its outcome was to be. It would be worse than
ever now to hear the sounds through the wall if she had the mis–
fortune actually to see the interior of the house (how dreadful if
she had to go into the sickroom iself! ) and it would be almost as
bad if the door was never opened and whoever it was that bade her
wait a minute saw her leave and enter Number 8. Her comings and
goings would thereafter be observed; or, even if they weren't, she
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