Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/154

 enclosure which she began to fill with pets. To the members of her brother's new flock she remained a mystery, since no one spoke to her even when they came to the house, unless by chance she happened to open the door and usher them in silence into a parlor furnished with three chairs, a worn carpet, two religious chromos and a rubber-plant. People saw her sometimes in the town, wandering along the street, peering into shop windows at things which she could never afford to buy. She had begun even at that date to appear extremely eccentric. Her clothes were queer and out of date, with a skirt which always trailed far behind her through dust or mud, regardless of the weather. But she was very clean, and even in those days wore white cotton gloves. People who encountered her at the door of Uriah's house noticed that she wore them even when opening the door, and Mrs. Bosanky, the drunken old Irish woman who came up sometimes from the flats to help her clean the house, said that Miss Annie wore the gloves even when cooking and cleaning and doing the washing.

Within the crude enclosure among the burdocks at the back of the house there came to be sheltered rabbits and guinea-pigs, three or four stray cats, a crow with a broken wing and an old and bony mongrel dog whose broken leg Miss Annie Spragg had mended with great care. The thicket about the house had long been a refuge for birds and after she came their numbers increased. People said it was strange that Miss Annie Spragg's cats never annoyed the birds and that even bluejays and sparrows