They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed. - Shirley Jackson

…Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

I took my coffee into the dining room and settled down with the morning paper. A woman in New York had had twins in a taxi. A woman in Ohio had just had her seventeenth child. A twelve-year-old girl in Mexico had given birth to a thirteen-pound boy. The lead article on the woman's page was about how to adjust the older child to the new baby. I finally found an account of an axe murder on page seventeen, and held my coffee cup up to my face to see if the steam might revive me.

Slowly the pattern of our days grew, and shaped itself into a happy life.