"Sit down, won't you?" said one of them, in a voice that was
somewhat rigid with pain. "I think you had better be told first
what has happened."
Then, with her bleak face looking unmeaningly out of the window,
she continued, in an even and mechanical voice:
"I had better state everything that occurred just as it occurred.
This morning I was clearing away the breakfast things, my sisters
were both somewhat unwell, and had not come down. My brother had
just gone out of the room, I believe, to fetch a book. He came back
again, however, without it, and stood for some time staring at the
empty grate. I said, `Were you looking for anything I could get?'
He did not answer, but this constantly happens, as he is often very
abstracted. I repeated my question, and still he did not answer.
Sometimes he is so wrapped up in his studies that nothing but a
touch on the shoulder would make him aware of one's presence, so I
came round the table towards him. I really do not know how to
describe the sensation which I then had. It seems simply silly, but
at the moment it seemed something enormous, upsetting one's brain.
The fact is, James was standing on one leg."
Grant smiled slowly and rubbed his hands with a kind of care.
"Standing on one leg?" I repeated.
"Yes," replied the dead voice of the woman without an inflection to
suggest that she felt the fantasticality of her statement.
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