Sister Ann
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“Sister Ann, Sister Ann, do you see anyone coming?”— from poor cowering Fatima. And from the watcher on the look-out always the same monotonous reply: “Naught but the dust that blows before the wind!”
She was really Edith; but ever since as children they had acted the BLUEBEARD play, she had been Ann to them — Sister Ann. And the name fitted her like her own skin. For Ann quite literally spent her life on the watch — for the next disaster, she being the only one who might ward it off.
Of late, however, her vigilance had had a double aim.
Without counting her — and no one ever did, she was so different — there were six of them, six girls in a row. (Brother Stephen the lawyer came after Ann, and little Timothy, who still rode every day to school, right at the end of
