The Old Woman Speaks

the long version

Looking back over the years, Martha remembered. She remembered Jandy at seventeen 'when all the playing stopped and life began.' Jandy had never grown very tall, never filled out like the village girls —`Slight she was and small-boned with a little, white, witching face' that looked out from curtains of red hair. But already, at seventeen, there was one man who loved her, had loved her for years, though only one person knew it. And soon, as the 'playing stopped and life began', there would be a second to love her.