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down the pavement, the fanning headlights catching a scurrying bunch of leaves or a crouching cat.
It was one of the older streets in town; at one time, he had known everyone who had lived upon it. He could call out
without hesitation the names of the one-time owners - Wilson, Becket, Johnson, Random - but none of them lived here
any longer. The names had changed and the faces were faces that he did not know; the stratification had shifted and
he knew almost no one on the street.
The middle-young and the very old, he thought, they are the lonely ones.
He went back to the chair beside the lamp he'd lighted and sat down rather stiffly in it. He fidgeted, drumming his
fingers on the arms. He wanted to get up, but there was nothing to get up for, unless it was to wash the dishes, and he
didn't want to wash them.
He could take a walk, he told himself. That might be a good idea. There was a lot of comfort in an evening walk.
He got his coat and hat and went out the door and down the walk and turned west at the gate.
He was more than halfway there, skirting the business section, before he admitted to himself that he was heading for
the Stiles house and the Sitters - that he had, in fact, never intended doing otherwise.
What he might do there, what he might learn there, he had no idea. There was no actual purpose in his mind. It was
almost as if he were on an unknown mission, as if he were being pushed by some unseen force into a situation of
no-choice.
He came to the Stiles house and stood on the walk outside, looking at it.
It was an old house, surrounded by shade trees that had been planted many years before, and the front yard was a
wilderness of shrubs. Every once in a while, someone would come and cut the lawn and maybe trim the hedges and fix
up the flower beds to pay the Sitters for all the baby-
minding they had done, since the Sitters took no money.
And that was a funny thing, Dean thought, their not taking any money - just as if they didn't need it, as if they might
not know what to do with it even if they had any.
Perhaps they didn't need it, for they bought no food and still they kept on living and never had been sick enough for
anyone to know about it. There must have been times when they were cold, although no one ever mentioned it, but
they bought no fuel, and Lamont Stiles had left a fund to pay the taxes - so maybe it was true that they had no need of
money.
There had been a time, Dean recalled, when there had been a lot of speculation in the town about their not eating - or
at least not buying any food. But after a time the speculation dwindled down and all anyone would say was that you
could never figure a lot of things about alien people and there was no use in trying.
And that was right, of course.
The Stiles house, Dean realized with something of a start, was even older than his house. It was a rambler and they
had been popular many years before the split-level had come in.
Heavy drapes were drawn at the windows, but there was light behind the drapes and he knew the Sitters were at
home. They were usually home, of course. Except on babysitting jobs, they never left the house, and in recent years
they had gone out but little, for people had gotten in the habit of dropping off the kids at the Sitters' house. The kids
never made a fuss, not even the tiny ones. They all liked going to the Sitters.
He went up the walk and climbed the stoop to ring the bell.
He waited and heard movement in the house.
The door came open and one of the Sitters stood there, with the light behind it, and he had forgotten - it had been
many years since he'd seen one of the Sitters.
Shortly after Lamont Stiles had come home, Dean remembered, he had met all three of them, and in the years between,
he had seen one of them from time to time a distance on the street. But the memory and the wonder had faded from his
mind and now it struck him once again with all the olden force - the faery grace, the sense of suddenly standing face to
face with a gentle flower.
The face, if it might be called a face, was sweet - too sweet, so sweet that it had no character and hardly an
individuality. A baffling skin arrangement, like the petals of a flower, rose above the face, and the body of the Sitter
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