Summary

The first-person narrator contemplates the history of their Aunt Rose, who was brought in their house in Hempstead where they grew up. Aunt Rose is very old and needs to be taken care of by their family in an upstairs room. The narrator's father tells them the story of Great-Aunt Rose and Red Whelan. He says that after the Civil War, when Rose was a child, a red haired man with one leg and one arm, Red Whelan, came up to live in their attic. Patrick, the speaker's great-grand father, was a young school teacher who prepared a room for Red Whelan to live his last days. Great-aunt Rose took care of Red Whelan for forty years. He was her brother's substitute in the Civil War and Rose was "a widowed spinster, our father called her. A married nun" (71).

The Little...