"I knew I was under observation so I continued eating as if the news had not interested me," he says of the difficult moments after he has received the bad news about his teacher. Moments later, he fills his mouth with food so as to avoid an outburst directed at Old Cotter. He is probably right in his analysis of the situation. Clearly, it is the wrong time to stick up for himself, or for Father Flynn. At the house of mourning, the boy carefully observes his surroundings and acts appropriately, entering on tiptoe, pretending to pray when that seems the thing to do, refusing crackers for fear of making too much noise eating them, and, most of all, remaining quiet. Even adults can often be insensitive to the mood of their environment. The boy, however, always interprets the emotional tone of his surroundings correctly.
It is no surprise that a boy so sensitive, so intelligent, would find himself somewhat alienated from others — cut off, fundamentally, from his family and peers. He appears to lack altogether a connection with his uncle, much less Old Cotter, and it is said that he rarely plays "with young lads of his own age." Even when he is in the company of his aunt and the priest's sisters near story's end, the reader's main sense of the boy is that he is alone.
Finally, though the main character of "The Sisters" is no more in charge of his own fate than most children, he has an independent spirit and a desire to discover the true nature of things that cause him to search beyond the boundaries of convention. He quests, as far as he is capable of doing so, for that which he does not yet know. It is this characteristic that presumably brought him to the priest in the first place, and leads him to the house of the dead man and finally to Father Flynn's open casket. It is also this active, seeking quality in the boy that makes him most appealing to us.
