The Blue Wall

A surgeon takes over the care of Virginia Marbury, an eight-year-old girl with meningitis, after her previous doctor dies in a riding accident. Among the medical notes he inherits is a puzzling question about the wall beside her bed. Virginia seems to sense something beyond its blue surface, and the nurse reports that the child connects her own condition with the fortunes of an unseen presence.

Richard Washburn Child sets this psychological mystery among wealthy city households, where professional observation meets experiences that resist an easy explanation. The surgeon presents himself as a careful witness, yet the case challenges his confidence in the boundaries of knowledge. His account gives readers both the practical details of a sickroom and the unease of wondering how one life might affect another across an apparently solid barrier. The appeal lies in watching a medical observer weigh strange evidence while trying to keep his judgment precise.