Eurdora Welty's indifference to her readers' expectations

Eudora Welty wraps up her short story - long story, really - Kin, in "Collected Stories," with the two cousins, Dicey, visiting Mississippi from the North, and Kate, going in to visit with old Uncle Felix, who is lying apparently on his death bed, in a room cluttered with memorabilia and artifacts from his long life. The girls actually hardly say a thing to him; most of the talking done by Sister (Aunt?) Anne, a somewhat bossy, mannish presence who takes control of everything and everyone. The story, somewhat unusual for Welty, is in first-person narration by Dicey, but it actually feels like 3rd-person to some extent, in that Welty doesn't use the narrative strategy to have Dicey reveal much about her interior life. She describes all she sees much as an omniscient third-person narrator would. One exception, though: in the room with Uncle Felix she sees an old toy, a stereopticon, and she recalls looking at pictures through this when she was a little girl in Mississippi - it's a moment that's certainly meant to be a tribute to Proust and the episode in volume one of the "magic lantern" that through its varied light patterns on the walls of his room. Apparently Uncle Felix also enjoyed this toy, but Welty reveals little about this connection. The main "episode" in this non-eventful story occurs when Felix mutters some words that nobody can comprehend: Hide. Daisy. Some other words. As far as I can see, Welty lets this utterance hang out there as a mystery - she doesn't provide an answer as to what Felix may be recollecting or trying to convey. Shortly after this utterance, Anne intrudes, takes Felix's temperature, and Dicey oddly tells Anne that her aunt would have come along for the visit but she can't put up her (Anne). Kate and Dicey depart laughing; does this make sense? Or, more to the point, is this a satisfactory use of the material that Welty has developed so carefully? At this point in her career - this is from her final book of short stories - she is clearly pushing against the boundaries of the form, thinking more about developing novel-length narratives - and Welty's well-known and justly praised subtlety does not serve her well here: my sense is I've traveled a long way with her in this story without sufficient explanation or reward. It's a wonderful set-up for a story, but Welty obstinately refuses to meet our expectations for the form, she won't tie loose ends together or even provide a dramatic climax. Reading Welty, you always feel you're in the hands of a master writer, but at times the writer's indifference to her readers' expectations is disconcerting, disappointing.