"How d'ye do, Caroline?
'Lo, Steve!" The quartette shook hands.

Mrs.Dunn sank creakingly into a chair and gazed about the room.

Malcolm strolled to the window and looked out.
Stephen followed and stood beside him.
"My dear," said Mrs.Dunn, addressing Caroline, "how are you getting on?
How are your nerves?
Is all the dreadful 'settling' over ?" "Very nearly, thank goodness." "That's a mercy.

I should certainly have been here yesterday to help you in superintending and arranging and so on, but I was suffering from one of my 'hearts,' and you know what _they_ are." Everyone who knew Mrs.Corcoran Dunn was acquainted with her "hearts." The attacks came, so she was accustomed to explain, from an impaired valve, and "some day"-- she usually completed the sentence with upturned eyes and a resigned upward wave of the hand.
Her son turned from the window.
"I say, Mother," he explained, wearily, "I do wish you wouldn't speak of your vital organs in the plural.

Anyone would imagine you were a sort of freak, like the two-headed boy at the circus.