If they make particular inquiries--very unlikely I think--but, if they do, put them at their ease." She sighed.
"Why was my poor darling so upset, when I came in ?" said he.
There was a difficulty in her speaking.

He waited with much patient twiddling of bread crumbs; and at last she said: "My sister called twice at my--our old lodgings.

The second time, she burst into tears.

The girl told me so." "But women cry so often, and for almost anything, Dahlia." "Rhoda cries with her hands closed hard, and her eyelids too." "Well, that maybe her way." "I have only seen her cry once, and that was when mother was dying, and asked her to fetch a rose from the garden.

I met her on the stairs.