And upon the stairway landing, near by, two old women, on all-fours at their work, were likewise pessimistic.
"Hech!" said one, lamenting in a whisper.

"It give me a turn to see him go by--white as wax an' bony as a dead fish! Mrs.Cronin, tell me: d'it make ye kind o' sick to look at um ?" "Sick?
No more than the face of a blessed angel already in heaven!" "Well," said the other, "I'd a b'y o' me own come home t' die once--" She fell silent at a rustling of skirts in the corridor above them.
It was Mrs.Sheridan hurrying to greet her son.
She was one of those fat, pink people who fade and contract with age like drying fruit; and her outside was a true portrait of her.

Her husband and her daughter had long ago absorbed her.

What intelligence she had was given almost wholly to comprehending and serving those two, and except in the presence of one of them she was nearly always absent-minded.

Edith lived all day with her mother, as daughters do; and Sheridan so held his wife to her unity with him that she had long ago become unconscious of her existence as a thing separate from his.