The doctor doubted if he would pull through.
Mrs.Wilcox was asked to break the news to her daughter.

She literally broke it.

That is to say, she presented it in such disjointed fragments that it would have puzzled a wiser head than Mrs.Nevill Tyson's to make out the truth.

Mrs.Wilcox had been much distressed by Molly's strange indifference to her maternal claims; but when you came to think of it, it was a very good thing that she had not cared more for the child, if she was not to keep him.

All the same, Mrs.Wilcox knew that she had an extremely disagreeable task to perform.
They were in the porch at Thorneytoft, the bare white porch that stared out over the fields, and down the great granite road to London.