Aunt Florence had lived with them until they had left school, and they had moved three times and had their yearly holiday and...

and there'd been changes of servants, of course.
Some little sparrows, young sparrows they sounded, chirped on the window-ledge.

"Yeep--eyeep--yeep." But Josephine felt they were not sparrows, not on the window-ledge.

It was inside her, that queer little crying noise.

"Yeep--eyeep--yeep." Ah, what was it crying, so weak and forlorn?
If mother had lived, might they have married?
But there had been nobody for them to marry.