He had feared to find her stricken down in the road, and when he saw her clinging alone and in a maddened way to this tree, he made no bones of speaking to her with all necessary plainness.
"I asked you if it was Missus Brown you had come to see," he called to her through the din.

"And you wouldn't answer." "Why should I ?" she shouted back.

"Why do you speak like that?
Has anything happened to her ?" "Don't you know ?" "No, no--she was well when I heard from her last, and expecting me, or so she wrote.

Is she--she--" "Dead, missus.

We buried her last Tuesday.