Her beautiful, pitiful embroideries were paid for in bad nights.

And at six o'clock that morning she had given her little dismal cry: "Oh, Nanna, Nanna, my beast of a spine is going to bother me to-day, and it's Anne's birthday!" "And what else," said Nanna severely, "do you expect, Miss Edith ?" "I didn't expect this.

I do believe it's getting worse." "Worse ?" Nanna was contemptuous.

"It was worse on Master Walter's birthday last year." (Last year she had made a waistcoat.) "I can't think," moaned Edith, "why it's always bad on birthdays." But however badly "it" might behave in the night, it was never permitted to destroy the spirit of the day.
Anne looked anxiously at the collapsed, exhausted figure in the bed.
"Yes," said Edith, having smiled at her sister-in-law with magnificent mendacity, "you may well look at me.

You couldn't make yourself as flat as I am if you tried.