None of them ever inquired how the others had been getting on.

All of them were very chary how they opened a conversation, as if they feared it would be made a grievance of; and is there anything in the world so dreadful as a family grievance! And grievances there are which speak even when they are dumb.

Indoors, every member of the family began to wear rags, and this is what every family must come to that can only look nice in new clothes.

Such people, unless they are able to sit before the mirror all day long, look draggle-tailed and sluttish, even if the clothes that hang about them are not very old, and so betray their poverty to the world.

The girls were obliged to get out and do up their last year's dresses.