She who had wept so often in
this latest sorrow could shed no tears.
Deleah cried, wetting the pillow nightly with her tears. When talking of
matters quite unconnected with the lost child the tears would come welling
up, drowning the beautiful hazel eyes; would tremble, as she tried to go
on talking, on the thick black lashes; would roll, she pretending not to
notice, down her cheeks.
Bessie cried--howled, even, lying with her face buried in the sofa
cushion, calling in a smothered voice upon Franky's name.
Emily cried, cleaning with spirits of ammonia the shabby school suit whose
odour had so offended the nostrils of the elder sister. Putting yet
another patch in the hinder portions of the trousers, the only use of such
labours being that it delayed the laying away of the little garments for
ever.
But the mother was denied such easy expression of sorrow that was beyond
words and beyond tears. "I am not ill. Mr. Pretty and I can manage," she
said, and the substitute supplied by George Boult was sent back.
Mr. Pretty was very good to her, giving up, for the time being, his
surreptitious smokes in the cellar, his skylarking with the youths of his
own age who passed the door, giving his serious attention to duties he had
consistently shirked hitherto.
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