Perhaps the most indefinable change had come over Claire's home life.
Her mother's unfailing string of trivial gossip, formerly not without a
certain interest, now scarcely held her to even polite attention.
Indeed, her self-absorbed silence, while Mrs. Robson poured out the
latest news about Mrs. Finnegan's second sister's husband's mother--who
was suddenly stricken with some incurable disease, made all the more
mysterious by the fact that its nature was not divulged--was so apparent
that her mother, goaded on to a mild exasperation, would ask,
significantly:

"What's the matter, Claire? Have you a headache?"

Mrs. Robson was never so happy as in the discovery of some one with a
mysterious disease, particularly if the victim's relatives were loath to
discuss the issue.

"They think they fool me!" she would say, triumphantly, to Claire, "but
I guess I know what ails her.... Didn't her mother, and her uncle, and
her sister's oldest child die of consumption? I tell you it's in the
family. The last time I saw her she nearly coughed her head off."

Not that Mrs. Robson was unsympathetic; brought face to face with
suffering, she blossomed with every impulsive tenderness, but her
experiences had confirmed her in pessimism, and every fresh tragedy
testified to the soundness of her faith. Her pride at diagnosing
people's ills and pronouncing their death-sentences was almost
professional. And she had an irritating way of making comments such as
this: