withholding of it--studied or callous because so natural, the merest
conventionalism, to have asked, "Were you hurt?"--that made her
acutely feel her position.

A paradox, she thought, not to want a thing and yet to be wounded
because it was not hers. A ridiculous paradox--and brightly she tried
to smile at the silliness of it; blinking the tears that were swelling
now, her face turned against the window towards the pavement.

A tall, slim girl was passing, holding the arm of a nice-looking
little old man with a grey moustache and military air. The tall, slim
girl was laughing down at him, and he looked to be chuckling merrily,
just as--Her mind swung off, and the tears must be blinked again.

They reminded her, those two, of herself and her father. Such familiar
friends as they looked so she had been with Dad who idolised her and
whom she had idolised. Just like that--arm in arm, joking, "ragging"--
she used to walk with him round about the home in Ireland--the world
to one another and none else in the world, except the mother who was
so intimately and inseparably of them that years past her death they
still spoke of her as if she were alive.

Thus, long after her death, it would be: "Dad, we can't go home by the
hill; mother never lets Grizzle do that climb after a long day." And:
"Mary, your mother won't like you being so late; we must turn back."
And: "Mary, there's the pig by mother's almond tree; run and shoo
him."

Partly this refusal to recognise that, though dead, Mother was
actually gone from them, no longer was sharing their little jokes and