Whilst Alice ate in silence, Mrs.Mutimer kept going in and out of the room; when the girl rose from the table, she stood before her and asked: 'Why couldn't he come ?' Alice went to the fireplace, knelt down, and spread her hands to the blaze.

Her mother approached her again.
'Won't you give me no answer, Alice ?' 'He couldn't come, mother.

Something important is keeping him.' 'Something important?
And why did he want you there ?' Alice rose to her feet, made one false beginning, then spoke to the point.
'Dick's married, mother.' The old woman's eyes seemed to grow small in her wrinkled face, as if directing themselves with effort upon something minute.

They looked straight into the eyes of her daughter, but had a more distant focus.
The fixed gaze continued for nearly a minute.
'What are you talking about, girl ?' she said at length, in a strange, rattling voice.

'Why, I've seen Emma this very morning.