There was no sign of sorrow on her face, nothing but a kind of sulky defiance.
After a while she took the paper bag out of her sister's hand, opened it, and began to eat the gingerbread biscuits it contained.

Hyacinth spoke to her, but she turned her head away, and would not answer him.
His voice seemed to rouse the younger sister, who stopped crying and looked at him curiously.

He tried again, and this time he spoke in Irish.
At once the younger girl brightened and answered him.

Apparently she had no fear that malice could lurk in the heart of a man who spoke her own language.

In a few minutes she was chatting to him as if he were an old friend.
He learnt that the two girls were on their way to New York.