Never before had she broken down and sobbed on Mary's shoulder as she did now.
Always she had been the comforter and Mary the one to be consoled, but for a few moments their positions were reversed.

Conscious that her coming had lifted a burden from her mother's shoulders, the burden of enduring her anxiety alone, she tiptoed into Jack's room, ready to begin playing the Jester at once with some merry speech which she was sure would bring a smile.
But he was lying asleep, and the jest died on her lips as she stood and gazed at him.

She had expected him to look ill, but his face, white and drawn with great dark shadows under his closed eyes, was so much ghastlier than she had pictured, that it was a shock to find him so.

She stole out of the room again to the sunny little back porch, as sick at heart as if she had seen him lying in his coffin.

He was no more like the strong jolly big brother she had left, than the silent shadow of him.