"Daniel is here," Helen said, "because it's Saturday and we didn't know you were coming."
"Well?"
"I thought you might be sorry. And we have asked him to stay the night."
"I promise not to turn him out," Mildred Caniper said, with her humorous look, and Helen laughed back with a friendliness for which Miriam, listening in a corner, admired her secretly.
"But I shall want to talk to you this evening when you are all together," Notya said.
For that ceremony, Miriam wore her customary black with an air which at once changed the dress into one of mourning; the fashion of her hair was subdued to match her manners, and Daniel, having a dim notion that he might unknowingly have offended, asked in his clumsy way what troubled her.
She edged closer to him and looked up, and he could see that she was laughing at herself, though that helped him not at all.
"Isn't my father dead? And aren't we going to have a family consultation in the dining-room? Well, here am I."
"I see."
"What do you see?"