"She is always well. I haven't had a day's anxiety about her since she was born."
"But she isn't very old yet." Already little Frances was supplying conversational material to her parents.
"I wish you would sit down, George," said Gabriella, with a change of tone. "I want to read you a part of a letter from mother."
"Can't you tell me instead?"
"If you'd rather. You know I never told mother why we couldn't have her to live with us. I never told her anything. I simply made excuses."
"That was all right, wasn't it?" He was plainly nervous.
"At the time I thought I couldn't do differently, but now—"
She gave him the letter, and while he unfolded it awkwardly, she watched him anxiously and yet without interrupting his reading. Beyond the simple facts, she had told him nothing, and it was characteristic of her that she did not embellish these facts with picturesque phrases. She herself was so insensible to the appeal of rhetoric that she hardly thought of it as likely to influence anybody. Then, too, in moments of intense feeling she had always a sensation of dumbness.
"I'm awfully sorry about her illness," he said, "but when you think of it, the best thing that could have happened to her was not to come to New York. This climate would have been the end of her."
"Will you let me have the money, George? I will try to save in every way that I can. I've made all the baby's clothes, as it is, and I can easily make the few things I need, also. Since the baby came I have stopped calling with your mother."