“It’s snowing” said Dorothy, in a voice fraught with intensest emotion.
Phyl rolled comfortably over to her left side without the least unclosing of her heavy eyelids.
“Well, I don’t care,” she said, drowsily.
Dorothy shook her vigorously to bring her to reason. She was quite quivering with cold and grief [14] ]herself. “Don’t you remember?” she said. “Jennie and Suey are out all this time.”
Then indeed Phyl’s eyes sprang open, and the horror in her sister’s eyes showed equally strong in her own.
“Whatever shall we do?” she said.
They crept out of bed softly and stole through cold air to the window against which the little soft flakes were beginning to fall.
“H’sh!” Dorothy said, “we shall wake mother.” So they tiptoed and spoke in whispers.
Phyl was peering in an anguished way through a patch of glass she had rubbed clear of breath-mist, but the moon was growing more and more woe-begone now the snow-clouds were drifting down, and all it revealed of the garden were some vague shadows of trees and stretches of dark grass patched here and there with white.
“[They’ll get galloping consumption] at least,” Dorothy said in a choked voice.