"Do your head good. But I daresay you're right. I'm going to have some though."
She moved about busying herself in her calm efficient way, lighting the spirit lamp, getting out the cups, cutting the bread.
"Sure you won't have some?"
"No thanks."
Tactful Mary was—none of that awful commiseration, no questions.
A good pal, but how far away, what infinite distance!
Millie took the book that was nearest to her, opened it and read page after page without seeing the words.
Then a sentence caught her.
"Nor is it altogether the remembrance of her cathedral stopping earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the tearlessness of arid skies that never rain. . . ."
"The tearlessness of arid skies that never rain?" How strange a phrase! What was this queer book? She read on. "Thus when the muffled rollings of a milky sea; the bleak rustlings of the festooned frosts of mountains; the desolate shiftings of the windrowed snows of prairies; all these, to Ishmael, are as the shaking of that buffalo robe to the frightened colt!"