"If I could help you in any way?" suggested Callandar. "You may be worrying quite needlessly."
"Do people ever consult you about their mothers behind their mother's back?"
"Often. Why not?"
"Only that it doesn't seem natural. Grown-up people—"
"Are often just as foolish as anybody else!"
"Besides, I doubt if I can make you understand." Now that the ice was broken Esther's voice was eager. "I know very little of the real trouble myself. It seems to be just a general state of health. But it varies so. Sometimes she seems quite well, bright, cheerful, ready for anything! Then again she is depressed, nervous, irritable. She has desperate headaches which come on at intervals. They are nervous headaches, she says, and are so bad that she shuts herself up in her room and will not let any of us in. She will not eat. I—I don't know very much about it, you see."
"You know a little more than that, I think, perhaps when you know me better?—It is, after all, a matter of trusting one's doctor."
"I do trust you. But feelings are so difficult to put into words. And the greatest dread I have about mother's illness is only a feeling, a feeling as if I knew, without quite knowing, that the trouble is deeper than appears. Jane feels it too, so it can't be all imagination. It is caused, I think, by a change in mother herself. She seems to be growing into another person—don't laugh!"
"I am not laughing. Please go on."
"Well, one thing more tangible is that the headaches, which seem to mark a kind of nervous crisis, are becoming more frequent. And the medicine—"