"Angel, whenever I ask you how your mother is you always say she's not very well just now; but the only person I've seen or heard moving about the house is you. I'm beginning to wonder if your mother is a creature of your imagination." Angel said nothing; she continued to scrape the crumbs off the tablecloth with the blunt edge of a knife. "Are you alone in the house?"
"Course I'm not; how about my brother, Eustace? You've seen and heard him, haven't you?"
Eustace, it appeared, was only slightly his sister's senior, and almost as old; though Nora felt that no one could really be as old as Angel seemed; she admitted that she had seen Eustace.
"Very well then; he don't go till after nine and he's back most days before six, so how can I be alone in the house?"
"I know about Eustace; as you say, I've seen him. But I was thinking of your mother. Where is she; or have you reasons why you would rather not tell me?"
"What do you mean by have I reasons?"
The light of battle came into the child's eyes; it was extraordinary how soon it did come there.
"I was wondering if, for any reason, you would prefer to keep your own counsel."
"We don't all of us care to turn ourselves inside out; seems to me you don't for one."
The accusation was so true that Nora was routed.