“I am bothered about the child, Kate.”
“Yes.”
She turned a chair from the table.
“This last month—”
“You have noticed the change?”
“Yes, dear.”
“So have I.”
He rested his elbows on his knees, and sat close over the fire, moving the poker to and fro as though beating time.
“She has lost flesh and color. There is a swollen gland in the neck, too. This beast of a town, I suppose, with its dirt and smoke. Thank God, the boy seems fit enough.”
He spoke slowly, yet with an emphatic curtness that might have suggested lack of feeling to a sentimentalist. Catherine sat in silence, watching him with troubled eyes.