He looked at her as she fixed her eyes on the floor, frowning; and then he glanced away at the mahogany sideboard, where Mr. Smith’s heavy pieces of polished silver met his gaze, with the peculiar detached phlegm of old, worn possessions that have seen so many family-troubles that they have grown professionally callous, after the manner of undertakers and sextons.

Something about that silver on the sideboard, combined with his sister’s news, threw a grey shadow over his own life. His mind sank down into a desolate acceptance of long years of stark endurance, the sort of endurance that windblown trees have to acquire when their branches become at last permanently bent, from bowing sideways, away from the north or the east.

“Well, now you know the worst!” his sister murmured at last.

“It might be worse still,” he said lamely.