they were both shocked, if not positively alarmed, by an interruption to their celebration. The door opened. ‘Sister, can she be seen?’ It was Mr Wyb… - Patrick White

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they were both shocked, if not positively alarmed, by an interruption to their celebration. The door opened. ‘Sister, can she be seen?’ It was Mr Wyburd in something too loud for a whisper and less than his usual grammar. ‘The princess has arrived. Her daughter.’ As if this were not enough, a second figure was pushing rustling past the one at the door: for Mrs Hunter it was sound perfume joy despair; whereas Sister Badgery saw a tall thin hatless woman, somewhere around fifty (to be on the kind side) her dress unsurprising except for its simplicity and the pearls bounding about around her neck, and on her bosom, as she half ran half staggered. A princess shouldn’t run, the nurse recovered herself enough to disapprove; and she shouldn’t have a horse face. But Dorothy floundered, imperviously, on. ‘O mon Dieu, aidez-moi !’ she gasped, before assuming another of her selves, or voices, to utter, ‘Mother!’ and lower, ‘Mum!’ Then, by act of special grace, a blind was drawn over the expression the intruder was wearing for this old mummy propped up in bed, a thermometer sticking out of its mouth; if life were present, it was the life generated by jewels with which the rigid claws were loaded.