Voss could always, if necessary, fail to understand. But wounds will wince, especially in the salt air. He was smiling and screwing up his eyes at th… - Patrick White

It was Sunday, and Mumma had gone next door with Lena and the little ones. Under the pepper tree in the yard Pa was sorting, counting, the empty bottles he would sell back: the bottles going clink clink as Pa stuck them in the sack. The fowls were fluffing in the dust and sun: that crook-neck white pullet Mumma said she would hit on the head if only she had the courage to; but she hadn't.

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.

"Where have you been, Theodora?," Mrs Goodman asked.
"Walking, Mother."
"And whom did you see?"
Mrs Goodman flung her grammar like a stone.
"I did not see a cat," said Theodora.
Mrs Goodman looked at her daughter, who giggled before she left the room.