her heart out in the hopeless despair of childhood—a despair that knows only the moment and cannot feel the dawn of any to-morrow.
The sound of children crying this way is one of the most terrible sounds in the world, because when grief, unmixed with any anger, overtakes them, there is nothing for them except hopelessness.
In all Alice's life she had never heard Sara cry like this. Sara usually cried loudly and resentfully, or, if her feelings were hurt, two lovely tears as clear as jewels overflowed from her eyes—tears evidently meant to be kissed away. She had cried for grief, of course, but before, with a grief that could be comforted. One did not have to tell Alice that this grief of Sara's, whatever it was, was hopeless. Something irrevocable had happened to her little spirit that she would always remember. Alice knelt beside the trunk.
"Sara," she said, "Sara, darling! Tell mother what's the matter."
At the sympathy in Alice's voice Sara shrank away. Her sobbing changed to a low moan of grief. Nothing could comfort her.
There came Grandma's heavy foot upon the steep attic stairs. She puffed slightly as she came across the room.
"Why, of all things!" she said, and then her eyes fell with compassion upon Sara's little flattened figure, face down upon the bottom of the big trunk.
"Well, of all things," she repeated in a voice of deep sympathy. "Why, sweet Sara—Grandma's darling! What's the matter, Sara darling?"
As her mother and grandmother implored her to tell them what was the matter, for nothing deserved tears like this, Sara remained speechless and continued to cry the more. It was then that the Grandmother had a moment of insight.
