Like her father, she had always been more solemn than other children. She contained experience beyond her years. She seemed to know about hardship, how it crept into one’s life like a cuckoo, casting out happiness forever. Happiness was frail and flimsy: a petal, a whisper. Hardship was constant. It was muscular and loud. Only fools forgot this vital fact, her face explained. Only fools failed to let it guide their every waking thought and deed.
