Small Things Like These

Heavy is the head that wears the crown

Always, Christmas brought out the best and the worst in people.

But people said lots of things – and a good half of what was said could not be believed; never was there any shortage of idle minds or gossips about town

understand why women feared men with their physical strength and lust and social powers, but women, with their canny intuitions, were so much deeper: they could predict what was to come long before it came, dream it overnight, and read your mind. He’d had moments, in his marriage, when he’d almost feared Eileen and had envied her mettle, her red-hot instincts

was there any point in being alive without helping one another?

Whatever suffering he was now to meet was a long way from what the girl at his side had already endured, and might yet surpass.

he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another?

The blow was cheap but it was the first he’d heard from her, in all their years together.

Did she ever imagine how her life would be if she had married another?

He was touching forty but didn’t feel himself to be getting anywhere or making any kind of headway and could not but sometimes wonder what the days were for.