"Why, what has shaken thee?" said Mordecai. He fell into this antique form of speech habitually in talking to his sister and to the Cohen children.
"Thoughts," said Mirah; "thoughts that come like the breeze and shake me-- bad people, wrong things, misery--and how they might touch our life."
"We must take our portion, Mirah. It is there. On whose shoulder would we lay it, that we might be free?"
The one voluntary sign she made of her inward care was this distant allusion.