[ anyone else might have been bewildered by hong lu's curiosity by the notion, but be it due to that unwilling bond they share or simply because don sees nothing wrong with not knowing it she answers easily. ]

To think of them, and to wonder if something may ail them -- or, at the very least, to be interested in their being somehow, by way of concern or something else known only to one's own mind. As I do not worry particularly often myself -- Young Sinclair handles that quite finely for the both of us -- it is nonetheless something I have been harried by in my time here.

[ something she's learned, too, but by experience more than anything. acknowledgment and realizing the sort of things she does when confronted with that worry, how it comes out and what lessens it. time has done a lot. ]