Might be a bit off the point, but I always thought it slightly odd that Miss Cartwright questions Miranda's pretty standard translation of a difficult phrase (on Wikipedia the translation is pretty much the same) but maybe it's just a way of showing that Nicola takes a while ( Miranda's translation is a year in the future) to understand the feelings of grief and mourning in the phrase, and how they relate to what has happened. The Dodds, in different ways, are all grieving.
Lizzzar