George and the Major met him at the station when he
arrived--the first time the Major had ever come to meet his grandson.
The old gentleman sat in his closed carriage (which still needed paint)
at the entrance to the station, but he got out and advanced to grasp
George's hand tremulously, when the latter appeared. "Poor fellow!" he
said, and patted him repeatedly upon the shoulder. "Poor fellow! Poor
Georgie!"

George had not yet come to a full realization of his loss: so far,
his condition was merely dazed; and as the Major continued to pat him,
murmuring "Poor fellow!" over and over, George was seized by an almost
irresistible impulse to tell his grandfather that he was not a poodle.
But he said "Thanks," in a low voice, and got into the carriage, his
two relatives following with deferential sympathy. He noticed that the
Major's tremulousness did not disappear, as they drove up the street,
and that he seemed much feebler than during the summer. Principally,
however, George was concerned with his own emotion, or rather, with his
lack of emotion; and the anxious sympathy of his grandfather and his
uncle made him feel hypocritical. He was not grief-stricken; but he felt
that he ought to be, and, with a secret shame, concealed his callousness
beneath an affectation of solemnity.

But when he was taken into the room where lay what was left of Wilbur
Minafer, George had no longer to pretend; his grief was sufficient. It
needed only the sight of that forever inert semblance of the quiet man
who had been always so quiet a part of his son's life--so quiet a part
that George had seldom been consciously aware that his father was indeed
a part of his life. As the figure lay there, its very quietness was
what was most lifelike; and suddenly it struck George hard. And in that
unexpected, racking grief of his son, Wilbur Minafer became more vividly
George's father than he had ever been in life.

When George left the room, his arm was about his black-robed mother, his
shoulders were still shaken with sobs. He leaned upon his mother; she
gently comforted him; and presently he recovered his composure and
became self-conscious enough to wonder if he had not been making an
unmanly display of himself. "I'm all right again, mother," he said
awkwardly. "Don't worry about me: you'd better go lie down, or
something; you look pretty pale."

Isabel did look pretty pale, but not ghastly pale, as Fanny did. Fanny's
grief was overwhelming; she