she
followed his glance and whispered gently:--

"Her husband and two of her brothers were killed at Gettysburg. Her
husband was in Pickett's Division. Those were Pickett's men that just
passed--about all there are left now."

A little while afterwards, she added: "It is not so gay as one of your
Grand Army Days, is it? You see ... it all comes home very close to us.
Those old men that can't be with us much longer are our mothers'
brothers, and sweethearts, and uncles, and fathers. They went out so
young--so brave and full of hope--they poured out by hundreds of
thousands. Down this very street they marched, no more than boys, and
our mothers stood here where we are standing, to bid them godspeed. And
now look at what is left of them, straggling by. There is nobody on this
porch--but you--who did not lose somebody that was dear to them. And
then there was our pride ... for we were proud. So that is why our old
ladies cry to-day."

"And why your young ladies cry, too?"

"Oh, ... I am not crying."

"Don't you suppose I know when people are crying and when they
aren't?--Why do you do it?"

Sharlee lowered her eyes. "Well ... it's all pretty sad, you know ...
pretty sad."

She turned away, leaving him to his own devices. From his place on the
top step, Queed turned and let his frank glance run over the ladies on
the porch. The sadness of face that he had noticed earlier had dissolved
and precipitated now: there was hardly a dry eye on that porch but his
own. What were they all crying for? Miss Weyland's explanation did not
seem very convincing. The war had ended a generation ago. The whole
thing had been over and done with many years before she was born.

He turned again, and looked out with unseeing eyes over the thick
street, with the thin strip of parade moving down the middle of it. He
guessed that these ladies on the porch were not crying for definite
brothers, or fathers, or sweethearts they had lost. People didn't do
that after forty years; here was Fifi only dead a year, and he never saw
anybody crying for her. No, they were weeping over an idea; it was
sentiment, and a vague, misty, unreasonable sentiment at that. And yet
he could not say that Miss Weyland appeared simply foolish with those
tears in her eyes. No, the girl somehow managed to give the effect of
seeing farther into things than he himself.... Her tears evidently were
in the nature of a tribute: she was paying them to an idea. Doubtless
there