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.
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