“I'm Missus Tobin.”
She was dull-looking, round-eyed, gray-haired. She fumbled in the basket, dropped something in wet paper on a chair, and seemed placidly preparing to say more. It seemed to me that she had much of Tobin's mental directness, the Doric attitude, the neglect of comment. I asked: “How's Tobin?”
“Oi! He's dead.”
“I am very sorry, Mrs. Tobin. May I—”
“Oi! Funeral's this afternoon. He could'n' be round. He was sick. Five weeks three days.”
She went out and down the stair, bumping back and forth between the wall and the banister.
On the misty afternoon of that day I stood on that corner where more than elsewhere the city and the University meet; where hackmen and newsboys congregate; where a gray brick hotel looks askance at the pillared and vaulted entry of a recitation hall. The front of that hall is a vainglorious thing. Those who understand, looking dimly with halfshut eyes, may see it change to a mist, and in the mist appear a worn fence, a grassless, trodden space, and four tall trees.
The steps of the hall were deserted, except for newsboys playing tag among the pillars. I asked one if he knew where Tobin lived.
“He's havin' a funeral,” he said.
“Where?”