“And he’s sent himself home,” said Weir. “Sent himself home to be buried. You all alone?”
“I’m the whole family,” said the young man with a smile that made Weir look away. “Will it be all right,” he began to ask again, and hesitated before the pronoun. For nearly a week he had been travelling with this freight and the dilemma was new each time. How should one refer to one’s father in a pine box? Corpse was a sodden, gruesome word. Body was too cold and distant. Remains,—no. There were left only the pronouns—it, this, that—and they were disrespectful.
“It’s all right there,” said the station agent, seeing what the young man meant. “But if you want to leave it all night we’ll take it in.”
“Only for a few minutes,” said the young man. “I’m coming right back.”
The idlers about the station waited until he was out of sight and then gathered around the box, staring at it, reading the card, looking away, commenting—
“So that’s poor old Aaron.... As the fellow said, we’re all alike at the end of the lane.... He wasn’t so oldan, I ought t’know because wasn’t I born—?... The young one brought him back.... Where’d he come from, does it say?... Likely looking boy.... What’s his name?... Wonder what old Gib’l say.... This here one stole his sweetheart away back there in....”
To John Breakspeare, son of Esther, great grandson of the founder, now turning his twentieth year, New Damascus was a legend. He had never been there. Yet without asking his way he walked straight to the inn that was his grandfather’s, since named Lycoming House, and wrote two names in the register thus:
{
John Breakspeare.
Aaron ditto
}