At last the carpenter, who was used to funerals, and who was now next door to being clerk, heaved a heavy sigh, stooped down, picked a strand from the grass plot, and held it at arm’s length, looking at it fixedly for a minute or so, before saying, huskily—
“All flesh is grass, Tom Morrison—flowers of the field—cut down—withered. Amen.”
He said it in a slow, measured way, and with a nasal twang, the last word closing his disconnected speech after quite an interval; and then the two men stood together for some minutes in silence.
At last Biggins spoke again, but without raising his eyes, looking down at the garden path, as if for a place to plant the bent he had broken from its roots.
“Poor wife! She’s terribly cut up, Tom.”
There was another interval of silence, and then Biggins said, as if to himself, and still gazing at the path—
“White cloth, and silver breastplate and nails?”
There was another pause, and then Tom said in a weary, dull way—
“As if it was one of your own, my lad—as if it was one of your own.”
“Good-bye, Tom Morrison—good-bye, lad,” said Biggins, holding out his hand once more, but with his back half turned to his neighbour “Good-bye,” said Tom, squeezing the honest, hard fist held out to him in a manly grip; and, with a sigh, Biggins was turning off, when a word from the wheelwright arrested him. “Come down here, lad, away from the house,” said Tom, huskily.