There was no answer. For a moment Leonard's own form relaxed, and he turned his face and buried it in the unresponsive breast. Then he lifted it again, and taking the other face between his hands he sank his brow to the brow upturned and cried: "God rest your soul, Arthur! Oh, Arthur, Arthur, God rest your soul!"
XXII
MORNING GRAY
Mrs. Morris gave the physician her account of the accident, the physician gave the reporters his, and no other ever got into the old street or the town it looks down upon with such sweet superiority.
Said the rustic vestryman to another pall-bearer, as they turned toward their homes, "Many's the time All Angels's been craowded, but I never see it craowded as 'twas this time."
The new mound was white under January snows when Godfrey and Isabel first stood beside it together; and when summer had come and gone again, and at last the time drew near when, by the regular alternations of the service, the ocean wanderer's three years afloat were to be followed by three ashore, it was beside that mound that Ruth let him ask the long-withheld question.
And once more the new year followed the old.
On one of its earliest days, "I cal'late," a certain somebody began to say to General Byington, "th' never was a happier weddin' so quiet, nor a qui—" But he caught the sheen of his daughter's spectacles and forebore.
And still moved on the heavenly procession of the seasons; and as each new one passed with smile and song, and strewed its flowers or fruits on Bylow Hill, the memory of one who after life's fitful fever slept soundly at last was ever a sweet forgetting of all that had once been bitter, and a sweeter and sweeter remembrance of whatsoever things had been pure, lovely, and of good report.