More moved than he had thought to be, Sheldon knelt by the quiet body. The fretful pulse was still, the tired heart was at rest, the fever-ridden brain slept.
“Yes,” he said quietly as, kneeling, he removed his hat and looked up pityingly into Paula’s set face. “He is dead. Poor little Paula!”
She stared at him with her eyes widening in eloquent expression of the new emotions in her breast. She stood very still, her hands clasped as they had been when the old man rose to his feet. Her brown fingers were slowly going white from their own steady pressure. Sheldon could only wonder gropingly what this tragedy would mean to her. Other girls had lost fathers before now; but when had a girl lost every one she knew in the world as Paula had lost now?
There was nothing for Sheldon to say, so he remained a little kneeling, his head bowed in spontaneous reverence, waiting for the burst of tears from her which would slacken the tense nerves. But it did not come. Presently Paula drew nearer, knelt like Sheldon, put her two warm hands upon the cold forehead. Sheldon saw a shiver run through her. She drew back with a sharp cry.
“Dead!” she whispered. “Dead!”
“Poor little Paula,” he said again in his heart. Aloud he said nothing.
After a while he got to his feet and went away from her, dabbing at his own eyes as he went, grumbling under his breath. He wanted to take her into his arms—as he did the twins, Bill and Bet—to hold her close and let her cry, and pat her shoulder and say, “There, there!” There was much of kindness and gentleness and sympathy under the rough outside shell of John Sheldon, and it went out unstintedly to a slip of a girl who was alone as no other girl in all the world.
When he came back she was sitting very still, her hand patting softly one of the cold, lifeless hands. She looked up curiously, speaking in a quiet whisper:
“He will never wake up?”
“Not in this world,” answered Sheldon gently. “But maybe the soul of him is already awake in another world.”