"Oh, yes, Davy, they called him."
"Well, she has erected the prettiest sarcophagus in the whole cemetery for Davy. I tell you Esther Lockwin is a magnificent woman."
"She would have more critics, though, if she were not Wandrell's only daughter."
"Wandrell's only daughter! You don't tell me so! Ah, yes, yes! That accounts for it."
So, while the philosophers account for it, Esther Lockwin goes on with the black business of life. Every week she waits impatiently for news from Corkey. Every week he gives notice that he has found nothing.
"When spring comes, I'll find that yawl," he promises. He knows he can do that much with time.
How often has Esther Lockwin thrown herself on a couch, weeping and moaning as if her body would not hold her rebellious heart--as when Corkey left her in those black and earliest days of the great tempest of woe!
"It is marvelous that it is held to be dishonorable to die, and honorable to live," she cries.
"Oh, David, David, come back! come back! so noble, so good, so great! You who loved little Davy so! You who kissed his blessed little feet! Oh, my own! my husband!"
A fond old mother, knocking on the door, comes always in time to stop these brain-destroying paroxysms.