The meaning of such a pilgrimage dawned suddenly on the boy. His eyes filled, and because he considered it unmanly to weep, he slid from his chair and went to the window. There he got out his pocket-handkerchief and blew his nose.
“I’m afraid he’s going to die,” he said, in a smothered voice.
The Chancellor followed him to the window, and put an arm around his shoulders. “Even that would not be so terrible, Otto,” he said. “Death, to the old, is not terrible. It is an open door, through which they go gladly, because—because those who have gone ahead are waiting just beyond it.”
“Are my mother and father waiting?”
“Yes, Otto.”
He considered. “And my grandmother?”
“Yes.”
“He’ll be very glad to see them all again.”
“Very happy, indeed. But we need him here, too, for a while. You need him and—I. So we will go and pray to have him wait a little longer before he goes away. Hour about it?”
“I’ll try. I’m not very good. I do a good many things, you know.”