"It is strange," he said.
"What, Sir?"
"I beg your pardon; I was thinking in words," he replied.
"I am sorry that I cannot do as you wish," I said, and resumed my profession in the room above.
The day went on, never pausing one moment for the sorrow and the suffering that another day had brought to this house in Redleaf.
Just before the funeral-bell began to toll, Mr. Axtell came again to the sickroom door. There was no change. I told him so. Why did the man look as if he had been crying? Was it because he had, I wonder?
He did not come in. Poor man! He was the only relative, the only one to stand at the last beside the grave he opened yesterday. I could not help it, I held out my hand to him as he stood there in the hall, I had no words wherewith to convey sympathy. He looked at it very much as he might have done at one of the waxen hands that belong to waxen figures in a shop-window, without one ray of the meaning it was intended to convey entering into his mind. I felt confused, uncomfortable. It seemed to me, then, irreverent to his sorrow, that I, a stranger, should have attempted the proffer of sympathy; but I must make him comprehend me.
"I wanted to say that I am sorry with you," I said.
"Will you say it the same way again?"
"How?" for this time it was I who did not comprehend.