"Will you rise?" he asked.
He did not bring the cushion to where I was; he carried it around and spread it in a vacant spot between two graves, the place left beside my mother for my precious father's white hairs to be laid in. Having deposited it there, he looked at me, evidently expecting that I would avail myself of his kindness. I wanted to refuse. I felt perfectly comfortable where I was. I should have done so, had not my intention been intercepted by a shaft of expression that crossed my vein of humor unexpectedly. It was only a look from out of his eyes. They were absolutely colorless,—not white, not black, but a strange mingling of all hues made them everything to my view,—and yet so full of coloring that no one ray came shining out and said, "I'm blue, or black, or gray;" but something said, if not the mandate of color, "Obey!"
I did.
"Sacrilege!" I said. "It is a place for worship."
"Whose grave is this?" Mr. Axtell asked, as he bent down and laid his hand upon the sod. It was upon the one next beyond my mother's; between the two it was that he had placed the cushion.
"The head-stone is just there. You can read, can you not?" I asked, with a spice of malice, because for the second time this barbaric gentleman had commanded me to obey.
He lifted himself up, leaned against the towering family-monument, and slowly said,—
"Miss Percival, it is very hard for an Axtell to forgive."
I thought of the face in the Upper Country, and asked,—
"Why?"