We turned back
silently into the brown room.
We were all quite hushed from our late excitement. What strange things
were happening to-night!
All in a moment something so solemn and important was put into our
minds. An event that,--never talked about, and thought of as little, I
suppose, as such a one ever was in any family like ours,--had yet
always loomed vaguely afar, as what should come some time, and would
bring changes when it came, was suddenly impending.
Grandfather might be going to die.
And yet what was there for us to do but to go quietly back into the
brown room and sit down?
There was nothing to say even. There never is anything to say about
the greatest things. People can only name the bare, grand, awful fact,
and say, "It was tremendous," or "startling," or "magnificent," or
"terrible," or "sad." How little we could really say about the gale,
even now that it was over! We could repeat that this and that tree
were blown down, and such a barn or house unroofed; but we could not
get the real wonder of it--the thing that moved us to try to talk it
over--into any words.
"He seemed so well this afternoon," said Rosamond.
"I don't think he _was_ quite well," said Ruth. "His hands trembled so
when he was folding up his papers; and he was very slow."
"O, men always are with their fingers. I don't think that was
anything," said Barbara. "But I think he seemed rather nervous when
he came over. And he would not sit in the house, though the wind was
coming up then.
Pages:
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124