"Her husband and two of her brothers were killed at Gettysburg. Her husband was in Pickett's Division. Those were Pickett's men that just passed--about all there are left now."
A little while afterwards, she added: "It is not so gay as one of your Grand Army Days, is it? You see ... it all comes home very close to us. Those old men that can't be with us much longer are our mothers' brothers, and sweethearts, and uncles, and fathers. They went out so young--so brave and full of hope--they poured out by hundreds of thousands. Down this very street they marched, no more than boys, and our mothers stood here where we are standing, to bid them godspeed. And now look at what is left of them, straggling by. There is nobody on this porch--but you--who did not lose somebody that was dear to them. And then there was our pride ... for we were proud. So that is why our old ladies cry to-day."
"Don't you suppose I know when people are crying and when they aren't?--Why do you do it?"
Sharlee lowered her eyes. "Well ... it's all pretty sad, you know ... pretty sad."
She turned away, leaving him to his own devices. From his place on the top step, Queed turned and let his frank glance run over the ladies on the porch. The sadness of face that he had noticed earlier had dissolved and precipitated now: there was hardly a dry eye on that porch but his own. What were they all crying for? Miss Weyland's explanation did not seem very convincing. The war had ended a generation ago. The whole thing had been over and done with many years before she was born.
He turned again, and looked out with unseeing eyes over the thick street, with the thin strip of parade moving down the middle of it. He guessed that these ladies on the porch were not crying for definite brothers, or fathers, or sweethearts they had lost. People didn't do that after forty years; here was Fifi only dead a year, and he never saw anybody crying for her. No, they were weeping over an idea; it was sentiment, and a vague, misty, unreasonable sentiment at that. And yet he could not say that Miss Weyland appeared simply foolish with those tears in her eyes. No, the girl somehow managed to give the effect of seeing farther into things than he himself.... Her tears evidently were in the nature of a tribute: she was paying them to an idea. Doubtless there was a certain largeness about that. But obviously the paying of such a tribute could do no possible good--unless--to the payer. Was there anything in that?--in the theory....