“Yes,” said Bibbs.  “It—­it is beginning to get dark.  I—­I noticed that.”

“I ought to tell you—­I—­” Mary began, confusedly.  She bit her lip, sat silent a moment, then spoke with composure.  “It must seem odd, my—­”

“No, no!” Bibbs protested, earnestly.  “Not in the—­in the least.”

“It does, though,” said Mary.  “I had not intended to come to the cemetery, Mr. Sheridan, but one of the men in charge at the house came and whispered to me that ’the family wished me to’—­I think your sister sent him.  So I came.  But when we reached here I—­oh, I felt that perhaps I—­”

Bibbs nodded gravely.  “Yes, yes,” he murmured.

“I got out on the opposite side of the carriage,” she continued.  “I mean opposite from—­from where all of you were.  And I wandered off over in the other direction; and I didn’t realize how little time it takes.  From where I was I couldn’t see the carriages leaving—­at least I didn’t notice them.  So when I got back, just now, you were the only one here.  I didn’t know the other people in the carriage I came in, and of course they didn’t think to wait for me.  That’s why—­”

“Yes,” said Bibbs, “I—­” And that seemed all he had to say just then.

Mary looked out through the dusty window.  “I think we’d better be going home, if you please,” she said.

“Yes,” Bibbs agreed, not moving.  “It will be dark before we get there.”

She gave him a quick little glance.  “I think you must be very tired, Mr. Sheridan; and I know you have reason to be,” she said, gently.  “If you’ll let me, I’ll—­” And without explaining her purpose she opened the door on her side of the coupe and leaned out.

Bibbs started in blank perplexity, not knowing what she meant to do.

“Driver!” she called, in her clear voice, loudly.  “Driver!  We’d like to start, please!  Driver!  Stop at the house just north of Mr. Sheridan’s, please.”  The wheels began to move, and she leaned back beside Bibbs once more.  “I noticed that he was asleep when we got in,” she said.  “I suppose they have a great deal of night work.”

Bibbs drew a long breath and waited till he could command his voice.  “I’ve never been able to apologize quickly,” he said, with his accustomed slowness, “because if I try to I stammer.  My brother Roscoe whipped me once, when we were boys, for stepping on his slate-pencil.  It took me so long to tell him it was an accident, he finished before I did.”

Mary Vertrees had never heard anything quite like the drawling, gentle voice or the odd implication that his not noticing the motionless state of their vehicle was an “accident.”  She had formed a casual impression of him, not without sympathy, but at once she discovered that he was unlike any of her cursory and vague imaginings of him.  And suddenly she saw a picture he had not intended to paint for sympathy:  a sturdy boy hammering a smaller, sickly boy, and the sickly boy unresentful.