“And why your young ladies cry, too?”

“Oh, ...  I am not crying.”

“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....

Unusual bursts of cheering broke their way into his consciousness, and he recalled himself to see a squad of negro soldiers, all very old men, hobbling by.  These were of the faithful, whom no number of proclamations could shake from allegiance to Old Marster.  One of them declared himself to be Stonewall Jackson’s cook.  Very likely Stonewall Jackson’s cooks are as numerous as once were ladies who had been kissed by LaFayette, but at any rate this old negro was the object of lively interest all along the line.  He was covered with reunion badges, and carried two live chickens under his arm.

Queed went down to the bottom step, the better to hear the comments of the onlookers, for this was what interested him most.  He found himself standing next to an exceptionally clean-cut young fellow of about his own age.  This youth appeared a fine specimen of the sane, wholesome, successful young American business man.  Yet he was behaving like a madman, yelling like Bedlam, wildly flaunting his hat—­a splendid-looking Panama—­now and then savagely brandishing his fists at an unseen foe.  Queed heard him saying fiercely, apparently to the world at large:  “They couldn’t lick us now.  By the Lord, they couldn’t lick us now!”