“There won’t be another like Mr. Dellogg in these parts for many a year,” said the driver, shaking his head.  “Ah no.  And that’s so.”

“Isn’t he coming back?” asked Anna-Rose.

The driver’s jaws ceased for a moment to roll.  He stared at Anna-Rose with unblinking eyes.  Then he turned his head away and spat along the station, and then, again fixing his eyes on Anna-Rose, he said, “Young gurl, you may be a spiritualist, and a table-turner, and a psychic-rummager, and a ghost-fancier, and anything else you please, and get what comfort you can out of your coming backs and the rest of the blessed truck, but I know better.  And what I know, being a Christian, is that once a man’s dead he’s either in heaven or he’s in hell, and whichever it is he’s in, in it he stops.”

Anna-Felicitas was the first to speak.  “Are we to understand,” she inquired, “that Mr. Dellogg—­” She broke off.

“That Mr. Dellogg is—­” Anna-Rose continued for her, but broke off too.

“That Mr. Dellogg isn’t—­” resumed Anna-Felicitas with determination, “well, that he isn’t alive?”

“Alive?” repeated the driver.  He let his hand drop heavily on the window-sill.  “If that don’t beat all,” he said, staring at her.  “What do you come his funeral for, then?”

“His funeral?”

“Yes, if you don’t know that he ain’t?”

“Ain’t—­isn’t what?”

“Alive, of course.  No, I mean dead.  You’re getting me all tangled up.”

“But we haven’t.”

“But we didn’t.”

“We had a letter from him only last month.”

“At least, an uncle we’ve got had.”

“And he didn’t say a word in it about being dead—­I mean, there was no sign of his being going to be—­I mean, he wasn’t a bit ill or anything in his letter—­”

“Now see here,” interrupted the driver, sarcasm in his voice, “it ain’t exactly usual is it—­I put it to you squarely, and say it ain’t exactly usual (there may be exceptions, but it ain’t exactly usual) to come to a gentleman’s funeral, and especially not all the way from New York, without some sort of an idea that he’s dead.  Some sort of a general idea, anyhow,” he added still more sarcastically; for his admiration for the twins had given way to doubt and discomfort, and a suspicion was growing on him that with incredible and horrible levity, seeing what the moment was and what the occasion, they were filling up the time waiting for their baggage, among which were no doubt funeral wreaths, by making game of him.

“Gurls like you shouldn’t behave that way,” he went on, his voice aggrieved as he remembered how sympathetically he had got down from his seat when he saw their mourning clothes and tired white faces and helped them into his taxi,—­only for genuine mourners, real sorry ones, going to pay their last respects to a gentleman like Mr. Dellogg, would he, a free American have done that.  “Nicely