Then Paul Rossiter broke down and cried as few men ever cry, and sobbed till it seemed as if his heart would break, while his wife, now the stronger and calmer of the two, supported him, and tried to comfort him. There was perfect accord and confidence between the husband and wife after that, and Mrs. Rossiter roused herself to something like cheerfulness and interest in the world about her for the sake of the man who, except to her, never mentioned Philip’s name, but who grew old and gray and bent so fast and sometimes even forgot to water his ferns and let them dry and wither in their pots, where they might have died but for his wife, who took charge of them herself, and gave them the care they needed. Like their father, Ethel and Grace were very quiet in their grief, which was not the less acute for that. A thought of Phil was always in their hearts, though they never spoke of him voluntarily, and always changed the conversation as soon as possible when his name was mentioned. But oh, how they missed him everywhere: missed his quick, springing step upon the walk as he came in, bright, and fresh, and gay, from doing nothing—his cheery whistle, or snatches of song, or his playful badinage, and all the thousand little acts by which a good, kind brother can make himself beloved. If they could have seen him dead—if his body could have been brought home and buried in quiet Merrivale, under the shadows of the pines, where they could have kept his grave bright with flowers and watered it with their tears—it would have been some solace for their pain. But alas! he had no grave, no resting-place, save those deep, dark Eastern waters, and who could tell what horrid monster of the deep might have torn and mangled his manly form ere it reached the bottom of the sea! It was too horrible to think of; and the faces of his mother and sisters grew whiter and thinner each day, for each day they missed more and more the young man who had been the sunlight of their home. Poor Grandma Ferguson, too, was completely prostrated at first with the suddenness of the blow, and could only sit and cry like a little child for the boy whom she had loved so dearly, and who had always been kind and affectionate to her. “No matter if I ain’t nothin’ but a homespun, uneddicated critter; he never acted an atom ashamed of me, and when he had some high young city bucks visitin’ him he allus brought ’em to see me and get some of my strawberry short-cake or mince pies,” she said to a neighbor who was trying to comfort her. “He never sassed me but once, and then he was a boy, and didn’t know no better, and he was sorry, too,” she said; and she went on to relate the circumstances of his coming to her the night before he went away to school, and asking her forgiveness for the rude words he had said to her, when she kissed him and called him her baby.