The second bore Mrs.
Hughs, her son Stanley, and Joshua Creed. The third bore Martin Stone.
In the first cab Silence was presiding with the scent of lilies over him
who in his short life had made so little noise, the small grey shadow
which had crept so quietly into being, and, taking his chance when he
was not noticed, had crept so quietly out again. Never had he felt so
restful, so much at home, as in that little common coffin, washed as he
was to an unnatural whiteness, and wrapped in his mother's only spare
sheet. Away from all the strife of men he was Journeying to a greater
peace. His little aloe-plant had flowered; and, between the open windows
of the only carriage he had ever been inside, the wind--which, who
knows? he had perhaps become--stirred the fronds of fern and the flowers
of his funeral wreath. Thus he was going from that world where all men
were his brothers.
From the second cab the same wind was rigidly excluded, and there was
silence, broken by the aged butler's breathing. Dressed in his Newmarket
coat, he was recalling with a certain sense of luxury past, journeys
in four-wheeled cabs--occasions when, seated beside a box corded and
secured with sealing-wax, he had taken his master's plate for safety to
the bank; occasions when, under a roof piled up with guns and boxes, he
had sat holding the "Honorable Bateson's" dog; occasions when, with
some young person by his side, he had driven at the tail of a baptismal,
nuptial, or funeral cortege.
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