A man, climbing a flag pole to replace a slipped rope, caught
his attention and standing by the window looking at the minute figure
clinging to the swaying pole, he began talking of the absurdity of human
endeavour.
The colonel's daughter listened respectfully to his rather obvious
banalities and getting up from her chair came to stand beside him. Sam
turned slyly to look at her firm brown cheeks as he had looked on the
morning when she had come to see him about Luella London and was struck by
the thought that she in some faint way reminded him of Janet Eberly. In a
moment, and rather to his own surprise, he burst into a long speech
telling of Janet, of the tragedy of her loss and something of the beauty
of her life and character.
The nearness of his loss and the nearness also of what he thought might be
a sympathetic listener spurred him and he found himself getting a kind of
relief for the aching sense of loss for his dead comrade by heaping
praises upon her life.
When he had finished saying what was in his mind, he stood by the window
feeling awkward and embarrassed. The man who climbed the flag pole having
put the rope through the ring at the top slid suddenly down the pole and
thinking for the moment that he had fallen Sam made a quick clutch at the
air with his hand.
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