Mary and Helen were frightened; the house was so strange, everyone spoke in whispers, and, on the way into church, many ladies had asked them how their mother was.
They felt important as well as sad.

But Jeremy did not feel important.
He had not heard the ladies and their questions--he would not have cared if he had.

People had always called him "a queer little boy," simply because he was independent and thought more than he spoke.

Nevertheless, he had always in reality been normal enough until now.

To-day he was really "queer," was conscious for the first time of the existence of a world whose adjacence to the real world was, in after days, to trouble him so often and to complicate life for him so grievously.