I've got to go home." His Uncle George and the Major met him at the station when he arrived--the first time the Major had ever come to meet his grandson.
The old gentleman sat in his closed carriage (which still needed paint) at the entrance to the station, but he got out and advanced to grasp George's hand tremulously, when the latter appeared.

"Poor fellow!" he said, and patted him repeatedly upon the shoulder.

"Poor fellow! Poor Georgie!" George had not yet come to a full realization of his loss: so far, his condition was merely dazed; and as the Major continued to pat him, murmuring "Poor fellow!" over and over, George was seized by an almost irresistible impulse to tell his grandfather that he was not a poodle.
But he said "Thanks," in a low voice, and got into the carriage, his two relatives following with deferential sympathy.

He noticed that the Major's tremulousness did not disappear, as they drove up the street, and that he seemed much feebler than during the summer.

Principally, however, George was concerned with his own emotion, or rather, with his lack of emotion; and the anxious sympathy of his grandfather and his uncle made him feel hypocritical.