In the first half of the story, the tone is conversational and light. Focalized from various characters' points of view, the third-person narration imitates the way real people in early twentieth-century England might have gossiped with each other. Kipling signals this by starting the story with "Everyone in the village knew." This beginning indicates that the expositional passages pick up on the voice of the collective village. Although this voice is gossiping about Helen, it is nevertheless on her side. Eventually, as the narrator goes into the details of Helen's thoughts on her late brother and her supposed nephew, the narration is focalized through her perspective. The cheerful, chatty tone continues until the narrator describes the events of Michael's abrupt death.
Another aspect that strengthens the conversational nature of the tone is the narration's swift pace. The narrator moves quickly through the background information as well as Michael's childhood and teenage years, only stopping briefly to develop a small handful of dialogue-driven vignettes illustrating the bond between Helen and Michael. This pace makes Michael's death feel all the more sudden, as the narrator has hardly stopped to give the reader a chance to take in the story's events before this principal character is gone. The pace of the narration reproduces a feeling parents often express: that their children grow up too fast. Tragically for Helen, Michael grows up only to die.
Although the tone remains relatively conversational even as Helen grapples with her profound grief, it gradually darkens over the course of the story's second half. The language becomes increasingly heavy, and the tone reproduces the exhaustion and hopelessness that Helen feels as she waits for Michael's body to be found and prepares to visit his grave. By the time she makes it to the cemetery, the tone has undergone a significant shift relative to the story's expositional passages. The impression that the narrator is mimicking gossip is entirely gone and has been replaced by a gripping development of haunting imagery and intense metaphors. In the final sentence, as Helen looks back at the cemetery and the gardener, the narration feels simple, pensive, and calm. The tone at the end simulates the solace Helen has found after a lengthy period of loss, confusion, and grief.
