CHAPTER XXI.
SIDNEY'S WARD.
Sidney passed the rest of the day in seeing a few of his tenants renting the farms in the immediate neighborhood of Brackenburn Manor, and hearing from them gossiping reports of the oddities of the late occupier of the Manor House. By all accounts, the life led by his young ward had been dreary and lonely indeed. She had not been suffered to hold any intercourse with her neighbors, even to the extent of attending the little parish church, which stood in a village about a mile and a half away. The prevalent idea about her was that she was not quite in her right mind; that she was at the least an "innocent," as they called her, and for this reason her father had never sent her to school or engaged a teacher for her. That she had spent the greater part of her time in wandering alone about the moor was told to him again and again as a proof that she differed from ordinary girls. Sidney went back to the Manor, after strolling about some hours, and found Dorothy sitting in the wide old porch, evidently awaiting his return. The evening sun shone full into the porch, and fell upon a white, wistful little face, which was lifted up shyly to him as he drew near, with a faint flush of color coming to the pale cheeks. It was a sad face, yet the face of a child. He took her hand gently into his own as he sat down on the bench beside her.
"So you have been sleeping well," he said in his pleasant voice.
"Yes; they've taken the dogs away from his bed," she answered gratefully, "and the house was very quiet. His room is the quietest of all. When he was ill he let me read to him sometimes; the dogs could not do that, and he seemed to like it. So this afternoon I've read to him all the burial service."
"Aloud!" asked Sidney.
"Yes, aloud," she answered: "it was not wrong, was it?"
"No, no," he replied, looking down pitifully into her anxious, wistful eyes. She was a very slight, small creature, he thought, easily hurt, and very easily neglected, for she would not assert her own claims. There was a great attraction to him in the simplicity and quaintness of her ways.
"I know," she said, fastening her dark eyes earnestly upon him and speaking with a quivering mouth, "I know that his body is dead, and he could not hear me with those ears, but I felt as if his spirit was near me; and when I finished I almost heard his voice saying: 'After all, I did love you a little, Dorothy.' I wish I could be sure he thought it."
"I feel sure he loved you," said Sidney, "though he would not show it."