"Of course," I nodded. "Whatever happens to you—I mean, whatever things you may have to do without—take care that you keep yourself in good condition, body and mind. You can always get new clothes when you want them, so long as the figure they're going to be hung on is all right. Keep your bloom and your graces and your style. Why, even if people went about naked, like savages, there would still be some among them well dressed and some not!"
To-night, as I knelt by his bed with my head resting on the pillow beside his, his mind was on graver things.
"I've been thinking a lot about souls and that sort of thing since Miss Torry told me just now that the colonel along the road here is supposed to be dying. I saw the vicar go in there. I don't want that kind of man coming about me when I'm dying. I couldn't tell my feelings then to a man I'd been playing tennis with a month or two before. Asking a man like that to help you in your last minutes would seem more like a joke than anything else."
"You strange boy! Why, the vicar is a very good man."
"I know he is; but that doesn't make any difference. I'd rather have a worse man who kept to his own calling more."
This was the first time for a long while that the boy of my heart had spoken to me about religion. It prepared me for what I came upon accidentally next day in a private drawer which he had happened to leave not only unlocked, but yawning open—an ivory crucifix.
I stood and looked at the sacred thing, as it lay partly hidden and partly revealed among a few boyish treasures that included a few letters that I had written him at the rare times when we had been separated.
That crucifix hidden away in his drawer meant more, far more, than even I could guess. It told a story of strange workings in the deeps of his soul. I knew better than to say a word to him about it. But that night, when I went to see him in bed, my kiss was warmer and my arm under his head tenderer even than usual.
"Dear Big Yeogh Wough! Dear Big Yeogh Wough!" he murmured caressingly.