Where stood the dauntless three.”
She stopped. Rex looked up at her with shining eyes.
“Oh, go on!” he begged—“go on! That’s never the stuff I used to say!”
Jo read on, putting all her heart into her task. It had somehow become the most important thing in the world, for the moment, that this little lad, who seemed to have missed so much, should get the same joy from the poem that they had had. She wanted intensely that he should see it as clearly as did Billy, who knelt on his chair beside the table, staring at the soldiers. Billy knew every word of the story, but it was always new to him.
And there was soon no doubt that Rex was ensnared. There came to Jo the feeling dear above all others to the preacher and the actor—the knowledge that the audience is caught and held. She felt him thrill to the words: she knew, when she reached some verse more than usually musical, that every line went home to him. He ceased to look at the glittering array on the table; it had served its purpose in fixing the scene for ever in his brain, but she felt his great eyes upon her all the time. It was as though she were reading to Rex, and to Rex alone, knowing that in reading she was giving him a precious possession that could never be taken away from him.
They followed the fighting for the bridge, Billy’s eyes ecstatic over the downfall of Astur; they heard the destroyed bridge crash into the flooded Tiber and sweep away with the torrent, leaving Horatius alone to face the taunts of his enemies. Jo heard Rex draw his breath sharply as the Roman turned his back upon the invitation to surrender, looking across the swollen river to the dear glimpse of his home. Her voice grew low.
“Oh, Tiber! Father Tiber!
To whom the Romans pray,
A Roman’s life, a Roman’s arms,
Take thou in charge this day!”