She felt her lips unsteady. Even to her it was more real than ever before. She had a sudden vision of the wife who waited in that white porch for her fighting man, holding his baby to her heart. There was tense silence in the room. Then she steadied herself, and the story drew to its triumphant close.
Billy straightened himself with a jerk that shook the table and sent the Etruscan army into a heap. But the matchbox walls of Rome, although they quivered, stood firm and steadfast.
“Well!” said Rex, with a great sigh. “If that’s poetry, I want it every day!” He raised pleading eyes to Jo. “If you aren’t tired, would it bother you awfully to read it all over again?”
CHAPTER XI
THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE
AFTER that, lessons went more easily, because both teachers and pupil understood each other better. Rex had a good deal of the quick intuition and clear brain that had made his sister a successful Captain of Merriwa. He realized that it was only a different method of teaching that had transformed “Horatius” from a dull lesson into something startlingly alive. The words had been the same all the time, only he had not had the wit to read them until his eyes were opened. Possibly, he reasoned, other branches of learning might have possibilities; they might not all be mere devices for embittering one’s young life.
His books, too, were different. To tell the truth, Mrs. Forester had been rather horrified when she had realized the weary path her young son had trod—a discovery not made until Helen, fresh from school, had helped her to arrange Rex’s outfit for Emu Plains. Helen had gasped in amazement over Rex’s books.
“But these aren’t all he has, surely, Mother? Wherever did you get them?”
“I didn’t get them,” Mrs. Forester had answered. “Miss Green had them. She brought them with her. I believe I bought them from her: she told me most of them were difficult to obtain now.”
“I should think they would be. Poor little kid—just fancy having to wade through these! Why, they’re fit for boys of fifteen, if they’re fit for anything at all—only they’re not! Every one ought to be scrapped. Look at the tiny print, and the weary, long paragraphs. And to drag a little nine-year-old through them!”
“I do feel rather ashamed,” Mrs. Forester had admitted, after an examination of Miss Green’s ancient literature. “They are really dreadful, aren’t they? She came with high recommendations, and I thought it wouldn’t matter if she were a bit old-fashioned—I was so much away from home that it seemed better not to have a very young governess to leave in charge of Rex.”