Then he broke down entirely, while Dorcas soon followed, and Rex was left to finish alone, which he did without the slightest hesitancy. He had a rich tenor voice; taking up the air where Dorcas dropped it, he sang the hymn to the end, while Mr. Leighton stood with closed eyes and a rapt expression on his face.
“I wish Bertha could hear that. Let us pray,” he said, when the song was ended, and, before he quite knew what he was doing, Rex found himself on his knees, listening to Mr. Leighton’s fervent prayer, which closed with the petition for the safety of those upon the deep.
As Rex had told Phineas Jones, he was not a professor, and he did not call himself a very religious man. He attended church every Sunday morning with his aunt, went through the services reverently, and listened to the sermon attentively, but not all the splendors of St. Thomas’s Church had ever impressed him as did that simple, homely service in the farm house among the Leicester hills, where his “Amen” to the prayer for those upon the sea was loud and distinct, and included in it not only his aunt and Bertha, but also the girl whom he had knocked down, who seemed to haunt him strangely.
“If I were to have much of this, Phineas would not be obliged to take me to one of his meetings to convert me,” he thought, as he arose from his knees and signified his readiness to retire.
CHAPTER IX.
REX MAKES DISCOVERIES.
It was Mr. Leighton who conducted Rex to his sleeping-room, saying, as he put the lamp down upon the dressing-bureau: “There’s a big patch of plaster off in the best chamber, where the girls put company, so you are to sleep in here. This is Bertha’s room.”
Rex became interested immediately. To occupy a young girl’s room, even if that girl were Squint-Eye, was a novel experience, and after Mr. Leighton had said good-night he began to look about with a good deal of curiosity. Everything was plain, but neat and dainty, from the pretty matting and soft fur rug on the floor, to the bed which looked like a white pin-cushion, with its snowy counterpane and fluted pillow-shams.
“It is just the room a nice kind of a girl would be apt to have, and it doesn’t seem as if a great, hulking fellow like me ought to be in it,” he said, fancying he could detect a faint perfume such as he knew some girls affected. “I think, though, it’s the roses and lilies. I don’t believe Squint-Eye goes in for Lubin and Pinaud and such like,” he thought, just as he caught sight of the slippers, which Dorcas had forgotten to remove when she arranged the room for him.
“Halloo! here are Cinderella’s shoes, as I live,” he said, taking one of them up and handling it gingerly as if afraid he should break it. “French heels; and, by Jove, she’s got a small foot, and a well-shaped one, too. I wouldn’t have thought that of Squint-Eye,” he said, with a feeling that the girl he called Squint-Eye had no right either in the room or in the slipper, which he put down carefully, and then continued his investigations, coming next to the window-seat, where the work-basket and book were lying. “Embroiders, I see. Wouldn’t be a woman if she didn’t,” he said, as he glanced at the bit of fancy work left in the basket. Then his eye caught the book, which he took up and saw was a volume of Tennyson, which showed a good deal of usage. “Poetical, too! Wouldn’t have thought that of her, either. She doesn’t look it.” Then turning to the fly-leaf, he read, “Bertha Leighton. From her cousin Louie. Christmas, 18—.”
“By George,” he exclaimed, “that is Louie Thurston’s handwriting. Not quite as scrawly as it was when we wrote the girl and boy letters to each other, but the counterpart of the note she sent me last summer in Saratoga, asking me to ride with her and Fred. And she calls herself cousin to this Bertha! I remember now she once told me she had some relatives North. They must be these Leightons, and I have come here to find them and aunt’s companion too. Truly the world is very small. Poor little Louie! I don’t believe she is happy. No woman could be that with Fred, if he is my friend. Poor little Louie!”