“Other refuge have I none.”
The solitude and quiet were soothing to both—the sense of a divine presence more than soothing to her who had faith in it.
They had not been there long when a gentleman came up the aisle with a firm, but light step, passed by without noticing them, and knelt down just before them. Carl sat and gazed at him in astonishment. That Dick Rowan should outwardly and publicly conform to the church, for Edith’s sake, was not surprising, but that he should come privately to the chapel to pray was inexplicable. Could it be that a brave, manly fellow like this could sincerely believe?
Utterly unconscious of observation, the sailor knelt there motionless, with his face hidden in his hands, and when Carl’s companion whispered to him, and they both went out, that figure had not stirred.
Edith Yorke’s friend began at once to show her what was notable in the city; but, as often happens, what they considered worth seeing disappointed the neophyte, and what they passed without notice she would fain have paused to look at. Inexperienced persons who have read much usually overestimate the magnitude of the wonders they have not seen. What young traveller, entering for the first time a city, ever found its houses as palatial, its streets as
superb, its monuments as grand, as fancy had pictured them?
“Everything looks so much smaller and more shabby,” Edith confessed privately to Dick Rowan. “Trees and waters are finer than any pictures of them that I have seen, and faces that speak and smile are more beautiful than any painted ones. Only some pictures of Italian scenes delight me. Now, Dick, please do not be shocked when I tell you that I quite long to stop and look at the organ-grinders and their monkeys, and to gaze in at the shop windows. But I can’t, you know, for that would make Carl and Hester and Miss Mills ashamed of me.”
The result of this confidence was that, dressed to attract as little attention as possible, these two friends set the others aside, and went on long tramps together. They paid not much attention to the finer sights, but dived into all sorts of byways. They looked in at shop windows, at birds and shells and jewels, and more than one shopkeeper was smilingly pleased to display his best wares at the young lady’s shy request, though informed beforehand that she did not mean to buy. They watched the organ-grinders and their monkeys to their hearts’ content; they amused themselves with the gamins, and held various conversations with them; they were bountiful to street-beggars. Ragged urchins were astonished by showers of candy that seemed to descend from heaven on their heads, poor little weeping outcasts were asked to tell their griefs, and listened to with tender sympathy, tears perhaps rising into one pair of eyes that looked at them. Sometimes a wretched pauper, walking with downcast face through the street, felt something touch his hand and leave a bit of money there, and looked up to see a lady and gentleman just passing, and
one sweet face glance momentarily back with a smile at once arch and pitying. “Shall I ruin you, Dick?” Edith asks gleefully. “I have ruined myself; but that didn’t take long. My poor little money is all gone. Are you very rich?”
“Oh! immensely!” Dick replies. “I have chests of gold. Give away as much as you wish to.”