In his own dumb sort of way he wondered where this money came from, and if there was any left. Another thing bothered him just a little. A newspaper reporter, writing up the death notice, asked Rex about his father.
‘I don’t know anything about him,’ Rex had replied. ‘In fact, I have never heard his name mentioned.’
‘Possibly his name was Morgan,’ suggested the reporter facetiously. ‘Didn’t your mother have a marriage certificate?’
‘I have never seen it.’
These things bothered him now. It seemed so ridiculous. There had been one man in Northport who had dropped in to see his mother once in a while. Rex knew him to be a Mr. J. E. Blair, an attorney at law. He did not come oftener than once every two or three months, and his visits were of short duration. Rex had never wondered about him, although he had never been present during these short visits.
The death of his mother had been a grand awakening for Rex. All his life he had drifted along, being content to let her guide him in everything, absolutely devoid of any initiative, and now he was like a rudderless ship in a storm.
He looked at his soft, white hands, and a flash of bitterness swept through his soul. He remembered what he had heard a man say one day:
‘That Morgan boy is going to grow up to be an educated damn fool.’
He did not understand it at the time—but now he knew. But Rex was not exactly a fool. He had absorbed education as a sponge absorbs water—but to no purpose. He realized that he knew nothing of the world, of people, except what he had learned from books. There was not a single thing he had learned that would fit him for making a living.
His next-door neighbor was coming across the little strip of lawn, and Rex looked at him curiously. His name was Amos Weed, a big, portly man, who owned a grocery store down in the center of the city. They had been neighbors for years, but nothing more than a nod had ever passed between them.