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!”
There was a world of pathos and pity in Rex’s voice as he said, “Poor
little Louie!” and stood looking at her handwriting and thinking of the
beautiful girl whom he might perhaps have won for his own. But if any
regret for what might have been mingled with his thoughts, he gave no
sign of it, except that the expression of his face was a shade more
serious as he put the book back in its place and prepared for bed, where
he lay awake a long time, thinking of Louie, and Squint-Eye, and the
girl he had knocked down on the ship, and Rose Arabella Jefferson, whose
face was the last he remembered before going to sleep.
The next morning was bright and fair, with no trace of the storm visible
except in the freshened foliage and the puddles of water standing here
and there in the road, and Rex, as he looked from his window upon the
green hills and valleys, felt a pang of disappointment that the place he
so coveted could never be his. Breakfast was waiting when he went down
to the dining-room, and while at the table he spoke of Louie and asked
if she were not a cousin.
“Oh, yes,” Dorcas said, quickly, a little proud of this grand relation.
“Louie’s mother and ours were sisters. She told Bertha she knew you.
Isn’t she lovely?”
Rex said she was lovely, and that he had known her since she was a
child, and had been in college with her husband. Then he changed the
conversation by inquiring about the livery-stables in town. He would
like, he said, to drive about the neighborhood a little before returning
to New York, and see the old cemetery where so many Hallams were buried.
“Horses enough, but you’ve got to walk into town to get them. If old
Bush will answer your purpose you are quite welcome to him,” Mr.
Leighton said.
“Thanks,” Rex replied. “I am already indebted to you for so much that I
may as well be indebted for more. I will take old Bush, and perhaps Miss
Leighton will go with me as a guide.”
This Dorcas was quite willing to do, and the two were soon driving
together through the leafy woods and pleasant roads and past the old
houses, where the people came to the doors and windows to see what fine
gentleman Dorcas Leighton had with her. Every one whom they met spoke to
Dorcas and inquired for Bertha, in whom all seemed greatly interested.
“Your sister must be very popular. This is the thirteenth person who has
stopped you to ask for her,” Rex said, as an old Scotchman finished his
inquiries by saying, “She’s a bonnie lassie, God bless her.”
“She is popular, and deservedly so. I wish you knew her,” was Dorcas’s
reply; and then as a conviction, born he knew not when or why, kept
increasing in Rex’s mind, he asked, “Would you mind telling me how she
looks? Is she dark or fair? tall or short? fat or lean?”
Dorcas answered unhesitatingly, “She is very beautiful,—neither fat nor
lean, tall nor short, dark nor fair, but just right.”
“Oh-h!” and Rex drew a long breath as Dorcas went on: “She has a lovely
complexion, with brilliant color, perfect features, reddish-brown hair
with glints of gold in it in the sunlight, and the handsomest eyes you
ever saw,—large and bright and almost black at times when she is excited
or pleased,—long lashes, and carries herself like a queen.”
“Oh-h!” Rex said again, knowing that Rose Arabella Jefferson had fallen
from her pedestal of beauty and was really the Squint-Eye of whom he had
thought so derisively. “Have you a photograph of her?” he asked, and
Dorcas replied that she had and would show it to him if he liked.
They had now reached home, and, bringing out an old and well-filled
album, Dorcas pointed to a photograph which Rex recognized as a
facsimile of the one his aunt had insisted belonged to Miss Jefferson.
He could not account for the peculiar sensations which swept over him
and kept deepening in intensity as he looked at the face which attracted
him more now than when he believed it that of Rose Arabella of
Scotsburg.
“I wish you would let me have this. I am a regular photo-fiend,—have a
stack of them at home, and would like mightily to add this to the lot,”
he said, remembering that the one he had was defaced with Rose
Arabella’s name.
But Dorcas declined. “Bertha would not like it,” she said, taking the
album from him quickly, as if she read his thoughts and feared lest he
would take the picture whether she were willing or not.
It was now time for Rex to go, if he would catch the next car for
Worcester. After thanking Mr. Leighton and Dorcas for their hospitality
and telling them to be sure and let him know whenever they came to New
York, so that he might return their kindness, he bade them good-bye,
with a feeling that although he had lost his fancy farm and fox-hunts,
he had gained two valuable friends.
“They are about the nicest people I ever met,” he said, as he walked
down the avenue. “Couldn’t have done more if I had been related. I ought
to have told them to come straight to our house if they were ever in New
York, and I would if it were mine. But Aunt Lucy wouldn’t like it. I
wonder she didn’t tell me about the mistake in the photographs when I
was on the ship. Maybe she didn’t think of it, I saw her so short a
time. I remember, though, that she did say that Miss Leighton was rather
too high and mighty, and, by George, I told her to sit down on her! I
_have_ made a mess of it; but I will write at once and go over sooner
than I intended, for there is no telling what Mrs. Haynes may put my
aunt up to do. I will not have that girl snubbed; and if I find them at
it, I’ll——”
Here he gave an energetic flourish of his cane in the air to attract the
conductor of the fast-coming car, and posterity will never know what he
intended doing to his aunt and Mrs. Walker Haynes, if he found them
snubbing that girl.