“Well, I declare if my house isn’t occupied!” he cried, and he lifted the window and peered across the way with such an excited countenance, that the young woman opposite paused in her work to regard him. But after a moment’s observation the startled look in her face gave place to pity, for she saw that the great shining eyes were those of an invalid—an invalid child, she thought.
“Poor child; poor little fellow,” she said to herself, “and such a pretty face, too!”
But Dick was twenty-two years old, with a man’s heart and a man’s longings shut up in his deformed body. But since he was compelled to pass his days between a bed and a chair, with an occasional hour down on the curbing in the sunlight of a warm day, he found his whole enjoyment in his imagination. And wonderful flights it took, flights and freaks suspected by no one save good old Dr. Griffin, his one confidant.
He had known Dick ever since his advent into his life of misery. Dick’s mother had been the beauty of the street more than a score of years ago. Old Benjamin Levy, her father, was a hard man, and to escape the barren home and dreary life, pretty Josie eloped with a handsome Christian whom she had met while promenading on the street. Her father had uttered a terrible curse when the knowledge of her flight came to him; and scarce two years later the curse had fallen, for pretty Josie came home to die, and to leave her invalid baby as the constant reminder of the fulfilment of his curse, to her father.
Dr. Griffin had been retained during all these years as Dick’s physician; for the one thing in which old Benjamin showed no parsimony was in the care of this little deformed grandchild. A little shop where he sold second-hand clothing, and a couple of small rooms above it, for living purposes constituted his ménage.
Directly opposite was a three-story and basement brick house, which had in its day been a semi-fashionable private residence. But as trade encroached upon the street, this building had degenerated to an apartment house.
While the house stood tenantless, Dick amused himself by imagining that it was his own residence.
“It is my house,” he would say, “and I am traveling abroad, and it is closed. By and by I shall come home, and there will be a great house-warmin’, and lights in every window and flower-pots on the sills, and pretty curtains and life and fun; for I am a very rich young man with lots of money, and I always have everything very gay around me.”
Dr. Griffin used to encourage the boy in his fancies, thinking they relieved the monotony of his dreary life. “Well, I see you are still traveling abroad, Dick,” he used to say. “That house of yours is still closed. No idea when you will return, have you?”
“No, I’m havin’ too good a time to come back yet awhile,” Dick would answer. “Haven’t half seen the world yet.”