“You don’t tell me so! Why, what a stupid old fellow I am, to be sure!” cried the Doctor, with feigned self-scorn. “How large a family have you, Dick?”
“Well, only—only one, as I care ’specially about. Look—look at her, Doctor!” catching the Doctor’s hand and leaning forward in his chair. “See her a-fixin’ the nice little curtain at the window? She’s a regular neat one, she is, my little woman over there. She was a-cleanin’ the windows and things this mornin’ with her hair so slick and a span clean apron on. That’s the kind of girl I like. I allers liked that kind. Isn’t she the right kind, eh, Doctor?”
Dr. Griffin saw a trim young woman with rosy cheeks, looping back scrim curtains with pink ribbons. He nodded gravely.
“From my brief acquaintance, I should say she was,” he answered. “I congratulate you on your good luck. With such a family as that, you ought to be a happy fellow!”
“Queer little fellow; queer little fellow,” he said to himself, as he went down the stairs. “Strange notion that about his home and family.”
When Dick awoke the following day he felt a new sense of happiness in the thought of his neighbor opposite. He hurried through his tedious ceremony of dressing, ate his frugal breakfast, hobbled into his invalid-chair, and gave an eager glance across the street. Yes, there were the dainty curtains still at the window, so it was no dream. He watched for a glimpse of the occupant, but she did not appear. Then he laughed a little softly to himself.
“Of course, she wouldn’t be hangin’ around the window at all hours; she isn’t that sort; and, of course, I’m over there now, and she’s a-pourin’ coffee for me; we take breakfast sort of late to-day, ’cause we’re just home from Europe, and I haven’t gone down to the office yet. After I get off she’ll brush around and set things to right, and—hello! I must have gone now you know for there she is a-whiskin’ the dust off the window-sill as pretty as ever and as neat as a pin. All the time I’m down at the office with them pesky clerks of mine a-botherin’ me I’ll be thinkin’ of that sweet little woman up here waitin’ for me.”
“We do have very sociable times,” Dick told the Doctor a month later. “That little woman and I seem made for each other. She’s just the right sort. We never have no fusses, and things go so comfortable-like all the time.”
“And how do you like the other party? There’s a man there also, I see. How do you like him?”
Dick flushed painfully, and a deep frown settled on his face. There was a man whom he saw from time to time sitting at the window after the dinner hour reading his paper. But the moment he made his appearance, Dick closed his eyes or left the window seat. He regarded the man as an intruder—a shadow upon his home life, a serpent in his Eden.