Sunday was a day of restlessness and discontent, because the man was there all day long, and on Sundays he avoided the invalid-chair, which was his seat on all other days. Now, when he heard Dr. Griffin speak of the man as a real being, he suffered all the bitter and mortifying pangs of jealousy which might come to a man who hears a stranger give words to a suspicion of his wife’s disloyalty to which he has striven to blind himself.
“A man—a—yes—there’s a man there sometimes,” Dick stammered; “he’s a—a sort of poor relative, don’t you know. One of my relations, you see, and I can’t very well turn him off.”
“Oh, I see,” answered the Doctor, noticing Dick’s confusion and hastening to help him out. “Well, everybody has some one of that sort. I’ve half a dozen poor relatives who live on me. Some one of them is with us most of the time. A little uncomfortable occasionally may be, because every man’s house is his castle where he wants to be alone at times. But we who have homes have no right to be selfish; we must share them with less fortunate people. Happiness must not make us selfish.”
Dick’s face brightened. His heart had grown light and happy while the Doctor spoke.
“That’s just what I tell myself and the little woman,” he said. “Often she doesn’t like to have the fellow droppin’ in and spoilin’ our chats” (Dick felt an immense satisfaction in saying this), “but I tell her with just our two selves we’d get selfish with happiness unless we had somethin’ to do for another. But he does break up our Sundays awfully—scarcely can get a word alone, that fellow’s pokin’ around so.”
“Oh, well, you can afford him one day in the week, and I wouldn’t let him bother me; just be as happy as if he wasn’t around.”
Somehow Dick felt much better after this talk. He had tried to ignore the presence of the man opposite, but now he could acknowledge it, and definitely locate the man in his thought as a poor dependent, who was benefitted by his bounty. He enjoyed thinking that the little woman objected more or less to the fellow, and that she allowed him so much liberty only to please Dick. As the weeks rolled on he confessed to the Doctor that the fellow was really useful at times.
“Rainy days he goes to market for the little woman,” he said, “and often runs out on errands for us.”
“Dick’s house” had been occupied six months when a whole week passed without his seeing his “little woman” at the window. During that six months there had scarcely been an afternoon during which she had not sat for an hour or two at the window with her sewing. Dick had grown to think of that hour as the bright spoke in the wheel of the day. She looked at him so kindly and gently, and he used to imagine he was lying on a lounge in the room, reading aloud to her as she sewed, and that her kind, warm smile was one of love, not of pity. And when a whole week passed without his once seeing her, Dick found himself in a nervous fever, with a blinding headache from having gazed so eagerly and anxiously across the street, and Grandfather Levy sent for Dr. Griffin.
“There’s somethin’ the matter over the way,” whispered Dick, as soon as the Doctor was alone with him. “I haven’t seen her for a whole week; there’s a strange woman there, and I’m sure she’s sick. I couldn’t sleep all last night for worryin’ about her.”