“How glad your sister will be when she finds that the use of your arm has been restored to you.” Lena May sat by the bedside holding Tony on her lap.
“Won’t she?” Dean’s upward glance was radiant. “No longer will I have to follow the profession of old book-seller. I want to do something that will keep that arm constantly busy.”
“What, Dean, have you thought?”
“Yes, indeed. You won’t think it a very wonderful ambition. I want to be a farmer. I don’t like this crowded city. I feel as though I can’t breathe. When I am lying here alone, I keep thinking of the New England farm where my boyhood was spent, and I long to really work in that rocky soil, standing up now and then to breathe deep of that sparkling air and to gaze at that wide view over the meadow-lands, and the shining, curving silver ribbon, that is really a river, to the distant mountains. Lena May, how I wish you could see it with me.”
“I am sure that I would love it,” the girl said, then, rising, she added: “Here comes Gloria and Mr. Hardinian. They are going to hear some Hungarian music tonight, and I promised to have an early supper for them. Tony may stay with you. I am sure he would like to hear a story about the little wild creatures who live on your farm.”
But, when the girl was gone, the little fellow accommodatingly curled up by Dean’s side and went to sleep, and so the lad’s thoughts were left free to dream of a wonderful something that might happen some day on that far-away New England farm.
CHAPTER XXXI.
FOUR ROMANCES
Time—Two weeks later.
Place—Kitchen of the Pensinger mansion.
Characters—Gloria, Gwendolyn, Roberta, Lena May and little Tony.