"Shirley told Nancy--just the bare facts--and of course my little sister told my mother and me. We 've been thinking of you all ever since, wishing we could help you."
"You can; we need you. Even mother feels it. Olive says when she asked her if she wanted a nurse, she refused to have one except her maid, but said, 'I wish I dared to ask that kind-faced Mrs. Bell. I feel as if she could tell me what to do.'"
"Mother will be so glad. She will go over by and by. She loves to help people, and always knows how better than anybody else in the world."
"I can believe it. She makes a fellow feel as if he belonged to her, somehow, and she was interested in him."
"She is--that's why she makes you feel so.--Come over here in the shade, please, and tell me what I can do."
Murray dropped upon the grass beside Jane's low chair with a sigh of weariness, and ran his hand through the thick locks of his hair, pushing them away from his forehead with an impatient gesture, as if he would like thus easily to clear away the clouds which bothered him.
"You see," he began slowly, "I feel more or less responsible myself for this outbreak. I can't help thinking that if things had been between us as they ought to be between brothers Forrest would have brought his notions and troubles to me."
"But you--but he----" Jane paused, surprised at the tone he took. "You have n't been able to be with Forrest much, because--because he has been so active and lived such a different life----"
"You are kind to excuse me, but I don't see how that makes it any better. I could have shown interest and sympathy enough with his tastes and plans to have made him come naturally to me. I 'm the elder brother, and I have n't been a brother, only a querulous, fault-finding, elderly relative, as if he were fourteen and I forty. He did come to you with his grievances against father, did n't he?"
Jane coloured a little as his eyes keenly questioned her.