Murray limped slowly over to the end of the room, where a great semi-circular alcove, filled with windows, a cushioned seat running round its whole extent, looked out upon the shrubbery and the street beyond. He sank down upon this seat, and gazed indifferently out of the window.
Across the narrow side street which led away from stately Worthington Square into a much less pretentious neighborhood stood a big furniture van, unloading its contents before a small brown house. Although upon the left side of the Townsend place lay a fine stretch of lawn, at the right the house stood not more than ten yards away from the side street. Its present owner had attempted to remedy this misfortune of site by planting a thick hedge and much shrubbery, but a narrow vista remained through which, from the dining-room windows, the little brown house opposite could be seen with the effect of being viewed through a field-glass and brought into close range.
"What's that over there in Gay Street?" Olive had caught a glimpse of the furniture-van. "New people moving in? Goodness! How many tenants has that house had? They 're always moving out and moving in--nobody can keep track of them."
Mrs. Townsend, looking up from her letter, glanced out in her turn. "There is certainly no need to keep track of them," she observed. "What your Grandfather Townsend could have been thinking of when he built this house on the very edge of such a fine lot----"
"Grandfather Townsend was a shrewd old man, and had an eye to the sale of lots on the farther side of the house when land got high here," was Forrest's explanation.
Five minutes later he was out of the house and crossing the lawn to the stables--a gay and gallant young figure in his riding clothes. From the window of his own room upstairs Murray watched his brother go, feeling bitterly, as he often did, the contrast between Forrest's superb young health and his own crippled condition, the result of an accident two years before, and the illness which had followed it.
"Don't get outdoors enough!" he said to himself. "I fancy if I could go tearing out of the house like that every morning, jump on Bluebottle, and gallop off down Frankfort Boulevard I could get outdoor air enough to keep me healthy."
An hour afterward there was a knock at his door, and a child's voice called: "O Murray, may I come in?"
His thirteen-year-old sister Shirley somehow seemed nearer to Murray than any other member of his family. "Come in!" he responded.
"O Murray," the little sister began instantly, "some new people are moving into the little brown house, and there 's a girl just my age! She looks so nice! I 've been watching her. She 's helping wash windows. Oh, please come into the den and let me show you!"