Round the Corner in Gay Street

by Grace S. Richmond

"If I were a big, grown man," murmured Jane, "I 'd never condescend to keep track of----"

"Along in April," pursued Ross, unmoved, "once in ten days was the schedule. But this last, coming as it does just one short week after its predecessor, and carrying, as it does, two large red postage-stamps--which, I am confident, is underpayment----"

"Stop teasing!" cried Nancy, always loyal to her sister. "Every one of you is envying Jane, wishing you could have letters from a real cowboy."

"A real cowboy!" laughed Ross. "I think I see Murray Townsend getting himself up in that rig. With his pale face and thin shoulders he 'd look like the tenderest kind of a tenderfoot."

Jane pulled the letter out of her belt. The previous letter had promised that this one should bring some snap-shot pictures of the writer and his surroundings. She hoped, as she broke the seal, that she should find them, feeling sure that the extra thick letter indicated that it carried the promised enclosures.

As she pulled out the sheets a little packet of blue-prints dropped into her lap. She picked them up and fell to looking at them. Peter, sitting next to her, laughed to himself, as he reached for his dish of oatmeal, Jane having forgotten to serve him. But everybody forgot breakfast, as the blue-prints went round the table. All but one were scenes of ranch and camp life, bringing into view horses and cowboys of all sorts and conditions, each carefully labelled with its descriptive title. But the one at the bottom of the pack was called "the tenderfoot"--the only one of the set in which Jane's correspondent was in evidence.

"Can it be possible this is Murray?" exclaimed Mrs. Bell, studying incredulously the erect figure on horseback, life and energy in every outline, from the tilt of the wide hat to the set of the leg in the saddle. "Why, he looks as if he weighed thirty pounds more than when he went away."

"By George, the fellow has n't roughed it nearly a year for nothing, has he?" admitted Ross. "He doesn't look the stage cowboy, either--I 'll say that for him. Those clothes have seen wear and rain, and that hat has had the true Western shape knocked into it. It makes you envy him, does n't it?"

Peter said nothing, but his eyes dwelt upon the figure in the saddle with a look of longing so intense that if anyone had been observing him it must have told his story plainly. One person was observing him, and as Peter looked up at last, with an involuntary glance at his father, who had just made some observation on the advantage it had been to the rich man's son to get out among the ranchmen and gain a new view of life, he met his father's eyes. Joseph Bell understood just what it meant to Peter to stay at home and work as foreman in a note-paper factory when there were such places as Montana in the world waiting for young men to come and explore them. And there was that in his father's look which told Peter that his sacrifice was appreciated.

Up in her own room, when a dozen duties had been done, Jane read her letter. It was to her a deeply interesting letter, as had been all those which came before it, for Murray wielded a graphic pen, and his pictures of the sort of life he had been living were vivid as colour-sketches. He was rejoicing in the coming of spring and summer, after the long, cold winter, and his delight seemed to Jane so unlike any pleasure in outdoor life she had seen him show at home that it filled her with joy. The letter said, as it neared the close and fell into the personal vein, as letters do: