Round the Corner in Gay Street

by Grace S. Richmond

"My dear boy!" There was a great gladness in Harrison Townsend's voice and he wrung his son's hand as if he would wring it off. Murray's mother, too--he had not known she was capable of so much tenderness, and he kissed her with a feeling that in his thoughts he had n't done her love for him justice.

As for Olive and Shirley, there was nothing lacking in the way they showed their joy in having him at home again. Murray himself, during this long year of absence, was not the only one who had learned a few enlightening truths about the great business of living.

To the full, also, Murray enjoyed the surprising fact that the Bells were grouped about the fire in a way which indicated that they were entirely at home. He rejoiced in the heartiness with which the male members of that family gripped his hand--they seemed like brothers. And when the sweet-faced, bright-eyed lady in gray pressed his hand in both her own and looked at him as if her pleasure in his return was very great, Murray, quite unable to help it, stooped and kissed her also. Surely, homecoming was a happier thing than he had dared to picture it.

He was off upstairs to his room presently, while word was sent to an exasperated cook to delay the dinner yet a little longer. In less time than could have been expected, however, Murray was down again, and in his evening clothes showed even more plainly than before the astonishing increase in his weight.

"These shoulders," cried Peter, inspecting them, "can they be the shoulders of the delicate young gentleman who went away last year looking so long and lean and lank? I wonder you could get them into your coat."

"I could n't," Murray answered, laughing. "I had to borrow father's dinner-jacket and one of his waistcoats."

"It was fortunate for you that the old coat was n't given away when the new one came home," his father observed, regarding the shoulders in evidence with great satisfaction.

They went out to dinner in the gayest spirits, and if everybody remembered with regret the one absent, everybody still rejoiced that this promising son of the house was once more at its board. For there could be no question that the eldest son looked now a fit representative of the family of Townsend.

The dinner which followed was an elaborate one, for it was not within the range of the hostess's notions to entertain in any simple fashion, even when the occasion was the birthday of a fourteen-year-old. But the young people at the board succeeded in infusing so much of their own joyousness into the affair that the time passed swiftly. There were birthday gifts at Jane's plate as well as at Shirley's, and it would have been hard to tell, at the close of the feast, which pair of cheeks was the pinker, or which pair of eyes the brighter. It is safe to guess however, that there were elements in the pleasure of one recipient which must have been lacking in that of the other, and that the presence of one birthday guest counted for more to her than all the gifts put together. The fact that she could hardly look up without encountering the interested glance of the newly arrived traveller was just a trifle disconcerting, and it must be admitted that when Jane and Shirley gathered up their gifts at the close of the dinner, the little girl knew better than the older one just what she had received.

Dinner over, a short and not especially dramatic little scene took place behind closed library doors. Scenes which mean the most are often quietest of all.