Here the deeper voice of the youth interrupted, and nothing more was distinguishable. Murray and Shirley walked on, both, it must be confessed, wishing they had eyes in the backs of their heads.
"Oh, do let's turn and go back!" begged Shirley, with one quick glance behind. But Murray made her keep on to the corner, and then insisted on crossing the street.
"Even now they may guess that we 're watching them," he said. "Don't stare so at them, child."
"But they're going in. Oh, look,"--she clutched his arm--"there's the mother! I'm sure she is. Look! Isn't she dear?"
She did look "dear." She was enveloped in an apron, and her sleeves were rolled up to the elbows revealing a pair of round, white, capable arms. Her abundant gray hair rolled and puffed about her face in a most girlish fashion, her bright, dark eyes were set under arching eyebrows, and her face, almost as fresh in colouring as her daughter's, was full of charm.
The young man, laughing, put an arm about her shoulders, and drew her back with him into the house. The two girls, gathering up their pails and cloths, and exchanging low, gay talk, followed, and the door was closed.
The April sunshine suddenly faded out of the narrow side street and left it as commonplace as ever. Yet not quite. Murray and Shirley, gazing across at the dull little brown house. were longing to enter it. It was quite evident that life of a sort they hardly knew was about to be lived within.
With this new interest to stimulate him, it was perhaps not strange that Murray should have found it rather easier than usual to get out for his afternoon walk, or that it should have ended by a slow progress through Gay Street. There were somehow so few young people he cared for, and the faces of the three he had seen had struck him as so interesting, that he wondered, as he tapped along with his cane, by what means he could learn to know them.
Just as Murray came along the street, the younger of the two girls he had seen opened the door, and holding it ajar, addressed somebody inside in her childishly penetrating voice:
"I 'm going to find a telephone somewhere, Janey, if I have to ring at every door. No--I 'll tell them we are n't the sort of people who borrow molasses and telephones and things all the time, but---- Why, I 'll say it's very important--anybody would understand about wall-paper not coming and the man waiting. No, I don't suppose they have in such a little house, but it won't do any harm to ask. Of course, across the street they'd have--but I don't quite---- No, of course I won't, but----"