Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover]
[Illustration: "'HERE YOU ARE--YOU DON'T HALF LET ME HELP YOU'"]
_ROUND THE CORNER
IN GAY STREET_
_By_ GRACE S. RICHMOND
AUTHOR OF
"With Juliet in England,"
"The Indifference of Juliet," etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY
MAUD THURSTON AND CHARLES M. RELYEA
_A. L. BURT COMPANY_
_Publishers -- New York_
COPYRIGHT, 1907, 1908, BY
PERRY MASON COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
PUBLISHED, AUGUST, 1908
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
TO
MARJORIE, GUERNSEY AND JEAN
CONTENTS
BOOK I. GAY STREET
CHAPTER
I. An Introduction by Telephone
II. Gay Street Settles Down
III. Peter Sees a Light
IV. Forrest Plays a Trick
V. Without Gloves
VI. Weeds and Flowers
VII. Jane Puts a Question
VIII. Murray Gives an Answer
IX. Snap Shots
X. Hide and Seek
XI. In the Garden
BOOK II. WORTHINGTON SQUARE
I. Jane Wears Pearls
II. Shirley Has Grown Up
III. Luncheon for Twelve
IV. Pot-hooks
V. Black Care
VI. A Breakdown
VII. Christmas Greens
VIII. Peter Reads Rhymes
IX. A Red Glare
X. Peter Prefers the Porch
BOOK I. GAY STREET
CHAPTER I
AN INTRODUCTION BY TELEPHONE
The hour for breakfast at the home of Mr. Harrison Townsend, in
Worthington Square, was supposed to be eight o'clock. In point of fact,
however, breakfast was usually served from that hour on, until the last
laggard had appeared.
The head of the house himself was always promptly on hand at eight. On
the morning of April second he had, as usual, nearly finished his
breakfast before the door opened to admit a second member of the family.
Mr. Townsend raised his eyes as a tall and slender figure limped slowly
across the floor.
"Morning, Murray!" he said, and dropped his eyes again to his paper.
"Good morning, sir!" responded his son, and glanced indifferently over
the table as he sat down. "Bring me grapefruit and a cup of coffee," he
said to the maid. "No, nothing else. Be sure the grapefruit is fixed
as I like it."
Mr. Townsend finished his newspaper and his coffee at the same moment,
and rose from the table. Although five minutes had elapsed since the
elder of his two sons came into the room, no conversation had passed
between them. Mr. Townsend's glance dropped upon the young man, who,
with his look of ill health, would have appeared to a stranger to have
lived several more than the twenty-three years which were really his.
"You're not feeling well this morning, Murray?"
"About as usual."
"It's not strange that you have no strength, when you take nothing
substantial with your morning meal."
"How can I, when I can't bear the sight of anything but fruit?"
"You don't get out enough."
"I suppose I don't. There's nothing to take me out."
Mr. Townsend turned away. As he passed through the door, he met his
daughter Olive, and greeted her.
This very pretty, dark-skinned, dark-eyed girl of eighteen evidently had
been keeping late hours on the previous evening. Her long lashes
drooped sleepily over her eyes as she nodded to her brother.
"Grapefruit any good?" she asked.
"Fair, if it wasn't sweetened like a bonbon."
"I like mine sweet. Annie, tell Gretchen to put half a dozen maraschino
cherries in my grapefruit and some crushed ice."
"You must like the mess that will be," Murray observed.
"I do--very much," replied his sister, decidedly.
The two continued their breakfast in silence, which was presently
interrupted by the advent of a fourth member of the family. Forrest
Townsend, flinging into the room with a rush, dressed in riding clothes,
and casting hat and crop upon a chair as he passed it, offered a
picturesque contrast to the two dark-eyed young persons. Of a little
more than medium height, strongly built, fair-haired and blue-eyed, he
looked the young athlete that he was.
"Hello!" was his morning greeting, as he dropped into a chair. He
proceeded instantly to give his directions to the maid. No invalid
order was his.
"No--no grapefruit. I want my chop, and some bacon and eggs; tell
Gretchen to brown the eggs better than she did yesterday. Muffins this
morning? What? Oh bother! You know I hate toast, Annie! Oh,
waffles--that's better! Coffee, of course."
"Sounds like an order you 'd give at a hotel," observed his sister, with
scorn. "I wonder Gretchen does n't make a fuss at having to cook a
whole breakfast like that just for you. Nobody else wants such a heavy
meal at this hour."
"The bigger geese you all are then. If I picked at my breakfast the way
the rest of you do, I 'd soon lose this good muscle and wind of mine."
"I never heard that hot waffles and syrup were good for muscle and
wind." Murray looked cynical under his dark eyebrows. "They would n't
be allowed at any training-table."
Forrest leaned back in his chair and surveyed his brother. "A lot you
know about training tables--a fellow who spent his two college years
cramming for honours," he said, pointedly. "No wonder you look like a
pale ghost on such rations. Here comes mother at last."
Mrs. Harrison Townsend, in a trailing pale blue gown, her fair hair
piled high upon her head, came in with an air of abstraction.
"Out late last night?" Forrest asked her, attacking his chop with
relish. "A dissipated lot you all look but me. Even Murray would be
taken for a chap that got in toward morning. That comes of reading in
bed. Now look at me. I was in after the last of you, and I 'm as fresh
as a daisy."
"For a boy not out of his teens your hours strike me as peculiar."
Murray rose slowly as he spoke. He glanced at his mother. She was busy
with letters she had found at her plate.
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!"
From the 'den' it could all be seen. There were two girls on the small
porch, each washing a window. The elder girl looked as if she were
about eighteen, her abundant curly hair, of a decided reddish brown,
being worn low at her neck after the fashion of girls of that age. Even
across the street the observers could see that she had a merry face,
full of life and colour.
The younger girl, was about Shirley's size, round-faced and sturdy, and
apparently of an amiable frame of mind, for having accidentally tipped
over her pail, she took the mishap in the jolliest spirit, and throwing
back her thick brown braids of hair, mopped up the swimming porch with
lively flourishes.
"I wish we could see 'em closer," suggested Shirley. "They look so
nice--don't you think they do?--not a bit like the other people that
have lived in that house. I saw their mother, I 'm sure I did, a little
while ago--she had the dearest face! Murray, don't you think you 'd
like to take a little walk? It would be such fun to go past the house
while they 're out there, and they 'd be sure to turn and look, so we
could see their faces. Please, Murray! We may not have so good a
chance after they get the windows washed."
It was something to do, certainly. Motives of interest for the daily
walk upon which the doctors insisted were few, and the older brother
gladly followed his anxious young leader out into the spring sunshine.
Slowly, Murray's cane tapping their advance, they turned the corner from
Worthington Square into Gay Street.
Coming rapidly toward them from the opposite direction was a young
fellow of about Murray's age. This youth, looking toward the brown
house, gave a low whistle. The girls upon the porch turned and waved
their cloths, and the newcomer, making three leaps of the short path to
the house, and one jump of the low porch, was with them.
They did not shout, those three, and the elder girl's voice, Murray
noted, was delightfully modulated; but he and Shirley were close now,
and they could not help hearing the greeting.
"Hard at it already? Everything come? I got off for an hour, and
thought I 'd rush up and do what I could."
"That was lovely of you, Pete," said the elder girl. A surreptitious
glance from Murray, and a frank stare from Shirley, proved her to
possess a very attractive face, indeed, as she smiled at the stoutly
built young man before her. "Yes, everything has come, and mother can
keep you busy every minute. Window-washing would n't _seem_ to come
first, but we thought we 'd get at least this little front room in order
by night, so that when you all came home----"
Her voice was growing indistinct as the passers-by moved reluctantly on.
But the younger girl at this point broke in, and her voice, high and
eager like Shirley's own, carried farther:
"O Petey, Jane and I are to have the dearest, littlest room you ever
saw, right under the eaves. Jane can't stand up all over, but I
can--except close to the wall. It's so little, Jane thinks we can paper
it ourselves. If we can only----"
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----"
She ended an interview which evidently was not proceeding according to
her satisfaction by closing the door and running down the steps into the
street. Murray wanted very much to speak to her and offer the use of
his telephone, but she whisked away so fast he had no time. He walked
more slowly than ever, saw her turn away from two Gay Street doors, and
then retraced his steps, and met her as she was preparing to ascend the
third small porch.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "but I thought I heard you say something
about needing to use a telephone. Won't you please come over and use
ours--the house on the corner?"
"Oh, thank you!" She looked relieved. "That's good of you. We hate to
bother anybody like this, and Jane--my sister--did n't want me to, but
the paper man is waiting, and he 's getting very cross, and we do want
to get the dining-room done before night. I 'll go and tell Jane. She
'll have to telephone. I can't--I don't know how!"
She ran into the house, and a moment later the elder sister emerged, and
came down to Murray to accept his courtesy.
"It's very kind of you," she said, as he accompanied her across the
street and in at the hedge gate. "To-morrow happens to be a legal
holiday, you know, and the paperer says if he does n't have the right
paper this afternoon it will be three days before he can finish."
"That would be an awful bother," Murray declared, "just as you 're
getting settled. I 'm glad we 're so near. Come in. This way, please.
Take this chair here by the desk. I 'll just wait in the hall and show
you the way out."
As he waited, Murray could not help hearing. The business did not seem
to be easily accomplished. When his visitor had succeeded in getting
the paper house on the telephone she had a very bad time making the man
at the other end of the line understand about the mistake in the paper,
and when it became plain that he did understand, Jane's surprised little
sentences showed that he was a most unaccommodating person, and would
not do what she requested.
"You can't do it?" she asked, and Murray observed that with all the
trouble she was having her voice did not lose its courteous intonations.
"Not this afternoon _at all_? We are very anxious to get the room
settled and the paperer says---- Yes, I know, but it surely was n't our
mistake. I beg your pardon--it 's only three o'clock, I think, not
four. He says there 's plenty of time if---- No, I 've nobody to
send."
"Look here!" Murray's disgusted voice was at her ear. He was gently
attempting to take the receiver away from her. "Let me tackle that
person, please."
The next moment Jane was standing beside the desk, her cheeks rosy with
a quite reasonable indignation at the treatment she had been receiving
from the surly unknown. At the telephone sat her new acquaintance,
sending rapid requests over the wire in a tone which plainly was making
somebody attend.
"Not fix up your own mistake to-night--with to-morrow a holiday? Why
not? There's plenty of time. Send by a special messenger, of course,
and tell him to be quick. Who's talking to you? That does n't make any
special difference, does it? It may be a small order--I don't see what
that has to do with it. Mrs. Bell needs that paper up within half an
hour. Yes--well, this is Harrison Townsend's house--Worthington Square,
and I 'm telephoning for our friends. What? Oh, you will! Well, thank
you! I 'm glad you see your way clear. Yes--half an hour--I say, make
it twenty minutes, can't you, please? Very well." And Murray broke
off, and hung up the receiver with an impatient click which expressed
his contempt for a clerk who would hurry up an order for Worthington
Square when he would n't do it for Gay Street.
"Idiot!" he remarked.
The girl beside him moved toward the door, smiling. "It was ever so
kind of you," she said. "The paper is for the dining-room, and you can
guess how it upsets things to have the dining-room in confusion."
"I hope you didn't mind my telling that fellow you were our friends,"
said Murray, as he accompanied his guest to the door. "Such near
neighbours----"
"Oh, I understood! That was what made it so easy for him to get a
messenger! Only--please don't think we----"
"Yes?" Murray was smiling encouragingly at her.
"It sounds absurd, but--it's so dreadfully soon to be borrowing
telephones----"
"Or molasses?"
They both laughed. Murray's hand lingered upon the door knob, which at
this moment it became timely for him to turn for her. "I could n't help
hearing your sister assuring you that she would tell people you never
borrowed molasses. I don't see why not. We might need to borrow it of
you some time, but of course if you feel there's something especially
prohibitive about molasses----"
He knew he was not saying anything brilliant, but it made her laugh
again, and laughing is an excellent way of getting over a trying
situation.
But he was obliged to open the door for her without delay, for she
plainly was not going to be tempted into lingering. She ran down the
steps, and he saw her bronze-red hair catch the sunshine as she went.
As she reached the bottom he called after her: "I hope you'll like that
paper mighty well when it's on!"
"Thank you!" he heard her answer, over her shoulder, and he was sure
that she was still smiling. It seemed to him reasonably certain that
the Bells were pleasant people to know.