Roy halted on the threshold. There was a double bed inside, but nobody
on it nor was anybody to be seen in the apartment.
“Where is my brother?” he asked.
“Your brother?” exclaimed the woman. “I did not understand that there
were two of you. Your father’s letter mentioned only one son. Wait, I
will get—”
“No, there must be some mistake,” Roy interposed. “I thought my
brother, Rex Pell, might be here.”
“What, you are not Eric Levens, then?”
“No, indeed, and don’t you know anything about my brother? I am so
sorry.”
“I thought you were the young gentleman I expected who was to look at
this room to see whether he liked it well enough to stay while his
father went to Europe. But why are you sorry that I do not know
anything about your brother? Have you lost him?”
“In a sort of a way, yes,” and Roy told his story, or as much of it as
he could, without bringing in the fact of Rex’s having run away from
home.
“Oh, I guess I can help you,” exclaimed the woman, when he had
finished. “Maybe he is the young fellow who is staying at the Raynors’.
I heard about it last Sunday at church.”
“About _it?_ About what?”
Roy’s face grew pale. The woman looked a little uncomfortable.
“Don’t be too anxious,” she replied. “He must be better now if he could
send a message. But he’s had the intermittent fever. He was found on
the piazza of the house one rainy evening about ten days ago by
Florence Raynor. A trampish looking young fellow had carried him in out
of the wet, and they say he’s been devoted to him ever since.”
“Where do the Raynors live?” asked Roy, already impatient to be off.
“Come here to the window and I can show you the house. It is clear at
the end of this street beyond all the others. You can just see the
chimneys above the trees.”
Roy was soon hurrying away in the direction pointed out.
Although he feared that Rex might have been ill, the certainty of it
made his heart very sore for his brother.
“Sick among strangers!” was his thought. “I wish mother had come with
me.”
A young girl was reading on the piazza when he opened the gate and
walked up the path between the box hedges.
“Is my brother Rex here?” he said, pausing at the foot of the steps,
his hat in his hand.
She had raised her head as the gate latch clicked, and now their eyes
met. Even in that moment Roy noted how very pretty she was.
“You are the Roy that he sent the telegram to?” she exclaimed. Then
paused suddenly, and blushed.
“Yes, I’m Roy, and I’ve had a hard time to find him. How is he?”
“He’s better. He was asleep just now. If you will come in I will call
mother.”
“Rex has certainly fallen into good hands,” thought Roy when he was
left alone.
Mrs. Raynor came out in a moment and greeted Roy most cordially.
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “It will do your brother good to see
you,”
“You’ve been very, very kind to him,” answered Roy.
“No; it wasn’t any trouble, because we all took to him so. It was a
pleasure to do for him.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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