“I’m getting strong by the day,” the little letter told the girl, “and the hope of seeing you very soon again, Muriel, good friend, helps me more than anything else.”
What would the girls in his home set have thought could they have seen that letter which had been written in the greatest sincerity, for with none of them did Gene have a serious friendship. They knew him merely as the good-looking, always good-natured brother of their favorite, Helen Beavers, with whom they bantered merrily. Gene liked them all well enough, but they wearied him with their constant chatter of tennis tournaments and teas, and their ceaseless laughter. No wonder that his pal, David Davison, had often said that most girls seemed to be afflicted with “giggleitis,” but not so Muriel.
As Gene sat alone hour after hour in a hospital, the windows of which looked out across the Hudson, he thought often of the sweet seriousness of the truly beautiful face of his “storm maiden.” Those hazel eyes had looked into his very soul, and how thankful he was that he had nothing in that soul that he wished to conceal.
She had laughed, now and then, spontaneously, joyfully, but she was very different from the modern girl who laughed continually because she thought it becoming. He couldn’t conceive of Muriel doing anything merely to gain admiration.
“She’s a bully good pal, that’s what; so is sis; but there aren’t many girls like those two,” was his conclusion.
Gene had still another month of enforced vacation, as the doctor had declared that he would not permit him to return to college until after the holidays. Under other circumstances the lad would have fretted about this, but as it was he knew that he was actually eager to spend at least the larger part of that month in Tunkett.
But Gene was not left long alone, for on the very first Saturday after his arrival in the New York hospital, his sister Helen and two of her best friends from the boarding school farther up the Hudson appeared unexpectedly to visit him.
Gladys Goodsell and Faith Morley were attractive maidens, clad in fashionably tailored suits, with muffs to keep their gloved hands warm, for, in spite of the dazzling brightness of the day, the air was stingingly cold.