There might, after all, be something in it.
But it was not the pictures that he was now considering.
Before his nurse's descent upon him he was determined that he would walk--not crawl, but walk in his socks and shoes--from his place by the window to the blue screen by the fire.

There had been days, and those not so long ago, when so hazardous an Odyssey had seemed the vainest of Blue Moon ambitions; it had once been the only rule of existence to sprawl and roll and sprawl again; but gradually some further force had stirred his limbs.

It was a finer thing to be upright; there was a finer view, a more lordly sense of possession could be summoned to one's command.

That, then, once decided, upright one must be and upright, with many sudden and alarming collapses, Ernest Henry was.
He had marked out, from the first, the distance from the wall to the blue screen as a very decent distance.

There was, half-way, a large rocking-chair that would be either a danger or a deliverance, as Fate should have it.