In this way he managed to lay aside quite a little sum of money, besides paying his interest to Arthur, and when Maude came home from Europe in March he felt himself warranted in beginning to raise the roof. He was naturally a mechanic, and would have made a splendid carpenter; he was also something of an architect, and sketched upon paper the changes he proposed making. The roof was to be raised over Jerrie's room; there was to be a pretty bay-window at the south, commanding a view of the Collingwood grounds and the river. There was to be another window on a side, but whether to the east or the west he could not quite decide. There was to be a dressing-room and large closet, while the main room was to be carried up in the centre, after the fashion of a church, and to be ceiled with narrow strips of wood painted alternately with a pale blue and gray. He showed the sketch to his grandmother, who approved it, just as she approved everything he did, but suggested that he submit it to Maude Tracy, who she heard, had become an artist and had a studio; so he took the plan to Maude, explaining it to her, and saying it was to be a surprise to Jerrie, when she came home for good in the summer. Maude was interested and enthusiastic at once, and entered heart and soul into the matter, making some suggestions which Harold adopted, and deciding for him where the extra window was to be placed.

'Put it to the east,' she said, 'for Jerrie is always looking toward the rising sun, because, she says her old home is that way. And, besides, she can see the Tramp House she is so fond of. For my part, I think it a poky place, and never like to pass it after dark, lest I should see the dark woman standing in the door, with the candle in her hand, crying for help. Where was Jerry then, I wonder! In the carpet-bag, asleep, perhaps. Wouldn't that make a very effective picture! The storm, the open door, the frantic woman in it, with the candle held high over her head, and Jerrie clutching her dress behind, with her great blue eyes staring out in the darkness. That is the way I have always seen it since you told me about it, and the light you saw. I mean to paint the picture, and hang it in the new room as another surprise to Jerrie.'

'Oh, don't!' Harold said, with a shudder. 'Jerrie would not like it. It almost killed her when she first knew of the cry which Mr. Arthur heard, and the light I saw that night. She insisted upon knowing everything there was to know; and when I told her all the color left her face, and for a moment she sat rigid as a stone, with a look I shall never forget, and then she cried as I never saw anybody cry before. This was three years ago, and she has never spoken to me of it since.'

Harold's voice trembled as he talked, while Maude cried outright. The idea of the picture was given up, and she went back to the subject of the new room in which she seemed quite as much interested as Harold himself. When the roof was raised, and the floor laid, and the frame-work of the bay-window up, she went nearly every day to the cottage to watch the progress of the work, and to keep Harold's one hired man up to the mark, if he showed the least sign of lagging.

'She is wus than a slave-driver,' the man said to Harold one day. 'Why, if ever I stop to take a chair, or rest my bones a bit, she's after me in a jiffy, and asks if I don't think I can get so much done in an hour if I work as tight as I can clip it. I was never so druv in my life.'

And yet both the man and Harold liked to see the little lady there, walking through the shavings, and holding high her dainty skirts as she clambered over piles of boards and shingles, or perching herself on the work bench, superintended them both, and twice by her intervention saved a door from swinging the wrong way, and from being a little askew.

Mrs. Tracy was greatly opposed to Maude's going so often to the cottage, wondering what pleasure she could find in seeing an old house repaired, and predicting that she would make herself sick. But Maude was headstrong and would have her way, especially as her father did not object, but himself took her frequently to the cottage. Frank was almost as much interested in the work as she was, and once offered his services, as did Dick St. Claire and Billy Peterkin.

'That's splendid. We'll have a bee, and get a lot done,' Maude said; and she pressed into the bee her father and Dick, and Billy, and Fred Raymond, and Tom, the latter of whom did nothing but find fault, saying that the ceiling ought to have been of different woods, the floor inlaid, and the tops of the windows cathedral glass.

'And I suppose you will find the money for all that elegance,' Maude said, as she held one end of a board for Harold to nail. 'We are cutting our garment according to the cloth, and if you don't like it you'd better go away. We do not want any drones in the hive, do we, Hally?'

'She had taken to address him thus familiarly since they had commenced their carpenter work together, and Harold smiled brightly upon her as upon a child, as she stood on tip-toe at his side.

Tom went away, but he soon came back again; for there was for him a peculiar fascination about this room for Jerrie, and sitting down upon a saw-horse, he looked on, and whittled, and smoked, while Dick blistered his hands, and Fred raised a blood-blister by striking his finger with the hammer, and Billy ran a huge splinter under his thumb nail.

Then they all went away, and Harold was left alone, for his man had been obliged to leave, and thus the finishing up devolved upon him. But he was equal to it. The worst was over, and all that was now required was hard and constant work if he would accomplish it in time to see Jerrie graduated, as he greatly wished to do, provided he should have money enough left for the trip when everything was paid for.

But whoever has repaired an old house needs not to be told that the cost is always greater than was anticipated, and that there are a thousand difficulties which beset the unwary workman and hinder his progress. And Harold found it so. Still he worked bravely on, early and late, taking no rest except for an hour or so in the afternoon, when he found it a very pleasant change to walk through the leafy woods, so full of summer life and beauty, to where Maude waited for him, with her sunny face and bright smile, which always grew brighter at his coming. How could he know what was in her mind?—he, who never dreamed it possible that she, of all other girls, could fall in love with him—'that Hastings chap, poor as poverty,' as he knew Tom sometimes called him.

That Maude liked him, he was sure; but he supposed it was mostly for the amusement he afforded her, and for the sake of Jerrie, of whom she was never tired of talking. Maude's friendship was very sweet to the young man, who had so few means of enjoyment, and whose life was one of toil and care. So he went blindly on toward the pitfall in the distance, and began at last to look forward with a great deal of pleasure to the readings or talks with Maude, even though he did not find her very intellectual. She amused and rested him, and that was something to the tired and overworked man.

The room was finished inside at last, and looked exceedingly cool and pleasant in its dress of blue and gray, and its two rows of colored glass in each window; for Harold had carried out Tom's suggestion in that respect, and by going without a new hat and a pair of pants, which he needed, had managed to get the glass, which he set himself; for, as he said to Maude, who assisted him in the matching and arrangement, he was a kind of jack-at-all-trades. Maude had also helped him to putty up the nail-holes, and had tried her hand at the painting until it gave her a sick-headache, and she was obliged to quit.

When Arthur first heard of the raised roof, he went down to see it, and approving of everything which had thus far been done, insisted upon furnishing the room himself. But Harold refused, saying decidedly that it was his own surprise for Jerrie, and no one must help him. So Arthur went away, and told Maude confidentially that the young man Hastings was made of the right kind of stuff, that he liked his independence, and that, although he should allow him to pay his debt, he should deposit the money as fast as received to his credit in the savings bank, so that he would eventually get it all.

'You are the darlingest uncle in the world!' Maude said, rubbing her soft cheek against his, in that purring way many men like, which made Arthur kiss her, and tell her she was a little simpleton, but rather nice on the whole.

'And you'll not tell Jerrie a word about the room!' Maude charged him again and again, while they were in New York selecting the dress.

'Not if I can help it,' was his reply, although, as the reader knows, he came near letting it out twice, but held on in time, so that the raised roof was still a secret from Jerrie when she reached the station and was met by Maude and Harold.

The room, was all ready, and a most inviting looking room it was, with its pretty carpet of blue and drab, and a delicate shading of pink in it; its cottage furniture, simple, but suitable; its muslin curtains and chintz covered lounge, and the willow chair and round table, which Maude had insisted upon furnishing. She would have some part in furnishing the room, she said, and Harold allowed her to get the chair, which she put by the window looking toward the Tramp House, and the round table, which stood in the bay-window, with a Japanese bowl upon it filled with the lilies Harold had gathered in the early morning. He had found it impossible to go to Vassar there were so many last things to be done, and so little money left in his purse with which to make the journey, and as Maude had more confidence in her own taste for the arrangement of furniture than in his, she too decided to remain at home and see it through. The carpet was not put down until the morning of the day when the young men started for Vassar, and it was the noise of the tack-hammer which Tom had heard and likened to the shingling of a roof.

'There must be flowers everywhere, Jerrie is so fond of them,' Maude said; and she brought great baskets full from the park gardens, and a costly Dresden vase, which Arthur had left for Jerrie when he went away, together with his card and his photograph, and a note in which he had written as follows:

'MY DEAR CHILD:—Welcome, welcome home again. I wish I could see you when your blue eyes first look upon the room I came so near telling you about. Maude would have killed me if I had. You have no idea how Harold has worked to get it done, and where he got the money is more than I know. Pinched himself, in every way, of course. He is a noble fellow, Jerrie. But you know that. I saw it in your face at Vassar, and saw something else, too, which you may think is a secret. Will talk with you about it when I come home. I am off to-morrow for California. Would like to take you with me. Maybe I shall meet with robbers in the Yosemite. I'd rather like to. God bless you!

'ARTHUR TRACY.'

'Uncle Arthur was very queer the day he went away,' Maude said to Harold, as she put the note, and the photograph, and the card upon the dressing-bureau. 'I heard him talking to Gretchen, and saying, "Gretchen, Gretchen, Jerrie will be here by-and-by, to keep you company while I am gone—little Jerrie, when I first knew her, but a great tall Jerrie now, with the air of a duchess. Yes, Jerrie is coming, Gretchen." How he loves her—Jerrie, I mean; and I do not wonder, do you?'

Harold's mouth was full of tacks and he did not reply, but went steadily on with his work until everything was done.

'Isn't it lovely, and won't she be pleased!' Maude kept saying, as she gave the room a last look and then started for home, charging Harold to be on time at the train, and to try and not look so tired.

Harold was very tired, for the constant strain of the last few weeks had told upon him, and he felt that he could not have gone on much longer, and that only for Maude's constant enthusiasm and sympathy he should have broken down before the task was done. It was not easy work, shingling roofs and nailing down floors, and painting ceilings, and every bone in his body ached, and his hands were calloused like a piece of leather, and his face looked tired and pale when he at last sat down to rest awhile before changing his working suit for one scarcely better, although clean and fresher, with no daubs of paint or patches upon it.

'They don't look first-rate, that's a fact,' he said to himself as he surveyed his pants, and boots, and hat, and thought what a contrast he should present to the elegant Tom and his other friends at the station. 'But Jerrie won't care a bit; she understands, or will, when she sees her new room. How pretty it is!' he added, as he stopped to look in and admire it.

A blind had swung open, letting in a flood of hot sunshine and as it was desirable to keep the room as cool as possible, Harold went in to close the shutter. But something was the matter with both fastening and hinge, and he was fixing it when Maude drove up, telling him the train was late.

'That's lucky,' he said, 'for this blind is all out of gear;' and it took so much time to fix and rehang it that the whistle was heard among the hills a mile away, just as he entered the victoria with Maude and started for the station upon a run.



CHAPTER XXX.

THE WALK HOME.

All the way from the station to the gate Harold was trying to think of something to say besides the merest commonplaces, and wondering at Jerrie's silence. She had seemed glad to see him, he had seen that in her eyes, and seen there something else which puzzled and troubled him, and he was about to ask her what it was when she stopped so abruptly, and said:

'Why didn't you come to Vassar? Tom Tracy said you were shingling a roof, and Billy Peterkin said Maude was helping you.'

'Oh, that's it, is it?' Harold said, bursting into a laugh. 'That is why you have been so stiff and distant, ever since we left the depot, that I could not touch you with a ten-foot pole.'

'Well, I don't care,' Jerry replied, with a sob in her voice. 'I was so disappointed, for I wanted you so badly. Everybody had some friend there, but myself. You don't know how lonely I felt when I went on the stage and knew there was no home face looking at me in all that crowd. I think you might have come any way.'

'But, Jerrie,' Harold said, laying his hand upon her shoulder, as they slowly walked on, 'wait a little before you condemn me utterly. I wanted to come quite as much as you wanted to have me. I remembered what a help it was to me when I was graduated to see your face in the crowd, and know by its expression that you were satisfied.'

'I did not suppose you saw me,' Jerry exclaimed, her voice very different in its tone from what it had been at first.

'Saw you!' and Harold's hand tightened its grasp on her shoulder. 'Saw you! I scarcely saw any one else except you, and Maude, who sat beside you. I knew you would be there, and I looked the room over, missing you at first, and feeling as if something were wanting to fire me up; then, when I found you, the inspiration came, and if I began to flag ever so little, I had only to look at your blue eyes and my blood was up again.'

This was a great deal for Harold to say and he felt half frightened when he had said it; but Jerrie's answer was reassuring.

'Oh, I didn't know that. I am so glad you told me.'

They were close to the Tramp House now. The walk from the station had been hot and dusty, and Jerry was tired, so she said to Harold:

'Let's go in a moment; it looks so cool in there.'

So they went in, and Jerry sat down upon a bench, while Harold took a seat upon the table where Jerrie once had slept, with the shadow of death around her, and the carpet-bag for her covering.

'I suppose you had peals of applause and flowers by the bushel,' Harold said.

'Yes,' Jerry replied, 'applause enough, and flowers enough—twenty bouquets and baskets in all, including yours. It was kind in you to send it.'

She did not tell him of the wilted condition of his flowers, or that one of the faded roses was pressed between the lids of her Latin grammar.

'Billy sent up a heart of blue forget-me-nots,' she continued, 'and Tom a bunch of daisies on a standard of violets. What a prig Tom is, and what a dandy Billy has grown to be, and he stammers worse than ever.'

'But he is one of the best-hearted fellows in the world;' Harold said, 'he has been very kind to me.'

'Yes, I know;' Jerry rejoined, quickly, 'he makes his father pay you big wages in the office and gives you a great many holidays; that is kind. But, oh, Harold, how I hate it all—your being obliged to work for such a man as Peterkin. I wish I were rich! Maybe I shall be some day. Who knows?'

The great tears were shining in her eyes as she talked, and brushing them away she suddenly changed the conversation, and said:

'I never come in here that a thousand strange fancies do not begin to flit through my brain, and my memory seems stretched to the utmost tension, and I remember things away back in the past before you found me in the carpet-bag.'

She was gazing up toward the rafters with a rapt look on her face, as if she were seeing the things of which she was talking; and Harold, who had never seen her in this way, said to her very softly:

'What do you remember, Jerrie? What do you see?'

She did not move her head or eyes, but answered him.

'I see always a sweet pale face, to which I can almost give a name—a face which smiles upon me; and a thin, white hand which is laid upon my hair—a hand not like those you have told me about, and which must have touched me so tenderly that awful night. Did you ever try to recall a name, or a dream, which seems sometimes just within your grasp, and then baffles all your efforts to retain it?'

'Yes, often,' Harold said.

'Just so it is with me,' she continued, 'I try to keep the fancies which come and go so fast, and which always have reference to the past and some far off country—Germany, I think. Harold, I must have been older when you found me than you supposed I was.'

'Possibly,' Harold replied. 'You were so small that we thought you almost a baby, although you had an old head on your shoulders from the first, and could you have spoken our language I believe you might have told us where you were and where you came from.'

'Perhaps,' Jerry said. 'I don't know; only this, as I grow older, the things way back come to me, and the others fade away. The dark woman; my mother,'—she spoke the name very low—'is not half as real to me as the pale, sick face, on which the firelight shines. It is a small house, and a low room, a poor room, I think, with a big, white stove in the corner, and somebody is putting wood in it; a dark woman; she stoops; and from the open door the firelight falls upon the face in the chair—the woman who is always writing when she is not in bed; and I am there, a little child; and when the pale face cries, I cry, too; and when she dies—oh, Harold! but you saw me play it once, and wondered where I got the idea. I saw it. I know I did; I was there, a part of the play. I was the little child. Then, there is a blur, a darkness, with many people and a crying—two voices—the dark woman's and mine; then, a river, or the sea, or both, and noisy streets, and a storm, and cold; and you taking me into the sunshine.'

As she talked she had unconsciously laid her hand on Harold's knee, and he had taken it in his, and was holding it fast, when she startled him with the question:

'Do you—did you—ever think—did anybody ever think it possible, that the woman found dead in here, was not my mother?'

'Not your mother!' Harold exclaimed, dropping her hand in his surprise. 'Not your mother! What do you mean?'

'No disrespect to her,' Jerrie replied—'the good, brave woman, who gave her life for me, and whose dear hands caressed and shielded me from the cold as long as there was power in them to do it. I love and reverence her memory as if she had been my mother; but Harold, do I look at all as she did? You saw her—here, and at the park house. Think—am I like her—in any thing?'

'No,' Harold answered. 'You are like her in nothing; but you may resemble your father.'

'Ye-es,' Jerrie said, slowly, 'I may. Oh, Harold, the spell is on me now so strong that I can almost remember. Tell me again about that night, and the morning; what they did at the park house—Mr. Arthur, I mean. He was expecting somebody; Nina told me a little once, but not much. Do you know? Was it Gretchen he expected?'

She had grasped his hand again, and was looking into his face as if his answer would be life or death to her. And Harold who had no idea what was in her mind, and who had never thought that the dark woman was not her mother, looked at her wonderingly, as he replied:

'Yes, I remember that he had a fancy in his mind that Gretchen was coming; but he has had that fancy so often. He said she was in the ship with him and on the train, but she wasn't. I think Gretchen is dead.'

'Yes, she is dead,' Jerry said, decidedly; 'but tell me all you know of the time I came.'

So Harold told her again what he knew personally of the tragedy, and all he remembered to have heard. There was little which Jerrie did not already know, for as Harold had been a boy when it happened, he had not heard all that was said, and since that time other matters had crowded the incidents of the death and burial out of his mind. The thing most real to him was Jerrie herself, the beautiful girl sitting by his side, astonishing him so with her mood and her questions. He had seen her often in her spells, as he called them; when she acted her pantomimes, and talked to people whom she said she saw; but he had only thought of them as the vagaries of a peculiar mind—a German mind his grandmother said, and he accepted her theory as the correct one.

He had never seen Jerrie as she was now, with that rapt look in her face and in her eyes, which shone with a strange light as she went on to speak of the things which sometimes came and went so fast, and which she tried in vain to retain. It had never occurred to him that the woman he had found dead was not her mother, and he thought her crazy when she put the question to him. But he was a man, solid and steady, with no vagaries of the brain, and not a tithe of the impetuosity and immigration of the girl, who went on to ask him if he had ever seen any one whom she resembled.

He was wondering, in a vague kind of way, how long she meant to stay there, and if the tea-cakes his grandmother was going to make for supper would be spoiled, when she asked the question, to which he replied.

'No, I don't think I ever did, unless it is Gretchen. You are some like her, but I suppose many German girls have her complexion and hair.'

The answer was not very reassuring, and Jerrie showed it in her fact, which was still upturned to Harold, who, looking down upon it and the earnest, wistful expression which had settled there, started suddenly as if an arrow had struck him, for he saw the likeness Jerry had seen in the glass, and taking the upturned face between both his hands, he studied it intently, while, like lightening, the possibility of the thing flashed through his brain, making him colder and fainter than Jerrie herself when she looked into the mirror.

'What if it were so?' he said to himself, while everything seemed slipping away from him, but mostly Jerrie, who, if it were so, would be separated from him by a gulf he could not pass; for what could the daughter of Arthur Tracy care for him, the poor boy, whose life had been one fight with poverty, and whose worn, shabby clothes, on which the full western sunlight was falling, told plainer than words of the poverty which still held him in thrall.

'Jerrie!' he cried, rising to his feet, and letting the hands which had clasped her face drop down to her shoulders, which they pressed tightly, as if he thus would keep her with him—'Oh, Jerrie, you are like Arthur Tracy, or you were when you looked at me so earnestly; but it is gone now. Do you—have you thought that Gretchen was your mother?'

He was pale as a corpse, and Jerrie was the calmer of the two, as she told him frankly all she had thought and felt since Arthur's visit to her.

'I meant to tell you,' she said, 'though not quite so soon; but when I came in here I could not help it, things crowd upon me so. It may be, and probably is, all a fancy, but there is something in my babyhood different from the woman who died, and when I am able to do it I am going to Wiesbaden, for that is where Gretchen lived, and where I believe I came from, and if there is anything I shall find it. Oh, Harold!' and she grasped his hand in hers, 'I may not be Gretchen's daughter, but if I am more than a peasant girl—if anything good comes of my search, my greatest joy will be that I can share with you who have been so kind to me. I will gladly give you and grandma every dollar I may ever have, and then I should not pay you.'

'There is nothing owing me,' Harold said, the pain in his heart and his fear of losing her growing lean as she talked. 'You have brought me nearly all the happiness I have ever known; for when I was a boy and every bone ached with the hard work I had to do—the thought that Jerry was waiting for me at home, that her face would greet me at the window, or in the door, made the labor light; and now that I am a man—' He paused a moment, and Jerrie's head dropped a little, for his voice was very low and soft, and she waited with a beating heart for him to go on. 'Now that I am a man, life would be nothing to me without you.'

Was this a declaration of love? It almost seemed so, and but for a thought of Maude, Jerry might have believed it was such, and lead him on to something more definite. As it was, her heart gave a great bound of joy, which showed itself on her face as she replied:

'If I make your life happier, I am glad; for never had a poor, unknown girl so good and true a brother as I. But come, I have kept you here too long, and grandma must be wondering where we are.'

'Yes, and supper will be spoiled,' Harold said, as he followed her to the door. 'We are to have it in the back porch, where it is so cool, and to have tea-cakes, with strawberries from our own vines, and cream from our own cow, or rather your cow. Did I write you that she had a splendid calf, which we call Clover-top.

They had come back to commonplaces now, Jerrie's clairvoyant spell had passed and she was herself again, simple Jerrie Crawford, walking along the familiar path, and talking of the cow which Frank Tracy had given her when it was a little sickly calf, whose mother had died. She had taken it home and nursed it so carefully that it was now a healthy little Jersey, whom she called Nannie.

'A funny name for a cow,' Harold had said, and she had replied:

'Yes, but it keeps repeating itself in my brain. I have known a Nannie sometime, sure, and may as well perpetuate the name in my bossy as anywhere.'

Nannie was in a little enclosure by the side of the lane, and at Harold's call she came at once to the fence, over which she put her face for the caress she was sure to get, while Clover-top kicked up her heels and acted as if she, too, understood and were glad Jerrie had come.

'Oh, it is so pleasant everywhere, and I am so glad to be home again,' Jerrie said, as her eyes went rapidly from one thing to another, until at last they fell upon the raised roof shining to new and yellow in the sunlight.



CHAPTER XXXI.

AT HOME.

Oh, Harold, what is that? What have you been doing?' Jerrie cried, stopping short, while a suspicion of the truth began to dawn upon her.

'That is the roof Tom told you I was shingling,' Harold replied; and taking her by the arm, he hurried her into the cottage where Mrs. Crawford stood at the door, in her broad white apron and the neat muslin cap which Maude has fashioned for her.

With a cry of joy, Jerrie took the old lady in her arms, and kissed and cried over her.

'It is so nice to be home, and everything is so pleasant!' she said, as her eyes swept the sitting-room and kitchen, and back porch where the tea-table was laid, with its luscious berries and pitchers of cream. 'Go right up stairs with Harold. I have just come down, and cannot go up again,' Mrs. Crawford said, excitedly; and, with a bound, Jerry was up the stairs and into the lovely room.

When she saw them coming in the lane, Mrs. Crawford had gone up and opened the shutters, letting in a flood of light, so that nothing should escape Jerrie's notice. And she saw it all at a glance—the high walls, the carpet, the furniture, the curtains, and the flowers—and knew why Harold did not come to Vassar.

He was standing in the bay-window, watching her, and the light fell full upon his shabby clothes, which Jerrie noticed for the first time, knowing exactly why he must wear them, and understanding perfectly all the self-denials and sacrifices he had made for her, who had been angry because he did not come to see her graduated. Had she been three years younger, she would have thrown herself into his arms and died there. Harold half thought and hoped she was going to do so now, for she made a rush toward him, then stopped suddenly, and sinking into the willow chair—Maude's gift—began to sob aloud, while Harold stood looking at her, wishing she had not cried, and wondering what he ought to do.

'Don't you like it, Jerrie?' he said at last.

'Like it?' and in the blue eyes so full of tears which she flashed upon him, he read her answer. 'Like it! Oh, Harold, it is perfect! I never saw a room I liked better. But why did you do it? Was it because of that foolish speech of mine about knocking my brains out, the ceiling was so low?'

'Not at all,' Harold replied. 'I had the idea in my head long before you wrote that to me, but could not quite see my way clear until last spring. I have seen Nina's room and Maude's, and have heard that Ann Eliza Peterkin's was finer than the Queen's at Windsor, and I did not like to think of you in the cooped up place this was, with the slanting roof and low windows. I am glad you like it.'

And then, knowing that she would never let him rest until he had done so, he told her all the ways and means by which he had been able to accomplish it, except indeed, his own self-denials and sacrifices of pride, and even comfort. But this she understood, and noticed again more carefully the shabby coat, and pants, and shoes, and the calloused hands, which lay upon his knees as he talked, and which she wished so much to take in hers and kiss and pity, for the hard work they had done for her. But this would have been 'throwing herself at his head.'

She was constantly thinking of Arthur's words, and so she only cried the more, as she told Harold how much she thanked him, and never could repay him for what he had done for her.

'But it was a pleasure, Jerrie,' he said.' I never enjoyed anything in my life as I have working in this room, with Maude to help me. She was here nearly every day, and by her courage and enthusiasm kept me up to fever heat. She puttied up the nail-holes and painted your dressing-room, and would have helped shingle the roof if I had permitted it. She gave the chair you sit in, and the table in the window. She would do that and I let her; but when Mr. Arthur offered his assistance, and the other Mr. Tracy, I refused, for I wanted it all my own, for you.'

He was speaking rapidly and excitedly, and had Jerrie looked she would have seen in his face all she was to him; but she did not look up, and at mention of Maude a cloud fell suddenly upon her. But she would not let it remain; she would be happy and make Harold so, too. So she told him again of her delight, and what a joyous coming home it was.

She had not yet seen Arthur's card, and photograph, and note; but Harold called her attention to them; and taking up the latter, she opened it, while her heart gave a great throb of something between joy and pain as she saw the words, 'My dear child,' and then went on to read the note so characteristic of him.

'What a strange fancy of his to go off so suddenly to California. I wonder Mr. Frank allowed it,' she said, as she put the note in her pocket, and then, at a call from Mrs. Crawford, went down to where the supper was waiting for her.

The tea cakes were a little cold, but everything else was delicious, from the fragrant tea to the ripe berries and thick, sweet cream, and Jerrie enjoyed it all with the keen relish of youth and perfect health.

After supper was over Jerrie made her grandmother sit still while she washed up and put away the dishes, singing as she worked, and whistling, too—loud, dear, ringing strains, which made a robin in the grass fly up to the perch, where, with his head turned on one side he listened, as if in wonder, to this new songster, whose notes were strange to him.

And Jerrie did seem like some joyous bird just let loose from prison, as she flitted from one thing to another, now setting her grandmother's cap a little more squarely on her head, and bending to kiss the silvery hair as she said to her, 'Your working days are over now, for I have come home to care for you, and in the future you have nothing to do but to sit still, with your dear old lame feet on a cushion;' now helping Harold water the flowers in the borders, and pinning a June pink in his buttonhole, while he longed to take her in his arms and kiss her as in the days when they were children together; now, going with him to milk Nannie, who, either remembering Jerrie, or recognizing a friend in her, allowed her gentle face to be petted and her horn to be decorated with a knot of blue ribbon, which Jerrie took from her throat, and which Harold afterward took from Nannie's horn and hid away with the withered lillies Jerrie had thrown him that day at Harvard when her face and her eyes had been his inspiration.

They kept early hours at the cottage, and the people at the Park House were little more than through the grand dinner they were giving, when Jerrie said good-night to her grandmother and Harold, and went up to her new room under the raised roof. It was a lovely summer night, and the moonlight fell softly upon the grass and shrubs outside, and shone far down the long lane where the Tramp House stood, with its thick covering of woodbine.

Leaning from the window Jerrie looked out upon the night, while a thousand thoughts and fancies came crowding into her brain, all born of that likeness seen by her in the mirror when Arthur was with her at Vassar, and which Harold, too, had recognized that afternoon when she sat with him in the Tramp House. After Arthur had left her in May, she had been too busy to indulge often in idle dreams, but they had come back to her again with an overwhelming force, which seemed for a few moments to lift the veil of mystery and show her the past, for which she was so eagerly longing. The pale lace was clearer, more distinct in her mind, as was the room with the tall white stove and the high-backed settee beside it, and on the settee a little girl—herself, she believed—and she could hear a voice from the cushioned chair where the pale face was resting speaking to her and calling her by the name Arthur had given her in his note.

'My child,' he had written; but he had only put it as a term of endearment; he had no suspicion of the truth if it were truth; and yet why should he not know? Could anything obliterate the memory of a child, if there had been one, Jerrie asked herself, as her eyes wandered in that direction of the park, which had once seemed to her like Paradise.

'I will know some time. I will find it out myself,' she said, as she withdrew from the window and commenced her preparations for bed.

As she stepped into her dressing room, her eye fell upon the foreign trunk, which had come with her, and with the contents of which she was familiar. They had been kept intact by Mrs. Crawford, who hoped that by them Jerrie might some day be identified. The girl went now to the old trunk, and, lifting the heavy lid, took out the articles one by one with a very different feeling from what she had ever experienced before when handling them. The alpaca dress came first, and she examined it carefully. It was coarse, and plain, and old-fashioned, and she felt intuitively that a servant had worn it and not she whose pale, refined face seemed almost to touch hers as she knelt beside the box. The cloak and shawl, in which she had been wrapped, were inspected next, and on these Jerrie's tears fell like rain, while there was in her heart an indefinable feeling of pity for the woman who had resolutely put away the covering from herself to save a life which was no part of her own.

'Oh, Mah-nee,' she sobbed, laying her face upon the rough, coarse garments, 'I am not disloyal to you in trying to believe that you were not my mother, and could you come back to me, Mah-nee, whoever you are, I'd be to you so loving and true. Tell me, Mah-nee, who I am; give me some sign that what comes to me so often of that far-off land is true. There was another face than yours, which kissed me fondly, and other hands, dead now, as are the dear old hands which shielded me from the cold that awful night, have caressed me lovingly.'

But to this appeal there came no response, and Jerrie would have been frightened if there had. The shawl, the cloak, the dress were as silent and motionless as she to whom they had belonged; and Jerrie folded them reverently, kissing each one as she did so; then she took out the carpet-bag, which had once held her tiny body. She always laughed when she looked at this and tried to imagine herself in it, and she did so now as she held it up and said:

'I could not much more than get my two feet in you now, old bag; but you did me good service once, and I respect you, although I have outgrown you.'

Her own clothes came next—the little dresses, which showed a mother's love and care; the handkerchief, marked 'J;' the aprons, and the picture book with which she had played, and from which it seemed to her she had learned the alphabet, standing by that cushioned chair before the tall white stove. There was only the fine towel left of the clothing, and Jerrie gazed along and thoughtfully at the letter 'M,' embroidered with flowers in the corners.

'Marguerite begins with M,' she said, 'and Gretchen's name was Marguerite. Oh, if it were Gretchen who worked this letter, then I can touch what her hands have touched—the little dimpled hands in the picture,' and she kissed the 'M' as fervently as if it had been Gretchen's lips and Gretchen were her mother.

On the old brass ring the key to the trunk and carpet-bag were still fastened, together with the small straight key, for which no use had ever been found. Jerrie had never thought much about this key before, but now she held it in her hand a long, long time, while the conviction grew that this was the key to the mystery; that could she find the article which this unlocked, she would know what she so longed to know—something definite with regard to herself. But where to look she could not guess; and with her brain in a whirl which threatened a violent headache, she closed the chest at last, and crept wearily to bed just as the clock, which Peterkin had set up in one of his towers, struck for half-past ten, and Grace Atherton's carriage was rolling down the avenue from the big dinner at the Park House.



CHAPTER XXXII.

THE NEXT DAY.

Jerrie was astir the next morning almost as soon as the first robin begin to sing under her window. She had left a blind open, and the red beams of the rising sun fell upon her face and roused her from a dream of Germany and what she meant to do there. Once fairly awake, Germany seemed far away, as did the fancies of the previous night. The spell, mesmeric, or clairvoyant, or whatever one chooses to call it, was broken, and she was only Jerrie Crawford again, dressing herself rapidly and noiselessly so as not to awaken her grandmother, who slept in the room beneath hers.

'I shall get the start of her,' she said, as she donned a simple working dress which had done her service during the summer vacations for three successive years. 'I heard her telling Harold last night to have the tubs and water ready early, for she had put off the Monday's washing until I came home, as I was sure to bring a pile of soiled clothes. And I have; but, my dear grandmother, your poor old twisted hands will not touch them. What is a great strapping girl like me for, I'd like to know, if it is not to wash her own clothes, and yours, too?' and Jerrie nodded resolutely at the fresh young face in the mirror, which nodded back with a smile of approbation of the tout ensemble of the figure reflected in the glass.

And truly it was a very pretty and piquant picture which she, made in her neat calico dress, which, as it was three years old at least, was a little too short for her, and showed plainly her red stockings and high-heeled slippers, with the strap around her instep. Her sleeves were short, for she had cut them off and arranged them in a puff above her elbows to save rolling them up, and her white bib-apron was fastened on each shoulder with a knot of blue ribbon, Harold's favorite color. She had thoroughly brushed her beautiful wavy hair, and then twisting it into a mass of curls had tucked it under a coquettish muslin cap, whose narrow frill just shaded her lovely face. 'You look like a peasant girl, and I believe you are a peasant girl, and ought to be working in the fields of Germany this minute,' she said to herself with a mocking courtesy, as she left the mirror and descended to the kitchen, where, early as it was, she found Harold warming some coffee over a fire of chips, and cutting a slice of dry bread.

'What in the world!' she exclaimed, stopping short on the threshold. 'I mean to be the first on the scene, and lo! here you are before me. What are you doing?'

'Getting my breakfast,' Harold replied, turning toward her with a slight shade of annoyance on his face. 'You see, I have a job. I did not tell you last night that a Mr. Allen, who lives across the river, four miles away, looked in one day when I was painting your ceiling, and liked it so much that he has engaged me to paint one for him. I told him I was only an amateur, but he said he'd rather have me than all the boss painters in Shannondale. He offered me three dollars a day and board, which means dinner and supper, or fifteen for the job; and I took the last offer, as I can make the most at it by beginning early and working late, and we need—'

Here he stopped short, for how could he tell Jerrie that the raised roof had taken all his means, and that he even owed the grocer for the sugar she had eaten upon her berries, and the butcher for the bit of steak bought the previous night for her breakfast and his grandmother's. But Jerrie guessed it without his telling, but with her quick instinct and delicate perception knew that no genuine man like Harold cares to have even his best friend know of his poverty if he can help it. Forcing back the tears which sprang to her eyes, she cried, cheerily:

'Yes, I know; you are a kind of second Michael Angelo, though I doubt if that old gentleman, at your age, could have done my room better than you did. I don't wonder Mr. Allen wanted you. But you are not going to tramp four miles on a hot morning, on nothing but bread and coffee, and such coffee—muddier than the Missouri River! You shall have a decent breakfast, if I can get it for you. Just sit down and rest, and see what a Vassar with a diploma can do.'

As she talked she was replenishing the fire with hard-wood, putting on the kettle, pouring out the coffee dregs saved from yesterday's breakfast, and hunting for an egg with which to settle the fresh cup she intended to make.

'No, no, Jerrie. No, you must not take that; it is all we have in the house, and grandma must have a fresh one every day at eleven o'clock, the doctor says—it strengthens her,' Harold said, rising quickly, while Jerrie put the one egg back in the box and asked what Mrs. Crawford did settle coffee with.

'I am sure I don't know; cold water, I guess,' Harold said, resuming his seat, while Jerrie tripped here and there, laying the cloth, bringing his cup and saucer and plate, and at last pouncing upon the bit of steak in the refrigerator.

But here Harold again interfered.

'Jerrie—Jerrie, that is for your breakfast and grandma's. You must not take that.'

'But I shall take half of it. I would rather have a glass of Nannie's milk any time than meat, and you are going to have my share; so, Mr. Hastings, just mind your business and let the cook alone, or she'll be givin' ye warnin',' Jerrie answered laughingly, as she divided the steak, which she proceeded at once to broil.

So Harold let her have her way, and felt an increase of self-respect, and that he was something more than a common day laborer, as he ate his steak and buttered toast, and drank the coffee, which seemed to him the best he had ever tasted. Jerrie picked him a few strawberries, and laid beside his plate a beautiful half-opened rose, with the dew still upon it. It was a delicate attention, and Harold felt it more than all she had done for him.

'Thank you, Jerrie,' he said, picking up the rose as he finished his breakfast. 'It was so nice in you to think of it, just as if I were a king instead of a jack-at-all-trades, but I hardly think it suits my blue checked shirt and painty pants. Keep it yourself, Jerrie,' and he held it up against her white bib apron. 'It is just like the pink on your cheeks. Wear it for me,' and taking a pin from his collar, he fastened it rather awkwardly to the bib, while his face came in so close proximity to Jerrie's that he felt her breath stir his hair, and felt, too, a strong temptation to kiss the glowing cheek so near his own. 'There, that completes your costume,' he said, holding her off a little to look at her. 'By the way, haven't you got yourself up uncommonly well this morning? I never saw you as pretty as you are in this rig. If it would not be very improper, I'd like to kiss you.'

He was astonished at his own boldness, and not at all surprised at Jerrie's reply, as she stepped back from him.

'No, thank you, it would be highly improper for a man of twenty-six, who stands six feet in his boots, to kiss a girl of nineteen, who stands five feet six in her slippers.'

There was a flush on her cheeks and a strange look in her eyes, for she was thinking of Harvard, where he had put her from him, ashamed that strangers should see her kiss him. Harold had forgotten that incident, which at the time had made no impression upon him, and was now thinking only of the beautiful girl whose presence seemed to brighten and ennoble everything with which she came in contact, and to whom he at last said good-bye, just as Peterkin's tower clock struck for half-past five.'

'I must go now,' he said, taking up his basket of brushes. 'I have lost a full half-hour with you, and your steaks, and your coddling me generally. I ought to have been there by this time. Good-bye,' and offering her his hand, he started down the lane at a rapid pace, thinking the morning the loveliest he had ever known, and wondering why everything seemed so fresh, and bright, and sweet.

If he could have sung, he would have done so, but he could not, and so he talked to himself, and to the birds, and rabbits, and squirrels, which sprang up before him as he struck into the woods as the shortest route to Mr. Allen's farm house—talked to them and to himself of Jerrie, and how delightful it was to have her home again, unspoiled by flattery, sweet and gracious as ever, and how he longed to tell her of his love, but dared not yet until he was surer of her and of what she felt for him. He had no faith now in her fancies with regard to herself. Of the likeness to Arthur, which he thought he saw the previous there had been no trace on the face which had almost touched his that morning when he pinned the rose upon her bib. She was not—could not be Gretchen's daughter, and was undoubtedly the child of the woman found in the Tramp House—his Jerry, whom he had found, and claimed as his own, and whom he meant to win some day, when he had his profession, and was established in business. 'But that will be a long, long time, and some one else may steal her from me,' he said to himself, sadly, as he thought of the years which must elapse before he could venture to take a wife. 'Oh, if I were sure she cared for me a little, as I do for her, I would ask her now and have it settled; for Jerrie is not a girl to go back on her promise, and the years would seem so short, and the work so easy, with Jerrie at the end of it all,' he continued, and then he wondered how he could find out the nature of Jerrie's feeling for him without asking her directly, and so spoiling everything if he should happen to be premature.

Would his grandmother know? Not at all likely. She was too old to know much of love, or its symptoms in a girl. Would Nina St. Claire know? Possibly, for she and Jerrie were great friends, and girls always told each other their secrets, so Maude said, and Maude was just then his oracle. He had seen so much of her the last few months that he felt as if he knew her even better than he did Jerrie, and he was certainly more at his ease in her presence. Then why not talk with Maude and enlist her as a partisan. He might certainly venture to make her his confidente, she had been so very communicative and familiar with him, telling him things which he had wondered at, with regard to her father, and mother, and Tom, and the family generally. Yes, he would sound Maude, very cautiously at first, and get her opinion, and then he should know better what to do. Maude would espouse his cause, he was sure, for she liked him and worshipped Jerrie. He could trust her, and he would.

He had reached the Allen farm-house by this time, and though he was perspiring at every pore, for the morning was very hot, he scarcely felt the heat or the fatigue of his rapid four-mile walk, as he mixed his paints and prepared for his work, for there was constantly in his heart a thought of Jerrie, as she had looked in that bewitching dress, and of the bright, smile she had flashed upon him when she said good-bye.

Meanwhile Jerrie had watched him out of sight, whistling merrily:

'Gin a body meet a body, Comin' through the rye, Gin a body kiss a body, Need a body cry?'

whistling it so loud and clear that Nannie came to the fence and put her head over it with a faint low of approval, while Clover-top thrust his white nose through the bars, and looked at her inquiringly, as Jerrie pulled up handfuls of fresh grass and fed them from her hands, noticing that Nannie had lost her knot of ribbon, and wondering where it was. Then she returned to the house, and was busying herself with preparations for her grandmother's breakfast and her own, when the latter appeared in the kitchen, surprised to find her there, and saying:

'Why, Jerrie, what made you get up till I called you? Why didn't you lie and rest?'

'Lie and rest,' Jerrie answered laughingly. 'It is you who are to lie and rest, and not a great overgrown girl like me. I have given Harold his breakfast and seen him off. I cooked him half the steak,' she added as she took out the remaining half and put it on the gridiron. 'I don't care for steak,' she continued, as she saw Mrs. Crawford about to protest. 'I would rather any time have bread and milk and strawberries. I shall never tire of them;' and the big bowl full which she ate with a keen relish, proved that she spoke the truth.

'Now, grandma,' she said, when breakfast was over. 'I am going to do the work, washing and all. I must do something to work off my superfluous health, and strength, and muscle. Look at that arm, will you?' and she threw out her bare arm, which for whiteness and roundness and symmetry of proportion, might have been coveted by the most fashionable lady in the land. 'Go back to your rocking-chair and rest your dear, old lame foot on your softest cushion, and see how soon I will have everything done. It is just seven now, and by ten we shall be all slicked up, as Ann Eliza Peterkin says.'

It was of no use to try to resist Jerrie. She would have her own way; and so Mrs. Crawford, after skimming her milk and attending to the cream, went to her rocking-chair and her cushion, and sat there quietly, while Jerrie in the woodshed pounded and rubbed, and boiled and rinsed, and wrung and starched and blued, and hung upon the line article after article, until there remained only a few towels and aprons and stockings and socks, and a pair of colored overalls which Harold had worn at his work. As these last were rather soiled and had no them patches of paint, Jerrie was attacking them with a will, when her grandmother called out in great trepidation:

'Jerrie, Jerrie, do wipe your hands and come quick! Here's Tom Tracy hitching his horse at the gate.'

Jerrie's first impulse was to do as her grandmother bade her, and her second to stay where she was.

'If Tom chooses to call so early he must take me as he finds me,' she thought, while to her grandmother she said: 'Nonsense! Who cares for Tom Tracy? If he asks for me send him to the woodshed. I can't stop my work.'

In a moment the elegant Tom, fresh from his perfumed bath, the odor of which still lingered about him, and faultlessly attired in a cool summer suit, was bending his tall figure in the door-way of the woodshed where Jerrie, who was rubbing away on Harold's overalls, received him with a nod and a smile, as she said:

'Good-morning, Tom. You are up early, and so was I. Business before pleasure, you know; so I hope you will excuse me if I keep right on. I have stinted myself to get through, mopping and all, by ten, and it is now nine by Peterkin's bell. Pray be seated. How is Maude?'

She pointed to a wooden chair near the door, where Tom sat down, wholly nonplussed, and not knowing at all what to say first.

Never before had he been received in this fashion, and it struck him that there was something incongruous between himself, in his dainty attire, with a cluster of beautiful roses in his hand, and that chair, minus a back, in the woodshed, where the smell of the soapsuds would have made him faint and sick if he had not been so near to the open door.

Tom had not slept well the previous night. He had joined the fine dinner-party his mother had given to the Hart's, and St. Claire's and Atherton's, and had sat next to Fred Raymond's sister Marian, a very pretty young girl with a good deal that was foreign in her style and in her accent, for she had been in Europe nine years, and had only just come home. Everything in her manner was perfect, from her low, well-modulated voice, to her sweet, musical laugh, and Tom acknowledged to himself that she was the most highly polished and cultivated girl he had ever met; and still she tired him, and he was constantly contrasting her with Jerrie, and thinking how much better he should enjoy himself if she were there beside him, with her ready wit and teasing remarks, which frequently amounted almost to ridicule. Jerrie had been very gracious to him on the train, and had laughed and joked with him quite as much as she had with Dick St. Clare.

'Perhaps she likes me better than I have supposed she did,' he thought. 'Anyway, I'd better be on hand, now she is at home and can see Harold every day. He don't care a copper for Maude, or wouldn't if she didn't run after him so much, and that will sicken him pretty soon, now that he has Jerrie. By George, I believe I'd be as poor as he is, and paint for a living, if I couldn't have Jerrie without it. But I think I can; anyway, I am going to try. She cannot be insensible to the advantage it would be to her to be my wife, and eventually the mistress of Tracy Park. There is not a girl in the world who would not consider twice before she threw such a chance away.'

Such was the nature of Tom's reflections all through the dinner, and to him the tiresome talk which followed it and the short summer night during which he was planning his mode of attack.

'I'll call in the morning and take her some roses; she likes flowers,' he thought. 'I wonder what she did with those I gave her at Vassar? They were not with her on the car, unless she hid them in the paper box she carried so carefully. Yes, I guess they were there, and I shall see them standing around some where.'

And this was the secret of Tom's early call. He had thought at first to walk, but had changed his mind, and driven down to the cottage in his light buggy, with the intention of asking Jerrie to drive with him along the river road. But she did not look much like driving as she stood there by the wash-tub in that working-dress, which he thought the most charming of anything he had ever seen, notwithstanding his chagrin that the future Mrs. Tom Tracy should ever come in contact with anything as vulgar as soapsuds and pounding barrels. How beautiful she was in that short dress, with her bare arms, the whitest he had ever seen, and how pretty her feet looked in the red stockings and slippers, which he would have sworn were threes instead of fours and a half.

'I was coming this way,' he said at last, 'and thought I'd stop and see how you stood the journey, and I've brought you some roses.'

He held them toward her, and with a bright smile she came forward to receive them.

'Oh, thank you, Tom,' she said, 'it was so kind in you. Roses are my favorites after the white pond lilies, and these are very sweet.'

She buried her face in them two or three times, and then, putting them in some water, resumed her position by the wash-tub.

'I'd like you to drive with me,' Tom said, 'but I see you are too busy. Must you do that work, Jerrie? Can't somebody—can't your grandmother do it for you?'

'Grandmother! That old lady do my washing! No, indeed!' Jerrie answered, scornfully, as she made a dive into the boiler with the clothes-stick and brought out a pair of Mrs. Crawford's long knit stockings, and dropped them into the rinsing water with a splash.

'Grandma has worked enough,' she continued, as she plunged both her arms into the water. 'Harold and I shall take care of her now. He was up this morning at four o'clock, and has gone to Mr. Allen's, four miles away, to paint a room for him like mine.'

She said this a little defiantly, for she felt hot and resentful that Tom Tracy should be sitting there at his ease, while Harold was literally working for his daily bread, and also took a kind of bitter pride in letting Tom know that she was not ashamed of Harold's work.

'Yes,' Tom drawled, 'that new room must have cost Hal his bottom dollar. We all wondered how he could afford it. I hope you like it.'

She was too angry to tell him whether she liked it or not, for she knew the speech was a mean one and prompted by a mean spirit, and she kept on rubbing a towel until there was danger of its being rubbed into shreds. Then suddenly remembering that Tom had not told her of Maude, she repeated her question. 'How is Maude? She was coming to see me this morning I hope I shall be done before she gets here.'

'Don't hurry yourself for Maude,' Tom replied. 'She will not be here to-day. I had nearly forgotten that she sent her love and wants you to come there. She is sick in bed, or was when I left. She had a slight hemorrhage last night. I think it was from her stomach, though, and so does mother, but father is scared to death, as he always is if Maude has a pain in her little finger.'

'Oh, Tom,' Jerrie said, recalling with a pang the thin face, the blue-veined hands, the tired look of the young girl at the station. 'Oh, Tom, why didn't you tell me before, so I could hurry and go to her;' and leaning over her tub Jerrie began to cry, while Tom looked curiously at her, wondering if she really cared so much for his sister.

'Don't cry, Jerrie,' he said, at last, very tenderly for him. 'Maude is not so bad; the doctor has no fear. She is only tired with all she has done lately. You know, perhaps, that she was here constantly with Harold, and I believe she actually painted for him some, and for aught I know helped shingle the roof, as Billy said.'

'Yes, I know; I understand,' Jerrie replied, 'I saw it in her face yesterday. She has tired herself out for me, and if she dies I shall hate the room forever.'

'But she will not die; that is nonsense,' Tom began when he was interrupted by Mrs. Crawford, who called out:

'Oh, Jerry, here is Billy Peterkin, with his hands full. What shall I do with him?'

Dashing away her tears, Jerry replied:

'Send him in here, of course.'

In a few moments the dapper little man was in the woodshed, with a large bouquet of hot-house flowers in one hand and a basket of delicious black-caps in the other. For a moment he stood staring first at Tom on the wooden chair glaring savagely at him, and at Jerrie by the washtub with the traces of tears on her face—then, with a wind of forced laugh, he said:

'Be-beg pardon, if I in-tr-trude. Looks dusedly like l-love in a t-t-tub.'

'And if it is, you have knocked the bottom out,' Tom said, with a sneer. Both jokes were atrocious, but they made Jerrie laugh, which was something. She was glad on the whole that Billy had come, and when he offered her the berries and the flowers, she accepted them graciously, and bade him sit down, if he could find a seat.

'Here is one on the wash bench,' she said, 'or, will be when I have emptied the tub;' and she was about to take up the latter, when Billy sprang to her assistance and emptied it himself, while Tom sat looking on, chaffing with anger and disgust.

After a moment Billy stuttered out:

'Ann Eliza sent me here, and wants you to c-c-come and see her rooms. G-g-got a suite, you know; and, by Jove, they are like a b-b-bazaar, they are so f-full of things, and fl-flowers; half Vassar is there. Got your basket of d-daisies, Tom, and when I asked her where she g-g-got 'em, she said it was n-n-none of my business. D-did she steal 'em?' and he turned to Jerrie, whose face was scarlet, as she replied:

'No, I gave them to her, with a lot of others; I could not bring them all and it was better to dispose of home flowers, as I can get them any time.'

Tom could have beaten the air, he was so angry. He had been vain enough to hope that his gift was carefully put away in some box or parcel; and lo! it was in the possession of that red-haired Peterkin girl, whose penchant for himself he suspected, and whom he despised accordingly.

'Much obliged to you for giving away my flowers,' he was going to say, when Mrs. Crawford called again, and this time in real distress.

'Jerrie, Jerrie! you must come now, for here is Dick St. Claire.'

For an instant Jerrie hesitated, and then ashamed of the feeling which had at first prompted her not to let Dick into the wood-shed, she replied:

'If Tom and Billy can he admitted to my boudoir, Dick can. Send him in.'

'By George, this is jolly!' Dick said, as he bent his tall figure under the low door-way, and seated himself upon the inverted washtub which Billy had emptied. 'Have you all been washing?' 'No,' Jerrie answered, proudly. 'I am the washerwoman, and all those clothes you saw on the line are my handiwork.'

'By George!' Dick said again. 'You are a trump, Jerrie! Why didn't you wear that dress when you were graduated? It's the prettiest costume I ever saw.'

'Th-that's what I think, only I d-didn't d-dare t-tell her so!' Billy cried, springing to his feet and hopping about like a little robin.

'How is Nina?' Jerrie asked, ignoring the compliment.

'Brisk as a bee,' Dick replied, 'and sends an invitation for you to come over to a garden-tea to-night to meet Marian Raymond, Fred's sister. Awful pretty girl, with an accent like a foreigner; was over there several years, you know. I was going to the Park House to invite you and Maude,' he continued, turning to Tom, 'but as you are here, it will save me the walk. Half-past five sharp.'

Then as his eye fell upon Billy, in whose face there was a look of expectancy, his countenance fell, for Nina had given him no instructions to invite the Peterkins, and he felt intuitively that there was nothing in common between Ann Eliza Peterkin and the refined and aristocratic Marian Raymond, who had seen the best society in Europe, and in whose veins some of Kentucky's bluest blood was flowing. But Dick was very kind-hearted, and never knowingly wounded the feelings of any one if he could help it; and, after an awkward moment, during which he was wondering what Nina would do to him if he did it, he turned to Billy and said, as naturally as if it were what he had been expressly bidden to say:

'Why, I shan't have to walk over to Le Bateau either. I'm in luck this hot morning, if you will take the invitation to your sister—for half-past five.'

'Th-thanks,' Billy began; 'b-but am I left out?'

'Of course not. I'm an awful blunderer,' Dick said, adding, mentally, 'and liar, too, though I didn't say anybody would be happy to see them. Poor Billy, he is well enough, and so is Ann Eliza, if she wouldn't pile that red hair so high on the top of her head and wear so much jewelry. Well, I am in for it, and Nina can't any more than kill me.'

By this time Jerrie was bustling about, putting away the washing paraphernalia and sweeping the wood-shed, thus indicating that she had no more time to lose with her three callers, two of whom Dick and Billy, took the hint and left, but not until she had explained to the former that it would be impossible for Harold to be present at the garden-party, as she knew he would not be home until late, and would then be quite too tired for company.

'I am sorry that he cannot join us. I counted upon him,' Dick said. 'But you will come, of course, and I offer my services on the spot to see you home. Do you accept them?'

Jerrie seemed to see, without looking, the disappointment in Billy's face, and the wrath in Tom's; but as she greatly preferred Dick's society to theirs in a walk from Grassy Spring to the cottage, she accepted his offer, and then said, laughingly:

'Now, good-morning to you, and good riddance, too, for I am in an awful hurry, I am going over to see Maude as soon as I can get myself ready.'

She had not thought that Tom would wait for her, and would greatly have preferred to walk; but Tom was persistent, and moving his chair from the wood-shed outside into the shade where it was cooler, he sat fanning himself with his hat, and watching the long line of clothes, which Jerrie had washed, flopping in the wind, with a feeling of mortified pride, as if his own wife had washed them. He knew that his mother had once been familiar with tubs, and wash-boards, and soap-suds, but that was before his day. Twenty-seven years had washed all that out, and he really felt that to be a Tracy and live at Tracy Park was an honor scarcely less than to be President of the United States, and Jerrie, he was sure, would see it as such when once the chance was offered her. She could not be so blind to her own interest as to refuse him, Tom Tracy, who was so much sought after by the belles of Saratoga and Newport, where he had spent a part of two or three seasons. He had been best man at the great —— wedding in Springfield, and groomsman at another big affair in Boston, and had scores of invitations everywhere. Taken altogether, he was a most desirable parti, and he was rather surprised himself at his infatuation for the girl whom he had found in the suds, and who was not ashamed that he had thus seen her. This was while he was watching the clothes on the line, scowling at three pairs of coarse, vulgar stockings which he knew belonged to Mrs. Crawford, and the pair of blue overalls which were Harold's.

'Yes, I do wonder at my interest in that nameless girl, whose mother was a common peasant woman,' he thought; but when the nameless girl appeared, fresh, and bright, and dainty, as if she had never seen a wash-tub, with her hat on her arm, and two of his roses pinned on the bosom of her blue muslin dress, he forgot the peasant woman, and the lack of a name, and thought only of the lovely girl who signified that she was ready.

It was very cool in the pine woods, where the heat of the summer morning had not yet penetrated, and Tom, who was enjoying himself immensely, suggested that they leave the park and take a short drive on the river road. But Jerrie, who was not enjoying herself, said 'No!' very decidedly. It would be hot there, and she was anxious to be with Maude as soon as possible. So they drove on until they reached the grounds which surrounded the house, and which Jerrie thought more beautiful than she had ever seen them. The grass was like velvet, with masses of flowers and shrubs, and urns, and bits of statuary here and there, while over a little brook where Jerrie and Maude had often waded, and where poor Jack had had a little water-wheel, a rustic bridge had been built, with a pretty summer-house just beyond. Frank Tracy was a natural gardener, and had lavished piles of money upon the grounds, in which he often worked himself, and where he was busy now with a clump of roses when Tom drove up with Jerrie.



CHAPTER XXXIII.

AT THE PARK HOUSE.

It was six months since Jerrie had seen Frank Tracy, and even in that time he had changed so much that she noticed it at once, and looked at him wonderingly as he came quickly toward her with a smile on his haggard face, and an eager welcome in his voice, as he gave her both his hands, and told her how glad he was to see her.

His hair was very white, and she noticed how he stooped as he walked with her to the house and told her how anxiously Maude was waiting for her.

'But she cannot talk just yet,' he said. 'You must do all that. The doctor tells us there is no danger, if she is kept quiet for a few days. Oh, Jerrie, what if I should lose Maude after all.'

They were ascending the staircase now, and Frank was holding Jerrie's hand while she tried to comfort and reassure him, and then thanked him for the fruit and the flowers he had sent to the cottage for her the day before.

'You are so good to me,' she said, 'you and Mr. Arthur. How lonely the house seems without him.'

'Yes,' Frank replied, though in his heart he felt his brother's absence as a relief, for his presence was a constant reproach to him, and helped to keep alive the remorse which was always tormenting him.

The sight of Jerrie, too, was a pain, but she held a nameless fascination for him, and he was constantly wondering what she would say and do when she knew, as he was morally sure she would sometime know what he had done. He was thinking of this now, and saying to himself, 'She will not be as hard upon me as Arthur,' as he led her up the stairs and stopped at the door of Arthur's rooms.

'Would you like to go in?' he asked. 'I have the keys,' and he proceeded to unlock the door.

But Jerrie held back.

'No,' she said, as she glanced in at the silent, deserted rooms. 'It is like a grave. The ruling spirit is gone.'

'But you forget Gretchen. She is here, and one of Arthur's last injunctions was that I should visit her every day, and tell her he was coming back. I have not seen her this morning. Come.'

He was leading her now by the waist through the front parlor, where the furniture in its white shrouds looked like ghosts, and the pictures were covered with tarletan. It was dark, too, in the Gretchen room, as they called it now, but Frank threw open the blinds and let in a flood of light upon the picture, before which Jerrie stood reverently, and with feelings such as she had never experienced before, as she looked upon that lovely, girlish face.

A new idea had taken possession of Jerrie since she had last seen that picture, and while, unsuspected by her, Frank was studying first her features and then those of Gretchen, she was struggling frantically with the past, which seemed clearer than before. Again she saw the low room far away—the tall stove in the corner, the dark woman opening the door, the firelight on the white face in the chair; and this time memory added another item to the picture, and she of the white face and wavy golden hair seemed to hold a writing-desk on her lap and a piece of paper on which the pale hands were tracing words slowly and feebly, as if the effort were a pain.

'Oh, I can almost remember,' she whispered, just as Frank's voice broke the spell by saying:

'Good-morning, Gretchen. Arthur is in California, but he is surely coming back; he bade me tell you so.'

'Is he crazy as well as Mr. Arthur? Are we all crazy together?' Jerrie asked herself, as she watched him closing the blinds and shutting out the sunlight from the room, so that the picture was in shadow now and seemed nothing but bits of colored glass.

'I have kept my promise to Arthur; and now for Maude,' Frank said, and Jerry was conscious of a new and strange sensation—a feeling of ownership and possession, as she went through the broad hall, glancing in at one handsome room after another, until she reached Maude's door.

On the threshold she met Mrs. Frank, just coming out, and elegantly attired in a tasteful muslin wrapper, with more lace and embroidery upon it than Jerrie had ever worn in her life; her hair was carefully dressed with a cap which looked like a pen-wiper or doll's bonnet, it was so small, perched on the top of it; her face was powdered, and her manner was one of languor and fine-ladyism, which she had cultivated so assiduously and achieved so successfully. Not a muscle of her face changed when she saw Jerrie, but she closed Maude's door quickly, and stepping into the hall, offered the tips of her fingers, as she said, in a fretful, rather than a welcoming tone:

'Good-morning. You are very late. Maude expected you two hours ago, almost immediately after Tom went out. She has worked herself into a great state of feverish nervousness.'

'I am so sorry,' Jerry replied. 'But I could not come sooner. I had a large washing to do, and that takes time, you know.'

Jerry meant no reflection upon the days when Dolly had done her own washing, and knew that it took time, but the thought she did, and a frown settled upon her face as she replied:

'Surely your grandmother might have helped you, or Harold; and Maude is so impatient and weak this morning. The doctor says there is no danger if she is kept quiet. She is only tired out with that room of yours. Why, I am told she has actually puttied up nail-holes, and painted walls, and sawed boards! I hope you like it. You ought to, for a part of Maude's life and strength is in it.'

'Oh, Mrs. Tracy,' Jerry cried, with tears in her eyes, 'I am so sorry. Of course I like the room, or did; but if it has injured Maude, I shall hate it.'

Dolly had given her a little stab and was satisfied, so she said in a softer tone:

'Maude may recover—I think she will; but everything must be done to please her, and she cannot talk to you this morning—remember that. You must do the talking, but must not stay too long.'

'Mamma—mamma, let Jerrie in,' came faintly from the closed room; and then Mrs. Tracy stood aside and let Jerrie pass into the luxurious apartment, where Maude lay upon a silken couch, with a soft, rose-colored shawl thrown over her shoulders, her eyes large and hollow, and her face as white almost as a corpse.

One looking at her needed not to be told of her danger, or of the peril there was in exciting her; and Jerrie felt a cold thrill creep over her as she went to the couch, and kneeling beside it, kissed the pale, quivering lips and smoothed the dark hair, while she tried to speak naturally and cheerfully, as if in her mind there was no thought of danger to the beautiful girl, who smiled so lovingly upon her and kept caressing her hands and her face, as if she would thus express her gladness to see her.

'I know all about it, Maude,' Jerrie said. 'Tom told me, and your mother. You tired yourself out for me. Hush! Don't speak, or I shall go away,' she continued, as she saw Maude's lips move. 'You are not to talk. You are to listen, just for a day or two, and then you will he better, and come to the cottage and see my lovely room. It is so pretty, and I like it so much, and thank you and Harold so much. He has gone to the Allen farm to-day to paint,' she said, in answer to an eager questioning look in Maude's eyes. 'He does not know you are sick. He will come when he can see you—to-morrow, maybe. Would you like to have him?'

A warm pressure of the hand was Maude's reply, as the moisture gathered upon her heavy eyelashes. But Jerrie kissed it away, though her own hot tears fell upon Maude's hair, which, however, was so thick that she did not feel them; nor did she dream what it cost Jerrie to sit there and tell her everything of Harold which she could think of, because she knew that would please the sick girl better. Once she made Maude laugh, as she took off little Billy, imitating his voice so perfectly that a person outside would have said he was in the room. Jerrie's talent for imitation and ventriloquism had not deserted her, although as she grew older, she did not so often practice it as when a child; but she brought it into full play now to amuse Maude, and imitated every individual of whom she spoke, except Arthur. He was the one person whose peculiarities she could not take off.

'I have been to Mr. Arthur's room,' she said, 'but it seems so desolate without him. Do you hear from him often?'

'I have only had one letter, and then he was in Salt Lake City, at the Continental, in a room which he said was big enough for three rooms, and had not a single bad smell in it, except the curtains, which were new, and in which he did detect a little odor.'

Here Maude laughed again, while there came into her face a faint color and a look which made Jerrie's breath come quickly as, for the first time, the thought flashed across her mind that if what she had been foolish enough to dream of were true Maude was her cousin—her own flesh and blood.

'Maude,' she said suddenly, with a strong desire to fold the frail little body in her arms and tell her what she had thought.

But when Maude looked up inquiringly at her she only put her head down upon the rose-colored shawl and began to cry. Then, regardless of consequences, Maude raised herself upon her elbow, and laying her face on Jerrie's head began herself to cry piteously.

'Jerrie, Jerrie,' she sobbed, 'you think I am going to die, I know you do, and so does everybody, but I am not; I cannot die when there is so much to live for, and my home is so beautiful, and I love everybody so much, and—'

Terrified beyond measure, Jerrie put her hand over Maude's mouth and said, almost sharply:

'If you want to live you must not talk. Be careful and you will get well; the doctor says so.'

But Jerrie's tears belied her words when she saw the palor in Maude's face as she sank back upon her pillow exhausted, while, with her handkerchief she wiped a faint coloring of blood from her lips.

'I have stayed too long,' Jerrie said, as she arose from her low seat by the couch. Then Maude spoke again in a whisper and said:

'Send Harold soon.'

'I will,' Jerrie replied, and kissing the death-like face again she went softly from the room, thinking to herself, as she descended the stairs, 'I believe I could give Harold to her now.'



CHAPTER XXXIV.

UNDER THE PINES WITH TOM.

Jerrie found Tom just where she had left him, on the piazza outside, waiting for her, it would seem, for the moment she appeared he arose, and going with her down the steps walked by her side along the avenue toward the point where she would turn aside into the road which led to the cottage.

'How did you find Maude!' he asked.

'Weaker than I supposed,' Jerrie replied, 'and so tired. Oh, Tom, I know she hurt herself worrying about my room as she did, and if she dies I shall never like it again.'

'Nonsense,' Tom answered, carelessly. 'Maude won't die. She's got the Tracy constitution, which nothing can kill. Don't fret about your room. Maude liked being there. Nothing could keep her away. And don't flatter yourself that it was all love for you which took her there so much, for it wasn't. She is just mashed with Harold, while he—well, what can a young man do when a pretty girl—and Mamie is pretty—when she gushes at him all the time? It is a regular flirtation, and everybody knows about it except mother and the Gov.'

'Who is the Gov.?' Jerry asked, sharply.

'Why, you Vassars must be very innocent,' Tom replied, with a laugh, 'not to know that Gov. is one's respected sire: the old man, some call him, but I am more respectful. My gracious, though! isn't it sweltering? I'm nearly baked, you make me walk so fast!' and he wiped the great drops of swat from his forehead.

'Why don't you go back then? Why are you walking here in the hot sun?' Jerrie asked.

'I am going home with you,' he replied. 'Do you think I'd let you go alone?'

'Go alone?' Jerrie repeated, stopping short and fixing her blue eyes upon him. 'You have let me go alone a hundred times, and after dark, too, when I was much smaller than I am now, and less able to defend myself, supposing there was anything to fear, which there is not. Pray go back, and not trouble yourself for me.'

'I shall not go back,' Tom said. 'I waited on purpose to come with you. There is something I must say to you, and I may as well say it now as any other time.'

Jerrie was tall, but Tom was six inches taller, and he was looking down straight into her eyes with an expression in his before which hers fell, for she guessed what it was he wished to say to her, and her heart beat painfully as, without another word, she walked rapidly on until they were in the woods near a place where four tall pines formed a kind of oblong square. Here an iron seat had been placed years before, when the Tracy children were young, and held what they called their picnics there under the thick boughs of the pines which shaded them from both heat and cold. Laying his hand on Jerrie's shoulder, Tom said to her:

'Sit here with me under the pines while I tell you what for a long time I have wanted to tell you, and which may as well be told at once.'

Still Jerrie did not speak, but she sat down upon the seat, and, taking off her hat, began to fan herself with it, while with the end of her parasol she tried to trace letters in the thick carpet of dead pine needles at her feet.

Her attitude was not encouraging, and a less conceited man than Tom would have felt disheartened, but he was not. No girl would be insane enough to refuse Tom Tracy, of Tracy Park; and at last he made the plunge, and told her of his love for her and his desire to make her his wife.

'I know I was a mean little scamp when I was a boy,' he said, 'and did a lot of things for which I am ashamed; but I believe that I always loved you, Jerrie, even when I was teasing you the worst. I know I used to think you the prettiest little girl I ever saw, and now I think you the prettiest big one, and I have had splendid opportunities for seeing girls. You know I have travelled a great deal, and been in the very best society; and, if I may say it, I think I can marry almost any one whom I choose. I used to fear lest you and Hal would hit it off together, or, rather, that he would try to get you, but, since he and Maude are so thick, my fears in that quarter have vanished, and I am constantly building castles as to what we will do. I did not mean to ask you quite so soon, but the sight of you this morning washing your clothes, with all that soapy steam in your face, decided me not to put it off. A Tracy has no business in a washtub.'

'Did no Tracy ever wash her own clothes?' Jerrie asked, with an upward and sidewise turn of her head, habitual with her when startled or stirred.

There was a ring in her voice which Tom did not quite like, but he answered, promptly:

'Oh, of course, years ago; but times change, and you certainly ought not to be familiar with such vulgar things, and at Tracy Park you will be surrounded with every possible luxury, Father, and Maude, and Uncle Arthur will be overjoyed to have you there; and if, on my part, love and money can make you happy, you certainly will be so.'

'You have plenty of money of your own?' Jerrie said, with another upward toss of her golden head.

The question was full of sarcasm, but Tom did not see it, and answered at once:

'Why, yes, or I shall have in time. Uncle Arthur, you know, is in no condition to make a will now. It would not stand a minute. All the lawyers say that.'

'You have taken counsel, then?'

The parasol dug a great hole in the soft pines and was in danger of being broken, as Tom replied:

'Oh, yes; we are sure of that. Whatever Uncle Arthur has, and it is more than a million, will go to father, and, after him, to Maude and me; so you are sure to be rich and to be the mistress of Tracy Park, which will naturally come to me. Think, Jerrie, what a different life you will lead at the Park House from what you do now, washing old Mrs. Crawford's stockings and Harold's overalls.'

'Yes, I am thinking,' Jerrie answered, very low; and if Tom had followed the end of her parasol, he would have seen that it was forming the word Gretchen in front of him.

'Suppose Mr. Arthur has a wife somewhere?' Jerrie asked.

'A wife!' Tom exclaimed. 'That is impossible. We should have heard of that.'

'Who was Gretchen?' was the next query.

'Oh, some sweetheart, I suppose—some little German girl with whom he amused himself a while and then cast off, as men usually do such incumbrances.'

Tom did not quite know himself what he was saying, or what it implied, and he was not at all prepared to see the parasol stuck straight into the ground, while Jerrie sprang to her feet and confronted him fiercely.

'Tom Tracy! If you mean to insinuate a thing which is not good and pure against Gretchen, I'll never speak to you as long as I live! Take back what you said about Mr. Arthur's casting her off! She was his wife, and you know it? Dead, perhaps—I think she is; but she was his wife—his true and lawful wife; and—I—sometimes—'

She could not add 'think she was my mother,' for the words stuck in her throat, where her heart seemed to be beating wildly and choking her utterance.

'Why, Jerrie,' Tom said, startled at her excited appearance, and anxious to appease her, 'what can ail you? I hardly know what I said, and if I have offended you, I am sorry, I know nothing of Gretchen; her face is a good one and a pretty one, and Maude says you look like her; though I don't see it, for I think you far prettier than she. Perhaps she was my uncle's wife—I guess she was: but that does not injure my prospects, for of course she is dead, or she would have turned up before this time. We have nothing to fear from her.'

'She may have left a child. What then?' Jerrie asked, with as steady a voice as she could command.

'Pshaw! humbug!' Tom replied, with a laugh. 'That is impossible. A child would have been heard from before this time. There is no child; I'm sure I hope not, as that would seriously interfere with our prospects. Think of some one—say a young lady—walking in upon us some day and claiming to be Arthur Tracy's daughter!'

'What would you do?' Jerrie asked, in a tone of smothered excitement.

'I believe I'd kill her,' Tom said, laughingly, 'or marry her, if I had not already seen you. But don't worry about that. There is no child; there is nothing between us and a million, and you have only to appoint the day which will make me the happiest of men, and free you from a drudgery, which just to think of sets my teeth on edge. Will you name the day, Jerrie?'

If it had been possible for a look to have annihilated Tom, the scorn which blazed in Jerrie's eyes would have done so. To hear him talk as if the matter were settled and the money he was to inherit from his uncle could buy her made her blood boil, and seizing her poor parasol, still standing up so straight in the piny sand, she stepped backward from him and said, in a mocking voice:

'Thank you, Tom, for the honor you would confer upon me, and which I must decline, for I would rather wash grandma's stockings all my life, and Harold's overalls, too, than marry a man for money.'

'Jerrie, oh, Jerrie, you don't mean it! You do not refuse me!' Tom cried, in alarm, stretching out his arm to reach her but touching only the parasol, to which he clung desperately as a drowning man to a straw.

'I do mean it, Tom,' she said, softened a little by the pain she saw in his face. 'I can never be your wife.'

'But why not!' Tom demanded. 'Many a girl who stands higher socially in the world than you would gladly bear my name. I might have married Governor Storey's daughter, at Saratoga, last summer. She threw herself at my head, but one thought of you was enough to keep me from her. You cannot be in earnest.'

'But I am. I care nothing for your money, which may or may not be yours. I do not love you, Tom; and without love I would not marry a prince.'

It was very hard for Tom to believe that Jerrie really meant to refuse him, Tom Tracy, who with all his love for her—and he did love her as well as he was capable of loving any one—still felt that he was stooping a little, or at least was honoring her greatly when he asked her to be his wife. And she had refused him, and kept on refusing him in spite of all he could say; and worse than all, made him feel at last that she did not consider it an honor to be Mrs. Tom Tracy, of Tracy Park, and did not care either for him or his prospective fortune. She called it that finally, then Tom grew angry and taunted her with fostering a hope that Arthur might make her his heir, or at least leave her some portion of his money.

'But I tell you he can't do it. A crazy man's will would never stand, and he is crazy and you know it. You will never touch a dollar of Uncle Arthur's money, if you live to be a hundred, unless it comes to you from me. Don't flatter yourself that you will, and don't flatter yourself either that you will ever catch Hal Hastings, who is the real obstacle in my way. I know that very well, and so do you; but let me tell you that what heart he has is given to Maude, who is silly enough to encourage him; though I doubt if she would ever marry him when it comes to that. She will look higher than a painter, a carpenter, a—'

'Tom Tracy!' and Jerrie's parasol was raised so defiantly and her eyes flashed so indignantly that Tom did not finish what he was going to say, but cowered a little before the angry girl, who stood so tall before him and hurled her words at him with such scathing vehemence. 'Tom Tracy! Stop! You have said enough. When you made me believe that you really did care for me; and I suppose you must, or you would not have thrown over a governor's daughter for me, or left so many lovelorn, high-born maidens out in the cold, I was sorry for you, for I hate to give any one pain, and I would rather have you my friend than my enemy; but when you taunt me with expectations from your uncle—.'

Here Jerrie paused, for the lump in her throat would not suffer the words to come, and there arose before her as if painted upon canvas the low room, the white stove, the firelight on the whiter face, the writing on the lap, and the little child in the far-off German city. But she would have died sooner than have told Tom of this, or that the conviction was strong upon her that she should one day stand there under the pines, herself the heiress of Tracy Park, Gretchen's memory honored, and Gretchen's wrongs wiped out.

After a moment she went on:

'I care nothing for your money, and less for you, who show the meanness there is in your nature when you speak of Harold Hastings as you have done. Supposing he is poor—suppose he is a painter and a carpenter, and has been what you started to call him—is he less a man for that? A thousand times no, and there is more of true manhood and nobility in his little finger than in your whole body; and if Maude has won his love, she should be prouder of it than of a duchess' coronet. I do not wish to wound you, but when you talk of Harold, you make me so mad. Good-morning; it is time for me to be at my drudgery, as you call it.'

She walked rapidly away, leaving her parasol, which she had again thrust into the ground, flopping in the breeze which had just sprung up, and each flop seemed to mock the discomfited Tom, who, greatly astonished but not at all out of conceit with himself, sat staring blankly after her, and with her head and shoulders more erect than usual, if possible, she went on almost upon a run until a turn in the road hid her from view. Then he arose and shook himself together, and picking up the soiled parasol, folded it carefully and put it upon the seat, saying as he did so:

'By George! did that girl know what she was about when she refused to marry me?'



CHAPTER XXXV.

THE GARDEN PARTY.

Jerrie went on very rapidly toward home, almost running at times, and not at all conscious of the absence of her parasol, or that the noonday sun was beating hot upon her head, conscious only of a bitter feeling of pain and vexation, the latter that she had allowed herself to speak so angrily to Tom, and of pain because of what he had said to her of Maude and Harold. Do what she might, she could not forget the tone of Harold's voice, or the look in his eyes when he bade her good-bye that morning, or that his whole manner since her return had been more like that of a lover than of a brother. And still there was that little throb of jealousy tugging at her heart-strings, notwithstanding that he had said to herself in substance not more than an hour before that she believed she could give Harold to Maude, whose love for him she could not doubt.