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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Tracy Park, by Mary Jane Holmes
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Tracy Park
+
+Author: Mary Jane Holmes
+
+Release Date: March 10, 2005  [eBook #15321]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRACY PARK***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team from page images generously
+made available by the Kentuckiana Digital Library
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages of the printed work can be seen at
+      the Electonic Text Collection of the Kentuckiana Digital Library
+      http://kdl.kyvl.org/
+
+
+
+
+TRACY PARK
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+MRS. MARY J. HOLMES,
+
+Author of Bessie's Fortune, Queenie Hetherton, Edith Lysle's Secret,
+Homestead on the Hillside, etc., etc., etc.
+
+Toronto:
+Rose Publishing Company
+Hunter Rose & Co.
+Printers & Book Binders
+Toronto
+25 Wellington St
+
+1886
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Don't stand and cry; press forward and remove the
+difficulty."--Dickens.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE TELEGRAM.
+
+
+'BREVOORT HOUSE, NEW YORK, Oct. 6th, 18--.
+
+'_To Mr. Frank Tracy, Tracy Park, Shannondale_.
+
+'I arrived in the Scotia this morning, and shall take the train for
+Shannondale at 3 p.m. Send someone to the station to meet us.
+
+'ARTHUR TRACEY.'
+
+This was the telegram which the clerk in the Shannonville office wrote
+out one October morning, and despatched to the Hon. Frank Tracy, of
+Tracy Park, in the quiet town of Shannondale, where our story opens.
+
+Mr. Frank Tracy, who, since his election to the State Legislature for
+two successive terms, had done nothing except to attend political
+meetings and make speeches on all public occasions, had an office in
+town, where he usually spent his mornings, smoking, reading the papers
+and talking to Mr. Colvin, his business agent and lawyer, for, though
+born in one of the humblest of New England houses, where the slanting
+roof almost touched the ground in the rear, and he could scarcely stand
+upright in the chamber where he slept, Mr. Frank Tracy was a great man
+now, and as he dashed along the turnpike behind his blooded bays, with
+his driver beside him, people looked admiringly after him, and pointed
+him out to strangers as the Hon. Mr. Tracy, of Tracy Park, one of the
+finest places in the county. It is true it did not belong to him, but he
+had lived there so long that he had come to look upon it as his, while
+his neighbors, too, seemed to have forgotten that there was across the
+ocean a Mr. Arthur Tracy, who might at any time come home to claim his
+own, and demand an account of his brother's stewardship. And it was
+this very Arthur Tracy, whose telegram announcing his return from Europe
+was read by his brother with mingled feelings of surprise and
+consternation.
+
+'Not that everything isn't fair and above-board, and he is welcome to
+look into matters as much as he likes,' Frank said over and over to
+himself, as he sat stating blankly at the telegram, while the cold
+chills ran up and down his back and arms. 'Yes, he can examine all
+Colvin's books and he will find them straight as a string, for didn't he
+tell me to use what I needed as remuneration for looking after his
+property while he was gallivanting over the world; and if he objects
+that I have paid myself too much, why, I can at once transfer those
+investments in my name to him. No, it is not that which affects me so,
+it is the suddenness of the thing, coming without warning and to-night
+of all nights, when the house will be full of carousing and champagne.
+What will Dolly say! Hysterics of course, if not a sick headache. I
+don't believe I can face her till she has had a little time to get over
+it. Here, boy, I want, you!' and he rapped at the window at a young lad
+who happened to be passing with a basket on his arm. 'I want you to do
+an errand for me,' he continued, as the boy entered the office, and,
+removing his cap, stood respectfully before him 'Take this telegram to
+Mrs. Tracy, and here is a dime for you.'
+
+'Thank you, but I don't care for the money,' the boy said 'I was going
+to the park anyway to tell Mrs. Tracy that grandma is sick and can't go
+there to-night.'
+
+'Cannot go! Sick! What is the matter?' Mr. Tracy asked, in some dismay,
+feeling that here was a fresh cause of trouble and worry for Dolly, as
+he designated his wife when off his guard and not on show before his
+fashionable friends, to whom she was Dora, or Mrs. Tracy.
+
+'She catched cold yesterday fixing up mother's grave,' the boy replied;
+and, as if the mention of that grave had sent Mr. Tracy's thoughts
+straying backward to the past, he looked thoughtfully at the child a
+moment, and then said:
+
+'How old are you, Harold?'
+
+'Ten, last August,' was the reply; and Mr. Tracy continued:
+
+'You do not remember your mother?'
+
+'No, sir, only a great crowd, and grandma crying so hard,' was Harold's
+reply.
+
+'You look like her,' Mr. Tracy said.
+
+'Yes, sir,' Harold answered, while into his frank, open face there came
+an expression of regret for the mother who had died when he was three
+years old, and whose life had been so short and sad.
+
+'Now, hurry off with the telegram, and mind you don't lose it. It is
+from my brother. He is coming to-night.'
+
+'Mr. Arthur Tracy, who sent the monument for my mother--is he coming
+home? Oh, I am so glad!' Harold exclaimed, and his handsome face lighted
+up with childish joy, as he put the telegram in his pocket and started
+For Tracy Park, wondering if he should encounter Tom, and thinking that
+if he did, and Tom gave him any chaff, he should lick him, or try to.
+
+'Darn him!' he said to himself, as he recalled the many times when Tom
+Tracy, a boy of his own age, had laughed at him for his poverty and
+coarse clothes. 'Darn him! he ain't any better than I am, if he does
+wear velvet trousers and live in a big house. 'Taint his'n; it's Mr.
+Arthur's, and I'm glad he is coming home. I wonder if he will bring
+grandma anything. I wish he'd I bring me a pyramid. He's seen 'em, they
+say.'
+
+Meantime, Mr. Frank Tracy had resumed his seat, and, with his hands
+clasped together over his head, was wondering what effect his brother's
+return would have upon him. Would he be obliged to leave the park, and
+the luxury he had enjoyed so long, and go back to the old life which he
+hated so much.
+
+'No; Arthur will never be so mean,' he said. 'He has always shown
+himself generous, and will continue to do so. Besides that, he will want
+somebody to keep his house for him, unless--' and here the perspiration
+started from every pore, as Frank Tracy thought: 'What if he is married,
+and the _us_ in his telegram means a wife, instead of a friend or
+servant, as I imagined!'
+
+This would indeed be a calamity, for then his own and Dolly's reign was
+over at Tracy Park, and the party they were to give that night to at
+least three hundred people would be their last grand blow-out.
+
+'Confound the party!' he thought, as he arose from his chair and began
+to pace the room. 'Arthur won't like that as a greeting after eleven
+years' absence. He never fancied being cheek by jowl with Tom, Dick and
+Harry; and that is just what the smash is to-night. Dolly wants to
+please everybody, thinking to get me votes for Congress, and so she has
+invited all creation and his wife. There's old Peterkin, the roughest
+kind of a canal bummer when Arthur went away. Think of my fastidious
+brother shaking hands with him and Widow Shipley, who kept a low tavern
+on the tow-path! She'll be there; in her silks and long gold chain, for
+she has four boys, all voters, who call me _Frank_ and slap me on the
+shoulder. Ugh! even I hate it all; and in a most perturbed state of
+mind, the Hon. Frank and would-be Congressman continued to walk the room
+lamenting the party which must be, and wondering what his aristocratic
+brother would say to such a crowd in his house on the night of his
+return.
+
+And if there should be a Mrs. Arthur Tracy, with possibly some little
+Tracys! But that idea was too horrible to contemplate, and so he tried
+to put it from his mind, and to be as calm and quiet as possible until
+lunch-time, when, with no very great amount of alacrity and
+cheerfulness, he started for home, where, as he had been warned by his
+wife when he left her in the morning, 'he was to lunch standing up or
+anyhow, as she had no time for parade that day.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ARTHUR TRACY.
+
+
+Although it was a morning in October, the grass in the park was as green
+as in early June, while the flowers in the beds and borders, the
+geraniums, the phlox, the stocks, and verbenas were handsomer, if
+possible, than they had been in the summer-time: for the rain, which had
+fallen almost continually during the month of September, had kept them
+fresh and bright. Here and there the scarlet and golden tints of autumn
+were beginning to show on the trees; but this only added a new charm to
+a place which was noted for its beauty, and was the pride and admiration
+of the town.
+
+And yet Mrs. Frank Tracy, who stood on the wide piazza, looking after a
+carriage which was moving down the avenue which led through the park to
+the highway, did not seem as happy as the mistress of that house ought
+to have been, standing there in the clear, crisp morning, with a silken
+wrapper trailing behind her, a coquettish French cap on her head, and
+costly jewels on her short, fat hands, which once were not as white and
+soft as they were now. For Mrs. Frank Tracy, as Dorothy Smith, had known
+what hard labor and poverty meant, and slights, too, because of the
+poverty and labor. Her mother was a widow, sickly and lame, and Dorothy
+in her girlhood had worked in the cotton mills at Langley, and bound
+shoes for the firm of Newell & Brothers, and had taught a district
+school, 'by way of elevating herself,' but the elevation did not pay,
+and she went back to the mills in the day-time and her shoes at night,
+and rebelled at the fate which had made her so poor and seemed likely to
+keep her so.
+
+But there was something better in store for her than binding shoes, or
+even teaching a district school, and, from the time when young Frank
+Tracy came to Langley as clerk in the Newell firm, Dorothy's life was
+changed and her star began to rise. They both sang in the choir,
+standing side by side, and sometimes using the same book, and once or
+twice their hands met as both tried to turn the leaves together.
+Dorothy's were red and rough, and not nearly as delicate as those of
+Frank, who had been in a store all his life: and still there was a
+magnetism in their touch which sent a thrill through the young man's
+veins, and made him for the first time look critically at his companion.
+
+She was very pretty, he thought, with bright black eyes, a healthful
+bloom, and a smile and blush which went straight to his heart and made
+him her slave at once. In three months' time they were married and
+commenced housekeeping in a very unostentatious way, for Frank had
+nothing but his salary to depend upon. But he was well connected, and
+boasted some blue blood, which, in Dorothy's estimation, made amends for
+lack of money. The Tracys of Boston were his distant relatives, and he
+had a rich bachelor uncle who spent his winters in New Orleans and his
+summers in Shannondale, at Tracy Park, on which he had lavished fabulous
+sums of money. From this uncle Frank had expectations, though naturally
+the greater part of his fortune would go to his god-son and name-sake,
+Arthur Tracy, who was Frank's elder brother, and as unlike him as one
+brother could well be unlike another.
+
+Arthur was scholarly in his tastes, quiet and gentlemanly in his
+manners, with a musical voice which won him friends at once, while in
+his soft black eyes there was a peculiar look of sadness, as if he were
+brooding over something which filled him with regret. Frank was very
+proud of his brother, and with Dorothy felt that he was honored when,
+six months after their marriage, he came for a day or so to visit them,
+and with him his intimate friend Harold Hastings, an Englishman by
+birth, but so thoroughly Americanized as to pass unchallenged for a
+native. There was a band of crape on Arthur's hat, and his manner was
+like one trying to be sorry, while conscious of a great inward feeling
+of resignation, if not content. The rich uncle was dead. He had died
+suddenly in Paris, where he had gone on business, and the whole of his
+vast fortune was left to his nephew Arthur--not a farthing to Frank, not
+even the mention of his name in the will: and when Dorothy heard it she
+put her white apron over her face, and cried as if her heart would
+break. They were so poor, she and Frank, and they wanted so many things,
+and the man who could have helped them was dead and had left them
+nothing. It was hard, and she might not have made the young heir very
+welcome if he had not ensured her that he should do something for her
+husband. And he kept his word, and in course of time bought out a
+grocery in Langley and put Frank in it, and paid the mortgage on his
+house, and gave him a thousand dollars, and invited them for a few days
+to visit him; and then it would seem as if he forgot them entirely; for
+with his friend Harold he settled himself at Tracy Park, and played the
+role of the grand gentleman to perfection.
+
+Dinner parties and card parties, where it was said the play was for
+money, and where Arthur always allowed himself to lose and his friends
+to win; races and hunts were of frequent occurrence at Tracy Park,
+where matters generally were managed on a magnificent scale, and created
+a great deal of talk among the plain folks of Shannondale, whose only
+dissipation then was going to church twice on Sunday and to the cattle
+show once each year.
+
+Few ladies ever graced these festivities, for Arthur was very
+aristocratic in his feelings, and with two or three exceptions, held
+himself aloof from the people of Shannondale. It was said, however, that
+sometimes, when he and his friend were alone, there was the sweep of a
+white dress and the gleam of golden hair in the parlor, where sweet Amy
+Crawford, daughter of the housekeeper, played and sang her simple
+ballads to the two gentlemen, who always treated her with as much
+deference as if she had been a queen, instead of a poor young girl
+dependent for her bread upon her own and her mother's exertions. But
+beyond the singing in the twilight Amy never advanced, and so far as her
+mother knew she had never for a single instant been alone with either of
+the gentlemen. How, then, was the household electrified one morning when
+it was found that Amy had fled, and that Harold Hastings was the
+companion of her flight?
+
+    'I wanted to tell you,' Amy wrote to her mother in the note left on
+    her dressing table. 'I wanted to tell you and be married at home,
+    but Mr. Hastings would not allow it. It would create trouble, he
+    said, between himself and Mr. Tracy, who I may confess to you in
+    confidence, asked me twice to be his wife, and when I refused,
+    without giving him a reason, for I dared not tell him of my love for
+    his friend, he was so angry and behaved so strangely, and there was
+    such a look in his eyes, that I was afraid of him, and it was this
+    fear, I think, which made me willing to go away secretly with Harold
+    and be married in New York. We are going to Europe; shall sail
+    to-morrow morning at nine o'clock in the Scotia. The marriage
+    ceremony will be performed before we go on board. I shall write as
+    soon as we reach Liverpool. You must forgive me, mother, and I am
+    sure you would not blame me, if you knew how much I love Mr.
+    Hastings. I know he is poor, and that I might be mistress of Tracy
+    Park, but I love Harold best. It is ten o'clock, and the train, you
+    know, passes at eleven; so I must say good-bye.
+
+    'Yours lovingly,
+
+    'Amy Crawford, now, but when you read this,
+
+    'Amy Hastings.'
+
+This was Amy's letter which her mother found upon entering her room
+after waiting more than an hour for her daughter's appearance at the
+breakfast, which they always took by themselves. To say that she was
+shocked and astonished would but faintly portray the state of her mind
+as she read that her beautiful young daughter had gone with Harold
+Hastings, whom she had never liked, for though he was handsome, and
+agreeable, and gentlemanly as a rule, she knew him to be thoroughly
+selfish and indolent, and she trembled for her daughter's happiness when
+a little time had quenched the ardor of his passion. Added to this was
+another thought which made her brain reel for a moment an she thought
+what might have been. Arthur Tracy had wished to make Amy his wife, and
+mistress of Tracy Park, which she would have graced so well, for in all
+the town there was not a fairer, sweeter girl than Amy Crawford, or one
+better beloved.
+
+It did not matter that she was poor, and her mother was only a
+housekeeper. She had never felt a slight on that account, and had been
+reared as carefully and tenderly as the daughters of the rich, and if
+away down, in her mother's heart there had been a half defined hope that
+some time the master of Tracy Park might turn his attention to her, it
+had been hidden so closely that Mrs. Crawford scarcely knew of it
+herself until she learned what her daughter was and what she might have
+been. But it was too late now. There was no turning back the wheels of
+fate.
+
+Forcing herself to be as calm as possible, she took the note to Arthur,
+who had breakfasted alone, and was waiting impatiently in the library
+for the appearance of his friend.
+
+'Lazy dog!' Mrs. Crawford heard him say, as she approached the open
+door. 'Does he think he has nothing to do but to sleep? We were to start
+by this time, and he in bed yet!'
+
+'Are you speaking of Mr. Hastings?' Mrs. Crawford asked, as she stepped
+into the room.
+
+'Yes,' was his crisp and haughty reply, as if he resented the question,
+and her presence there.
+
+He could be very proud and stern when he felt like it, and one of these
+moods was on him now, but Mrs. Crawford did not heed it, and sinking
+into a chair, for she felt that she could not stand and face him, she
+began:
+
+'I came to tell you of Mr. Hastings and--Amy. She did not come to
+breakfast, and I found this note in her room. She has gone to New York
+with him. They took the eleven o'clock train last night. They are to be
+married this morning, and sail in the Scotia for Europe.'
+
+She had told her story, and paused for the result, which was worse than
+she had expected.
+
+For a moment Arthur Tracy stood staring at her, while his face grew
+white as ashes, and into his dark eyes, usually so soft and mild, there
+came a fiery gleam like that of a madman, as he seemed for a time to be.
+
+'Amy gone with Harold, my friend!' he said at last. 'Gone to New York!
+Gone to be married! Traitors! Vipers! Both of them. Curse them! If he
+were here I'd shoot him like a dog; and she--I believe I would kill
+her.'
+
+He was walking the floor rapidly, and to Mrs. Crawford it seemed as if
+he really were unsettled in his mind, he talked so incoherently and
+acted so strangely.
+
+'What else did she say?' he asked, suddenly, stopping and confronting
+her. 'You have not told me all. Did she speak of me? Let me see the
+note,' and he held his hand for it.
+
+For a moment Mrs. Crawford hesitated, but as he grew more and more
+persistent she suffered him to take it, and then watched him as he read
+it, white the veins on his forehead began to swell until they stood out
+like a dark blue net-work against his otherwise pallid face.
+
+'Yes,' he snapped between his white teeth. 'I did ask her to be my wife,
+and she refused, and with her soft, kittenish ways made me more in love
+with her than ever, and more her dupe. I never suspected Harold, and
+when I told him of my disappointment, for I never kept a thing from
+him--traitor that he was--he laughed at me for losing my heart to my
+housekeeper's daughter! I, who, he said, might marry the greatest lady
+in the land. I could have knocked him down for his sneer at Amy, and I
+wish now I had, the wretch! He will not marry your daughter, madam; and
+if he does not I will kill him!'
+
+He was certainly mad, and Mrs. Crawford shrank away from him an from
+something dangerous, and going to her room took her bed in a fit of
+frightful hysterics. This was followed by a state of nervous
+prostration, and for a few days she neither saw, nor heard of, nor
+inquired for Mr. Tracy. At the end of the fourth day, however, she was
+told by the house-maid that he had that morning packed his valise and,
+without a word to any one, had taken the train for New York. A week went
+by, and then there came a letter from him, which ran as follows:
+
+    'New York, May ----, 18--.
+
+    'Mrs. Crawford:--I am off for Europe to-morrow, and when I shall
+    return is a matter of uncertainty. They are married; or at least I
+    suppose so, for I found a list of the passengers who sailed in the
+    Scotia, and the names, Mr. and Mrs. Hastings, were in it. So that
+    saves me from breaking the sixth commandment, as I should have done
+    if he hid played Amy false. I may not make myself known to them, but
+    I shall follow them, and if he harms a hair of her head I shall
+    shoot him yet. My brother Frank is to live at Tracy Park. That will
+    suit his wife, and as you will not care to stay with her, I send you
+    a deed of that cottage in the lane by the wood where the gardener
+    now lives. It is a pretty little place, and Amy liked it well. We
+    used to meet there sometimes, and more than once I have sat with her
+    on that seat under the elm tree, and it was there I asked her to be
+    my wife. Alas! I loved her so much, and I love her still as I can
+    never love another woman, and I could have made her so happy; but
+    that is past, and I can only watch her at a distance. When I have
+    anything to communicate, I will write again.
+
+    'Yours truly, 'Arthur Tracy.'
+
+    'P.S.--Take all the furniture in your room and Amy's, and whatever
+    else is needful for your house. I shall tell Colvin to give you a
+    thousand dollars, and when you want more let him know, I shall never
+    forget that you are Amy's mother.
+
+This was Arthur's letter to Mrs. Crawford, while to his brother he
+wrote:
+
+    'Dear Frank:--I am going to Europe for an indefinite length of time.
+    Why I go it matters not to you or any one. I go to suit myself, and
+    I want you to sell out your business at Langley and live at Tracy
+    Park, where you can see to things as if they were your own. You will
+    find everything straight and square, for Colvin is honest and
+    methodical. He knows all about the bonds, and mortgages, and stocks,
+    so you cannot do better than to retain him in your service,
+    overseeing matters yourself, of course, and drawing for your salary
+    what you think right and necessary for your support and for keeping
+    up the place as it ought to be kept up. I enclose a power of
+    attorney. When I want money I shall call upon Colvin. I may be gone
+    for years and perhaps forever.
+
+    'I shall never marry, and when I die, what I have will naturally go
+    to you. We have not been to each other much like brothers for the
+    past few years, but I do not forget the old home in the mountains
+    where we were boys together, and played, and quarreled, and slept up
+    under the roof, where the blankets were hung to keep the snow from
+    sifting through the rafters upon our bed.
+
+    'And, Frank, do you remember the bitter mornings, when the
+    thermometer was below zero, and we performed our ablutions in the
+    wood-shed, and the black-eye you gave me once for telling mother
+    that you had not washed yourself at all, it was so cold? She sent
+    you from the table, and made you go without your breakfast, and we
+    had ham and johnny-cake toast that morning, too. That was long ago,
+    and our lives are different now. There are marble basins, with
+    silver chains and stoppers, at Tracy Pack, and you can have a hot
+    bath every day if you like, in a room which would not shame
+    Caracalla himself. And I know you will like it all, and Dolly, too;
+    but don't make fools of yourselves. Nothing stamps a person as a
+    _come-up_ from the scum so soon as airs and ostentation. Be quiet
+    and modest, as if you had always lived at Tracy Park. Imitate Squire
+    Harrington and Mr. St. Claire. They are the true gentlemen, and were
+    to the manner born. Be kind to Mrs. Crawford. She is a lady in every
+    sense of the word, for she comes of good New England stock.
+
+    'And now, good-bye. I shall write sometimes, but not often.
+
+    'Your brother,
+
+    'Arthur Tracy.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MR. AND MRS. FRANK TRACY.
+
+
+Mr. Frank, in his small grocery store at Langley, was weighing out a
+pound of butter for the Widow Simpson, who was haggling with him about
+the price, when his brother's letter was brought to him by the boy who
+swept his store and did errands for him. But Frank was too busy just
+then to read it. There was a circus in the village that day, and it
+brought the country people into the town in larger numbers than usual.
+Naturally, many of them paid Frank a visit in the course of the morning,
+so that it was not until he went home to his dinner that be even thought
+of the letter, which was finally brought to his mind by his wife's
+asking if there was any news.
+
+Mrs. Frank was always inquiring for and expecting news, but she was not
+prepared for what this day brought her. Neither was her husband, and
+when he read his brother's letter, which he did twice to assure himself
+that he was not mistaken, he sat for a moment perfectly bewildered, and
+staring at his wife, who was putting his dinner upon the table.
+
+'Dolly,' he gasped at last, when he could speak at all--'Dolly, what do
+you think? Just listen. Arthur is going to Europe, to stay forever,
+perhaps, and has left us Tracy Park. We are going there to live, and you
+will be as grand a lady as Mrs. Atherton, of Brier Hill; or that young
+girl at Collingwood.'
+
+Dolly had a platter of ham and eggs in her hand, and she never could
+tell, though she often tried to do so, what prevented her from dropping
+the whole upon the floor. She did spill some of the fat upon her clean
+tablecloth, she put the dish down so suddenly, and sinking into a chair,
+demanded what her husband meant. Was he crazy, or what?
+
+'Not a bit of it,' he replied, recovering himself and beginning to
+realize the good fortune which had come to him. 'We are rich people,
+Dolly. Read for yourself;' and he passed her the letter, which she
+seemed to understand better than he had done.
+
+'Why, yes,' she said. 'We are going to Tracy Park to live; but that
+doesn't make us rich. It is not ours.'
+
+'I know that,' her husband replied. 'But we shall enjoy it all the same,
+and hold our heads with the best of them. Besides, don't you see, Arthur
+gives me _carte blanche_ as to pay for my services, and, though I shall
+do right, it is not in human nature that I should not feather my nest
+when I have a chance. Some of that money ought to have been mine. I
+shall sell out at once if I can find a purchaser, and if I cannot, I
+shall rent the grocery and move out of this hole double quick.'
+
+His ideas were growing faster than those of his wife, who was attached
+to Langley and its people, and shrank a little from the grander opening
+before her. She had once spent a few days at Tracy Park, as Arthur's
+guest, and had felt great restraint even in the presence of Mrs.
+Crawford and Amy, whom she recognized as ladies notwithstanding their
+position in the house. On that occasion she had, with her
+brother-in-law, been invited to dine at Brier Hill, the country-seat of
+Mrs. Grace Atherton, a gay widow, whose dash and style had completely
+overawed the plain, matter-of-fact Dolly, who did not know what half the
+dishes were, or what she was expected to do. But, by watching Arthur,
+and declining some things which she felt sure were beyond her
+comprehension, she managed tolerably well, though when the dinner was
+over, and she could breathe freely again, she found that the back of her
+new silk gown was wet with perspiration, which had oozed from every pore
+during the hour and a half she had sat at the table. And even then her
+troubles were not ended, for coffee was served in the drawing-room, and
+as Arthur took his clear, she did not know whether she was expected to
+do the same or not, but finally ventured to say she would have hers with
+'trimmin's.' There was a mischievous twinkle in Mrs. Atherton's eyes
+which disconcerted her so much that she spilled her coffee in her lap,
+and felt, as she afterward told a friend to whom she was describing the
+dinner, as if she could have been knocked down with a feather.
+
+'Such folderol!' she said. 'Changing your plates all the time--eating
+peas in the winter greener than grass, with nothing under the sun with
+them, and drinking coffee out of a cup about as big as a thimble. Give
+me the good old-fashioned way, I say, with peas and potatoes, and meat,
+and things, and cups that will hold half a pint and have some thickness
+that you can feel in your mouth.'
+
+And now she was to exchange the good, old-fashioned way for what she
+termed 'folderol,' and for a time she did not like it. But her husband
+was so delighted and eager that he succeeded in impressing her with some
+of his enthusiasm, and after he had returned to his grocery, and her
+dishes were washed, she removed her large kitchen apron, and pulling
+down the sleeves of her dress, went and stood before the mirror, where
+she examined herself critically and not without some degree of
+complacency.
+
+Her hair was black and glossy, or would be if she had time to care for
+it as it ought to be cared for; her eyes were bright, and perhaps in
+time she might learn to use them as Mrs. Atherton used hers.
+
+Mrs. Atherton stood as the criterion for everything elegant and
+fashionable, and naturally it was with her that she compared herself.
+
+'She is older than I am,' she said to herself; 'there are crow-tracks
+around her eyes, and her complexion is not a bit better than mine was
+before I spoiled it with soap-suds, and stove heat, and everything
+else.'
+
+Then she looked at her hands, but they were red and rough, and the nails
+were broken and not at all like the nails which an expert has polished
+for an hour or more. Mrs. Atherton's diamond rings would be sadly out of
+place on Dolly's fingers, but time and abstinence from work would do
+much for them, she reflected, and after all it would be nice to live in
+a grand house, ride in a handsome carriage, and keep a hired girl to do
+the heavy work. So, on the whole, she began to feel quite reconciled to
+her change of situation, and to wonder how she ought to conduct herself
+in view of her future position. She had intended going to the circus
+that night, but she gave that up, telling her husband that it was a
+second-class amusement any way, and she did not believe that either Mrs.
+Atherton or the young lady at Collingwood patronized such places. So
+they staid at home and talked together of what they should do at Tracy
+Park, and wondered if it was their duty to ask all their Langley friends
+to visit them. Mrs. Frank, as the more democratic of the two, decided
+that it was. She was not going to begin by being _stuck up_, she said,
+and when at last she left Langley four weeks later, every man, woman,
+and child of her familiar acquaintance in town had been heartily invited
+to call upon her at Tracy Park if ever they came that way.
+
+Frank had disposed of his business at a reasonable price, and had rented
+his house with all the furniture, except such articles as his wife
+insisted upon taking with her. The bureau, and bedstead, and chairs
+which she and Frank had bought together in Springfield just before their
+marriage, the Boston rocker her mother had given her, and in which the
+old mother had sat until the day she died, the cradle in which she had
+rocked her first baby boy who was lying in the Langley grave-yard, were
+dear to the wife and mother, and though her husband told her she could
+have no use for them at Tracy Park, where the furniture was of the
+costliest kind, and that she would probably put them in the servants'
+rooms or attic, there was enough of sentiment in her nature to make her
+cling to them as something of the past, and so they were boxed up and
+forwarded by freight to Tracy Park, whither Mr. and Mrs. Tracy followed
+them a week later.
+
+The best dressmaker in Langley had been employed upon the wardrobe of
+Mrs. Frank, who, in her travelling dress of some stuff goods of a
+plaided pattern, too large and too bright to be quite in good taste,
+felt herself perfectly _au fait_ as the mistress of Tracy Park, until
+she reached Springfield, where Mrs. Grace Atherton, accompanied by a
+tall, elegant looking young lady, entered the car and took a seat in
+front of her. Neither of the ladies noticed her, but she recognized Mrs.
+Atherton at once and guessed that her companion was the young lady from
+Collingwood, who, rumor said, was soon to marry her guardian, Mr.
+Richard Harrington, although he was old enough to be her father.
+
+Dolly scanned both the ladies very closely, noting every article of
+their costumes from their plain linen collars and cuffs to their quiet
+dresses of gray, which seemed so much more in keeping with the dusty
+cars than her buff and purple plaid.
+
+'I ain't like them, and never shall be,' she said to herself, with a
+bitter sense of her inferiority pressing upon her. 'I ain't like them,
+and never shall be, if I live to be a hundred. I wish we were not going
+to be grand. I shall never get used to it,' and the hot tears sprang to
+her eyes as she longed to be back in the kitchen where she had worked so
+hard.
+
+But Dolly did not know then how readily people can forget the life of
+toil behind them and adapt themselves to one of luxury and ease; and
+with her the adaptability commenced in some degree the moment
+Shannondale station was reached, and she saw the handsome carriage
+waiting for them. A carriage finer far and more modern than the one from
+Collingwood, in which Mrs. Atherton and the young lady took their seats,
+laughing and chatting so gayly that they did not see the woman in the
+big plaid who stood watching them with a rising feeling of jealousy and
+resentment as she thought of Mrs. Atherton, 'She does not even notice
+me.'
+
+But when the Tracy carriage drew up, Grace Atherton saw and recognized
+her, and whispered, in an aside to her companion:
+
+'For goodness' sake, Edith, look! There are the Tracys, our new
+neighbors.' Then she bowed to Mrs. Tracy, and said: 'Ah, I did not know
+you were on the train.'
+
+'I sat right behind you,' was Mrs. Tracy's rather ungracious reply: and
+then, not knowing whether she ought to do it or not, she introduced her
+husband.
+
+'Yes, Mr. Tracy--how do you do?' was Mrs. Atherton's response; but she
+did not in return introduce the young girl, whose dark eyes were
+scanning the strangers so curiously, and this Dolly took as a slight and
+inwardly resented it.
+
+But Mrs. Atherton had spoken to her and that was something, and helped
+to keep her spirits up as she was driven along the turnpike to the
+entrance of the park.
+
+On the occasion of Mrs. Frank's first and only visit to her
+brother-in-law it was winter, and everything was covered with snow. But
+it was summer now, the month of roses, and fragrance, and beauty, and as
+the carriage passed up the broad, smooth avenue which led to the house,
+Dolly's eyes wandered over the well-kept lawn, sweet with the scent of
+newly-mown grass, the parteries of flowers and shrubs, the winding walks
+and clumps of evergreens here and there formed into fancy rooms, with
+rustic seats and tables under the over-hanging boughs; and when she
+reflected that all this was hers to enjoy for many years, and perhaps
+for her life-time, she felt the first stirring of that pride, and
+satisfaction, and self-assertion which was to grow upon her so rapidly
+and transform her from the plain, unpretentious woman who had washed,
+and ironed, and baked, and mended in the small house in Langley into the
+arrogant, haughty lady of fashion, who courted only the rich and looked
+down upon her less fortunate neighbors. Now, however, she was very meek
+and humble, and trembled as she alighted from the carriage before the
+great stone house which was to be her home.
+
+'Isn't this grand, Dolly?' her husband said, rubbing his hands together
+and looking about him complacently.
+
+'Yes, very grand,' Dolly answered him; but somehow it makes me feel
+weaker than water. I suppose, though, I shall get accustomed to it.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+GETTING ACCUSTOMED TO IT.
+
+
+In the absence of Mrs. Crawford, who for a week or more had been
+domesticated in the cottage in the lane, as the house was designated
+which Arthur had given her, there was no one to receive the strangers
+except the cook and the house-maid, and as Mrs. Tracy entered the hall
+the two came forward, bristling with criticism, and ready to resent
+anything like interference in the new-comers.
+
+The servants at the park had not been pleased with the change of
+administration. That Mr. Arthur was a gentleman whom it was an honor to
+serve, they all conceded; but with regard to the new master and
+mistress, they had grave doubts. Although none of them had been at the
+park on the occasion of Mrs. Tracy's first visit there, many rumors
+concerning her had reached them, and she would scarcely have recognized
+herself could she have heard the remarks of which she was the subject.
+That she had worked in a factory--which was true--was her least offence,
+for it was whispered that once, when the winter was unusually severe,
+and work scarce, she had gone to a soup-house, and even asked and
+procured coal from the poor-master for herself and her mother.
+
+This was not true, and would have argued nothing against her as a woman
+if it had been, but the cook and the house-maid believed it, and passed
+sundry jokes together while preparing to meet 'the pauper,' as they
+designated her.
+
+In this state of things their welcome could not be very cordial, but
+Mrs. Tracy was too tired and too much excited, to observe their demeanor
+particularly. They were civil, and the house was in perfect order, and
+so much larger and handsomer than she had thought it to be, that she
+felt bewildered and embarrassed, and said 'Yes 'em,' and 'No, ma'am,' to
+Martha, the cook, and told Sarah, who was waiting at dinner, that she
+'might as well sit down in a chair as to stand all the time; she
+presumed she was tired with so many extra steps to take.'
+
+But Sarah knew her business, and persisted in standing, and inflicting
+upon the poor woman as much ceremony as possible, and then, in the
+kitchen, she repeated to the cook and the coachman, with sundry
+embellishments of her own, the particulars of the dinner, amid peals of
+laughter at the expense of the would-be lady, who had said 'she could
+just as soon have her salad with her other things, and save washing go
+many dishes.'
+
+It was hardly possible that mistress and maids would stay together long,
+especially as Mrs. Tracy, when a little more assured, and a little less
+in awe of her servants, began to show a disposition to know by personal
+observation what was going on in the kitchen, and to hint broadly that
+there was too much waste here and expenditure there, and quite too much
+company at all hours of the day.
+
+'She didn't propose to keep a boarding-house,' she said, 'or to support
+families outside, and the old woman who came so often to the basement
+door with a big basket under her cloak must discontinue her calls.'
+
+Then there occurred one of those Hibernian cyclones which sweep
+everything before them, and which in this instance swept Mrs. Tracy out
+of the kitchen for the time being, and the cook out of the house. Her
+self-respect, she said, would not allow her to stay with a woman who
+knew just how much coal was burned, how much butter was used, and how
+much bread was thrown away, and who objected to giving a bite now and
+then to a poor old woman, who, poor as she was, had never yet been
+helped by the poor-master, or gone to a soup-house like my lady!
+
+Martha's departure was followed by that of Sarah, and then Mrs. Tracy
+was alone, and for a few days enjoyed herself immensely, doing her own
+work, cooking her own dinner, and eating it when and where she liked--in
+the kitchen mostly, as that kept the flies from the dining-room, and
+saved her many steps, for Dolly was beginning to find that there was a
+vast difference between keeping a house with six rooms and one with
+twenty or more.
+
+Her husband urged her to try a new servant, saying there was no
+necessity for her to make a slave of herself: but she refused to listen.
+Economy was a part of her nature, and besides that she meant to show
+them that she was perfectly independent of the whole tribe; the _tribe_
+and _them_ referring to the hired girls alone, for she knew no one else
+in town.
+
+Nobody had called except the clergyman, not even Mrs. Crawford, whose
+friendship and possible advice Mrs. Tracy had counted upon, and with
+whom she knew she should feel more at ease than with Mrs. Atherton from
+Brier Hill, or Miss Hastings from Collingwood. She had seen both the
+last named ladies at church and had a nod from Mrs. Atherton, and that
+was all the recognition she had received from her neighbors up to the
+hot July morning, a week or more after the house-maid's departure, when
+she was busy in the kitchen canning black raspberries, of which the
+garden was full.
+
+Like many housekeepers who do their own work, Dolly was not very
+particular with regard to her dress in the morning, and on this occasion
+her hair was drawn from her rather high forehead, and twisted into a
+hard knot at the back of her head; her calico dress hung straight dawn,
+for she was minus hoops, which in those days were worn quite large; her
+sleeves were rolled above her elbows, and, as a protection against the
+juice of the berries, she wore a huge apron made of sacking. In this
+garb, and with no thought of being interrupted, she kept on with her
+work until the last kettle of fruit, was boiling and bubbling on the
+stove, and she was just glancing at the clock to see if it were time to
+put over the peas for dinner, when there came a quick, decisive ring at
+the front door.
+
+'Who can that be?' she said to herself, as she wiped her hands upon her
+apron. 'Some peddler or agent, I dare say. Why couldn't he come round to
+the kitchen, door, I'd like to know?'
+
+She had been frequently troubled with peddlers and agents of all kinds,
+and feeling certain that this was one--ringing the bell a second time,
+as if in a hurry--she started for' the door in no very amiable frame of
+mind, for peddlers were her abomination. Something ailed the lock or
+key, which resisted all her efforts to turn it; and at last, putting her
+mouth to the keyhole, she called out, rather sharply:
+
+'Go to the back door: I cannot open this,'
+
+Then, as she caught a whiff of burnt syrup, she hurried to the kitchen,
+where she found that her berries had boiled over, and were hissing and
+sputtering on the hot stove, raising a cloud of smoke so dense that she
+did not see the person who stood on the threshold of the door until a
+voice wholly unlike that of any peddler or agent said to her;
+
+'Good morning, Mrs. Tracy. I hope I am not intruding.'
+
+Then she turned, and to her horror and surprise, saw Grace Atherton,
+attired in the coolest and daintiest of morning costumes, with a jaunty
+French bonnet set coquettishly upon her head, and a silver card-case in
+her hand.
+
+For the moment Dolly's wits forsook her and she stood staring at her
+visitor, who, perfectly at her ease, advanced into the room and said:
+
+'I hope you will excuse me, Mrs. Tracy, for this morning call I came--'
+
+But she did not finish the sentence, for by this time Dolly had
+recovered herself a little, and throwing off her apron, she replied,
+nervously:
+
+'Not at all--not at all, I supposed you were some peddler or agent when
+I sent you to this door. They are the plague of my life, and think I'll
+buy everything and give to everything because Arthur did. I am doing my
+own work, you see. Come into the parlor;' and she led the way into the
+dark drawing-room, and where the chairs and sofas were surrounded in
+white linen, looking like so many ghosts in the dim, uncertain light.
+
+But Dolly opened one of the windows, and pushing back the blinds, let in
+a flood of sunshine, so strong and bright that she at once closed the
+shutters, saying, apologetically, that she did not believe in fading the
+carpets, if they were not her own. Then she sat down upon an ottoman and
+faced her visitor, who was regarding her with a mixture of amusement and
+wonder.
+
+Grace Atherton was an aristocrat to her very finger-tips, and shrank
+from contact with anything vulgar and unsightly, and, to her mind, Mrs.
+Tracy represented both, and seemed sadly out of place in that handsome
+room, with her sleeves rolled up and the berry stains on her hands and
+face. Grace knew nothing by actual experience of canning berries, or of
+aprons made of sacking, or of bare arms, except it were of an evening
+when they showed white and fair against her satin gown, with bands of
+gold and precious stones upon them, and she felt that there was an
+immeasurable distance between herself and this woman, whom she had come
+to see partly on business and partly because she thought she must call
+upon her for the sake of Arthur Tracy, the former occupant of the park.
+
+Grace and Arthur had been fast friends, and Brier Hill was almost the
+only place where he had visited on anything like terms of intimacy.
+Indeed, it was rumored by the busy knowing ones of Shannondale that, had
+the pretty widow been six years his junior instead of his senior, she
+would have left no art untried to win him. But here the wise ones were
+in fault, for though Grace Atherton's heart was not buried in her
+husband's grave, and, in fact, had never been her husband's at all, it
+was given to one who, though he cared for it once, did not prize it now,
+for, with all the intensity of his noble nature, Richard Harrington, of
+Collingwood; loved the beautiful girl whom, years ago, he had taken to
+his home as his child, and whom, it was said, he was to marry. But if
+the belief that the love she once refused and which she would fain
+recover was lost to her forever rankled in her breast, Grace never made
+a sign, and laughed as gayly and looked almost as young and handsome as
+in the days when Richard was wooing her in the pleasant old English town
+across the sea. She had loved Richard then, but, alas! loved money more,
+and she chose a richer man, old enough to be her father, who had died
+when she was twenty-one and left her the possessor of nearly half a
+million, every dollar of which she would have given to have recalled the
+days which were gone forever.
+
+Grace had been intending to call upon Mrs. Tracy ever since she came to
+the park. 'Not,' as she said to her friend, Edith Hastings, 'for the
+woman's sake, for she knew her to be vulgar: but because she was a
+neighbor and the sister-in-law of Arthur Tracy,' And so at last she
+came, partly out of compliment and partly on business, into which last
+she plunged at once. She was going to the mountains with Mr. Harrington
+and Miss Hastings: her cook, who had been with her seven years, had gone
+to attend a sick mother, and had recommended as a fit person to take her
+place the woman who had just left Tracy Park.
+
+'I do not like to take a servant without first knowing something of her
+from her last employer,' she said: 'and, if you do not mind, I should
+like to ask if Martha left for anything very bad.'
+
+Mrs. Tracy colored scarlet, and for a moment was silent. She could not
+tell that fine lady in the white muslin dress, with seas of lace and
+embroidery, that Martha had called her _second classy_, and _stingy_ and
+_strooping_, and _mean_, because she objected to the amount of coal
+burned, and bread thrown away, and time consumed at the table, besides
+turning down the gas in the kitchen when she thought it too light, to
+say nothing of turning it off at the meter at ten o'clock, just when the
+servants were beginning to enjoy themselves. All this she felt would
+scarcely interest a person like Mrs. Atherton, who might sympathize with
+Martha more than with herself, so she finally said:
+
+'Martha was saucy to me, and on the whole it was better for them all to
+go; and so I am doing my own work.'
+
+'Doing your own work!' and Grace gave a little cry of surprise, while
+her shoulders shrugged meaningly, and made Mrs. Tracy almost as angry as
+she had been with Martha when she called her mean and second-class. 'It
+cannot be possible that you cook, and wash, and iron, and do
+everything,' Mrs. Atherton continued. 'My dear Mrs. Tracy, you can never
+stand it in a house like this, and Mr. Arthur would not like it if he
+knew. Why he kept as many as six servants, and sometimes more. Pray let
+me advise you, and commend to you a good girl; who lived with me three
+years, and can do everything, from dressing my hair to making a
+blanc-mange. I only parted with her because she was sick, and now that
+she is well, her place is filled. Try her, and do not make a servant of
+yourself. It is not fitting that you should.'
+
+Grace was fond of giving advice, and had said more than she intended
+saying when she began, but Mrs. Tracy, though annoyed, was not angry,
+and consented to receive the girl who had lived at Brier Hill three
+years, and who, she reflected, could be of use to her in many ways.
+
+While sitting there in her soiled working dress talking to the elegant
+Mrs. Atherton she had felt her inferiority more keenly than she had ever
+done before, while at the same time she was conscious that a new set of
+ideas and thoughts had taken possession of her, reawaking in her the
+germ of that ambition to be somebody which she had felt so often when a
+girl, and which now was to bud and blossom, and bear fruit a hundred
+fold. She would take the girl, and from her learn the ways of the world
+as presented at Brier Hill. She would no longer wear sacking aprons, and
+open the door herself. She would be more like Grace Atherton, whom she
+watched admiringly as she went down the walk to the handsome carriage
+waiting for her, with driver and footman in tall hats and long coats on
+the box.
+
+This was the beginning of the fine lady into which Dolly finally
+blossomed, and when that day Frank went home to his dinner he noticed
+something in her manner which he could not understand until she told him
+of Mrs. Atherton's call, and the plight in which that lady had found
+her.
+
+'Served you right, Dolly,' Frank said, laughing till the tears ran. 'You
+have no business to be digging round like a slave when we are able to
+have what we like. Arthur said we were to keep up the place us he had
+done, and that does not mean that you should be a scullion. No, Dolly;
+have all the girls you want, and hold up your head with the best of
+them. Get a new silk gown, and return Mrs. Atherton's call at once, and
+take a card and turn down one corner or the other, I don't know which,
+but this girl of hers can tell you. Pump her dry as a powder horn; find
+out what the quality do, and then do it, and not bother about the
+expense. I am going in for a good time, and don't mean to work either. I
+told Colvin this morning that I thought I ought to draw a salary of
+about four thousand a year, besides our living expenses, and though he
+looked at me pretty sharp over his spectacles he said nothing. Arthur is
+worth half a million, if he is worth a cent. So, go it, Dolly, while you
+are young,' and in the exuberance of his joy Frank kissed his wife on
+both cheeks, and then hurried back to his office, where he spent most of
+his time trying to be a gentleman.
+
+That day they dined in the kitchen with a leaf of the table turned up as
+they had done in Langley, but the next day they had dinner in the
+dining-room, and were waited upon by the new girl as well as it was
+possible for her to do with her mistress' interference.
+
+'Never mind; Mr. Tracy's in a hurry. Give him his pie at once,' she
+said, as Susan was about to clear the table preparatory to the dessert,
+but she repented the speech when she saw the look of surprise which the
+girl gave her and which expressed more than words could have done.
+
+'Better let her run herself,' Frank said, when Susan had left the room,
+'and if she wants to take every darned thing off the table and tip it
+over to boot, let her do it. If she has lived three years with Mrs.
+Atherton, she knows what is what better than we do.'
+
+'But it takes so long, and I have much to see to in this great house,'
+Dolly objected, and her husband replied:
+
+'Get another girl, then; three of them if you like. What matter how many
+girls we have so long as Arthur pays for them, and he is bound to do
+that. He said so in his letter. You are altogether too economical. I've
+told you so a hundred times, and now there is no need of saving. I want
+to see you a lady of silks and satins like Mrs. Atherton. Pump that
+girl. I tell you, and find out what ladies do!'
+
+This was Frank's advice to his wife, and as far as in her lay she acted
+upon it, and whatever Susan told her was done by Mrs. Atherton at Brier
+Hill, she tried to do at Tracy Park: all except staying out of the
+kitchen. That, from her nature, she could not and would not do.
+Consequently she was constantly changing cooks, and frequently took the
+helm herself, to the great disgust of her husband, who managed at last
+to imbue her with his own ideas of things.
+
+In course of time most of the neighbors who had any claim to society
+called at the park, and among them Mrs. Crawford. But Mrs. Tracy had
+then reached a point from which she looked down upon one who had been
+housekeeper where she was now mistress, and whose daughter's good name
+was under a cloud, as there were some who did not believe that Harold
+Hastings had ever made her his wife. When told that Mrs. Crawford had
+asked for her Mrs. Tracy sent word that she was engaged, and that if
+Mrs. Crawford pleased she would give her errand to the girl.
+
+'I have no errand. I came to call,' was Mrs. Crawford's reply, and she
+never crossed the threshold of her old home again until the March winds
+were blowing and there was a little boy in the nursery at the park.
+
+At the last moment the expected nurse had fallen sick, and in his
+perplexity Mr. Tracy went to the cottage in the lane and begged of Mrs.
+Crawford to come and care for his wife. Mrs. Crawford was very proud,
+but she was poor, too, and as the price per week which Frank offered her
+was four times as much as she could earn by sewing, she consented at
+last and went as nurse to the sick-room, and the baby, Tom, on whose
+little red face she imprinted many a kiss for the sake of her daughter
+who was coming home in June, and over whom the shadow of hope and fear
+was hanging.
+
+Dolly Tracy's growth after it fairly commenced, was very rapid, and when
+Mrs. Crawford went to her as nurse she had three servants in her employ,
+besides the coachman, and was imitating Mrs. Atherton to the best of her
+ability; and when, early in the summer, she received the wedding cards
+of Edith Hastings, the young lady from Collingwood, who had married a
+Mr. St. Claire instead of her guardian, she felt that her position was
+assured, and from that time her progress was onward and upward until the
+October morning, ten years later, when our story proper opens, and we
+see her standing upon the piazza of her handsome house, with every sign
+of wealth and luxury about her person, from the silken robe to the
+jewels upon her soft, white hands, which once had washed her own dishes,
+and canned berries in her own kitchen, where she had received Grace
+Atherton, with her sleeves above her elbows.
+
+There were five servants in the house now, and they ran over and against
+each other, and quarrelled, and gossipped, and worried her life nearly
+out of her, until she was sometimes tempted to send them away and do the
+work herself. But she was far too great a lady for that. She dressed in
+silk and satin every day, and drove in her handsome carriage, with her
+driver and footman in tall hats and long coats. She was thoroughly up in
+etiquette, and did not need Susan to tell her what to do. She knew all
+about visiting cards, and dinner cards, and cards of acceptance, and
+regret, and condolence, and she read much oftener than she did her Bible
+a book entitled 'Habits of Good Society.'
+
+Three children played in the nursery now, Tom, and Jack, and baby Maude,
+and she kept a nurse constantly for them, and strove with all her might
+to instil into their infant minds that they were the Tracys of Tracy
+Park, and entitled to due respect from their inferiors; and Tom, the boy
+of ten and a half, had profited by her teaching, and was the veriest
+little braggart in all Shannondale, boasting of his father's house, and
+his father's money, without a word of the Uncle Arthur wandering no one
+knew where, or cared particularly for that matter.
+
+Arthur had never been home since the day he quitted it to look after Amy
+Crawford, now lying in the grave-yard of Shannondale, under the shadow
+of the tall monument which Arthur's money had bought. At first he had
+written frequently to Mrs. Crawford, and occasionally to his brother,
+and his agent, Mr. Colvin; then his letters came very irregularly, and
+sometimes a year would intervene between them. Then he would write every
+week, and he once told them not to be anxious if they did not hear from
+him in a long time, as in case of his death he had arranged to have the
+news communicated to his friends at once. After this letter nothing had
+been heard from him for more than two years, until the morning when his
+telegram came and so greatly disturbed the mental equilibrium of Mr.
+Frank Tracy that for an hour or more he sat staring into the street in a
+bewildered kind of way, wondering what would be the result of his
+brother's return, and if he should be required to give up the
+investments he had made from the exorbitant sum he had charged for
+looking after the place. Once he thought he would ask Colvin's opinion;
+but he was a little afraid of the old man, who had sometimes hinted that
+his salary was far greater than the services rendered, but as Mr.
+Arthur, to whom he made reports of the expenditures, had never objected,
+it was not for him to do so, he said. And still Frank distrusted him,
+and decided that, on the whole, his better plan was to wait, or at least
+to consult no one but his wife, and he was glad when lunch-time came,
+and he started home, where preparations were going forward for the first
+large party they had ever given.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+AT THE PARK.
+
+
+Frank Tracy had at first grown faster than his wife, and the change in
+his manner had been more perceptible; for with all her foolishness Dolly
+had a kind heart, and a keen sense of right, and wrong, and justice than
+her husband. She had opposed him stoutly when he raised his own salary
+from $4,000 to $6,000 a year, on the plea that his services were worth
+it, and that two thousand more or less was nothing to Arthur; and when
+he was a candidate for the Legislature she had protested loudly against
+his inviting to the house and giving beer and cider to the men whose
+votes he wanted, and for whom as men he did not care a farthing; but
+when he came up for Congress she forgot all her scruples, and was as
+anxious as himself to please those who could help him secure the
+nomination and afterward the election. It was she who had proposed the
+party, to which nearly everybody was to be invited, from old Peterkin,
+with his powerful influence among a certain class, and Widow Shipleigh
+with her four sons, to Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire, from Grassy Spring,
+Squire Harrington, from Collingwood, and Grace Atherton, from Brier
+Hill. Very few who could in any way help Frank to a seat in Congress
+were omitted from the list, whether Republican or Democrat, for Frank
+was popular with both parties and expected help from both. Over three
+hundred cards had been issued for the party, which was the absorbing
+topic of conversation in the whole town, and which brought white kids
+and white muslins into great requisition, while swallow-tails and non
+swallow-tails were discussed in the privacy of households, and discarded
+or decided upon according to the length of the masculine purse or the
+strength of the masculine resistance, for dress coats were not then the
+rule in Shannondale. It was said that Mr. St. Claire and Squire
+Harrington always wore them to dinner, but they were the nobility _par
+excellence_ of the town, and were expected to do things differently from
+the middle class, who had their bread to earn. Old Peterkin, however,
+whom Frank in his soliloquy, had designated a _canal bummer_, had become
+a rich man, and was resolved to show that he knew what was _au fait_ for
+the occasion; a new suit throughout, in the very latest style, was in
+progress of making for him, and he had been heard to say that 'Tracy
+should have his vote and that of fifty more of the boys to pay for his
+ticket to the doin's'. This speech, which was reported to Mrs. Tracy,
+reconciled her to the prospect of receiving as a guest the coarsest,
+roughest man in town, whose only recommendation was his money and the
+brute influence he exercised over a certain class.
+
+Dolly has scarcely slept for excitement since the party had been decided
+upon, and everything seemed to be moving on very smoothly and in order.
+They were to have music, and flowers, and a caterer from Springfield,
+where a lovely party-dress for herself of peach-blow satin was making,
+and nothing occurred of any importance to disturb her until the morning
+of the day appointed for the party, when it seemed as if every evil
+culminated at once. First, the colored boy who was to wait in the upper
+hall came down with measles. Then Grace Atherton drove round in her
+carriage to say that it would be impossible for her to be present, as
+she had received news from New York which made it necessary for her to
+go there by the next train. She was exceedingly sorry, she said, and for
+once in her life Grace was sincere. She _was_ anxious to attend the
+party, for, as she said to Edith St. Claire in confidence, she wanted to
+see old Peterkin in his swallow-tail and white vest, with a shirt-front
+as big as a platter. There was a great deal of sarcasm and ridicule in
+Grace Atherton's nature, but at heart she was kind and meant to be just,
+and after a fashion really liked Mrs. Tracy, to whom she had been of
+service in various ways, helping her to fill her new position more
+gracefully than she could otherwise have done, and enlightening her
+without seeming to do so on many points which puzzled her sorely; on the
+whole they were good friends, and, after expressing her regret that she
+could not be present in the evening, Grace stood a few moments chatting
+familiarly and offering to send over flowers from her greenhouse, and
+her own maid to arrange Mrs. Tracy's hair and assist her in dressing.
+Then she took her leave, and it was her carriage Mrs. Tracy was watching
+as it went down the avenue, when little Harold Hastings appeared around
+the corner of the house, and, coming up the steps, took off his cap
+respectfully as he said:
+
+'Grandma sends you her compliments, and is very sorry that she has
+rheumatism this morning and cannot come to-night to help you. She
+thinks, perhaps, you can get Mrs. Mosher.'
+
+'Your grandmother can't come, when I depended so much upon her, and she
+thinks I can get Mrs. Mosher, that termagant, who would raise a mutiny
+in the kitchen in an hour!' Mrs. Tracy said this so sharply that a flush
+mounted to the handsome face of the boy, who felt as if he were in some
+way a culprit and being reprimanded. 'She _must_ come, if she does
+nothing but sit in the kitchen and keep order,' was Mrs. Tracy's next
+remark.
+
+'She can't,' Harold replied; 'her foot and ankle is all swelled and
+aches so she almost cries. She is awful sorry, and so am I, for I was
+coming with her to see the show.'
+
+This speech put a new idea into Mrs. Tracy's mind, and she said to the
+boy:
+
+'How would you like to come anyway, and stay in the upper hall, and tell
+the people where to go? The boy I engaged has disappointed me. You are
+rather small for the place, but I guess you'll do, and I will give you
+fifty cents.'
+
+'I'd like it first-rate,' Harold said, his face brightening at the
+thought of earning fifty cents and seeing the show at the same time.
+
+Half-dollars were not very plentiful with Harold, and he was trying to
+save enough to buy his grandmother a pair of spectacles, for he had
+heard her say that she could not thread her needle as readily as she
+once did, and must have glasses as soon as she had the money to spare.
+Harold had seen a pair at the drug-store for one dollar, and, without
+knowing at all whether they would fit his grandmother's eyes or not, had
+asked the druggist to keep them until he had the required amount. Fifty
+cents would just make it, and he promised at once that he would come;
+but in an instant there fell a shadow upon his face as he thought of
+_Tom_, his tormentor, who worried him so much.
+
+'What is it?' Mrs. Tracy asked, as she detected in him a disposition to
+reconsider.
+
+'Will Tom be up in the hall?' Harold asked.
+
+'Of course not,' Mrs. Tracy replied. 'He will be in the parlors until
+ten o'clock, and then he will go to bed. Why do you ask?'
+
+'Because,' Harold answered fearlessly, 'if he was to be there I could
+not come; he chaffs me so and twits me with being poor and living in a
+house his uncle gave us.'
+
+'That is very naughty in him, and I will see that he behaves better in
+future,' said Mrs. Tracy, rather amused than other wise at the boy's
+frankness.
+
+As the mention of the uncle reminded Harold of the telegram, he took it
+from his pocket and handed it to her.
+
+'Mr. Tracy said I was to bring you this. It's from Mr. Arthur, and he's
+coming to-night. I'm so glad, and grandma will be, too!'
+
+If Mrs. Tracy heard the last of Harold's speech she did not heed it, for
+she had caught the words that Arthur was coming that night, and, for a
+moment, she felt giddy and faint, and her hand shook so she could
+scarcely open the telegram.
+
+Arthur had been gone so long and left them in undisputed possession of
+the park, that she had come to feel as if it belonged to them by right,
+and she had grown so into a life of ease and luxury, that to give it up
+now and go back to Langley seemed impossible to her. She could see it
+all so plainly--the old life of obscurity and toil in the little kitchen
+where she had eaten her breakfast on winter mornings so near the stove
+that she could cook her buckwheats on the griddle and transfer them to
+her own and her husband's plates without leaving her seat. She had been
+happy, or comparatively so there, she said to herself, because she knew
+no better. But now she did know better, and she ate her breakfast in an
+oak-paneled dining-room, with a waitress at her elbow, and her
+buckwheats hot from a silver dish instead of the smoking griddle. She
+had a governess for her two boys, Tom and Jack, and a nurse for her
+little Maude, who, in her ambitious heart, she hoped would one day marry
+Dick St. Clair, the young heir of Grassy Spring.
+
+It never occurred to Dolly that they might possibly remain at the park
+if Arthur did come home. She felt sure they could not, for Arthur would
+hardly approve of his brother's stewardship when he came to realize how
+much it had cost him. They would have to leave, and this party she was
+giving would be her first and last at Tracy Park. How she wished she had
+never thought of it, or, having thought of it, that she had omitted from
+the list those who, she knew, would be obnoxious to the foreign brother,
+and who had only been invited for the sake of their political influence,
+which would now be useless, for Frank Tracy as a nobody, with very
+little money to spend, would not run as well, even in his own party, as
+Frank Tracy of Tracy Park, with thousands at his command if he chose to
+take them.
+
+'It is too bad, and I wish we could give up the party,' she said aloud,
+forgetting in her excitement that Harold was still standing there,
+gazing curiously at her. 'You here yet? I thought you had gone!' she
+said, half angrily, as she recovered herself a little and met the boy's
+wondering eyes.
+
+'Yes'm; but you ain't going to give the party up?' he said, afraid of
+losing his half-dollar.
+
+'Of course not. How can I, with all the people invited?' she asked,
+questioningly, and a little less sharply.
+
+'I don't know, unless I get a pony and go round and tell 'em not to
+come,' Harold suggested, thinking he might earn his fifty cents as
+easily that way as any other.
+
+But, much as Mrs. Tracy wished the party had never been thought of, she
+could not now abandon it, and declining the services of Harold and his
+pony, she again bade him go home, with a charge that he should be on
+time in the evening, adding, as she surveyed him critically:
+
+'If you have no clothes suitable, you can wear some of Tom's. You are
+about his size.'
+
+'Thank you; I have my meetin' clothes, and do not want Tom's,' was
+Harold's reply, as he walked away, thinking he would go in rags before
+he would wear anything which belonged to his enemy, Tom Tracy.
+
+The rest of the morning was passed by Mrs. Frank in a most unhappy frame
+of mind, and she was glad when, at an hour earlier than she had reason
+to expect him, her husband came home.
+
+'Well, Dolly,' he said, the moment they were alone, 'this is awfully
+unlucky, the whole business. If Arthur must come home, why couldn't he
+have written in advance, and not take us by surprise? Looks as if he
+meant to spring a trap on us, don't it? And if he did, by Jove, he has
+caught us nicely. It will be somewhat like the prodigal son, who heard
+the sound of music and dancing, only I don't suppose Arthur has spent
+his substance in riotous living, with not over nice people; but there is
+no telling what he has been up to all these years that he has not
+written to us. Perhaps he is married. He said in his telegram, "Send to
+meet _us_." What does that mean, if not a wife?'
+
+'A wife! Oh, Frank!' and with a great gasp Dolly sank down upon the
+lounge near where she was standing, and actually went into the hysterics
+her husband had prophesied.
+
+In reading the telegram she had not noticed the little monosyllable
+'_us_,' which was now affecting her so powerfully. Of course it meant a
+wife and possibly children, and her day was surely over at Tracy Park.
+It was in vain that her husband tried to comfort her, saying that they
+knew nothing positively, except that Arthur was coming home and somebody
+was coming with him; it might be a friend, or, what was more likely, it
+might be a valet; and at all events he was not going to cross Fox River
+till he reached it, when he might find a bridge across it.
+
+But Frank's reasoning did not console his wife, whose hysterical fit was
+succeeded by a racking headache, which by night was almost unbearable.
+Strong coffee, aconite, brandy, and belladonna, were all tried without
+effect. Nothing helped her until she commenced her toilet, when in the
+excitement of dressing she partly forgot her disquietude, and the pain
+in her head grew leas. Still she was conscious of a feeling of
+wretchedness and regret as she sat in her handsome boudoir and felt that
+it might be for the last time--that on the morrow another would be
+mistress where she had reigned so long.
+
+It was known in the house that Arthur was expected, and some one with
+him, but no hint had been given of a wife, and Mrs. Tracy had ordered
+separate rooms prepared for the strangers, who were to arrive on the
+half-past ten train. How she should manage to keep up and appear natural
+until that time Mrs. Tracy did not know, and her face and eyes wore an
+anxious, frightened look, which all her finery could not hide. And still
+she was really very handsome and striking in her dress of peach blow
+satin, and the bare arms which had once been more familiar with
+soap-suds and dishwater than lace and gold bracelets, looked very fair
+and girlish when at last she descended to the drawing-room and stood
+waiting for the first ring which would open the party.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE COTTAGE IN THE LANE.
+
+
+It was called thus because it stood at the end of a broad, grassy avenue
+or lane, which led from the park to the entrance of the grounds of
+Collingwood, whose chimneys and gables were distinctly visible in the
+winter when the trees were stripped of their foliage. At the time when
+Mrs. Crawford took possession of it its color was red, but the storms
+and rains of eleven summers and winters had washed nearly all the red
+away; and as Mrs. Crawford had never had the money to spare for its
+repainting, it would have presented a brown and dingy appearance
+outwardly, but for the luxurious woodbine, which she had trained with so
+much care and skill that it covered nearly three sides of the cottage,
+and made a gorgeous display in the autumn, when the leaves had turned a
+bright scarlet.
+
+Thanks to the thoughtfulness of Arthur Tracy, the cottage was furnished
+comfortably and even prettily when Mrs. Crawford entered it, and it was
+from the same kind friend that her resources mostly had come up to the
+day when, three years after her marriage, Amy Hastings came home to die,
+bringing with her a little two-year-old boy, whom, she called Harold,
+for his father. Just where the father was, if indeed he were living, she
+did not know. He had left her in London six months before, saying he was
+going over to Paris for a few days, and should be back almost before she
+had time to miss him. Just before he left her he said to her, playfully:
+
+'Cheer up, _petite_. I have not been quite as regular in my habits as I
+ought to have been, but London is not the place for a man of my
+tastes--too many temptations for a fellow like me. When I come back we
+will go into the country, where you can have a garden, with flowers and
+chickens, and grow fat and pretty again. You are not much like the girl
+I married. Good-bye.'
+
+He kissed her and the baby, and went whistling down the stairs. She
+never saw him again, and only heard from him once. Then he was in Paris,
+and had decided to go for a week to Pau, where he said they were having
+such fine fox hunts. Weeks went by and he never wrote nor came, and Amy
+would have been utterly destitute and friendless but for Arthur Tracy,
+who, when her need was greatest, went to her, telling her that he had
+never been far from her, but had watched over her vigilantly to see that
+no harm came to her. When her husband went to Paris he knew it through a
+detective, and from the same source knew when he went to Pau, where all
+trace of him had been lost.
+
+'But we are sure to find him again,' he said, encouragingly; 'and
+meantime I shall see that you do not suffer. As an old friend of your
+husband, you will allow me to care for you until he is found.'
+
+And Amy, who had no alternative, accepted his care, and tried to seem
+cheerful and brave while waiting for the husband who never came back.
+
+At last when all hope of seeing him again was gone, Arthur sent her home
+to the cottage in the lane, where her mother received her gladly,
+thanking Heaven that she had her daughter back again. But not for long.
+Poor Amy's heart was broken. She loved her husband devotedly, and his
+cruel desertion of her--for she knew now it was that--hurt her more than
+years of suffering with him could have done. Occasionally she heard from
+Arthur, who was still busy in search of the delinquent, and who always
+sent in his letter a substantial proof of his friendship and generosity.
+
+And so the weeks and months went by; and then, one day, there came a
+letter in the well-known handwriting. But it was Mrs. Crawford who
+opened it and read that Harold Hastings was dead: that Amy was free, and
+that Arthur Tracy, who through all had loved her just as well as when he
+first asked her to be his wife, now put the question again, offering to
+make her the mistress of Tracy Park and surround her with every possible
+comfort.
+
+'Say yes, darling Amy,' he wrote, 'and we may yet be very happy. I will
+be a good husband to you and a father to your child, who shall share my
+fortune as if he were my own. Answer at once, telling me to come, and,
+before you know it I shall be there to claim you for my wife.'
+
+With a low moan, Mrs. Crawford hid her face in her hands and sobbed
+aloud, for the Amy who might have been the honored wife of Arthur Tracy
+lay dead in her coffin; and that day they buried her under the November
+snow, which was falling in great sheets upon the frozen ground. What
+Arthur felt when he heard the news no one ever knew, for he made no sign
+to any one, but at once gave orders to Colvin that a costly monument
+should be placed at her grave, with only this inscription upon it:
+
+  AMY
+
+  _Aged_ 23.
+
+Of course the low-minded people talked, and Mrs. Crawford knew they did;
+but her heart was too full of sorrow to care what was said. Her
+beautiful daughter was dead, and she was alone with the little boy, the
+child Harold, who had inherited his mother's beauty, with all her lovely
+traits of character. Had Mrs. Crawford consented, Arthur would have
+supported him entirely; but she was too proud for that. She would take
+care of him herself as long as possible, she wrote him, but if, when
+Harold was older, he chose to educate him, she would offer no objection.
+
+And there the matter dropped, and Mrs. Crawford struggled on as best she
+could, sometimes going out to do plain sewing, sometimes taking it home,
+sometimes going to people's houses to superintend when they had company,
+and sometimes selling fruit and flowers from the garden attached to the
+cottage. But whatever she did, she was always the same quiet, lady-like
+woman, who commanded the respect of all, and who, poor as she was, was
+held in high esteem by the better class in Shannondale. Grace Atherton's
+carriage and that of Edith St. Claire stood oftener before her door
+than that at Tracy Park; and though the ladies came mostly on business,
+they found themselves lingering after the business was over to talk with
+one who, in everything save money, was their equal.
+
+Harold was his grandmother's idol. For him she toiled and worked,
+feeling more than repaid for all she did by his love and devotion to
+her. And Harold was a noble little fellow, full of manly instincts, and
+always ready to deny himself for the sake of others. That he and his
+grandmother were poor he knew, but he had never felt the effects of
+their poverty, save when Tom Tracy had jeered at him for it, and called
+him a pauper. There had been one square fight between the two boys, in
+which Harold had been the victor, with only a torn jacket, while Tom's
+eye had been black for a week, and Mrs. Tracy had gone to the cottage to
+complain and insist that Harold should be punished. But when she heard
+that Dick St. Claire had assisted in the fray, taking Harold's part, and
+himself dealing Tom the blow which blackened his eye, she changed her
+tactics, for she did not care to quarrel with Mrs. Arthur St. Claire, of
+Grassy Spring.
+
+Harold and Richard St. Claire, or Dick, as he was familiarly called,
+were great friends, and if the latter knew there was a difference
+between himself and the child of poverty he never manifested it, and
+played far oftener with Harold than with Tom, whose domineering
+disposition and rough manners were distasteful to him. That Harold would
+one day be obliged to earn his living, Mrs. Crawford knew, but he was
+still too young for anything of that kind; and when Grace Atherton, or
+Mrs. St. Claire offered him money for the errands he sometimes did for
+them, she steadily refused to let him take it. Had she known of Mrs.
+Tracy's proposition that he should be present at the party as hall-boy,
+she would have declined, for though she could go there herself as an
+employee, she shrank from suffering Harold to do so. That Mrs. Tracy was
+not a lady, she knew, and in her heart there was always a feeling of
+superiority to the woman even while she served her, and she was not as
+sorry, perhaps, as she ought to have been, for the attack of rheumatism
+which would prevent her from going to the park to take charge of the
+kitchen during the evening.
+
+'I am sorry to disappoint her, but I am glad not to be there,' she was
+thinking to herself as she sat in her bright, cheerful kitchen, waiting
+for Harold, when he burst in upon her, exclaiming:
+
+'Oh, grandma, only think! I am invited to the party, and I told her I'd
+go, and I am to be there at half-past seven sharp, and to wear my
+meetin' clothes.'
+
+'Invited to the party! What do you mean? Only grown up people are to be
+there,' Mrs. Crawford said.
+
+'Yes, I know;' replied Harold, 'but I'm not to be with the _grown-ups_.
+I'm to stay in the upper hall and tell 'em where to go.'
+
+'Oh, you are to be a _waiter_,' was Mrs. Crawford's rather contemptuous
+remark, which Harold did not heed in his excitement.
+
+'Yes, I'm to be at the head of the stairs, and somebody else at the
+bottom; and they are to have fiddlin and dancin'; I've never seen
+anybody dance; and ice-cream and cake, with something like plaster all
+over it, and oranges and grapes, and, oh, everything! Dick St. Claire
+told me; he knows; his mother has had parties, and she's going to-night,
+and her gown is crimson velvet, with black and white fur in it like our
+cat, only they don't call it that; and--oh, I forgot--they have had a
+telegraph, and I took it to Mrs. Tracy, who looked mad and almost cried
+when she read it, Mr. Arthur Tracy is coming home to-night.'
+
+Harold had talked so fast that his grandmother could hardly follow him,
+but she understood what he said last, and started as if he had struck
+her a blow.
+
+'Arthur Tracy! Coming home to-night!' she exclaimed. 'Oh, I am so glad,
+so glad.'
+
+'But Mrs. Tracy did not seem to be, and I guess she wanted to stop the
+party,' Harold said, repeating as nearly as he could what had passed
+between him and the lady.
+
+Harold was full of the party to which he believed he had been invited,
+and when in the afternoon Dick St. Claire came to the cottage to play
+with him, he felt a kind of patronizing pity for his friend who was not
+to share his honor.
+
+'Perhaps mother will let me come over and help you,' Dick said, 'I know
+how they do it. You mustn't talk to the people as they come up the
+stairs, nor even say good-evening, only;
+
+'"Ladies will please walk this way, and gentlemen that!"
+
+And Dick went through with a pantomime performance for the benefit of
+Harold, who, when the drill was over, felt himself competent to receive
+the Queen's guests at the head of the great staircase in Windsor Castle.
+
+'Yes, I know,' he said, '"Ladies this way, and gentlemen that;" but when
+am I to go down and see the dancing and get some ice-cream?'
+
+On this point Dick was doubtful. He did not believe, he said, that
+waiters ever went down to see the dancing, or to get ice cream, until
+the party was over, and then they ate it in the kitchen, if there was
+any left.
+
+This was not a cheerful outlook for Harold, whose thoughts were more
+intent upon cream and dancing than upon showing the people where to go,
+and it was also the second time the word waiter had been used in
+connection with what he was expected to do. But Harold was too young to
+understand that he was not of the party itself. Later on it would come
+to him fast enough, that he was only a part of the machinery which moved
+the social engine. Now, he felt like the engine itself, and long before
+six o'clock he was dressed, and waiting anxiously for his grandmother's
+permission to start.'
+
+'I'll tell you all about it,' he said to her. 'What they do, and what
+they say, and what they wear, and if I can, I'll speak to Mr. Arthur
+Tracy and thank him for mother's grave-stone.'
+
+By seven o'clock he was on his way to the park, walking rapidly, and
+occasionally saying aloud with a gesture of his hand to the right and
+the left, and a bow almost to the ground.
+
+'Ladies this way,' and 'gentlemen that.'
+
+When he reached the house the gas-jets had just been turned up, and
+every window was ablaze with light from the attic to the basement.
+
+'My eye! ain't it swell!' Harold said to himself, as he stood a moment,
+looking at the brilliantly lighted rooms. 'Don't I wish I was rich and
+could burn all that gas, and maybe I shall be. Grandma says Mr. Arthur
+Tracy was once a poor boy like me; only he had an uncle and I haven't.
+I've got do earn my money, and I mean to, and sometimes, maybe, I'll
+have a house us big as this, and just such a party, with a boy up stairs
+to tell 'em where to go. I wonder now if I'm expected to go into the
+kitchen door. Of course not, I've got on my Sunday clothes, and am
+invited to the party. I shall ring,'
+
+And he did ring--a sharp, loud ring, which made Mrs. Tracy, who had not
+yet left her room, start nervously as she wondered who had come so
+early.
+
+'Old Peterkin, of course. Those whom you care for least always come
+first.'
+
+Peering over the banister Tom Tracy saw Harold when the door was opened,
+and screaming to his mother at the top of his voice, 'It ain't old
+Peterkin, mother; it's Hall Hastings, come to the front door,' he ran
+down the stairs, and confronting the intruder just as he was crossing
+the threshold, exclaimed:
+
+'Go 'long; go back. You hain't no business ringin' the bell as if you
+was a gentleman. Go to the kitchen door with the other servants!'
+
+With a thrust of the hand he pushed Harold back and was about to shut
+the door upon him when, with a quick, dextrous movement, Harold darted
+past him into the hall, saying, as he did so:
+
+'Darn you, Tom Tracy, I won't go to the back kitchen door, and I'm not a
+servant, and if you call me so again I'll lick you!'
+
+How the matter would have ended is doubtful, if Mrs. Tracy had not
+called from the head of the stairs:
+
+'Thomas! Thomas Tracy! I am ashamed of you! Come to me this minute! And
+you, boy, go to the kitchen; or, no--now you are here, come up stairs,
+and I'll tell you what you are to do.'
+
+Her directions were much like those of Dick St. Claire, except that she
+laid more stress upon the fact that he was not to speak to any one
+familiarly, but was to be in all respects a machine. Just what she meant
+by that Harold did not know; but he hung his cap on a bracket, and
+taking his place where she told him to stand, watched her admiringly as
+she went down the staircase, with her peach-blow satin trailing behind
+her, and followed, by her husband, who looked and felt anxious and ill
+at ease.
+
+Tom had disappeared, but his younger brother, Jack, who was wholly
+unlike him, came to Harold's side, and began telling him what quantities
+of good things there were in the dining-room and pantry, and that his
+Uncle Arthur was coming home that night, and his mother was so glad, she
+cried; then, with a spring he mounted upon the banister of the long
+staircase and slipped swiftly to the bottom. Ascending the stairs almost
+as quickly as he had gone down, he bade Harold try it with him.
+
+'It's such fun! and mother won't care. I've done it forty times,' he
+said, as Harold demurred; and then, as the temptation became too strong
+to be resisted, two boys instead of one rode down the banister and
+landed in the lower hall, and two pairs of little legs ran nimbly up the
+stairs just as the door opened and admitted the first arrival.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE PARTY.
+
+
+The invitations had been for half-past seven, and precisely at that hour
+Peterkin arrived, magnificent in his swallow-tail and white shirt front,
+where an enormous diamond shone conspicuously. With him came the second
+Mrs. Peterkin, whose name was Mary Jane, but whom her husband always
+called _May_ Jane. She was a frail, pale faced little woman, and had
+once been Grace Atherton's maid, but had married Peterkin for his money.
+This was her first appearance at a grand party, and in her excitement
+and timidity she did not hear Harold's thrice repeated words, 'Ladies go
+that way,' but followed her husband into the gentlemen's dressing-room,
+where she deposited her wraps, and then, shaking in every limb,
+descended to the drawing-room, where Peterkin's boisterous laugh was
+soon heard, as he slapped his host on the shoulder, and said:
+
+'You see, we are here on time, though May Jane said it was too early.
+But I s'posed half-past seven meant half-past seven and then I wanted a
+little time to talk up the ropes with you. We are going to run you in,
+you bet!' and again his coarse laugh thrilled every nerve in Mrs.
+Tracy's body, and she longed for fresh arrivals to help quiet this
+vulgar man.
+
+Soon they began to come by twos, and threes, and sixes, and Harold was
+kept busy with his 'Ladies this way, and gentlemen that.'
+
+After Mrs. Peterkin had gone down stairs, leaving her wraps in the
+gentlemen's rooms, Harold, who knew they did not belong there, had
+carried them to the ladies' room and deposited them upon the bed, just
+as the girl who was to be in attendance appeared at her post, asked him
+sharply why he was in there rummaging the ladies' things.
+
+'I'm not rummaging. They are Mrs. Peterkin's. She left them in the other
+room, and I brought them here,' Harold said, as he returned to the hall,
+never dreaming that this little circumstance, trivial as it seemed,
+would be one of the links in the chain of evidence which must for a time
+overshadow him so darkly.
+
+Now, he was eager and excited, and interested in watching the people as
+they came up the stairs and went down again. With the quick instinct of
+a bright, intelligent boy, he decided who was accustomed to society and
+who was not, and leaning over the banister when not on duty, watched
+them when they entered the drawing-room and were received by Mr. and
+Mrs. Tracy. Unconsciously he began to imitate them, bowing when they
+bowed, and saying softly to himself:
+
+'Oh, how do you do? Good evening. Happy to see you. Pleasant to-night.
+Walk in. Ye-as!'
+
+This was the monosyllable with which he finished every sentence, and was
+the affirmation to the thought in his mind that he, too, would some day
+go down those stairs and into those parlors as a guest, while some other
+boy in the upper hall bade the ladies go this way and the gentlemen
+that.
+
+It was after nine when Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire arrived, with Squire
+Harrington, from Collingwood. Harold had been looking for them, anxious
+to see the crimson satin trimmed with ermine, of which Dick had told
+him. Many of the guests he had mentally criticised unsparingly, but Mrs.
+St. Claire, he knew, was genuine, and his face beamed, when in passing
+him, she smiled upon him with her sweet, gracious manner, and said,
+pleasantly:
+
+'Good evening, Harold. I knew you were to be here. Dick told me, and he
+wanted to come and assist you, but I thought he'd better stay home with
+Nina.'
+
+Up to this time no one had spoken to Harold, and he had spoken to no one
+except to tell them where to go, but had, as far as possible, followed
+Mrs. Tracy's injunction to be a machine. But the machine was getting a
+little tired. It was hard work to stand for two hours or more, and Mrs.
+Tracy had impressed it upon him that he was not to sit down. But when
+Mrs. St. Claire came from the dressing-room and stood before him a
+moment in her crimson satin and pearls, he forgot his weariness and
+forgot that he was not to talk, and said to her, involuntarily:
+
+'Oh, Mrs. St. Claire, how handsome you look! Handsomer than anybody yet,
+and different, too, somehow.'
+
+Edith knew the compliment was genuine, and she replied:
+
+'Thank you, Harold,' then, laying her hand on the boy's head and parting
+his soft, brown hair, she said, as she noticed a look of fatigue in his
+eyes, 'are you not tired, standing so long? Why don't you bring a chair
+from one of the rooms and sit when you can?'
+
+'She told me to stand,' Harold replied, nodding toward the parlors, from
+which a strain of music then issued.
+
+The dancing had commenced, and Harold's feet and hands beat time to the
+lively strains of the piano and violin, until he could contain himself
+no longer. The dancing he must see at all hazards and know what it was
+like, and when the last guests came up the stairs there was no hall boy
+there to tell them, 'Ladies this way, gentlemen that,' for Harold was in
+the thickest of the crowd, standing on a chair so as to look over the
+heads of those in front of him and see the dancers. But, alas, for poor
+Harold! He was soon discovered by Mrs. Tracy, who, asking him if he did
+not know his place better than that, ordered him back to his post, where
+he was told to stay until the party was over.
+
+Wholly unconscious of the nature of his offence, but very sorry that he
+had offended, Harold went up the stairs, wondering why he could not see
+the dancing, and how long the party would last. His head was beginning
+to ache with the glare and gas; his little legs were tired, and he was
+growing sleepy. Surely he might sit down now, particularly as Mrs. St.
+Claire had suggested it, and bringing himself a chair from one of the
+rooms he sat down in a corner of the hall and was soon in a sound sleep,
+from which, however, he was roused by the sound of Mr. Tracy's voice, as
+he came up the stairs, followed by a tall, distinguished-looking man,
+who wore a Spanish cloak wrapped gracefully around him, and a large,
+broad-brimmed hat drawn down so closely, as to hide his features from
+view.
+
+As he reached the upper landing he raised his head, and Harold, who was
+now wide awake and standing up, caught a glimpse of a thin, pale face
+and a pair of keen, black eyes, which seemed for an instant to take
+everything in; than the head was dropped, and the two men disappeared in
+a room at the far end of the hall.
+
+'I'll bet that's Mr. Arthur. How grand he is! looks just like a pirate
+in that cloak and hat,' was Harold's mental comment.
+
+Before he had time for further thought, Frank Tracy came from the room
+and hurried down the stairs to rejoin his guests.
+
+Five minutes later and the door at the end of the long hall which
+communicated with the back staircase and the rear of the house, opened,
+and a man whom Harold recognized as the expressman from the station
+appeared with a huge trunk on his shoulder and a large valise in his
+hand. These he deposited in the stranger's room and then went back for
+more, until four had been carried in. But when he came with the fifth
+and largest of all, a hand, white and delicate as a woman's, was thrust
+from the door-way with an imperative gesture, and a voice with a decided
+foreign accent exclaimed:
+
+'For heaven's sake, don't bring any more boxes in here. Why, I am
+positively stumbling over them now. Surely there must be some place in
+the house for my luggage besides my private apartment.'
+
+Then the door was shut with a bang, and Harold heard the sliding of the
+bolt as Arthur Tracy fastened himself in his room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ARTHUR.
+
+
+All the time that Frank Tracy had been receiving his guests and trying
+to seem happy and at his ease, his thoughts had been dwelling upon his
+brother's telegram and the ominous words, 'Send some one to meet us.'
+How slowly the minutes dragged until it was ten o'clock, and he knew
+that John had started for the station to meet the dreaded '_us_.' He had
+told everybody that he was expecting his long-absent brother, and had
+tried to seem glad on account of it.
+
+'You and he were great friends, I believe,' he said to Squire
+Harrington.
+
+'Yes, we were friends,' the latter replied; 'but when he lived here my
+health was such that I did not mingle much in society. I met him,
+however, in Paris four years ago, and found him very companionable and
+quite Europeanized in his manner and tastes. He spoke French or German
+altogether, and might easily have passed for a foreigner. I shall be
+glad to see him.'
+
+'And so shall I,' chimed in Peterkin, whose voice was like a trumpet and
+could be heard everywhere. 'A first-rate chap, though we didn't use to
+hitch very well together. He was all-fired big feelin', and them days
+Peterkin was nowhere; but circumstances alter cases. He'll be glad to
+see me now, no doubt;' and with the most satisfied air the half
+millionaire put his hand as if by accident to his immense diamond pin,
+and pulling down his swallow-tail, walked away.
+
+Frank saw the faint smile of contempt which showed itself in Squire
+Harrington's face, and his own grew red with shame, but paled almost
+instantly as the outer door was opened by some one who did not seem to
+think it necessary to ring; and a stranger, in Spanish cloak and
+broad-brimmed hat, stepped into the hall.
+
+Arthur had come, and was _alone_. The train had been on time, and at
+just half-past ten the long line of cars stopped before the Shannondale
+station, where John, the coachman from Tracy Park, was waiting. The
+night was dark, but by the light from the engine and the office John saw
+the foreign-looking stranger, who stepped upon the platform, and felt
+sure it was his man. But there was no one with him, though it seemed as
+if he were expecting some one to follow him from the car as he stood for
+a moment waiting. Then, as the train moved on, he turned with a puzzled
+look upon his face to meet John, who said to him, respectfully:
+
+'Are you Mr. Arthur Tracy?'
+
+'Yes; who are you?' was the not very cordial response.
+
+'Mr. Frank Tracy sent me from the park to fetch you,' John replied. 'I
+think he expected some one with you. Are you alone?'
+
+'Yes--no, no!' and Arthur's voice indicated growing alarm and uneasiness
+as he looked rapidly around him, 'Where is she? Didn't you see her? She
+was with me all the way. Surely she got off when I did. Where can she
+have gone?'
+
+He was greatly excited, and kept peering through the darkness as he
+talked; while John, a good deal puzzled, looked curiously at him, as if
+uncertain whether he were in his right mind or not.
+
+'Was there some one with you in the car?' he asked.
+
+'Yes, in the car, and in New York, and on the ship. She was with me all
+the way,' Mr. Tracy replied. 'It is strange where she is now. Did no one
+alight from the train when I did?'
+
+'No one,' John answered, more puzzled than ever.... 'I was looking for
+you, and there was no one else. She may have fallen asleep and been
+carried by.'
+
+'Yes, probably that is it,' Mr. Tracy said, more cheerfully, 'she was
+asleep and carried by. She will come back to-morrow.'
+
+He seemed quite content with this solution of the mystery, and began to
+talk of his luggage, which lay upon the platform--a pile so immense that
+John looked at it in some alarm, knowing that the carriage could never
+take it all.
+
+'Eight trunks, two portmanteaus, and a hat-box!' he said, aloud,
+counting the pieces.
+
+'Yes, and a nice sum those rascally agents in New York made me pay for
+having them come with me,' Arthur rejoined. 'They weighed them all, and
+charged me a little fortune. I might as well have sent them by express;
+but I wanted them with me, and here they are. What will you do with
+them? This is hers,' and he designated a black trunk or box, longer and
+larger than two ordinary trunks ought to be.
+
+'I can take one of them with the box and portmanteau, and the expressman
+will take the rest. He is here. Hallo, Brown,' John said, calling to a
+man in the distance, who came forward, and, on learning what was wanted,
+begun piling the trunks into his wagon, while Arthur followed John, to
+the carriage, which he entered, and, sinking into a seat, pulled his
+broad-brimmed hat over his face and eyes, and sat as motionless as if he
+had been a stone.
+
+For a moment John stood looking at him, wondering what manner of man he
+was, and thinking, too, of the woman who, he said, had been with him in
+the train, and who should have alighted with him. At last, remembering
+suddenly a message his master had given him, he began:
+
+'If you please, sir, Mr. Tracy told me to tell you he was very sorry
+that he could not come himself to meet you. If he had known that you
+were coming sooner, he would have done different; but he did not get
+your telegram till this morning, and then it was too late to stop it. We
+are having a great break-down to-night.'
+
+During the first of these remarks Arthur had given no sign that he
+heard, but when John spoke of a break-down, he lifted his head quickly,
+and the great black eyes, which Harold noticed later as peculiar,
+flashed a look of inquiry upon John, as he said:
+
+'Break-down? What is that!'
+
+'A party--a smasher! Mr. Tracy is running for Congress.' was John's
+reply.
+
+And then over the thin face there crept a ghost of a smile, which, faint
+as it was, changed the expression wonderfully.
+
+'Oh, a party!' he said. 'Well, I will be a guest, too. I have my
+dress-suit in some of those trunks. Frank is going to Congress, is he?
+That's a good joke! Drive on. What are you standing there for?'
+
+The carriage door was shut, and, mounting the box, John drove as rapidly
+toward Tracy Park as the darkness of the night would admit, while the
+passenger inside sat with his hat over his eyes, and his chin almost
+touching his breast, as if absorbed in thought, or else not thinking at
+all. Once, however, he spoke to himself, and said:
+
+'Poor little Gretchen! I wonder how I could have forgotten and left her
+in the train. What will she do alone in a strange place? But perhaps
+Heaven will take care of her. She always said so. I wish I had her faith
+and could believe as she does. Poor little Gretchen!'
+
+They had turned into the park by this time, and very soon draw up before
+the house, from every window of which lights were flashing, while the
+sounds of music and dancing could be distinctly heard.
+
+Something like Frank's idea came into Arthur's mind at the sight.
+
+'It makes me think of the return of the prodigal, only I have not wasted
+my substance and my father does not come to meet me,' he said, as he
+descended from the carriage and went up the broad steps to the piazza,
+on which a few young people were walking, unmindful of the chill night
+air.
+
+'I need not ring at my own house,' Arthur thought, as he opened the door
+and stepped into the hall; and thus it was that the first intimation
+which Frank had of his arrival was when he saw him standing in the midst
+of a crowd of people, who were gazing curiously at him.
+
+'Arthur!' he exclaimed, rushing forward and taking his brother's hand.
+'Welcome home again! I did not hear the carriage, though I was listening
+for it. I am so glad to see you! Come with me to your room;' and he led
+the way up stairs to the apartment prepared for the stranger.
+
+He had seen at a glance that Arthur was alone, unless, indeed, he had
+brought a servant who had gone to the side door; and thus relieved from
+a load of anxiety, he was very cordial in his manner, and began at once
+to make excuses for the party, repeating in substance what John had
+already said.
+
+'Yes, I know; that fellow who drove me here told me,' Arthur said,
+throwing off his coat and hat, and beginning to lave his face, and neck,
+and hands in the cold water which he turned into the bowl until it was
+full to the brim, and splashed over the sides as he dashed it upon
+himself.
+
+All this time Frank had not seen his face distinctly, nor did he have
+an opportunity to do so until the ablutions were ended and Arthur had
+rubbed himself with, not one towel, but two, until it seemed as if he
+must have taken off the skin in places. Then he turned, and running his
+fingers through his luxuriant hair, which had a habit of curling around
+his forehead as in his boyhood, looked full at his brother, who saw that
+he was very pale and thin, and that his eyes were unnaturally large and
+bright, while there was about him an indescribable something which
+puzzled Frank a little. It was not altogether the air of foreign travel
+and cultivation which was so perceptible, but a something else--a
+restlessness and nervousness of speech and manner as he moved about the
+room, walking rapidly and gesticulating as he walked.
+
+'You are looking thin and tired. Are you not well?' Frank asked.
+
+'Oh, yes, perfectly well,' Arthur replied: 'only this infernal heat in
+my blood, which keeps me up to fever pitch all the time. I shall have to
+bathe my face again,' and, turning a second time to the bowl, he began
+to throw water over his face and hands as he had done before.
+
+'I'd like a bath in ice water,' he said, as he began drying himself with
+a fresh towel. 'If I remember right, there is no bath-room on this
+floor, but I can soon have one built. I intend to throw down the wall
+between this room and the next, and perhaps the next, so as to have a
+suite.'
+
+He was asserting the ownership at once, and Frank had nothing to say,
+for his brother was master there, and had a right to tear the house down
+if he chose. The second washing must have cooled him, for there came a
+change in his manner, and he moved more slowly and spoke with greater
+deliberation, as he asked some questions about the people below.
+
+'Will you come down by-and-bye,' Frank said, after having made some
+explanations with regard to his guests.
+
+'No, you will have to excuse me,' Arthur replied. 'I am too tired to
+encounter old acquaintances or make new. I do not believe I could stand
+old Peterkin, who you say is a millionaire. I suppose you want his
+influence; your coachman told me you were running for Congress,' and
+Arthur laughed the old merry musical laugh which Frank remembered so
+well: then, suddenly changing his tune, he said: 'When does the next
+train from the East pass the station?'
+
+Frank told him at seven the next morning, and he continued:
+
+'Please send the carriage to meet it. Gretchen will probably be there.
+She was in the train with me, and should have gotten out when I did, but
+she must have been asleep and carried by.'
+
+'Gr-gr-gretchen! Who is she?' Frank stammered, while the cold sweat
+began to run down his back.
+
+The 'us' in the telegram did mean something, and mischief, too, to his
+interests, he felt intuitively.
+
+Instantly into Arthur's eyes there stole a look of cunning, and a
+peculiar smile played round his mouth as he replied:
+
+'She is Gretchen. See that the carriage goes for her, will you?'
+
+His voice and manner indicated that he wished the conference ended, and
+with a great sinking at his heart Frank left the room and returned to
+his guests and his wife, who had not seen the stranger when he entered
+the hall, and thus did not know of Arthur's arrival until her husband
+rejoined her.
+
+'He has come,' he whispered to her, while she whispered back:
+
+'Is he alone?'
+
+'Yes, but somebody is coming to-morrow; I do not know who; Gretchen, he
+calls her,' was Frank's reply.
+
+'Gretchen!' Mrs. Tracy repeated, in a trembling voice. 'Who is she?'
+
+'I don't know. He merely said she was Gretchen; his daughter, perhaps,'
+was Frank's answer, which sent the color from his wife's cheeks, and
+made her so faint and sick that she would have given much to be alone
+and think over this evil coming upon her the next day in the shape of
+the mysterious Gretchen.
+
+Meantime when left to himself, Arthur changed his mind with regard to
+going down into the parlors to see his brother's guests, and, unlocking
+the trunk which held his own wardrobe he took out an evening suit fresh
+from the hands of a London tailor, and, arraying himself in it, stood
+for a moment before the glass to see the effect. Everything was
+faultless, from his neck-tie to his boots; and, opening the door, he
+went out into the hall, which was empty, except for Harold, who was
+sitting near the stairs, half asleep again. Most of the guests were in
+the supper-room, but a few of the younger portion were dancing, and the
+strains of music were heard with great distinctness in the upper hall.
+
+'Ugh!' Arthur said, with a shiver, as he stopped a moment to listen,
+while his quick eye took in every detail of the furniture and its
+arrangement in the hall. 'That violinist ought to be hung--the pianist,
+too! Don't they know what horrid discord they are making? It brings that
+heat back. I believe, upon my soul, I shall have to bathe my face
+again.'
+
+Suiting the action to the word, he went back and washed his face for the
+third time; then returning to the hall, he advanced toward Harold, who
+was now wide awake and stood up to meet him. As Arthur met the
+clear-brown eyes fixed so curiously upon him, he stopped suddenly, and
+put his hand to his head as if trying to recall something; then going a
+step or two nearer to Harold, he said:
+
+'Well, my little boy, what are you doing up here?'
+
+'Telling the folks which way to go,' was Harold's answer.
+
+'Who are you?' Arthur continued. 'What is your name?'
+
+'Harold Hastings,' was the reply; and instantly there came over the
+white, thin face, and into the large, bright eyes, an expression which
+made the boy stand back a little as the tall man came up to him and,
+laying a hand on his shoulder, said, excitedly:
+
+'Harold Hastings! He was once my friend, or, I thought he was; but I
+hate him now. And he was your father, and Amy Crawford was your mother?
+_N'est ce pas?_ Answer me!'
+
+'Yes, sir--yes, sir; but I don't know what you mean by "_na-se par_,"'
+Harold said, in a frightened voice; and Arthur continued, as he
+tightened his grasp on his shoulder:
+
+'Don't you know you ought to have been my son, instead of his?'
+
+'Yes, sir--yes, sir; I'll never do so again,' Harold stammered, too much
+alarmed now to know what he was saying, or of what he was accused.
+
+'No, you never will do it again. I hated your father, and I hate you,
+and I am going to throw you over the stair railing!' Arthur said, and
+seizing Harold's coat-collar, he swung him over the banister as if he
+had been a feather, while the boy struggled and fought, and held onto
+the rails, until help appeared in the person of Frank Tracy, who came
+swiftly up the stairs, demanding the cause of what he saw.
+
+He had been standing near the drawing-room door, and had caught the
+sound of his brother's voice and Harold's as if in altercation. Excusing
+himself from those around him, he hastened to the scene of action in
+time to save Harold from a broken limb, if not a broken neck.
+
+'What is it? What have you been doing?' he asked the boy, who replied,
+amid his tears:
+
+'I hain't been doing anything, only minding my business, and he came and
+asked me who I was, and when I told him, he was going to chuck me over
+the railing--darn him! I wish I was big; I'd lick him!'
+
+Harold's cheeks were flushed, and the great tears glittered in his eyes,
+as he stood up, brave and defiant, and resentful of the injustice done
+him.
+
+'Are you mad, Arthur?' Frank said.
+
+And whether it was the tone of his voice, or the words he uttered,
+something produced a wonderful effect upon his brother, whose mood
+changed at once, and who advanced toward Harold with outstretched hand,
+saying to him:
+
+'Forgive me, my little man. I think I must have been mad for the
+instant; there is such a heat in my head, and the crash of that music
+almost drives me wild. Shall it be peace between us, my boy?'
+
+It was next to impossible to resist the influence of Arthur Tracy's
+smile, and Harold took the offered hand and said, between a sob and a
+laugh:
+
+'I don't know now why you wanted to throw me down stairs.'
+
+'Nor I, and I will make it up to you some time,' was Arthur's reply, as
+he took his brother's arm and said: 'Now introduce me to your guests.'
+
+The moment the gentlemen disappeared from view Harold's resolution was
+taken. He was of no use there any longer, as he could see. It was nearly
+midnight. He was very tired and sleepy, and his head was aching
+terribly. He could not see the dancing. He had had nothing to eat; he
+had stood until his legs were ready to drop off, and to crown all a
+lunatic had tried to throw him over the banister.
+
+'I won't stay here another minute,' he said.
+
+And leaving the hall by the rear entrance, and slipping down a back
+stairway, he was soon in the open air, and running swiftly through the
+park toward the cottage in the lane.
+
+Meanwhile the two brothers had descended to the drawing-room, where
+Arthur was soon surrounded by his friends and old acquaintances, whom he
+greeted with that cordiality and friendliness of manner which had made
+him so popular with those who knew him best. Every trace of excitement
+had disappeared, and had he been master of ceremonies himself, at whose
+bidding the guests were there, he could not have been more gracious or
+affable. Even old Peterkin, when he came into notice, was treated with a
+consideration which put that worthy man at ease, and set his tongue
+again in motion. At first he had felt a little overawed by Arthur's
+elegant appearance, and had whispered to his neighbor:
+
+'That's a swell, and no mistake. I s'pose that's what you call foreign
+get up. Well, me and ma is goin' to Europe some time, and hang me if I
+don't put on style when I come home. I'd kind of like to speak to the
+feller. I wonder if he remember that I was runnin' a boat when he went
+away?'
+
+If Arthur did remember it he showed no sign when Peterkin at last
+pressed up to him, claiming his attention, as Captain Peterkin, of the
+_'Liza Ann_, the fastest boat on the canal, and by George, the
+all-tiredest meanest, too, I guess, he said: 'but them days is past, and
+the old captain is past with them. I dabbled a little in ile, and if I
+do say it, I could about buy up the whole canal if I wanted to; but I
+ain't an atom proud, and I don't forget the old boatin' days, and I've
+got the old '_Liza Ann_ hauled up inter my back yard as a relict. The
+children use it for a play-house, but to me it is a--a--what do you call
+it? a--gol darn it, what is it?'
+
+'Souvenir,' suggested Arthur, vastly amused at this tirade, which had
+assumed the form of a speech, and drawn a crowd around him.
+
+'Wall, yes; I s'pose that's it, though 'taint exactly what I was trying
+to think of,' he said. It's a reminder, and keeps down my pride, for
+when I get to feelin' pretty big, after hearin' myself pointed out as
+Peterkin the millionaire, I go out to that old boat in the back yard,
+and says I, '_'Liza Ann_,' says I, 'you and me has took many a trip up
+and down the canal, with about the wust crew, and the wust hosses, and
+the wust boys that was ever created, and though you've got a new coat of
+paint onto you, and can set still all day and do nothing while I can
+wear the finest broadcloth and set still, too, it won't do for us to
+forget the pit from which we was dug, and I don't forget it neither, no
+more than I forgit favors shown when I was not fust cut. You, sir, rode
+on the _'Liza Ann_ with that crony of yours--Hastings was his name--and
+you paid me han'some, though I didn't ask nothin'; and ther's your
+brother--Frank, I call him. I don't forgit that he used to speak to me
+civil when I was nobody, and now, though I'm a Dimocrat, as everybody
+knows me knows, and everybody most does know me, for Shannondale allus
+was my native town, I'm goin' to run him into Congress, if it takes my
+bottom dollar, and anybody, Republican or Dimocrat; who don't vote him
+ain't my friend, and must expect to feel the full heft of my--my--'
+
+'Powerful disapprobation,' Arthur said, softly, and Peterkin continued:
+
+'Thank you, sir, that's the word--powerful, sir, powerful, powerful,'
+and he glowered threateningly at two or three young men in white kids
+and high shirt collars, who were known to prefer the opposing candidate.
+
+Peterkin had finished his harrangue, and was wiping his wet face with
+his handkerchief, when Arthur, who had listened to him with well-bred
+attention, said:
+
+'I thank you, Captain Peterkin, for your interest in my brother, who, if
+he succeeds, will, I am sure, owe his success to your influence, and be
+grateful in proportion. Perhaps you have a bill you would like him to
+bring before the House?'
+
+'No,' Peterkin said, with a shake of the head. 'My Bill is a little
+shaver, eight or nine years old; too young to go from home, but'--and he
+lowered his voice: a little--'I don't mind saying that if there should
+be a chance, I'd like the post-office fust-rate. It would be a kind of
+hist, you know, to see my name in print, Captain Joseph Peterkin, P.M.'
+
+Here the conversation ended, and the aspirant for the post-office, who
+had tired himself out, stepped aside and gave place to others who were
+anxious to renew their acquaintance with Arthur. It was between one and
+two o'clock in the morning when the party finally broke up, and, as the
+Peterkins had been the first to arrive, so they were the last to leave,
+and Mrs. Peterkin found herself again in the gentlemen's dressing-room,
+looking after her wraps. But they were not there, and after a vain and
+anxious search she said to her husband:
+
+'Joe, somebody has stole my things, and 'twas my Indian shawl, too, and
+gold-headed pin, with the little diamond.'
+
+Mrs. Tracy was at once summoned to the scene, and the missing wraps were
+found in the ladies' room, where Harold had carried them, but the
+gold-headed shawl-pin was gone and could not be found.
+
+Lucy, the girl in attendance, said, when questioned, that she knew
+nothing of the pin or Mrs. Peterkin's wraps either, except that on first
+going up to the room after the lady's arrival, she found Harold Hastings
+fumbling them over, and that she sent him out with a sharp reprimand.
+Harold was then looked for and could not be found, for he had been at
+home and in bed for a good two hours. Clearly, then, he knew something
+of the pin; and Peterkin and his wife said good-night, resolving to see
+the boy the first thing in the morning, and demand their property.
+
+When the Peterkins were gone, Arthur started at once for his room, but
+stopped at the foot of the stairs and said to his brother:
+
+'Don't forget to have the carriage at the station at seven o'clock.
+Gretchen is sure to be there.'
+
+'All right,' was Frank's reply.
+
+While Mrs. Tracy asked:
+
+'Who is Gretchen?'
+
+If Arthur heard her he made no reply, but kept on up the stairs to his
+room, where they heard him for a long time walking about, opening and
+shutting windows, locking and unlocking trunks, and occasionally
+splashing water over his face and hands.
+
+'Your brother is a very elegant-looking man,' Mrs. Tracy said to her
+husband as she was preparing to retire. 'Quite like a foreigner, but how
+bright his eyes are, and they look at you sometimes as if they would
+see through you and know what you were thinking. They almost make me
+afraid of him.'
+
+Frank made no direct reply. In his heart there was an undefined fear
+which he then could not put into words, and with the remark that he was
+very tired, he stepped into bed, and was just falling into a quiet sleep
+when there came a knock upon his door loud enough, it seemed to him, to
+waken the dead. Starting up he demanded who was there and what was
+wanted.
+
+'It is I,' Arthur said. 'I thought I smelled gas, and I have been
+hunting round for it. There is nothing worse to breathe than gas,
+whether from the furnace, the pipes, or the drain. I hope that is all
+right.'
+
+'Yes,' Frank answered, a little crossly. 'Had a new one put in two weeks
+ago.'
+
+'If there's gas in the main sewer it will come up just the same, and I
+am sure I smell it,' Arthur said. 'I think I shall have all the
+waste-pipes which connect with the drain cut off. Good-night. Am sorry I
+disturbed you.'
+
+They heard him as he went across the hall to his room, and Frank was
+settling down again to sleep when there came a second knock, and Arthur
+said, in a whisper:
+
+'I hope I do not trouble you, but I have decided to go myself to the
+station to meet Gretchen. She is very timid, and does not speak much
+English. Good-night once more, and pleasant dreams.'
+
+To sleep now was impossible, and both husband and wife turned restlessly
+on their pillows, Frank wondering what ailed his brother, and Dolly
+wondering who Gretchen was and how her coming would affect them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+WHO IS GRETCHEN?
+
+
+This was the question which Mr. and Mrs. Tracy asked of themselves and
+each other many times during the hours which intervened between their
+retiring and rising. But speculate as they might they could reach no
+satisfactory conclusion, and were obliged to wait for what the morning
+and the train might bring. The party had been a success, and Frank felt
+that his election to Congress was almost certain; but of what avail
+would all this be if he lost his foothold at Tracy Park, as he was sure
+to do if a woman appeared upon the scene. Both he and his wife had
+outgrown the life of eleven years ago, and could not go back to it
+without a struggle, and it is not strange if both wished that the
+troublesome brother had remained abroad instead of coming home so
+suddenly and disturbing all their plans. They heard him moving in his
+room before the clock struck six, and knew he was getting himself in
+readiness to meet the dreaded Gretchen. Then, long before the carriage
+came round they heard him in the hall opening the windows and admitting
+a gust of wind which blew their door open, and when Frank arose to shut
+it he saw the top of Arthur's broad-brimmed hat disappearing down the
+stairs.
+
+'I believe he is going to walk to the station; he certainly is crazy,'
+Frank said to his wife, as they dressed themselves and waited with
+feverish impatience for the return of the carriage.
+
+Arthur did walk to the station, which he reached just as the ticket
+agent was unlocking the door, and there, with his Spanish cloak wrapped
+around him, he stalked up and down the long platform for more than an
+hour, for the train was late, and it was nearer eight than seven when it
+finally came in sight.
+
+Standing side by side Arthur and John looked anxiously for some one to
+alight, but nobody appeared and the expression of Arthur's face was
+pitiable as he turned it to John, and said:
+
+'Gretchen did not come. Where do you suppose she is?'
+
+'I am sure I don't know. On the next train, may be,' was John's reply,
+at which Arthur caught eagerly.
+
+'Yes, the next train, most likely. We will come and meet it; and now
+drive home as fast as you can. This disappointment has brought that heat
+to my head, and I must have a bath. But, stop a bit; who is the best
+carpenter in town?'
+
+John told him that Belknap was the best, and Burchard the highest
+priced.
+
+'I'll see them both,' Arthur said. 'Take me to their houses;' and in the
+course of half an hour he had interviewed both Burchard and Belknap,
+and made an appointment with both for the afternoon.
+
+Then he was driven back to Tracy Park, where breakfast had been waiting
+until it was spoiled, and the cook's temper was spoiled, too, and when
+Frank and Dolly met him at the door, both asked in the same breath:
+
+'Where is she?'
+
+'She was not on this train. She will come on the next. We must go and
+meet her,' was Arthur's reply, as he passed up the stairs, while Frank
+and his wife looked wonderingly at each other.
+
+The spoiled breakfast was eaten by Mr. and Mrs. Tracy alone, for the
+children had had theirs and gone to their lessons, and Arthur had said
+that he never took anything in the morning except a cup of coffee and a
+roll, and these he wished sent to his room, together with a time-table.
+
+After breakfast Mrs. Tracy, who was suffering from a sick headache,
+declared her inability to sit up a moment longer and returned to her
+bed, leaving her husband and the servants to bring what order they could
+out of the confusion reigning everywhere, and nowhere to a greater
+extent than in Arthur's room, or rather the rooms which he had
+appropriated to himself, and into which he had had all his numerous
+boxes and trunks brought, so that he could open them at his leisure.
+There were more coming by express, he said, boxes which came through the
+custom-house, for he had brought many valuable things, such as pictures,
+and statuary, and rugs and inlaid tables and chinas, with which to adorn
+his home.
+
+The house, which was very large, had a wing on either side, while the
+main building was divided by a wide hall, with three rooms on each side,
+the middle one being a little smaller than the other two, with each of
+which it communicated by a door. And it was into this middle room on the
+second floor Arthur had been put, and which he found quite too small for
+his use. So he ordered both the doors to be opened and took possession
+of the suite, pacing them several times, and then measuring their
+length, and breadth, and height, and the distance between the windows.
+Then he inspected the wing on that side of the house, and, going into
+the yard, looked the building over from all points, occasionally
+marking a few lines on the paper he held in his hand. Before noon every
+room in the house, except the one where Dolly lay sick with a headache
+had been visited and examined minutely, while Frank watched him
+nervously, wondering if he would think they had greatly injured
+anything, or had expended too much money on furniture. But Arthur was
+thinking of none of these things, and found fault with nothing except
+the drain and the gas fixtures, all of which he declared bad, saying
+that the latter must be changed at once, and that ten pounds of copperas
+must be bought immediately and put down the drain, and that quantities
+of chloride of lime and carbolic acid must be placed where there was the
+least danger of vegetable decomposition.
+
+'I am very sensitive to smells, and afraid of them, too, for they breed
+malaria and disease of all kinds,' he said to the cook, whose nose and
+chin both were high in the air, not on account of any obnoxious odor,
+but because of this unreasonable meddling with what she considered her
+own affairs. If things were to go on in this way, she said to the
+house-maid, and if that man was going to poke his nose into drains, and
+gas-pipes, and kerosene lamps, and bowls of sour milk which she might
+have forgotten, she should give notice to quit.
+
+But when, half an hour later, some boxes and trunks which had come by
+express were deposited in the back hall, and Arthur, who was
+superintending them, said to her, as he pointed to a large black trunk,
+'I think this has the dress patterns and shawls I brought for you,
+girls; for though I did not know you personally, I knew that women were
+always pleased with anything from Paris' her feelings underwent a
+radical change, and Arthur was free to smell the drain and the gas
+fixtures as much as he liked.
+
+He was very busy, and though always pleasant, and even familiar at
+times, there was in all he said and did an air of ownership, as if he
+had assumed the mastership. And he had. Everything was his, and he knew
+it, and Frank knew it, too, and gave no sign of rebelling when the reins
+were taken from him by one who seemed to be driving at a break-neck
+speed.
+
+At lunch, while the brothers were together, Arthur announced his
+intentions in part, but not until Frank, who was anxious to get it off
+his mind, said to him:
+
+'By the way, I suppose you will be going to the office this afternoon,
+to see Colvin and look over the books. I believe you will find them
+straight, and hope you will not think I have spent too much, or drawn
+too large a salary. It you do, I will--'
+
+'Nonsense!' was Arthur's reply, with a graceful shrug of his shoulders.
+'Don't bother about that there is money enough for us both. What I
+invested in Europe has trebled itself, and more too, and would make me a
+rich man if I had nothing else. I am always lucky. I played but once at
+Monte Carlo, just before I came home, and won ten thousand dollars,
+which I invested in--But no matter; that is a surprise--something for
+your wife and Gretchen. I have come home to stay. I do not think I am
+quite what I used to be. I was sick all that time when you heard from me
+so seldom, and I am not strong yet. I need quite a rest. I have seen the
+world, and am tired of it, and now I want a house for Gretchen and
+myself, and you too. I expect you to stay with me as long as we pull
+together pleasantly and you do not interfere with my plans. I am going
+to take the three south rooms on the second floor for my own. I shall
+put folding-doors, or rather a wide arch between two of them, making
+them almost like one, and these I shall fit up to suit my own taste. In
+the smaller and middle room, where I slept last night, I shall have a
+large bow window, with shelves for books in the spaces between and
+beneath, and by the sides of the windows. I got the idea in a villa a
+little way out of Florence. Opposite this bow window, on the other side
+of the room, I shall have niches in the wall and corners for statuary,
+with shelves for books above and below. I have some beautiful pieces of
+marble from Florence and Rome. The Venus de Milo, Apollo Belvidere,
+Nydra and Psyche, and Ruth at the Well. But the crowning glory of this
+room will be the upper half of the middle window of the bow. This is to
+be of stained glass, bright but soft colors which harmonize perfectly,
+two rows on the four sides, and in the centre a lovely picture of
+Gretchen, also of cathedral glass, and so like her that it seems to
+speak to me in her soft German tongue. I had it made from a photograph I
+have of her, and it is very natural--the same sad, sweet smile around
+the lips which never said an unkind word to any one--the same bright,
+wavy hair, and eyes of blue, innocent as a child--and Gretchen is little
+more than that. She is only twenty-one--poor little Gretchen!' and,
+leaning back in his chair, Arthur seemed to be lost in recollections of
+the past.
+
+Not pleasant, all of them, it would seem, for there was a moisture in
+his eyes when he at last looked up in response to his brother's
+questioning.
+
+'Who did you say Gretchen was?'
+
+Instantly the expression of the eye changed to one of weariness and
+caution, as Arthur replied:
+
+'I did not say who she was, but you will soon know. I saw by the
+time-table that the train which passes here at eleven does not stop, but
+the three o'clock does, and you will please see that John goes with the
+carriage. I may be occupied with the carpenters, Burchard and Belknap,
+who were coming to talk with me about the changes I purpose to make, and
+which I wish commenced immediately. It is a rule of mine that when I am
+to do a thing, to do it at once. So I shall employ at least twenty men,
+and before Christmas everything will be finished, and I will show you
+rooms worthy of a palace. It is of Gretchen I am thinking, more than of
+myself. Poor little Gretchen!'
+
+Arthur's voice was inexpressibly sad and pitiful as he said 'Poor
+Gretchen,' while his eyes again grew soft and tender, with a far-away
+look in them, as if they were seeing things in the past rather than in
+the future.
+
+There was not a particle of sentiment in Frank's nature, and Gretchen
+was to him an object of dread rather than a romance. So far as he could
+judge, his brother had no intention of routing him; but a woman in the
+field would be different, and he should at once lose his vantage-ground.
+
+'You seem to be very fond of Gretchen,' he said, at last.
+
+'Fond!' Arthur replied, 'I should say I am, though the poor child has
+not much cause to think so. But I am going to atone, and this suite of
+rooms is for her. I mean to make her a very queen, and dress her in
+satin and diamonds every day. She has the diamonds. I sent them to her
+when I wrote to her to join me in Liverpool.'
+
+'And she did join you, I suppose?' Frank said, determined by adroit
+questioning to learn something of the mysterious Gretchen.
+
+'Yes, she joined me,' was the reply.
+
+'Was she very seasick?' Frank continued.
+
+'Not a minute. She sat by me all the time while I lay in my berth, but
+she would not let me hold her hand, and if I tried to touch even her
+hair, she always moved away to the other side of the state-room, where
+she sat looking at me reproachfully with those soft blue eyes of hers.'
+
+'And she was with you at the Brevoort in New York!' Frank said.
+
+'Yes, with me at Brevoort.'
+
+'And in the train?'
+
+'Yes, and in the train.'
+
+'And you left her there?'
+
+'No; she left herself. She did not follow me out. She went on by
+mistake, but is sure to come back this afternoon,' Arthur replied,
+rather excitedly, just as a sharp ring at the bell announced the arrival
+of Burchard and Belknap, the leading carpenters of the town, with whom
+he was closeted for the next two hours, and both of whom he finally
+hired in order to expedite the work he had in hand.
+
+At precisely three o'clock the carriage from Tracy Park drew up before
+the station, awaiting the arrival of the train and Gretchen, but though
+the former came, the latter did not, and John returned alone, mentally
+avowing to himself that he would not be sent on a fool's errand a third
+time; but five o'clock found him there again with the same result.
+Gretchen did not come, and Arthur's face wore a sad, troubled
+expression, and looked pale and worn, notwithstanding the many times he
+bathed it in the coldest water and rubbed it with the coarsest towels.
+
+He had unpacked several of his trunks and boxes, and made friends of all
+she servants by the presents, curious and rare, which he gave them,
+while Dolly's headache had been wholly cured at sight of the exquisite
+diamonds which her husband brought to her room and told her were hers,
+the gift of Arthur, who had bought them in Paris, and who begged her to
+accept them with his love.
+
+The box itself, which was of tortoise shell, lined with blue velvet, was
+a marvel of beauty, while the pin was a cluster of five diamonds with a
+larger one in the center, but the ear-rings were solitaires, large and
+brilliant, and Dolly's delight knew no bounds as she took the dazzling
+stones in her hands and examined them carefully. Diamond were the jewels
+of all others which she coveted, but which Frank never felt warranted in
+buying, and now they were hers, and for a time she forgot even Gretchen,
+whose arrival, or rather non-arrival, troubled her as much as it did her
+brother-in-law.
+
+Arthur had been very quiet and gentle all the afternoon, showing no sign
+of the temper he had exhibited the previous night at sight of Harold
+until about six o'clock, when Tom, his ten-year-old nephew, came rushing
+into the library, followed by Peterkin, very hot and very red in the
+face, which he mopped with his yellow silk handkerchief.
+
+'Oh, mother,' Tom began, 'what do you think Harold Hastings has done? He
+stole Mrs. Peterkin's gold pin last night. It was stuck in her shawl,
+and she couldn't find it, and Lucy saw him fumbling with the things, and
+he denies it up hill and down, and Mr. Peterkin is going to arrest him.
+I guess Dick St. Claire won't think him the nicest boy in town now. The
+thief! I'd like--
+
+But what he would like was never known, for with a spring Arthur bounded
+toward him, and seizing him by the coat collar, shook him vigorously,
+while he exclaimed:
+
+'Coward and liar! Harold Hastings is not a thief! No child of Amy
+Crawford could ever be a thief, and if you say that again, or even
+insinuate it to any living being, I'll break every bone in your body. Do
+you understand?'
+
+'Yes, sir; no sir, I won't; I won't,' Tom gasped, as well as he could,
+with his head bobbing forward and back so rapidly that his teeth cut
+into his under lip.
+
+'But _I_ shall,' Peterkin roared. 'I'll have the young dog arrested,
+too, if he don't own up and give up.'
+
+There was a wicked look in Arthur's black eyes, which he fastened upon
+Peterkin, as he said;
+
+'What does it all mean, sir? Will you please explain?'
+
+'Yes, in double quick time,' replied Peterkin, a little nettled by
+Arthur's manner, which he could not understand. 'You see, me and Mary
+Jane was early to the doin's; fust ones, in fact, for when your invite
+says half past seven it means it, I take it. Wall, we was here on time,
+and Mary Jane has been on a tear ever since, and says Miss St. Claire
+nor none of the big bugs didn't come till nine, which I take is
+imperlite, don't you?'
+
+'Never mind, we are not discussing etiquette. Go on with the pin and the
+boy,' Arthur said haughtily.
+
+'Mary Jane,' Peterkin continued, 'had a gold-headed shawl pin, with a
+small diamond in the head--real, too, for I don't b'lieve in shams, and
+haint sense the day I quit boatin' and hauled ther 'Liza Ann up inter my
+back yard. Well, she left this pin stickin' in her shawl, and no one up
+there but this boy of that Crawford gal's, and nobody knows who else.'
+
+Something in Arthur's face and manner made Frank think of a tiger about
+to pounce upon its prey, and he felt himself growing cold with suspense
+and dread as he watched his brother, while Peterkin continued:
+
+'When Mary Jane came to go home, her things wa'n't there, and the pin
+was missin'; and Lucy, the girl, said she found the boy pullin' them
+over by himself, when he had no call to be in there; and, sir, there
+ain't a lawyer in the United States that would refuse a writ on that
+evidence, and I'll get one of St. Claire afore to-morrow night. I told
+'em so, the widder and the boy, who was as brassy as you please, and
+faced me down and said he never seen the pin, nor knowed there was one;
+while she--wall, I swow, if she didn't start round lively for a woman
+with her leg bandaged up in vinegar and flannel. When I called the brat
+a thief and said I'd have him arrested, she made for the door and
+ordered me out--me, Joe Peterkin, of the 'Liza Ann! I'll make her smart,
+though, wus than the rheumatiz. I'll make her feel the heft--'
+
+He did not have time to finish the sentence, for the tiger in Arthur was
+fully roused, and with a bound toward Peterkin he opened the door, and,
+in a voice which seemed to fill the room, although it was only a
+whisper, he said:
+
+'Clown! loafer! puff-ball! Leave my house instantly, and never enter it
+again until you have apologized to Mrs. Crawford and her grandson for
+the insult offered them by your vile accusations. If it were not for
+soiling my hands, I would throw you down the steps,' he continued, as he
+stood holding the door open, and looking with his flashing eyes and
+dilated nostrils, as if he were fully equal to anything.
+
+Like most men of the boasting sort, Peterkin was a coward, and though he
+probably had twice the strength of Arthur, he went through the door-way
+out upon the piazza, where he stopped, and, with a flourish of his fist,
+denounced the whole Tracy tribe, declaring them but a race of upstarts,
+no better than he was, and saying he would yet be even with them, and
+make them feel the heft of his powerful disapprobation. Whatever else he
+said was not heard, for Arthur shut the door upon him, and returning to
+the library, where his brother stood, pale, trembling, and anxious for
+the votes he felt he had lost, he became on the instant as quiet and
+gentle as a child, and, consulting his watch, said in his natural tone:
+
+'Quarter of seven, and the train is due at half-past. Please tell John
+to have the carriage ready. I am going myself this time.'
+
+Frank opened his lips to protest against it, but something in his
+brother's manner kept him quiet and submissive. He was no longer master
+there--unless--unless--he scarcely dared whisper to himself what; but
+when the carriage went for the fourth time to the station after Gretchen
+and returned without her, he said to his wife:
+
+'I think Arthur is crazy, and possibly we shall have to shut him up.'
+
+'Yes, I wish you would,' was Dolly's reply, in a tone of relief, for,
+thus far, Arthur's presence in the house had not added to her comfort.
+'Of course he is crazy, and ought to be taken care of before he tears
+the house down over our heads, or does some dreadful thing.'
+
+'That's so, and I will see St. Claire to-morrow and find out the proper
+steps to be taken,' said Frank.
+
+That night he dreamed of windows with iron bars across them, and
+strait-jackets, into which he was thrusting his brother, while a face,
+the loveliest he had ever seen, looked reproachfully at him, with tears
+in the soft blue eyes, and a pleading pathos in the voice which said
+words he could not understand, for the language was a strange one to him
+who only knew his own.
+
+With a start Frank awoke, and found his wife sitting up in bed,
+listening intently to sounds which came from the hall, where some one
+was evidently moving around.
+
+'Hark!' she said, in a whisper. 'Do you hear that? There's a burglar in
+the house after my diamonds. What shall I do?'
+
+But Frank knew that no burglar ever made the noise this disturber of
+their rest was making and stepping out of bed he opened the door
+cautiously, and looking out, saw his brother, wrapped in a long
+dressing-gown, with a candle in his hand, opening one window after
+another until the hall was filled with the cold night wind, which swept
+down the long corridor banging a door at the farther end and setting all
+the rest to rattling.
+
+'Oh! Frank, is that you?' Arthur said. 'I am sorry I woke you, but I
+smelled an awful smell somewhere, and traced it to the hall, which you
+see I am airing; better shut the door or you will take cold. The house
+is full of malaria.'
+
+He was certainly crazy; there could be no doubt of it; and next morning,
+when Mr. St. Claire entered his office, he found Frank Tracy waiting
+there to consult him with regard to the legal steps necessary to procure
+his brother's incarceration in a lunatic asylum.
+
+Arthur St. Claire's face wore a grave, troubled look as he listened, for
+he remembered a time, years before, when he, too, had been interested in
+the lunatic asylum at Worcester, where a beautiful young girl, his wife,
+had been confined. She was dead now, and the Florida roses were growing
+over her grave, but there were many sad, regretful memories connected
+with her short life, and not the least sad of these were those connected
+with the asylum.
+
+'If it were to do over again I would not put her there, unless she
+became dangerous,' he had often said to himself, and he said much the
+same thing to Frank Tracy with regard to his brother.
+
+'Keep him at home, if possible. Do not place him with a lot of lunatics
+if you can help it. No proof he is crazy because he smells everything.
+My wife does the same. Her nose is over the registers half the time in
+winter to see if any gas is escaping from the furnace. And as to this
+Gretchen, it is possible there was some woman with him on the ship, or
+in New York, and he may be a little muddled there. You can inquire at
+the hotel where he stopped.'
+
+This was Mr. St. Claire's advice, and Frank acted upon it, and took
+immediate steps to ascertain if there had been a lady in company with
+his brother at the Brevoort House, where he had stopped, or if there had
+been any one in his company on the ship, which was still lying in the
+dock at New York. But there no one had been with him. Arthur Tracy alone
+was registered among the list of passengers, and only Arthur Tracy was
+on the books at the hotel. He had come alone, and been alone on the sea
+and at the hotel.
+
+Gretchen was a myth, or at least a mystery, though he still persisted
+that she would arrive with every train from Boston; and for nearly a
+week they humored him, and the carriage went to meet her, until at last
+there seemed to dawn upon his mind the possibility of a mistake, and
+when the carriage had made its twentieth trip for nothing, and Mr. St.
+Claire, who was standing by him on the platform when the train came up
+and brought no Gretchen, said to him:
+
+'She did not come.'
+
+'I am afraid she will never come,' he answered, sadly. 'No, she will
+never come. There has been some mistake. She will never come. Poor
+little Gretchen!' Then, after a moment he added, but there _is_ a
+Gretchen, and I wrote to her to join me in Liverpool, and I thought she
+did and was with me on the ship and in the train, but sometimes, when my
+head is so hot, I get things mixed, and am not sure but--' and he looked
+wistfully in his companion's face, while his voice trembled a little.
+'Don't let them shut me up; I have a suspicion that they will try it,
+but it will do no good. I was in an asylum nearly three years near
+Vienna; went of my own accord, because of that heat in my head.'
+
+'Been in an asylum?' Mr. St. Claire said, wonderingly.
+
+'Yes,' Arthur continued, 'I was only out three months ago. I wrote
+occasionally to Frank and Gretchen, but did not tell them where I was.
+They called it a _maison de santé_, and treated me well because I paid
+well, but the sight of so many crazy people made me worse, and if I had
+staid I should have been mad as the maddest of them. As it was, I forgot
+almost everything that ever happened, and fancied I was an Austrian. As
+soon as I came out I was better, though I was not quite myself till I
+got to Liverpool. Then things came back to me. Stand by me, St. Claire.
+I can see I am in the way, and Frank would like to be rid of me; but
+stand by me, and don't let them do it.'
+
+His manner was very pleading, and like one who was in fear of something,
+and remembering the past when a golden-haired girl had begged him to
+save her from iron bars and bolts, Mr. St. Claire assured him of his
+support against any steps which might be taken to prove him mad enough
+for the asylum.
+
+'But I would not come for Gretchen any more,' he said. 'I would give her
+a rest. Who is she?'
+
+Instantly the old look of cunning came into Arthur's eyes, as he
+replied:
+
+'She is Gretchen;' and then he walked toward the carriage, while Mr. St.
+Claire looked curiously after him, and said to himself:
+
+'That fellow is not right, but he is not a subject for a mad house, and
+I should oppose his being sent there. I do not believe, however, that
+they will try it on.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+ARTHUR SETTLES HIMSELF.
+
+
+They did try it on, but not until after the November election, at which
+Frank was defeated by a large majority, for Peterkin worked against him
+and brought all the 'heft of his powerful disapprobation' to bear upon
+him. Although Frank had had no part in turning him from the door that
+morning after the party, he had not tried to prevent it by a word, and
+this the low, brutal man resented, and swearing vengeance upon the whole
+Tracy tribe, declared his intention to defeat Frank if it cost him half
+his fortune to do so. And it did cost him at least two thousand dollars,
+for Frank Tracy was popular with both parties; many of the Democrats
+voted for him, but the rabble, the scum, those who could be bought on
+both sides, went against him, even to the Widow Shipley's four sons; and
+when all was over, Frank found himself defeated by just as many votes as
+old Peterkin had paid for, not only in Shannondale, but in the adjoining
+towns, where his money carried 'heft,' as he expressed it.
+
+It was a terrible disappointment to Frank and his wife, who had looked
+forward to enjoying a winter in Washington, where they intended to take
+a house and enjoy all society had to offer them in the national
+metropolis. Particularly were they anxious for the change now that
+Arthur had come home, for it was not altogether pleasant to be ruled
+where they had so long been rulers, and to see the house turned upside
+down without the right to protest.
+
+'I can't stand it, and I won't,' Frank said to his wife in the first
+flush of his bitter disappointment. 'Ever since he came home he has
+raised Cain generally, with his carpenters, and masons, and painters,
+and stewing about water-pipes, and sewer-gas, and smells. He's mad as a
+March hare, and if I can't get rid of him by going to Washington, I'll
+do it in some other way. You know he is crazy, and so do I, and I'll
+swear to it on a stack of Bibles as high as the house.'
+
+And Frank did swear to it, not on a stack of Bibles, but before two or
+three physicians and Mr. St. Claire, who, at his solicitation, came to
+Tracy Park, and were closeted with him for an hour or more, while he
+related his grievances, asserting finally that he considered his brother
+dangerous, and did not think his family safe with him, citing as proof
+that he had on one occasion threatened to kill his son Tom for accusing
+Harold Hastings of theft.
+
+How the matter would have terminated is doubtful, if Arthur himself had
+not appeared upon the scene, calm, dignified, and courtly in his manner,
+which insensibly won upon his hearers, as in a few well-chosen and
+eloquent words, he proceeded to prove that though he might be peculiar
+in some respects, he was not mad, and that a man might repair his own
+house, and cut off his own water-pipes, and take up his sewer, and
+detect a bad smell, and still not be a subject for a lunatic asylum.
+
+'And,' he continued, addressing his brother, 'it ill becomes you to
+take this course against me--you, who have enriched yourself at my
+expense, while I have held my peace. Suppose I require you to give an
+account of all the money which you have considered necessary for your
+support and salary--would you like to do it? Would the world consider
+you strictly honorable, or would they call you a lunatic on the subject
+of money and not responsible for your acts? But I have no wish to harm
+you. I have money enough, and cannot forget that you are my brother. But
+molest me, and I shall molest you. If I go to the asylum you will leave
+Tracy Park. If I am allowed to stay here in peace, you can do so,
+too--at least, until Gretchen comes, when it will, perhaps, be better
+for us to separate. Two masters may manage to scramble along in the same
+house, but two mistresses never can, and Dora and Gretchen would not be
+congenial. Good morning, gentlemen!' and he bowed himself from the room,
+leaving Frank covered with confusion and shame as he felt that he was
+beaten.
+
+The physicians did not think it a case in which they were warranted to
+interfere. Neither could conscientiously sign a certificate which should
+declare Arthur a lunatic, and their advice to Frank was that he should
+suffer his brother to have his own way in his own house, and when he
+felt that he could not bear with his idiosyncracies he could go
+elsewhere. But it was this going elsewhere which Frank did not fancy;
+and, after a consultation with his wife, he decided to let matters take
+their course for a time at least, or until Gretchen came, if she ever
+did.
+
+Arthur's allusion to the sums of money his brother had appropriated to
+his own use had warned Frank that he was not quite so indifferent or
+ignorant of his business affairs as he had seemed, and this of itself
+served to keep him quiet and patient during the confusion which ensued,
+as walls were torn down, and doors and windows cut, while the house was
+filled with workmen, and the sound of the hammer and saw was heard from
+morning till night.
+
+It was in the middle of October when Arthur fairly commenced his
+repairs, but so many men did he employ, and so rapidly was the work
+pushed on, that the first of January found everything finished and
+Arthur installed in his suite of rooms, which a prince might have
+envied, so richly and tastefully were they fitted up. Beautiful pictures
+and rich tapestry covered the walls in the first room, where the floor
+was inlaid with colored woods in lovely Mosaic designs, and the centre
+was covered with a costly Oriental rug, which Arthur had bought at a
+fabulous price in Paris, where it had once adorned a room in the
+Tuileries. But the gem of the whole was the library, where the statuary
+stood in the niches, and where, from the large bow-window at the south,
+a young girl's face looked upon the scene with an expression of shy
+surprise and half regret in the soft blue eyes, as if their owner
+wondered how she came there, and was always thinking of the fields and
+forests of far-away Germany. For it was decidedly a German face of the
+higher type, and such as is seldom found among the lower or even middle
+classes. And yet you instinctively felt that it belonged to the latter,
+notwithstanding the richness of the dress, from the pearl-embroidered
+cap set jauntily on the reddish golden hair to the velvet bodice and the
+satin peasant waist. The hands, small and dimpled like those of a child,
+were clasped around a prayer-book and a bunch of wild flowers which had
+evidently just been gathered. It was a marvelously beautiful face, pure
+and sweet as that of a Madonna, and the workmen involuntarily bowed
+their heads before it, calling it, not without some reason, a memorial
+window, for the name Gretchen was under the picture, and one
+unconsciously found himself looking for the date of birth and death. But
+only the one word 'Gretchen' was there, with no sign to tell who she
+was, or where, if living, she was now, or what relation she bore to the
+strange man who often stood before her whispering to himself:
+
+'Poor little Gretchen! Will you never come?'
+
+For a few days after the rooms were completed, they were thrown open to
+such of Arthur's friends as cared to see them, and the question 'Who is
+Gretchen?' was often asked, but the answer was always the same: 'She is
+Gretchen. I am expecting her every day.'
+
+But if he were expecting her, he no longer asked that the carriage be
+sent to meet her. That had been one of the proofs of his insanity as
+alleged by his brother, and Arthur was sane enough and cunning enough to
+avoid a repetition of that offence, but he often went himself to the
+station, when the New York trains were due, for it was from the west
+rather than the east that he was now looking for her.
+
+Frank, who watched him nervously, with all his senses sharpened, guessed
+what had caused the change and grew more nervous and morbid on the
+subject of Gretchen than ever. At first his brother, who was greatly
+averse to going out, had asked him to post his letters; business letters
+they seemed to be, for they were addressed to business firms in New
+York, London, and Paris, with all of which Arthur had relations. But one
+morning when Frank went as usual to his brother's room asking if there
+was any mail to be taken to the office, Arthur, who was just finishing a
+letter, replied:
+
+'No, thank you, I will post this myself. I have been writing to
+Gretchen.'
+
+'Yes, to Gretchen?' Frank said, quickly, as he advanced nearer to the
+writing desk, hoping to see the address on the envelope.
+
+But Arthur must have suspected his motive, for he at once turned over
+the envelope and kept his hand upon it, while Frank said to him:
+
+'Is she in London now?'
+
+'No; she was never in London,' was the curt reply, and then, turning
+suddenly, Arthur faced his brother and said: 'Why are you so curious
+about Gretchen? It is enough for you to know that the is the sweetest,
+truest little girl that ever lived. When she comes I shall tell you
+everything, but not before. You have tried to prove me crazy; have said
+I was full of cranks; perhaps I am, and Gretchen is one of them, but it
+does not harm you, so leave me in peace, if you wish for peace
+yourself.'
+
+There was a menacing look in Arthur's eyes which Frank did not like, and
+he retreated from the room, resolved to say no more to him of Gretchen,
+whose arrival he again began to look for and dread. But Gretchen did not
+come, or any tidings of her, and Christmas came and went, and the lovely
+bracelets which Arthur brought from the trunk he said was hers, and into
+which no one had ever looked but himself, remained unclaimed upon his
+table, as did the costly inlaid work-box, and the cut-glass bottles with
+the gold stoppers. All these were to have been Gretchen's Christmas
+presents; but when she did not come they disappeared from view and were
+not seen again, while Arthur seemed to be settling into a state of great
+depression, caring nothing for the outside world, but spending all his
+time in the lovely rooms he had prepared for himself and one who never
+came.
+
+As far as was possible he continued his foreign habits, having his
+coffee and rolls at eight in the morning, his breakfast, as he called
+it, at half-past twelve, and his dinner at half-past six. All these
+meals were served in his room as elaborately, and with as much ceremony,
+as if lords and ladies sat at the table instead of one lone man, who
+never let himself down a particle, but required the utmost subservience
+and care in the waiting. The finest of linen, and china, and glass, and
+silver adorned his table, with bits of fanciful crockery gathered here
+and there in his extended wanderings, and always flowers for a
+centre-piece--roses mostly, if he could get them--tea roses and Marshal
+Neils, for Gretchen, he said, was fond of these, and, as she might
+surprise him at any moment, he wished to be ready for her, and show that
+he was expecting her.
+
+Opposite him, at the end of the table, was always an empty plate with
+its surroundings, and the curiously-carved chair, which had seen the
+lion at Lucerne. But no one ever sat in it. No one ever used the
+decorated plate, or the glass mug at its side, with its twisted handle
+and the letter 'G.' on the silver cover. Just what this mug was for none
+of the household knew until Grace Atherton, who had travelled in Europe,
+and to whom Mrs. Tracy showed it one day when Arthur was out, said:
+
+'Why, it is a beer-mug, such as is used in Germany, though more
+particularly among the Bavarian Alps and in the Tyrol. This Gretchen is
+probably a tippler, with a red nose and a double chin. I wish to
+goodness she would come and satisfy our curiosity.'
+
+This wish of Grace's was not shared by Mrs. Tracy, who felt an uneasy
+sense of relief as the days went on, and the beer-drinking Gretchen did
+not appear, while Arthur became more and more depressed and remained
+altogether in his room, seeing no one and holding no intercourse with
+the outside world. He had returned no calls, and had been but once to
+the cottage in the lane to see Mrs. Crawford. That interview had been a
+long and sad one, and when they talked of Amy, whose grave Arthur had
+visited on his way to the cottage, both had cried together, and Gretchen
+seemed for the time forgotten. They talked of Amy's husband, who, Arthur
+said, had died at Monte Carlo; and then he spoke of Amy's son, who was
+not present, and whom he seemed to have forgotten entirely, for when
+Mrs. Crawford said to him, 'You saw him on the night of your return
+home,' he looked at her in a perplexed kind of way, and if trying to
+recall something which had gone almost entirely from his mind. It was
+this utter forgetfulness of people and events which was a marked feature
+of his insanity, if insane he were, and he knew it and struggled against
+it; and when Mrs. Crawford told him he had seen Harold he tried to
+recall him, and could not until the boy came in, flushed and excited
+from a race with Dick St. Claire through the crisp November wind, which
+had brought a bright color to his cheek and a sparkle to his eye. Then
+Arthur remembered everything, and something of his old prejudice came
+back to him, and his manner was a little constrained as he talked to the
+boy, whose only fault was that Harold Hastings had been his father and
+that he bore his name.
+
+Arthur did not stay long after Harold came in, but said good-morning to
+Mrs. Crawford and walked slowly away, going again to Amy's grave, and
+taking from it a few leaves of the ivy which was growing around the
+monument. And this was all the intercourse he held with Mrs. Crawford,
+except to send her at Christmas a hundred dollars, which he said was for
+the boy Harold, to whom he had done an injustice.
+
+After this he seldom went out, but gave himself heart and soul to the
+completion of his rooms, and when they were finished he settled down
+into the life of a recluse, seeing very few and talking but little,
+except occasionally to himself, when he seemed to be carrying on a
+conversation with some unseen visitant, who must have spoken in a
+foreign tongue or tongues, for sometimes it was French, sometimes
+Italian, and oftener German, in which he addressed his fancied guest,
+and neither Frank nor Dolly could understand a word of the strange
+jargon. On the whole, however, he was very quiet and undemonstrative,
+and but for the habit of talking to himself and smelling odors where
+there were none, he would not have seemed very different from many
+peculiar people who are never suspected of being crazy.
+
+If he were still expecting Gretchen, he gave no sign of it, except the
+place at his table always laid for her, and Frank was beginning to
+breathe freely, and to look upon his brother's presence in the house as
+not altogether unbearable, when an event occurred which excited all
+Shannondale, and for a time made Frank almost as crazy as his brother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE STORM.
+
+
+The winter since Christmas had been unusually severe, and the oldest
+inhabitant, of whom there are always many in every town, pronounced the
+days as they came and went the coldest they had ever known. Ten, twelve,
+and even fourteen degrees below zero the thermometers marked more than
+once, while old Peterkin's, which was hung inside the Lizy Ann and
+always took the lead, went down one morning to seventeen, and all the
+water-pipes and pumps in town either froze or burst, and Arthur Tracy,
+who, with his absorption of self, never forgot the poor, sent tons and
+tons of coal to them, and whispered to himself:
+
+'Poor Gretchen! It is hard for her if she is on the sea in such weather
+as this. Heaven protect her, poor little Gretchen!'
+
+That night when Frank went, as his custom was, to sit a few moments with
+his brother, he found him on his knees, with his face toward the
+picture, repeating the prayer for those upon the sea.
+
+The next day there was a change for the better, and the next, and the
+next, until when the last day of February dawned Peterkin's thermometer
+registered only two, and people began to show themselves in the
+streets, while the sun tried to break through the grey clouds which
+shrouded the wintry sky. But this was only temporary, for before noon
+the mercury fell again to eight below, the wind began to rise, and when
+the New York train came panting to the station at half-past six, clouds
+of snow so dense and dark were driving over the hills and along the line
+of track that nothing could be distinctly seen.
+
+It was not until the train had moved on that the station-master, who,
+half blinded with the sleet, was gathering up the mail-bag, which had
+been unceremoniously dropped, saw across the track at a little distance
+from him the figure of a woman who seemed to be trying to examine a
+paper she held in her hand, while clinging to her skirts and crying
+piteously was a little child, but whether boy or girl, he could not
+tell.
+
+'Can I do anything for you?' he said advancing toward the stranger, who,
+thrusting the paper from sight, caught up the child in her arms, and
+without word of answer, hurried away in the storm and rapidly-increasing
+darkness.
+
+'Curis! She must have got off t'other side of the cars. I wonder who she
+is and where she is goin'. Not fur, I hope, such a night as this. Ugh!
+the wind is like so many screech owls and almost takes a feller off his
+feet, the agent said to himself, as he looked after the stranger, and
+then went back to the light and warmth of his office, where he soon
+forgot the woman, who, with the child held closely in her arms, walked
+rapidly on, her eyes strained to their utmost tension as they peered
+through the darkness and the storm until she reached a gate opening into
+a grassy road which led through the fields in a straight line to Tracy
+Park and Collingwood beyond.
+
+Carriages seldom traversed this road, but in the summer time the people
+from Collingwood and Tracy Park frequently walked that way, as it was a
+much nearer route to town than the main highway. Here the woman stopped,
+and looking up at the tall arch over the gate, said aloud, as if
+repeating a lesson learned by heart, 'Leave the car on your right hand;
+take the road to the right, as I have drawn it on paper; go straight on
+for a quarter of a mile until you come to a wide iron gate with a tall
+arch over it. This gate is also at your right. You cannot mistake it.'
+
+'No,' she continued, 'I cannot mistake it. This is the place. We are
+almost there,' and putting down the child, she tugged with all her
+strength at the ponderous gate, which she at last succeeded in opening,
+and resuming her burden, passed through into the field where the snow
+lay on the ground in great white drifts, while the blinding flakes and
+cutting sleet from the leaden clouds above, beat pitilessly upon her as
+she struggled on the wearisome way.
+
+And while she toiled on, fighting bravely with the storm, and
+occasionally speaking a word of encouragement to the little child
+nestled in her bosom, Arthur Tracy stood at one of the windows in his
+library, with his white face pressed close against the pane, as he
+looked anxiously out into the gathering darkness, shuddering
+involuntarily as the wind came screaming round a corner of the house,
+bending the tall evergreens until their slender tops almost touched the
+ground, and then rushing on down the carriage-drive with a shriek like
+so many demons let loose from the ice-caves of the north, where the
+winds are supposed to hold high carnival.
+
+They were surely holding carnival to-night, and their king was out with
+all his legions, and as Arthur listened to the roar of the tempest he
+whispered to himself:
+
+'A wild, wild night for Gretchen to arrive, and her dear little feet and
+hands will be so cold; but there is warmth and comfort here, and love
+such as she never dreamed of, poor Gretchen! I will hold her in my arms
+and chafe her cold fingers and kiss her tired face until she feels that
+her home-coming is a happy one. It must be almost time,' and he glanced
+at a small cathedral clock which stood upon the mantel.
+
+In the adjoining room the dinner table was as usual laid for two, but
+one could see that more care than usual had been given to its
+arrangement, while the roses in the centre were the largest and finest
+of their kind. In the low, wide grate a bright fire was burning, and
+Arthur placed a large easy chair before it, and then brought from the
+library a covered footstool, with a delicate covering of blue and gold.
+No foot had ever yet profaned this stool with a touch, for it was one of
+Arthur's specialties, bought at a great price in Algiers; but he brought
+it now for Gretchen and saw in fancy resting upon it the cold little
+feet his hands were to rub and warm and caress until life came back to
+them, and Gretchen's blue eyes smiled upon him and Gretchen's sweet
+voice said:
+
+'Thank you, Arthur. It is pleasant coming home.'
+
+For the last two or three weeks, Arthur had been very quiet and
+taciturn, but on the morning of this day he had seemed restless and
+nervous, and his nervousness and excitability increased until a violent
+headache came on, and Charles, the servant, who attended him, reported
+to Mrs. Tracy that his midday meal had been untouched and that he really
+seemed quite ill. Then Frank went to him, and sitting down beside him as
+he lay upon a couch in the room with Gretchen's picture, said to him,
+not unkindly:
+
+'Are you sick to-day? What is the matter?'
+
+For a few moments Arthur made no reply, but lay with his eyes closed as
+if he had not heard. Then suddenly rousing himself, he burst out,
+vehemently:
+
+'Frank, you think me crazy, or you have thought so, and you have based
+that belief in part on the fact that I am always expecting Gretchen. And
+so for a long time I have suppressed all mention of her, though I have
+never ceased to look for her arrival, since--since--well, I may as well
+tell you the truth. I know now that she could not have been with me on
+the ship and in the train, although I thought she was. I wrote her to
+join me in Liverpool, and fancied she did. But my brain must have been a
+little mixed. She did not come with me, but I wrote to her weeks ago,
+telling her to come at once, and giving her directions how to find the
+park if she should arrive at the station and no one there to meet her.
+She has had more than time to get here, but I have said nothing about
+sending the carriage for her, as that seemed to annoy you. But to-day,
+Frank, to-day'--and Arthur's voice grew softer and pleading, and
+trembled as he went on. 'I dreamed of her last night, and to-day she
+seems so near to me that more than once I have put out my hand to touch
+her. Frank, it is not insanity, this presentiment of mine that she is
+near me, that she is coming to me, or tidings of her; it is mind acting
+upon mind; her thoughts of me reaching forward and fastening upon my
+thoughts of her, making a mental bridge on which to see her coming to
+me. And you will send for her. You will let John go again. Think if she
+should arrive in this terrible storm and no one there to meet her. You
+will send this once, and if she is not there I will not trouble you
+again.'
+
+There was something in Arthur's white face which Frank could not resist,
+and though he had no idea that anything would come of it, he promised
+that John should go.
+
+'Oh, Frank,' Arthur exclaimed, his face brightening at once, 'you have
+made me so happy! My headache is quite gone,' and then he began to plan
+for the dinner, which was to be more elaborate than usual, and served an
+hour later, so as to give plenty of time for Gretchen to rest and dress
+herself if she wished to do so.
+
+'And she will when she sees the lovely dress I have for her,' he thought
+to himself, and after his brother had gone he went to the large closet
+where he kept the long black trunk which he called Gretchen's, and into
+which Dolly's curious eyes had never looked, although she longed to know
+the contents.
+
+This Arthur now opened, and had Dolly been there she would have held
+her breath in wonder at the many beautiful things it contained.
+Folded in one of the trays, as only a French packer accustomed to
+the business could have arranged it, was an exquisite dinner-dress of
+salmon-colored satin, with a brocaded front and jacket of blue and gold,
+and here and there a knot of duchess lace, which gave it a more airy
+effect. This Arthur took out carefully and laid upon the bed in his
+sleeping-apartment, together with every article of the toilet necessary
+to such a dress, from a lace pocket handkerchief to a pair of pale-blue
+silk hose, which he kissed reverently as he whispered to himself:
+
+'Dear little feet, which, no doubt, are so cold now in the wretched car;
+but they will never be cold when once I have them here.'
+
+He was talking in German, as he always did when Gretchen was the subject
+of his thought, and so Dolly, who came to say that some things which he
+had ordered for dinner were impossible now, could not understand him,
+but she caught a glimpse of the dress upon the bed, and advanced quickly
+toward the open door, exclaiming:
+
+'Oh, Arthur, what a lovely gown! Whose--?'
+
+But before she completed her question Arthur was upon the threshold and
+had closed the door, saying as he did so:
+
+'It is Gretchen's. I had it made at Worth's. She is coming to-night, you
+know.'
+
+Dolly had heard from her husband of Arthur's fancy, and though she had
+no faith in it, she replied:
+
+'Yes, Frank told me you were expecting her again, and I came to say that
+we cannot get the fish you ordered, for no one can go to town in this
+storm, and I doubt if we could find it if we did. You will have to skip
+the fish.'
+
+'All right; all right. Gretchen will be too much excited to care,'
+Arthur replied, standing with his hand upon the door-knob until Dolly
+left the room and went to this kitchen, where Frank was interviewing the
+coachman.
+
+He had found that important personage before the fire, bending nearly
+double and complaining bitterly of a fall he had just had on his way
+from the stable to the house. According to his statement, the wind had
+taken him up bodily, and carrying him a dozen rods or so, had set him
+down heavily upon a stone flowerpot which was left outside in the
+winter, nearly breaking his back, as he declared. This did not look very
+promising for the drive to the station, and Frank opened the business
+hesitatingly, and asked John what he thought of it.
+
+'I think I would not go out in such a storm as this with my back if
+Queen Victoria was to be there,' John answered gruffly. 'And what would
+be the use?' he continued. 'I have been to meet that woman, if she is a
+woman, with the outlandish name, more than fifty times, I'll bet; he
+don't know what he is talking about when he gets on her track. And
+s'posin' she does come, she can find somebody to fetch her. She ain't
+going to walk.'
+
+This seemed reasonable; and as Frank's sympathies were with his coachman
+and horses rather than with Gretchen and his brother, he decided with
+John that he need not go, but added, laughingly, as he saw the man walk
+across the floor as well as he ever did on his way to the woodshed:
+
+'Seems to me your broken back has recovered its elasticity very soon.'
+
+To this John made no reply except an inaudible growl, and Frank returned
+to the library, resolving not to go near his brother until after train
+time, but to let him think that John had gone to the station.
+
+At half-past five, however, Arthur sent for him, and said:
+
+'Has he gone? It must be time.'
+
+'Not quite; it is only half-past five. The train does not come until
+half-past six, and is likely to be late,' was Frank's reply.
+
+'Yes, I know,' Arthur continued, 'but he should be there on time. Tell
+him to start at once, and take an extra robe with him, and say to
+Charles that I will have sherry to-night, and champagne, too, and
+Hamburg grapes, and--'
+
+The remainder of his speech was lost on Frank, who was hurrying down the
+stairs with a guilty feeling in his heart, although he felt that the end
+justified the means, and that under the circumstances he was justified
+in deceiving his half-crazy brother. Still he was ill at ease. He had no
+faith in Arthur's presentiments, and no idea that any one bound for
+Tracy Park would be on the train that night, but he could not shake off
+a feeling of anxiety, amounting almost to a dread of some impending
+calamity, which possibly the sending of John to the station might have
+averted, and going to a window in the library, he, too, stood looking
+out into the night, trying not to believe that he was watching for some
+possible arrival, when, above the storm, he heard the shrill scream of
+the locomotive as it stopped for a moment and then dashed on into the
+white snow clouds; trying to believe, too, that he was not glad, as the
+minutes became a quarter, the quarter a half, and the half
+three-quarters, until at last he heard the clock strike the half-hour
+past seven, and nobody had come.
+
+'I shall have to tell Arthur,' he thought, and, with something like
+hesitancy, he started for his brother's room.
+
+Arthur was standing before the fire, with his arm thrown caressingly
+across the chair where Gretchen was to sit, when Frank opened the door
+and advanced a step or two across the threshold.
+
+'Has she come? I did not see the carriage. Where is she?' Arthur cried,
+springing swiftly forward, while his bright, eager eyes darted past his
+brother to the open door-way and out into the hall.
+
+'No, she has not come. I knew she wouldn't; and it was nonsense to send
+the horses out such a night as this,' Frank said, sternly, with a
+mistaken notion that he must speak sharply to the unfortunate man, who,
+if rightly managed, was gentle as a child.
+
+'Not come! Gretchen not come! There must be some mistake!' Arthur said,
+all the brightness fading from his face, which seemed to grow pinched
+and pallid as he turned it piteously toward his brother and continued:
+'Not come! Oh, Frank! did John say so? Was no one there? Let me go and
+question him--there must be a mistake.'
+
+He was hurrying toward the door, when Frank caught his arm and detained
+him, while he said, decidedly:
+
+'No use to see John. Can't you believe me when I tell you no one was
+there--and I knew there would not be. It was folly to send.'
+
+For a moment a pale, haggard face, which looked still more haggard and
+pale with the firelight flickering over it, confronted Frank steadily;
+then the lips began to quiver, and the eyelids to twitch, while great
+tears gathered in Arthur's eyes, until at last, covering his face with
+his hands, he staggered to the couch, and throwing himself upon it,
+sobbed convulsively.
+
+'Oh, Gretchen, my darling!' he said. 'I was so sure, and now everything
+is swept away, and I am left so desolate.'
+
+Frank had never seen grief just like this, and, with his conscience
+pricking him a little for the deception he had practised, he found
+himself pitying his brother as he had never done before; and when at
+last the latter cried out loud, he went to him, and laying his hand
+gently upon his bowed head, said to him, soothingly:
+
+'Don't, Arthur; don't feel so badly. It is terrible to see a man cry as
+you are crying.'
+
+'No, no; let me cry,' Arthur replied. 'The tears do me good, and my
+brain would burst without them. It is all on fire, and my head is aching
+so hard again.'
+
+At this moment Charles appeared, asking if his master would have dinner
+served. But Arthur could not eat, and the table which had been arranged
+with so much care for Gretchen was cleared away, while Gretchen's chair
+was moved back from the fire and Gretchen's footstool put in its place,
+and nothing remained to show that she had been expected except the
+pretty dress, with its accessories, which lay upon Arthur's bed. These
+he took care of himself, folding them with trembling hands and tear-wet
+eyes, as a fond mother folds the clothes her dead child has worn,
+sorrowing most over the half-worn shoes, so like the dear little feet
+which will never wear them again. So Arthur sorrowed over the
+high-heeled slippers, with the blue rosettes and pointed toes,
+fashionable in Paris at that time. Gretchen had never worn them, it is
+true, but they seemed so much like her that his tears fell fast as he
+held them in his hands, and, dropping upon the pure white satin, left a
+stain upon it.
+
+When everything was put away and the long trunk locked again, Arthur
+went back to the couch and said to his brother, who was still in the
+room:
+
+'Don't leave me, Frank; at least not yet, till I am more composed. My
+nerves are dreadfully shaken to-night, and I feel afraid of something, I
+don't know what. How the wind howls and moans! I never heard it like
+that but once before, and that was years ago, among the Alps in
+Switzerland. Then it blew off the roof of the chalet where I was
+staying, and I heard afterward that Amy died that night. You remember
+Amy, the girl I loved so well, though not as I love Gretchen. If she had
+come, I should have told you all about her, but now it does not matter
+who she is, or where I saw her first, knitting in the sunshine, with the
+halo on her hair and the blue of the summer skies reflected in her eyes.
+Oh, Gretchen, my love, my love!'
+
+He was talking more to himself than to Frank, who sat beside him until
+far into the night, while the wild storm raged on and shook the solid
+house to its very foundations. A tall tree in the yard was uprooted, and
+a chimney-top came crushing down with a force which threatened to break
+through the roof. For a moment there was a lull in the tempest, and,
+raising himself upon his elbow, Arthur listened intently, while he said,
+in a whisper which made Frank's blood curdle in his veins:
+
+'Hark! there's more abroad to-night than the storm! Something is
+happening or has happened which affects me. I have heard voices in the
+wind--Gretchen calling me from far away. Frank, Frank, _did_ you hear
+that? It was a woman's cry; her voice--Gretchen's. Yes, Gretchen, I am
+coming!'
+
+And with a bound he was at the window, which he opened wide, and leaning
+far out of it, listened to hear repeated a sound which Frank, too, had
+heard--a cry like the voice of one in mortal peril calling for help.
+
+It might have been the wind, which on the instant swept round the corner
+in a great gust, driving the snow and sleet into Arthur's face, and
+making him draw in his body, nearly half of which was leaning from the
+window as he waited for the strange cry to be repeated. But it did not
+come again, though Frank, whose nerves were strung to almost as high a
+tension as his brother's, thought he heard it once above the roar of the
+tempest, and a vague feeling of disquiet took possession of him as he
+sat for an hour longer watching his brother and listening to the noise
+without.
+
+Gradually the storm subsided, and when the clock struck one the wind had
+gone down, the snow had ceased to fall, and the moon was struggling
+feebly through a rift of dark clouds in the west. After persuading his
+brother to go to bed, Frank retired to his own room and was soon asleep,
+unmindful of the tragedy which was being enacted not very far away,
+where a little child was smiling in its dreams, while the woman beside
+it was praying for life until her mission should be accomplished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE TRAMP HOUSE.
+
+
+About midway between the entrance to the park and the Collingwood
+grounds, and fifty rods or more from the cross-road which the strange
+woman had taken on the night of the storm, stood a small stone building,
+which had been used as a school-house until the Shannondale turnpike was
+built and the cross-road abandoned. After that it was occupied by one
+poor family after another, until the property of which it was a part
+came into the hands of the elder Mr. Tracy, who, with his English ideas,
+thought to make it a lodge and bring the gates of his park down to it.
+But this he did not do, and the house was left to the mercy of the
+winds, and the storms, and the boys, until Arthur became master there,
+and with his artistic taste thought to beautify it a little and turn it
+to some use.
+
+'I would tear it down,' he said to his neighbor, Mr. St. Claire, who
+stood with him one day looking at it, 'I would tear it down, and have
+once or twice given orders to that effect, but as often countermanded
+them. I do not know that I am exactly superstitious, but I am subject to
+fancies, or presentiments, or whatever you choose to call those moods
+which take possession of you and which you cannot shake off, and,
+singularly enough, one of these fancies is connected with this old hut,
+and as often as I decide to remove it something tells me not to; and
+once I actually dreamed that a dead woman's hand clutched me by the arm
+and bade me leave it alone. A case of "Woodman spare that tree," you
+see.'
+
+And Arthur laughed lightly at his own morbid fancies, but he left the
+house and planted around it quantities of woodbine, which soon crept up
+its sides to the chimney-top and made it look like the ivy-covered
+cottages so common in Ireland. It was the nicest kind of rendezvous for
+lovers, who frequently availed themselves of its seclusion to whisper
+their secrets to each other, and it was sometimes used as a dining-room
+by the people of Shannondale, where in summer they held picnics in the
+pretty pine grove not far away. But during Arthur's absence it had been
+suffered to go to decay, for Frank cared little for lovers or picnics,
+and less for the tramps who often slept there at night, and for whom it
+came at last to be called the Tramp House. So the winds, and the storms,
+and the boys did their work upon it unmolested, and when Arthur
+returned, the door hung upon one hinge, and there was scarcely a whole
+light of glass in the six windows.
+
+'Better tear the old rookery down. It is of no earthly use except to
+harbor rats and tramps. I've known two or three to spend the night in it
+at a time, and once a lot of gipsies quartered themselves here for a
+week and nearly scared Dolly to death,' Frank said to his brother as
+they were walking past it a few days after his return, and Arthur was
+commenting upon its dilapidated appearance.
+
+'Oh, the tramps sleep here, do they?' Arthur said. 'Well, let them. If
+any poor, homeless wretches want to stay here nights they are very
+welcome, I am sure, and I will see that the door is rehung and glass put
+in the windows. May as well make them comfortable.'
+
+'Do as you like,' Frank replied, and there, so far as he was concerned,
+the matter ended.
+
+But while the carpenters were at work at the Park Arthur sent one of
+them to the old stone house and had the door fixed and glass put in two
+of the windows, while rude but close shutters were nailed before the
+others, and then Arthur went himself into the room and pushed a long
+table which the picnic people had used for their refreshments and the
+tramps for a bed into a corner, where one sleeping upon it would be more
+sheltered from the draught. All this seemed nonsense to Frank, who
+laughingly suggested that Arthur should place in it a stove and a ton of
+coal for the benefit of his lodgers. But Arthur cared little for his
+brother's jokes. His natural kindness of heart, which was always seeking
+another's good, had prompted him to this care for the Tramp House, in
+which he felt a strange interest, never dreaming that what he was doing
+would reach forward to the future and influence not only his life but
+that of many others.
+
+The storm which had raged so fiercely around the house in the park had
+not spared the cottage in the lane, which rocked like a cradle as gust
+after gust of wind struck it with a force which made every timber
+quiver, and sent the boy Harold close to his grandmother's side as he
+asked, tremblingly:
+
+'Do you think we shall be blown away?'
+
+The rheumatism from which Mrs. Crawford had been suffering in the fall
+had troubled her more or less during the entire winter, and now,
+aggravated by a cold, it was worse than it had ever been before, and on
+the night of the storm she was suffering intense pain, which was only
+relieved by the hot poultices which Harold made under her direction and
+applied to the swollen limb. This kept him up later than usual, and the
+clock was striking eleven when his grandmother declared herself easier,
+and bade him go to bed.
+
+It was at this hour that Arthur Tracy had fancied he heard the cry for
+help, and the snow was sweeping past the cottage in great billows of
+white when Harold went to the window and looked out into the night. In
+the summer when the leaves were upon the trees the old stone house could
+not he seen from the cottage, from which it was distant a quarter of a
+mile or more, but in the winter when the trees were stripped of their
+foliage it was plainly discernible, and as Harold glanced that way a
+gleam of light appeared suddenly, as if the door had been opened and the
+flickering rays of a candle had for a moment shone out into the
+darkness. Then it disappeared, but not until Harold had cried out:
+
+'Oh, grandma, there's a light in the Tramp House; I saw it plain as day.
+Somebody is in there.'
+
+'God pity them.' was Mrs. Crawford's reply, though she did not quite
+credit Harold's statement, or think of it again that night.
+
+It was late next morning when Harold awoke to find the sun shining into
+the room, and without any sign of the terrible storm, except the snow,
+which lay in great piles everywhere and came almost to the window's
+edge. But Harold was not afraid of snow, and soon had the walks cleared
+around the cottage, and when, after breakfast, which he prepared
+himself, for his grandmother could not step, he was told that a doctor
+must be had and he must go for him, he did not demur at all, but
+commenced his preparations at once for the long and wearisome walk.
+
+'Better go through the park,' his grandmother said to him, as he was
+tying his warm comforter about his ears and putting on his mittens. 'It
+is a little farther that way, but somebody has broken a path by this
+time, and the cross-road, which is nearer, must be impassable.'
+
+Harold made no reply, but remembering the light he had seen in the Tramp
+House, resolved within himself to take the cross-road and investigate
+the mystery. Bidding his grandmother good-by, and telling her he should
+be back before she had time to miss him, he started on his journey, and
+was soon plunging through the snow, which, in some places, was up to his
+armpits, so that his progress was very slow, but by kicking with his
+feet and throwing out his arms like the paddles of a boat, he managed to
+get on until he was opposite the Tramp House, which looked like an
+immense snow-heap, so completely was it covered. Only the chimney and
+the slanting roof showed any semblance to a house as Harold made his way
+toward it, still beating the snow with his arms, and thinking it was not
+quite the fun he had fancied it might be.
+
+He was close to the house at last, and stood for a moment looking at it,
+while a faint thrill of fear stirred in his veins as he remembered to
+have heard that burglars and thieves sometimes made it their rendezvous
+after a night's marauding. What if they were there now, and should rush
+upon him if he ventured to disturb them!
+
+'I don't believe I will try it,' he thought, as he glanced nervously at
+the door, which was blockaded by a great bank of snow; and he was about
+to retrace his steps, when a sound met his ear which made him stand
+still and listen until it was repeated a second time.
+
+Then forgetting both burglar and thief, he started forward quickly, and
+was soon at the door, from which he dug away the snow with a desperate
+energy, as if working for his life. For the sound was the cry of a
+little child, frightened and pleading.
+
+'Mah-nee! mah-nee!' it seemed to say; and Harold, thinking it was mamma,
+answered, cheerily:
+
+'I am coming as fast I can.'
+
+Then the crying ceased, and all was still inside, while Harold worked on
+until enough snow was cleared away to allow of his opening the door
+about a foot, and through this narrow opening he forced his way into the
+cold, damp room, where for a moment he could see nothing distinctly, for
+the sunlight outside had blinded him, and there was but little light
+inside, owing to the barred and snow-bound windows.
+
+Gradually, however, as he became accustomed to the place, he saw upon
+the long table in the corner where Arthur Tracy had moved it months
+before, what looked like a human form stretched at full length and lying
+upon its back, with its white, stony face upturned to the rafters above,
+and no sound or motion to tell that it still lived.
+
+With an exclamation of surprise, Harold sprang forward and laid his hand
+upon the pale forehead of the woman, but started back as quickly with a
+cry of horror, for by the touch of the ice-cold flesh he knew the woman
+was dead.
+
+'Frozen to death!' he whispered, with ashen lips; and then, as something
+stirred under the gray cloak which partly covered the woman, he
+conquered his terror and went forward again to the table, over which he
+bent curiously.
+
+Again the cry, which was more like 'mah-nee' now than 'mamma,' met his
+ear, and, stooping lower, he saw a curly head nestle close to the bosom
+of the woman, while a little fat white hand was clasping the neck as if
+for warmth and protection.
+
+At this sight all Harold's fear vanished, and, bending down so that his
+lips almost touched the bright, wavy hair, he said:
+
+'Poor little girl!'--he felt instinctively that it was a girl--'poor
+little girl! come with me away from this dreadful place!' and he tried
+to lift up her head, but she drew it away from him, and repeated the
+piteous cry of 'Mah-nee, mah-nee!'
+
+At last, however, as Harold continued to talk to her, the cries ceased,
+and, cautiously lifting her head, she turned toward him a fat, chubby
+face and a pair of soft, blue eyes in which the great tears were
+standing. Then her lips began to quiver in a grieved kind of way, as if
+the horror of the previous night had stamped itself upon her tender mind
+and she were asking for sympathy.
+
+'Mah-nee!' she said again, placing one hand on the cold, dead face, and
+stretching the other toward Harold, who put out his arms to take her.
+
+But something resisted all his efforts, and a closer inspection showed
+him a long, old-fashioned carpet-bag, which enveloped her body from her
+neck to her feet, and into which she had evidently been put to protect
+her from the cold.
+
+'Not a bad idea either,' Harold said, as he comprehended the situation;
+'and your poor mother gave you the most of her cloak, too, and her
+shawl,' he continued, as he saw how carefully the child had been
+wrapped, while the mother, if it were her mother, had paid for her
+unselfishness with her life.
+
+'What is your name, little girl?' he asked.
+
+The child, who had been staring at him while he talked as if he were a
+lunatic, made no reply until he had her in his arms, when she, too,
+began to talk in a half-frightened way. Then he looked at her as if she
+were the lunatic, for never had he heard such speech as hers.
+
+'I do believe you are a Dutchman,' he said, as he wrapped both shawl and
+cloak around her and started for the door, which he kicked against some
+time in order to make an opening wide enough to allow of his egress with
+his burden.
+
+When at last they emerged from the cold, dark room into the bright
+sunshine, the child gave a great cry of delight, and the blue eyes
+fairly danced with joy as they fell upon the dazzling snow. Then she put
+both arms around Harold's neck, and nestling her face close to his,
+kissed him as fondly as if she had known him all her life, while the boy
+paid her back kiss after kiss as he proceeded slowly toward home.
+
+The child was heavy, and the bag and shawl made such an unwieldy bundle
+that his progress was very slow, and he stopped more than once to rest
+and take breath, and as often as he stopped the blue eyes would look up
+enquiringly at him with an expression which made his boyish heart beat
+faster as he thought what pretty eyes they were and wondered who she
+was. Once he fell down, and bag and baby rolled in the snow; but only
+the vigorous kicking of a pair of little legs inside the bag showed that
+the child disapproved of the proceeding, for she made no sound, and when
+he picked her up she brushed the snow from his hair, and laughed as if
+the thing had been done for fun.
+
+He reached the cottage at last, and bursting into the room where his
+grandmother was sitting with her foot in a chair, exclaimed, as he put
+down the child, who, as she was still enveloped in the bag, stood with
+difficulty:
+
+'Oh grandma, what do you think? I did see a light in the Tramp House,
+and there is somebody there--a woman--dead--frozen to death, with
+nothing over her, for she had given her cloak and shawl to her little
+girl. I went there. I found her, and brought the baby home in the
+carpet-bag, and now I must go back to the woman. Oh, it was dreadful to
+see her white face, and it is so cold there and dark;' and if the horror
+of what he had seen had just impressed itself upon him, the boy turned
+pale and faint, and, staggering to a chair, burst into tears.
+
+Too much astonished to utter a word, Mrs. Crawford stared at him a
+moment in a bewildered kind of way, and then when the child, seeing him
+cry, began also to cry for "Mah-nee," and struggle in the bag, she
+forgot her lame foot, on which she had not stepped for a week, and going
+to the little girl, released her from the bag, and taking her upon her
+lap, began to untie the soft woollen cloak and to chafe the cold
+fingers, while she questioned her grandson.
+
+Having recovered himself somewhat, Harold repeated his story, and asked
+with a shudder:
+
+'Must I go for her alone? I can't, I can't. I was not afraid with the
+baby there, but it is so awful, and I never saw any one dead before.'
+
+'Go back alone! Of course not!' his grandmother replied. 'But you must
+go to the park at once and tell them; go as fast as you can. She may not
+be dead.'
+
+'Yes, she is,' Harold answered, decidedly. 'I touched her face, and
+nothing alive could feel like that.'
+
+He was buttoning his overcoat preparatory to a fresh start, but before
+he went he kissed the little girl who was sitting on his grandmother's
+lap, and who, as she saw him leaving her, began to cry for him and to
+utter curious sounds unintelligible to them both. But Harold brought her
+a piece of bread, which she began to devour ravenously, and then he
+stepped quietly out and was soon breaking through the drifts which lay
+between the cottage and the park.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE WOMAN.
+
+
+They slept later than usual at the park house that morning, and Frank
+and his family were just sitting down to breakfast, and Arthur was
+taking his rolls and coffee in his own room, when John, with a white,
+scared face, looked in and said:
+
+'Excuse me, Mr. Tracy, but--but something dreadful has happened. There's
+a woman frozen to death in the Tramp House, with a baby, and Harold
+Hastings found them, and--but he is here, sir; he will tell you
+himself;' and he went for the boy, who soon entered the room, followed
+by every servant in the house.
+
+Harold had come upon John first in the stable, and sinking down
+exhausted upon the hay, had told his story, while the man, John,
+listened terror-stricken and open-mouthed. Then seeing how weak and
+tired Harold seemed, and how he sank back upon the hay when he attempted
+to rise, he took him in his arms, and carrying him to the kitchen, left
+him there while he went with the news to his master.
+
+'A woman dead in the Tramp House, and a baby!' Frank exclaimed, and for
+an instant he felt as if he were dying, for there flashed over him a
+conviction that the woman had come in the train the previous night, and
+that it was her cry for help which had been borne to him on the winds,
+and to which he had paid no heed.
+
+'Are you sick? Are you going to faint?' his wife said to him, as she saw
+how white he grew, and how heavily he leaned back in his chair as Harold
+related the particulars of his finding the woman and the child.
+
+'I am not going to faint; but it makes me sick and shaky to think of a
+woman freezing to death so near us that if she had cried for help we
+might perhaps have heard her,' Frank replied.
+
+Then turning to Harold, he continued:
+
+'How did she look? Was she young? Was she pretty? Was she dark or fair?'
+
+He almost gasped the last word, as if it choked him, and no one guessed
+how anxiously he waited for Harold's answer, which did not afford him
+much relief.
+
+'I don't know; it was so dark in there, and cold, and I was afraid some
+of the time, and in a hurry. I only know that her nose was long and
+large, for I touched it when I was trying to get at the little girl, and
+it was so cold--oh, oh!'
+
+And Harold shuddered as if he still felt the icy touch of the dead.
+
+'A long nose and a large one,' Frank said, involuntarily, while a sigh
+of relief escaped him as he remembered that the nose of the picture in
+his brother's room was neither long nor large.
+
+Still Harold might be mistaken, and though he had no good cause for
+believing that the woman lying dead in the Tramp House was Gretchen,
+there was a horrible feeling in his heart, while a lump came into his
+throat and affected his speech, which was thick and indistinct, as he
+rose from his chair at last and said to John:
+
+'We have no time to lose. Hitch up the horses to the long sleigh as
+quick as you can. We must go to the Tramp House after the woman, and
+send to the village for a doctor, and telegraph to Springfield for the
+coroner. I suppose there must be an inquest; and, Dolly, see that a room
+is prepared for the body.'
+
+'Oh, Frank, must it come here? Why not take it to the cottage? The child
+is there,' Mrs. Tracy said, not because she cared so much for the
+trouble, but because of her aversion to having the corpse of a stranger
+in the house, with all that it involved.
+
+'I tell you that woman must come here,' was Frank's decided reply, as he
+began to make himself ready for the ride.
+
+'Don't tell Arthur yet,' he said, as he left the house and took his seat
+in the sleigh, which was soon ploughing its way through the snow banks
+in the direction of the Tramp House.
+
+It was Harold who acted as master of ceremonies, for John was nervous
+and hung back from the half open door, while Frank was too much unstrung
+to know just what he was doing or saying, as he squeezed through the
+narrow space and then stood for a moment, snow-blind and dizzy, in the
+cheerless room.
+
+Harold was not afraid now. He had been there before alone, had seen and
+touched the white face of the corpse, and now, with companionship in its
+presence, he went fearlessly up to it, followed by Frank, who could
+scarcely stand, and who laid his hand for support on Harold's shoulder,
+and then turned curiously and eagerly toward the woman.
+
+John had lingered outside, shovelling the snow from the door which he
+succeeded in opening wide, so that the full, broad sunlight fell upon
+the face, which was neither young, nor pretty, nor fair, while the hair
+was black as night.
+
+Frank noted all these points at a glance, and could have shouted aloud
+for joy, so great was the revulsion of his feelings. It was not Gretchen
+lying there before him, and he was not a murderer, as he had accused
+himself of being, for she did not come by the train; she had no
+connection with Tracy Park; she was going somewhere else--to
+Collingwood, perhaps--when, overcome by the storm and the cold, she had
+sought shelter for the night in this wretched place.
+
+'I suppose the proper thing to do is to leave her here till the coroner
+can see her,' he said to John; 'but no train can get through from
+Springfield to-day, I am sure, and I shall have her taken to the park.
+Bring me the blankets from the sleigh.'
+
+He was very collected now, for a great load was lifted from his mind.
+
+'Had she nothing with her? nothing to cover her?' he asked, as they
+proceeded to wrap her in the warm blankets, which, had they sooner come,
+would have saved her life.
+
+Harold told him again of the carpet-bag and the cloak and the shawl,
+which had covered the child, and added, 'That's all; there don't seem to
+be anything else. Oh, what's this?' and stooping down, he picked up some
+hard substance which he had kicked against the table.
+
+It proved to be one of those olive wood candle sticks, so convenient in
+travelling, as when not in use, they can be made into a small round box
+or ball, and take but little room. It contained but the remains of a wax
+candle, which had burned down into the socket and then gone out. Near
+by, upon the floor, was a tiny box of matches, with two or three charred
+ones among them.
+
+'The poor woman must have had a light for at least a portion of the
+time,' Frank said, as he picked up the box.
+
+'She had, I know she had,' Harold cried, excitedly; 'for I saw it and
+told grandma so. It was like she had opened the door and let out a big
+blaze, and then everything was dark, as if the door was shut or the wind
+had blown the candle out.'
+
+'What time was that, do you think?' Frank asked.
+
+'It must have been about eleven,' Harold replied, 'for I remember
+hearing the clock strike and grandma's saying I must go to bed, it was
+so late. I was up with her because her foot was so bad, and I warmed the
+poultices.'
+
+Frank groaned aloud, unmindful of the boy looking so curiously at him,
+for that was the time when he had heard the sound like a human voice is
+distress. He had thought it a fancy then communicated to him by his
+brother's nervousness, but now he was certain it must have been the
+stranger calling through the storm, in the vain hope that somebody would
+hear and come. Somebody had heard, but no one had come; and so in the
+cold and the darkness, with the snow sifting through every crevice and
+blowing down the wide chimney to the hearth where it made a drift like a
+grave, she had battled for her own life and that of the child beside
+her, saving the latter but losing her own.
+
+'If I had only believed it was a cry,' Frank thought, and as he wrapped
+the body in the blankets and buffalo robe as tenderly and reverently as
+if the stiffened limbs had belonged to his mother, he saw distinctly
+before him as if painted upon canvas the driving gale, the inky sky, the
+half-opened door, through which the sleet was driving, the light behind,
+and the frantic, freezing woman, screaming for help, while only the
+winds made answer, and the pitiless storm raged on.
+
+This was the picture which Frank was destined to see in his dreams for
+many and many a night, until the mystery was solved concerning the woman
+whom they carried to the sleigh, which was driven back to the park
+house, where, within fifteen or twenty minutes a crowd of anxious,
+curious people gathered. The messenger sent to town had done his work
+rapidly and thoroughly, and half the villagers who heard of the tragedy
+enacted at their very door started at once for Tracy Park. The boy had
+stopped at the station and told his story there, making the
+baggage-master feel as if he, too, were a murderer, or at least an
+accessory.
+
+'If I had only gone after that woman,' he said, as he told of the
+stranger who had come on the train and gotten off on the side of the car
+farthest from the depot--'if I had gone after her and made her take a
+conveyance to where she was going, this would not have happened; but it
+was so all-fired cold, and the wind was yelling so, and she walked off
+so fast, as if she knew her own business. So I just minded mine, or
+rather I didn't, for I never even seen the box, or trunk, which was
+pitched out helter-skelter, and which I found this morning, all covered
+up with snow. It was hers, of course, and I shall send it right over
+there, as it may tell who the poor critter was.'
+
+This trunk, which was little more than a strong wooden box with two
+double locks upon it, was still further secured by a bit of rope wound
+twice around it and tied in a hard knot. There was no name upon it to
+tell whose it was, or whence it came, except the name of a German
+steamer, on which its owner had probably crossed the ocean, and the
+significant word 'Hold,' showing that it had not been used in the
+state-room. It had been checked at the Grand Central depot in New York
+for Shannondale, and the check was still attached to the iron handle
+when it was put down in the kitchen at Tracy Park, where the utmost
+excitement prevailed, the servants huddling together with scared faces,
+and talking in whispers of the terrible thing which had happened, while
+Mrs. Tracy and the housekeeper, scarcely less excited than the servants,
+gave their attention to the dead.
+
+At the end of the rear hall was a small room, where Frank sometimes
+received business calls when at home, and there they laid the body,
+after the physician, who had arrived, declared that life had been
+extinct for many hours.
+
+Seen in the full daylight, she seemed to be at least thirty-five years
+of age, and her features, though not unpleasing, were coarse and large,
+especially the nose. Her hair was black, her complexion dark, and the
+hands, which lay folded upon her bosom, showed marks of toil, for they
+were rough and unshapely, though smaller in proportion than the other
+members of her body. Her woollen dress of grayish blue was short and
+scant; her knit stockings were black and thick, and her leather shoes
+were designed fur use rather than ornament. A wide white apron was tied
+around her waist, and she wore a small black and white plaided shawl
+pinned about her neck.
+
+And there she lay, not a pleasant picture to contemplate, helpless and
+defenceless against the curious eyes bent upon her and the remarks
+concerning her, as one after another of the villagers came in to look at
+her and speculate as to who she was or how she came in the Tramp House.
+
+Among the crowd was Mr. St. Claire, who gave it as his opinion that she
+was a Frenchwoman of the lower class, and asked if nothing had been
+found with her except the clothes she wore. Harold told him of the
+shawl, and cloak, and carpet-bag which he had carried with the child to
+the cottage.
+
+'Yes, there is something more--her trunk,' chimed in the baggage-master,
+who had just entered the room, trembling and breathless.
+
+'Her trunk! Did she come in the cars?' Frank asked, his hands dropping
+helplessly at his side, and his lips growing pale, as the man replied:
+
+'Yes; last night, on the quarter-past-six from New York; and what is
+curi's, she got out on the side away from the depot, and I never seen
+her till the cars went on, when she was lookin' at a paper, and the
+child cryin' at her feet. I spoke to her, but she did not answer, and
+snatching up the child, she hurried off, almost on a run. It was
+storming so I did not see her trunk till this mornin', when I found it
+on the platform. I wish I had gone after her and made her take a sleigh.
+If I had she wouldn't now have been dead, and, I swow, I feel as if I
+had killed her. I wonder why under the sun she turned into the lots,
+unless she was goin' to Collingwood--'
+
+'Or Tracy Park,' Frank said, involuntarily.
+
+'Were you expecting any one?' Mr. St. Claire asked.
+
+Sinking into a chair, Frank replied:
+
+'No, I was not, but Arthur, who has been worse than usual for a few
+days, has again a fancy that Gretchen is coming. He says now that she
+was not in the ship with him, but that he has written her to join him
+here, and yesterday he took it into his head that she would be here last
+night, and insisted that the carriage be sent to meet her; but John had
+hurt his back, and as I had no faith in her coming, he did not go. I
+wish he had; it might have saved this woman's life, although she is not
+Gretchen.'
+
+Frank had made his confession, except so far as deceiving his brother
+was concerned, and he felt his mind eased a little, though there was
+still a lump in his throat, and a feeling of disquiet in his heart, with
+a wish that the dead woman had never crossed his path, and a conviction
+that he had not yet seen the worst of it.
+
+Mr. St. Claire looked at him thoughtfully a moment, and then said:
+
+'I should not accuse myself too much. You could not know that any one
+would be there, and this woman certainly is not the Gretchen of whom
+your brother talks so much, and whose picture is in his room. Has he
+seen her? Does he know of the accident?'
+
+'I have not told him yet. He is not feeling well to-day. Charles says he
+is still in bed,' was Frank's reply.
+
+'We may find something in her trunk,' Mr. St. Claire continued, 'which
+will give us a clue to her history. Where do you suppose she kept her
+key?'
+
+No one volunteered an answer, until Harold suggested that if she had a
+pocket it was probably there, when half a dozen hands or more at once
+felt for the pocket, which was found at last, and proved to be one of
+great capacity, and to contain a heterogeneous mass of contents: A
+purse, in which were two or three small German coins, an English
+sovereign, and a five dollar green-back; two handkerchiefs, one soiled
+and coarse, bearing in German text the initials 'N.B.' the other small
+and fine, bearing the initial 'J.,' also in German text: a pair of
+scissors, a thimble, a small needle-case, a child's toy, a worn
+picture-book, printed in Leipsic, a box of pills, some peanuts, some
+cloves, a piece of candy, a seed cake, a pocket comb, half a biscuit;
+and at the very bottom, the brass check whose number corresponded with
+that upon the trunk; also a ring to which were attached three keys, one
+belonging to the trunk, another evidently to the carpet-bag, while the
+third, which was very small and straight, must have been used for
+fastening some box or dressing-case.
+
+It was Mr. St. Claire who opened the trunk, from which one of the
+servants had removed the rope, while Frank sat near still trembling in
+every limb, and watching anxiously as article after article was taken
+out and examined, but afforded no satisfaction whatever, or gave any
+sign by which the stranger might be traced.
+
+There was a black alpaca dress and a few coarse garments which must have
+belonged to the woman. Some of them bore the initials 'N.B.,' some were
+without a mark, and all were cheap and plain, like the clothes of a
+servant before her head is turned and she apes her mistress' wardrobe.
+The child's dresses were of a better quality, and one embroidered
+petticoat bore the name 'Jerrine,' while the letter 'J.' was upon them
+all, except a towel of the finest linen, on one corner of which was the
+letter 'M.' worked with colored floss.
+
+'Jerrine!' Mr. St. Claire repeated, pronouncing it 'Jerreen.' 'That is a
+French name, and a pretty one. It is the child's, of course.'
+
+To this no one replied, and he continued his examination of the trunk
+until it was quite empty.
+
+'That is all,' he said in a tone of disappointment; and Frank, who had
+been sitting by and holding some of the things in his lap as they were
+taken from the trunk, answered, faintly:
+
+'No, here is a book. It was done up in a handkerchief,' and he held up
+what proved to be a German Bible; but he did not tell that he had found
+something else, which he had thrust into his pocket when no one was
+looking at him.
+
+What he had found was a photograph, which had slipped from the leaves of
+the Bible, and at sight of the face, of which he only had a glimpse,
+every drop of blood seemed to leave his heart and came surging to his
+brain, making him so giddy and wild that he did not realise what he was
+doing when he hid away the picture until he could examine it by himself.
+Once in his pocket he dared not take it out, although he raised his hand
+two or three times to do so, but was as often deterred by the thought
+that everybody would think that he had intended to hide it and suspect
+his motive. So he kept quiet and saw them examine the book, the blank
+page of which had been torn half off, leaving only the last three
+letters of what must have been the owner's name, '----ich'--that was
+all, and might as well not have been there, for any light it shed upon
+the matter.
+
+Opening the book by chance at 1st Corinthians, 2nd chapter, Mr. St.
+Claire, who could read German much better than he could speak it, saw
+pencil-marks around the ninth verse, and read aloud:
+
+    'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the
+    heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love
+    Him.'
+
+On the margin opposite this verse was written, in a girlish hand:
+
+    'Think of me as there when you read this, and do not be sorry.'
+
+A lock of soft, golden hair, which might have been cut from a baby's
+head, and a few faded flowers, which still gave forth a faint perfume
+like heliotrope, were tied with a bit of thread, and lying between the
+leaves. And except that the book was full of marked passages, chiefly
+comforting and conciliatory, there was nothing more to indicate the
+character of the owner.
+
+'If this Bible were hers, she was a good woman,' Mr. St. Claire said,
+laying his hand reverently upon the forehead of the dead, while Frank,
+who saw another meaning between the lines, shook like one in an ague
+fit, for he did not believe that those hands, so pulseless and cold, had
+ever traced the words, 'Think of me as there when you read this, and do
+not be sorry.' She who wrote them might be, and probably was dead, but
+her grave was far away, and the fact did not at all change the duty
+which he owed to her and him for whom the message was intended.
+
+'What shall I say to Arthur, and how shall I tell him,' he was wondering
+to himself, when Mr. St. Claire roused him by saying:
+
+'You seem greatly unstrung by what has happened. I never saw you look so
+ill.'
+
+'Yes, I feel as if I had murdered her by not sending John to the
+station,' Frank stammered, glad to offer this as an excuse for his
+manner, which he knew must seem strange and unnatural.
+
+'You are too sensitive altogether. John might not have seen her, she
+hurried off so fast, and you have no particular reason to think she was
+coming here,' Mr. St. Claire said, adding: 'We'd better leave her now.
+We can do nothing more until the coroner comes, which will hardly be
+to-day. I hear the roads are all blocked and impassable. Let everything
+remain in the trunk where he can see them.'
+
+Mechanically Mrs. Tracy, who was present, put the different articles
+into the trunk, leaving the Bible on the top, and then followed her
+husband from the room. She knew there was more affecting him than the
+fact that a dead woman was in the house, or that he had not sent John to
+the station. But what it was she could not guess, unless, and she, too,
+felt faint and giddy for a moment, as a new idea entered her mind.
+
+'Frank,' she said to him when they were alone for a few moments, 'Arthur
+had a fancy that Gretchen was coming last night. You do not think this
+woman is she?'
+
+'Gretchen? No. Don't be a fool, Dolly. Gretchen is fair and young, and
+the woman is old and black as the ace of spades. Gretchen! No, indeed!'
+
+He did not show her the picture he had secreted; he knew she would not
+approve of the act, and if she had no suspicion with regard to the woman
+and the child he did not care to share his with her, particularly as it
+was only a suspicion, and so far as he could judge in his perturbed
+state of mind, nothing he could do would ever make things sure. His wife
+seemed to have forgotten the child at the cottage, and he would not
+bring it to her mind until it was necessary to do so. Just then Charles
+came to the room and said that his master was very much excited and
+wished to know the reason for so much commotion in the house, and why so
+many people were coming and going down and up the avenue.
+
+'I thought it better that you should tell him,' Charles added, and with
+a sinking heart Frank started for his brother's room.
+
+He had not seen him before that day, and now as he looked at him it
+seemed to him that he had grown older since the previous night, for
+there were lines about his mouth, and his face was very thin and pale.
+But his eyes were unusually bright, and his voice rang out clear as a
+bell as he said:
+
+'What is it, Frank? What has happened that so many people are coming
+here, banging doors and talking so loud that I heard them here in my
+room, but I could not distinguish what they said. What's the matter? Any
+one hurt or dead?'
+
+He put the question direct, and Frank gave a direct reply.
+
+'Yes, a woman was found frozen to death in the Tramp House this morning,
+and was brought here. She is lying in the office at the end of the back
+hall.'
+
+'A women frozen to death in the Tramp House!' Arthur repeated. 'Then I
+did hear a cry. Oh, Frank, who is she? Where did she come from?'
+
+'We do not know who she is, or where she came from!' Frank replied, 'Mr.
+St. Claire thinks she is French. There is nothing about her person to
+identify her, but I would like you to see her, and--and--'
+
+'I see her! Why should I see her, and shock my nerves more than they are
+already shocked?' Arthur said, with a decided shake of his head.
+
+'But you must see her,' Frank continued. 'Perhaps you know her. She came
+last night. She--'
+
+Before he could utter another word Arthur was at his side, Frank seizing
+him by the shoulder with the grip of a giant, demanded, fiercely:
+
+'What do you mean by her coming last night? How did she come? Not by
+train, for John was there. Frank, there is something you are keeping
+back. I know it by your face. Tell me the truth. Is it Gretchen dead in
+this house?'
+
+'No,' Frank answered huskily. 'It is not Gretchen, if that picture is
+like her, for this woman is very dark and old, and, besides that, has
+Gretchen a child?'
+
+For an instant Arthur stood staring at him, or rather at the space
+beyond him, as if trying to recall something too distant or too shadowy
+to assume any tangible form; then bursting into a laugh he said:
+
+'Gretchen a child! That is the best joke I have heard. How should
+Gretchen have a child? She is little more than one herself, or was when
+I saw her last. No, Gretchen has no child. Why do you ask?'
+
+'Because,' Frank replied, 'there was a little girl found in the Tramp
+House with this woman, a girl three or four years old, I judge. She is
+at the cottage now, where Harold carried her. He found the woman this
+morning. Will you see her now?'
+
+Arthur answered 'no,' decidedly, and then Frank, who knew that he should
+never again know peace of mind if his brother did not see her, summoned
+all his courage and said:
+
+'Arthur, you must. I have not told you all. This woman did come by train
+from New York.'
+
+'Then why did not John see her?' interrupted Arthur.
+
+'He was not there,' Frank replied. 'Forgive me, Arthur, I did not send
+him as you thought. It was so cold and stormy, and I had no faith in
+your presentiments, and so--so--'
+
+'And so you lied to me, and I will never trust you again as long as I
+live, and if this had been Gretchen, I would kill you, where I stand!'
+Arthur hissed in a whisper, more terrible to hear than louder tones
+would have been, 'Yes, I will see this woman whose death lies at your
+door,' he continued, with a gesture that Frank should precede him.
+
+Arthur was very calm, and collected, and stern, as he followed to the
+office where the body lay, covered now from view, but showing terribly
+distinct through the linen sheet folded over it.
+
+'Remove the covering,' he said, in the tone of a master to his slave,
+and Frank obeyed.
+
+Then bending close to the stiffened form, Arthur examined the face
+minutely, while Frank looked on alternately between hope and dread, the
+former of which triumphed as his brother said, quietly:
+
+'Yes, she is French: but I do not know her. I never saw her before. Had
+she nothing with her to tell who she was?'
+
+His mood had passed, and Frank did not hear him now.
+
+'She had a trunk,' he replied. 'Here it is, with her clothes, and the
+child's, and--a Bible.'
+
+'He said the last slowly, and, taking up the book, opened it as far as
+possible from the writing on the margin, which might or might not be
+dangerous.
+
+'It is a German Bible,' he continued, and then Arthur took it quickly
+from him as if it had been a long-lost friend, turning the worn pages
+rapidly, but failing to discover the marked passage and the message for
+some one.
+
+The lock of baby hair and the faded flowers caught his attention, and
+his breath came hard and pantingly, as for a moment he held the little
+golden tress which seemed almost to twine itself lovingly around his
+fingers.
+
+'That must be her child's hair. You know I told you there was a little
+girl found with her. Would you like to see her?' Frank said.
+
+'No, no!' Arthur answered, hastily. 'Let her stay where she is, I don't
+like children as a rule. You know I can't abide the noise yours
+sometimes make.'
+
+He was leaving the room with the Bible in his hand, but Frank could not
+suffer that, and he said:
+
+'I suppose all these things must stay here till the coroner sees them;
+so I will put the Bible where I found it.
+
+Arthur gave it up readily enough, and then, as he reached the door,
+looked back, and said:
+
+'If forty coroners and undertakers come on this business, don't bother
+me any more. My head buzzes like a bee-hive. See that everything is done
+decently for the poor woman, and don't let the town bury her. Do it
+yourself, and send the bill to me. There is room enough on the Tracy
+lot; put her in a corner.'
+
+'Yes,' Frank answered, standing in the open door and watching him as he
+went slowly down the long hall and until he heard him going up stairs.
+
+Then locking the door, which shut him in with the dead, he took the
+photograph from his pocket and examined it minutely, feeling no shadow
+of doubt in his heart that it was Gretchen--if the picture in the window
+was like her. It was the same face, the same sweet mouth and sunny blue
+eyes, with curls of reddish-golden hair shading the low brow. The dress
+was different and more in accordance with that of a girl who belonged to
+the middle class, but this counted for nothing, and Frank felt himself a
+thief, and a liar, and a murderer as he stood looking at the lovely
+face; and debating what he should do.
+
+Turning it over he saw on the back a word traced in English letters, in
+a very uncertain scrawling hand, as if it were the writer's first
+attempt at English. Spelling it letter by letter he made out what he
+called 'Wiesbaden,' and knew it was some German town. Did Gretchen live
+there, he wondered, and how could he find out, and what should he do? He
+had not yet seen the child at the cottage, but from some things Harold
+said, he knew she was more like this picture than like the dead woman
+found with her, and in his heart he felt almost sure who she was, and
+that his course of duty was plain. He ought to show Arthur the
+photograph, and tell him his suspicions, and take every possible step to
+ascertain who the woman was and where she came from.
+
+Frank was not a bad man, nor a hard-hearted man, but he was ambitious
+and weak. He had enjoyed money, and ease, and position long enough to
+make him unwilling to part with them now, while for his children he was
+more ambitious than for himself. To see Tom master of Tracy Park was the
+great desire of his life, and this could not be, if what he feared were
+proved true. If Arthur had no wife, no child, no will adverse to him,
+why, then his interest was safe, for no will his brother could now make
+would be held as valid, and when he died everything would naturally go
+to him. Of all this Frank thought during the few minutes he staid in
+the silent room. Then he said to himself:
+
+'I will see the child first. After all I know nothing for certain--can
+never know anything for certain, and I should be a fool to give up all
+my children's interests for a fancy, an idea, which may have no
+foundation. Arthur does not know half the time what he is saying, and
+might not tell the truth about Gretchen. She may not have been his wife.
+On the whole, I do not believe she was. He would never have left her if
+she had been, and if so, this child, if she is Gretchen's, has no right
+to come between me and mine. No, I shall wait a little while and think,
+though in the end I mean to do right.'
+
+With these specious arguments Frank tried to quiet his conscience, but
+he could not help feeling that Satan had possession of him, and as he
+hurried through the hall he said aloud, as if speaking to something
+seen:
+
+'Go away--go away! I shall do right if I only know what right is.
+
+He did not see his brother again that day, or go to the cottage either,
+but as he was dressing himself next morning he said to his wife:
+
+'That little girl ought to see her mother before she is buried. I shall
+send for her to-day. The coroner will be here, too. Did I tell you I had
+a telegram last night? He is coming on the early train.'
+
+Mrs. Tracy passed the allusion to the coroner in silence, but of the
+little girl she said:
+
+'I suppose the child must come to the funeral, but you surely do not
+mean to keep her? We are not bound to do that because her mother froze
+to death on our premises.'
+
+'Would you let her go to the poor-house?' Frank asked, but Dolly did not
+reply.
+
+As the breakfast-bell just then rang, no more was said of the little
+waif until the sleigh was brought to the door, and Frank announced his
+intention of stopping for the child on his way back from the station,
+where he was going to meet the coroner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+LITTLE JERRY.
+
+
+It was nearly noon when Harold left Tracy Park the previous day and
+started for home, eager and anxious with regard to the child whom he
+claimed as his own. He had found her. She was his and he should keep
+her, he said to himself, and then he wondered how his grandmother had
+managed with her, and if she had cried for him or for her mother, and as
+he reached the house he stood still a moment, to listen. But the sounds
+which met his ear were peals of laughter, mingled with mild, and, as it
+would seem, unavailing expostulations from his grandmother.
+
+Opening the door suddenly he found the child seated at the table in the
+high chair he used to occupy, and which Mrs. Crawford had brought from
+the attic, where it was stored. Standing before the child was a dish of
+bread and milk, of which she had evidently eaten enough, for she was
+playing with it now, and amusing herself by striking the spoon into the
+milk, which was splashed over the table, while three or four drops of it
+were standing on the forehead and nose of the distressed woman, who was
+vainly trying to take the spoon from the little hand clenching it so
+firmly.
+
+Mrs. Crawford had had a busy and exciting day with her charge, who,
+active and restless, and playful, kept her on the alert and made her
+forget in part how lame she was. As she could not put her foot to the
+floor without great pain, and as she must move about, she adopted the
+expedient of placing her knee on a chair to the back of which she held,
+while she hobbled around the room, followed by the child, who, delighted
+with this novel method of locomotion, put her knee in a low chair, and
+holding to Mrs. Crawford's skirts, limped after her, imitating her
+perfectly, even to the groans she sometimes uttered when a twinge
+sharper than usual ran up her swollen limb. It was fun for the child,
+but almost death to the woman, who, when she could endure it no longer,
+sank into a chair, and tried by speaking sharply, to make the little
+girl understand that she must keep quiet. But when she scolded, baby
+scolded back, in a language wholly unintelligible, shaking her curly
+head, and sometimes stamping her foot by way of emphasizing her words.
+
+When Mrs. Crawford laughed the child laughed, and when once a pang
+severer than usual wrung the tears from her eyes, baby looked at her
+compassionately a moment, while her little face puckered itself into
+wrinkles as if she too were going to cry; then, putting up her soft hand
+she wiped the tears from Mrs. Crawford's cheeks, and, climbing into her
+lap, became as quiet as a kitten. But a touch sufficed to start her up,
+for she was full of fun and frolic, and her laughing blue eyes, which
+were of that wide-open kind which see everything, were brimming over
+with mischief. Once or twice she called out 'Mahnee,' and going to the
+window, stood on tip-toe looking out, to see if she were coming. But on
+the whole she seemed happy and content, exploring every nook and corner
+of the kitchen and examining curiously every article of furniture as if
+it were quite new to her.
+
+Once when Mrs. Crawford was talking earnestly to her, trying to make her
+understand, she stood for a moment watching and imitating the motion of
+the lady's lips and the expression of her face; then going up to her she
+began to examine her mouth and her teeth, as if she would know what
+manner of machinery it was which produced sounds so new and strange to
+her. She certainly was a remarkable child for her age, though Mrs.
+Crawford was puzzled to know just how old she was. She was very small,
+and, judging from her size, one would have said she was hardly three;
+but the expression of her face was so mature, and she saw things so
+quickly and understood so readily, that she must have been older. She
+was certainly very precocious, with a most inquiring turn of mind, and
+Mrs. Crawford felt herself greatly interested in her as she watched her
+active movements and listened to the musical prattle she could not
+understand.
+
+She had examined the carpet-bag, in which were found the articles
+necessary for an ocean voyage, and little else. Most of these were
+soiled from use, but there was among them a little clean, white apron,
+and this Mrs. Crawford put upon the child, after having washed her face
+and hands and brushed her wavy hair, which had a trick of coiling itself
+into soft, fluffy curls all over her head.
+
+The bread and milk had been given her about twelve o'clock, and the
+laugh she gave when she saw it showed her appreciation of it quite as
+much as the eagerness with which she ate it. Her appetite appeased,
+however, she began to play with it and throw the milk over the table and
+into Mrs. Crawford's face, just as Harold came in, full of what he had
+seen at the park, and anxious to see his baby, as he called her.
+
+Taking her on his lap and kissing her rosy cheeks, he began to narrate
+to his grandmother all that had been done, and told her that Mr. St.
+Claire had given it as his opinion that the woman was French.
+
+'And if so,' he continued, 'baby must be French, too, though she does
+not look a bit like her mother, who is very dark and not--well, not at
+all like you or Mrs. St. Claire.'
+
+Then he told of the trunk which the baggage-master had taken to the
+park, and of what it contained.
+
+'The woman's clothes were marked "N.B."' he said, 'and some of the
+baby's--such a funny name. Mr. St. Claire said it was French, and
+pronounced "Jerreen," though it is spelled "Jerrine."'
+
+'That is the name of the child's things in the bag,' Mrs. Crawford said.
+
+'Of course it is baby's, then,' Harold replied; 'but, I shall call her
+Jerry for short, even if it is a boy's name, and so my little lady, I
+christen you Jerry;' and kissing the forehead, the eyes, the nose, and
+the chin, he marked the shape of the cross upon the face upturned to
+his, and named his baby 'Jerry.'
+
+Later, when he knew more of the world, he would change the 'y' into
+'ie,' but now she was simply Jerry, and when he called her that she
+laughed and nodded as if the sound were not new to her. She was a
+beautiful child, with complexion as pure as wax, and eyes which might
+have borrowed their color from the blue lakes of Italy, or from the
+skies of England when they are at their brightest.
+
+'I wish she could talk to me. I suppose she must speak French,' he said,
+as he was trying in vain to make her understand him. 'Don't you know a
+word I say?' he asked her, and her reply was what sounded to him like
+'We, we.'
+
+'That's English,' he cried, delighted with her progress, but when he
+spoke to her again, her answer was, 'Yah, yah,' which seemed to him so
+nonsensical that after a few attempts to make her say 'yes,' and to
+teach her what it meant, he gave up his lesson for the remainder of the
+day and talked to her by signs and gestures which she seemed to
+understand.
+
+Whatever he did she did, and he saw her more than once imitating his
+grandmother's motions as well as his own, to the life.
+
+Late in the afternoon Mr. St. Claire came to the cottage, curious to see
+the child, who, at sight of him, retreated behind Harold, and then
+peered shyly up at him, with a look in her great blue eyes which puzzled
+him on the instant, as one is frequently puzzled with a likeness to
+something or somebody he tries in vain to recall. In this instance it
+was hardly the eyes themselves, but rather the way they looked at him,
+and the sweep of the long lashes, together with a firm shutting together
+of the lips, which struck Mr. St. Claire as familiar, and when with a
+swift movement of her little hand, she swept the mass of golden hair
+back from her forehead, he would have sworn that he had seen that trick
+a thousand times, and yet he could not place it. That she was the child
+of the dead woman he believed, and as the mother was French, so also was
+she. He had once passed two years in France, and was master of the
+language; so he spoke to the child in French, but though she seemed to
+understand him she made no reply, until he said to her:
+
+'Where is your mother, little one?'
+
+'Then she answered, promptly, 'Dead,' but the language was German, not
+French.
+
+'Ho-ho! You are a little Dutchman,' Mr. St. Claire said, with some
+surprise in his voice.
+
+Then as he noted the purity of her complexion, her fair hair and blue
+eyes, he said to himself:
+
+'Her father was a German, and probably they lived in Germany, but the
+mother was certainly French.'
+
+His own knowledge of German was very limited, but he could speak it a
+little, and turning again to the child he managed to say:
+
+'What is your name!'
+
+'Der-ree,' was the reply, and Harold exclaimed:
+
+'That's it; she means Jerry; that's short for the name on her clothes,
+which you said was pronounced Jereen. I have christened her Jerry, and
+she is my little girl, ain't you, Jerry!'
+
+'Yah--oui--'ess,' was the answer, and there was a gleam of triumph in
+the blue eyes which flashed up to Harold for approbation.
+
+She had not, of course, understood a word he said, except, indeed her
+name; but the tone of his voice was interrogatory, and seemed to expect
+an affirmative answer, which she gave in three languages, emphasizing
+the ''ess' with a nod of her head, as if greatly pleased with herself.
+
+'Bravo!' Harold shouted. 'She can say yes. I taught her, and I shall
+have her talking English in a few days as well as I do, shan't I,
+Jerry?'
+
+'Yah--'ess,' was the reply.
+
+Then Mr. St. Claire tried to question her further with regard to herself
+and her home, but his phraseology was probably at fault, for no
+satisfactory result was reached beyond the fact that her mother was
+dead, that her name was Jerry, or Derree, as she called it, and that she
+had been on a ship with Mah-nee, who did _so_--and she imitated
+perfectly the motions and contortions of one who is deathly sea-sick.
+
+'I suppose she means her mother by Mah-nee,' said Mr. St. Claire; and
+when he asked her if it were not so, she answered 'yah,' and ''ess,' as
+she did to everything, adopting finally the latter word altogether
+because she saw it pleased Harold.
+
+No matter what was the question put to her, her reply was ''ess,' which
+she repeated quickly, with a prolonged sound on the 's.'
+
+When at last Mr. St. Claire took his leave, it was with a strange
+feeling of interest for the child, whose antecedents must always be
+shrouded in mystery, and whose future he could not predict.
+
+It seemed impossible for Mrs. Crawford to keep her, poor as she was, and
+as he had no idea that the Tracys would take her, there was no
+alternative but the poor-house, unless he took her himself and brought
+her up with his own little five-year-old Nina. He would wait until after
+the funeral and see, he decided, as he went back to his home at Brier
+Hill, where his children, Dick and Nina, were eager to hear all he had
+to tell them of the poor little girl whose mother had been frozen to
+death.
+
+The next morning the sleigh from Tracy Park stopped before the cottage
+door, and Frank, who had been to meet the coroner, alighted from it. He
+was pale and haggard as he entered the room where Jerry was playing on
+the floor with Harold's Maltese kitten. As he came in she looked up at
+him, and, lifting her hand, swept the hair back from her forehead just
+as she had done the day before when Mr. St. Claire was there. The
+peculiar motion had struck the latter as something familiar, though he
+could not define it; but Frank did, or in his nervous condition he
+thought he did, and his knees shook so he could hardly stand as he
+talked with Mrs. Crawford and told her he had come for the child, who
+ought to be where her mother was until after the funeral.'
+
+'Then she will come back again. You will not keep her. She is mine,
+ain't you, Jerry?' Harold exclaimed, eagerly; while Jerry, who, with a
+child's instinct scented danger from Harold's manner and associated that
+danger with the strange man looking so curiously at her, sprang to her
+feet, which she stamped vigorously, while she cried, ''ess, 'ess, 'ess,'
+with her face all in wrinkles, and her blue eyes anything but soft and
+sunny, as they usually were.
+
+In this mood she was not much like Gretchen in the picture, but she was
+like some one else whom Frank had seen in excited moods, and he grew
+faint and sick as he watched her, and saw the varying expression of her
+face and eyes. The way she shook her head at him and flourished her
+hands was a way he had seen many times and remembered so well, and he
+felt as if his heart would leap from his throat as he tried to speak to
+her. A turn of the head, a gesture of the hands, a curve of the
+eyelashes, a tone in the voice, seemed slight actions on which to base a
+certainty; but Frank did feel certain, and his brain reeled for a second
+as his thoughts leaped forward years and years until he was an old man,
+and he wondered if he could bear it and make no sign.
+
+Then, just as he had decided that he could not, the tempter suggested a
+plan which seemed so feasible and fair that the future, with a secret to
+guard, did not look so formidable, and to himself he said:
+
+'It is not likely I can ever be positive; and so long as there is a
+doubt, however small, it would be preposterous to give up what otherwise
+must come to my children, if not to me; but I will not wrong her more
+than I can help.'
+
+'Come, little girl, go with me,' he said, in his kindest tones, as he
+advanced toward her, while Harold went for her cloak and hood.
+
+Jerry knew then that she was expected to go with the stranger, and
+without Harold, and resisted with all her might. Standing behind him, as
+if safe there, and clinging to his coat, she sobbed piteously,
+intermingling her sobs with 'Ess, 'ess, 'ess,' the only English word she
+knew, and which she seemed to think would avail in every emergency.
+
+And it did help her now, for Harold pleaded that he might go, too, and
+when Jerry saw him with his coat and hat, and understood that he was to
+be her escort, she ceased to sob, and allowing herself to be made ready,
+was soon in the sleigh, and on her way to Tracy Park.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+JERRY AT THE PARK.
+
+
+And so this is the poor little girl. We'll take her right to the
+kitchen, where she can get warm,' Mrs. Tracy said, as she met her
+husband in the hall, with Harold and the mite of a creature wrapped in
+the foreign looking cloak and hood.
+
+'No, Dolly!' and Frank spoke very decidedly, as Harold was turning in
+the direction of the kitchen. 'She is going to the nursery, with the
+other children, and when they have their dinner she shall have hers with
+them.'
+
+'Ess, 'ess, 'ess,' Jerry said, as if she comprehended that there was a
+difference of opinion between the man and woman, and that she was on the
+affirmative side.
+
+'Take her to the nursery! Oh, Frank! she may have something about her
+which the children will catch,' Mrs. Tracy said, blocking the way as she
+spoke.
+
+But Jerry, who through the half-open door had caught sight of the pretty
+sitting-room, with its warm carpet and curtains, and cheerful fire,
+shook her head defiantly at the lady, and brushing past her, went boldly
+into the room, whose brightness had attracted her.
+
+Marching up to the fire, she stood upon the rug and looked about her
+with evident satisfaction; then glancing at the three who were watching
+her, she nodded complacently, and said, ''ess, 'ess, 'ess,' while she
+held her little cold hands to the fire.
+
+'Acts as if she belonged here, doesn't she?' Frank said to his wife, who
+did not reply, so intent was she upon watching the strange child, who
+deliberately took off her cloak and hood and tossing them upon the
+floor, drew a small low chair to the fire, and climbing into it, sat
+down as composedly as if she were mistress there instead of an intruder.
+
+Once she swept the hair back from her forehead with the motion Frank
+knew so well, and then the lump came into his throat again, and he
+steadied himself against the mantel, while he looked curiously at the
+young girl, making herself so much at home and seeming so well pleased
+with her surroundings.
+
+'Take her to the nursery now. I must see to that coroner,' he said to
+his wife, adding: 'Harold must go too, or there will be the Old Harry to
+pay.'
+
+''Ess, 'ess,' came decidedly from the child, who went willingly with
+Harold, and was soon ushered into the large upper room, which was used
+as both nursery and school-room, for Mrs. Tracy could not allow her two
+sons, Tom and Jack, to come in contact with the boys at school; so she
+kept a governess, a middle-aged spinster, who, glad of a home, and the
+rather liberal compensation, sat all day in the nursery and bore
+patiently with Tom's freaks and Jack's dullness: to say nothing of the
+trouble it was to have the three-year-old Maude toddling about and
+interfering with everything.
+
+'Hallo!' Tom cried, as his mother came in, followed by Harold and Jerry.
+'Hallo, what's up?' And throwing aside the slate on which he had been
+trying to master the difficulties of a sum in long division, he went
+toward them, and said: 'Has the coroner come, and can't I go and see the
+inquest? You said maybe I could if I behaved, and I do, don't I, Miss
+Howard?'
+
+Just then he caught sight of Jerry, and stopping short, exclaimed:
+
+'By Jingo! ain't she pretty! I mean to kiss her.'
+
+And he made a movement toward the little face, which looked up so shyly
+at him. But his mother caught his arm and held him back, as she said,
+sharply:
+
+'Don't touch her, there is no tolling what you may catch. I wanted her
+to go to the kitchen, the proper place for her, but your father insisted
+that she should be brought here. I hope, Miss Howard, you will see that
+she does not go near the children.'
+
+'Yes, Madam,' Miss Howard replied, 'but I am sure there can be no
+danger. She looks as clean and sweet as a rose.'
+
+Miss Howard was fond of children, and she held out her hand to the
+little girl, who seemed to have a most wonderful faculty for
+discriminating between friends and enemies, and who went to her readily,
+and leaning against her arm, looked curiously at the group of
+children--at Tom, and Jack, and Maude, the latter of whom wished to go
+to her, but was restrained by the nurse. The moment the door closed on
+Mrs. Tracy, Tom walked up to the child, and said:
+
+'I shall kiss her now, anyhow.'
+
+But Jerry hid her face, and could not be induced to look up until he had
+moved away from her.
+
+'Catty as well as pretty,' Tom said. 'I wonder who she is anyway, and
+how she will like the poor-house?'
+
+'Who said she was going to the poor-house?' Harold exclaimed
+indignantly.
+
+'Mother said so,' Tom replied. 'I heard her talking to the cook. Where
+would she go if she did not go to the poor-house? Who would take care of
+her?'
+
+'I!' Harold answered, and to Miss Howard he seemed to grow older a dozen
+years, as he stood there with his arms folded and the light of a brave
+manhood in his brown eyes. 'I shall take care of her. She will live with
+grandmother and me. I found her, and she is mine.'
+
+''Ess, 'ess, 'ess,' came from Jerry, as she swung one little foot back
+and forth and looked confidingly at her champion.
+
+'_You_ take care of her!' Tom sneered, with that supercilious air he
+always assumed toward those he considered his inferiors. Why, you and
+your grandmother can't take care of yourselves, or you couldn't if it
+wasn't for Uncle Arthur. Mother says so. You wouldn't have any house to
+live in if he hadn't given it to you,'
+
+Harold's arms were unfolded now and the doubled fists were in his
+pockets clenching themselves tighter and tighter as he advanced to Tom,
+who, remembering his black eye, began to back towards the nurse for
+safety.
+
+'It's a lie, Tom Tracy,' Harold said. 'Mr. Arthur does not take care of
+us. We do it ourselves, and have for ever so long. He did give us the
+house, but it ain't for you to twit me of that. Whose house is this, I'd
+like to know? It isn't yours, nor your father's, and there isn't a thing
+in it yours. It is all Mr. Arthur's.'
+
+'Wall, we are to be his _hares_--Jack, and Maude, and me. Mother says
+so,' Tom stammered out, while Jerry, who had been looking intently,
+first at one boy, and then at the other, called out in her own language:
+
+'Nein, nein, nein,' and struck her hand toward Tom.
+
+'What does she mean by her "Nine, nine, nine,'" he asked of Miss Howard,
+who replied that she thought it was the German for 'No, no, no,' and
+that the child probably did not approve of him.
+
+Tom knew she did not, and though she was only a baby, be felt chagrined
+and irritable. Had he dared, he would have struck Harold, who asked him
+what he meant by being his uncle's _hare._ But he was afraid of Miss
+Howard, and remembering it must be time for the inquest, he slipped from
+the room, whispering fiercely to Harold as he passed him:
+
+'Darn you, Hal Hastings, I'll thrash you yet.'
+
+'Let me know when you are ready, and also when you get to be your
+uncle's _hare_,' was Harold's taunting reply, as the door closed upon
+the discomfited Tom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The inquest was a mere matter of form, for there was no doubt in any
+one's mind that the woman had been frozen to death, and she had no
+friends to complain that due attention had not been paid her. So after a
+few questions put to Mr. Tracy, and more to Harold, who was summoned
+from the nursery to tell what he knew, and a look at the cold rigid
+face, a verdict was rendered of 'Frozen to death.'
+
+Then came the question of burial, as to when, and where, and at whose
+expense. Quite a number of people had assembled and the little room was
+full. Conspicuous among them was Peterkin, who, having been elected to
+an office, which necessitated a care for the expenditures of the
+village, was swelled with importance, and dying for a chance to be
+heard.
+
+When Harold came into the room Jerry was with him. She had refused to
+let him leave her, and he led her by the hand into the midst of the men,
+who grew as silent and respectful the moment she appeared as if she had
+been a woman instead of a little child, who could speak no word of their
+language, or understand what was said to her. It was her mother lying
+there dead, and they made way for her as, catching sight of the white
+face, she uttered a cry of joy, and running up to the body, patted the
+cold cheeks, while she kept calling 'Mah-nee, Mah-nee,' and saying words
+unintelligible to all, but full of pathos and love, and child-like
+coaxing for the inanimate form to rouse itself, and speak to her again.
+
+'Poor little thing,' was said by more than one, and hands went up to
+eyes unused to tears, for the sight was a touching one--that lovely
+child bending over the dead face, and imprinting kisses upon it.
+
+Harold took her away from the body, and lifting her into a chair, kept
+by her, as with her arm around his neck, she stood listening to, and
+watching, and sometimes imitating the gestures of the men around her.
+
+It was Peterkin who spoke first; standing back so straight that his
+immense stomach, with the heavy gold watch-chain hanging across it,
+seemed to fill the room, he gave his opinion before any one had a chance
+to express theirs.
+
+It was the first time he had been in the house since the morning after
+the party, when Arthur had turned him from the door. He had vowed
+vengeance against the Tracys then, and kept his vow by spending two
+thousand dollars in order to defeat Frank as member of Congress and to
+get himself elected as one of the village trustees, and now he had come,
+partly out of curiosity to see the woman, and partly to oppose her being
+buried by the town, if such a thing were suggested.
+
+'Let them Tracys bury their own dead,' he said to his wife before he
+left home, and he said it again in substance now, as with a tremendous
+'ahem!' he commenced his speech standing close to little Jerry, who
+never took her eyes from him, but watched him with a face which varied
+in its expression with every variation in his voice and manner, and
+reached its climax when he said: 'I don't b'lieve in saddlin' the town
+with a debt we don't orto pay. Let the Tracys bury their own dead, I
+say!'
+
+''Ess, 'ess, 'ess,' Jerry chimed in with an emphatic shake of her head
+with each ''ess,' and a flourish of her hand more threatening than
+approving toward the speaker, who glanced at her and went on:
+
+'Do you see, gentlemen of the jury, who this cub looks like. I do! and
+so can you with half an eye. She looks like Arthur Tracy!'
+
+Just then Jerry swept back her golden hair, and, opening her eyes,
+flashed them around the room until they rested by accident upon Frank,
+who, pale, and faint, and terrified, was leaning against the door-way
+trying to seem only amused at the tirade which was concluded as follows:
+
+'Yes, Arthur Tracy! Not her skin, perhaps, nor hair, nor her eyes,
+leastwise not the color, but something I can't describe; and this woman,
+her mother, you say is a furriner; that may be, but I've seen her afore,
+or I'm mistaken. She took passage once on the 'Liza Ann, I'm sure on't,
+and Arthur look passage same day as far as Chester and was as chipper as
+you please with her. I don't say nothin', nor insinerate nothin', but I
+won't consent to have the town pay what belongs to the Tracys. Let 'em
+run their own canoes and funerals, too, I say; and as for this young one
+with the yaller hair--though where she got that the lord only knows;
+'tain't her's,' pointing to the corpse; 'nor 'tain't his'n,' pointing in
+the direction of Arthur's rooms; 'as for her, I'm opposed to sendin' to
+the poor-house another pauper.'
+
+'She is not a pauper, and she is not going to the poor-house either,'
+Harold exclaimed, while Jerry came in with her _nein, nein, nein_, which
+made the bystanders laugh, as Peterkin went on, addressing himself to
+Harold:
+
+'You are her champion, hey, and intend to take care of her. Mighty fine,
+I'm sure, but hadn't you better fetch back May Jane's pin that you took
+at the party.'
+
+'It is false,' Harold cried. 'I never saw the pin, never!' and the hot
+tears sprang to his eyes at this unmanly assault.
+
+By this time Peterkin, who felt that everybody was against him, was
+swelling with rage, and seizing Harold by the collar, roared out:
+
+'Do you tell me I lie! You rascal! I'll teach you what belongs to
+manners!' and he would have struck the boy but for Jerry, who had been
+watching him as a cat watches a mouse, and who, raising her war-cry of
+'_nein, nein, nein_,' sprang at him like a little tiger, and by the
+fierceness of her gestures and the volubility of her German jargon
+actually compelled him to retreat step by step until she had him outside
+the door, which she barred with her diminutive person. No one could help
+laughing at the discomfited giant and the mite of a child facing him so
+bravely, while she scolded at the top of her voice.
+
+Peterkin saw that he was beaten and left the house, vowing vengeance
+against both Harold and Jerry, if he should ever have it in his power to
+harm them.
+
+When he was gone, Frank, who had recovered his composure during the
+ludicrous scene, said to those present:
+
+'I would not explain to that brute, but it is not my intention to
+trouble the town. I have no more idea who this woman is than you have,
+and I'll swear that Peterkin's vile insinuations with regard to her are
+false. My brother says he never saw her in his life, and he speaks the
+truth. She may have been on Peterkin's boat, but I doubt it. She has
+every appearance of a foreigner, and her child'--here Frank's tongue
+felt a little thick, but he cleared his throat and went on--'her child
+speaks a foreign language--German, they tell me. This poor woman died on
+my--or rather my brother's premises. I have consulted with him, and he
+thinks as I do, that she should be cared for at our expense. He says,
+further, that there is room on the Tracy lot; she is to be buried there.
+I shall attend to it at once, and the funeral will take place to-morrow
+morning at ten o'clock from this house. What disposition will be made of
+the child I have not yet decided, but she will _not_ go to the
+poor-house.'
+
+'Oh, Mr. Tracy,' Harold burst out, 'she is mine. She is to live with
+grandma and me. You will not take her from me--say you will not?'
+
+'_Vill not_,' Jerry reiterated, imitating as well as she could Harold's
+last words.
+
+For a moment Mr. Tracy looked fixedly at the boy, pleading for a burden
+which would necessitate toil, and self-denial, and patience of no
+ordinary kind and never had he despised himself more than he did then,
+when, believing what he did believe, he said at last:
+
+'I will talk with your grandmother, and see what arrangements we can
+make. I rather think you have the best right to her. But she must stay
+here to-night and until after the funeral, when she can go with you, if
+you like.'
+
+To this Harold did not object, and as Jerry seemed very happy and
+content, he left her, while she was exploring the long drawing-room, and
+examining curiously the different articles of furniture. As she did not
+seem disposed to touch anything, she was allowed to go where she liked,
+although Mrs. Frank remonstrated against her roaming all over the house
+as if she belonged there, and suggested again that she be sent to the
+kitchen. But Frank said 'no,' decidedly, and Jerry was left to herself,
+except as the nurse-girl and Charles looked after her a little.
+
+And so it came about that towards evening she found herself in the upper
+hall, and after making a tour of the rooms, whose doors were open, she
+came to one whose door was shut--nor could she turn the knob, although
+she tried with all her might. Doubling her tiny fist, she knocked upon
+the door, and then, as no one came, kicked against it with her foot, but
+still with no result.
+
+Inside the room, with Gretchen's picture, Arthur sat in his
+dressing-gown, very nervous and a little inclined to be irritable and
+captious. He knew there had been an inquest, and that many people had
+come and gone that day, for he had seen them from his window, and had
+seen, too, the sleigh, with Frank, and the coroner, and Harold, and a
+blue hood, drive into the yard. But to the blue hood he never gave a
+thought, as he was only intent upon the dead woman, whose presence in
+the house made him so nervous and restless.
+
+'I shall be glad when she is buried. I have been so cold and shaky ever
+since they brought her here,' he said to Charles, as, with a shiver, he
+drew his chair nearer to the fire and leaning back wearily in it fixed
+his eyes upon Gretchen's picture smiling at him from the window, 'Dear
+little Gretchen,' he said in a whisper, 'you seem so near to me now that
+I can almost hear your feet at the door, and your voice asking to come
+in. Hush!' and he started suddenly, as Jerry's kicks made themselves
+heard even to the room where he sat. 'Hush! Charles, who is that banging
+at the door? Surely not Maude? They would not let her come up here. Go
+and see, and send her away.'
+
+He had forgotten that he was listening for Gretchen, and when Charles,
+who had opened the door cautiously and described the intruder, said to
+him. 'It is that woman's child. Shall I let her in? She is a pretty
+little thing,' he replied, 'Let her in? No; why should you and why is
+she allowed to prowl around the house? Tell her to go away.'
+
+So Jerry was sent away with a troubled disappointed look in her little
+face, and as the chill March night came on and the dark shades crept
+into the room and Gretchen's picture gradually faded from sight in the
+gathering gloom until it seemed only a confused mixture of lead and
+glass, Arthur felt colder, and drearier, and more wretched than he had
+ever felt before. It was a genuine case of homesickness, if one can be
+homesick who is in his own house, surrounded by every possible comfort
+and luxury. He was tired, and sick, and disappointed, and his head was
+aching terribly, while thoughts of the past were crowding his brain
+where the light of reason seemed struggling to reinstate itself. He was
+thinking of Gretchen, and longing for her so intensely that once he
+groaned aloud and whispered to himself:
+
+'Poor Gretchen! I am so sorry for it all. I can see it clearer now, how
+I left her and did not write, and I don't know where she is, or if she
+will ever come; and yet, I feel as if she had come, or tidings of her.
+Perhaps my letter reached her. Perhaps she is on her way. God grant it,
+and forgive me for all I have made her suffer.'
+
+It was very still in the room where Arthur sat, for Charles had gone
+out, and only the occasional crackling of the coal in the grate and
+ticking of the clock broke the silence which reigned around him; and at
+last, soothed into quiet, he fell asleep and dreamed that on his door he
+heard again the thud of baby feet, while Gretchen's voice was calling to
+him to let the baby in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE FUNERAL AND AFTER.
+
+
+Long before ten o'clock, the hour appointed for the funeral, the next
+morning, people began to gather at the Park House, and the avenue seemed
+full of them. The news that an unknown woman had been frozen to death in
+the Tramp House had spread far and wide, awakening in many a curiosity
+to see the stranger, and discover, if possible, a likeness to some one
+they might have known.
+
+It was strange how many reminiscences were brought to mind by this
+circumstance of girls who had disappeared years before and were supposed
+to be dead--or worse. And this woman might be one of them; indeed,
+Peterkin had said that she was, and they came in crowds to see her, and
+to see, as well, the inside of the handsome house, of which they had
+heard so much, especially since Mr. Arthur's return. But in this they
+were disappointed, for all the front rooms were locked against them, and
+only the large dining-room, the breakfast-room, the servants' hall, and
+the little back office were thrown open to the public. In the first of
+these the corpse was lying in a substantial, handsome coffin, for Frank,
+who ordered it, would have no other; and when the undertaker suggested a
+cheaper one would answer just as well, had said, decidedly:
+
+'I mean to bury her decently. Give me this one, and send the bill to me,
+not to Arthur.'
+
+It was _his_ funeral, and, judging from his face, he was burying all his
+friends, instead of a poor, unknown woman, whose large, coarse features
+and plain woollen dress looked out of place in that handsome black
+coffin, with its silver-plated trimmings. Frank had suggested that she
+should have a white merino shroud, but his wife had overruled him. It
+was _not_ her funeral, and she had no interest in it, except that it
+should be over as soon as possible, and the house cleansed from the
+atmosphere of death. So when her husband asked if the child ought not to
+have a mourning-dress, she scoffed at him for the suggestion saying she
+did not like to see children in black anyway, and even if she died
+herself she should not wish hers to wear it.
+
+'I cannot imagine,' she continued, 'why you have taken so unaccountable
+a fancy to and interest in these people, especially the child. One would
+think she belonged to royalty, the fuss you make over her. What are we
+to do with her to-night? Where is she to sleep?'
+
+'In the nursery,' was his reply; and he saw his wishes carried out and
+ordered in a crib, which used to be Jack's, and bade the nurse see that
+she was comfortable.
+
+So Jerry was put to bed in the nursery and slept very quietly until
+about, ten o'clock when she awoke and cried piteously for both 'Man-nee'
+and 'Ha-roll.' Frank, who was sitting alone in the library, heard the
+cry, and knew it was not Maude's. Had it been he would not have minded
+it, for he knew that she would be cared for without his interference.
+But something in the crying of this little foreign girl stirred him
+strangely, and after listening to it a few moments he arose, and going
+softly to the door of the nursery, stood listening until a sharp hush
+from the nurse girl decided him to enter, and going to the crib he bent
+over the sobbing child and tried to comfort her. She could not
+understand him, but the tone of his voice was kind, and when he put his
+hand on her hot head she took it in hers and held it fast, as if she
+recognized in him a friend. And Frank as he felt the clasp of the soft,
+warm fingers, and saw the confiding look in the wide-open eyes, grew
+faint and cold, and asked himself again, as he had many times that day,
+_if he could do it_.
+
+Jerry was asleep at last, but she sobbed occasionally in her sleep, and
+there were great tears on her eyelashes, while her fingers clutched
+Frank's hand tightly as if fearing to let it go. But he managed to
+disengage it and stealing cautiously from the room went back to the
+library where he sat late into the night, facing the future and
+wondering if he could meet it.
+
+He had Jerry at the table next morning and saw that she was helped to
+everything she wanted without any regard to its suitability for her, and
+when his wife said rather curtly that she never knew that he was so fond
+of children before, he answered her:
+
+'I am only doing as I would wish some one to do to Maude if she were
+like this poor little girl.'
+
+When, at last, the hour for the funeral arrived he placed her himself
+upon the high chair close to the coffin, where she sat through the short
+service, conspicuous in her gray cloak and blue hood, with her golden
+hair falling on her neck and piled in wavy masses on her forehead, while
+her bright eyes scanned the crowd curiously as if asking why they were
+there and why they were all looking so intently at her. More than one
+kind-hearted woman went up and kissed her, and when, at the close of the
+services, Mr. Tracy held her in his arms for a last look at her mother,
+their tears fell fast for the child, so unconscious of the meaning of
+what was passing around her.
+
+'Isn't she beautiful! Such lovely hair, and eyes, and dazzling
+complexion!' was said by more than one; and then they speculated as to
+her future.
+
+Would she go to the poor-house? Would Frank Tracy keep her with all his
+children, or was it true, as they had heard, that Mr. Arthur Tracy was
+to adopt her at his own? And where was Mr. Arthur? He might, at least,
+have shown enough respect for the dead woman to come into the room, and
+they wanted so much to see him, for there was a great deal of curiosity
+with regard to the lunatic of Tracy Park among the lower class of people
+who had come to Shannondale during the eleven years of his absence.
+
+But Arthur was sick in bed, suffering alternately from chills and a
+raging fever, which set his brain on fire and made him wilder than
+usual. He had not slept well during the night. Indeed, he said, he had
+not slept at all. But this was a common assertion of his, and one to
+which Charles now paid little heed.
+
+'A man can't snore and not sleep,' was the unanswerable argument with
+which he refuted the sleepless nights of his master.
+
+On this occasion, however, he had heard no snoring, and Arthur's face,
+seen by the morning light, was a sufficient proof of the wakeful hours
+he had passed. He, too, had heard the distant crying, and felt
+instinctively that it was not Maude's. Starting up in bed to listen, he
+said:
+
+'What's that? Is that child here yet?'
+
+'Yes sir: she is to stay till after the funeral,' was Charles' reply,
+and Arthur continued:
+
+'Bring me some cotton for my ears. I never can stand that noise. It is a
+peculiar cry.'
+
+The cotton was brought. A window in the hall which had a habit of
+rattling with every breath of wind was made fast with a bit of shingle
+whittled out for that purpose, and then Arthur became tolerably quiet
+until morning, when he began to talk to himself in the German language,
+which Charles could not understand. But he caught the name Gretchen, and
+knew she was the subject of the sick man's thoughts. Suddenly turning to
+his attendant, to whom he always spoke in English, Arthur said:
+
+'The funeral is to-day?'
+
+'Yes, sir, at ten o'clock.'
+
+'Well, lock every door leading up this way, and shut out the gossipping
+blockheads who will come by hundreds, and, if we would let them, swarm
+into my room as thick as the frogs were in the houses of the Egyptians.
+Shut the doors, Charles, and keep them out.'
+
+So the doors were shut and bolted, and then Arthur lay listening with
+that intensity which so quickens one's hearing, that the faintest sounds
+are distinct at great distances. He heard the trampling footsteps as the
+people came crowding in, and the tread of horses' feet as sleigh after
+sleigh drove up the avenue, and once, with a shudder, he said:
+
+'That is the hearse. I am sure of it.'
+
+Then all was still, and listen as he might he could not distinguish the
+faintest sound until the services were over and the people began to
+leave the house.
+
+'There,' he said, with a sigh of relief; 'it will soon be over. Bring me
+my clothes, Charles. I am going to get up and see the last of this poor
+woman. God help her, whoever she was.'
+
+He was beginning to feel a great pity for the woman whose coffin they
+were putting in the hearse, which moved off a few rods, and then stopped
+until the open sleigh came up, the sleigh in which Frank Tracy sat,
+muffled in his heavy overcoat, for the day, though bright and sunny, was
+cold, and a chill March wind was blowing. Dolly had taken refuge in a
+headache which had prevented her from being present at the funeral and
+kept her from going to the grave as her husband had wished her to do. So
+only Harold and Jerry occupied the sleigh with Frank, and these sat
+opposite him, with their backs to the horses, Jerry in her gray cloak
+and blue hood showing conspicuously as she came into full view of the
+window where Arthur stood looking at the procession with a feeling at
+his heart, as if in some way he were interested in the sad funeral,
+where there was no mourner, no one who had ever seen or known the
+deceased, save the little helpless girl, looking around her in perfect
+unconcern save as she rather liked the stir and all that was going on.
+
+They had tied a thin veil over her head to shield her from the cold, and
+thus her face was not visible to Arthur. But he saw the blue hood and
+the golden hair on the old gray cloak, and the sight of it moved him
+mightily, making him hold fast to the window-casing for support, while
+he stood watching it. Just as far as he could see it his eye followed
+that hood, and when it disappeared from view, he turned from the window,
+deathly sick, and tottering back to his bedroom, vomited from sheer
+nervous excitement.
+
+'Thank Heaven it is over and the rabble gone,' he said, when he became
+easier. 'Go now and open all the doors and windows to let in the fresh
+air and out the smell they are sure to have left. Ugh! I get a whiff of
+it now. Burn some of that aromatic paper; but open the hall windows
+first.'
+
+Charles did as he was ordered, and the wind was soon sweeping through
+the wide hall, while Arthur's rooms were filled with an odor like the
+sweet incense burned in the old cathedrals.
+
+'I am very giddy and faint,' Arthur said, when Charles came back to him
+after his ventilating operation. 'I have looked at the bright snow too
+long, and there are a thousand rings of fire dancing before my eyes, and
+in every ring I see a blue hood and veil, with waves of hair like
+Gretchen's, when she was a child. There is a redder tinge now on
+Gretchen's hair, because she is older. Wheel me out there, Charles,
+where I can see her.'
+
+Charles obeyed, and moved the light bed-lounge into the library, where
+his master could feast his eyes upon the sweet face which knew no
+change, but which always, night and day, smiled upon him the same. The
+picture had a soothing effect upon Arthur, and he gazed at it now until
+it began to fade away and lose itself in the blue hood and veil he had
+seen in the sleigh far down the avenue; and when, a few minutes later,
+Charles came in to look at him, he found him fast asleep.
+
+Meantime the funeral train had reached the cemetery, where the snow was
+piled in great drifts, and where, in a corner of the Tracy lot, they
+buried the stranger, with no tear to hallow her grave, and no pang of
+regret save that she had ever come there, with the mystery and the doubt
+which must always cling to her memory. Frank Tracy's face was very pale
+and stern as he held little Jerry in his arms during the committal of
+the body to the grave, and then bade her take one last look at the box
+which held her mother. But Jerry, who was growing cold and tired, began
+to cry, and so Frank took her back to the sleigh, which was driven to
+the cottage in the lane. Here she felt at home, and drawing to the fire
+the low rocking chair she had appropriated to herself, was soon
+supremely happy devouring the ginger cookie which Mrs. Crawford had
+given her, and in trying to pronounce English words under Harold's
+teaching.
+
+While the children were thus employed, Mr. Tracy was divulging to Mrs.
+Crawford the object of his visit. He could hardly explain, he said, why
+he was so deeply interested in the child, except it were that her mother
+had died on his premises and she seemed to be thrown upon his care.
+
+'I cannot see her go to the poor-house,' he continued, with a trembling
+in his voice which made Mrs. Crawford wonder a little, as she had never
+credited him with much sympathy for anything outside his own family. 'I
+cannot see her go to the poor-house, and I cannot well take her into my
+family, as we have three children of our own. But I have made up my mind
+to care for her, and I have come to ask if, for a compensation, you will
+keep her here?'
+
+'Yes, grandma--say yes!' Harold cried; while Jerry, with her mouth full
+of cookie, repeated, 'ay 'ess.'
+
+'You see, the children plead for me,' Mr. Tracy said, with a smile at
+the little girl, whose hand just then swept back the hair from her eyes,
+which looked steadily at him as he went on: 'While she is young--say,
+until she is ten years old--I will pay you three dollars a week, and
+after that more, if necessary. I know you will be kind to her, and that
+she will be happy here and well brought up. Is it a bargain?'
+
+Mrs. Crawford had never seen him so interested in anything and felt
+somewhat surprised and puzzled, but she expressed her willingness to
+take the child and do what she could for her.
+
+'It will be a good thing for Harold,' she said, 'as he is in danger of
+growing selfish here alone with me.'
+
+And so Jerry's future was settled, and counting out twelve dollars,
+Frank handed them to Mrs. Crawford, saying:
+
+'I will pay you for four weeks in advance, as you may need the money,
+and--and--perhaps--' His face grew very red as he stammered on, 'perhaps
+it may be as well not to tell how much I pay you. People--or
+rather--well, Mrs. Tracy might think it strange, and not understand why
+I feel such an interest in the child. I don't understand it myself.'
+
+But he did understand, and his knees were shaking under him as, when the
+transaction was over, and he was on his way to the Park, he felt that he
+had sold himself to Satan.
+
+'And yet I know nothing for sure,' he kept repeating to himself. 'Arthur
+is expecting Gretchen, whoever she may be. He says he has written to
+her, and he has one of his presentiments that she is coming on the night
+when this woman arrives, who is no more like the Gretchen he raves about
+than I am. This woman has a child. He says Gretchen has none, and that
+he never saw this woman. And yet I find among the things a photograph
+exactly like the picture in the window, and also like the child, who
+certainly bears a resemblance to my brother, though no one else,
+perhaps, would see it. Now, sir,' he appeared to be addressing himself
+to some person unseen, from whom he shrank, for he drew himself as far
+as was possible to his side of the sleigh and shivered as he went on:
+'Now, sir, is that sufficient proof to warrant me in turning everything
+topsy-turvy, and making Arthur crazier than he is?'
+
+'Certainly not,' he seemed to hear in reply, either from within or
+without, he hardly knew which, and he went on:
+
+'I shall try to find out who the woman was, and where she came from; but
+how am I to do it? how begin? Arthur will not tell me a word about
+Gretchen, who she is, or what she is to him. Still, I mean to be on the
+safe side, and do right by the child. Arthur cannot live many years. His
+nerves will wear him out, if nothing else, and when he does, his money
+will naturally come to me.'
+
+'Naturally,' his spectral companion replied, and he continued:
+
+'Well, what I intend doing is this: I shall make my will, in which Jerry
+will share equally with my children, and I shall further draw up a
+written request that in case I die before my brother, any money which
+may fall to my children from him shall be shared equally with her. I
+shall, out of my own private funds, provide for her support and
+education, until she comes of age, or marries, and if possible, I shall
+bring about a marriage between her and Tom, who will probably one day be
+master of Tracy Park. Can anything more be required of me?'
+
+'Nothing,' was the consoling reply; and as the sleigh just then drew up
+before his door, Frank alighted from it, and said to himself as he ran
+up the steps:
+
+'I believe I have been riding with the devil, and have made a league
+with him!'
+
+He found the house thoroughly aired and cleansed from all signs of the
+recent funeral; and when, at one o'clock, he sat down to lunch in the
+handsome dining-room, and sipped his favorite claret, and ate his
+foreign preserves, and thought how much comfort and luxury money could
+buy, he was sure he had done well for himself and his children after
+him. But, like Bishop Hatto, of Mouse-Tower memory, Frank Tracy never
+knew real peace of mind from the day he deliberately sold himself to the
+Evil One for filthy lucre, until the day, years after, when full
+restitution was made, and, with the sin confessed, he held his head up
+again, free from the shadow which he did not leave in the sleigh, but
+which followed him day and night, walking by him when he walked, sitting
+by him when he sat, and watching by him when he slept, so as to be ready
+when he woke with the specious argument that he was acting justly and
+even generously by the little waif, who was like a sunbeam in the
+cottage in the lane, whom many people went to see, marvelling at her
+beauty and wondering in vain whose likeness they sometimes saw in her as
+she frolicked around the house, full of life, and fun, and laughter.
+
+Frank made his will, as he promised his shadow he would, but he went to
+Springfield to have it drawn up, for he knew that Colvin, or any lawyer
+whom he might employ in Shannondale, would wonder at it. He also wrote
+out himself what he called his dying request to his children, in case he
+should die before his brother. In this he stated emphatically his wish
+that Jerry should have her share of whatever might come to them from the
+Tracy estate, the same as if she were his own child.
+
+'I have a good and sufficient reason for this,' he wrote in conclusion,
+'and I enjoin it upon you to carry out my wishes as readily as you would
+were I to speak to you from my grave,'
+
+This done, Frank felt a little better, and the shadow at his side was
+not quite as real as it had been before. He put his will and his dying
+request together in a private drawer with Gretchen's photograph, and the
+testament with the handwriting in it. He had kept this back when the
+stranger's trunk was sent to the cottage, thinking that if it were
+missed and inquired for, he could easily produce it as having been
+mislaid. At the suggestion of Mr. St. Claire he went to New York, to the
+office of the German line of steamers, and made inquiries with regard to
+the passengers who had come on a certain ship at such a time. But
+nothing could be learned of any woman with a child, and after inserting
+in several of the New York papers a description of the woman, with a
+request for any information concerning her which could be given, he
+returned home, with a feeling that he had done all that could be
+required of him, and that he might now enjoy himself.
+
+He was accordingly kind and even tender to his brother, who for several
+weeks suffered from low nervous depression, which kept him altogether in
+his room, to which he refused to admit any one except his attendant and
+Frank. He had ceased for the time being, to talk of Gretchen, or to
+expect her, and he never inquired for the child, whose blue hood had so
+affected him. Once Frank spoke of her to him and told him where she was,
+and that she was learning to speak English very rapidly, and growing
+prettier every day. But Arthur did not seem at all interested and only
+said:
+
+'How can Mrs. Crawford afford to keep the child?'
+
+Others than Arthur asked that question, and among them Dolly, who with a
+woman's quick wit, sharpened by something she accidentally saw, divined
+the truth, which she wrung at last from her husband. There was a fierce
+quarrel--almost their first--a sick headache which lasted three days,
+and a month or more of coldness between the married pair, and then,
+finding she could accomplish nothing, for Frank was as firm as a rock,
+Dolly gave up the contest, and tried by economizing in various ways, to
+save the money which she felt was taken from her children by the little
+girl, who had become so dear to Mrs. Crawford, that she would not have
+parted with her had nothing been paid for her keeping.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+"MR. CRAZYMAN, DO YOU WANT SOME CHERRIES?"
+
+
+More than two years had passed away since the terrible March night when
+the strange woman was frozen to death in the Tramp House, and her
+history was still shrouded in mystery. Not a word had been heard
+concerning her, and her story was gradually being forgotten by the
+people of Shannondale. Her grave, however, was tolerably well kept, and
+every Saturday afternoon, in summer time, a few flowers were put upon it
+by Harold. Not so much for the sake of the dead as for the beautiful
+child who always accompanied him, laughing, and frolicking, and
+sometimes dancing around the grave where he told her her mother was
+buried.
+
+As there had been no date on which to fix Jerry's birth, they had called
+the first day of March her birthday, so that when more than two years
+later we introduce her to our readers on a hot July morning, she was
+said to be six years and four months old. In some respects, however, she
+seemed much older, for there was about her a precocity only found in
+children who have always associated with people much older than
+themselves, or into whose lives strange experiences have come. In
+stature she was very short, though round and plump as a partridge.
+'Dutchy,' Mr. Tracy called her, for Mrs. Tracy did not like her, and
+took no pains to conceal her dislike, though it was based upon nothing
+except the money which she knew was paid regularly to Mrs. Crawford for
+the child's maintenance.
+
+There could be no reason, she said to her husband, why he should support
+the child of a tramp, and the woman had been little better, judging from
+appearances, unless, indeed--and then she told what old Peterkin had
+said more than once, to the effect that Jerry Crawford, as she was
+called, was growing to be the image of the Tracys, especially Arthur.
+
+'And if so,' she added, 'you'd better let Arthur take care of her, and
+save your money for your own children,'
+
+To this Frank never replied. He knew better than old Peterkin that Jerry
+was like the Tracys, or, rather, like his brother, and that it was not
+so much in the features as in the expression and certain movements of
+the head and hands, and tones of the voice when she was very much in
+earnest, and raised it to a higher pitch than usual. She could speak
+English very well now, and sometimes, when Frank, who was a frequent
+visitor at the cottage, sat watching her at her play, and listening to
+her as she talked to herself, as was her constant habit, he could have
+shut his eyes and sworn it was his brother's voice calling to him from
+the hay-loft or apple tree where they had played together when boys.
+
+Jerry's favorite amusement when alone was to make believe that either
+herself, or a figure she had made out of a shawl, was a sick woman,
+lying on a settee which she converted into a bed. Sometimes she was the
+nurse and took care of the sick woman to whom she always spoke in
+German, bending fondly over her, and occasionally holding up before her
+a doll which Mrs. St. Claire had given her, and which she played was the
+woman's baby. Then she would be the sick woman herself, and trying on
+the broad frilled cap which had been found in the trunk, would slip
+under the covering, and laying her head upon the pillow, go through with
+all the actions of some one very sick, occasionally hugging to her bosom
+and kissing the doll.
+
+Once she enacted the pantomime of dying. Folding her hands together and
+closing her eyes, her lips moved as if in prayer, for a moment, then
+stretching out her feet she lay perfectly motionless, with a set
+expression in the little face which looked so comical under the broad
+frilled cap. Then, as if it had occurred to her that action was
+necessary from some one, she exchanged places with the lay figure, and
+tying the cap upon its head, tucked it carefully in the bed, by which
+she knelt, and covering her face with her hands imitated perfectly the
+sobs and moans of a middle-aged person, mingled occasionally with the
+clearer, softer notes of a child's crying.
+
+The first time Frank witnessed this piece of acting was on a Saturday
+afternoon, when he had come to the cottage as usual to pay his weekly
+due. Both Mrs. Crawford and Harold were gone, but knowing they would
+soon return, as it was not their habit to leave Jerry long alone he sat
+down to wait, while she went back to the corner in the kitchen, which
+she used as her play-house.
+
+'Somebody is sick and I am taking care of her,' she said to Mr. Tracy,
+who watched her through the pantomime of the death scene with a feeling,
+when it was over, that he had seen Gretchen die.
+
+There was not a shadow of doubt in his mind that the sick woman was
+Gretchen, the nurse the stranger found in the Tramp House, and the doll
+baby the little girl upon whose memory that scene had been indelibly
+stamped, and who, with her wonderful powers of imitation, could rehearse
+it in every particular. To herself she always spoke in German, which no
+one could understand sufficiently to make out what she meant. Once Mr.
+St. Claire suggested to Frank that he take her to his brother, to whom
+German was as natural as English, and who might be able to learn
+something of her antecedents. And Frank had answered that he would do
+so, knowing the while that nothing could tempt him to bring her and his
+brother together until all the recollections of her babyhood, if she had
+any, were obliterated, and she had in part forgotten her own language.
+
+His first step in evil doing had to be followed by others until he was
+so far committed that he could not retrace his steps, and two shadows
+were with him constantly now, one always reproaching him for what he had
+done, and the other telling him it was now too late to turn back.
+
+He was very fond of Jerry, and on the Saturday afternoon when he sat
+watching her strange play, noticing how graceful was every movement, and
+how lovely the constantly varying expression of her face--from concern
+and anxiety when she was the nurse to distress and pain and then
+resignation and quietude in death when she took the role of the sick
+woman--he felt himself moved by some mighty influence to right her at
+once and put her in her proper place.
+
+'It is more than I can bear. I can't even look Dolly straight in the
+eye,' he said to his evil shadow, which answered back.
+
+'You know nothing sure. Will you give up your prospects for a photograph
+and a likeness which may be accidental?'
+
+So his conscience was smothered again; but he would question the child,
+and after her play was over he called her to him and taking her in his
+lap, kissed the little grave face upon which the shadow of the scene she
+had been enacting had left its impress.
+
+'Jerry,' he said, 'that lady who just died in the bed with the cap on
+was your mamma, was it not?'
+
+''Ess,' was Jerry's reply, for she still adhered to her first
+pronunciation of the word.
+
+'And the other was the nurse?'
+
+''Ess,' Jerry said again; 'Mah-nee.'
+
+This was puzzling, for he had always supposed that by 'mah-nee' the
+child meant 'mam-ma;' but he went on:
+
+'Try to understand me, Jerry; try to think away back before you came in
+the ship.'
+
+''Ess, I vill,' she said, with a very wise look on her face, while Mr.
+Tracy continued:
+
+'Had you a papa? Was he there with you?'
+
+'_Nein_,' was the prompt reply, and Mr. Tracy continued:
+
+'Where did your mamma live? Was it in Wiesbaden?'
+
+He knew he did not pronounce the word right, and was surprised at the
+sudden lighting up of the child's eyes as she tried to repeat the name.
+'Oo-oo-ee,' she began, with a tremendous effort, but the W mastered her,
+and she gave it up with a shake of her head.
+
+'I not say dat oo-oo-ee,' she said, and he put the question in another
+form:
+
+'Where did your mamma die?'
+
+'Tamp House; f'oze to deff,' was now the ready answer, a natural one,
+too, for she had been taught by Harold that such was the case, and had
+often gone with him to the house where he found her, and where the old
+table still stood against the wall.
+
+No one picnicked there now, for the place was said to be haunted, and
+the superstitious ones told each other that on stormy nights, when the
+wild winds were abroad, lights had been seen in the Tramp House, where a
+pale-faced woman, with her long, black hair streaming down her back,
+stood in the door-way, shrieking for help, while the cry of a child
+mingled with her call. But Harold shared none of these fancies. He was
+not afraid of the building, and often went there with Jerry, and sitting
+with her on the table, told her again and again how he had found her
+mother that wintry morning, and how funny she herself had looked in the
+old carpet-bag, and so it is not strange that when Mr. Tracy asked her
+where her mother died, she should answer, 'In the Tramp House,' although
+she had acted a pantomime whose reality must have taken place under very
+different circumstances.
+
+'Of course your mother died in the Tramp House, and I have nothing with
+which to reproach myself. I am altogether too morbid on the subject,'
+Frank said, and he had decided that he was a pretty good sort of fellow,
+after all, when at last Mrs. Crawford came in and he paid her for
+Jerry's board.
+
+It was a part of Frank's plan to save the money out of his own personal
+expenses, so he smoked two cigars less each day and went without claret
+for dinner, except on Sunday, and never touched champagne, and wore his
+hats and coats until his wife said they were shabby and insisted upon
+new ones. In this way he saved more than three dollars a week, but the
+overplus was laid aside for the time when Jerry must necessarily cost
+him more because she would be older. In some respects he was doing his
+duty by the child, who, next to Harold and Mrs. Crawford, whom she
+called grandma, loved him better than any one else. She always ran to
+meet him when he came, and sometimes, when he went away, accompanied him
+down the lane, holding his hand and asking him numberless questions
+about Tracy Park and about his little girl, and why she never came to
+see her.
+
+Frank could not tell Jerry of his wife's bitter prejudice against her,
+and that this was the reason why Maude had never been to the cottage or
+Jerry to the park. But if Jerry had not visited it in person, she was
+greatly interested in the handsome house and grounds, and the lovely
+rooms where the crazy man lived. This was Harold's designation of Mr.
+Arthur--the crazy man--and perhaps of all the things at Tracy Park,
+Jerry was most desirous to see him and his rooms. Harold, who, on one of
+the rare occasions when Arthur was out to dine, had been sent to the
+house on an errand, had gone with Jack into these rooms, which he
+described minutely to his grandmother and Jerry, dwelling longest upon
+the beautiful picture in the window. 'Gretchen, he calls it,' he said;
+and then Jerry, who was listening intently, gave a sudden upward and
+sidewise turn to her Lead, just as she had done when Mr. Tracy spoke to
+her of Wiesbaden.
+
+'Detchen,' she repeated, with a little hesitancy. 'Vat the name vas? Say
+again.'
+
+He said it again, and over the child's face there came a puzzled
+expression, as if she were trying to recall something which baffled all
+her efforts. But she did not forget the name, and that evening Mrs.
+Crawford heard her singing to herself,
+
+'Detchen, Detchen, who are you? Detchen, Detchen, where are you?' and
+she noticed that the doll baby with which Jerry played the most was ever
+after called 'Detchen,' instead of Maude, as it had been christened when
+first given to her.
+
+Jerry had seen Maude Tracy many times and had admired her greatly, with
+her pretty white dresses and costly embroideries; and once, at church,
+when Maude passed near where she was standing, she stood back as far as
+possible out of the way and held her plain gingham dress aside, as if
+neither it nor herself had any right to come in close contact with so
+superior a being. Of the house in the park she knew nothing, except what
+Harold had told her, and that it was a place to be admired and gazed at
+breathlessly at a respectful distance. She had never been there since
+the day of the funeral But she was going at last with Harold, who had
+permission to gather cherries for his grandmother from some of the many
+trees which grew upon the place.
+
+It was a hot morning in July, and the air seemed thunderous and heavy
+when she set off on what to her was as important an expedition as is a
+trip to Europe to an older person. She had wanted to wear her pink
+gingham dress, the one kept sacred for Sunday, and had even hoped that
+she might be allowed to display her best straw hat with the blue ribbons
+and cluster of apple blossoms. She had no doubt that she should go into
+the house and see the crazy man, and Mrs. Tracy, who she had heard wore
+silk stockings every day, and she wished to be suitably attired for such
+honor.
+
+But Mrs. Crawford dispelled her air castles by telling her that she was
+only to go into the side yard where the cherry trees were, and that she
+must be very quiet, so as not to disturb Mr. Arthur, whose windows
+looked that way. To wear her pink dress was impossible, as she would get
+it stained with the juice of the cherries, while the best hat was not
+for a moment to be thought of.
+
+So Jerry submitted to the dark calico frock and high-necked,
+long-sleeved apron which Mrs. Crawford thought safe and proper for her
+to wear on a cherry expedition. A clean, white sun-bonnet with a wide
+cape covered her head and concealed her face when she started from the
+cottage, with her quart tin pail on her arm; but no sooner was she on
+the path which led to the park that the obnoxious bonnet was removed and
+was swinging on her arm, while she was admiring the shadow which, her
+long, bright curls made in the sunshine as she shook her head from side
+to side.
+
+To tell the truth, our little Jerry was rather vain. Passionately fond
+of pictures and flowers, and quick to detect everything beautiful both
+in art and nature, she knew that the little face she sometimes saw in
+Mrs. Crawford's old-fashioned mirror was pretty, and after the day when
+Dick St. Claire told her that her hair was 'awful handsome,' she had
+felt a pride in it and in herself, which all Mrs. Crawford's
+asseverations that 'Handsome is that handsome does' could not destroy.
+Maude Tracy's hair was black and straight, and here she felt she had the
+advantage over her.
+
+'I do hope we shall see her,' she said to Harold, as she danced along,
+swaying her bonnet and shaking her hair. 'Do you think we shall?'
+
+Harold thought it doubtful, and, even if they did, it was not likely she
+would speak to them, he said.
+
+'Why not?' Jerry asked, and he replied:
+
+'Oh, I suppose they feel big because they are rich and we are poor.'
+
+'But why ain't I rich, too? Why don't I live at the park like Maude, and
+wear low-necked aprons instead of this old high one?' Jerry asked; but
+Harold could not tell, and only said:
+
+'Would you rather live at the park than with me?'
+
+'No,' Jerry answered, promptly, stopping short and digging her heel into
+the soft loam of the path. 'I would not stay anywhere without you; and
+when I live at the park you will live there, too, and have codfish and
+tatoe every day.'
+
+Strangely enough this was Harold's favorite dish, and, as it was not his
+grandmother's, his taste was not gratified in that respect as often as
+he would have liked, hence Jerry's promise of the luxury.
+
+Just here, at a sudden turn in the path, they came upon Jack and Maude
+Tracy playing on a bench under a tree, while the nurse was at a distance
+either reading or asleep. Harold would have passed them at once, as he
+knew his grandmother was in a hurry for the cherries, but Jerry had no
+such intention.
+
+Stopping short in front of Maude, she inspected her carefully, from her
+white dress and bright plaid sash to the string of amber beads around
+her neck; while, side by side with this picture, she saw herself in her
+dark calico frock and high-necked apron, with her sun-bonnet and tin
+pail on her arm. Jerry did not like the contrast, and a lump began to
+swell in her throat. Then, as a happy thought struck her, she said, with
+something like exultation in her tone:
+
+'My hair curls and yours don't.'
+
+'No,' Maude answered, slowly--'no it don't curl, but it's black, and
+yours is yaller.'
+
+This was a set back to Jerry, who hated everything yellow, and who had
+never dreamed of applying that color to her hair. She only knew that
+Dick St. Claire had called it pretty, but in this new light thrown upon
+it all her pride vanished, for she recognized like a flash that it might
+be 'yaller,' and stood there silent and vanquished, until Maude, who in
+turn had been regarding her attentively, said to her:
+
+'Ain't you Jerry Crawford?'
+
+That broke the ice of reserve, and the two little girls were soon
+talking together familiarly, and Jerry was asking Maude if she wore
+beads and her best clothes every day.
+
+'Phoo! These ain't my best clothes. I have one gown all brawdery and
+lace,' was Maude's reply, while Jack, who was standing near, chimed in:
+
+'My father's got lots of money, and so has Uncle Arthur, and when he
+dies we are going to have it; Tom says so.'
+
+Slowly the shadows gathered on Jerry's brow as she said, sadly;
+
+'I wish I had an Uncle Arthur, and could wear beads and a sash every
+day' Then, as she looked at Harold, her face brightened immediately and
+she exclaimed.
+
+'But I have Harold and a grandma, and you hain't,' and running up to
+Harold, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him lovingly, as
+if to make amends for the momentary repining.
+
+'We must go now,' Harold said, and taking her hand in his, he led her
+away toward the house, which impressed her with so much awe that as she
+drew near to it, she held her breath and walked on tiptoe, as if afraid
+that any sound from her would be sacrilege in that aristocratic
+atmosphere.
+
+'Oh, isn't it grand, Harold?' Isn't it grand!' she kept repeating, with
+her mouth full of cherries, after they had reached the trees on which
+the ripe, red fruit hung so thickly. 'Do you s'pose we shall see the
+crazy man?' she asked, and Harold replied:
+
+'I don't know. I guess not, unless he comes to the window. Those are his
+rooms, and that window which looks so ugly outside, is the one with the
+picture in it,' and he pointed to the south wing, most of the windows of
+which were open, while against one a long ladder was standing.
+
+It had been left there by a workman who had been up on it to fix the
+hinge of a blind, and who had gone to the village in quest of something
+he needed, Jerry saw the ladder and its close proximity to the open
+window, and she thought to herself.
+
+'I mean to fill my pail with cherries, and go up that ladder and take
+them to him, I wonder if he would bite me?'
+
+Suiting the action to the word she stopped eating; and began to pick
+from the lower limbs as rapidly as possible until her pail was full.
+
+'Pour them into the basket,' Harold called to her from the top of the
+tree, but Jerry did not heed him. She had seen the tall figure of a man
+pass before the window, and a pale, thin face had for a moment, looked
+out, apparently to discover whence the talking came.
+
+'I'm going to take the crazyman some cherries,' she tried, and almost
+before Harold could protest, she was half way up the ladder, which she
+climbed with the agility of a little cat.
+
+'Jerry, Jerry! What are you doing!' Harold exclaimed, 'Come back this
+minute. He doesn't like children; he tried to throw me over the banister
+once; he will knock you off the ladder; oh, Jerry!' and Harold's voice
+was almost a sob as he watched the girl going up round after round until
+the top was reached, and she stood with her flushed, eager face, just on
+a level with the window so that by standing on tiptoe, she could look
+into the room.
+
+It was Arthur's bedroom, and there was no one in it, but she heard the
+sound of footsteps in the adjoining apartment, and raising herself as
+far as possible, and holding up her pail, she called out in a clear,
+shrill voice;
+
+'Mr. Crazyman, Mr. Crazyman, don't you want some cherries?'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+ARTHUR AND JERRY.
+
+
+Arthur had passed a restless night. Indeed all his nights were restless,
+but this one had been especially so. Thoughts of Gretchen had troubled
+him in his dreams, and two or three times he had started up to listen,
+thinking that he heard her calling to him from a distance. He had
+dreamed also of the blue hood seen that day of the funereal, now more
+than two years ago, and of the child who had come knocking at his door,
+first with her hands and then with her feet, but whom he had refused to
+admit. He had never seen her since, and had never inquired for her of
+his own accord. Two or three times his brother had spoken of her in a
+casual way, telling him once that she was with Mrs. Crawford. Arthur had
+then asked how she could afford to keep her, and Frank had made no
+reply. But the second time when he spoke of Jerry, and Arthur, more
+interested in Mrs. Crawford than in her, had asked the same question,
+Frank had said:
+
+'She cannot afford it, I pay her three dollars a week.'
+
+For a moment Arthur looked inquiringly at him; then he said:
+
+'You are a good fellow after all, even if you did deceive me about
+sending John for Gretchen. Tell Colvin, when Christmas comes, to give
+Mrs. Crawford a hundred dollars for me.'
+
+After this Mrs. Crawford and her affairs passed completely out of
+Arthur's mind. He never went to the cottage, or near it. He never went
+anywhere, in fact, but lived the life of a recluse, growing thinner, and
+paler, and more reticent every day, talking now but seldom of Gretchen,
+though he never arose in the morning or retired at night without kissing
+her picture and murmuring to it some words of tenderness in German.
+
+He had measured the length of his three rooms and dressing-room, and
+found them to be nearly one hundred feet, or six rods do that by passing
+back and forth twenty-five times he would walk almost a mile.
+
+Regularly each morning, when it was not too cold or stormy, he would
+throw open his windows and take his daily exercise, which was but a poor
+substitute for what might be had in the fresh air outside, but was
+nevertheless much better than nothing.
+
+On this particular morning, when Harold and Jerry were at the park, he
+was taking his walk as usual, though very slowly, for he felt weak and
+sick, and, oh, so inexpressibly lonely and desolate that it seemed to
+him he would gladly lie down and die.
+
+'If I thought Gretchen were dead, nothing would seem so desirable to me
+as the grave, for then there would be nothing to live for,' he was
+saying to himself, when the sound of voices outside attracted his
+attention, and going to the window, he saw the children, Harold in the
+top of the tree, and Jerry at the foot, with her white sun-bonnet
+shading her face.
+
+Recognizing Harold, he guessed who the little girl was, and a strange
+feeling of interest stirred in his heart for her, as he said:
+
+'Poor little waif! I wonder where she came from, or what will become of
+her?'
+
+'Then resuming his walk, he forgot all about the little waif, until
+startled by a voice which rang, clear and bell-like, through the rooms:
+
+'Mr. Crazyman! Mr. Crazyman! don't you want some cherries?'
+
+It was not so much the words as something in the tone, the foreign
+accent, the ring like a voice he never could forget, and which the
+previous night had called to him in his dreams. And now it was calling
+again--not in his sleep, but in reality, for he knew he was
+awake--calling from the adjoining room, which no one could enter without
+his knowledge.
+
+Mentally weak as he was, and apt to be superstitious, his limbs shook,
+and his heart beat faster than its wont, as he went toward his
+sleeping-apartment, from which the voice came again a little louder and
+more peremptory:
+
+'Mr. Crazyman! where are you? I've brought you some cherries!'
+
+He had reached the door by this time, and saw the pail on the broad
+window-ledge where Jerry had put it, and to which she was clinging, with
+her white sun-bonnet just in view.
+
+'Oh, Gretchen! how did you get here?' he said, bounding across the
+floor, with no thought of Jerry in his mind, no thought of any one but
+Gretchen, whom he was constantly expecting to come, though not exactly
+in this way.
+
+'I climbed the ladder to fetch you some cherries, and I'm standing on
+the toppest stick,' Jerry said, craning her neck until her bonnet fell
+back, disclosing to view her beautiful face flushed with excitement, and
+her bright, wavy hair, which, moist with perspiration, clung in masses
+of round curls to her head and forehead.
+
+'Great Heaven!' Arthur exclaimed, as he stood staring at the wide-open
+blue eyes confronting him so steadily. 'Who are you, and where did you
+come from?'
+
+'I'm Jerry, and I comed from the carpet-bag in the Tramp House. Take me
+in, won't you?' Jerry said; and, mechanically leaning from the window,
+Arthur took her in, while Harold from below looked on, horror-struck
+with fear as to what the result might be if Jerry were left any time
+alone with a madman who did not like children.
+
+'He may kill her; I must tell the folks,' he said; and, going round to
+the side door, he entered, without knocking, and asked for Mrs. Tracy.
+
+But she was not at home, and so he told the servants of Jerry's danger,
+and begged them to go to her rescue.
+
+'Pshaw, he won't hurt her. Charles will come pretty soon, and I'll send
+him up. Don't look so scared; he is harmless,' the cook said to Harold,
+who, in a wild state of nervous fear, went back to the cherry trees,
+where he could listen and hear the first scream which should proclaim
+Jerry's danger.
+
+But none came, and could he have looked into the room, where Jerry sat,
+or rather stood, he would have been amazed.
+
+As Arthur lifted Jerry through the window, and put her down upon the
+floor, he said to her:
+
+'Take off that bonnet and let me look at you.'
+
+She obeyed and stood before him with all her wealth of hair tumbling
+about her glowing face, and an eager, questioning expression in her blue
+eyes, which looked at him so fearlessly. Arthur knew perfectly well who
+she was, but something about her so dazed and bewildered him that for a
+moment he could not speak, but stared at her with the hungry, wistful
+look of one longing for something just within his reach, but still
+unattainable.
+
+'Do you like me?' Jerry asked at last.
+
+'Like you?' he replied. 'Yes. Why did you not come to me sooner?'
+
+And, stooping, he kissed the cherry-stained mouth as he had never kissed
+a child before.
+
+Sitting down upon the lounge, he took her in his lap and said to her
+again:
+
+'Who are you, and where did you come from? I know your name is Jerry,
+which is a strange one for a girl, and I know you live with Mrs.
+Crawford, but before that night where did you live? Where did you come
+from?'
+
+'Out of the carpet-bag in the Tramp House. I told you that once,' Jerry
+said. 'Harold found me. I am his little girl. He is out in the cherry
+tree, and said I must not come up, because you were crazy and would hurt
+me. You won't hurt me, will you? And be you crazy?'
+
+'Hurt you? No,' he answered, as he parted the rings of her hair from her
+low brow. 'I don't know whether I am crazy or not They say so, and
+perhaps I am, when my head is full of bumble-bees.'
+
+'Oh--h!' Jerry gasped, drawing back from him. 'Can they get out? And
+will they sting?'
+
+Arthur burst into a merry laugh, the first he had known since he came
+back to Shannondale. Jerry was doing him good. There was something very
+soothing in the touch of the little warm hands he held in his, and
+something puzzling and fascinating, too, in the face of the child. He
+did not think of a likeness to any one; he only knew that he felt drawn
+toward her in a most unaccountable manner, and found himself wondering
+greatly who she was.
+
+'Harold told me there were pictures and marble people up here with
+nothing on, and everything, and that's why I comed--that and to bring
+you some cherries. I like pictures. Can I see them?' Jerry said.
+
+'Yes, you shall see them,' Arthur replied; and he led her into the room
+where Gretchen's picture looked at them from the window.
+
+'Oh, my!' Jerry exclaimed, with bated breath, 'Ain't she lovely! Is she
+God's sister?' and folding her hands together, she stood before the
+picture as reverently as a devout Catholic stands before a Madonna.
+
+It was some time since Jerry had spoken a word of German, but as she
+stood before Gretchen's picture old memories seemed to revive, and with
+them the German word for _pretty_, which she involuntarily spoke aloud.
+
+Low as was the utterance, it caught Arthur's ear, and grasping her
+shoulder, he said:
+
+'What was that? What did you say, and where did you learn it?'
+
+His manner frightened her; perhaps the bumble-bees were coming out, and
+she drew back from him, forgetting entirely what she had said.
+
+'It was a German word,' he continued, 'and the accent is German, too;
+can you speak it.'
+
+Unconsciously as he talked, he dropped into that language, and Jerry
+listened intently, with a strained look on her face, as if trying to
+recall something which came and went, but went more than it came, if
+that could be.
+
+'I talked that once,' she said, 'when I lived with mamma; but she is
+dead. Harold found her, and I put flowers on her grave.'
+
+Half the time she was speaking in German, or trying to, and Arthur
+listened in amazement, while his interest in her deepened every moment,
+as he took her through the rooms and showed her 'the marble people with
+nothing on them,' and the beautiful pictures which adorned his walls.
+
+'How would you like to come and be my little girl?' he asked her at
+last, when, remembering Harold and the cherries, she told him she must
+go, and started toward the window as if she would make her egress as she
+had come in.
+
+'Can Harold come, too? I can't leave Harold,' she said Then, as she
+caught sight of him still standing at a distance, gazing curiously up at
+the window through which she had disappeared, she called out, 'Yes
+Harold; I'm coming. I have seen him and everything, and he did not hurt
+me. Good-bye!' and she turned toward Arthur with a little nod.
+
+Then, before he could stop her, she sprang out upon the ladder, and went
+down faster than she had come up, leaving the pail of cherries upon the
+window-sill, and leaving, too, in Arthur's breast a tumult of emotions
+which he could not define.
+
+That night, when Frank, who had heard in much alarm of Jerry's visit to
+his brother, went up to see him, he found him more cheerful and natural
+than he had seen him in weeks. As Frank expected, his first words were
+of the little girl who had come to him through the window and left him
+the cherries, of which he said he had eaten so many that he feared they
+might make him sick. What did Frank know of the child? What had he
+learned of her history? Of course he had made enquiries everywhere?
+
+It was just in the twilight, before the gas was lighted, and so Arthur
+did not see how his brother's face flamed at first and then grew white
+as he recapitulated what the reader already knows, dwelling at length
+upon the enquiries he had made in New York, all of which had been
+fruitless. There was the name Jerrine on the child's clothing, he said
+and the initials 'N.B.' on that of her mother, who was evidently French,
+although she must have come from Germany.'
+
+'Yes,' Arthur replied, 'the child is a German, and interests me greatly.
+Her face and something in her voice has haunted me all the afternoon.
+Was there nothing in that trunk or the carpet-bag which would be a
+clue?'
+
+'Nothing,' Frank replied, although it seemed to him it was the shadow
+speaking for him, or at least putting the lie into his mouth. There were
+articles of clothing, all very plain, and a picture book printed at
+Leipsic, I can get that for you if you like, though it tells nothing
+unless it he that the mother lived in Leipsic.'
+
+Frank talked very rapidly, and laid so much stress on Leipsic, that
+Arthur got an idea that Jerry had actually come from there, just as his
+brother meant he should, and he began to speak of the town and recall
+all he knew of it.
+
+'I was never there but once,' he said, 'for although I spent a great
+deal of time in Germany, it was mostly in Heidleberg and Wiesbaden. Oh,
+that is lovely,--Wiesbaden--and nights now, when I cannot sleep, I fancy
+that I am there again, in the lovely park, and hear the music of the
+band, and see the crowds of people strolling through the grounds, and I
+am there with them, though apart from the rest, just where a narrow
+path turns off from a bridge, and a seat is half hidden from view
+behind the thick shrubberies. There I sit again with Gretchen, and feel
+her hand in mine and her dear head on my arm. Oh, Gretchen--'
+
+There was a sob now in his voice, and he seemed to be talking to himself
+rather than to his brother, who said to him:
+
+'Gretchen lived in Wiesbaden, then?'
+
+'Yes; but for heaven's sake pronounce it with a V, and not a W, and in
+two syllables instead of three,' Arthur answered, pettishly, his ear
+offended as it always was with a discordant sound or mispronounciation.
+
+'Veesbaden, then,' Frank repeated, understanding now why Jerry had
+stumbled over the name when he once spoke it to her.
+
+Clearly she had come from Wiesbaden, where Gretchen had lived, and where
+he believed she had died, though he did not tell Arthur so; he merely
+said:
+
+'Gretchen was your sweetheart, I suppose?'
+
+But Arthur did not reply; he never replied to direct questions as to who
+Gretchen was, but after a moment's silence, he said:
+
+'You speak of her as something past. Do you believe she is dead?'
+
+'Yes, I do,' was Frank's decided answer. You have never told me who she
+was, though I have my own opinion on the subject, and I know that you
+loved her very much, and if she loved you so much--'
+
+'She did--she did; she loved me more--far more than I deserved,' was
+Arthur's vehement interruption.
+
+'Well, then,' Frank continued, 'if she did, and were living, she would
+have come to you, or answered your letters, or sent you some messenger.'
+
+Frank's voice trembled here, and be seemed to see again the cold, still
+face of the dead woman, whose lips, could they have spoken, might have
+unlocked the mystery and brought a message from Gretchen'
+
+'True, true,' Arthur replied. 'She would have come or written. How long
+is it since I came home?'
+
+'Four years next October,' Frank said.
+
+'Four years;' Arthur went on, 'is it so long as that? And it, was then
+more than three years since I had seen her. Everything was blotted out
+from my mind from the time that I entered that accursed _maison de
+santé_ until I found myself in Paris. I am afraid she _is_ dead.'
+
+Just then Charles came in with lights and the chocolate his master
+always took before retiring, and so Frank said good-night, and went out
+upon the broad piazza, hoping the night air would cool his heated brow,
+or that the laughter and prattle of Jack and Maude, who were frolicking
+on the gravel walk, would drown the voice of the shadow which said to
+him:
+
+'But for the number of years he says it is since he saw Gretchen, there
+could be no doubt, and you would be the biggest rascal living. As it is,
+you need not distress yourself--Jerry is nothing to him; and if she
+were, you have gone too far now to go back. People would never respect
+you again. And then there is Maude. You cannot disgrace her.'
+
+No, he could not disgrace his darling Maude, who, as if guessing that he
+was thinking of her, came up the steps to his side, and seating herself
+upon his lap, pushed the hair from his forehead with her soft fingers,
+and kissed him lovingly as she was wont to do.
+
+'My beautiful Maude,' he thought, for he knew she would be beautiful,
+with her black hair, and starry eyes, and brilliant complexion, and he
+loved her with all the strength of his nature. To see her grow into
+womanhood, admired and sought after by everyone, was the desire of his
+heart, and as he believed that money was necessary to the perfect
+fulfilment of his desire, for her sake he would carry his secret to the
+grave.
+
+'Are you sick, papa?' Maude asked, looking into his pale face, on which
+the moon shone brightly.
+
+'No, pet,' he answered, 'only tired. I am thinking of little Jerry
+Crawford. She was here this afternoon,'
+
+'Yes, I saw her in the park with Harold. Isn't he handsome, papa? and
+such a nice boy! so different from Tom,' said Maude, and then she went
+on: 'Jerry is pretty too; prettier than I am; her hair curls and mine
+doesn't, but her dress is so ugly--that old high apron and calico gown.
+What makes her so poor and me so rich?'
+
+Mr. Tracy groaned inwardly, as he replied:
+
+'You are not rich, my child.'
+
+'Oh, yes, I am,' Maude said, 'I heard mamma tell Mrs. Brinsmade so. She
+said Uncle Arthur was worth a million, and when he died we should have
+it all, because he could not make a will if he wanted to, and he had no
+children of his own,'
+
+Although little more than seven years old, Maude Tracy was very knowing
+and precocious in some respects, and, like her brother Tom, had heard so
+much from her mother and others of their prospective wealth, that she
+understood the situation far better than she ought, and was already
+counting on the thousands waiting for her when her uncle died. And yet
+Maude Tracy had in her nature qualities which were to ripen into a noble
+womanhood. Truthful and generous, her instincts of right and wrong were
+very keen, and young as she was she had no respect for anything like
+deception or trickery. This her father knew, and his bitterest pang of
+remorse came from this thought, 'What would Maude say if she knew?' And
+it was more for her sake he was sinning than for his own or that of any
+other. She was so pretty, or would be when grown to young ladyhood, and
+the adornments which money could bring would so well become her.
+
+'Maude,' he said at last, 'how would you like to change places with
+Jerry? That is, let her come here and live, while we go away and be
+poor; not quite as she is, but like many people.'
+
+'And not wear a sash, and beads, and buttoned boots every day?' Maude
+interrupted him quickly. 'I should not like it at all. Why, Jerry
+dresses herself, and wipes the dishes, and wears those big aprons all
+the time. No, I don't want to be poor;' and as if something in her
+father's mind had communicated itself to her, she raised her head from
+his shoulder and looked beseechingly at him.
+
+'Nor shall you be poor, if I can help it,' he said; 'but you must be
+very kind to Jerry, and never let her feel that you are richer than she.
+Do you understand?'
+
+'I think I do,' Maude answered, adding as she kissed him fondly: 'And
+now I s'pose I must go, for there is Hetty come for me; so, good-night,
+you dearest, best papa in the world.'
+
+He knew that she believed in him fully; that should he confess his
+fault she would understand it, and lose faith in him. He would bear the
+burden, he said to himself. There should be no more repining or looking
+back, Maude must never know; and so Jerry's chance was lost.
+
+The next morning Arthur awoke with a racking headache. He was accustomed
+to it, it is true; but this one was particularly severe.
+
+'It's the cherries; no wonder; a quart of those sour things would turn
+upside down any stomach,' Charles said, as he glanced at the empty tin
+pail which was adorning an inlaid table, and then suggested a dose of
+ipecac as a means of dislodging the offending cherries.
+
+But Arthur declined the medicine. His stomach was well enough, he said.
+It was his head which ached, and nothing would help that like the touch
+of the cool little hands he had held in his the previous day. Charles
+must go for Jerry--go at once, for he wanted her, and as when Arthur
+wanted a thing he wanted it immediately, Charles was soon on his way to
+the cottage in the lane, where he found the little girl under a tall
+lilac bush, busy with the mud pies she was making, and talking to
+herself, partly in English and partly in broken German, which she had
+resumed since visiting the park.
+
+'Seemed like something I had dreamed, when he talked like that, and I
+could almost do it myself,' she said to Harold when describing the
+particulars of her interview with Mr. Tracy, and her tongue fell
+naturally into the language of her babyhood.
+
+On hearing Charles' errand, her delight was unbounded.
+
+'Iss. You'll let me go,' she cried, as she stood before Mrs. Crawford,
+with the mud-spots on her hands and face; 'and you'll let me wear my
+best gown now, and my white apron with the shoulder-straps, and my
+morocco shoes, because this visiting.'
+
+As Mrs. Crawford could see no objection to the plan, Jerry was soon
+dressed, and on her way to the Park House, which seemed to her to be a
+very palace, and until the day before a place to be looked upon with
+awe, and admired breathlessly at a distance. Indeed, she had sometimes,
+when passing near the house, walked on tiptoe, as if on sacred ground,
+and held back her humble dress lest it should harm a shrub or vine by
+contact. But matters now were changed. She had been there, and was
+going there again by special invitation from the master, and she tripped
+along airily with a sense of dignity and importance unusual in one so
+young.
+
+Mrs. Tracy, who seldom troubled herself with her brother-in-law's
+affairs, knew nothing of his having sent for Jerry, and was surprised
+when she saw her coming up the walk with Charles, whose manner indicated
+that he knew perfectly what he was about. She had heard of Jerry's visit
+on the previous day, and had wondered what Arthur could find in that
+child to interest him, when he would never allow Maude in his room. She
+knew nothing of the shadow which night and day was nearer to her husband
+than she was herself, but she did not fancy Jerry, because of the three
+dollars a week, which she felt was so much taken from herself. Why they
+should be burdened with the support of the child, just because her
+mother happened to be found dead upon their premises, she could not
+understand.
+
+Had Jerry been older, she might, she said, have taken her into the
+kitchen as maid of all work, for Dolly had reached a point where she
+liked a great many servants in the household, and prided herself upon
+employing more help than either Grace Atherton or Edith St. Claire. Only
+that morning she had spoken to her husband of Jerry, and asked him how
+long he proposed to support her.
+
+'Just as long as I have a dollar of my own, and she needs it,' was his
+reply, as he left the room, slamming the door behind him and leaving her
+to think him almost as crazy as his brother.
+
+Thus it was not in a very quiet frame of mind that she went out upon the
+cool, broad piazza, and, taking one of the large willow chairs standing
+there, began to rock back and forth and wonder what had so changed her
+husband, making him silent and absent-minded, and even irritable at
+times, as he had been that morning. Was there insanity in his veins as
+well as in his brother's, and would her children inherit--her darling
+Maude, of whom she was so proud, and who, she hoped, would some day be
+the richest heiress in the county and marry Dick St. Claire, if, indeed,
+she did not look even higher?
+
+It was at this point in her soliloquy that she saw Jerry coming up the
+walk, her face glowing with excitement and her manner one of freedom and
+assurance.
+
+Ascending the steps, Jerry nodded and smiled at the lady, whose
+expression was not very inviting, and who, to the child's remark, 'I've
+comed again,' answered, icily:
+
+'I see you have. Seems to me you come pretty often.' Turning to Charles,
+Mrs. Tracy continued:
+
+'Why is she here again so soon? What does she want?'
+
+Quick to detect and interpret the meaning of the tones of a voice, and
+hearing disapprobation in Mrs. Tracy's, Jerry's face was shadowed at
+once, and she looked up entreatingly at Charles, who said:
+
+'Mr. Tracy sent me for her. She was with him yesterday, and he will have
+her again to-day.'
+
+Then Jerry's face brightened, and she chimed in:
+
+'Iss, I'm visiting, I'm invited, and I'm going to stay to eat.'
+
+Mrs. Tracy dared not interfere with Arthur, even if he took Jerry to
+live there altogether, and, with a bend of her head, she signified to
+Charles that the conference was ended.
+
+'Come, Jerry,' Charles said; but Jerry held back a moment, and asked:
+
+'Where's Maude?'
+
+If Mrs. Tracy heard, she did not reply, and Jerry followed on after
+Charles through the hall and up the broad staircase to the darkened room
+where Arthur lay, suffering intense pain in the head, and moaning
+occasionally. But he heard the patter of the little feet, for he was
+listening for it, and when Jerry entered his room he raised himself upon
+his elbow, and reaching the other hand toward her, said:
+
+'So you have come again, little Jerry; or, perhaps I should call you
+little _Cherry_, considering how you first came to me. Would you like
+that name?'
+
+'Iss,' was Jerry's reply, in the quick, half-lisping way which made the
+monosyllable so attractive.
+
+'Well, then, Cherry,' Arthur continued, 'take off that bonnet, and open
+the blind behind me so I can see your face. Then bring that stool and
+sit where I can look at you while you rub my head with your hands. It
+aches enough to split, and I believe the bumble bees are swarming; but
+they can't get out, and if they could, they are the white-faced kind,
+which never sting.'
+
+Jerry knew all about white-faced bumble-bees, for Harold had caught them
+for her, and with this fear removed, she did as Arthur bade her, and was
+soon seated at his side, rubbing his forehead, where the blue veins were
+standing out full and round, and smoothing his hair caressingly with her
+fingers, which seemed to have in them a healing power, for the pain and
+heat grew less under their touch, and, after a while Arthur fell into a
+quiet sleep.
+
+When he awoke, after half an hour or so, it was with a delicious sense
+of rest and freedom from pain. Jerry had dropped the shades to shut out
+the sunlight, and was walking on tiptoe round the room, arranging the
+furniture and talking to herself in whispers, as she usually did when
+playing alone.
+
+'Jerry,' Arthur said to her, and she was at his side in a moment, 'you
+are an enchantress. The ache is all gone from my head, charmed away by
+your hands. Now, come and sit by me again, and tell me all you know of
+yourself before Harold found you. Where did you live? What was your
+mother's name? Try and recall all you can.'
+
+Jerry, however, could tell him very little besides the Tramp House, and
+the carpet-bag, and Harold letting her fall in the snow. Of the cold and
+the suffering she could recall nothing, or of the journey from New York
+in the cars. She did remember something about the ship, and her mother's
+seasickness, but where she lived before she went to the ship she could
+not tell. It was a big town, she thought, and there was music there, and
+a garden, and somebody sick. That was all. Everything else was gone
+entirely, except now and then when vague glimpses of something in the
+past bewildered and perplexed her. Her pantomime of the dying woman and
+the child had not been repeated for more than a year, for now her acting
+always took the form of the tragedy in the Tramp House, with herself in
+the carpet-bag and a lay figure dead beside her. But gradually, as
+Arthur questioned her, the old memories began to come back and shape
+themselves in her mind, and he said at last:
+
+'It was like this--playin' you was a sick lady and I was your nurse. I
+can't think of her name, I guess I'll call her Manny. And there must be
+a baby; that's me, only I can't think of my name.'
+
+'Call it Jerry, then,' Arthur suggested, both interested and amused,
+though he did not quite understand what she meant.
+
+But he was passive in her hands, and submitted to have a big
+handkerchief put over his head for a cap, to hold on his arm the baby
+she improvised from a sofa-cushion of costly plush, around which she
+arranged as a dress an expensive tablespread, tied with the rich cord
+and tassel of his dressing-gown.
+
+'You must cry a great deal,' she said, 'and pray a great deal, and kiss
+the baby a great deal, and I must scold you some for crying so much, and
+shake the baby some in the kitchen for making a noise, because, you
+know, the baby can walk and talk, and is me, only I can't be both at a
+time.'
+
+She was not very clear in her explanations, but Arthur began to have a
+dim perception of her meaning, and did what she bade him do, and rather
+enjoyed having his face and hands washed with a wet rag, and his hair
+brushed and _turled_, as she called it, even though the fingers which
+_turled_ it sometimes made suspicious journeyings to her mouth. He cried
+when she told him to cry; he coughed when she told him to cough; he
+kissed the baby when she told him to kiss it; he took medicine from the
+tin pail in the form of the cherry juice left there, and did not have to
+make believe that it sickened him, as she said he must, for that was a
+reality. But when she told him he must die, but pray first, he demurred,
+and asked what he should say. Jerry hesitated a little. She knew that
+her prayers were 'Our Father,' and 'Now I lay me,' but it seemed to her
+that a person dying should say something else, and at last she replied:
+
+'I can't think what she did say, only a lot about _him_. There was a
+_him_ somewhere, and I guess he was naughty, so pray for _him_, and the
+baby--that's me--and tell Manny she must take me to Mecky,'
+
+'To whom?' Arthur asked, and she replied:
+
+'To Mecky, where he was, don't you know?'
+
+Arthur did not know, but he prayed for _him_, saying what she bade him
+say--a mixture half English, half German.
+
+'There now, you are dead,' she said at last, as she closed his eyes and
+folded his hand upon his chest, 'You are dead, and mustn't stir nor
+breathe, no matter how awful we cry, Man-nee and I.'
+
+Kneeling down beside him, she began to cry so like that of two persons
+that if Arthur had not known to the contrary, he would have sworn there
+were two beside him, a woman and a child, the voice of the one shrill
+and clear, and young, and frightened, the other older, and harsher, and
+stronger, and both blending together in a most astonishing manner.
+
+'With a little practice she would make a wonderful ventriloquist,'
+Arthur thought, as he watched her flitting about the room, talking to
+unseen people and giving orders with regard to himself.
+
+Once Frank had witnessed a pantomine very similar to this, only then the
+play had ended with the death, while now there was the burial, and when
+Arthur moved a little and asked if he might get up, she laid her hand
+quickly on his mouth, with a peremptory 'hush! you are dead and we must
+bury you.'
+
+But here Jerry's memory failed her, and the funeral which followed was
+an imitation of the one which had left the Park House three years
+before, and which Arthur had watched from his window. Frank was there,
+and his wife, and Peterkin, and Jerry imitated the voices of them all,
+and when someone bade her kiss her mother she stooped and kissed
+Arthur's forehead, and said:
+
+'Good-bye, mamma,' then throwing a thin tidy over his face, she
+continued, 'Now, I am going to shut the coffin,' and as she worked at
+the corners, as if driving down the screws, Arthur felt as if he were
+actually being shut out from life, and light, and the world.
+
+To one of his superstitious tendencies the whole was terribly real, and
+when at last she told him he was buried, and the folks had come back,
+and he could get up, the sweat was standing upon his face and hands in
+great drops, and he felt that he had in very truth been present at the
+obsequies of some one, whose death had made an impression so strong upon
+Jerry's mind that time had not erased it. There was in his heart no
+thought of Gretchen, as there had been in Frank's when he was a
+spectator at the play. He had no cause for suspicion, and thought only
+of the child whose restlessness and activity were something appalling to
+him.
+
+'Now, what shall we play next?' she asked, as he sat white and trembling
+in his chair.
+
+'Oh, nothing, nothing,' he groaned, 'I cannot stand any more now.'
+
+'Well, then, you sit still, and I'll clean house; it needs it badly.
+Such mud as that boy brings in I never saw, and I'm so lame, too!' Jerry
+responded, and Arthur recognized Mrs. Crawford, whose tidiness and
+cleanliness were proverbial, and for the next half hour he watched the
+little actress as she limped around the room exactly as Mrs. Crawford
+limped with her rheumatism, sweeping, dusting, and scolding a little,
+both to Harold and Jerry, the latter of whom once retorted:
+
+'I would not be so cross as that if I had forty rheumatisses in my
+laigs, would you, Harold?'
+
+But Harold only answered, softly:
+
+'Hush, Jerry I you should not speak so to grandmamma, and she so good to
+us both, when we haven't any mother.'
+
+Arthur would have laughed, so perfect was the imitation of voice and
+gesture, but at the mention of Harold's mother there came into his mind
+a vision of sweet Amy Crawford, who had been his first love, and for
+whose son he had really done so little.
+
+'Jerry,' he said, 'I guess you have cleaned house long enough. Wash your
+hands and come to me.'
+
+She obeyed him, and looking into his face, said:
+
+'Now, what? can you play cat's cradle or casino?'
+
+'No; I want to talk to you of Harold. You love him very much?'
+
+'Oh, a hundred bushels--him and grandma, too.'
+
+'And he is very kind to you?'
+
+'Yes, I guess he is. He never talks back, and I am awful sometimes, and
+once I spit at him, and struck him; but I was so sorry and cried all
+night, and offered to give him my best doll 'cause it was the plaything
+I loved most, and I went without my piece of pie so he could have two
+pieces if he wanted,' Jerry said, her voice trembling as she made this
+confession, which gave Arthur a better insight into her real character
+than he had had before.
+
+Hasty, impulsive, repentant, generous, and very affectionate, he felt
+sure she was, and he continued;
+
+'Does Harold go to school?'
+
+'Yes; and I too--to the district; but I hate it!' Jerry replied.
+
+'Why hate it?' Arthur asked. 'What is the matter with the district
+school?'
+
+'Oh, it smells awful there sometimes when it is hot,' Jerry replied with
+an upward turn to her nose. 'And the boys are so mean, some of them.
+Bill Peterkin goes there and I can't bear him, he plagues me so. Wants
+to kiss me. A-a-h, and says I am to be his wife, and he has got warts on
+his thumb!'
+
+Jerry's face was sufficiently indicative of the disgust she felt for
+Bill Peterkin with his warts, and leaning back in his chair, Arthur
+laughed heartily, as he said:
+
+'And you do not like Bill Peterkin? Well, what boys do you like?'
+
+'Harold and Dick St. Claire,' was the prompt response, and Arthur
+continued:
+
+'What would you have in place of the district school?'
+
+'A governess,' was Jerry's answer. 'Nina St. Claire has one, and Ann
+Eliza Peterkin has one, and Maude Tracy has one.'
+
+Here Jerry stopped suddenly, as if struck with a new idea.
+
+'Why, Maude is your little girl, isn't she? You are her rich uncle, and
+she is to have all your money when you die. I wish I was your little
+girl.'
+
+She spoke the last very sadly, and something in the expression of her
+face brought Gretchen to Arthur's mind, and his voice was choked as he
+said to her:
+
+'I'd give half my fortune if you were my little girl.'
+
+Then laying his hand on her bright hair, he questioned her adroitly of
+her life at the cottage, finding that it was a very happy one, and that
+she had never known want, although Mrs. Crawford was unable to work as
+she once had done, and was largely dependent upon the price for Jerry's
+board, which Frank paid regularly. Of this, however, Jerry did not
+speak. She only said:
+
+'Harold works in the furnace, and in folks' gardens, and does lots of
+things for everybody, and once Bill Peterkin twitted him because he goes
+to Mrs. Baker's sometimes after stuff for the pig, and Harold cried, and
+I got up early the next morning and went after it myself and drew the
+cart home. After that grandma wouldn't let Harold go for any more, so I
+s'pose the pig will not weigh as much, I'm sorry, for I like sausage,
+don't you?'
+
+Arthur hated it, but he did not tell her so, and she went on.
+
+'Harold studies awful hard, and wants to go to college. He is trying to
+learn Latin and recites to Dick St. Claire; but grandma says it is
+up-hill business. Oh, if I's only rich I'd give it all to Harold, and he
+should get learning like Dick. Maybe I can work some time and earn some
+money. I wish I could.'
+
+Arthur did not speak for a long time, but sat looking at the child whose
+face now wore an old and troubled look. In his mind he was revolving a
+plan which, with, his usual precipitancy, he resolved to carry into
+effect at once. But he said nothing of it to Jerry, whose attention was
+diverted by the entrance of Charles and the preparations for luncheon,
+which on the little girl's account, was served with more care than
+usual.
+
+Jerry, who had a great liking for everything luxurious, had taken tea
+once or twice at Grassy Spring with Nina St. Claire, and had been
+greatly impressed with the appointments of the table, prizing them more
+even than the dainties for her to eat. But what she had seen there
+seemed as nothing compared to this round Swiss table, with its colored
+glass and rare china, no two pieces of which were alike.
+
+'Oh, it is just like a dream!' she cried, as she watched Charles'
+movement and saw that there were two places laid.
+
+'Am I to sit down with you?' she said in an awe-struck voice, 'and in
+that lovely chair? I am glad I wore my best gown. It won't dirty the
+chair a bit.'
+
+But she took her pocket handkerchief and covered over the satin cushion
+before she dared seat herself in the chair, which had once been brought
+out for Gretchen, and in which she now sat down, dropping her head and
+shutting her eyes a moment Then, as she heard no sound, she looked up
+wonderingly, and asked:
+
+'Ain't you going to say "for Christ's Sake?" grandma does.'
+
+Arthur's face was a study with its mixed expression of surprise,
+amusement, and self-reproach. He never prayed except it were in some
+ejaculatory sentences wrung from him in his sore need, and the thought
+of asking a blessing on his food had never occurred to him. But Jerry
+was persistent.
+
+'You must say "for Christ's sake,"' she continued, and, with his weak
+brain all in a muddle, Arthur began what he meant to be a brief
+thanksgiving, but which stretched itself into a lengthy prayer, fall of
+the past and of Gretchen, whom he seemed to be addressing rather than
+his Maker.
+
+For a while Jerry listened reverently; then she looked up and moved
+uneasily in the chair, and at last when the prayer had continued for at
+least five minutes, she burst out impulsively:
+
+'Oh, dear, do say "amen." I am so hungry!'
+
+That broke the spell, and with a start Arthur came to himself, and said:
+
+'Think you, Jerry, praying is a new business for me, and I do believe I
+should have gone on forever if you had not stopped me. Now, what will
+you have?'
+
+He helped her to whatever she liked best, but could eat scarcely
+anything himself. It was sufficient for him to watch Jerry sitting there
+in Gretchen's chair and using Gretchen's plate, which every day for so
+many years had been laid for her. Gretchen had not come. She would never
+come, he feared, but with Jerry he did not feel half as desolate as when
+alone, with only his morbid fancies for company. And he must have her
+there, at least a portion of the time. His mind was made up on that
+point, and when about four o'clock, Jerry said to him:
+
+'I want to go now. Grandma said I was to be home by five,' she replied:
+
+'Yes, I am going with you. I wish to see your grandmother. I am going to
+drive you in the phaeton. How would you like that?'
+
+Her dancing eyes told him how she would like it, and Charles was sent to
+the stable with an order to have the little pony phaeton brought round
+as soon as possible as he was going for a drive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+ARTHUR'S PLAN
+
+
+'Why, the madam is going to drive, too, and I've come to harness;
+there'll be a row somewhere,' John said.
+
+'Can't help it,' Charles replied, 'Mr. Arthur wants the phaeton, and
+will have it for all of Madam.'
+
+'Yes, I s'p'o' so. Wall, I'll go and tell her,' was John's rejoinder, as
+he started for the house, where Mrs. Tracy was just drawing on her long
+driving gloves, and admiring her new hat and feather before the glass.
+
+Dolly looked almost as young, and far prettier, than when the came to
+the park, eleven years before. A life of luxury suited her. She had
+learned to take things easily, and the old woman with the basket might
+now come every day to her kitchen door without her knowing it. She aped
+Mrs. Atherton of Brier Hill, in everything, and had the satisfaction of
+knowing that she was on all occasions quite as stylish-looking and
+well-dressed as that aristocratic lady whom she called her intimate
+friend. She had also grown very proud and very exclusive in her ideas,
+and when poor Mrs. Peterkin, who was growing, too, with _her_ million,
+ventured to call at the park, the call was returned with a card which
+Doily's coachman left at the door. Since the night of her party, and the
+election which followed when Frank was defeated, she had ignored the
+Peterkins, and laughed at what she called their vulgar imitation of
+people above them, and when she heard that Mary Jane hail hired a
+governess for her two children, Bill and Ann Eliza, she scoffed at the
+airs assumed by _come-up_ people, and wondered if Mrs. Peterkin had
+forgotten that she was one of Grace Atherton's hired girls. Dolly had
+certainly forgotten the Langley life, and was to all intents and
+purposes the great lady of the park, who held herself aloof from the
+common herd, and taught her children to do the same.
+
+She had seen Jerry enter the house that morning with a feeling of
+disapprobation, which had not diminished as the day wore on and still
+the child staid, and what was worse, Maude was not sent for to join her.
+
+'Not that I would have allowed it, if she had been,' she said to
+herself, for she did not wish her daughter intimate with one of whose
+antecedents nothing was known, but Arthur might at least have invited
+her. He had never noticed her children much, and this she deeply
+resented. Maude, who knew of Jerry's presence in the house had cried to
+go in and play with her, but Mrs. Tracy had refused, and promised as an
+equivalent a drive in the phaeton around the town. And it was for this
+drive Dolly was preparing herself, when John came with the message that
+she could not have the phaeton, as Mr. Arthur was going to take Jerry
+home in it.
+
+Usually Arthur's slightest wish was a law in the household, for that was
+Frank's order; but on this occasion Dolly felt herself justified in
+rebelling.
+
+'Not have the phaeton! That's smart, I must say,' she exclaimed. 'Can't
+that child walk home, I'd like to know? Tell Mr. Tracy Maude has had the
+promise of a drive all day, and I am ready, with my things on. Ask him
+to take the Victoria; he never drives.'
+
+All this in substance was repeated to Arthur, who answered, quietly:
+
+'Let Mrs. Tracy take the victoria. I prefer the phaeton myself.'
+
+That settled it, and in few moments Jerry was seated at Arthur's side,
+and skimming along through the park, and out upon the highway which
+skirted the river for miles.
+
+'This is not going home, and grandma will scold,' Jerry said.
+
+'Never mind the grandma--I will make it right with her. I am going to
+show you the country,' Arthur replied, as he chirruped to the fleet pony
+who seemed to fly along the smooth road.
+
+No one who saw the tall, elegant-looking man, who sat so erect, and
+handled the reins so skilfully, would ever have suspected him of
+insanity, and more than one stopped to gaze after him and the little
+girl whose face, with the golden hair blowing about it, looked out from
+the white sun bonnet with so joyous an expression. On the homeward route
+they met the victoria, with John upon the box, and Mrs. Tracy and Maude
+inside.
+
+'There's Maude! Hallo, Maude--see me! I'm riding!' Jerry called out,
+cheerily, while Maude answered back:
+
+'Hallo, Jerry!'
+
+But Mrs. Tracy gave no sign of recognition, and only rebuked her
+daughter for her vulgarity in saying 'Hallo,' which was second class and
+low.
+
+'Then Nina St. Claire is second class and low, for she says "Hallo,"'
+was Maude's reply, to which her mother had no answer.
+
+Meanwhile the phaeton was going swiftly on toward the cottage, which it
+reached a few minutes after the furnace whistle blew for six, and
+Harold, who had been working there, came up the lane. There were soiled
+spots on his hands and on his face, and his clothes showed marks of
+toil, all of which Arthur noted, while he was explaining to Mrs.
+Crawford that he had taken Jerry for a drive, and kept her beyond the
+prescribed hour. Then, turning to Harold, he said:
+
+'And so you work in the furnace?'
+
+'Yes, sir, during vacation, when I can get a job there,' Harold
+answered, and Mr. Tracy continued:
+
+'How much do you get a day?'
+
+'Fifty cents in dull times,' was the reply, and Arthur went on:
+
+'Fifty cents from seven in the morning to six at night, and board
+yourself. A magnificent sum truly. Pray, how do you manage to spend so
+much? You must be getting rich.'
+
+The words were sarcastic, but the tone belied the words, and Harold was
+about to speak, when his grandmother interrupted him, and said,
+
+'What he does not spend for us he puts aside. He is trying to save
+enough to go to the High School, but it's slow work. I can do but little
+myself, and it all falls upon Harold.'
+
+'But I like it, grandma. I like to work for you and Jerry, and I have
+almost twenty dollars saved,' Harold said, 'and in a year or two I can
+go away to school, and work somewhere for my board. Lots of boys do
+that.'
+
+Arthur was hitching his pony to the fence, while a new idea was dawning
+in his mind.
+
+'Fifty cents a day,' he said to himself, 'and he has twenty dollars
+saved, and thinks himself rich. Why, I've spent more than that on one
+bottle of wine, and here is this boy, Amy's son, wanting an education,
+and working to support his grandmother like a common laborer. I believe
+I _am_ crazy.'
+
+He was in the cottage by this time--in the clean, cool kitchen where the
+supper table was laid with its plain fair, most unlike the costly viands
+which daily loaded his board.
+
+'Don't wait for me, Harold must be hungry,' he said, adding quickly: 'Or
+stay, if you will permit me, I will take a cup of tea with you. The
+drive has given me an appetite, and your tea smells very inviting.'
+
+It was a great honor to have Arthur Tracy at her table, and Mrs.
+Crawford felt it as such, and was very sorry, too, that she had nothing
+better to offer him than bread and butter and radishes, with milk, and a
+dish of cold beans, and chopped beets, and a piece of apple pie saved
+for Harold from dinner. But she made him welcome, and Jerry, delighted
+to return the hospitality she had received, brought him a clean plate
+and cup and saucer, and asked if she might get the best sugar-bowl and
+the white sugar. Then, remembering the beautiful flowers which had
+adorned the table at Tracy Park, she ran out and gathering a bunch of
+June pinks, put them in a little glass by his plate.
+
+When all was ready and they had taken their seats at the table, Mrs.
+Crawford closed her eyes reverently and asked the accustomed blessing
+which in that house preceded every meal. Jerry's amen was a good deal
+louder and more emphatic than usual, while she nodded her head to
+Arthur, with an expression which he understood to mean, 'You know now
+what you ought to say, instead of that long prayer,' and he nodded back
+that he did so understand it.
+
+Arthur enjoyed the supper immensely, or pretended that he did. He ate
+three slices of bread and butter; he drank three cups of tea; he even
+tried the beans and the beets, but declined the radishes, which, he
+said, would give him the nightmare.
+
+When supper was over and the table cleared away, he still showed no
+signs of going, but asking Mrs. Crawford to take a seat near him, he
+plunged at once into the business which had brought him there, and
+which, since he had seen Harold in his working-dress and heard what he
+was trying to do, had grown to be of a two-fold nature. He was very
+lonely, he said, and all the elegance and luxuriousness of his handsome
+house failed to give him pleasure or to make him forget the past. He
+wanted some one to love who would love him in return, and the little
+taste he had had of Jerry's society had made him wish for more, and he
+must have her with him a part at least of every day.
+
+'In short,' he said, 'I should like to undertake her education myself
+until she is older, when I shall see that she has the proper finishing.
+She tells me she hates the district school, with Bill Peterkin and his
+warts--'
+
+'Trying to kiss me,' Jerry interrupted, as open-eyed and open-mouthed,
+she stood, with her hand on his shoulder, listening to him.
+
+'Yes, trying to kiss you, though I do not blame him much for that,'
+Arthur said, with a smile, and then continued: 'She is ambitious enough
+to want a governess like Ann Eliza Peterkin and my brother's daughter,
+but I am better than a dozen governesses. I can teach her all the
+rudiments of an English education, with French and German, and Latin,
+too, if she likes; and my plan is, that she come to me every day except
+Saturdays and Sundays--come at ten in the morning, get her lessons and
+her lunch with me, and return home at four in the afternoon. Would you
+like it, Cherry?'
+
+'Oh-h-oh!' was all the answer Jerry could make for a moment, but her
+cheeks were scarlet, and tears of joy stood in her eyes, until she
+glanced at Harold; then all the brightness faded from her face, for how
+could she accept this great good and leave him to drudge and toil alone?
+
+'What is it, Cherry?' Mr. Tracy asked; and, with a half sob, she
+replied:
+
+'I can't go without Harold. If I get learning, he must get learning,
+too,' and leaving Arthur, the crossed over to the boy, and putting her
+arm around him, looked up at him with a look which in after years he
+would have given half his life to win.
+
+She was a little girl now and did not care if he did know how much she
+loved him, and that for him she would sacrifice everything. But in this
+case the sacrifice was not required, for Arthur hastened to say:
+
+'I shall not forget Harold. I have something better in store for him
+than reciting his lessons to me. When the High School opens in
+September, he is going there, and if he does well he shall go to
+Andover in time, and perhaps to Harvard. It will all depend upon
+himself, and how he improves his opportunities. What! crying? Don't you
+like it?' Arthur asked, as he saw the great tears gathering in Harold's
+eyes and rolling down his cheeks.
+
+'Yes, oh, yes; but it don't seem real, and--and--I guess it makes me
+kind of sick,' Harold gasped, as, freeing himself from Jerry's
+encircling arm, he hurried from the room, to think over this great and
+unexpected joy which had come so suddenly to him.
+
+With his naturally refined tastes and instincts the dirty furnace work
+had not been pleasant to him, and he had shrunk with inexpressible
+loathing from the swill cart and the other menial duties he had been
+obliged to perform for the sake of those he loved. How to get an
+education was the problem he was earnestly trying to solve, and lo! it
+was now solved for him. For a moment the suddenness of the thing
+overcame him, and he sat down upon a table in the yard, faint and
+bewildered, while Arthur made his plan clear to Mrs. Crawford, saying
+that what he meant to do was partly for Jerry's sake and partly for the
+sake of the young girl who had been his early love.
+
+'I always intended to take care of you,' he said; 'but things go from my
+mind, and I forget the past as completely as if it had never been. But
+this will stay by me, for I shall have Cherry as a reminder, and if I am
+in danger of forgetting she will jog my memory.'
+
+Fur a moment Mrs. Crawford could not speak, so great was her surprise
+and joy that the good she had thought unattainable was to be Harold's at
+last. And yet something in her proud, sensitive nature rebelled against
+receiving so much from a stranger, even if that stranger were Arthur
+Tracy. It seemed like charity, she said, when at last she spoke at all.
+But Arthur overruled her with that persuasive way he had of converting
+people to his views; and when at last he left the cottage it was with
+the understanding that Jerry should commence her lessons with him the
+first week in September, and that Harold should enter the High School in
+Shannondale when it opened in the autumn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE WORKING OF ARTHUR'S PLAN.
+
+
+As Arthur was wholly uncommunicative with regard to his affairs, and as
+Mrs. Crawford kept her own counsel, and bade Harold and Jerry do the
+same, the Tracys knew nothing whatever of the plan until the September
+morning when Jerry presented herself at the park house, and was met in
+the door-way by Mrs. Frank, who was just going out. Very few could have
+resisted the bright little face, so full of childish happiness, or the
+clear, assured voice, which said so cheerily:
+
+'Good-morning, Mrs. Tracy. I'm come to school.'
+
+But, prejudiced as she was against the girl, Mrs. Tracy could resist any
+thing, and she answered, haughtily;
+
+'Come to school! What do you mean? This is not a school-house, and if
+you have any errand here, go round to the other door. Only company come
+in here.'
+
+'But I'm company. I'm going to get learning; he told me to come,' Jerry
+answered, flushed and eager, and altogether sure of her right to be
+there.
+
+Before Mrs. Frank could reply, a voice, distinct and authoritative, and
+to which she always yielded, called from the top of the stairway inside:
+
+'Mrs. Tracy, if that is Jerry to whom you are talking, send her up at
+once. I am waiting for her.'
+
+Jerry did not mean the nod she gave the lady as she passed her to be
+disrespectful, but Mrs. Frank felt it as such, and went to her own room
+in a most perturbed state of mind, for which she could find no vent
+until her husband came in, when she stated the case to him, and asked if
+he knew what it meant.
+
+But Frank was as ignorant as herself, and could not enlighten her until
+that night, after he had seen his brother, and heard from him what he
+was intending to do.
+
+'God bless you, Arthur. You don't know how happy you have made me,'
+Frank said, feeling on the instant that a great burden was lifted from
+his mind.
+
+Jerry was to be educated and cared for, and would probably receive all
+that the world would naturally concede to her if the truth were known.
+He believed, or thought he did, that Gretchen had never been his
+brother's wife, though to believe so seemed an insult to the original of
+the sweet face which looked at him from the window every time he entered
+his brother's room. Jerry was a great trouble to him, and he would not
+have liked to confess to any one how constantly she was in his mind, or
+how many plans he had devised in order to atone for the wrong he knew he
+was doing her. And now his brother had taken her off his hands, and she
+was to be cared for and receive the education which would fit her to
+earn her own livelihood, and make her future life respectable. No
+particular harm was done her after all, and he might now enjoy himself,
+and cast his morbid fancies to the winds, he reflected, as he went
+whistling to his wife's apartment, and told her what he had heard.
+
+For a moment Dolly was speechless with astonishment, and when at last
+she opened her lips, her husband silenced her with that voice and manner
+of which she was beginning to be afraid.
+
+It was none of their business, he said, what Arthur did in his own
+house, provided they were not molested, and if he chose to turn
+schoolmaster, he had a right to do so. For his part, he was glad of it,
+as it saved him the expense of Jerry's education, for if Arthur had not
+taken it in hand, he should; and Dolly was to keep quiet and let the
+child come and go in peace.
+
+After delivering himself of these sentiments, Frank went away, leaving
+his wife to wonder, as she had done more than once, if he, too, were not
+a little crazy, like his brother. But, she said no mare about Jerry's
+coming there, except to suggest that she might at least come in at the
+side door instead of the front, especially on muddy days when she was
+liable to soil the costly carpets. And Jerry, who cared but little how
+she entered the house, if she only got in, came through the kitchen
+after the second day, and wiped her feet upon the mat; and once, when
+her shoes were worse than usual, took them off, lest they should leave a
+track.
+
+It is not our intention to linger over the first few months of Jerry's
+school days at Tracy Park, but rather to hasten on to the summer four
+years after her introduction to Tracy Park as Arthur's pupil. During all
+that time he had never once seemed to grow weary of the task he had
+imposed upon himself, but, on the contrary, his interest had daily
+deepened in the child who developed so rapidly under his training that
+he sometimes looked at her in astonishment, marvelling more and more who
+she was and from whom she had inherited her wonderful memory and power
+to grasp points which are usually far beyond the comprehension of a
+child of ten, or even twelve, and which Maude Tracy could no more have
+mastered than her brother, the stupid Jack. His intellect had not grown
+with his body, and when at thirteen he was asked the question, 'If there
+are five peaches on the table, and Tom eats three of them, how many will
+there be left?' he answered, promptly:
+
+'None, 'cause Tom would eat them all.'
+
+In this reply there was a shrewdness which poor Jack never intended, and
+the laugh which followed his answer confused and bewildered him. There
+was a tutor now at Tracy Park for Jack, but Maude had been transferred
+to Arthur's care. This was wholly due to Jerry, who alone could have
+induced him to let Maude share her instruction. Arthur did not care for
+Maude. She was dull, he said, and would never learn her lessons. But
+Jerry coaxed so hard that Arthur consented at last, and when Jerry had
+been with him about three years, Maude became his pupil, and that of
+Jerry as well, for nearly every day when the lessons were over the two
+little girls might have been seen sitting together under the trees in
+the park, or in some corner of the house, Maude puzzled, and perplexed,
+and worried, and Jerry anxious, decided, and peremptory, as she went
+over and over again with what was so clear to her and so hazy to her
+friend.
+
+'Oh, dear me, suz, what does ail you?' she said, one day, with a stamp
+of her foot, after she had tried in vain to make Maude see through a
+simple sum in long division. 'Can't you remember first to divide, second
+multiply, third subtract, and fourth bring down?'
+
+'No, I can't. I can't remember anything, and if I could, how do I know
+what to divide or what to bring down? I am stupid, and shall never know
+anything,' was Maude's sobbing reply, as she covered her face with her
+slate.
+
+Maude's tears always moved Jerry, who tried to reassure the weeping girl
+with the assurance that perhaps, if she tried very hard, she might some
+time know enough to teach a district school. This was the height of
+Jerry's ambition, to teach a district school and board around; but
+Maude's aspirations were different. She was rich. She was to be a belle
+and wear diamonds and satins like her mother; and so it did not matter
+so much whether she understood long division or not, though it did hurt
+her a little to be so far outstripped by Jerry, who was younger than
+herself.
+
+To Arthur, Jerry was a constant delight and surprise, and nothing
+astonished or pleased him more than the avidity with which she took up
+German. This language was like play to her, and by the time she was ten
+years old she spoke, and read, and wrote it almost as well as Arthur
+himself.
+
+'It takes me back somewhere, I can't tell where,' she said to him; 'and
+I seem to be somebody else than Jerry Crawford, and I hear music and see
+people, and a pale face is close to me, and I get all confused trying to
+remember things which come and go.'
+
+Only once after her first day at the park had she enacted the pantomime
+of the sick woman and the nurse, and then she had done it at Arthur's
+request. But it was not quite as thrilling as at first; the _him_ for
+whom the dying woman had prayed was omitted, and the whole was mixed
+with the Tramp House, and the carpet-bag, and Harold, who was now a
+youth of seventeen, and a student at the high school in Shannondale,
+where he was making as rapid progress in his studies as Jerry was at the
+park.
+
+But Harold's life was not as serene and happy as Jerry's, for it was not
+pleasant for him to hear, as he often did, that he was a charity
+student, supported by Arthur Tracy. Such remarks were very galling to
+the high-spirited boy, and he was constantly revolving all manner of
+schemes by which he could earn money and cease to be dependent. All
+through the summer vacations, which were long ones, he worked at
+whatever he could find to do, sometimes in people's gardens, sometimes
+on their lawns, but oftener in the hay-fields, where he earned the
+most. Here Jerry was not infrequently his companion. She liked to rake
+hay, she said; it came natural to her, and she had no doubt she
+inherited the taste from her mother, who had probably worked in the
+fields in Germany.
+
+One afternoon, when Jerry knew that Harold was busy in one of Mr.
+Tracy's meadows, she started to join him, for he had complained of a
+headache at home, and had expressed a fear that he might not be able to
+finish the task he had imposed upon himself. The road to the field was
+by the Tramp House, which looked so cool and quiet, with its thick
+covering of woodbine and ivy over it, that Jerry turned aside for a
+moment to look into the room which had so great a fascination for her,
+and where she spent so much time. Indeed, she seldom passed near it
+without going in for a moment and standing by the old table which had
+once held her and her dead mother. Things came back to her there, she
+said, and she could almost give a name to the pale-faced woman who
+haunted her so often.
+
+As she entered the damp, dark place now, she started, with an
+exclamation of surprise, which was echoed by another, as Frank Tracy
+sprang up and confronted her. It was not often that he entered the Tramp
+House, and he would not have confessed to any one his superstitious
+dread of it, or that, when he did visit it, he always had a feeling that
+the dead woman found there years ago would start up to accuse him of his
+deceit and hypocrisy. Could he have had his way he would have pulled the
+building down, but it was not his, and when he suggested it to Arthur,
+as he sometimes did, the latter opposed it, saying latterly, since Jerry
+had been so much to him:
+
+'No, no, Frank; let it stand. I like it, because but for it Jerry might
+have perished with her mother, and I should not have had her with me.'
+
+So the Tramp House stood, and grew damper and mustier each year, as the
+moss and ivy gathered on the walls outside, and the dust and cobwebs
+gathered on the walls within. These, however, Jerry was careful to brush
+away, for she had a play house in one corner, and a little work-bench
+and chair, and she often sat there alone and talked to herself, and the
+woman dead so long ago, and to others whose faces were dim and shadowy,
+but whom she had felt sure she had known. Very frequently she went
+through the process of cleaning up, as she called it, and her object in
+stopping there now was, in part, to see if it did not need her care
+again.
+
+'Oh, Mr. Tracy! are you here! How you scared me? I thought it was a
+tramp!' she said, as he came toward her.
+
+'Do you come here often?' he asked, as he offered her his hand.
+
+'Yes, pretty often. I like it, because mother died here, and sometimes I
+feel as if she would make it known to me here who she was. I talk to her
+and ask her to tell me, but she never has. Oh, don't you wish she
+would?'
+
+Frank shuddered involuntarily, for to have Jerry told who she really
+was, was the last thing he could desire, but as a criminal is said
+always to talk about the crime he has committed and is hiding, so Frank,
+when with Jerry, felt impelled to talk with her of the past and what she
+could remember of it. Seating himself upon the bench with her at his
+side, he said:
+
+'And you really believe the woman found here was your mother?'
+
+'Why, yes. Don't you? Who was my mother, if she wasn't?' and Jerry's
+eyes opened wide as he looked at him.
+
+'I don't know, I am sure. Does my brother talk of Gretchen now?' was the
+abrupt reply.
+
+'Yes, at times,' Jerry answered: 'and yesterday, after I sang him a
+little German song, which he taught me, he had them pretty bad--the bees
+in his head, I mean: that is what he calls it when things are mixed; and
+he says he is going to write to her, or her friends.'
+
+'Write to her! I thought he had given that up. I thought he--Did he say,
+"Write to her friends?"' Frank gasped as he felt himself grow cold and
+sick with this threatened danger.
+
+Arthur had seemed so quiet and happy with Jerry, and had said so little
+of Gretchen, that Frank had grown quite easy in his mind, and the black
+shadow of fear did not trouble him quite so much as formerly. But now it
+was over him again, and grew in intensity as he questioned the child.
+
+'Have you ever tried to find out who Gretchen is?' he asked at last.
+
+'No,' she replied, 'but I guess she is his wife.'
+
+'Yes,' Frank said, falteringly, 'his wife; and where do you think she
+lived?'
+
+'Oh, I know that. In Wiesbaden. He told me so once, and it seems as if I
+had been there, too, when he talked about it, and I hear the music and
+see the flowers, and a white-faced woman is with me, not at all like
+mother, who, they say, was ugly and dark; black as a nigger, Tom told me
+once, when he was mad. Was she black?'
+
+Mr. Tracy made no reply to this, but said, suddenly:
+
+'Jerry, do you like me well enough to do me a favor, a great favor?'
+
+'Why, yes, I guess I do. I like you very much, though not as well as I
+do Harold and Mr. Arthur. What do you want?' was Jerry's answer.
+
+After hesitating a moment, Mr. Tracy began:
+
+'There are certain reasons why I ought to know if my brother writes to
+Gretchen, or her friends, or any one in Germany, especially Wiesbaden. A
+letter of that kind might do me a great deal of harm; if he should write
+to any one in Germany, you would, perhaps, he asked to post the letter,
+as he never goes to town?'
+
+He said this interrogatively, and Jerry answered him promptly:
+
+'I think he would give it to me.'
+
+'Yes, well; Jerry, can you keep a secret, and never tell any one what I
+am saying to you?' was Frank's next remark, to which Jerry responded:
+
+'I think I should tell Harold, and, perhaps, Mr. Arthur.'
+
+'No, no, no, Jerry, never!' and Frank laid his hand half menacingly upon
+the little girl's shoulder. 'I have been kind to you, have paid your
+board to Mrs. Crawford ever since you have been there--'
+
+He felt how mean it was to say this, and do not at all resent Jerry's
+quick reply:
+
+'Yes, but Mrs. Peterkin says you do not pay enough.'
+
+'Perhaps not,' he continued, 'but if Mrs. Crawford is satisfied, it
+matters little what Mrs. Peterkin thinks. Jerry, you _must_ do this for
+me,' he went on rapidly, as his fears kept growing. 'You must never tell
+anyone of our conversation, and if my brother writes that letter soon,
+or at any time, you must bring it to me. Will you do it? Great harm
+would come if it were sent--harm to me, and harm to Maude, and--'
+
+'To Maude!' Jerry replied. 'I would do anything for Maude. Yes, I will
+bring the letter to you if he writes one. You are sure it would be right
+for me to do so?'
+
+Frank had touched the right cord when he mentioned his daughter's name,
+for during these years of close companionship the two little girls had
+learned to love each other devotedly, though naturally Jerry's was the
+stronger and less selfish attachment of the two. To her Maude was a
+queen who had a right to tyrannize over and command her if she pleased;
+and as the tyranny was never very severe, and was usually followed by
+some generous act of contrition, she did not mind it at all, and was
+always ready to make up and be friends whenever it suited the capricious
+little lady.
+
+'Yes, I will do it for Maude,' she said again; but there was a troubled
+look on her face, and a feeling in her heart as if, in some way, she was
+false to Arthur in thus consenting to his brother's wishes.
+
+But, she reflected, Arthur was crazy, so people said, and she herself
+knew better than anyone else of his many fanciful vagaries, which, at
+times, took the form of actual insanity. For weeks he would seem
+perfectly rational, and then suddenly his mood would change, and he
+would talk strange things to himself and the child, who was now so
+necessary to him, and who alone had a soothing influence over him. Only
+the day before, as Jerry had told Frank, Arthur had been unusually
+excited, after listening to a simple air which he had taught to her, and
+which, at his request, she sang to him after Maude had gone out and left
+them alone.
+
+'I could swear you were Gretchen, singing to me in the twilight, and
+across the meadow comes the tinkle of the bells where the cows and goats
+are feeding,' he said to her, as he paced up and down the room.'
+
+Then, stopping suddenly, he went up to her, and pushing her soft, wavy
+hair from her forehead, looking long and earnestly into her face.
+
+'Cherry,' he said at last, using the pet name he often gave her, 'you
+_are_ some like Gretchen as she must have been when of your age. Oh, if
+you only were hers and mine! But there was no child; and yet--and yet--'
+
+He seemed to be thinking intently for a moment, and then going to a
+drawer in his writing desk, which Jerry had never seen open before, he
+took out a worn, yellow letter, and ran his eye rapidly over it until he
+found a certain paragraph, which he bade Jerry read.
+
+The paragraph was as follows:
+
+'I have something to tell you when you come, which I am sure will make
+you as glad as I am.'
+
+Jerry read it aloud slowly, for the handwriting was cramped and
+irregular, and then looked up questioningly to Arthur, who said to her:
+
+'What do you think she meant by the something which would make me glad
+as she was?'
+
+'I don't know,' Jerry answered him. 'Who wrote it? Gretchen?'
+
+'Yes, Gretchen; it is her last letter to me, and I never went back to
+see what she meant, for the bees were bad in my head and I forgot
+everything, even Gretchen herself. Poor little Gretchen! What was the
+idea which came to me like a flash of lightning, in regard to this
+letter, when I heard you sing? It is gone, and I cannot recall it.'
+
+There was a worried, anxious look on his face as he put the letter away,
+and went on talking to himself of Gretchen, saying he was going to write
+her again, or her friends, and find out what she meant.
+
+The next day Jerry met Frank in the Tramp House, as we have described,
+and gave him the promise to bring him any letter directed to Germany
+which Arthur might entrust to her. But the promise weighed heavily upon
+her as she walked slowly on towards the field where Harold was at work,
+and where she found him resting for a moment under the shadow of a
+wide-spreading butternut. He looked tired and pale, and there were great
+drops of sweat upon his white forehead, and an expression on his face
+which Jerry did not understand.
+
+Harold was not in a very happy frame of mind. Naturally cheerful and
+hopeful, it was not often that he gave way to fits of despondency, or
+repining at his humble lot, so different from that of the boys of his
+own age, with whom he came in daily contact, both at school and in the
+town.
+
+Dick St. Claire, his most intimate friend, always treated him as if he
+were fully his equal, and often stood between him and the remarks which
+boys made thoughtlessly, and which, while they mean so little, wound to
+the quick such sensitive natures as Harold's. But not even Dick St.
+Claire could keep Tom Tracy in check. With each succeeding year he grew
+more and more supercilious and unbearable, pluming himself upon his
+position as a Tracy of Tracy Park, and this wealth he was to inherit
+from his Uncle Arthur. For the last year he had been at Andover, where
+he had formed a new set of acquaintances, one of whom was spending the
+vacation with him. This was young Fred Raymond, whose home was at Red
+Stone Hall, in Kentucky, and whose parents were in Europe. Between the
+two youths there was but little similarity of taste or disposition, for
+young Raymond represented all that was noble and true, and though proud
+of his State and proud of his name, never assumed the slightest
+superiority over those whom the world considered his inferiors. He was
+Tom's room-mate, and hence the intimacy between them which had resulted
+in Fred's accepting the invitation to Tracy Park. If anything had been
+wanting to complete Tom's estimate of his own importance this visit of
+the Kentuckian would have done it. All his former friends were cut
+except Dick St. Claire, while Harold was as much ignored as if he had
+never existed. Tom did not even see him or recognize him with so much as
+a look, but passed him by as he would any common day laborer whom he
+might chance to meet. All through the summer days, while Harold was
+working until every bone in his body ached, Tom and his friend were
+enjoying themselves in hunting, fishing, driving, or rowing, or lounging
+under the trees in the shady lawns.
+
+That afternoon when Jerry joined him in the hayfield, Tom and the
+Kentuckian had passed him in their fanciful hunting-suits with their
+dogs and guns, but though Harold was within a few yards of them, Tom
+affected not to see him, and kept his head turned the other way, as if
+intent upon some object in the distance.
+
+Leaning upon his rake, Harold watched them out of sight, with a choking
+sensation in his throat as he wondered if it would always be thus with
+him, and if the day would never come when he, too, could know what
+leisure meant, with no thought for the morrow's bread.
+
+'I am Tom's superior in everything but money, and yet he treats me like
+a dog,' he said, as he seated himself upon the grass, where he sat
+fanning himself with his straw hat.
+
+When Jerry appeared in view he brightened at once, for in all the world
+there was not anything half so sweet and lovely to him as the little
+blue-eyed girl who seated herself beside him, and, nestling close to
+him, laid her curly head upon his arm.
+
+'I've come to help you rake the hay,' she said, 'for grandma told me you
+had a headache at noon, and couldn't eat your huckleberry pie. I am
+awfully sorry, Harold, but I ate it myself, it looked so good, instead
+of saving it for your supper. It was nasty and mean in me, and I hope it
+will make me sick.'
+
+But Harold told her he did not care for the pie, and would rather that
+she would eat it if she liked it. Then he questioned her of the park
+house and of Arthur; asking if the bees were often in his head now, or
+had she driven them out.
+
+'No, I guess I haven't. They were awful yesterday and to-day,' Jerry
+replied. 'He was talking of Gretchen all the time. I wonder who she was.
+Sometimes I look at her until it seems to me I have seen her or
+something like her, a paler face with sadder eyes. How he must have
+loved her, better than you or I could ever love anybody; don't you think
+so?'
+
+Harold hesitated a moment, and then replied:
+
+'I don't know, but it seems to me I love you as much as a man could ever
+love another.'
+
+'Phoo! Of course you do; but that's boy love; that isn't like when you
+are old enough to have a beau!' and Jerry laughed merrily, as she sprang
+up, and, taking Harold's rake, began to toss the hay about rapidly,
+bidding him sit still and see how fast she could work in his place.
+
+Harold was very tired, and his head was aching badly, so for a time he
+sat still, watching the graceful movements of the beautiful child, who,
+it seemed to him, was slipping away from him. Constant intercourse with
+a polished man like Arthur Tracy had not been without its effect upon
+her, and there was about her an air which with strangers would have
+placed her at once above the ordinary level of simple country girls.
+This Harold had been the first to detect, and though he rejoiced at
+Jerry's good fortune, there was always with him a dread lest she should
+grow beyond him, and that he should lose the girl he loved so much.
+
+'What if she should think me a clown and a clodhopper, as Tom Tracy
+does?' he said to himself, as he watched her raking up the hay faster,
+and quite as well as he could have done himself. 'I believe I should
+want to die.'
+
+It was impossible that Jerry should have guessed the nature of Harold's
+thoughts, but once, as she passed near him, she dropped her rake, and
+going up to him, wiped his forehead with her apron, and, kissing him
+fondly, said to him:
+
+'Poor, tired boy, is your head awful? You look as if you wanted to
+vomit? Do you?'
+
+'No, Jerry,' Harold answered, laughingly. 'I am not as bad as that. I
+was only thinking and wishing that I were rich and could sometime give
+you and grandma a home as handsome as Tracy Park. How would you like
+it?'
+
+'First-rate, if you were there,' Jerry replied; 'but if you were not I
+shouldn't like it at all. I never mean to live anywhere without you;
+because, you know, I am your little girl, the one you found in the
+carpet-bag, and I love you more than all the world, and will love and
+stand by you forever and ever, amen!'
+
+She said the last so abruptly, and it sounded so oddly, that Harold
+burst into a laugh, and taking up the rake she had dropped, began his
+work again, declaring that the headache was gone, and that he was a
+great deal better.
+
+'Forever and ever, amen!' The words kept repeating themselves over and
+over in Harold's mind as he walked homeward in the gathering twilight
+with Jerry hip-pi-ty-hopping at his side, her hand in his, and her
+tongue running rapidly, as it usually did when with him.
+
+She would 'love and stand by him forever and ever, amen!' It was a
+singular remark for a child, and in after years, when his sky was the
+blackest, the words would come back to the man Harold like so many stabs
+as he whispered in his anguish:
+
+'She has forgotten her promise to "stand by me forever and ever, amen!"'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+MRS. TRACY'S DIAMONDS.
+
+
+Mrs. Tracy was going to have a party--not a general one, like that which
+she gave when our readers first knew her, and Harold Hastings stood at
+the head of the stairs and bade 'the ladies go this way and the
+gentlemen that.' Since Dolly had become so exclusive and a leader of
+fashion, she had ignored general parties and limited her invitations to
+a select few, which, on this occasion, numbered about sixty or seventy.
+But the entertainment was prepared as elaborately as if hundreds had
+been expected, and the hostess was radiant in satin and lace, and
+diamonds, as she received her guests and did the honors of the occasion.
+
+The September night was soft and warm, and the grounds were lighted up,
+while quite a crowd collected near the house to hear the music and watch
+the proceedings.
+
+Mrs. Tracy would have liked to have had Jerry in the upper hall, where
+Harold had once stood.
+
+'It would help to keep the child in her place,' she thought, 'for she is
+getting to feel herself of quite too much consequence, with so much
+attention from Arthur.'
+
+But her husband promptly vetoed the proposition, saying that when Jerry
+Crawford came to the park house to an entertainment it would be as a
+guest, and not as a waiter. So a colored boy stood in the upper hall,
+and a colored boy stood in the lower hall, and there were colored
+waiters everywhere, and Dolly had never been happier or prouder in her
+life: for Governor Markham and his wife, from Iowa, were there, and a
+judge's wife from Springfield--all guests of Grace Atherton, and, in
+consequence, bidden to the party.
+
+Another remarkable feature of the evening was the presence of Arthur in
+the parlors. He had known both Governor Markham and his wife, Ethelyn
+Grant, and had been present at their wedding, and it was mostly on their
+account that he had consented to join in the festivities. Jerry, it is
+true, had done a great deal toward persuading him to go down,
+repeating, in her own peculiar way, what she had heard people say with
+regard to his seclusion from society.
+
+'You just make a hermit of yourself,' she said, 'cooped up here all the
+time. I don't wonder folks say you are crazy. It is enough to make
+anybody crazy, to stay in one or two rooms and see nobody but Charles
+and me. Just dress yourself in your best clothes and go down and be
+somebody, and don't talk of Gretchen all the time! I am tired of it, and
+so is everybody. Give her a rest for one evening, and show the people
+how nice you can be if you only have a mind to.'
+
+Jerry delivered this speech with her hands on her hips, and with all the
+air of a woman of fifty; while Arthur laughed immoderately, and promised
+her to do his best not to disgrace her, and to appear as if he were not
+crazy.
+
+Jerry's anxiety was somewhat like that of a mother for a child whose
+ability she doubts; and, after her supper was over she took her way to
+the park house to see that Arthur was dressed properly for the occasion.
+
+'It would be like him to go without his neck-tie and wear his every-day
+boots,' she thought.
+
+But she found him as faultlessly gotten up as he well could be in his
+old-fashioned evening dress, which sat rather loosely upon him, for he
+had grown thinner with each succeeding year.
+
+Jerry thought him splendid, and watched him admiringly as if he left the
+room and started for the parlors, with her last injunction ringing in
+her ears:
+
+'Not a word out of your head about Gretchen, but try and act as if you
+were not crazy.'
+
+'I'll do it, Cherry. Don't you worry,' he said to her, with a little
+reassuring nod, as he descended the stairs.
+
+And he kept his promise well. There was no word out of his head about
+Gretchen, and no one ignorant of the fact would ever have suspected that
+his mind was unsettled as he moved among the guests, talking to one
+another with that pleasant, courtly manner so natural to him. A very
+close observer, however, might have seen his eyes dilate and even flash
+with some sudden emotion when his brother's wife passed him and her
+brilliant diamonds, his gift, sparkled in the bright gaslight. The
+setting was rather peculiar, but Mrs. Tracy liked it for the
+peculiarity, and had never had it changed. She was very proud of her
+diamonds, they were so large and clear, and she had the satisfaction of
+knowing that there were no finer, if as fine, in town. She seemed to
+know, too, just in what light to place herself in order to show them to
+the best advantage, and at times the gleams of fire from them were
+wonderful, and once Arthur put his hand before his eyes as she passed
+him, and muttering something to himself moved quickly to another part of
+the room. This was late in the evening, and soon after he excused
+himself to those around him, saying it was not often that he dissipated
+like this, and as he was growing tired he must say good-night.
+
+The next morning Charles found him looking very pale and worn, with a
+bad pain in his head. He had rested badly, he said, and would have his
+coffee in bed, after which Charles was to leave him alone and not come
+back until he rang for him, as he might possibly fall asleep.
+
+It was very late that morning when the family breakfasted, and as they
+lingered around the table, discussing the events of the previous night,
+it was after eleven o'clock when at last Mrs. Tracy went up to her room.
+
+As she ascended the stairs to the upper hall, she caught a glimpse of
+Harold disappearing through a door at the lower end of the hall,
+evidently with the intention of going down the back stairway and making
+his exit from the house by the rear door, rather than the front. Mrs.
+Tracy knew that he was sometimes sent by his grandmother on some errand
+to Arthur, and giving no further thought to the matter went on to her
+own room, which her maid had put in order. All the paraphernalia of last
+night's toilet were put away, diamonds and all. Contrary to her usual
+custom, for she was very careful of her diamonds, and very much afraid
+they would be stolen, she had left them in their box on her dressing
+bureau. But they were not there now. Sarah, who knew where she kept
+them, had put them away, of course, and she gave them no more thought
+until three days later, when she received an invitation to a lunch party
+at Brier Hill.
+
+'I shall wear my dark blue satin and diamonds,' she said to her maid,
+who was dressing her hair, but the diamonds, when looked for, were not
+in their usual place.
+
+Sarah had not put them away, nor in fact had she seen them at all, for
+they were not upon the bureau when she went to arrange her mistress'
+room the morning after the party. The diamonds were gone, nor could any
+amount of searching bring them to light. And they looked everywhere, in
+every box and drawer and corner, and Mrs. Tracy grew cold and sick and
+faint, and finally broke down in a fit of crying, as she explained to
+her husband that her beautiful diamonds were stolen. She called it that,
+now, and the whole household was roused and questioned as to when and
+where each had last seen the missing jewels. But no one had seen them
+since they were in the lady's ears, and she knew she had left them upon
+her bureau when she went down to breakfast. She was positive of that. No
+one had been in the room, or that part of the house, except Tom, Fred
+Raymond, Charles and Sarah. Of these the first two were not to be
+thought of for a moment, while the last two had been in the family for
+years, and were above suspicion. Clearly, then, it was some one from
+outside, who had watched his or her portunity and come in.
+
+Had any one been seen about the house at that hour? Yes, Charles
+remembered having met Harold Hastings coming out of the rear door;
+'but,' he added, 'I would sooner suspect myself than him.'
+
+And this was the verdict of all except Mrs. Tracy, who now recalled the
+fact that she, too, had seen Harold 'sneaking through the door as if he
+did not wish to be seen.'
+
+That was the way she expressed herself, and her manner had in it more
+meaning even than her words.
+
+'What was Harold doing in the house? What was his errand? Does any one
+know?' she asked, but no one volunteered any information until Charles
+suggested that he probably came on some errand to Mr. Arthur; he would
+inquire, he said, and he went at once to his master's room.
+
+Arthur was sitting by his writing-desk, busy with a letter, and did not
+turn, his head when Charles asked if he remembered whether Harold
+Hastings had been to his room the morning after the party.
+
+'No, I have not seen him for more than a week,' was the reply.
+
+'But he must have been here that morning,' Charles continued. 'Try and
+think.'
+
+'I tell you no one was here. I am not quite demented yet. Now go. Don't
+you see you are interrupting me?' was Arthur's rather savage response,
+and without having gained any satisfactory information Charles returned
+to the group anxiously awaiting him:
+
+'_Well_?' was Mrs. Tracy's sharp interrogatory, to which Charles
+responded:
+
+'He does not remember what happened that morning; but that is not
+strange. He was very tired and unusually excited after the party, and
+when he is that way he does not remember anything. Harold might have
+been there a dozen times and he would forget it.'
+
+'Bring the boy, then. He will know what he was doing here,' was Mrs.
+Tracy's next peremptory remark, and her husband said to her,
+reproachfully:
+
+'Surely you do not intend to charge him with the theft?'
+
+'I charge no one with the theft until it is proven on him; but I must
+see the boy and know what he was doing here. I never liked this free
+running in and out of those people in the lane. I always knew something
+would come of it,' Mrs. Tracy said, and Charles was despatched for
+Harold.
+
+He found him mowing the lawn for a gentleman whose premises joined Tracy
+Park, and without any explanation told him that he was wanted
+immediately at the park house.
+
+'But it is noon,' Harold said, glancing up at the sun. 'And there is
+Jerry coming to call me to dinner.'
+
+'No; better come at once. Jerry can go with you, if she likes,' Charles
+said, feeling intuitively that in the little girl Harold would find a
+champion.
+
+Harold left his lawn mower, and explaining to Jerry, who had come up to
+him, that he had been summoned to the park house, whither she could
+accompany him if she chose, he started with her and Charles, whom he
+questioned as to what was wanted with him.
+
+'Were you in the park house the morning after the party? That would be
+Wednesday,' Charles asked.
+
+'Yes, I went to see Mr. Arthur Tracy, but could get no answer to my
+knock,' Harold promptly replied, while his face flushed scarlet, and he
+seemed annoyed at something. He could not explain to Charles his motive
+in going to see Arthur, as, now that the first burst of indignation was
+over, he felt half ashamed of it himself. On the afternoon of the day of
+the party he had been at Grassy Spring, helping Mrs. St. Claire with her
+flowers, and after his work was done he had gone with Dick into the
+billiard-room, where they found Tom Tracy and his friend, young Raymond.
+They had come over for a game, and the four boys were soon busily
+engaged in the contest. Harold, who had often played with Dick and was
+something of an expert, proved himself the most skilful of them all,
+greatly to the chagrin of Tom, who had not recognized him even by a nod.
+Dick, on the contrary, had introduced him to Fred Raymond with as much
+ceremony as if he had been the Governor's son, instead of the boy who
+sometimes worked in his mother's flower garden. And the Kentuckian had
+taken him by the hand and greeted him cordially, with a familiar:
+
+'How d'ye do, Hastings? Glad to make your acquaintance'
+
+There was nothing snobbish about Fred Raymond, whose every instinct was
+gentlemanly and kind, and Harold felt at ease with him at once, and all
+through the game appeared at his best, and quite as well bred as either
+of his companions.
+
+When the play was over Dick excused himself a moment, as he wished to
+speak with his father, who was about driving to town. As he stayed away
+longer than he had intended doing, Tom grew restless and angry, too,
+that Fred should treat Harold Hastings as an equal, for the two had at
+once entered into conversation, comparing notes with regard to their
+standing in school and discussing the merits of Cicero and Virgil, the
+latter of which Harold had just commenced.
+
+'We can't wait here all day for Dick,' Tom said. 'Let us go out and look
+at the pictures.'
+
+So they went down the stairs to a long hall, in which many pictures were
+hanging--some family portraits and others, copies of the old masters
+which Mr. St. Claire had brought from abroad. Near one of the portraits
+Fred lingered a long time, commenting upon its beauty, and the
+resemblance he saw in it to little Nina St. Claire, the daughter of the
+house, and whose aunt the original had been. The portrait was not far
+from the stairway which led to the billiard-room, and Harold, who had
+remained behind, and was listlessly knocking the balls, could not help
+hearing all they said:
+
+'By the way, who is that Hastings? I don't think I have seen him before;
+he is a right clever chap,' Fred Raymond said.
+
+Tom replied, in that sneering, contemptuous tone which Harold knew so
+well, and which always made his blood boil and his fingers tingle with a
+desire to knock the speaker down:
+
+'Oh, that's Hal Hastings, a poor boy, who does chores for us and the St.
+Claires. His grandmother used to work at the park house, and so uncle
+Arthur pays for his schooling, and Hal allows it, which I think right
+small in him. I wouldn't be a charity student, anyway, if I never knew
+anything. Besides that, what's the use of education to chaps like him.
+Better stay as he was born. I don't believe in educating the masses, do
+you?'
+
+Of himself Tom could never have thought of all this, but he had heard it
+from his mother, who frequently used the expression 'not to elevate the
+masses,' forgetting that she was once herself a part of the mass which
+she would now keep down.
+
+Just what Fred said in reply Harold did not hear. There was a ringing in
+his ears, and he felt as if every drop of blood in his body was rushing
+to his head as he sat down, dizzy and bewildered, and smarting cruelly
+under the wound he had received this time. He had more than once been
+taunted with his poverty and dependence upon Mr. Tracy, but the taunts
+had never hurt him so before, and he could have cried out in his pain as
+he thought of Tom's words, and knew that in himself there was the making
+of a far nobler manhood than Tom Tracy would ever know.
+
+Was poverty, which one could not help, so terrible a disgrace, an
+insuperable barrier to elevation, and was it mean and small in him to
+accept his education from a man on whom he had no claim? Possibly; and
+if so, the state of things should not continue. He would go to Arthur
+Tracy, thank him for all he had done, and tell him he could receive no
+more from him; that if he had an education, he must get it himself by
+the work of his own hands, and thus be beholden to no one.
+
+Full of this resolution, he went down the stairs and out into the open
+air, which cooled his hot head a little, though it was still throbbing
+terribly as he went through the leafy woods toward home.
+
+In the lane he saw Jerry coming toward him, with her sun-bonnet hanging
+down her back and her soft, curly hair blowing around her forehead. The
+moment she saw him she knew something was the matter, and, hastening her
+steps to run, asked him what had happened, and why he looked so white
+and mad.
+
+Harold was sure of sympathy from Jerry, and he told her his story, which
+roused her to a high pitch of indignation.
+
+'The miserable, nasty, sneaking Tom!' she said, stopping short and
+emphasizing each adjective with a stamp of her foot as if she were
+trampling upon the offending Tom. 'I wish I had heard him. I'd have
+scratched his eyes out! talking of you as if you were dirt! I hate him,
+and I told him so the other day, and spit at him when he tried to kiss
+me.'
+
+'Kiss you! Tom Tracy kiss you!' Harold exclaimed, forgetting his own
+grief in this insult to Jerry; for it seemed to him little less than
+profanity for lips like Tom Tracy's to touch his little Jerry.
+
+'No, he didn't, but he tried, right before that boy from Kentucky; but I
+wriggled away from him, and bit him, too, and he called me a cat, and
+said he guessed I wouldn't mind if _you_ or Dick St. Claire tried to
+kiss me, and I shouldn't; but I'll fight _him_ and Bill Peterkin every
+time. I wonder why all the boys want to kiss me so much!'
+
+'I expect it is because you have just the sweetest mouth in the world,'
+Harold said, stooping down and kissing the lips which seemed made for
+that use alone.
+
+This little episode had helped somewhat to quiet Harold's state of mind,
+but did not change his resolve to speak to Mr. Tracy, and tell him that
+he could not receive any more favors from his hands. He would, however,
+wait until to-morrow, as Jerry bade him to.
+
+'You will worry him so that he will be crazier than a loon at the
+party,' she said, and so Harold waited, but started for the park the
+next morning as soon as he thought Mr. Tracy would see him.
+
+He had rung at the door of the rear hall, but as no one heard him he
+ventured in, as he had sometimes done before, when sent for Jerry if it
+rained, and ascending the stairs to the upper hall, knocked two or three
+times at Arthur's door, first gently, and then louder as there came no
+response.
+
+'He cannot be there, and I must come again,' he thought as he retraced
+his steps, reaching the door at the lower end of the hall just as Mrs.
+Tracy came up the broad staircase on her way to her room.
+
+As that day wore on, and the next, and the next, Harold began to care
+less for Tom's insult, and to think that possibly he had been hasty in
+his determination to decline Arthur's assistance, especially as he meant
+to pay back every dollar when he was a man. He would at all events wait
+a little, he thought, and so had made no further effort to see Mr.
+Tracy, when Charles found him, and told he was wanted at the park house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+SEARCHING FOR THE DIAMONDS.
+
+
+They went directly to Mrs. Tracy's room, where they found that lady in a
+much higher fever of excitement than when she first discovered her loss.
+All the household had assembled in the hall and in her room, except
+Arthur, who sat in his library, occasionally stopping to listen to the
+sound of the many voices, and to wonder why there was much noise.
+
+Tom was there with his friend, Fred Raymond, anxiously awaiting the
+arrival of Harold, whose face wore a look of wonder and perplexity which
+deepened into utter amazement as Mrs. Tracy angrily demanded of him what
+his business was in the hall on Wednesday morning when she saw him
+sneaking through the door.
+
+'Where had you been, and did you see my diamonds? Somebody has stolen
+them,' she said, while Harold gazed at her in utter astonishment.
+
+'Somebody stolen your diamonds!' he repeated, without the shadow of an
+idea that she could in any way connect him with a theft; nor would the
+idea have come to him at all, if Tom had not said to him with a sneer:
+
+'Better own up, Hal, and restore the property. It is your easiest way
+out of it.'
+
+Then he comprehended, and had Tom knocked him senseless the effect could
+not have been greater. With lips as white as ashes and fists tightly
+clenched, he stood, shaking like a leaf and staring helplessly, first at
+one and then at another, unable to speak until his eyes fell on Jerry,
+whose face was a study. She had thrown her head forward and on one side,
+and was looking intently at Tom Tracy, while her blue eyes flashed fire,
+and her whole attitude was like that of a tiger ready to pounce upon its
+prey. And when Harold said faintly, 'Ask Jerry; she knows,' she did
+pounce upon Tom, not bodily, but with her tongue, pouring out her words
+so rapidly and mingling with them so much German that it was almost
+impossible to understand all she said.
+
+'You miserable, good-for-nothing, nasty fellow,' she began. 'Do you dare
+accuse Harold of stealing! Stealing! You, who are not fit to tie his
+shoes! And do you want to know why he was here that morning? I can tell
+you; but no, I won't tell _you_! I won't speak to you! I'll never speak
+to you again; and if you try to kiss me as you did the other day,
+I'll--I'll scratch out every single one of your eyes! _You_ twit Harold
+for being poor, and call him a charity! What are you but a charity
+yourself, I'd like to know! Is this your house? No, sir! It is Mr.
+Arthur's! Everything is Mr. Arthur's, and if you don't quit being so
+mean to Harold I'll tell him every single nasty thing I know about you!
+Then see what he will do!'
+
+As Jerry warmed with her subject, every look, every gesture, and every
+tone of her voice was like Arthur's, and Frank watched with a
+fascination which made him forget everything else, until she turned
+suddenly to him, and in her own peculiar style and language told him why
+Harold had come to the park house that morning when the diamonds were
+missing.
+
+'I advised him to come,' she said, with all the air of a grown woman,
+'and I said I'd stand by him, and I will, forever and ever, amen!'
+
+The words dropped from her lips the more maturely, perhaps, because she
+had used them once before with reference to the humiliated boy, to whose
+pale, set face there came a smile as he heard them again, and stretching
+out his hand he laid it on Jerry's curly head with a caressing motion
+which told plainer than words could have done of his affection for and
+trust in her.
+
+What more Jerry might have said was prevented by the appearance of a new
+actor upon the scene in the person of Arthur himself. He had borne the
+noise and confusion as long as he could, and then had rung for Charles
+to enquire what it meant. But Charles was too much absorbed with other
+matters to heed the bell, though it rang three times sharply and loudly.
+At last, as no one came, and the bustle outside grew louder, and Jerry's
+voice was distinctly heard, excited and angry, Arthur started to see for
+himself what had happened.
+
+'Oh, Mr. Arthur,' Jerry cried, as she caught sight of him coming down
+the hall, 'I was just going after you, to come and turn Tom out of
+doors, and everybody else who says that Harold took Mrs. Tracy's
+diamonds. She has lost them, and Tom--'
+
+But here she was interrupted by Tom himself, who, always afraid of his
+uncle, and now more afraid than ever because of the fiery gleam in his
+eyes, stammered out that he had not accused Harold, nor any one; that he
+only knew the diamonds were gone and could not have gone without help.
+
+'Do you mean those stones your mother flashed in my eyes that night?
+Serves her right if she has lost them,' Arthur said, without manifesting
+the slightest interest or concern in the matter.
+
+But when Jerry began her story, which she told rapidly in German, he
+became excited at once, and his manner was that of a maniac, as he
+turned fiercely upon Tom, denouncing him as a coward and a liar, and
+threatening to turn him out of the house if he dared harbor such a
+suspicion against Harold Hastings.
+
+'I'll turn you all into the street,' he continued, 'if you are not
+careful, and bring Harold and Jerry here to live; then see if I can have
+peace. Diamonds, indeed! what has a poor man's wife to do with
+diamonds? Gretchen's diamonds, too! If they are lost, search the house,
+but never accuse Harold again.'
+
+At this paint Arthur wandered off into German, which no one could
+understand except Jerry, who stood, holding fast to his arm, her face
+flushed and triumphant at Harold's victory and Tom's defeat; but as the
+tirade in German went on, she started suddenly forward, and with clasped
+hands and staring eyes stood confronting Arthur until he had ceased
+speaking, and with a wave of his hand signified that he was through and
+his audience dismissed. Jerry, however, did not move, but stood
+regarding him with a frightened, questioning expression in her face,
+which was lost upon the spectators, who were too much interested in the
+all-absorbing topic to notice anyone particularly.
+
+Tom was the first to go away, and his example was followed by all the
+servants, except Charles, who succeeded in getting his master back to
+his room and quieting him somewhat, though he kept talking to himself of
+diamonds, and Paris, and Gretchen, who, he said, should not he wronged.
+
+'I am sorry, Harold, that this thing has happened. I have no idea that
+you know anything of the matter. I would as soon suspect my own son,'
+Frank said to Harold, as he was leaving the house.
+
+With this grain of comfort, the boy went slowly home, humiliated and cut
+to the heart with the indignity put upon him; while Jerry walked
+silently at his side, never speaking a word until they were nearly home,
+when she said, suddenly:
+
+'I know where the diamonds are, but I shan't tell now while there is
+such a fuss;' but Harold was too much absorbed in his own thoughts to
+pay much attention to the remark, although it recurred to him years
+after, when the diamonds came up to confront him again.
+
+It did not take long for the whole town to know of Mrs. Tracy's loss.
+The papers were full of it. The neighbors talked of it constantly, and
+two detectives were employed to work the matter up and discover the
+thief, if possible. A thorough search was also made at the park house.
+Every servant was examined and cross-examined, and all their trunks and
+boxes searched; every nook and corner and room was gone through in the
+most systematic order, even to Arthur's apartments. This last was
+merely done as a matter of form, and to let the indignant servant see
+that no partiality was shown, the polite officers explained to Arthur,
+who at first refused to let them in, but who finally opened the door
+himself, and bade them go where they liked.
+
+Half hidden among the cushions of the sofa from which Arthur had arisen
+when he let the officers in and to which he returned again, was Jerry,
+her face pale to her lips and her eyes like the eyes of some haunted
+animal, when she saw the policemen cross the threshold.
+
+After her return home the previous day she had been unusually taciturn
+and had taken no part in the conversation relative to the missing
+diamonds, but just before going to bed she said to Harold:
+
+'What will they do with the one who took the diamonds, if they find
+him?'
+
+'Send him to state prison,' Harold answered.
+
+'And what do they do to them in state prison?' Jerry continued.
+
+'Cut their hair off; make them eat bread and water and mush, and sleep
+on a board, and work awful hard,' was Harold's reply, given at random
+and without the least suspicion why the question had been asked.
+
+Jerry said no more, but the next morning she started for the park house,
+which she knew was to be searched, and going to Mr. Arthur's room looked
+him wistfully in the face as she asked in a whisper:
+
+'Are they found?'
+
+'Found! What found?' he said, as if all recollection of the missing
+jewels had passed entirely from his mind.
+
+'The diamonds; Mrs. Tracy's diamonds; the ones you gave her,' was
+Jerry's answer.
+
+For a moment, Arthur looked perplexed and bewildered and confused, and
+seemed trying to recall something which would not come at his bidding.
+
+'I don't know anything about it,' he said at last. 'I don't seem to
+think of anything, my head is so thick with all the noise there was here
+yesterday and the tumult this morning. Search-warrants, Charles says,
+and two strange men driving up so early. Who are they, Jerry?'
+
+'Police, come to search the house; search everybody and everything.
+Ain't you afraid?' Jerry said.
+
+'Afraid? No: why should I be afraid? Why, child, how white you are, and
+what makes you tremble so? You didn't take the diamonds,' was Arthur's
+response, as he drew the little girl close to him and looked into her
+pallid face.
+
+'Mr. Arthur,' Jerry began, very low, as if afraid of being heard, 'if I
+should give Maude something for her very own, and she should accept and
+keep it a good while, and then some day I should take it from her, when
+she did not know it, and hide it, and not give it up, would that be
+stealing?'
+
+'Certainly. Why do you ask?'
+
+Jerry did not say why she asked, but put the same question to him she
+had put to Harold:
+
+'If they find the one who took the diamonds will they send him to state
+prison?'
+
+'Undoubtedly. They ought to.'
+
+'And cut off his hair?'
+
+She was threading Arthur's luxuriant locks caressingly, and almost
+pityingly, with her fingers as she asked the last question, to which he
+replied, shortly:
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And make him eat bread and water and mush?'
+
+'Yes; I believe so.'
+
+'And sleep on a board?'
+
+'Yes, or something as bad.'
+
+'And make him work awful hard until his hands are blistered?'
+
+Now she had in hers Arthur's hands, soft and white as a woman's, and
+seemed to be calculating how much hard work it would take to blister
+hands like these.
+
+'Yes, work till his hands drop off,' Arthur said.
+
+With a shudder, she continued:
+
+'I could not bear it: could you?'
+
+'Bear it? No; I should die in a week. Why, what does ail you? You are
+shaking like a leaf. What are you afraid of?'
+
+'I don't know; only state prison seems so terrible, and they are looking
+everywhere. What if they should come in here?'
+
+'Come in here? Impossible, unless they break the door down,' Arthur
+replied; and then Jerry said to him:
+
+'If they do, suppose you lie down and let me cover you with the afghan
+and cushions?'
+
+'But I don't want to lie down and be smothered with cushions,' Arthur
+returned, puzzled, and wondering at the excitement of the child, who
+nestled close to his side and held fast to his hand, as if she were
+guarding him, or expected him to guard her, while the examination went
+on outside, and the frightened and angry servants submitted to having
+their boxes and trunks examined.
+
+At last footsteps were heard on the stairs and the sound of strange
+voices, mingled with that of Frank, who was protesting against his
+brother's rooms being entered.
+
+'You will lose every servant you have if we do not serve all alike,' was
+the answer.
+
+Then Frank knocked at his brother's door and asked admittance.
+
+'We must do it to pacify the servants,' he said, as Arthur refused,
+bidding him go about him business.
+
+After a little further expostulation Arthur arose, and, unlocking the
+door, bade them enter and look as long as they pleased and where they
+pleased.
+
+It was a mere matter of form, for not a drawer or box was disturbed; but
+Jerry's breath came in gasps, and her eyes were like saucers, as she
+watched the men moving from place to place, and then looked timidly at
+Arthur to see how he was taking it. He took it very coolly, and when it
+was over and the men were about to leave, he bade them come again as
+often as they liked; they would always find him there ready to receive
+them, but the diamonds--_nix_.
+
+This last he said in a low tone as he turned to Jerry, who, the moment
+they were alone and he had seated himself beside her, put her head on
+his arm and burst into a hysterical fit of crying.
+
+'Why, Cherry, what is it? Why are you crying so?' he asked, in much
+concern.
+
+'Oh, I don't know,' the sobbed; 'only I was so scared all the time they
+were in the room. What if they had found them! What if they should think
+that--that--_I_ took them, and should send me to prison, and cut off my
+hair: and make me eat bread and water and mush, which I hate!'
+
+Arthur looked at her a moment, and then with a view to comfort her,
+said, laughingly:
+
+'They would not send you to prison, for I would go in your stead.'
+
+'Would you? Could you? I mean could somebody go for another somebody, if
+they wanted to ever go much?' Jerry asked, eagerly, as she lifted her
+tear-stained face to Arthur's.
+
+Without clearly understanding her meaning, and with only a wish to quiet
+her, Arthur answered, at random:
+
+'Certainly. Have you never heard of people who gave life for another's?
+So, why not be a substitute, and go to prison, if necessary?'
+
+'Yes,' Jerry answered, with a long-drawn breath, and the cloud lifted a
+little from her face.
+
+After a moment, however, she asked, abruptly:
+
+'Suppose the one who took the diamonds will not give them up, and
+somebody else knows where they are, ought that somebody else tell?'
+
+'Certainly, or be an accessory to the crime,' was Arthur's reply.
+
+Jerry did not at all know what an accessory was, but it had an awful
+sound to her, and she asked:
+
+'What do they do to an accessory? Punish her--him, I mean--just the
+same?'
+
+'Yes, of course,' Arthur said, scarcely heeding what she was asking him,
+and never dreaming of the wild fancy which had taken possession of her.
+
+That one could go to prison in another's stead, and that an accessory
+would be punished equally with the criminal, were the two ideas distinct
+in her mind when she at last arose to go, saying to Arthur, as she stood
+in the door:
+
+'You are sure you are not afraid to have them come here again, if they
+take it into their heads to do so?'
+
+'Not in the least; they can search my rooms every day and welcome, if
+they like,' was Arthur's reply.
+
+'Well, that beats me!' Jerry said aloud to herself, with a nod for every
+word, as she went down the stairs and started for home, taking the Tramp
+House on her way. 'I guess I'll go in there and think about it,' she
+said, and entering the deserted building, she sat down upon the bench
+and began to wonder if she _could do it_, if worst came to worst, as it
+might.
+
+'Yes, I could for him, and I'll never tell; I'll be that thing he said,
+and a substitute, too, if I can,' she thought, 'though I guess it would
+kill me. Oh, I hope I shan't have to do it! I mean to say a prayer about
+it, anyway.'
+
+And kneeling down in the damp, dark room, Jerry prayed, first, that it
+might never be found out, and second, that if it were she might not be
+called to account as an accessory, but might have the courage to be the
+substitute, and stand by him forever and ever, amen!'
+
+'I may as well begin to practice, and see if I can bear it,' she
+thought, as she walked slowly home, where she astonished Mrs. Crawford
+by asking her to make some mush for dinner.
+
+'Mush! Why, child, I thought you hated it' Mrs. Crawford exclaimed.
+
+'I did hate it,' Jerry replied, 'but I want it now real bad. Make it for
+me, please. Harold likes it, don't you, Hally?'
+
+Harold did like it very much; and so the mush was made, and Jerry forced
+herself to swallow it in great gulps, and made up her mind that she
+could not stand that any way. She preferred bread and water. So, for
+supper she took bread and water and nothing else, and went up to bed us
+unhappy and nervous as a healthy, growing child well could be.
+
+She had tried the mush, and the bread and water, and now she meant to
+try the shorn head, which was the hardest of all, for she had a pride in
+her hair, which so many had told her was beautiful.
+
+Standing before her little glass, with the lamp beside her, she looked
+at it admiringly for a while, turning her head from side to side to see
+the bright ringlets glisten; then, with an unsteady hand the severed,
+one by one, the shining tresses, on which her tears fell like rain as
+she gathered them in a paper and put them away, wondering if the prison
+shears would cut closer or shorter, and wondering if it would make any
+difference that she was only a substitute, or at most an accessory.
+
+It was a strange idea which had taken possession of her, and a senseless
+one, but it was terribly real to her, and that little shorn head
+represented as noble and complete a sacrifice as was ever made by older
+and wiser people. There was no hard board to sleep upon, and so she took
+the floor, with a pillow under her head and a blanket over her,
+wondering the while if this were not a more luxurious couch than
+convicts, who had stolen diamonds, were accustomed to have.
+
+'Why, Jerry, what have you done?' and 'Oh, Jerry, how you look!' were
+the ejaculatory remarks which greeted her next morning, when she went
+down to her breakfast of bread and water, for she would take nothing
+else.
+
+'Why did you do it?' Mrs. Crawford asked a little angry and a good deal
+astonished; but Jerry only answered at first with her tears, as Harold
+jeered at her forlorn appearance and called her a picked chicken.
+
+'Maude's hair is short, and all the girls', and mine was always in my
+eyes and snarled awfully,' she said at last, and this was all the excuse
+she would give for what she had done; while for her persisting in a
+bread and water diet she would give no reason for three or four days.
+Then she said to Harold, suddenly:
+
+'You told me that the one who stole the diamonds would have to eat bread
+and water and have his head shaved, and I am trying to see how it would
+seem--am playing that I am the man, and in prison; but I find it very
+hard, I don't believe I can stand it. Oh, Harold, do you think they will
+ever find the diamonds? I am so tired and hungry, and the blackberry pie
+we had for dinner did look so good!'
+
+'Jerry,' Harold exclaimed, in amazement, and but dimly comprehending her
+real meaning, 'you are crazy, to be playing you are a convict! And is
+that what you have been doing?'
+
+'Ye-es,' Jerry sobbed; 'but I can't bear it, and I hope they will not
+find him,'
+
+'Him! Who?' Harold asked.
+
+'The one who took the diamonds,' she replied.
+
+'And I hope they will. He ought to be found and punished. Think what
+harm he has done to me by letting them accuse me,' Harold answered,
+indignantly.
+
+'No, no, Hally,' Jerry replied. 'No one accused you but Tom, and he is
+meaner than dirt; and if they did think you took them, and if you had to
+go, I should not let you; I should go in your place. I could do it for
+you and Mr. Arthur, but for no one else. Oh, I hope they will never find
+them.'
+
+She put her hands to her head, and looked so white and faint that
+Harold was alarmed, and took her at once to his mother, who, scarcely
+less frightened than himself, made her lie down, and brought her a piece
+of toast and a cup of milk, which revived her a little. But the strain
+upon her nerves for the last few days, and the fasting on bread and
+water proved too much for the child, who for a week or more lay up in
+her little room, burning with fever, and talking strange things at
+intervals, of diamonds, and state prison, and accessories, and
+substitutes, the last of which she said she was, assuring some one to
+whom she seemed to be talking that she would never tell, never!
+
+Every day Arthur came and sat for an hour by her bed, and held her hot
+hands in his, and listened to her talk, and marvelled at her shorn head,
+which he did not like. Whatever he said to her was spoken in German, and
+as she answered in the same tongue, no one understood what they said to
+each other, though Harold, who understood a few German words, knew that
+she was talking of the diamonds, and the prison, and the substitute.
+
+'I shall _never_ tell!' she said to Arthur, 'and I shall go! I can bear
+it better than you. It is not that which makes my headache so. It's--oh,
+Mr. Arthur, I thought you so good, and I am so sorry about the
+diamonds--Mrs. Tracy was so proud of them. Can't you contrive to get
+them back to her? I could, if you would let me. I am thinking all the
+time how to do it, and never let her know, and the back of my head aches
+so when I think.'
+
+Arthur could not guess what she really meant, except that the lost
+diamonds troubled her, and that she wished Mrs. Tracy to have them.
+Occasionally his brows would knit together, and he seemed trying to
+recall something which perplexed him, and which her words had evidently
+suggested to his mind.
+
+'Cherry,' he said to her one day when he came as usual, and her first
+eager question was, 'Have they found them?' 'Jerry, try and understand
+me. Do you know where the diamonds are?'
+
+Instantly into Jerry's eyes there came a scared look, but she answered,
+unhesitatingly:
+
+'Yes, don't you?'
+
+'No,' was the prompt reply; 'though it seems to me I did know, but there
+has been so much talk about them, and you are so sick, that everything
+has gone from my head, and the bees are stinging me frightfully. Where
+are the diamonds?'
+
+But by this time Jerry was in the prison, sleeping on a board and eating
+bread and mush, and Arthur failed to get any satisfaction from her.
+Indeed, they were two crazy ones talking together, with little or no
+meaning in what they said. Only this Arthur gathered--that Jerry would
+be happy if 'Mrs. Tracy had her diamonds again and did not know how they
+came to her. When this dawned upon him he laughed aloud, and kissing her
+hot cheek, said to her:
+
+'I see; I know, and I'll do it. Wait till I come again.
+
+It was ten o'clock in the morning when he left Mrs. Crawford's house;
+there was a train which passed the station at half-past ten, bound for
+New York, and without returning to the park, Arthur took the train,
+sending word to his brother not to expect him home until the next day,
+and not to be alarmed on his account, as he was going to New York and
+would take care of himself.
+
+Why he had gone Frank could not guess, and he waited in much anxiety for
+his return. It was evening when he came home, seeming perfectly composed
+and well, but giving no reason for his sudden journey to the city. His
+first inquiry was for Jerry, and his second, if anything had been heard
+of the diamonds. On being answered in the negative, he remarked:
+
+'Those rascally detectives are bunglers, and oftentimes would rather let
+the culprit escape than catch him. I doubt if you ever see the jewels
+again. But no matter; it will all come right. Tell your wife not to
+fret,'
+
+The next morning when Mrs. Tracy went to her room after breakfast she
+was astonished to find upon her dressing bureau a velvet box with
+Tiffany's name upon it, and inside an exquisite set of diamonds; not as
+fine as those she had lost, or quite as large, but white, and clear, and
+sparkling as she took them in her hand with a cry of delight, and ran
+with them to her husband. Both knew from whence they came, and both went
+at once to Arthur, who, to his sister-in-law's profuse expressions of
+gratitude, replied indifferently:
+
+'Don't bother me with thanks; it worries me. I bought them to please
+the little girl, who talks about them all the time. She will yet well
+now, I am going to tell her.'
+
+He found Jerry better, and perfectly sane. She was very glad to see him,
+though she seemed somewhat constrained, and shrank from him a little,
+when he sat down beside her. Her first rational question had been for
+him, and her second for the diamonds; were they found, and if not, were
+they still looking for them.
+
+'No, they have not found them,' Harold had said, 'and the officers are
+still hunting for the thief, while the papers are full of the reward
+offered to any one who will return them. Five hundred dollars now, for
+Mr. Arthur has added two hundred to the first sum. He has quite waked up
+to the matter. You know he seemed very indifferent at first.'
+
+'Mr. Arthur offered two hundred more!' Jerry exclaimed. 'Well, that
+beats me!'
+
+This was Mrs. Crawford's favorite expression, which Jerry had caught, as
+she did most of the peculiarities in speech and manner of those about
+her.
+
+'Two hundred dollars! He must be crazy.'
+
+'Of course he is. He don't know what he does or says half the time, and
+especially since you have been sick,' Harold said.
+
+'Sick!' Jerry repeated, quickly. 'Have I been sick, and is that why I am
+in bed so late? I thought you had come in to wake me up, and I was glad,
+for I have had horrid dreams.'
+
+Harold told her she had been in bed since the day of the investigation,
+when she came from the park house with a dreadful headache.
+
+'And you've been crazy, too, as a loon,' he continued, 'and talked the
+queerest things about state prison, and hard boards, and bread and
+water, and accessories, and substitutes, and so on. Seemed as if you
+thought you were a felon, and a body would have supposed that you had
+either taken the diamonds yourself or else knew who did, the way you
+went on by spells.'
+
+'Oh, Harold!' Jerry gasped, while her face grew spotted and the
+perspiration came out upon her forehead. 'Did I speak anybody's name?'
+
+'No,' Harold replied. 'I could not make you do that. I asked you ever
+so many times if you knew who took the diamonds, and you said "Yes," but
+when I asked who it was, you always answered, "Don't you wish you knew?"
+and that was all I could get out of you. Mr. Arthur was here every day,
+and sometimes twice a day, but you spoke German to him. Still I knew it
+was about the diamonds, for I understood that word. He was not here
+yesterday at all. There, hark! I do believe he is coming now. Don't you
+know who is said to be near when you are talking about him?'
+
+And, with a laugh, Harold left the room just as Arthur entered it.
+
+'Well, Cherry,' he said to her, as he drew a chair to her bedside, 'Mrs.
+Crawford tells me the bees are out of your head this morning, and I am
+glad. I have some good news for you. Mrs. Tracy has some diamonds, and
+is the happiest woman in town.'
+
+Jerry had not noticed his exact words, and only understood that Mrs.
+Tracy had found her diamonds.
+
+'Oh, Mr. Arthur, I am so glad!' the cried; and springing up in bed, she
+threw both arms around his neck and held him fast, while she sobbed
+hysterically.
+
+'There, there, child! Cherry, let go. You throttle me. You are pulling
+my neck-tie all askew, and my head spins like a top,' Arthur said, as he
+unclasped the clinging arms and put the little girl back upon her
+pillow, where she lay for a moment, pale and exhausted, with the light
+of a great joy shining in her eyes.
+
+'Did she know where they came from? how did you manage it? Are you sure
+she did not suspect!' she asked.
+
+'I put them on her dressing-bureau while she was at breakfast,' he
+replied, 'and when she came up there they were--large solitaire
+ear-rings and a bar with five stones, not quite as large or as fine as
+the ones she lost, but the best I could find at Tiffany's. Why, Jerry,
+what is the matter? You do not look glad a bit. I thought you wanted me
+to give them to her surreptitiously, and I did,' he continued, as the
+expression of Jerry's face changed to one of blank dismay and
+disappointment, and the tears gathered in her eyes.
+
+'I did--I do,' she said; 'but I meant, not new ones, but her very
+own--the ones you gave her.'
+
+For a moment Arthur sat looking at her with a perplexed and troubled
+expression, as if wondering what she could mean, and why he had so
+utterly failed to please her; then he said, slowly:
+
+'The ones I gave her? You make my head swim trying to remember, and the
+bumble-bees are black-faced, instead of white, and stinging me
+dreadfully. I wish you would say nothing more of the diamonds. It
+worries me, and makes me feel as if I were in a nightmare, and I know
+nothing of them.'
+
+Raising herself on her elbow and pointing her finger toward him in a
+half beseeching, half threatening way, Jerry said:
+
+'As true as you live and breathe, and hope not to be hung and choked to
+death, don't you know where they are?'
+
+This was the oath which Jerry's companions were in the habit of
+administering to each other in matters of doubt, and she now put it to
+Arthur as the strongest she knew.
+
+'Of course not,' he answered, with a little irritation in his tone.
+'What ails you, Cherry? Are you crazy, like myself? Struggle against it.
+Don't let the bees get into your brain and swarm and buzz until you
+forget everything. You ought to remember; you do things you ought not to
+do. It is terrible to be crazy and half conscious of it all the
+time--conscious that no one believes what you say or holds you
+responsible for what you do.'
+
+'Don't they?' Jerry asked, eagerly, for she knew the meaning of the word
+'responsible.' 'If a crazy man or woman took the diamonds, and then
+forgot, and did not tell, and it was ever found out, wouldn't they be
+punished?'
+
+'Certainly not,' was the reassuring reply, 'Don't you know how many
+murders are committed and the murderer is not hung, because they say he
+is crazy?'
+
+In a moment the cloud lifted from Jerry's face, which grew so bright
+that Arthur noticed the change, and said to her:
+
+'You are better now, I see, and I must go before I undo it all.
+Good-bye, and never say diamonds to me again; it gets me all in a--m
+a--well, a French pickle--mixed, you know.'
+
+He kissed her tenderly, and promising to take her for a drive as soon as
+she was able, went out and left her alone, wondering why it was that his
+having given the diamonds to his sister-in-law had failed in its effect
+upon her, and upon himself, too.
+
+For a long time after he was gone Jerry lay thinking with her eyes
+closed, so that if Harold or her grandmother came in they would think
+her asleep. Mr. Arthur was certainly crazy at times--very crazy. She
+could swear to that, and so could many others. And if a crazy man was
+not responsible for his acts, then he was not, and the law would not
+touch him; but with regard to the accessory, she was not sure. If that
+individual were not crazy, why, then he or she might be punished; and as
+the taste she had had of bread and water, and hard boards, in the shape
+of the floor, was not very satisfactory, and as Mrs. Tracy had other
+diamonds in the place of the lost ones, she finally determined to keep
+her own counsel and never tell what she had heard Arthur say that
+morning when the theft was discovered and he had talked so fast in
+German to her and to himself. If she had known where the diamonds were
+she might have managed to return them to their owner. But she did not
+know, and her better course was to keep quiet, hoping that in time Mr.
+Arthur himself would remember and make restitution; for that he had
+forgotten and was sincere in saying that he knew nothing of them she was
+certain, and her faith in him, which for a little time had been shaken,
+was restored.
+
+With this load lifted from her mind Jerry's recovery was rapid, and when
+the autumnal suns were just beginning to tinge the woodbine on the Tramp
+House and the maples in the park woods with scarlet, she took her
+accustomed seat in Arthur's room and commenced her lessons again with
+Maude, who had missed her sadly and who would have gone to see her every
+day during her sickness if her mother had permitted it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+ARTHUR'S LETTER.
+
+
+Two weeks had passed since Jerry's return to her lessons, and people had
+ceased to talk of the missing diamonds, although the offered reward of
+$500 was still in the weekly papers, and a detective still had the
+matter in charge, without, however, achieving the slightest success. No
+one had ever been suspected, and the thief, whoever he was, must have
+been an expert, and managed the affair with the most consummate skill.
+Now that she had another set, Mrs. Tracy was content, and peace and
+quiet reigned in the household, except so far as Arthur was concerned.
+He was restless and nervous, and given to fits of abstraction, which
+sometimes made him forget the two little girls, one of whom watched him
+narrowly; and once when they were alone and he seemed unusually absorbed
+in thought, she asked him if he were trying to think of something.
+
+'Yes,' he said, looking up quickly and eagerly; 'that is it. I am trying
+to remember something which, it seems to me, I ought to remember; but I
+cannot, and the more I try, the farther it gets from me. Do you know
+what it is?'
+
+Jerry hesitated a moment, and then she asked:
+
+'Is it the diamonds?'
+
+'Diamonds! No. What diamonds? Didn't I tell you never to say diamonds to
+me again? I am tired of it,' he said, and in his eyes there was a gleam
+which Jerry had never seen there before when they rested upon her. It
+made her afraid, and she answered, meekly:
+
+'Then I cannot help you to remember.'
+
+'Of course not. No one can,' Arthur replied, in a softened tone. 'It is
+something long ago, and has to do with Gretchen.'
+
+Then suddenly brightening, as if that name had been the key to unlock
+his misty brain, he added;
+
+'I have it; I know; it has come to me at last! Gretchen always sets me
+right. I wrote her a letter long ago--a year, it seems to me--and it has
+never been posted. Strange that I should forget that; but something came
+up--I can't tell what--and drove it from my mind.'
+
+As he talked he was opening and looking in the drawer which Jerry had
+never seen but once before, and that when he took from it the letter in
+German, a paragraph of which he had bidden her read.
+
+'Here it is!' he said, joyfully, as he took out a sealed envelope and
+held it up to Jerry. 'This is the letter which you must post to-day. I
+can trust it to you.'
+
+He gave her the letter, which she took with a beating heart and a sense
+of shame and regret as she remembered her pledge to Mr. Frank Tracy. She
+had promised to take him any letter which Mr. Arthur might intrust to
+her care, and if she took this one from Arthur she must keep her word.
+
+'Oh, I can't do it--I can't! It would be mean to Mr. Arthur,' she
+thought; and returning him the letter, she said: 'Please post it
+yourself; then you will be sure, and I might lose it, or forget. I am
+careless sometimes. Don't ask me to take it.'
+
+She was pleading with her might; but Arthur paid no heed, and only
+laughed at her fears.
+
+'I know you will not forget, and I'd rather trust you than Charles.
+Surely, you will not refuse to do so small a favor for me?'
+
+'No,' she said, at last, as she put the letter in her pocket, with the
+thought that, after all, there might be no harm in showing it to Mr.
+Frank, who, of course, merely wished to see it, and would not think of
+keeping it.
+
+But she did not know Frank Tracy or guess how great was his anxiety lest
+any message should ever reach a friend of Gretchen, if friend there were
+living. She found him in the room he called his office, where the dead
+woman had lain in her coffin, and where he often sat alone thinking of
+the day when the inquest was held, and when he took his first step in
+the downward road, which had led him so far that now it seemed
+impossible to turn back, even had he wished to do so, as he sometimes
+did.
+
+'If I had never secreted the photograph, or the book with the
+handwriting, if I had shown them to Arthur, everything would have been
+so different, and I should have been free,' he was thinking, when Jerry
+knocked timidly at the door, rousing him from his reverie, and making
+him start with a nameless tsar which was always haunting him.
+
+'Oh, Jerry, it is you,' he said, as the little girl crossed the
+threshold, and shutting the door, stood with her back against it, and
+her hands behind her. 'What is it?' he asked, as he saw her hesitating.
+
+With a quick, jerky movement of the head, which set in motion the little
+rings of hair, now growing so fast, and brought his brother to his mind,
+Jerry replied:
+
+'I came to tell you that Mr. Arthur has written the letter.'
+
+'What letter?' Frank asked, for the moment forgetting the conversation
+he had held with the child in the Tramp House.
+
+'The one I promised to bring you to show you--the one to Germany,' was
+Jerry's answer.
+
+And then Frank remembered at once what, in the excitement of the diamond
+theft, had passed from his mind.
+
+'Yes, yes, I know; give it to me,' he said, advancing rapidly toward
+her, and putting out his hand. 'When did he write it? Give it to me,
+please.'
+
+'But not to keep,' Jerry said, struck by something in his face and
+manner which, it seemed to her, meant danger to the letter.
+
+'Let me see it,' he continued.
+
+And rather reluctantly Jerry handed him a bulky letter, the direction of
+which covered nearly the whole of one side of the envelope.
+
+Very nervously Frank scanned the address, which might as well have been
+in the Fiji language for any idea it conveyed to him.
+
+'To whom is it directed? I cannot read German,' he said
+
+'I don't know,' Jerry replied. 'I have not looked at it, and would
+rather not.'
+
+'Why, what a little prude you are;' and Frank laughed uneasily. 'What
+possible harm is there in reading an address? The postmaster has to do
+it, and any one who took it to the office would do it if he could.'
+
+This sounded reasonable enough, and standing beside him, while he held
+the letter a little way from her, Jerry read the address in German
+first, then, as he said to her: 'I don't understand that lingo, put it
+into English,' she read again:
+
+'To Marguerite Heinrich, if living, and if dead to any of her friends;
+or to the postmaster at Wiesbaden, Germany. If not delivered within two
+months, return to Arthur Tracy, Tracy Park, Shannondale, Mass., U.S.A.'
+
+'Marguerite--Marguerite Heinrich!' Frank repeated, 'That is not
+Gretchen. The letter is not to her.'
+
+'I guess it is,' Jerry replied. 'He told me once that Gretchen was a pet
+name for Marguerite.'
+
+'Yes,' Frank returned, with a sigh, as this little crumb of hope was
+swept away, while to himself he added: 'At all events it is not
+Marguerite Tracy, and that makes me less a scoundrel than I should
+otherwise be. If he had written a little more it would have run over to
+the other side of the envelope. Any one would know he was crazy,' he
+continued, with a sickly attempt at a smile, while Jerry stood waiting
+to take the letter from him.
+
+He knew she was waiting, and said to her, as he put it in his pocket:
+
+'Thank you for bringing this to me. It is probably some nonsense which
+ought not to go, even if the sending it would do no harm, as it
+certainly would.'
+
+Until then Jerry had not realised that he did not mean the letter to go
+at all. She had remembered her promise to take it to him, and forgotten
+that he had said it must not be sent lest it should do harm to Maude.
+But it all came back to her now, and her tears fell like rain as she
+stood for a moment irresolute. But loyalty to Arthur conquered every
+other feeling. Surely he would not suffer any wrong to come to his own
+brother and niece. The letter was harmless, and must go.
+
+'Give it to me, please. You do not mean to keep it?' she said, at last,
+in a tone and manner she might have borrowed from Arthur himself, it was
+so like him when on his dignity.
+
+And Frank felt it, and knew that he had more than a child to deal with,
+and must use duplicity if he would succeed. So he said to her quietly
+and naturally:
+
+'Why, how excited you are! Do you think I intend to keep the letter? It
+is as safe with me as with you. It is true that when I talked with you
+in the Tramp House I thought that it must not be sent, but I have
+changed my mind since then, and do not care. I am going to the office,
+and will take it myself. John is saddling my horse now, and if I hurry I
+shall be in time for the western mail. Good-bye, and do not look so
+worried. Do you take me for a villain?'
+
+He was leaving the room as he talked, and before he had finished he was
+in the hall and near the outer door, leaving Jerry stupefied, and
+perplexed, and only half reassured.
+
+'If I had not sold myself to Satan before, I have now, for sure; and
+still I did not actually tell her that I would post it, though it
+amounted to that,' Frank thought, as he galloped through the park toward
+the highway which led to the town.
+
+Once he took the letter from his pocket and examined it again, wishing
+so much that he knew its contents.
+
+'If I could read German, I believe I am bad enough now to open it; but I
+can't, and I dare not take it to any one who can,' he said, as he put it
+again in his pocket, half resolving to post it and take the chances of
+its ever reaching Gretchen's friends, or any one who had known her.
+'I'll see how I feel when I get inside,' he thought, as he dismounted
+from his horse before the door of the post-office.
+
+The mail was just in, and the little room was full of people waiting for
+it to be distributed; and Frank waited with them, leaning against the
+wall, with his head bent down, and beating his boot with his
+riding-whip.
+
+'I must decide soon,' he thought, when a voice not far from him caught
+his ear, and glancing from under his hat, he saw Peterkin coming in,
+portly and pompous, and with him a dapper little man, who, in the days
+of the 'Liza Ann, had been a driver for the boat, but who now, like his
+former employer, was a millionaire, and wore a thousand-dollar diamond
+ring. To him Peterkin was saying:
+
+'There, that's him--that's Frank Tracy, the biggest swell in town--lives
+in that handsome place I was telling you about.'
+
+Strange that words like these from a man like old Peterkin should have
+inflated Frank's pride; but he was weak in many points; and though he
+detested Peterkin, it gratified him to be pointed out to strangers as a
+swell who lived in a fine house, and with the puff of vanity came the
+reflection that, as Frank Tracy of some other place than Tracy Park,
+with all its appliances of wealth, he would not be a swell whom
+strangers cared to see, and Jerry's chance was lost again.
+
+'Here is your mail, Mr. Tracy,' the postmistress said; and stepping
+forward, Frank took his letters from her, just as Peterkin slapped him
+on the shoulder, and, with a familiarity which made Frank want to knock
+him down, called out:
+
+'Hallo, Tracy! Just the feller I wanted to see. Let me introduce you to
+Mr. Bijah Jones, from Pennsylvany; used to drive hosses for me in the
+days I ain't ashamed of, by a long shot. He's bought him a place out
+from Philadelphy, and wants to lay it out _à la--à la_--dumbed if I
+know the word, but like them old chaps' gardens in Europe, and I told
+him of Tracy Park, which beats everything holler in this part of the
+country. Will you let us go over it and take a survey?'
+
+'Certainly; go where you like,' Frank said, struggling to reach the
+door; but Peterkin button-holed him and held him fast, while he
+continued:
+
+'I say, Tracy, heard anything from them diamonds?'
+
+'Nothing,' was the reply.
+
+'Didn't hunt in the right quarter,' Peterkin continued, 'leastwise
+didn't foller it up, or you'd a found 'em without so much advertisin'.'
+
+'What do you mean?' Frank asked.
+
+'Oh, nothin',' Peterkin replied; 'only them diamonds never went off
+without hands, and them hands ain't a thousand miles from the park.'
+
+'Perhaps not,' Frank answered, mechanically, more intent upon getting
+away than upon what Peterkin was saying.
+
+He longed to be in the open air, and as he mounted his horse, he said,
+as if speaking to some one near him:
+
+'Well, old fellow, I've done it again, and sunk myself still lower. You
+are bound to get me now some day, unless I have a death-bed repentance
+and confess everything. The thief was forgiven at the last hour, why not
+I?'
+
+The black shadow which Frank felt sure was beside him, did not answer,
+though he could have sworn that he heard a chuckle as he rode on, fast
+and far, until his horse was tired and he was tired, too. Then he began
+to retrace his steps, so slowly that it was dark when, he reached the
+village, and took the road which led by the gate through which the woman
+had passed to her death on the night of the storm. It was the shortest
+route to the park, and he intended to take it.
+
+As he drew near to the gate, it seemed to him that there was something
+on the wide post nearest the fence which had not been there in the
+afternoon when he rode by--something dark, and large, and peculiar in
+shape, and motionless as a stone. He was not by nature a coward, and
+once he had no belief in ghosts or supernatural appearances, but now he
+did not know what he believed, and this object, whose outline, seen
+against, the western sky, where a little dim light was lingering, seemed
+almost like that of a human form, made his heart beat faster than its
+wont, and he involuntarily checked his horse, just as a clear, shrill
+voice called out:
+
+'Mr. Tracy, is that you? I have waited so long, and I'm so cold sitting
+here. Did you post the letter?'
+
+It was Jerry who, after he had left her in his office, had been seized
+with an indefinable terror lest he might not post the letter after all.
+It seemed wrong to doubt him, and she did not really think that she did
+doubt him; still she would feel happier if she knew, and after supper
+was over she started along the grassy road until she reached the gate.
+Here she waited a long time, and then, as Mr. Tracy did not appear, she
+walked up and down the lane until the sun was down and the ground began
+to feel so damp and cold that she finally climbed up to the top of the
+gate-post, which was very broad, and where, on her way to town, she had
+frequently sat for a while. It was very cold and tiresome waiting there,
+and she was beginning to get impatient and to wonder if it could be
+possible that he had gone home by some other road, when she heard the
+sound of a horse's hoofs and felt sure he was coming.
+
+'Why, Jerry, how you frightened me!' Frank said, as he reined his horse
+close up to her. 'Jump down and get up behind me. I will take you home.'
+
+She obeyed, and with the agility of a little cat, got down from the
+gate-post and on to the horse's back, putting both arms around Frank's
+waist to keep herself steady, for the big horse took long steps, and she
+felt a little afraid.
+
+'Did you post the letter?' she asked again, as they left the gate behind
+them and struck into the lane.
+
+To lie now was easy enough, and Frank answered without hesitation:
+
+'Of course. Did you think I would forget it?'
+
+'No,' Jerry answered. 'I knew you would not. I only wanted to be sure,
+because he trusted it to me, and not to have sent it would have been
+mean, and a sneak, and a lie, and a steal. Don't you think so?'
+
+She emphasized the 'steal,' and the 'lie,' and the 'sneak,' and the
+'mean,' with a kick that made the horse jump a little and quicken his
+steps.
+
+'Yes,' Frank assented; it would be all she affirmed, and more too, and
+the man who could do such a thing was wholly unworthy the respect of any
+one, and ought to be punished to the full extent of the law.
+
+'That's so,' Jerry said, with another emphatic kick and a slight
+tightening of her arm around the conscience-stricken man, who wondered
+if he should ever reach the cottage and be free from the clasp of those
+arms, which seemed to him like bands of fire burning to his soul. 'I'd
+never speak to him again,' Jerry continued, 'and Mr. Arthur wouldn't
+either. He is so right-up, and hates a trick. I don't believe, either,
+that any harm will come to Maude from that letter, as you said. If there
+does, and Mr. Arthur can fix it, he will, I know, for I shall ask him,
+and he once told me he would do anything for me, because I look as he
+thinks Gretchen must have looked when she was a little girl like me.'
+
+They had reached the cottage by this time, where they found Harold in
+the yard looking up and down the lane for Jerry, whose protracted
+absence at that hour had caused them some anxiety, even though they were
+accustomed to her long rambles by herself and frequent absences from
+home. It was not an unusual thing for her to linger in the Tramp House,
+even after dark, talking to herself, and Gretchen, and Mah-nee, and her
+mother and a sick woman, whose face was far back in the past. She was
+there now, Harold supposed, and this belief was confirmed when Mr. Tracy
+said to him:
+
+'You see I have picked up your little girl and brought her home. Jump
+down, Jerry, and good-night to you.'
+
+She was on the ground in an instant, and he was soon galloping toward
+home, saying to himself:
+
+'I don't believe I can even have a death-bed repentance now. I have told
+too many lies for that, and more than all, must go on lying to the end.
+I have sold my soul for a life of luxury, which after all is very
+pleasant,' he continued, as he drew near the house, which was
+brilliantly lighted up, while through the long windows of the
+drawing-room he could see the table, with its silver and glass and
+flowers, and the cheerful blaze upon the hearth of the fire-place, which
+Dolly had persuaded Arthur to have built. There was every kind of
+bric-a-brac on the tall mantel, and Frank saw it as he passed, and saw
+the colored man moving slowly about the room after the manner of a
+well-trained servant who understands his business. There was company
+staying in the house, Mr. and Mrs. Raymond, from Kentucky, father and
+mother to Fred; and Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire, and Grace Atherton, and
+Squire Harrington had been invited to dinner, and were already in the
+dining-room when Frank entered it after a hasty toilet.
+
+He had been out in the country and ridden further than he had intended,
+he said by way of apology, as he greeted his guests, and then took Mrs.
+Raymond into dinner, which, with the exception of the soup and fish, was
+served from side tables. This was Dolly's last new kink, as Frank called
+it, and Dolly was very fine, in claret velvet, with her new diamonds,
+which were greatly admired, Grace Atherton declaring that she liked them
+quite as well as the stolen ones, whose setting was rather _passé._
+
+'That is just why I liked them so, because they were old-fashioned; it
+made them look like heir-looms, and showed that one had always had a
+family,' Dolly said.
+
+Grace Atherton shrugged her still plump shoulders just a little, and
+thought of the first call she ever made upon Dolly, when she entered
+through the kitchen and the lady entertained her in her working-apron!
+
+Dolly did not look now as if she had ever seen a working-apron, and was
+very bright and talkative, and entertaining, and all the more so because
+of her husband's silence. He was given to moods, and sometimes
+aggravated his wife to desperation when he left all the conversation to
+her.
+
+'Do talk,' she would say to him when they were alone. 'Do talk to people
+and not sit so glum, with that great wrinkle between your eyes as if you
+were mad at something; and do laugh, too, when anybody tells anything
+worth laughing at, and not leave it all to me. Why, I actually giggle at
+times until I feel like a fool, while you never smile or act as if you
+heard a word. Look at me occasionally, and when I elevate my
+eyebrows--_so_--brace up and say something, if it isn't so cunning.'
+
+This _elevating of the eyebrows_ and _bracing up_ were matters of
+frequent occurrence, as Frank grew more and more silent and abstracted,
+and now after he had sat through a funny story told by Mr. St. Claire
+and had not even smiled, or given any sign that he heard it, he suddenly
+caught Dolly's eye and saw that both eyebrows, and nose, and chin were
+up as marks of unusual disapprobation, for how could she guess of what
+he was thinking as he sat with his head bent down, and his eyes
+seemingly half shut. But they came open wide enough, and his head was
+high enough when he saw Dolly's frown; and turning to Mrs. Raymond he
+began to talk rapidly and at random. She had just returned from Germany,
+where she had left her daughter, Marion, in school, and Frank asked her
+of the country, and if she had visited Wiesbaden, and had there met or
+heard of anyone by the name of Marguerite Heinrich.
+
+Mrs. Raymond had spent some months in Wiesbaden, for it was there her
+daughter was at school, and she was very enthusiastic in her praises of
+the beautiful town. But she had never seen or heard of Marguerite
+Heinrich, or of anyone by the name of Heinrich.
+
+'Marguerite Heinrich?' Dolly repeated. 'Who in the world is she--and
+where did you know her?'
+
+'I never did know her. I have only heard of her,' Frank replied, again
+lapsing into a silence from which he did not rouse again.
+
+He was thinking of the letter hidden away with the photograph and the
+book--of the lies he had told since his deception began, and now sure it
+was that he had sinned beyond forgiveness. When he was a boy he had
+often listened, with the blood curdling in his veins, to a story his
+grandmother told him with sundry embellishments, for he was not well
+versed in German literature, of a man--Foster it seemed to him was the
+name--who sold his soul to the devil in consideration that for a certain
+number of years he was to have every pleasure the world could give. It
+had been very pleasant listening to the recital of the fine things the
+man enjoyed, for Satan kept his promise well; but the boy's hair had
+stood on end as the story neared its close, and he heard how, when the
+probation was ended, the devil came for his victim down the wide-mouthed
+chimney, scattering bricks and fire-brands over the floor, as he carried
+the trembling soul out in the blackness of the stormy night.
+
+Strangely enough this story came back to him now, and notwithstanding
+the horror of the thing he laughed aloud as he glanced up at the tall
+oak fire-place, wondering if it would be that way he would one day go
+with his master, and seeing in fancy Dolly's dismay when the tea-cups,
+and saucers, and vases, and plaques, came tumbling to the floor as he
+disappeared from sight in a blue flame, which smelled of brimstone.
+
+It was a loud, unnatural laugh, but fortunately for him it came just as
+Grace Atherton had set the guests in a roar with what she was saying of
+the Peterkin's final struggle to enter society, and so it passed
+unnoticed by most of them. But that night in the privacy of his room,
+where Dolly delivered most of her lectures, she again upbraided him with
+his taciturnity, telling him that he never laughed but once, and then it
+sounded more like a groan than a laugh.
+
+'You have hit the nail on the head this time, for it was a groan,' Frank
+said, as he plunged into bed; and Dolly, as she undressed herself
+deliberately, and this time put her diamonds carefully away, little
+dreamed what was passing in the mind of the man, who, all through the
+long hours of the night, lay awake, seldom stirring lest he should
+disturb her, but repeating over and over to himself, the words:
+
+'Lost now forever and ever, but if Maude is happy I can bear it.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+JERRIE--NINE YEARS LATER.
+
+
+She spelled her name with an _ie_ now, instead of a _y._ She was
+nineteen years old; she had been a student at Vassar for four years,
+together with Nina St. Claire and Ann Eliza Peterkin, and in July was to
+be graduated with the highest honors of her class. In her childhood,
+when we knew her as little Jerry, she had been very small, but at the
+age of twelve she suddenly shot up like an arrow, and had you first seen
+her, with her back to you, you might have said she was very tall, but
+had you waited till she turned her face toward you, or walked across
+the floor, you would have thought that if an eighth of an inch were
+taken from her height it would spoil her splendidly developed form. Her
+school companions called her the Princess, she was so tall and straight,
+and graceful in every movement, with that sweet graciousness of manner
+which won all hearts to her and made her a general favorite. Whether she
+spelled her name with an _ie_ or a _y_ and stood five feet six or four
+feet five, she was the same Jerry who had defended Harold against Tom
+Tracy, and been ready to go to prison, if need be, for Mr. Arthur.
+Frank, unselfish, truthful, and original, she had been as a child, with
+perhaps a little too much pride in her hair, which she hid once cut off
+to see how it would seem, and she was original, and truthful, and
+unselfish now, with a pardonable pride in her luxuriant tresses, which
+lay in waves upon her finely-shaped head and glistened in the sunlight
+like satin of a golden hue. But nothing could spoil Jerrie, not even the
+adulation of her friends or the looking-glass which told her she was
+beautiful, just as Nina St. Claire told her every day.
+
+'Yes; I am not blind, and I know that I am rather good-looking,' she
+once said to Nina, 'and I am glad, for, as a rule, people like pretty
+things better than ugly ones, but I am not an idiot to think that looks
+are everything, and I don't believe I am very vain. I used to be though,
+when a child, but Harold gave me so many lectures upon vanity that I
+should not do credit to his teachings were I now to be proud of what I
+did not do myself.'
+
+'But Harold thinks you are beautiful,' Nina replied.
+
+'He does? I did not know that. When did he say so?' Jerrie asked; with
+kindling eyes and a quick, sideways turn of her head, of which she had a
+habit when startled by some sudden emotion.
+
+'He said so last vacation, when we were home, and I had that little
+musicale, and you played and sang so divinely, and wore that dress of
+baby-blue which Mr. Arthur gave you, with the blush-rose, in your belt.'
+Nina said; 'I was so proud of you and so was mamma and Mrs. Atherton.
+You remember there were some New Yorkers there who were visiting Mrs.
+Grace, and I was glad for them to know that we had some talent, and some
+beauty, too, in the country; and Harold was proud, too. I don't think
+he ever took his eyes off you from the time you sat down to the piano
+until you left it, and when I said to him, "Doesn't she sing like an
+angel, and isn't the lovely?" he replied: "I think my sister Jerry has
+the loveliest face I ever saw, and that blue dress is very becoming to
+her."'
+
+'Wasn't that rather a stiff speech to make about his _sister_?' Jerry
+said, with a slight emphasis upon the last word, as she walked away,
+leaving Nina to wonder if she were displeased.
+
+Evidently not, for a few minutes later she heard her whistling softly
+the air 'He promised to buy me a knot of blue ribbon to tie up my bonny
+brown hair,' and could she have looked into Jerry's room she would have
+seen her standing before the mirror examining the face which Harold had
+said was the loveliest he had ever seen. Others had said the same, and
+their sayings had been repeated to her. Billy Peterkin, and Tom Tracy,
+and Dick St. Claire, and even Fred Raymond, from Kentucky, who was
+supposed to be devoted to Nina. But Jerry cared little for the
+compliments of either Fred or Dick, while those of Tom she scorned and
+those of Billy she ridiculed. One word of commendation from Harold was
+worth more to her than the praises of the whole world besides. But
+Harold had always been chary of his commendations, and was rather more
+given to reproof than praise, which did not altogether suit the young
+lady.
+
+As Jerry had grown older, and merged from childhood into womanhood, a
+change had come over both the girl and boy, a change which Jerry
+discovered first, awaking suddenly one day to find that the brother and
+sister delusion was ended, and Harold stood to her in an entirely new
+relation. Just when the change had commenced she could not tell. She
+only knew that it had come, and that she was not quite so happy as she
+had been in the days when she called Harold her brother, and kissed him
+whenever she felt like it, which was very often, for she was naturally
+affectionate, and showed her affection to those she loved. She was
+seventeen when the dream came--the old, old story which transformed her
+from a romping, a rather gushing child, into a woman more quiet and more
+dignified, especially with Harold, who missed and mourned in secret for
+the playful loving ways which had been so pleasant to him, even if he
+did not always make a return.
+
+Though capable of loving quite as devotedly and unselfishly as Jerry,
+he was not demonstrative, while a natural shyness and depreciation of
+himself made him afraid to tell in words just what or how much he did
+feel. He would rather show it by acts; and never was brother tenderer or
+kinder toward a sister than he was to Jerry, whose changed mood he could
+not understand. And so there gradually arose between them a little
+cloud, which both felt, and neither could exactly define.
+
+Arthur had kept his promise well with regard to Jerry, who had passed
+from him to Vassar, and he would have kept it with Harold, if the latter
+had permitted it. But the boy's pride and independence had asserted
+themselves at last. He had accepted the course at Andover, and one year
+at Harvard, on condition that he should be allowed to pay Arthur back
+all he had received as soon as he was able to do it. As he entered
+Harvard in advance, he was a junior when he decided to care for himself,
+and during the remainder of his college course, which, of course, was
+longer than usual, he struggled on, doing what he could during the
+summer vacation--teaching school for months at a time--and in the
+college reducing his expenses by acting as proctor, and compelling
+obedience to the rules of the institution. Even the few who were aware
+of his limited means, and his efforts to increase them, had to
+acknowledge, as he stood before the multitude, delivering the
+valedictory, and exciting thunders of applause by his graceful gestures
+and thrilling eloquence, that he was not only an orator, but every inch
+a gentleman.
+
+His fellow students who saw him then, and listened entranced to his
+clear, well-trained voice, thought not of Harold's threadbare coat and
+shining old-fashioned pants, which were so conspicuous as he pursued his
+studies in the class-room, but which were now concealed by the gown he
+wore over them. They saw only the large, dark eyes, the finely chiseled
+features, and the manly form. But as they listened to the burning words
+which showed so much clear, deep thought, they said to each other:
+
+'The young man has a future before him. Such eloquence as that could
+move the world, and rouse or quiet the wildest mob that ever surged
+through the streets of mad Paris.'
+
+Jerry was there, and saw and heard. And when Harold's speech was over,
+and the building was shaking with applause, and flowers were falling
+around him like rain, she, too, stood up and cheered so loudly that a
+Boston lady, who sat in front of her, and who thought any outward show
+of feeling vulgar and ill-bred, turned and looked at her wonderingly and
+reprovingly. But in her excitement Jerry did not see the disapprobation
+in the cold, proud eyes. She saw only what she mistook for enquiry, and
+she answered eagerly:
+
+'That's Harold--that's my brother! Oh, I am so proud of him!'
+
+And leaning forward so that a curl of her bright hair touched the Boston
+woman's bonnet, she threw the bunch of pond lilies which she had herself
+gathered that day on the river at home, before the sun was up, and while
+the white petals were still folded in sleep. For Jerry had come down on
+the early train to see Harold graduated, and Maude had found her in the
+crowd and sat beside her, almost as pleased and happy as herself to see
+Harold thus acquit himself.
+
+Maude's roses had been bought at a florist's in Boston at a fabulous
+price, for they were the choicest and rarest in market. Harold had seen
+both the roses and the lilies long before they fell at his feet. It was
+a fancy, perhaps, but it seemed to him that it sweet perfume from the
+latter reached him with the brightness of Jerry's eyes. He knew just
+where the lilies came from, for he had often waded out to the green bed
+when the water was low to get them for Jerry; and all the time he was
+speaking there was in his heart a thought of the old home, and the
+woods, and the river, and the tall tree on the bank, with the bench
+beneath, and on it the girl, whose upturned, eager face he saw above the
+sea of heads confronting him.
+
+Jerrie's approval was worth more to the young man than that of all the
+rest; for he knew that, though she would be very lenient toward him, she
+was a keen and discriminating critic, and would detect a weakness which
+many an older person would fail to see. But she was satisfied--he was
+sure of that; and if there had been in his mind any doubt it would have
+been swept away when, after the exercises were over, and he stood
+receiving the congratulations of his friends, she worked her way through
+the crowd and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him fondly, and
+bursting into a flood of tears as she told him how proud she was of him.
+
+The eyes of half his classmates were upon him, and though Harold felt a
+thrill of keen delight run through his veins at the touch of Jerrie's
+lips, he would a little rather she had waited until they were alone.
+
+'There, there, Jerrie, that will do!' he whispered, as he unclasped her
+arms, and put her gently from him, though he still held her hand. 'Don't
+you see they are all looking at us.'
+
+With a sudden, jerk Jerrie withdrew her hand from his and stepped back
+into the crowd, her heart beating wildly, and her cheeks burning with
+shame, as she thought what she had done and how it must have mortified
+Harold.
+
+Maude was speaking to him now--Maude with her bright black eyes and
+brilliant color. But she was neither crying nor strangling him with
+kisses. She was shaking hands with him very decorously, and telling him
+how pleased and glad she was. And in his hand he held her roses, which
+he occasionally smelled as he listened, and smiled upon her with that
+peculiar smile of his which made him so attractive. But the lilies were
+nowhere to be seen; and when, an hour later, all the baskets and
+bouquets bearing his name were piled together, the lilies were not
+there.
+
+'He has thrown them away! He did not care for them at all, and I might
+as well have staid in bed as to have gotten up at four o'clock and
+risked my neck to get them. He likes Maude and her roses better than he
+does me,' Jerrie thought, with a swelling heart and all through the
+journey home--for they returned that night--she was very quiet and
+tactiturn, letting Maude do all the talking, and saying when asked why
+she was so still, that her head was aching, and that she was too tired
+and sleepy to talk.
+
+That was the last time for years that Jerrie put her arms around
+Harold's neck, or touched her lips to his; for it had come to her like a
+blow how much he was to her, and, as she believed, how little she was to
+him.
+
+'Maude is preferred to me--I see it now so plainly; he likes me well
+enough, but he loves _her_--I saw it in the way he looked at her that
+time I mortified him so dreadfully with my _gush_,' she thought; and
+although of all her girl friends, not even excepting Nina St. Claire,
+Maude was the nearest and dearest, she was half-glad when a week or two
+later, Maude said good-bye to her, and with her mother sailed away to
+Europe, where she remained for more than a year and a half.
+
+During her absence the two girls corresponded regularly, and Jerrie
+never failed to write whatever she thought would please her friend to
+hear of Harold; and when at last Maude returned, and wrote to Jerrie of
+failing health, and wakeful nights, and lonely days, and her longing for
+the time when Jerrie would be home, and be with her, and read to her, or
+recite bits of poetry, as she had been wont to do, Jerrie trampled every
+jealous, selfish thought under her feet, and in her letters to Harold
+urged him to see Maude as often as possible, and read to her whenever
+she wished him to do so.
+
+'You have such a splendid voice, and read so well,' she wrote, 'that it
+will rest her just to listen to you, and will keep her from being so
+lonely; so offer your services if she does not ask for them--that's a
+good boy.'
+
+Then, as she remembered how weak Maude was, mentally, she thought:
+
+'He never can be happy with her as she is now. A girl who cannot do a
+sum in simple fractions, and who, when abroad, thought only of Rome as a
+good place in which to buy sashes and ribbons, and who asked me in a
+letter to tell her who all those Caesars were, and what the Forum was
+for, is not the wife for a man like Harold, and however much he might
+love her at first he would be sure to tire of her after a while, unless
+he can bring her up. Possibly he can.'
+
+Resuming her pen, she wrote:
+
+'Don't give her all sentimental poetry and love trash, but something
+solid--something historical, which she can remember and talk about with
+you.'
+
+In his third letter to Jerrie, after the receipt of her instructions,
+Harold wrote as follows:
+
+'I have offered my services as reader, and tried the solid on Maude as
+you advised--have read her fifty pages of Grote's History of Greece; but
+when I got as far as Homeric Theogony, she looked piteously at me, while
+with Hesiod and Orpheus she was hopelessly bewildered, and by the time I
+reached the extra Hellenic religion she was fast asleep! I do not
+believe her mind is strong enough to grapple with those old Greek chaps;
+at all events they worry her, and tire her more than they rest. So I
+have abandoned the gods and come down to common people, and am reading
+to her Tennyson's poems. Have read the May Queen four times, until I do
+believe she knows it by heart. She has a great liking for the last
+portion of it, especially the lines:
+
+    "I shall not forget you, mother:
+    I shall hear you when you pass,
+  With your feet above my head
+    In the long and pleasant grass."
+
+'I saw her cry one day when I read that to her. Poor little Maude! She
+is very frail, but no one seems to think her in danger, she has so
+brilliant a color, and always seems so bright.'
+
+Jerrie read this letter two or three times, and each time with an
+increased sense of comfort. No man who really loved a girl could speak
+of her mental weakness to another as Harold had spoken of Maude's to
+her, and it might be after all that he merely thought of her as a
+friend, whom he had always known. So the cloud was lifted in part, and
+she only felt a greater anxiety for Maude's health, which as the spring
+advanced, grew stronger, so that it was almost certain that she would
+come to Vassar in the summer and see her friend graduated.
+
+Such was the state of affairs when Nina repeated to Jerrie what Harold
+had said to her at the musicale the previous winter. All day long there
+was a note of gladness in Jerrie's heart which manifested itself in
+snatches of song, and low, warbling, whistled notes, which sounded more
+as if they came from a canary's than from a human throat. Jerrie did
+_not_ chew gum, but she whistled, and the teachers who reproved her most
+for what they called a boyish trick, always listened intently, when the
+clear, musical notes, now soft and low, now loud and shrill, were heard
+outside, or in the building.
+
+'Whistling Jerrie,' the girls sometimes called her, but she rather liked
+the name, and whistled on whenever she felt like it.
+
+And it was a very joyous, happy song she trilled, as she thought of
+Harold's compliment, and wished she might wear at commencement the dress
+of baby-blue which he had admired, for Harold would, of course, be there
+to see and hear, and as, when he wrote his valedictory two years before
+there had been in every line a thought of her, so in her essay, which
+was peculiarly German in its method and handling, thoughts of Harold had
+been closely interwoven. She knew she should receive a surfeit of
+applause--she always did; but if Harold's were wanting the whole thing
+would be a failure. So she wrote him twice a week, urging him to come,
+and he always replied that nothing but necessity would keep him from
+doing so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE TWO FACES IN THE MIRROR.
+
+
+Toward the last of May Arthur came to Vassar, bringing with him the
+graduating dress which he had bought in New York, with Maude as his
+adviser. He had Jerrie at the hotel to spend Saturday and Sunday with
+him, and took her to drive and to shop, and then in the evening asked
+her to put on her finery, that he might see how it looked.
+
+'I shall not come to hear you spout out your erudition,' he said, 'for I
+detest crowds, with the dreadful smell of the rooms. I have gotten the
+park house tolerably free from odors, though the cook's drain is
+terrible at times, and I shall have brimstone burned in the cellar once
+a week. But what was I saying? Oh, I know--I shall not be here at
+commencement, and I wish to see if my Cherry is likely to look as well
+as any of them.'
+
+So Jerrie left him alone while she donned the white dress, which fell in
+soft, fluffy folds around her feet, and fitted her superb figure
+perfectly. She knew how well it became her, and sure of Arthur's
+approbation, went back to the parlor, where she had left him. Arthur was
+standing with his back to the door when she came in, and going up to
+him, she said:
+
+'Here I am in all my gewgaws. Do you think I shall pass muster?'
+
+She spoke in German, as she always did to him, and when he turned
+quickly, there was a startled look on his face, as he said:
+
+'Oh, Cherry, it's you! I thought for a moment it was Gretchen speaking
+to me. Just so she used to come in with her light footstep and soft
+voice, so much like yours. Where is she, Cherry, that she never comes
+nor writes? Where is Gretchen now?'
+
+His chin quivered as he talked, and there was a moisture in his eyes,
+bent so fondly upon the young girl beside him. He was worn with the
+fatigue and excitement of his journey and the long drive he had taken,
+and Jerrie knew that whenever he was tired his mind was weaker and
+wandered more thin usual. So she tried to quiet and divert him by
+calling his attention to her dress, and asking how he liked it.
+
+'It is lovely,' he said, examining the lace and the soft flounces. 'It
+is the prettiest Maude and I could find. You know, she was with me, and
+helped me select it. Yes, it's lovely, and so are you, Cherry, with
+Gretchen's eyes and hair, and smile, and that one dimple in your cheek.
+She used to wear soft, white dresses, and in this you are enough like
+her to be her daughter.'
+
+They were standing side by side before a long mirror, she taller for a
+woman than he was for a man, so that her face was almost in a range with
+his, as he stooped a little forward.
+
+Glancing into the mirror at the two faces so near to each other, Jerrie
+saw something which for an instant made her cold and sick, and set every
+nerve to quivering as she stepped suddenly back, looking first at the
+man's face and then at her own in the mirror. It was gone now, the look
+which had so startled her, but it had certainly been there--a likeness
+between the two faces--and she had seen it plainer than she had ever
+seen any resemblance between herself and the picture. Gretchen had blue
+eyes, and fair hair, and fair complexion, and so had she, and so had
+hundreds of German girls, and all Arthur had ever said to her had never
+brought to her mind a thought like the two faces in the mirror. _What if
+it were so?_ That was the thought which had flashed like lightning
+through her brain, making her so weak that she grasped Arthur's arm to
+steady herself as she tried to speak composedly.
+
+'You are white as your dress,' he said. 'It is this confounded hot room;
+let us sit nearer the window.'
+
+They sat down together on a sofa, and taking up a newspaper, Arthur
+fanned Jerrie gently, while she said to him:
+
+'Do you really think I look like Gretchen?'
+
+'Yes; except that you are taller. You might be her daughter.'
+
+'Had she--had Gretchen a daughter?' was Jerrie's next question, put
+hesitatingly.
+
+'None that I ever heard of,' Arthur replied. 'Why do you ask that?'
+
+'And her name when a girl was Marguerite Heinrich, was it not?' Jerrie
+went on.
+
+'Yes. Who told you that?' Arthur said.
+
+'I saw it on a letter which you gave me to post years ago, when I was a
+child,' Jerrie replied. 'You never received an answer to that letter,
+did you?'
+
+'What letter did you post for me to Marguerite Heinrich? I don't know
+what you mean,' Arthur said, the old worried look settling upon his
+face, which always came there when he was trying to recall something he
+ought to remember.
+
+As he grew older he seemed to be annoyed when told of things he had
+forgotten, and as the letter had evidently gone entirely from his mind,
+Jerrie said no more of it. _She_ remembered it well; and never dreaming
+that it had not been posted, she had watched a long time for an answer,
+which never came. Gretchen was dead; that was settled in her mind. But
+who was she? With the words, 'What if it were so?' still buzzing in her
+brain, the answer to this question was of vital importance to her, and
+after a moment, she continued, as if she had all the time been talking
+of Gretchen:
+
+'She was Marguerite Heinrich when a girl in Wiesbaden, but she had
+another name afterward, when she was married.'
+
+'You are talking of something you know nothing about. Can't you let
+Gretchen alone?' Arthur said, petulantly, and springing up he began to
+pace the room in a state of great excitement, while Jerrie sat
+motionless, with a white, stony look on her face and a far off look in
+her eyes, as if she were seeing in a vision things she could not retain,
+they passed to rapidly before her, and were so hazy and indistinct.
+
+The likeness she had seen in the glass was gone now. She was not like
+Arthur at all; it was madness in her to have thought so. And she was not
+like Gretchen either. Her mother was lying under the little pine tree
+which she and Harold had planted above the lonely grave. Her mother had
+been dark, and coarse, and bony, and a peasant woman--so Ann Eliza
+Peterkin, who had heard it from her father, had told her once, when
+angry with her, and Harold, when sorely pressed, had admitted as much to
+her.
+
+'Dark, with large, hard hands,' he had said; and Jerrie with the great
+tears shining in her eyes, had answered, indignantly:
+
+'But hard and black as they were, they always touched _me_ gently and
+tenderly, and sometimes I believe I can remember just how lovingly and
+carefully they wrapped the old cloak around me to keep me warm. Dear
+mother, what do I care how black she was, and coarse. She was mine, and
+gave her life for me.'
+
+This was when Jerrie was a child, and now that she was older she was
+seeking to put away this woman with the dark face and the coarse hands,
+and substitute in her place a fairer, sweeter face, with hands like wax
+and features like a Madonna. But only for a few moments, and then the
+wild dream vanished, and the sad, pale face, the low voice, the music,
+the trees, the flowers, the sick-room, the death-bed, the woman who
+died, and the woman who served, all went out together into the darkness,
+and she was Jerrie Crawford again, wearing her commencement dress to
+please the man still pacing the floor abstractedly, and paying no heed
+to her when she went out to change her dress for the blue muslin she bud
+worn through the day.
+
+When she returned to the parlor she found him seated at the tea-table,
+which had been laid during her absence. Taking her seat opposite to him,
+she made his tea, and buttered his toast, and chatted, and laughed until
+she succeeded in bringing back a quiet expression to the face which bore
+no likeness now to her own, but looked pale and haggard as it always did
+after any excitement. He was talking of the commencement exercises, and
+regretting that he could not be present.
+
+'I may not be home,' he said. 'And if I am. I shall not come. Crowds
+kill me, and smells kill me, and we are sure to have both. I wish I had
+a different nose, but it is as it was made, and I think I detect some
+bad odor in here, don't you?'
+
+Jerrie, who knew from experience that the better way was to humor his
+fancy, said she did smell something; perhaps it was the carpet, or the
+curtains, both of which were new.
+
+'Very likely, and in that case the smell is a clean one,' he replied,
+and began again to speak of commencement.
+
+'Harold is sure to be here,' he said, 'and he is better than forty old
+coves like me. It is astonishing what a fancy I have taken to that young
+man. I don't see a fault in him, except that he is too infernally proud.
+Think of his refusing to take any more money from me unless I would
+accept his note promising to pay it all back in time--just as if he ever
+can, or will.'
+
+'Indeed he will,' Jerrie exclaimed, rousing at once in Harold's defence.
+'He will pay every dollar, and I shall help him.'
+
+'You!' and Arthur laughed, merrily, 'How will you help him, I'd like to
+know.'
+
+'I shall teach school, or give music lessons, or do both to earn
+something for grandmother,' Jerrie answered, quickly. 'And I shall help
+Harold, and shall pay Mr. Frank all he gave grandmother for my board. I
+know just how much it is. Three dollars a week from the time I was four
+years old until I was sixteen and came here to school--almost two
+thousand dollars; a big sum, I know, but I shall pay it. You will see,'
+she went on rapidly and earnestly; as she saw the amused look on
+Arthur's face, and felt that he was laughing at her.
+
+'You are going to pay my brother to the uttermost farthing, but what of
+me? Am I to be left in the cold?' he asked, as he arose from the table
+and seated himself upon the sofa near the window.
+
+'I expect to be your debtor all my life,' Jerrie said, as went over to
+him and laid her soft, white arms around his neck. 'I can never pay you
+for all you have done for me, never. I can only love you, which I do so
+dearly, as the kindest and best of men.'
+
+She was stooping over him now; and putting up his hands Arthur drew her
+close to him, so that the two faces were again plainly reflected, side
+by side in the mirror opposite--the man's gentle and tender as a
+woman's, the girl's flushed, and eager, and excited as she caught a
+second time the likeness which had made her cold and faint when she
+first saw it, and which made her faint again as she clasped her hands
+tightly together, and leaning a little forward, looked earnestly at the
+faces in the mirror, while she listened to what Arthur was saying.
+
+'You owe me nothing, Cherry; the indebtedness is all on my side, and has
+been since the day when a little white sun-bonnet showed itself at my
+window, and a clear, ringing voice, which I can hear yet, said to me,
+"Mr. Crazyman, don't you want some cherries?" You don't know how much of
+life and sunshine you brought me with the cherries. My sky was very
+black those days, and but for you I am certain that I should long ere
+this have been what you called me--a crazy man for sure, locked up
+behind bars and bolts. My little Cherry has been all the world to me;
+and though she is very grand, and tall, and stately now, I love to
+remember her as the child in the sun-bonnet, clinging to the ladder, and
+talking to the lunatic inside. That would make a fine picture, and it I
+were an artist I would paint it some day. Perhaps Maude will. Poor
+little Maude! Did I tell you that while she was absent she dabbled in
+water-colors? and now she has what she calls a studio, where she
+perpetrates the most atrocious daubs you ever saw. Poor Maude! She is
+weak in the upper story, but is, on the whole, a nice girl, and very
+pretty, too, with her black eyes, and brilliant color, and kittenish
+ways. I did not care for her once, but we are great friends now, and she
+is a comfort to me in your absence. I am afraid, though, that she is not
+long for this world. Everything tires her, and she has grown so thin
+that a breath might blow her away. I think it would kill Frank to lose
+her. His life is bound up in hers; and he once said to me, either that
+he had sold, or would sell, his soul for her. What do you suppose he
+meant?'
+
+Jerrie did not reply. The likeness in the mirror had disappeared as
+Arthur grew more in earnest, and she listened more intently to what he
+was saying of Maude, every word as he went on a blow from which she
+shrank as from some physical pain.
+
+'Yes,' Arthur continued, 'Maude is weak, mentally and physically, though
+I believe she is trying hard to improve her wind, or rather, that young
+man, Harold, is trying to improve it for her. He is at the house nearly
+everyday, or she is at the cottage. But, hold on! I wasn't to tell, and
+I haven't told--only he reads to her, sometimes outside when the weather
+will admit, but oftener in her _studio_, where she talks to him of art,
+and where I once saw him giving her a sitting while she tried to sketch
+his face. A caricature, I called it, ridiculing it so much that she put
+it away unfinished, and is now at work on some water-lilies he brought
+her, and which are really very good. Mrs. Tracy is not pleased with
+Harold's visits, and I once overheard her saying to Maude, "Why do you
+encourage the attentions of that young man? why do you run after him so,
+down there every day?" Hold on, again! What a tattler I am! Why don't I
+stick to Dolly, who said, "You certainly do not care for him. He hasn't
+a cent to his name, nor any family and has even worked in Peterkin's
+furnace." What Maude replied I do not know, I only heard Dolly bang the
+door hard as she left the room, so I suppose the answer was not a
+pleasing one. Dolly is a grand lady and would not like her daughter to
+marry an ordinary man like Harold.'
+
+'No,' Jerrie said, slowly, as if speaking were an effort. 'N-no; and you
+think Harold likes Maude very much?'
+
+'Likes her? Yes. Why shouldn't he like a girl as pretty as she is,
+especially when she meets him more than half way?' Arthur replied, and
+Jerrie continued in the same measured tone:
+
+'Ye-es, and you think he would marry her if her mother would permit it?'
+
+'He is not at all likely to do that,' Arthur answered, quickly, 'A man
+seldom marries a woman who throws herself at his head and lets him see
+how much she cares for him, and Maude is doing just that. She cannot
+conceal anything. I tell you, Cherry, if the time ever comes when you
+love somebody better than all the world beside, don't let him know until
+he speaks for himself. Don't be lightly won. Better be shy and cold,
+than demonstrative and gushing, like Maude. Gretchen was shy as a fawn,
+and after I told her I loved her she would not believe it possible. But,
+child, you look fagged and tired. It is time you were in bed. I have
+talked you nearly to death.'
+
+'I am not tired,' Jerrie said, 'and I want to know what it is about
+Maude's going to the cottage, which you must not tell me. Is she there
+very, very often, and does Harold like to have her come, and is that
+throwing herself at his head, as you call it?'
+
+She had her arm around his neck in a coaxing kind of way, and Arthur
+smoothed the soft white hand resting on his coat-collar, as he answered,
+laughingly:
+
+'Mother Eve herself. You would have eaten the apple, too, had you been
+Mrs. Adam. No, no, I shall not tell any secrets. You must wait and see
+for yourself. And now you must go, for I am tired myself.'
+
+She said good-night, and went to her room, but not to sleep at once,
+because of the tumult of emotions which had been roused by what Arthur
+had told her of Maude and Harold.
+
+'I don't believe now that I really meant him to make love to her when I
+asked him to amuse her,' she whispered to herself, as she dashed away
+two great tear-drops from her cheeks.
+
+Then, after a moment, she continued:
+
+'But they shall never know. No one shall ever know that I care, for I
+don't, or I am not going to. Harold is my brother, and I shall love
+Maude as my sister, and I will do all I can to make her more like what
+Harold's wife should be. She is beautiful, and good, and sweet, and
+true, and with money and position can do far more for him than I
+could--I, the daughter of a peasant woman, the child of the carpet bag;
+and yet--'
+
+Here Jerrie's hands beat the air excitedly as she recalled the wild
+fancy which had twice taken possession of her that night, and which had
+been born of that likeness seen in the mirror. Many times since she had
+passed from childhood to womanhood had she speculated upon the mystery
+which enshrouded her, while one recollection after another of past
+events flitted through her brain, only to bewilder her awhile and then
+to disappear into oblivion. But never before had she been affected as
+she was that night when the possibility of what might be nearly drove
+her wild.
+
+'Oh, if that were so,' she said, 'I could help Harold, and I'd give
+everything to him and make him my king, as he is worthy to be. There is
+something far back,' she continued 'something different from the woman
+who died at my side. That face which haunts me so often was a reality
+somewhere. It has kissed me and called me darling, and I saw the life
+fade out of it--saw it cold and dead. I know I did, and sometime, when I
+have paid that debt to Mr. Frank Tracy, and have helped Harold, and made
+grandmother comfortable, I'll go to Germany, to Wiesbaden and
+everywhere, and clear the mystery, if possible; and if mother was a
+peasant girl, with hands coarse and hard, and black from labor in the
+field, then, I, too, will be a peasant girl, and marry a peasant lad,
+and draw his potatoes home in a cart, while he trudges at my side.'
+
+At this picture of herself Jerrie laughed out loud, and while trying to
+think how it would seem to draw potatoes in a cart, after having dug
+them, she fell asleep and dreamed of Maude and Harold, and studios and
+lilies, and a face which was a caricature, as Arthur had said, and
+which, when at a late hour she awoke, proved to be that of the
+chambermaid, whom Arthur had sent to rouse her, as he was waiting for
+his breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+MAUDE'S LETTER.
+
+
+    TRACY PARK, June ----, 18--.
+
+    'My darling Jerrie:--I wish I could send you a whiff of the
+    delicious air I am breathing this morning from the roses under my
+    window and the pond-lilies which Harold brought me about an hour
+    ago. Don't you think he was up before the sun, and went out upon the
+    river to get them for me because he knows how fond I am of them, and
+    I told him yesterday that they always made me think of you, they are
+    an sweet, and pure, and fair. I wish you could have seen him, or,
+    rather, have heard his voice and seen the look in his eyes, as he
+    said: "Yes; Jerrie is the lily and you are the rose; you set each
+    other off admirably. I am glad you are so good friends."
+
+    'Harold thinks the world of you, Jerrie, and were you his own
+    sister, I am sure he could not love you better than he does. How
+    handsome he has grown since I went away. I always thought him
+    splendid-looking, but he is more than that now; so tall and
+    straight, with his head set on his shoulders in such an aristocratic
+    kind of way, and then his eyes, which look at you so--well, I don't
+    know how they do look at you, but they are eyes you would trust and
+    never be afraid of anything bad behind them. Uncle Arthur says his
+    mother was lovely, and that his father was one of the handsomest men
+    of his time, but I am certain that Harold looks better than either
+    of them, and has inherited the good qualities of both, without a
+    single bad one. He is so nice and gentlemanly, and has such a kind,
+    courteous way of saying and doing things. Fred Raymond--who, you
+    know, is so sweet on Nina St. Clair--says that if Harold had all the
+    blood of a hundred kings in his veins he could not be more courtly
+    or dignified in his manner than he is, and that is a great deal for
+    a Kentuckian to say. Fred is now at Grassy Spring, visiting Dick St.
+    Claire, and will stay until Nina comes home. I wish Harold was rich,
+    and if I had money of my own, I believe I'd give it to him, only he
+    wouldn't take it, he is so awfully proud, and afraid somebody will
+    help him; and yet I respect him for the pride, which has made him
+    teach school, and do everything he could find to do in order to go
+    through college the last two years and pay his own way. But I did
+    not like it a bit when I heard he had accepted a situation in
+    Peterkin's furnace. I know he had good wages, but it is dreadful to
+    think of Harold under such a man, even if Billy is there. When I
+    told Uncle Arthur he laughed, and said: "Honor and shame from no
+    condition rise." I wonder what he meant? I asked Tom, and he said I
+    was a fool.
+
+    'Weren't you proud of Harold, though, the day he graduated? What an
+    oration that was! and how the building shook with applause when he
+    came on and when he went off! And do you remember the expression of
+    his face when he picked up the bouquet of roses I threw him, and
+    looked over where we sat? I thought he touched his lips to them, but
+    was not sure. Do you remember? He is studying law now all the time
+    he can get in Judge St. Claire's office, but he comes to read to me
+    for an hour or more nearly every day. He came of his own accord,
+    too. I did not ask him, or even hint, as Tom says I do, when I want
+    anything; and sometimes I half think he is trying to drive something
+    into my head, or was, when he began to read to me about those old
+    Greeks, Hesiod, or Herod, I don't know which, and Theogony--that's
+    rather a pretty name, don't you think so? But I could not stand the
+    Greeks. My mind is too weak to be impressed by anything Grecian,
+    unless it is the Grecian bend. You tried it until you were
+    discouraged and gave it up, telling me I was the stupidest idiot you
+    ever saw! That was the time we had the a spelling-school in the
+    Tramp House, and you were the teacher, and Harold chose me first,
+    and I spelled biscuit "bisket!" Do you remember how I cried? and
+    when you told me nobody would ever like me unless I knew something,
+    Harold said. "Don't talk like that, Jerrie; those who know the least
+    are frequently liked the best."
+
+    'What a comfort those words have been to me; and especially at the
+    time when I failed so utterly in examination at Vassar and had to
+    give it up. Oh, Jerrie, you do not know how mortified I was over
+    that failure, to think I knew so little; and the worst of it is I
+    can't learn, or understand; or remember, and it makes my head ache
+    so to try. I am sorry most on father's account, he is so proud of
+    me and would like to see me take the lead in everything. Poor
+    father! he is growing old so fast. Why, his hair is white as snow,
+    and he sometimes talks to himself just as Uncle Arthur does. I
+    wonder what ails him that he never smiles or seems interested in
+    anything except when I am smoothing his hair or sitting on his knee;
+    then he brightens up and calls me his pet and darling, and talks
+    queer kind of talk, I think. He asks me if I am glad I live at Tracy
+    Park--if I like the pretty things he buys me, and if I should be as
+    happy if I were poor--not real poor, you know, but as we were at
+    Langley before I was born. I went there with him a few weeks ago for
+    the first time; and oh, my goodness gracious! such a poky little
+    house, with the stairs going right up in the room, and such a tiny,
+    stuffy bedroom! I tried to fancy mamma's scent bottles, and brushes,
+    and combs, and the box for polishing her nails, transported to that
+    room, and her in there with Rosalie dressing her hair. It made me
+    laugh till I cried, and I think papa did actually cry, for he sat
+    down upon the stairs and turned his head away, and when he looked up
+    his eyes were all wet and red, with such a sorry look in them that I
+    went straight up and kissed him, and asked him playfully if he was
+    crying for the old days when he lived in that house and sold codfish
+    in the store.
+
+    '"Yes, Maude," he said. "I believe I'd give the remainder of my life
+    if I could be put back right here as I was when your uncle Arthur's
+    letter came and turned my head. Oh, if the years and everything
+    could be blotted out!"
+
+    'What do you suppose he meant? I was frightened, and did not say a
+    word until he asked me those questions I told you about; did I like
+    pretty things? did I like to live at Tracy Park, and could I bear to
+    be poor and live in the Langley house? I just told him, 'No, I
+    should not like to live in Langley, that I did like living at Tracy
+    Park, and did like the pretty things which money bought.'
+
+    '"Then I ought to be content, if my beautiful Maude is so," he said,
+    and the tired look on his face lifted a little.
+
+    'He calls me beautiful so often. But I don't see it, do you? Of
+    course you don't. You think me too black, and small, and thin, and
+    so I am. Harold never told me I was pretty, and--I tell this in
+    confidence, and you must never breathe it to any one--I have tried
+    to wring a compliment from him so many times, but it's no use, I
+    can't do it, he never understands anything, though he does sometimes
+    say, when he brings me a bright rose: "Wear it, Maude; it will
+    become your style."
+
+    'He never says you are pretty, either, and that is strange, for I
+    think you have the loveliest and sweetest face I ever saw, except
+    Gretchen's in the picture, you look like her; I saw it so plainly
+    two years ago, when you were here one evening, and I spoke of it to
+    father. Who was she, I wonder? Uncle Arthur does not talk much of
+    her now, though I believe he kisses her every night and morning. How
+    much he thinks of you, and how much he has talked of _Cherry_ since
+    his visit to you in May. I am so glad you liked the dress, he was so
+    anxious about it. Did he say any thing to you of a trip to
+    California? He took us quite by surprise two weeks ago by telling us
+    he was going. He wanted to see the Yosemite Valley before he died,
+    he said, and June was the time to see it. So he started off with
+    Charles about ten days ago, and the house seems like a tomb without
+    him.
+
+    'If I can, I shall come and see you graduate with the other Vassars,
+    though I shall be ashamed to be seen where I failed so utterly. I
+    might have known I should, for I haven't about me a single quality
+    which would entitle me to be a Vassar, unless it is my fondness for
+    _gum_. Do you really chew an awful lot there, or is it a fib? How
+    learned you and Nina will be, and how you will cast me in the shade,
+    making me seem stupider than ever. I did try very hard to learn to
+    speak German when I was abroad with mamma, for father wished it
+    particularly; but I could not do it, and gave it up. I have not a
+    capacity for anything, except to love and suffer and sacrifice for
+    those I love. Do you know, it sometimes frightens me to think how
+    devotedly I could love some one. Not a girl, but a man--a lover--a
+    husband, who loved me. Why, I would give my life for him, and bear
+    any kind of torture if it would add to his happiness. But why write
+    this nonsense to you, who never acted as if you cared an atom for
+    any boy, not even Dick St. Claire, who used to give you sugar hearts
+    and call you his little wife. _Entre nous_ (who says I do not know
+    two French words?) mamma would like to make a match between Dick and
+    me, but she never will--never! Dick is nice, and I like him, but not
+    that way. Poor mamma! How much she thinks of money and position! I
+    tell her she ought to have a photograph of the old Langley House
+    hung up in her room to keep her in mind of her former condition.
+    Just now she has the craze to hammer brass and paint in
+    water-colors, and goes over to Mrs. Atherton's to take lessons.
+    Don't you think that Mrs. Peterkin--_May Jane_--had like aspirations
+    with mamma, and wanted to join the class; but the teacher found that
+    she had as many pupils as she could attend to, and so May Jane is
+    left out in the cold. But Mr. Peterkin says, 'By George, my wife
+    shall have 'complishments if money can buy em!' And so, I suppose,
+    she will. What strides those Peterkins have taken, to be sure, and
+    what a big house he has built with such a funny name.--"_Le
+    Batteau_", which, as he pronounces it, sounds like _Lubber-too_! It
+    is just finished, and they have moved into it. I have not been
+    there, but Tom has, and he says it fairly glitters, it is so
+    gorgeous, and looks inside like those chariots which come with
+    circuses.
+
+    'You ought to hear Peterkin talk about his '_Ann Lizy_, who, he
+    says, "is to Vassar, gettin schoolin' with the big bugs, and when
+    she comes _hum_ he is goin' to get her a hoss and cart for her own,
+    and a maid, and a vally, too, if she wants one." Well, there are
+    some bigger fools in the world than I am, and that's a comfort. As
+    for Billy, he stammers worse, if possible, than he used to when he
+    told us we were "pl-p-plaguey mean to pl-pl-plague Ann Lizy so;" but
+    I guess I will let him burst upon you in all the magnificence of his
+    summer attire--his almost white clothes, short coat, tight pants,
+    pointed shoes, and stove-pipe hat to make him look taller. He comes
+    here occasionally to see Tom, and always talks of you. I do believe
+    you might be Mrs. Billy Peterkin and live at _Lubber-too_, if you
+    wanted; but, really, Billy is very kind to Harold, who gets twice as
+    much wages in the office, when he writes there, as he would if it
+    were not for Billy.
+
+    'Tom is home, doing nothing, but taking his ease and aping an
+    English swell. You know he was with mamma and me in England, and
+    since his return has effected everything English, and looks quite
+    like the _dude_ of the period. He, too, seems interested in your
+    return; and I don't know but you might be mistress of Tracy Park, if
+    you could fancy the incumbrance. Dick St. Claire is going to Vassar
+    to see you and Nina graduate; and Harold, too, if he possibly can.
+    He is very busy just now with something he must finish, and perhaps
+    he cannot be there. Tom is going, and Fred Raymond, and Billy
+    Peterkin--quite a turn-out from Shannondale.
+
+    'I can hardly wait to see you. Only think, it is almost two years
+    since I said good-bye; for we went to Europe just after Harold was
+    graduated, and your last Christmas holidays were over before we came
+    home.
+
+    'What a long letter I have written you, and have not told you a word
+    of my health, about which you inquired so particularly. Did Uncle
+    Arthur tell you anything? I wish he had not, for it worries me to
+    have people look, and act, and talk as if I were sick, when I am
+    not. If I had not a pain in my side, and a tickling cough, which
+    keeps me awake nights and makes me sweat until my hair is wet, I
+    should be perfectly strong; and but for the pain and the weariness,
+    I feel as well as I ever did; and I go out nearly every day, and I
+    don't want to die and leave my beautiful home, and father, and
+    mother, and you, and--everybody I love. I am too young to die. I
+    cannot die.
+
+    'Oh, Jerrie, I am glad you are coming home! You will do me good,
+    just as Harold does. He is so strong every way, and so kind I can't
+    begin to tell you what he has been to me since I came home in
+    March--more than a friend--more than a brother. I do not see why you
+    never fell in love with him, thought I suppose it is living with
+    him always, as you have, and looking upon him as a brother.
+
+    'And now I must say good-bye, for I am getting tired and must rest.
+    I was at the cottage this morning, and Harold is coming here this
+    afternoon to read Tennyson's "May Queen" to me. He has read it a
+    dozen times, but I am never tired of it, although it makes me cry to
+    think of that grave in the long grass, with little Alice in it, cold
+    and dead, listening for those she loved to come and weep over her.
+    You know, she says to her mother:
+
+    '"I shall hear you when you pass,
+     With your feet above me, in the long and pleasant grass."
+
+    'Oh, Jerrie, if it should be--you know what I mean; if there should
+    come a time when people say to each other, "Maude Tracy is dead!"
+    you'll come often, won't you, and think of me always as the friend,
+    who, weak and stupid as she was, loved you dearly--dearly.
+
+    'Now, good-bye again. Harold has just come in, and says, "Remember
+    me to Jerrie, and tell her I shall hope to see her graduated, but do
+    not know, I am so busy."
+
+    'Truly and lovingly,
+
+    'MAUDE TRACY.'
+
+    'P.S.--Tom has come in, and says, "Give my love to Jerrie."
+
+    'P.S. No. 2.--Dick St. Claire and Fred Raymond are here, and both
+    send their regards.
+
+    'P.S. No. 3.--If you will believe me, Billy Peterkin is here,
+    nibbling his little cane, and says, "Present my compliments to Miss
+    Crawford."
+
+    'Just think of it. Five, or, rather, four young men--for Tom don't
+    count--for me to entertain. But I can do it, and rather like it,
+    too, though they all tire me, except Harold.'
+
+Jerrie read this letter, which was received a few days before
+commencement, two or three times, and each time she read it, the little
+ache in her heart kept growing larger, until at last it was actual pain,
+and covering her face with her hands, she cried like a child.
+
+'It is Maude I am crying for,' she kept saying to herself. 'I know she
+is worse than they have told me. She is going to die, and I am mean to
+grudge her Harold's love, if that will make her happier. Why does she go
+to the cottage so often, I wonder? Is it to see him? He would not like
+me to do that. He was chagrined when I kissed him at Harvard. But, then,
+he does not love me, and he does Maude; but he _must_ see me graduate.
+I'll write and tell him so. That, surely, will not be "throwing myself
+at his head;"' and seizing her pen, Jerrie wrote, rapidly and excitedly:
+
+    'DEAR HAROLD: I have just heard from Maude, who says there is a
+    possibility that you will not come to Vassar; but I shall be so
+    disappointed if you do not. I would rather have you here than all
+    the wise old heads in the State. So come without fail, no matter
+    what you are doing. I can't imagine anything which should keep you.
+    Tell grandma I am longing to be home, and keep thinking just how
+    cool and nice the kitchen looks, with the hop-vine over the door;
+    but she will I have to raise the roof soon, for I do believe I've
+    grown an inch since last winter and am in danger of knocking my
+    brains out in those low rooms.
+
+    'Good-bye till I see you.
+
+    'JERRIE.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+'HE COMETH NOT,' SHE SAID.
+
+
+The _she_ was Jerrie, who, the night before commencement, was shaking
+hands with Dick St. Claire, Fred Raymond, Tom Tracy, and Billy Peterkin,
+all of whom had arrived on the evening train, and after dinner had come
+to pay their respects to the young ladies from Shannondale. The _he_ way
+Harold, for whom Jerrie asked at once.
+
+'Where is Harold? Is he coming in the morning?' she said, as she stood,
+tall, and straight, and queen-like, before the four young men, who
+glanced at each other with a significance in their looks, which she did
+not understand.
+
+It was Dick St. Claire who took it upon himself to explain.
+
+'No, Hal is not coming,' he said, 'and he is awfully cut up about it. He
+thought he might manage it until yesterday when he found it impossible
+to do so. You see, he has taken a job which must be done at a certain
+time.'
+
+'Taken a job!' Jerrie repeated. 'What job? What do you mean?' and her
+blue eyes flashed upon each of the young men, falling last upon Tom
+Tracy, as if she expected him to answer, which he did in the half
+sneering, half satirical tone which made her hate him and long to box
+his ears.
+
+'Why, it's a sort of carpenter's job,' he said; 'and I heard his hammer
+going this morning before sunrise, for I was up early for once and out
+in the park. Sounded as if he were shingling a roof, and that's work,
+you know, which must be done in fair weather. It might rain and spoil
+the plastering.'
+
+'Thank you,' Jerrie answered, curtly. 'Harold is shingling a roof, and
+cannot come. But where is Maude? Is she shingling a roof, too?'
+
+'Yes, b-b-by Jove. You've h-hit it. Maude's sh-shingling a roof, too:
+the b-best joke out,' Billy Peterkin chimed in, glad of an opportunity
+to join in the conversation, and so get some attention from Jerrie.
+
+He was a little man, only four feet five with heels, and he wore the
+light clothes of which Maude had written, and a stove-pipe hat, and dove
+colored gloves, and carried a little cane, which he constantly nibbled
+at, when he was not beating his little boot with it. But he was
+good-natured and inoffensive and kind-hearted, with nothing low or mean
+in his nature; and Jerrie, who looked as if she could have picked him up
+and thrown him over the house, liked him far better than she did the
+'elegant Tom,' as she had nicknamed him, who stood six feet without
+heels, and who knew exactly what shade of color to choose, from his
+neck-tie to his hose, which were always silk of the finest quality. Tom
+was faultlessly gotten up, and he knew it, and carried himself as if he
+knew it, and knew, too, that he was Tom Tracy, the future heir of Tracy
+Park, if he were fortunate enough to outlive both his uncle and his
+father. Jerrie had disliked him when he was a boy and she disliked him
+now, and turning her back upon him pretended to be interested in 'little
+Billy,' as she was in the habit of calling him; he was so short and she
+was so tall.
+
+He was speaking of Harold, and he said:
+
+'It's a dused shame he co-couldn't come, b-but he sent some money by
+Dick to buy you a b-basket in New York, and by George, we've got you a
+st-stunner down to the h-hotel; only I'm a-a-fraid it'll be w-wilted
+some b-before to-morrow.
+
+'Yes,' Dick said, coming forward, 'I should not have told you now, if
+Billy had not let it out; Hal did give me some money to buy a basket of
+flowers for you; the very best I could find, he said, and I got a big
+one; but I'm afraid it was not very fresh, for it begins to look wilted
+now. You must blame Tom, though; he pretends to be up in flowers, and
+advised my getting this one in New York, because it was so handsome and
+cheap.'
+
+'Oh, it is all right,' Tom drawled, in that affected voice he had
+adopted since his return from Europe. 'It was the best, any way, we
+could get for the money. Hal, you know, isn't very flush in the pocket.'
+
+It was a mean speech to make, and all Tom's audience felt it to be so,
+while Jerry crimsoned with resentment and answered hotly:
+
+'Faded or not, I shall care more for Harold's flowers than for all the
+rest which may be given me.'
+
+This was not very encouraging to three at least of the young men who
+were intending to make the finest floral offering they could find, to
+the girl whom in their secret hearts they admired more than any girl
+they had ever seen, and who, had she made the slightest sign, might have
+been installed at Grassy Spring, or Tracy Park, or Le Bateau, within
+less than a month. But Jerry had never made a sign, and had laughed and
+chatted and flirted with them all, not excepting Tom, who had long ago
+dropped his supercilious air of superiority and patronage when talking
+with her, and treated her with a gentleness and consideration almost
+lover-like. Horribly jealous of Harold, whom he still felt infinitely
+above, although he did not now often openly show it, he had encouraged
+the visits of the latter to Tracy Park, and by jokes and hints and
+innuendoes had fed the flame which he knew was burning in his sister's
+heart.
+
+'There will be a jolly row when mother finds it out,' he said to Maude
+one day; 'for you know she holds her head a great deal higher than Hal
+Hastings, who isn't the chap I'd choose for a brother-in-law. But if you
+like him, all right. Stick to him, and I'll stand by you to the death.'
+
+This was to Maude; while to his mother, when, she complained that Harold
+came there quite too often, and that Maude was running after him too
+much, he said:
+
+'Nonsense, mother! let Maude alone. She knows what she is about, and
+would not wipe her shoes on Hal Hastings, much less marry him. She is
+lonely without Nina and Jerry, and not strong enough to read much
+herself, and Hal amuses her; that's all. I know. I have talked with her.
+I am keeping watch, and the moment I see any indications of love-making
+on either side I will give you warning, and together we will put my fine
+chap in his proper place in a jiffy.'
+
+Tom was a young man now of twenty-seven, tall, and finely-formed, with
+all his mother's good looks, and his Uncle Arthur's courtliness of
+manner when he felt that his companions were worthy of his notice, but
+proud, and arrogant, and self-asserting with his inferiors, or those
+whom he thought such. He had never overcome his unwarrantable dislike of
+Harold, whom he considered far beneath him; but Harold was too popular
+to be openly treated with contempt, and so there was a show of
+friendship and civility between them, without any real liking on either
+side. Tom could not tell just when he began to look upon Jerrie as the
+loveliest girl he had ever seen, and to contemplate the feasibility of
+making her Mrs. Tom Tracy. His admiration for her had been of slow
+growth, for she was worse than a nobody--a child of the Tramp House, of
+whose antecedents nothing was known, while he was a Tracy, of Tracy
+Park, whom a duchess might be proud to wed. But he had succumbed at last
+to Jerrie's beauty, and sprightliness, and originality, and now his love
+for her had become the absorbing passion of his life, and he would have
+made her his wife at any moment, in the face of all his mother's
+opposition. By some subtle intuition, he felt that Harold was his rival,
+though he could not fathom the nature of Harold's feeling for Jerrie, so
+carefully did the latter conceal it.
+
+'He must regard her as something more than a sister,' he thought; 'he
+cannot see her every day without loving her, and by-and-by he will tell
+her so, and then my cake is dough. If I can only get him committed to
+Maude while Jerrie is away, my way is clear, for I am quite sure she
+does not care for Dick, and she would be a fool not to take Tracy Park
+if she could get it. And why shouldn't Hal love Maude? She is pretty,
+and sweet, and winning, and will some day be an heiress. Hal may thank
+his stars to get her, though I hate him as I do poison.'
+
+It was Tom who had insisted that Harold's basket should be bought in New
+York, where there was a better chance, he said, and he had himself
+selected flowers which he knew were not fresh, and would be still worse
+twenty-four hours later.
+
+'Why don't you get yours here, if it is the be-best place?' Will
+Peterkin had asked him, and he replied:
+
+'Oh, we can't be bothered with more than one basket in the train. I can
+find something there.'
+
+He did not say what he intended to find, or that baskets were quite too
+common for him. But after leaving the young ladies in the evening, he
+went to a florist's and ordered for Jerrie a book of white daisies, with
+a rack of purple pansies for it to rest upon.
+
+'That will certainly be unique, and show her that I have taste,' he
+thought.
+
+For Nina a bouquet was sufficient, while for Ann Eliza Peterkin he
+ordered nothing. Tom could be lavish of his money where his own interest
+was concerned, but where he had no interest he was stingy and even mean,
+and so poor little red-haired Ann Eliza, who would have prized a leaf
+from him more than all the florist's garden from another, was to get
+nothing from him.
+
+'What business has old Peterkin's daughter to graduate with ladies, any
+way?' he thought, and he looked on with a sneer, while Billy ordered
+five baskets, one of which was to be of white roses, with a heart of
+blue forget-me-nots in the centre.
+
+'What, under heaven, are you going to do with five baskets?' he asked;
+but Billy was non committal, for he would not own that three were
+intended for Jerrie, whom he wished to carry off the palm so far as
+flowers were concerned.
+
+And she did; for of all the young ladies who the next day passed in
+review before the multitude, no one attracted so much attention or
+received so much praise as Jerrie. For clearness of reasoning, depth of
+thought, and purity of language, her essay, though a little too
+metaphysical, perhaps, was accounted the best, and listened to with rapt
+attention. And when the musical voice ceased, and the young girl, who
+had never looked more beautiful than she did then, with the sparkle in
+her eyes and the flush on her cheeks, bowed to the audience, bouquets of
+flowers fell around her like hailstones, while basket after basket was
+handed up to her, Tom Tracy's book showing conspicuously from the rest
+and attracting unusual admiration.
+
+But, alas for poor Harold's gift! Dick had watered it the last thing
+before going to bed and the first thing in the morning, but the flowers
+were limp and faded, and gave forth a sickly odor, while the leaves of
+the roses were dropping off, and only the size, which was immense,
+remained to tell what it once had been. But Jerrie singled it out from
+all the rest, and held it in her hands until the exercises were over;
+and that night, at a reception given to the graduates, she wore in her
+bosom two faded pink roses, the only ones she could make hold together,
+and which Nina told her smelled a little old. But Jerrie did not care.
+They were Harold's roses, which he had sent to her, and she prized them
+more than all the rest she had received. At little Billy's _heart_ she
+had laughed till she cried, and then had given it to a young girl, not a
+graduate, who admired it exceedingly. Tom's book she knew was exquisite,
+and placed it with others, and thanked him for it, and told him it was
+lovely, and then gave it to Ann Eliza, whose offerings had been so few.
+A bouquet from Dick St. Claire and Fred Raymond, a basket from her
+brother, and one more from _herself_, were all, and the little
+red-haired girl, who, with her heavy gold chain and locket, and diamond
+ear-rings, and three bracelets, and five finger-rings, had looked like a
+jeweller's shop, felt aggrieved and neglected, and Jerrie found her
+sobbing in her room as if her heart was broken.
+
+'Only four snipping things,' she said, 'and you had twenty-five, and
+mother will be so disappointed, and father too, when he knows just how
+few I got. I wish I was popular like you.'
+
+'Never mind,' Jerrie said, cheerfully. 'It was only a happen so--my
+getting so many. You are just as nice as I am, and I'll give you part of
+mine to take home to your mother. I can never carry them all. I should
+have to charter a car,' and in a few moments six of Jerrie's baskets
+were transferred to Ann Eliza's room, including Tom Tracy's book.
+
+'Oh, I can't take that, Ann Eliza said; he didn't mean it for me; he
+didn't give me anything, and I--I--'
+
+Here she began to sob again, and laying her hand pityingly upon the
+bowed head, Jerrie said:
+
+'Yes, I know; I understand. Something from Tom Tracy would have pleased
+you more than from anyone; but listen to me, Annie. Tom is not worth
+your tears.'
+
+'Don't you care for him?' the girl asked, lifting her head suddenly.
+
+'Not a particle, as you mean. You have nothing to fear from me,' Jerrie
+replied.
+
+This was a grain of comfort to the girl who had been weak enough to
+waste her affections upon Tom Tracy, and who, fearing Jerrie was a
+rival, was weak enough to hope that with her out of the way she might
+eventually succeed in bringing him to her feet, for she knew his
+fondness for money, and knew, too, that she should in all probability be
+one day the heiress to a million. So great was her infatuation for the
+man who had never shown her the slightest attention, that even his
+flowers, though second-hand, and not intended for her, were everything
+to her, and when she packed her trunk that night she put them carefully
+away in many wrappings of paper, to be brought out at home in the
+privacy of her own room, and kept as long as the least beauty or perfume
+remained.
+
+It was a merry party which the New York train carried to Shannondale the
+next day, and Jerrie was the merriest and gayest of them all, bandying
+jokes and jests, and coquetting pretty equally with the young men, until
+neither Tom, nor Dick, nor Billy quite knew what he was doing or saying.
+But always in her gayest moods, when her eyes were brightest and her wit
+the keenest, there was in Jerrie's heart a thought of Harold, who had so
+disappointed her, and a wonder as to the nature of the _job_ which had
+been of sufficient importance to keep him from Vassar.
+
+'Shingling a roof, and Maude is helping him,' Billy said, 'I wonder what
+he meant?' she was thinking, when she heard Ann Eliza cry out, that the
+towers of 'Le Bateau' were visible.
+
+As she had not seen that wonderful structure since its completion, she
+arose from her seat, and going to the window, looked out upon the
+massive pile in the distance, looking, with its turrets, and towers, and
+round projections, like some old castle rather than a home where people
+could live and be happy.
+
+'It is very grand,' she said to Ann Eliza; and Billy, who was leaning
+toward her, replied:
+
+'Yes, too grand for a Pe-Peterkin. It wants you, there, Jerrie, as its
+m-m-master-p-p-piece, and, by Jove, you can b-be there, too, if you
+will!'
+
+No one heard this attempt at an offer but Jerrie, who, with a saucy toss
+of the head, replied, laughingly:
+
+'Thank you, Billy. I'll think of it, and let you know when I make up my
+mind to come. Just now I prefer the cottage in the lane to any spot on
+earth. Oh, here, we are at the station,' she cried, as the train shot
+round a curve and Shannondale was reached.
+
+There was a scrambling for bundles, and flowers, and wraps. Fred Raymond
+gathering up Nina's, while Dick, and Tom, and Billy, almost fought over
+Jerrie's, and poor little Ann Eliza would have carried hers alone if
+Jerrie had not helped her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+IN SHANNONDALE.
+
+
+Nine years of change in Shannondale, and the green hill-side, which
+stretched from the common down to the river where, when our story
+opened, sheep and cows were feeding in the pasture land, is thickly
+covered with houses of every kind of architecture, from the Mansard roof
+to the Queen Anne style, just coming into fashion, while the meadow
+lands are dotted over with the small houses of the men who work in the
+large furnace, or manufactory, which Peterkin had bought and enlarged,
+as a monument, he said, and where he sometimes employed as many as four
+hundred men, and had set up a whistle which could be heard for miles and
+miles, and nearly blew off the chimney-tops when it sounded in the
+morning at six o'clock, it was so loud and shrill. A screecher, Peterkin
+called it, and he always listened with a smile of pride and satisfaction
+on his face when he heard the first indications of its blowing, and knew
+that four hundred men were quickening their stops on account of it,
+lest they should be a few minutes late and have their wages docked.
+
+Peterkin counted two millions now, and boasted the finest, or at least,
+the most expensive house in the county, not even excepting Tracy Park,
+which still held its own for solidity and old-fashioned dignity, and was
+the show place to the strangers visiting in Shannondale.
+
+When Peterkin made $20,000 in one day from some speculation in stocks,
+he said to Mr. St. Claire, who was now a judge, and with whom he
+pretended to be on terms of great familiarity:
+
+'I say, judge, I'm goin' to build a buster, and whip the crowd. I've
+lived about long enough in that little nine-by-ten hole, and I'll be
+dumbed if I don't show 'em what I can do. I'll have towers, and
+bay-windows, and piazzers, with checkered work all 'round 'em, and a
+preservatory, and all kinds of new fangled doin's. May Jane and Ann
+'Liza want that Queen Anny style, but I tell 'em no such squatty things
+for me. They can have all the little winder panes and stained glass,
+cart loads on't, if they want; but I'll have the rooms big and high, so
+a feller won't bump his head. Yes, _sir_! I'm in for a smasher!'
+
+And he built 'a smasher' on the site of the old house, behind which the
+'Liza Ann,' or what there was left of it, was lying; and when the house
+was done, and furnished with the most gaudy and expensive furniture he
+could find in Boston and New York, he said it had just as good a right
+to a name as any body. There was Tracy Park, and Grassy Springs, and
+Brier Hill, and Collingwood, and he'd be dumbed if he'd be outdone by
+any of 'em.
+
+'He'd like to call it 'Liza Ann,' he said to Arthur, whom he met one day
+in the park, and to whom he began to talk of his new house. 'He'd like
+to call it 'Liza Ann, after the old boat, for that craft was the
+beginnin' of his bein' any body; but May Jane and Ann 'Liza wouldn't
+hear to it. They wanted some new-frangled foreign name; could Mr. Tracy
+suggest something?'
+
+'How would "_Le Bateau_" do? It is the French for "the boat," and might
+cover your difficulty,' Arthur said, without a thought that his
+suggestion would be adopted.
+
+But it was, immediately.
+
+'That's jest the checker. 'Liza Ann with a new name, _Lub--lub_--what
+d'ye call her?' Peterkin said, and Arthur replied:
+
+'_Le Bateau_.'
+
+'Yes, yes--_Lubber-toe_; that'll suit May Jane tip-top. Beats all what
+high notions she's got! Why, I don't s'pose she any more remembers that
+she used to wash Miss Atherton's stun steps than you remember somethin'
+that never happened. Do you?'
+
+Arthur thought very likely that she did not, and Peterkin went on:
+
+'You say it means a boat in French; _canal_, do you s'pose?'
+
+Arthur did not think it mattered what boat, and Peterkin continued:
+
+'_Lubber-toe_! Sounds droll, but I like it, I'll see an engraver to-day
+but how do you spell the plaguy thing!'
+
+Arthur wrote it on a slip of paper, which he handed Peterkin, who began
+slowly:
+
+_L-e le, b-a-t-bat; le-bat_. Why, what in thunder! That ain't
+_Lubbertoe_. 'Tain't nothin'!'
+
+With an amused smile Arthur explained that the pronunciation of French
+words had very little to do with the way they were spelled; then, very
+carefully pronouncing the name several times, and making Peterkin repeat
+it after him, he said good-bye, and walked away, thinking to himself:
+
+'There are bigger lunatics outside the asylum than I am, but it is not
+possible the fool will adopt that name.'
+
+But the fool did. May Jane approved, and Billy did not care, provided
+his father would pronounce it right, and so in less than a week, '_Le
+Bateau_' was on Peterkin's door-plate, and on the two gate-posts of the
+entrance to his grounds, and May Jane's visiting cards bore the words:
+
+'Mrs. Peterkin. Le Bateau. Fridays.'
+
+She had her _days_ now, like Mrs. Atherton, and Mrs. St. Claire, and
+Mrs. Tracy, and had her butler, too, and her maid, and her carriage; and
+after the house was furnished, and furnished in style which reminded one
+of a theatre, it was so gorgeous and gay, Peterkin concluded to have a
+_coat of arms_ for his carriage; and remembering how Arthur had helped
+him in a former dilemma he sought him again and told him his trouble.
+
+'That _Lubber-too_ (he called it _too_ now) 'went down like hot cakes,
+and was just the thing,' he said, 'and now I want some picter for my
+carriage door to kinder mark me, and show who I am. You know what I
+mean.'
+
+Arthur thought a _puff-ball_ would represent Peterkin better than
+anything else, but he replied:
+
+'Yes, I know. You want a coat of arms, which shall suggest your early
+days--'
+
+'When I was a flounderin' to get up--jess so,' Peterkin interrupted him.
+'You've hit it, square. Now I'd like a picter of the Lizy Ann, as she
+was, but May Jane won't hear to't. What do you say, square?'
+
+Arthur tingled to his finger tips at this familiarity from a man whom he
+detested, and whom he would like to turn from his door, but the man was
+in his house and in his private room, tilting back in a delicate Swiss
+chair, which Arthur expected every moment to see broken to pieces, and
+which finally did go down with a crash as the burly figure settled
+itself a little more firmly upon the frail thing.
+
+'I'll be dumbed if I hain't, broke it all to shivers!' the terrified
+Peterkin exclaimed, as he struggled to his feet, and looked with dismay
+upon the _débris_. 'What's the damage?' he continued, taking out his
+pocket-book and ostentatiously showing a fifty-dollar bill.
+
+'Money cannot replace the chair, which once adorned the _salon_ of
+Madame De Stael,' Arthur said, 'Put up your purse, but for Heaven's
+sake, never again tip back in your chair. It is a vulgar trick, of which
+no gentleman would be guilty.'
+
+Ordinarily, Peterkin would have resented language like this, but he was
+just now too anxious to curry favor with Arthur to show any anger, and
+he answered, meekly:
+
+'That's so, square. 'Tain't good manners, and I know it, as well as the
+next one. I'm awful sorry about the chair, and think mebby I could get
+it mended. I'd like to try.'
+
+'Never mind the chair,' Arthur said, with an impatient gesture. 'Try
+another and a stronger one, and let's go back to business. You want a
+painted panel for your carriage. How will this do?' and he rapidly
+sketched a green, pleasant meadow, with a canal running through it, and
+on the canal a boat, drawn by one horse, which a barefoot,
+elfish-looking boy was driving.
+
+'I swow, square, you're a trump, you be,' Peterkin exclaimed, slapping
+him on the back, 'You've hit it to a dot. That's the 'Lizy Ann, and that
+there boy is Bije Jones, drivin the old spavin hoss. You or'to hev _me_
+somewhere in sight, cussin' the hands as I generally was, and May Jane
+on deck, hangin' her clothes to dry. Could you manage that?'
+
+Arthur thought he could, but suggested that Mrs. Peterkin might not like
+to be made so conspicuous.
+
+'Possibly she will not like this drawing at all. She may think it too
+suggestive of other days.'
+
+'That's so,' Peterkin assented, a little sadly; 'and if she don't take
+to it, the old Harry can't make her. She used to be the meekest of wives
+them days she dried her clothes on the 'Lizy Ann, but she don't knock
+under wuth a cent sense we riz in the world, and Ann Lizy is wus than
+her mother. But I'll show this to the old woman and let you know.'
+
+May Jane did not approve, neither did Billy. No use, they said, to
+flaunt the canal, horse, driver, and all in people's faces; and so the
+discomfited Peterkin went to Arthur again and told him, 'the fat was all
+in the fire, and May Jane on a rampage.'
+
+'Try again, squire; but give us some kind of water and craft.'
+
+So Arthur good-humoredly changed the canal into a gracefully flowing
+river, in a bend of which, in the distance, there was just visible a
+boat, which was a cross between a gondola and one of those little
+dangerous things so common on the lakes of Wisconsin. Standing in the
+bow of the boat, with folded arms, as if calmly contemplating the
+scenery, was the figure of a man--suppositively Peterkin--who swore
+'he'd keep this picter in spite of 'em;' and as his wife did not
+seriously object, the sketch was transferred in oil to a pannel and
+inserted in the carriage, which, when drawn by two shining bays and
+driven by a colored man in long coat and tall hat, with Peterkin sitting
+back in it with all the pride and pompousness of a two-millionaire, and
+May Jane at his side, covered with diamonds, attracted general attention
+and comment. Billy seldom patronized the carriage, but frequently rode
+beside it, talking to his mother, of whom he was very fond, and taking
+off his hat to every person he met, whether old or young, rich or poor.
+
+'Billy is an idiot, but very kind-hearted,' people said of him, and in
+truth he was popular with everybody, especially with the men in his
+father's employ, who all went to him for favors, or for an increase of
+wages; for if Billy had any business it was in his father's office,
+where he pretended to look after matters and keep the books straight.
+Such had been the growth of Peterkin during the past nine years. 'He had
+got clean to the front,' he said, 'and was hob-nobbin' with Squire
+Harrenton, and Judge St. Claire, and the Tracys,' all of whom shrugged
+their shoulders and laughed at him in secret, but treated him civilly to
+his face, for, deny it as we may, money has a mighty power, and will
+open many a door which nothing else could move.
+
+'Coarse and ignorant as a horse, but not so bad after all' was what
+people said of him now; and in fact Peterkin had improved and softened a
+good deal with the accession of wealth. Nobody gave so largely, or
+lavishly either, to everything, as he did, while to his employees he was
+always generous and considerate. Once he thought to join the church,
+thinking that would add to his respectability; but when talked with by
+his clergyman he showed himself so lamentably deficient in every
+necessary qualification that he was advised to wait a while, which he
+did; but he rented the most expensive pew he could find, and carried the
+largest prayer-book of any one, and read the loudest, stumbling over the
+words frightfully, and kept his head down the longest, so long, indeed,
+that he once went to sleep, and had quite a little nap before his wife
+nudged him and told him to get up.
+
+'Good Lord deliver us!' Was his ejaculation, as he sprang to his feet,
+and, adjusting his glasses, looked fiercely round at the amused
+congregation.
+
+So far as money and display were concerned, the St. Claires and Mrs.
+Atherton had not kept up with Peterkin. On the contrary, as he grew into
+society they gradually withdrew, until at last Dolly Tracy had it all
+her own way and looked upon herself as the lady _par excellence_ of the
+town. She had been to Europe. She had seen the queen; she had had some
+dresses made at Worth's; she had picked up a few French words which she
+used on all occasions, with but little regard to their appropriateness.
+She had decorated a tea set, and was as unlike the Dolly Tracy, who once
+did her own work and ate griddle cakes from her own kitchen stove, as a
+person well could be. Everything had gone well with her, and scarcely a
+sorrow had touched her, for though poor, stupid Jack had slept for five
+years in the Tracy lot with only the woman of the Tramp House for
+company, he was so near an imbecile when he died that his death was a
+blessing rather than otherwise. Tom, with his fine figure, his
+fastidious tastes, and aristocratic notions, was the apple of her eye,
+and _tout à fait au fait_, she said, when her French fever was at its
+height and she wished to impress her hearers with her knowledge of the
+language; while, except for her ill-health, and the bad taste she
+manifested in her liking for Harold's society, Maude was _tout à fait au
+fait_, too. She had no dread of Gretchen, now; even Arthur had ceased to
+talk of her, and was as a rule very quiet and contented.
+
+Only her husband troubled her, for with the passing years his silence
+and abstraction had increased, until now it was nothing remarkable for
+him to go days without speaking to any one unless he were first spoken
+to. His hair was white as snow, and made him look years older than he
+really was; while the habit he had of always walking with his head down,
+and a stoop in his shoulders, added to his apparent years.
+
+During the time Maude was in Europe he grew old very fast, for Maude was
+all that made life endurable. To see her in her young beauty, flitting
+about the house and grounds like a bright bird, whose nest is high up in
+some sheltered spot where the storms never come, was some compensation
+for what he had done; but when she was gone there came over him such a
+sense of loneliness and desolation that at times he feared lest he
+should become crazier than his brother, who really appeared to be
+improving, although the strange forgetfulness of past events still clung
+to and increased upon him. He did not now remember ever to have said
+that Gretchen was with him in the ship or on the train, or that he had
+sent the carriage so many times to meet her; and when be spoke of her,
+which he seldom did to any one except to Jerrie, it was as of one who
+had died years ago. Occasionally, in the winter, when a wild storm was
+raging like that which had shaken the house and bent the evergreens the
+night Jerrie came, he would tie a knot of crape upon the picture, but
+would give no reason for it when questioned except to say, 'Can't you
+see it is a badge of mourning?'
+
+For a week or more it would remain there, and then he would put it
+carefully away, to be again brought out when the night was wild and
+stormy.
+
+It was during Maude's absence that the two brothers became more intimate
+than they had been before since Arthur first came home, and it happened
+in this wise. Every day, for months after Maude and his wife went away,
+Frank spent hours alone in his private room, sometimes doing nothing,
+but oftener looking at the photograph of Gretchen, and the Bible with
+the marked passages and the handwriting around it. Then he would take
+out the letter about which Jerrie had been so anxious, and examine it
+carefully, studying the address, which he knew by heart, and beginning
+at last to arrange the letters in alphabetical order as far as he could,
+and try to imitate them. It was a difficult process, but little by
+little, with the assistance of a German text book of Maude's which he
+found, he learned the alphabet, and began to form words, then to put
+them together, and then to read. Gradually the work began to have a
+great fascination for him, and he went to Arthur one day and asked for
+some assistance.
+
+'Never too old to learn,' he said, 'and as the house is like a tomb
+without Maude, I have actually taken up German, but find it up-hill
+business without a teacher. Will you help me?'
+
+'To be sure, to be sure,' Arthur cried, brightening up at once, and
+bringing out on the instant such a pile of books as appalled Frank and
+made him wish to withdraw his proposition.
+
+But Arthur was eager, and persistent, and patient, and had never
+respected his brother one half as much as when he was stammering over
+the German pronunciation, which he could not well master. But he learned
+to read with a tolerable degree of fluency, and to speak a little, too,
+while he could understand nearly all Arthur said to him.
+
+'Do you think I could get along in Germany?' he asked his brother, one
+day.
+
+'Certainly you could,' Arthur replied. Do you think of going there? If
+you do, go to Wiesbaden, and inquire for Gretchen--how she died, and
+where she was buried. I should have gone long ago only I dreaded the
+ocean voyage so confoundedly, and then I forget so badly. When are you
+going?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know--I don't know as ever,' Frank answered quickly; and
+yet in his heart there was the firm resolve to go to Wiesbaden and hunt
+up Marguerite Heinrich's friends, if possible.
+
+'And if I find them, and find my suspicions correct, what shall I do
+then?' he asked himself over and over again; and once made answer to his
+question: 'I will either make restitution, or drown myself in the
+Rhine.'
+
+Jerrie was a constant source of misery to Frank, and yet when she was at
+home he was always managing to have her at the park house, where he
+could see her, and watch her, as she moved like a young queen though the
+handsome rooms, or frolicked with Maude upon the lawn.
+
+'She is surely Gretchen's daughter, and Arthur's, too,' he would say to
+himself, as he, too, detected in her face the likeness to his brother,
+which had so startled Jerrie in the mirror.
+
+He was always exceedingly kind to her, and almost as proud of her
+success at Vassar as Arthur himself; and on the day when she was
+expected home he went two or three times to the cottage in the lane,
+carrying fruit and flowers, and even offering things more substantial,
+which, however, were promptly declined by Mrs. Crawford, who had
+signified her intention to take nothing more for Jerrie's board.
+
+'The girl pays for herself, or will,' she said, 'and it is Harold's wish
+and mine to be independent.'
+
+But she accepted the fruit and the flowers and wondered a little to see
+Frank so excited, and nervous, and anxious that every thing should be
+done to make Jerrie's final home-coming as pleasant as possible.
+
+It was a lovely July afternoon when the young ladies from Vassar were
+expected, but the train was half an hour late, and the carriage from
+Grassy Spring and the carriage from Le Bateau had waited so long that
+both coachmen were asleep upon their respective boxes, when at last the
+whistle was heard among the hills telling that the cars were coming. The
+Tracy carriage was not there, though twenty minutes before train time
+Maude had come down in the victoria, and on learning of the delay had
+been driven rapidly to the cottage in the lane, from which she had not
+returned when at last the cars stopped before the station and the young
+people alighted upon the platform, which, with their luggage, seemed at
+once to be full.
+
+'Your checks, miss,' the coachman from Grassy Spring said to Nina, as he
+touched his hat regretfully to her, and his words were repeated to Ann
+Eliza by the servant from Le Bateau.
+
+But Jerrie held hers in her hand with a rueful look of disappointment on
+her face as she looked in vain for Harold or Maude to greet her. For a
+single moment the difference between her position and that of Nina and
+Ann Eliza struck her like a blow, and she thought to herself:
+
+'For them everything, for me nothing.'
+
+Then she rallied, and passing her checks to the baggage master, said to
+him:
+
+'If there is a boy here with a cart or a wheelbarrow, let him take my
+trunks, otherwise send them by express. I see there is no one to meet
+me.'
+
+'Yes'm, but they's comin',' the man replied, with a significant nod in
+the direction where a cloud of dust was visible, as the Tracy victoria
+came rapidly up to the station, with Maude and Harold in it.
+
+The former was standing up and waving her parasol to the party upon the
+platform, while, almost before the carriage stopped, Harold sprang out,
+and had both of Jerrie's hands in his, and held them, as he told her how
+glad he was to welcome her home again. He looked tired and flurried, and
+did not seem quite himself, but there could be no doubt that he was
+glad, for the gladness shone in his eyes and in his face, and Jerrie
+felt it in the warm clasp of his hands, which she noticed with a pang
+were brown, and calloused, and bruised in some places as if they had of
+late been used to harder toil than usual. But she had not much time for
+thought before Maude's arms were around her neck and Maude was standing
+on tiptoe and drawing down her face which she covered with kisses; and,
+between laughing and crying, exclaimed:
+
+'You darling old Jerrie, how glad I am to see you again! and how tall
+and grand you have grown! Why, I don't much more than come to your
+shoulder. See, Harold, how Jerrie outshines me,' and she lifted her
+sparkling face to Harold, who looked down at her as a brother might have
+looked at an only sister of whom he was very fond.
+
+How pretty and piquant she was with her brilliant complexion and her
+black eyes, and how stylish she looked in the Paris gown of embroidered
+linen, which fitted her perfectly, and the big hat, which turned up just
+enough on the side to give her a saucy, coquettish air, as she flitted
+from one to another, kissing Nina twice, Ann Eliza once, and shaking
+hands with all the young men except Tom, who put his in his pockets out
+of her way.
+
+He could not stand Maude's gush, he said, and he watched her with a
+half-sneering smile as she tiptoed around, for it always seemed as if
+she walked upon her toes, courtesying as she walked.
+
+'I meant to have been here before the train,' she said to Jerrie, 'and I
+was here about an hour ago; but when I found the cars were late I drove
+over to tell Harold, as time with him was everything. How we did drive,
+though, when we heard the whistle. Come, jump in,' she continued, as she
+herself stepped into the victoria. 'Jump in, and I will take you home in
+a jiffy. It won't hurt Hal to walk, although he is awful tired.'
+
+'But I would rather walk; take Harold, if he is so tired,' Jerrie said,
+in a tone she did not quite intend.
+
+'Oh, Jerrie,' Harold exclaimed, in a low, pained voice, 'I am not tired,
+let us both walk,' and going to Maude he said something to her which
+Jerrie could not hear, except the words, 'Don't you think it better so?'
+
+'Of course I do; it was stupid in me not to see it before,' was Maude's
+reply, as she laid her hand on Harold's arm where it rested a moment,
+while she said her good-byes.
+
+And Jerrie saw the little, ungloved hand touching Harold so familiarly,
+and thought how small, and white and thin it was, with the full, blue
+veins showing so distinctly upon it, and then she looked more closely at
+Maude herself, and saw with a pang how tired and sick she looked in
+spite of the bright color in her cheeks which came and went so fast.
+There was a pallor about her lips and about her nose, while her ears
+were almost transparent, and her neck was so small that Jerrie felt she
+could have clasped it with one hand.
+
+'Maude,' she cried, pressing close to the young girl, as Harold stepped
+aside, 'Maude, are you sick? You are so pale everywhere except your
+cheeks, which are like roses.'
+
+'No, no,' Maude answered quickly, as if she did not like the question.
+'Not sick a bit, only a little tired. We have been at work real hard,
+Hal and I; but he will tell you about it, and now good-bye again, for I
+must go, I shall be round in the morning. Good-bye. Oh, Tom, I forgot!
+We have company to dinner to-night--a Mr. and Mrs. Hart, who are friends
+of Mrs. Atherton, and have just returned from Germany, bringing Fred's
+sister, Marian, with them. She has been abroad at school for years, and
+is very nice. I ought to have told Fred and Nina. How stupid in me! But
+they will find their invitations when they get home. Now hop in, quick,
+and don't tear my flounces. You are so awkward.'
+
+'I suppose Hal never tears your flounces,' Tom said, as he took his seat
+beside his sister, and gave Jerrie a look which sent the blood in great
+waves to her face and neck, for it seemed to imply that he understood
+the case and supposed she did too.
+
+The St. Claire carriage had driven away with Nina and Dick, and Fred,
+and the carriage from Le Bateau had gone, too, when at last Jerrie and
+Harold started down the road and along the highway to the gate through
+which the strange woman had once passed with the baby Jerrie in her
+arms. The baby was a young woman now, tall and erect, with her head set
+high as she walked silently by Harold's side, until the gate was reached
+and they passed into the shaded lane, where they were hidden from the
+sight of anyone upon the main road leading to the park house. Then
+stopping suddenly, she faced squarely toward her companion, and said:
+
+'Why didn't you come to commencement? Tom Tracy said you were shingling
+a roof, and Billy Peterkin said Maude was helping you.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+WHY HAROLD DID NOT GO TO VASSAR.
+
+
+The cottage in the lane, as its name implied, was not very pretentious,
+and all its rooms were small and low, and mostly upon the ground floor,
+except the one which Jerrie had occupied since she had grown too large
+for the crib by Mrs. Crawford's bed. In this room, in which there was
+but one window, and where the roof slanted down on both sides, Jerrie
+kept all her possessions--her playthings and her books, and the trunk
+and carpet-bag which had been found when she was found. Here she had cut
+off her hair and slept on the floor, to see how it would seem, and here
+she had enacted many a play, in which the scenes and characters were all
+of the past. For the cold in winter she did not care at all, and when in
+summer the nights were close and hot, she drew her little bed to the
+open window and fell asleep while thinking how warm she was. That she
+ought to have a better room had never occurred to her, and never had she
+found a word of fault or repined at her humble surroundings, so
+different from those of her girl friends. Only, as she grew taller, she
+had sometimes laughingly said that if the kept on she should not much
+longer be able to stand upright in her den, as she called it.
+
+'I hit my head now everywhere except in the middle,' she once said. 'I
+wonder if we can't some time manage to raise the roof.'
+
+The words were spoken thoughtlessly, and almost immediately forgotten by
+Jerrie: but Harold treasured them up, and began at once to devise ways
+and means to raise the roof and give Jerrie a room more worthy of her.
+This was just after he had left college, and there was hanging over him
+his debt to Arthur and the support of his grandmother. The first did not
+particularly disturb him, for he knew that Arthur would wait any length
+of time, while the latter seemed but a trifle to a strong, robust young
+man. Mrs. Crawford was naturally very economical, and could make one
+dollar go further than most people could two; so that very little
+sufficed for their daily wants when Jerrie was away.
+
+'I must earn money somehow,' Harold thought, 'and must seek work where I
+can do the best, even if it is from Peterkin.'
+
+So, swallowing his pride, he went to Peterkin's office and asked for
+work. Once before, when a boy of eighteen, and sorely pressed, he had
+done the same thing, and met with a rebuff from the foreman, who said to
+him gruffly:
+
+'No, sir; we don't want no more boys; leastwise, gentlemen boys. We've
+had enough of 'em. Try t'other furnace. Mr. Warner is allus takin' all
+kinds of trash, out of pity, and if he says "No," go to his wife; she'll
+get you in.'
+
+But the Warner factory, where Harold had once worked, was full of boys,
+whom the kind-hearted employer, or his wife, or both, had taken in, and
+there was no place for Harold. So he waited awhile until Jerrie needed a
+new dress and his grandmother a bonnet, and then he tried Peterkin
+again, and this time with success.
+
+'Yes, take him,' Peterkin said to his foreman, 'take him, and put him to
+the emery wheel; that's the place for such upstarts; that'll take the
+starch out of him double quick. He's a bad egg, he is, and proud as
+Lucifer. I don't suppose he'd touch my Bill or my Ann'Lizy with a
+ten-foot pole. Put him to the wheel. Bad egg! bad egg!'
+
+For some moat unaccountable reason, old Peterkin had a bitter prejudice
+against the boy, on whose account he had once been turned from the Tracy
+house; and though he had forgiven the Tracys, and would now have voted
+for Frank for Congressman if he had the chance, he still cherished his
+animosity against Harold, designating him as an upstart and a bad egg,
+who was to be put to the wheel. So Harold was 'put to the wheel' until
+he got a bit of steel in his eye, and his hands were blistered. But he
+did not mind the latter so much, because Jerrie cried over them at night
+and kissed them in the morning, and bathed them in cosmoline, and called
+Peterkin a mean old thing, and offered to go herself to the wheel.
+
+But to this Harold only laughed. He could stand it, he said, and a
+dollar a day was not to be sneezed at. He could wear gloves and save his
+hands.
+
+But the appearance of gloves was the signal for a general hooting and
+jeering from the boys of his own age who were employed there, and who
+had from the first looked askance at Harold because they knew how
+greatly he was their superior, and fancied an affront in everything he
+did and every word he said, it was spoken so differently from their own
+dialect.
+
+'I can't stand it,' Harold said to Jerrie, after a week's trial with the
+gloves. 'I'd rather sweep the streets than be jeered at as I am. I don't
+mind the work. I am getting used to it, but the boys are awful. Why,
+they call me 'sissy,' and 'Miss Hastings,' and all that.'
+
+So Harold left the employ of Peterkin, greatly to the chagrin of that
+functionary, who had found him the most faithful boy he had ever had.
+But this was years ago, and matters had changed somewhat since then.
+Harold was a man now--a graduate from Harvard, with an air and dignity
+about him which commanded respect even from Peterkin, who was sitting
+upon his high stool when Harold came in with his application. Billy, who
+was Harold's fast friend, was now in the business with his father, and
+as he chanced to be present, the thing was soon arranged, and Harold
+received into the office at a salary of twelve dollars per week, which
+was soon increased to fifteen and twenty, and at last, as the autumn
+advanced and Harold began to talk of taking the same school in town
+which he had once before taught, he was offered $1,500 a year, if he
+would remain, as foreman of the office, where his services were
+invaluable. But Harold had chosen the law for his profession, and as
+teaching school was more congenial to him than writing in the office,
+and would give him more time for reading law, he declined the salary and
+took the school, which he kept for two successive winters, going between
+times into the office whenever his services were needed, which was very
+often, as they knew his worth, and Billy was always glad to have him
+there.
+
+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.
+
+'And I'll do it now,' she said, at last, to herself. 'I'll fight it
+down, this something which makes me hate myself. If Harold loves Maude
+he shall never know from me of that horrible pain which cuts me like a
+knife and makes me forget to be indignant at Tom for talking so much of
+his money and his position, as if they could buy me! Poor Tom! I said
+some sharp things to him, but he deserved them, the prig! Let him marry
+that governor's daughter if he can. I am sure I wish him success.'
+
+She had reached home by this time, and found their simple dinner waiting
+for her. 'Oh, grandma, why did you do it? Why didn't you wait for me?'
+she said, as she took her seat at the table where the dishes were all so
+plain, and the cloth, though white and clean, so coarse and cheap.
+
+Jerrie was as fond of luxury and elegance as any one, and Tracy Park,
+with its appurtenances, would have suited her taste better than the
+cottage.
+
+'But not with Tom, not with Tom,' she kept on repeating to herself, as
+she cleared the table and washed the dishes, and then brought in and
+folded the clothes for the morrow's ironing.
+
+By this time she was very tired, and going to her cool, pretty room, she
+threw herself upon the lounge and slept soundly for three hours or more.
+Sleep is a wonderful tonic, and Jerrie rose refreshed and quite herself
+again. Not even a thought of Maude and Harold disturbed her as she went
+whistling and singing around her room, hanging up her dresses one by
+one, and wondering which she should wear at the garden party. Deciding
+at last upon a simple white muslin, which, although two years old, was
+still in fashion, and very becoming, she arranged her wavy hair in a
+fluffy mass at the back of her head, brushed her bangs into short, soft
+curls upon her forehead, pinned a cluster of roses on the bosom of her
+dress, and was ready for the party.
+
+'Tell Harold, if he is not too tired, I want him very much to come for
+me,' she said, to Mrs. Crawford, and then about five o'clock started for
+Grassy Spring, where she found the guests all assembled in the pleasant,
+shady grounds, which surrounded the house.
+
+Tom was there in his character of a fine city dandy, and the moment he
+saw Jerry, he hastened to meet her, greeting her with perfect
+self-possession, as if nothing had happened.
+
+'You are late,' he said, going up to her. 'We are waiting for you to
+complete our eight hand croquet, and I claim you as my partner.'
+
+'I c-c call that mean, T-t-tom. I was g-g-going to ask J-jerrie to
+pl-play with m-me,' little Billy said, hopping around them, while Dick's
+face showed that he, too, would like the pleasure of playing with
+Jerrie, who was known to be an expert and seldom missed a ball.
+
+Naturally, however, Marian Raymond, as a stranger, would fall to him,
+and they were soon paired off, Dick and Marian, Tom and Jerrie, Nina and
+Billy, Fred Raymond and Ann Eliza, who wore diamonds enough for a full
+dress party, and whose red hair was piled on the top of her head so
+loosely that the ends of it stuck out here and there like the streamers
+on a boat on gala days. This careless style of dressing her hair, Ann
+Eliza affected, thinking it gave individuality to her appearance; and it
+certainly did attract general observation, her hair was so red and
+bushy. Dick had stumbled and stammered dreadfully when confessing to his
+sister that he had invited the Peterkins, while Nina had drawn a long
+breath of dismay as she thought of presenting Ann Eliza and Billy to
+Marian Raymond, with her culture and aristocratic ideas. Then she burst
+into a laugh and said, with her usual sweetness:
+
+'Never mind, Dickie. You could not do otherwise. I'll prepare Marian,
+and the Peterkins will really enjoy it.'
+
+So Marian, who, with all her accomplishments and foreign air, was a
+kind-hearted, sensible girl, was prepared, and received the Peterkins
+very graciously, and seemed really pleased with Billy, whose big, kind
+heart shone through his diminutive body and always won him friends. He
+was very happy to be there, because he liked society, and because he
+knew Jerrie was coming; and Ann Eliza was very glad because she felt it
+an honor to be at Grassy Spring, and because she knew Tom was coming,
+and when he came she fastened upon him with a tenacity which he could
+not well shake off; and when croquet was proposed she was the first to
+respond.
+
+'Oh, yes, that will be nice, and I know our side will beat,' and she
+looked at Tom as it were a settled thing that she should play with him.
+
+But Tom was not in a mood to be gracious. He had come to the
+entertainment, which he mentally called a bore, partly because he would
+not let Jerrie think he was taking her refusal to heart, and partly
+because he must see her again, even if she never could be his wife. All
+the better nature of Tom was concentrated in his love for Jerrie, and
+had she married him he would probably have made her as happy as a wholly
+selfish man can make happy the woman he loves. But she had declined his
+offer, and wounded him deeper than she supposed.
+
+A hundred times he had said to himself that afternoon, as he sat alone
+in the lovely park--of which he had once said to Harold, he was to be
+the _hare_, and of whose possession in the future he had boasted to
+Jerrie--that he did not care a _sou_, that he was glad she had refused
+him, for after all it was only an infatuation on his part; that the girl
+of the carpet-bag was not the wife for a Tracy; but the twinge of pain
+in his heart belied his words, and he knew he did love Jerrie Crawford
+better than he should ever again love any girl, whether the daughter of
+a governor or of the president.
+
+'And I go to the party, too, just to show her that I don't care, and for
+the sake of looking at her,' he said. 'She can't help that, and it is a
+pleasure to look at a woman so grandly developed and perfectly formed as
+she is. By Jove! Hal Hastings is a lucky dog; but I shall hate him
+forever.'
+
+So Tom pulled himself together, and went to Grassy Spring in a frame of
+mind not the most amiable; and when croquet was proposed, he sneered at
+it as something quite too _passé_, citing lawn tennis as the only decent
+outdoor amusement.
+
+'Why, then, don't you set it up on your grounds, where you have plenty
+of room, and ask us all over there?' Dick asked, good-humoredly, as he
+began to get out the mallets and balls.
+
+To this Tom did not reply, but said, instead:
+
+'Count me out. I don't like the game, and there are enough without me.'
+
+Just then Jerry appeared at the gate, and he added quickly:
+
+'Still, I don't wish to be ungracious; and now Jerrie has come, we can
+have an eight hand.'
+
+Hastening toward her, he met her as we have recorded, and claimed her
+for his partner.
+
+'Thank you, Tom,' Jerrie said, with a bright smile on her face, which
+made the young man's heart beat fast with both pleasure and pain, as he
+gave her the mallet and told her she was to play first.
+
+Tom was making himself master of ceremonies, and Dick kept quiet and let
+him, and watched Jerrie admiringly as she made the two arches, and the
+third, and fourth, and then sent her ball out of harm's way. It was a
+long and closely contested game, for all were skilful players, except
+poor Ann Eliza, who was always behind and required a great deal of
+attention from her partner especially when it came to croqueting a
+ball. She did not know exactly what to do, and kept her foot so long
+upon the ball that less amiable girls than Nina and Jerrie would have
+said she did it on purpose, to show how small and pretty it looked in
+her closely fitting French boot. But Jerrie's side beat, as it usually
+did. She had become a 'rover' the second round, had rescued Tom from
+many a difficulty, and taken Ann Eliza through four or five wickets,
+besides doing good service to her other friends.
+
+'I p-p-propose three ch-cheers for Jerrie,' Billy said, standing on his
+tiptoes and nearly splitting his throat with his own hurrah.
+
+After the game was over they repaired to the piazza, where the little
+tables were laid for tea, and where Jerrie found herself _vis-à-vis_
+with Marian Raymond, of whom she had thought she might stand a little in
+awe, she had heard so much of her. But the mesmeric power which Jerrie
+possessed drew the Kentucky girl to her at once, and they were soon in a
+most animated conversation.
+
+'You do not seem like a stranger to me,' Marian said, 'and I should
+almost say I had seen you before, you are so like a picture in Germany.'
+
+'Yes,' Jerrie answered, with a gasp, and a feeling such as she always
+experienced when the spell was upon her and she saw things as in a
+dream.
+
+'Was it in a gallery?'
+
+'Oh, no; it was in a house we rented in Wiesbaden. You know, perhaps,
+that I was there at school for a long time. Then, when mamma came out,
+and I was through school, we stayed there for months, it was so lovely,
+and we rented a house which an Englishman had bought and made over. Such
+a pretty house it was, too, with so many flowers and vines around it.'
+
+'And the picture--did it belong to the Englishman?' Jerrie asked.
+
+'Oh, no,' Marian replied: 'it did not seem to belong to anybody. Mr.
+Carter--that was the name of our landlord--said it was there in the wall
+when he took the house, which was then very small and low, with only two
+or three rooms. He bought it because of the situation, which, though
+very quiet and pleasant, was so near the Kursaal that we could always
+hear the music without going to the garden.
+
+'Yes,' Jerrie said again, with her head on one side, and her ear turned
+up, as if she were listening to some far-off, forgotten strains. 'Yes;
+and the picture was like me, you say--how like me?'
+
+'Every way like you,' Marian replied; 'except that the original must
+have been younger when it was taken--sixteen, perhaps--and she was
+smaller than you, and wore a peasant's dress, and was knitting on a
+bench under a tree, with the sunshine falling around her, and at a
+little distance a gentleman stood watching her. But what is the matter,
+Miss Crawford? Are you sick?' Marian asked, suddenly, as she saw the
+bright color fade for an instant from Jerrie's face, leaving it deathly
+white, while Tom and Dick knocked their heads together in their efforts
+to get her a glass of water, which they succeeded in spilling into her
+lap.
+
+'It is nothing,' Jerrie said, recovering herself quickly. 'I have been
+in the hot sun a good deal to-day, and perhaps that affected me and made
+me a little faint. 'It has passed now;' and she looked up as brightly as
+ever.
+
+'It's that confounded washing!' Tom thought; but Jerrie could have told
+him differently.
+
+As Marian had talked to her of the house in Wiesbaden and the picture on
+the wall--of the peasant girl knitting in the sunshine--she had seen, as
+by revelation, through a rift in the clouds which separated her from the
+past--the picture on the wall, in its pretty Florentine frame, and knew
+that it resembled the pale, sweet face which came to her so often and
+was so real to her. Was it her old home Marian was describing? Had she
+lived there once, when the house consisted of only two or three rooms?
+and was that a picture of her mother, left there she knew not how or
+why? These were the thoughts crowding each other so fast in her brain
+when the faintness and pallor crept over her and the objects about her
+began to seem unreal. But the cold water revived her, and she was soon
+herself again, listening while Marian talked of heat and sun-strokes,
+with an evident forgetfulness of the peasant girl knitting in the
+sunshine; but Jerrie soon recurred to the subject and asked, rather
+abruptly: 'Was there a stove in that house--a tall, white stove, in a
+corner of one of the old rooms--say the kitchen--and a high-backed
+settee?'
+
+Marian stared at her a moment in surprise, and then replied:
+
+'Oh, I know what you mean--those unwieldy things in which they sometimes
+put the wood from the hall. No; there was nothing of that kind, though
+there was an old settee by the kitchen fire-place, but not a tall stove.
+Mr. Carter had modernized the house, and set up a real Yankee
+stove--Stewart's, I think they called it.'
+
+'Was the picture in the kitchen?' Jerrie asked next.
+
+'No,' Marian replied, 'it was in a little, low apartment which must once
+have been the best room.'
+
+'And was there no theory with regard to it! It seems strange that any
+one should leave it there if he cared for it,' Jerrie said.
+
+'Yes, it does,' Marian replied; 'but all Mr. Carter knew was that the
+people of whom he bought the house said the portrait was there when they
+took possession, and that it had been left to apply on the back rent;
+also that the original was dead. He (Mr. Carter) had bought the picture
+with the house, and offered to take it down, but I would not let him. It
+was such a sweet, sunny, happy face that it did me good to look at it,
+and wonder who the young girl was, and if her life were ever linked with
+that of the stranger watching her.'
+
+Again the faintness came upon Jerrie, for she could see so plainly on
+the sombre wall the picture of the sweet-faced girl, with the long
+stocking in her lap--a very long stocking she felt sure it was, but
+dared not ask, lest they should think her question a strange one. Of the
+stranger in the back yard watching the young girl she had no
+recollection, but her heart beat wildly as she thought:
+
+'Was that Mr. Arthur, and was the young girl Gretchen?'
+
+How fast the lines touching her past had widened about her since she
+first saw the likeness in the mirror, and her confused memories of the
+past began to take shape and assume a tangible form.
+
+'I will find that house, and that picture, and that Mr. Carter, and the
+people who lived there before him,' she said to herself; and then again,
+addressing Marian, she asked:
+
+'What was the street, and the number of that house?'
+
+Marian told her the street, but could not remember the number, while Tom
+said, laughingly:
+
+'Why, Jerrie, what makes you so much interested in an old German house?
+Do you expect to go there and live in it?'
+
+'Yes,' Jerrie replied, in the same light tone. 'I am going to Germany
+sometime--going to Wiesbaden, and I mean to find that house and the
+picture which Miss Raymond says I am so much like; then I shall know how
+I look to others. You remember the couplet:
+
+  '"Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us,
+     To see ourselfs as others see us!"
+
+'Look in the glass there, the best one you can find, and you'll see
+yourself as others see you,' Dick said, gallantly.
+
+Before Jerrie could reply, a servant appeared on the piazza, saying
+there was some one at the telephone asking for Mr. Peterkin.
+
+It proved to be Billy's father, who was in the village, and had received
+a telegram from Springfield concerning a lawsuit which was pending
+between himself and a rival firm, which claimed that he had infringed
+upon their patents. Before replying to the telegram he wished to confer
+with his son, who was to come at once to the hotel, and, if necessary,
+go to Springfield that night.
+
+'B-by Jove,' Billy said, as he returned to the piazza and explained the
+matter, 'it's t-t-too bad that I must g-go, when I'm enjoying m-myself
+t-t-tip-top. I wish that lawsuit was in Gu-Guinea.'
+
+Then turning to Ann Eliza he asked how she would get home if he did nut
+return.
+
+'Oh, don't trouble about me. I can take care of myself,' Ann Eliza said,
+with a bounce up in her chair, which set every loose hair of her frowzy
+head to flying.
+
+'M-m-maybe they'll send the ca-carriage,' Billy went on, 'and if they
+do-don't, m-may be you can g-go with T-Tom as far as his house, and then
+you wo-wont be afraid.'
+
+Tom could have killed the little man for having thus made it impossible
+for him not to see his sister safely home. He had fully intended to
+forestall Dick, and go with Jerrie if Harold did not come, for though
+she had refused him, he wished to keep her as a friend, hoping that in
+time she might be led to reconsider. He liked to hear her voice--to look
+into her face--to be near her, and the walk in the moonlight, with her
+upon his arm, had been something very pleasant to contemplate, and now
+it was snatched from him by Billy's ill-advised speech, and old
+Peterkin's red-haired daughter thrust upon him. It was rather hard, and
+Tom's face was very gloomy and dark for the remainder of the evening,
+while they sat upon the piazza and laughed, and talked, and said the
+little nothings so pleasant to the young and so meaningless to the old
+who have forgotten their youth.
+
+Jerrie was the first to speak of going. She had hoped that Harold might
+possibly come for her, but as the time passed on, and he did not appear,
+she knew he was not coming, and at last arose to say good-night to Nina,
+while Dick hastened forward and announced his intention to accompany
+her.
+
+'No, Dick, no; please don't,' she said. 'I am not a bit afraid, and I
+would rather you did not go.'
+
+But Dick was persistent.
+
+'You know you accepted my services this morning,' he said, and his face,
+as he went down the steps with Jerrie on his arm, wore a very different
+expression from that of poor Tom, who, with Ann Eliza coming about to
+his elbow, stalked moodily along the road, scarcely hearing and not
+always replying to the commonplace remarks of his companion, who had
+never been so happy in her life, because never before had she been out
+alone in the evening with Tom Tracy as her escort.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+OUT IN THE STORM.
+
+
+For half an hour or more before the young people left the house a dark
+mass of clouds had been rolling up from the west, and by the time that
+they were out of the grounds and on the highway, the moonlight was
+wholly obscured and the sky was overcast as with a pall, while frequent
+groans of thunder and flashes of lightning in the distance told of the
+fast coming storm.
+
+'Oh, I am so afraid of thunder! Aren't you?' Ann Eliza cried, in terror,
+as she clung closer to Tom, who, beside her, seemed a very giant, and
+who did not reply until there came a gleam of lightning which showed him
+the white face and the loose hair blowing out from under his companion's
+hat.
+
+There was a little shriek of fear and a smothered cry. 'Oh, Tom, aren't
+you a bit afraid?'
+
+And then the giant answered the trembling little girl whom he would like
+to have shaken off, she clung so closely to him 'Thunder and lightning,
+no!' I'm not afraid of anything except getting wet; and if you are,
+you'd better run before the whole thing is upon us; the sky is blacker
+than midnight now. I never saw a storm come on so fast. Can you run?'
+
+'Yes--some,' Ann Eliza gasped out; 'only my boots are so tight and new,
+and the heels are so high. Do you think we shall be struck?'
+
+This as a peal of thunder louder than any which had preceded it rolled
+over their heads, making Ann Eliza clutch Tom's arm in nervous terror
+which was not feigned.
+
+'Struck? No. But don't screech and hang on to me so. We can never get
+along if you do,' Tom growled; and, taking her by the wrist, he dragged
+rather than led her through the woods where the great rain-drops were
+beginning to fall so fast as the two showers--one from the west and one
+from the south--approached each other, until at last they met overhead,
+and then commenced a wild and fierce battle of the elements, the
+southern storm and the western storm each seemingly trying to outdo the
+other and come off conqueror.
+
+As the thunder and lightning and rain increased, Tom went on faster and
+faster, forgetting that the slip of a girl, who scarcely came to his
+shoulders, could not take so long strides as a great, hulking fellow
+like himself.
+
+'Oh, Tom, Tom--please not so fast. I can't keep up, my heart beats so
+fast and my boots hurt me so,' came in a faint, sobbing protest more
+than once from the panting girl at his side; but he only answered:
+
+'You _must_ keep up, or we shall be soaked through and through. I never
+knew it rain so fast. Take off your boots, if they hurt you. You've no
+business to wear such small ones.'
+
+He had heard from Maude that Ann Eliza was very proud of her feet, and
+always wore boots too small for them, and he experienced a savage
+satisfaction in knowing that she was paying for her foolishness. This
+was not very kind in Tom, but he was not a kind-hearted man, and he held
+the whole Peterkin tribe, as he called them, in such contempt that he
+would scarcely have cared if the tired little feet, boots and all, had
+dropped off, provided it did not add to his discomfort. They were out of
+the woods and park by this time, and had struck into a field as a
+shorter route to Le Bateau. But the way was rough and stony, and Tom had
+stumbled himself two or three times and almost fallen, when a sharp,
+loud cry from Ann Eliza smote his ear, and he felt that she was sinking
+to the ground.
+
+His first impulse was to drag her on, but that would have been too
+brutal, and stopping short he asked what was the matter.
+
+'Oh, I don't know. I guess I've sprained my ankle. It turned right over
+on a big stone, you went so fast, and hurts me awfully. I can't walk
+another step. Oh, what shall we do, and am I going to die?'
+
+'Die? No!' Tom answered, gloomily. 'But we are in an awful muss, and I
+don't know what to do. Here it is raining great guns, and I am wet to my
+skin, and you can't walk, you say. What in thunder shall we do?'
+
+Ann Eliza was sobbing piteously, and when a glare of lightning lighted
+up the whole heavens, Tom caught a glimpse of her face which was white
+as marble, and distorted with pain, and this decided him. He had thought
+to leave her in the darkness and rain, while he went for assistance
+either to the Park House or Le Bateau; but the sight of her utter
+helplessness awoke in him a spark of pity, and bending over her he said,
+very gently for him:
+
+'Annie,'--this was the name by which he used to call her when they were
+children together, and he thought Ann Eliza too long--'Annie, I shall
+have to carry you in my arms; there is no other way. It is not very far
+to your home. Come!' and stooping low over the prostrate form he lifted
+her very carefully and holding her in a position the least painful for
+her, began again to battle with the storm, walking more carefully now
+and groping his way through the stony field lest he should stumble and
+fall and sprain him own ankle, perhaps.
+
+'This is a jolly go,' he said to himself, as he went on; and then he
+thought of Dick and Jerrie, and wondered how they were getting through
+the storm, and if she had sprained her ankle and Dick was carrying her
+in his arms.
+
+'He will sweat some, if he is, for Jerrie is twice as heavy as
+Peterkin's daughter;' and at the very idea Tom laughed out loud,
+thinking that he should greatly prefer to have Jerrie's strength and
+weight in his arms to his light, slim, little girl, who neither spoke
+nor moved until he laughed, and then there came in smothered tones from
+the region of his vest:
+
+'Oh, Tom, how can you laugh? Do you think it such fun?'
+
+'Fun! Thunder! Anything but fun!' was his gruff reply, as he went on
+more rapidly now, for they were in the grounds of Le Bateau, and the
+lights from the house were distinctly visible at no great distance away.
+'We are here at last. Thank the Lord.' he said, as he went up the steps
+and pulled sharply at the bell.
+
+'Let me down. I can stand on one foot,' Ann Eliza said; and nothing loth
+Tom put her down, a most forlorn and dilapidated piece of humanity as
+she stood leaning against him with the light of the piazza lamp falling
+full upon her.
+
+Her little French boots, which had partly done the mischief, were
+spoiled, and the heel of one of them had been nearly wrenched off when
+she stumbled over the stone. Her India muslin, with its sash, and
+ribbons, and streamers, was torn in places and bedraggled with mud. She
+had lost her hat in the woods, and the wind and the rain had held high
+carnival in her loosely-arranged hair, whose color Tom so detested, and
+which streamed down her back in many little wet tags, giving her the
+look of a drowned rat after it has been tortured in a trap.
+
+Old Peterkin was reading his evening paper when Tom's sharp summons
+sounded through the house, making him jump from the chair, as he
+exclaimed:
+
+'Jiminy hoe-cakes! Who can that be in this storm?'
+
+He had seen Billy off in the train, and had returned home just as the
+rain began to fall. Naturally both he and his wife had felt some
+anxiety on Ann Eliza's account, but had concluded that if the storm
+continued she would remain at Grassy Spring, and if it cleared in time
+they would send the carriage for her. So neither thought of her when the
+loud ring came, startling them both so much. It was Peterkin himself who
+went to the door, gorgeous in a crimson satin dressing gown which came
+to his feet, but which no amount of pulling would make meet together
+over his ponderous stomach. An oriental smoking cap was on his head, the
+big tassel hanging almost in his eyes, and a half-burned cigar between
+his fingers.
+
+'Good George of Uxbridge!' he exclaimed, as his eye fell upon Tom, from
+whose soaked hat the water was dripping, and upon Ann Eliza leaning
+against him, her pale face quivering with pain, and her eyes full of
+tears. 'George of Uxbridge! What's up? What ails the girl!'
+
+At sight of her father Ann Eliza began to cry, while Tom said:
+
+'She has sprained her ankle and I had to bring her home. She cannot
+step.'
+
+'Jerusalem hoe-cakes! Spraint her ankle! Can't step! You bring her home!
+Heavens and earth! Here, May Jane, come lively! Here's a nice how-dy-do!
+Ann Liza's broke her laig, and Tom Tracy's brung her home!'
+
+As Peterkin talked, he was taking his daughter in his arms and bringing
+her into the hall, hitting her lame foot against the door, and eliciting
+from her a cry of pain.
+
+'Oh, father; Oh-h!--it does hurt so. Put me somewhere quick, and take
+off my boot. I believe I am going to die!'
+
+She was dripping wet, and little puddles of water trailed along the
+carpet as Peterkin carried her into the sitting room, where he was about
+to lay her down upon the delicate satin couch, when his wife's
+housewifely instincts were roused, and she exclaimed:
+
+'No, father. No, not there, when she's so wet, and water spots that
+satin so dreadfully.'
+
+'What in thunder shall I do with her? Hold her all night?' Peterkin
+demanded, while Tom deliberately picked up the costly Turkey hearth rug,
+and throwing it across the couch, said:
+
+'Put her on that.' So Peterkin deposited her upon the rug, hitting her
+foot again, and sending her off in a dead faint.
+
+'Oh, she's dead! she's dead! What shall we do?' Mrs. Peterkin cried,
+wringing her hands, and walking about excitedly.
+
+'Do?' Peterkin yelled. 'Hold your yawp, and stop floppin' round like a
+hen with her head cut off! She ain't dead. She's fainted. Bring some
+camfire, or alcohol, or hartshorn, or Pond's Extract, or something for
+her to smell.'
+
+'Yes, yes; but where are they?' Mrs. Peterkin moaned, still flopping
+around, as her husband had expressed it, while Tom rang the bell and
+summoned the maid, to whom he gave directions.
+
+'Bring some camphor or hartshorn,' he said. 'Miss Peterkin has fainted,
+and get off the boot as soon as possible. Don't you see how her foot is
+swelling?'
+
+This to Peterkin, who made a dive at the boot, which resisted all his
+efforts, even after it was unbuttoned. The leather, which was soaked
+through, had shrunk so that it was impossible to remove the boot without
+cutting it away, and this they commenced to do.
+
+Ann Eliza had recovered her consciousness by this time, and although the
+pain was terrible she bore it heroically, as piece after piece of the
+boot was removed, together with the silk stocking which left her poor
+little swollen foot exposed and bare.
+
+'By Jove, she's plucky!' Tom thought, as he watched the operation and
+saw the great drops of sweat on Ann Eliza's forehead and her efforts to
+quiet her mother, pretending that it did not hurt so very much. 'Yes,
+she's plucky,' and for the first time in his life Tom was conscious of a
+feeling of something like respect for Peterkin's red-haired daughter.
+'She _has_ a small foot, too; the smallest I ever saw on a woman. I do
+believe she wears twos,' he thought, while something about the little
+white foot made him think of poor Jack's dead feet, laid under the grass
+years ago.
+
+In this softened frame of mind he at last said good-night, although
+pressed by Peterkin to stay and dry himself, or at least take a drink as
+a preventive against cold, but Tom declined both, saying a hot bath
+would set him all right. 'Good-bye, Annie. I'm awful sorry for the
+sprain,' he said, offering her his hand; and as she took it in hers,
+noticing about the wrist prints of his fingers which had grasped it so
+tightly and held it so firmly as he dragged her along over stumps, and
+bogs, and stones, until she sank at his feet, 'I guess I was a brute to
+race her like that,' he said to himself, as he went out into the
+darkness and started for home. 'But I didn't want to go with her. I
+wanted to be with Jerrie, who, I have no doubt, went straight along,
+without ever thinking of spraining her ankle, as Ann Eliza did. Poor
+little foot! How swollen, though, it was when they got that boot off;
+but she bore it like a major! Pity she has such all-fired red hair, and
+piles it up like a haystack on the top of her head, with every hair
+looking six ways for Sunday.'
+
+At this point in his soliloquy Tom reached home, and was soon
+luxuriating in a hot bath, which removed all traces of the soaking he
+had received. That night he dreamed of Ann Eliza, and how light she was
+in his arms, and how patient through it all, and that the magnificent
+rooms at Le Bateau were all frescoed with diamonds and the floors inlaid
+with gold. Then the nature of his dream changed, and it was Jerry he was
+carrying in his arms, bending under her weight until his back was nearly
+broken. But he did not heed it in the least, and when he bent to kiss
+the face lying upon his bosom, where Ann Eliza had lain, he awoke
+suddenly to find that it was morning and that the sun was shining
+brightly into his room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+UNDER THE PINES WITH DICK.
+
+
+Jerrie was soaked through, but she did not sprain her ankle as Ann Eliza
+had done. And yet, had she been given her choice, rather than inflict
+the pain she did inflict upon poor Dick, she would have chosen the
+former unhesitatingly, and felt herself happy in doing it. Like Tom and
+Ann Eliza, she and Dick had run when they saw how fast the storm was
+coming, but it was of no use, for by the time they entered the park, the
+shortest route to the cottage, the rain came down in torrents, and
+drenched them to the skin in a few moments. Jerrie's hat was wrenched
+off, as Ann Eliza's had been by the wind, which tossed her long golden
+hair in a most fantastic fashion. But Dick put his hat upon her head,
+and would have given her his coat had she allowed it.
+
+'No, Dick,' she said, laughingly, as she saw him about to divest himself
+of it. 'Keep your coat. I am wet enough without that. But what an awful
+storm, and how dark it grows. We shall break our necks stumbling along
+at this rate.'
+
+Just then a broad glare of lightning illuminated the darkness, and
+showed Dick the four pines close at hand. He knew the place well, for,
+with the Tracy children, he had often played there when a boy, and knew
+that the thick bushes would afford them some protection from the storm.
+
+'By Jove, we are in luck!' he said. 'Here's the pine room, as we used to
+call it when you played you were Marie Antoinette, and had your head cut
+off. I can remember just how I felt when your white sun-bonnet, with
+Mrs. Crawford's false hair pinned it in, dropped into the basket, and
+how awful it seemed when you played dead so long that we almost thought
+you were; and when you came to light, the way you imitated the cries of
+a French mob, I would have sworn there were a hundred voices instead of
+one yelling: "Down with the nobility!" You were a wonderful actress,
+Jerrie; and it is a marvel you have not gone upon the stage.'
+
+While he talked he was groping for the bench under the pines, where they
+sat down, Dick seating himself upon the parasol, which Jerrie had left
+there that morning after her interview with Tom.
+
+'Hallo! what's this?' he said, drawing the parasol from under him. 'An
+umbrella, as I live! We are in luck. What good fairy do you suppose left
+it here for us?'
+
+Jerrie could not tell him that she had left it there, and she said
+nothing; while he opened and held it so that every drop of rain which
+slipped from it fell upon her neck and trickled down her back. 'Great
+Cæsar! that was a roarer!' Dick said, as the peal of thunder which had
+so frightened Ann Eliza burst over their heads, and, echoing through the
+woods, went bellowing off in the direction of the river, 'That's a
+stunner! but I rather like it, and like being here, too, with you, if
+you don't mind it. I've wanted a chance to speak to you alone, ever
+since--well, ever since this morning, when I saw you in that bewildering
+costume that showed your feet and your arms so--you know, with that
+thing like a napkin pinned up in front, and that jimcrack on your head,
+and the red stockings--and--and--'
+
+Dick was getting bewildered and did not quite know what he was saying,
+so he stopped and waited for Jerrie to reply. But Jerrie did not speak,
+because of the sudden alarm which possessed her. She could not see
+Dick's face, but in his voice she had recognized a tone heard in Tom's
+that morning when she sat with him under pines as she was sitting now
+with Dick and he had asked her to be his wife. Something told her that
+Dick was feeling for her hands, which she resolutely put behind her out
+of his way, and as he could not find them, he wound his arm around her
+and held her fast, while he told her how much he loved her and wanted
+her for his wife.
+
+'I believe I have loved you,' he said, 'ever since the day I first saw
+you at the inquest, and you flew so like a little cat at Peterkin when
+he attacked Harold. I used to be awfully jealous of Hal, for fear he
+would find in you more than a sister, but that was before he and Maude
+got so thick together. I guess that's a sure thing, and it makes me bold
+to tell you what I have. Why are you so silent Jerrie? Don't you love me
+a little? That is all I ask at first, for I know I can make you love me
+a great deal in time. I will be so kind and true to you. Jerrie, and
+father, and mother, and Nina will be so glad. Speak to me, Jerrie, and
+say you will try to love me, if you do not now.'
+
+As he talked he had drawn the girl closer to him, where she sat rigid as
+a stone, wholly unmindful of the little puddles of water--and they were
+puddles now--running down her back, for Dick had tilted the parasol in
+such a manner that one of the points rested upon the nape of her neck.
+But she did not know it, or think of any thing except the pain she must
+inflict upon the young man wooing her so differently from what Tom
+Tracy had done. No hint had Dick given of the honor he was conferring
+upon her, or of his own and his family's superiority to her family and
+herself. All the honor and favor to be conferred were on her side; all
+the love and humility on his, and for one brief moment the wild wish
+flashed upon her:
+
+'Oh, if I could love him as a wife ought, I might he so happy, for he is
+all that is noble and good and true.'
+
+But this was while she was smarting under the few words he had said of
+Harold and Maude. He, too, believed it a settled thing between the
+two--everybody believed it--and why should she waste her love upon one
+who did not care for her as she did for him? Why not encourage a love
+for Dick, who stood next in her heart to Harold? Questioning herself
+thus until there flushed upon her the recollection of Harold's voice as
+it had spoken to her that morning, and the look in his eyes when they
+rested upon her, as he said good-bye, lingering a moment as if loth to
+leave her, and then Dick's chance, if he had ever had any, was gone!
+
+'I do not believe it,' she said to herself, and then, turning her face
+to Dick she cried: 'Oh, Dick, I am so sorry you have said this to me;
+sorry that you love me--in this way--for I can't--I can't--. I do love
+you as a friend, a brother, next to Harold, but I cannot be your wife. I
+cannot.'
+
+For a moment there was perfect silence in the darkness, and then a lurid
+flame of lightning showed the two faces--that of the man pale as ashes,
+with a look of bitter pain upon it, and that of the woman, whiter than
+the man's and bathed in upon which fell almost as fast as the rain drops
+were falling tears, the pines.
+
+Then Dick spoke, but his voice sounded strange and unnatural and a great
+ways off:
+
+'If I wait a long, long time--say a year, or two, or three--do you think
+you could learn to love me just a little? I will not ask for much; only,
+Jerrie, I do hunger so for you that without you life would seem a
+blank.'
+
+'No, Dick; not if you waited twenty years. I must still answer no. I
+cannot love you as your wife should love you, and as some good, sweet
+girl will one day love you when you have forgotten me.'
+
+This is what Jerrie said to him, with much more, until he knew she was
+in earnest and felt as if his heart were breaking.
+
+'I shall never forget you, Jerrie,' he said, 'or cease to hope that you
+will change your mind, unless--' and here he started so suddenly that
+the wet parasol, down which streams of water were still coursing their
+way to Jerrie's back, dropped from his hand and rolled off upon the bed
+of fine needles at his feet, just where it had been in the morning when
+Tom was there instead of himself--'unless there is some one between us,
+some other man whom you love. I will not ask you the question, but I
+believe I could bear it better if I knew it was because your love was
+already given to another, and not because of anything in me.'
+
+For a moment Jerrie was silent; then suddenly facing Dick, she laid her
+hand on his and said:
+
+'I can trust you, I am sure of that; there is some one between us--some
+one whom I love. If I had never seen him, Dick, never known that he
+lived--and if I had known you just as I do, I might not have answered
+just as I have. I am very sorry.'
+
+Dick did not ask her who his rival was, nor did Harold come to his mind,
+so sure was he that an engagement existed between him and Maude.
+Probably it was some one whom she had met while away at school; and if
+so, Nina would know, and he would sound her cautiously, but never let
+her know, if he could help it, the heart-wound he had received.
+
+Poor Dick! every nerve was quivering with pain and disappointment when
+at last, as the rain began to cease, he rose at Jerrie's suggestion, and
+offering her his arm, walked silently and sadly with her to the door of
+the cottage. Here for a moment they stood side by side and hand in hand,
+until Jerrie said:
+
+'Dick, your friendship has been very dear to me. I do not want to lose
+it.'
+
+'Nor shall you,' he answered; and winding his arms around her, he kissed
+her lips, saying as he did so:
+
+'That is the seal of our eternal friendship. The man you love would not
+grudge me that one kiss, but perhaps you'd better tell him. Good-bye,
+and God bless you. When I see you again I shall try to be the same Dick
+you have always known.'
+
+For a few moments Jerrie stood listening to the sound of his footsteps
+as he went splashing through the wet grass and puddles of water; then,
+kissing her hands to him, she whispered:
+
+'Poor Dick! it would not be difficult to love you if I had never known
+Harold.'
+
+Opening the door softly, she found, as she had expected, that both her
+grandmother and Harold had retired; and taking the lamp from the table
+where it had been left for her, she stole quietly up to her room and
+crept shivering into bed, more wretched than she had ever been before in
+her life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+AT LE BATEAU.
+
+
+Harold got his own breakfast the next morning, and was off for his work
+just as the sun looked into the windows of the room where Jerrie lay in
+a deep slumber. She had been awake a long time the previous night,
+thinking over the incidents of a day which had been the most eventful
+one of her life, but had fallen asleep at last, and dreamed that she had
+found the low room far away in Wiesbaden, with the wall adorned with the
+picture of a young girl knitting in the sunshine, and the stranger
+watching her from a distance.
+
+It was late when she awoke, and Peterkin's clock was striking eight when
+she went down to the kitchen, where she found Mrs. Crawford sewing, and
+a most dainty breakfast waiting for her on a little round table near an
+open window shaded with the hop-vines. There was a fresh egg for her,
+with English buns, and strawberries and cream, and chocolate served in a
+pretty cup which she had never seen before, while near her plate was
+lying a bunch of roses, and on them a strip of paper, on which Harold
+had written:
+
+    "The top of the mornin' to ye, Jerrie. I'd like to stay and see you,
+    but if I work very hard to-day, I hope to finish the job on Monday
+    and get my fifteen dollars. That's a pile of money to earn in three
+    days, isn't it? I hope you enjoyed the garden-party. If I had not
+    been so awfully tired I should have gone for you. Grandma will tell
+    you that I went to bed and to sleep before that shower came up, so I
+    knew nothing of it. I wonder you got home; but of course Dick came
+    with you, or Billy, or possibly Tom. I hear you entertained all
+    three of them at the washtub! Pretty good for the first day home!
+    Good-bye till to-night. I only live till then, as they say in
+    novels.
+
+    "HAROLD."
+
+This note, every line of which was full of affection and thoughtfulness
+for her, was worth more to Jerrie than the chocolate, or the bun, or the
+pretty cup and saucer which Harold had bought for her the night before,
+going to the village, a mile out of his way, on purpose to get them and
+surprise her. This, Mrs. Crawford told her, as she eat eating her
+breakfast, which she had to force down because of the lump in her throat
+and the tears which came so fast as she listened.
+
+'You see,' Mrs. Crawford began, 'Mr. Allen paid Harold two or three
+dollars, and so he came home through the village, and bought the eggs,
+and the buns, and the chocolate, which he knew you liked, and the cup
+and saucer at Grady's. He has had it on his mind a long time to get it
+for you, but there were so many other things to pay for. Don't you think
+it is pretty?'
+
+'Yes, lovely!' Jerrie replied, taking up the delicate bit of china,
+through which the light shone so clearly. 'It is very pretty; but I wish
+he had not bought it for me,' and Jerrie wiped the hot tears from both
+her eyes, as Mrs. Crawford continued:
+
+'Oh, he wanted to. He is never happier than when doing something which
+he thinks pleases you or me. Harold is the most unselfish boy I ever
+knew; and I never saw him give way, or heard him complain that his lot
+was hard but once, and that was this summer, when he was building the
+room, and had to dismiss the man because he had no money to pay him.
+That left it all for him to do, and he was already so tired and
+overworked; and then Tom Tracy was always making fun of the addition,
+and saying it made the cottage look like a pig-sty with a steeple to
+it, and that you would think so too; and if it were his he'd tear the
+old hut down and start anew. Peterkin, too, made remarks about its being
+out of proportion to the rest of the house, and wondered where Harold
+got the money, and why he didn't do this and that, but supposed he
+couldn't afford it, adding that "beggars couldn't be choosers." When
+Harold heard all that, he was tired, and nervous, and sick, and
+discouraged, and his hands were blistered and bruised with hard work.
+His head was aching, and he just put it on that table, where you are
+sitting, and cried like a baby. When I tried to comfort him, he said,
+"It isn't the hard work, grandmother; I don't mind that in the least;
+neither do I care for what they say, or should not, if there was not
+some truth in it; things are out of proportion, and the new room makes
+the rest of the cottage look lower than ever, and I'd like so much to
+have everything right for Jerrie, who would not shame the Queen's
+palace. I wish, for her sake, that I had money, and could make her home
+what it ought to be. I do not want her to feel homesick, or long for
+something better, when she comes back to us."'
+
+Jerrie was crying outright now; but Mrs. Crawford, who was a little deaf
+and did not hear her, went on:
+
+'If you were a hundred times his sister he could not love you more than
+he does, or wish to make you happier. He would have gone for you last
+night, only he was so tired, and I persuaded him to go to bed. I knew
+somebody would come home with you, Dick, wasn't it? I thought I heard
+his voice.'
+
+'Yes, it was Dick,' Jerrie answered, very low, returning again to her
+breakfast, while her grandmother rambled on:
+
+'Harold slept so soundly that he never heard the storm or knew there was
+one till this morning. Lucky you didn't start home till it was over.
+You'd have been wet to the skin.'
+
+Jerrie made no answer, for she could not tell of that interview under
+the pines, or that she had been wet to the skin, and felt chilly even
+now from the effects of it. It seemed that Mrs. Crawford would never
+tire talking of Harold, for she continued:
+
+'He was up this morning about daylight, I do believe, and had his own
+breakfast eaten and that table laid for you when I came down. He wanted
+to see you before he went, and know if you were pleased; but I told him
+you were probably asleep, as it was late when you came in, and so he
+wrote something for you, and went whistling off as merrily as if he had
+been in his carriage, instead of on foot in his working-dress.'
+
+'And he shall have his carriage, too, some day, and a pair of the finest
+horses the country affords, and you shall ride beside him, in a satin
+gown and India shawl. You'll see!' Jerrie said, impetuously, as she
+arose from the table and began to clear away the dishes.
+
+The spell was upon her strongly now, and as her grandmother talked, the
+objects around her gradually faded away; the cottage, so out of
+proportion, and so humble in all its surroundings, was gone, and in its
+place a house, fair to look upon, fair as Tracy Park and much like it,
+and Harold was the master, looking a very prince, instead of the tired,
+shabbily dressed man he was now.
+
+'And I shall be there, too,' Jerrie whispered, or rather nodded to
+herself. 'I know I shall, and I do not believe one word of the Maude
+affair, and never will until he tells me himself, or she; and
+then--well, then, I will be glad for them, until I come to be really
+glad myself.'
+
+She was moving rapidly around the kitchen, for there was a great deal to
+be done--the Saturday's work and all the clothes to be ironed, and then
+she meant to get up some little surprise for Harold, to show him that
+she appreciated his thoughtfulness for her.
+
+About half-past ten a servant from Le Bateau brought her a note from Ann
+Eliza, who wrote as follows.
+
+    'Dear Jerrie:--Have pity on a poor cripple, and come as soon as you
+    can and see her. I sprained my ankle last night in that awful storm,
+    and Tom had to bring me home in his arms. Think of it, and what my
+    feelings must have been. I am hardly over it yet--the queer feelings
+    I mean--for, of course, my ankle is dreadful, and so swollen, and
+    pains me so that I cannot step, but must stay in my room all day. So
+    come as soon as possible. You have never seen the inside of our
+    house, or my rooms. Come to lunch, please. We will have it up here.
+    Good-bye.
+
+    'From your loving friend,
+
+    'ANN ELIZA.
+
+    'P.S.--I wonder if Tom will inquire for me.'
+
+'Tell her I will be there by lunch time,' Jerrie said to the man, while
+to her grandmother she continued: 'The baking and cleaning are all done,
+and I can finish the ironing when I get back; it will be cooler then,
+and I do want to see the inside of that show-house which Harold says
+cost a hundred thousand dollars. Pity somebody besides the Peterkins did
+not live there.'
+
+And so, about twelve o'clock Jerrie walked up to the grand house of gray
+stone, which, with its turrets, and towers, and immense arch over the
+carriage drive in front of a side door, looked like some old feudal
+castle, and flaunted upon its walls the money it had cost. Even the loud
+bell which echoed through the hall like a town clock told of wealth and
+show, as did the colored man who answered the summons, and bowing low to
+Jerrie, held out a silver tray for her card.
+
+'Nonsense, Leo!' Jerrie said, laughingly, for she had known the negro
+all her life and played with him, too, at times, when they both went to
+the district school. 'I have no card with me. Miss Ann Eliza has invited
+me to lunch, and I have come. Tell her I am here.'
+
+With another profound bow, Leo waved Jerrie into the reception-room, and
+then started to deliver her message.
+
+Seated upon one of the carved chairs, Jerrie looked about her curiously,
+with a feeling that the half had not been told her, everything was so
+much more gorgeous and magnificent than she had supposed. But what
+impressed and at the same time oppressed her most was the height of the
+walls from the richly inlaid floor to the gayly decorated ceiling
+overhead. It made her neck ache staring up fourteen feet and a half to
+the costly center ornament from which the heavy chandelier depended. All
+the rooms of the old house had been low, and when Peterkin built the new
+one, he made ample amends.
+
+"I mean to lick the crowd," he said; and a man was sent to Collingwood,
+and Grassy Spring, and Brier Hill, and lastly to Tracy Park, to take the
+height of the lower rooms. Those at Tracy Park were found to be the
+highest, and measured just twelve feet, so Peterkin's orders were to
+"run 'em up--run 'em up fourteen feet, for I swan I'll get ahead of
+'em."
+
+So they were run up fourteen feet, and by some mistake, half a foot
+higher, looking when finished so cold and cheerless and bare that the
+ambitious man ransacked New York and Boston and even sent to London for
+ornaments for his walls. Books were bought by the square yard, pictures
+by the wholesale, mirrors by the dozen, with bronzes and brackets and
+sconces and tapestry and banners and screens and clocks and cabinets and
+statuary, with every kind of furniture imaginable, from the costliest
+rugs and carpets to the most exquisite inlaid tables to be found in
+Florence or Venice. For Peterkin sent there for them by a gentleman to
+whom he said:
+
+'Git the best there is if it costs a fortune. I'm bound to lick the
+crowd.'
+
+This was his favorite expression; and when his house was done, and he
+stood, his broad, white shirt-front studded with diamonds and his coat
+thrown back to show them, surveying his possessions, he felt that he
+'had licked the crowd.'
+
+Jerrie felt so, too, as she followed the elegant Leo up the stairs and
+through the upper hall--handsomer, if possible than the lower one--to
+the pretty room where Ann Eliza lay, or rather reclined, with her lame
+foot on a cushion and her well one incased in a white embroidered silk
+stocking and blue satin slipper. She was dressed in a delicate blue
+satin wrapper, trimmed with swan's-down, and there were diamonds in her
+ears and on the little white hands which she stretched toward Jerrie as
+she came in.
+
+'Oh, Jerrie,' she said, 'I am so glad to see you, for it is awfully
+lonesome here; and if one can be homesick at home, I am. I miss the
+girls and the lessons and the rules at Vassar; much as I hated them when
+I was there; and just before you came in I wanted to cry. I guess my
+rooms are too big and have too much in them; any way, I have the feeling
+that I am visiting, and everything is strange and new. I do believe I
+liked the old room better, with its matting on the floor and the little
+mirror with the peacock feathers ornamenting the top, and that painted
+plaster image of Samuel on the mantel. It is very ungrateful in me, I
+know, when father has done it mostly to please me. Do you believe--he
+has hunted me up a maid; Doris is her name; and what I am ever to do
+with her, or she with me, I am sure I don't know. Do you?'
+
+Jerrie did not know either, but suggested that she might read to her
+while she was confined to her room. 'Yes, she might, perhaps, do that,
+if she can read,' Ann Eliza said. 'She certainly has pretentions enough
+about her to have written several treatises on scientific subjects. She
+was a year with Lady Augusta Hardy, in Ireland. Don't you remember the
+grand wedding father and mother attended in Allington two or three years
+ago, when Augusta Browne was married to an Irish lord, who had been
+bought by her money?--for of course he did not care much for her. Well,
+Doris went out with her as maid, and acts as if she, too, had married a
+peer. She came last night, and mamma and I are already as afraid of her
+as we can be, she is so fine and airy. She insisted upon dressing me
+this morning, and I felt all the while as if she were thinking how red
+and ugly my hair is, or counting the freckles on my face, and
+contrasting me with 'my Lady Augusta,' as she calls her. I wonder if she
+ever saw my lady's mother, Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, who told me once that I
+had a very _petty figger_, but she presumed it would _envelope_ as I
+grew older. But then people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw
+stones,' and Ann Eliza colored a little as she made this reference to
+her own father and mother, whose language was not much more correct than
+Mrs. Rossiter-Browne's.
+
+For one brought up as she had been, Ann Eliza was a rather sensible
+girl, and although she attached a great deal of importance to money, she
+knew it was not everything, and that with her father's millions there
+was still a wide difference between him and the men to whose society he
+aspired; and knew, too, that although Jerrie had not a penny in the
+world, she was greatly her superior, and so considered by the world at
+large. She was very fond of Jerrie, who had often helped her with her
+lessons, and stood between her and the ridicule of her companions, and
+was never happier than when in her society. So now she made her bring an
+ottoman close beside her, and held her hand while she narrated in detail
+the events of the previous night, dwelling at length upon the fact that
+Tom had carried her in his arms, and wondering if he would call to
+inquire after her. Jerrie thought he would; and, as if in answer to the
+thought, Doris almost immediately appeared with his card. She _was_ very
+fine and very smart, and Jerrie herself felt awed by her dignity and
+manner as she delivered her message. 'The gentleman sends his
+compliments, and would like to know how you are this morning.'
+
+'Jerrie, it's Tom! he has come!' Ann Eliza said, with joy in her voice.
+'Surely I can receive him here, for this is my parlor.'
+
+Jerrie thought she might, but the toss of the fine maid's head showed
+that she thought differently, as she left the room with her mistress'
+message.
+
+'Thunderation! I didn't want to see her. It's enough to have to call,'
+was Tom's mental comment, when Doris told him he was to walk up stairs.
+
+Indeed, he would not have come at all if Maude, to whom he related his
+adventure, had not insisted that he must.
+
+'You needn't see her, of course; but you must go and inquire how she is.
+According to your own statement you are to blame for her mishap; you
+dragged her along too fast.
+
+Tom knew there was some truth in this, and so he went the more
+willingly; and, sending up his card, stood near the open door, ready to
+leave the moment Leo came down with the message he had received from
+Doris.
+
+'I shall be cheek by jowl with these Peterkins, if I don't look out,' he
+thought, as he ascended the stairs to the hall, where Doris stood
+waiting to show him her mistress' room.
+
+'What! Jerry! You here?' he exclaimed, his face clearing, and the whole
+aspect of matters changing at once, as she arose to meet him.
+
+With Jerrie there the place seemed different, and he did not feel as if
+he were lowering himself, as he sat in the luxuriously furnished room,
+and joined in the dainty lunch which was brought up and served from
+Dresden china, and linen and cut glass, and was as delicate and dainty
+in its way as anything he had ever found at the Brunswick or
+Delmonico's. Mrs. Peterkin prided herself upon her _cuisine_, which she
+always superintended, and as Peterkin was something of an epicure and
+gourmand, the table was always supplied with every possible delicacy.
+
+Tom enjoyed it all, and praised the chocolate, and the broiled chicken,
+and the jellies, and thought Ann Eliza not so very bad-looking in her
+blue satin wrapper, with the swan's-down trimmings, and made himself
+generally agreeable. Maude was better, he said, and could talk a
+little, and he asked Jerrie to go home with him and see her. But Jerrie
+declined.
+
+'I have a great deal of work to do yet,' she said, 'I must iron all
+those clothes you saw upon the line yesterday, and so I must be going.'
+
+Tom frowned at the mention of the clothes which Jerrie had washed; while
+Ann Eliza insisted that she should stay until the dog-cart, which had
+been sent to the station for Billy, came back, when Lewis would take her
+home, as it was too warm to walk. Jerrie did not mind the walk, but she
+felt morally sure that Tom meant to accompany her, and greatly preferred
+the dog-cart and Lewis to another _tête-à-tête_ with him, for he did not
+act at all like a discarded lover, but rather as one who still hoped he
+had a chance. So she signified her intention to wait for the dog-cart,
+which soon came, with Billy in it, anxious when he heard of his sister's
+accident, delighted when he found Jerrie there, and persistent in saying
+that he and not Lewis would take her home.
+
+'Well, if you will, you will,' she said, laughingly; and bidding Ann
+Eliza good-bye, and telling Tom to give her love to Maude and say to her
+that she did not believe she should be at the park that day, she had so
+much to do, she was soon in the dog-cart with Billy, whose face was
+radiant as he gathered up the reins and started down the turnpike,
+driving at what Jerrie thought a very slow pace, as she was anxious to
+get home.
+
+Something of Billy's thoughts must have communicated itself to Jerrie,
+for she became nervous and ill at ease and talked rapidly of things in
+which she had not the slightest interest.
+
+'What of the lawsuit?' she asked. 'Are you likely to settle it?'
+
+'N-no,' Billy answered, hurriedly. 'It will h-have to co-come into
+co-court in a f-few days, and I am aw-awful sorry. I wa-wanted father to
+p-pay what they demanded, but he won't. Hal is subpoenaed on the other
+side, as he was in our office, and is supposed to know something about
+it; b-but I ho-hope he won't da-damage us m-much, as father would
+n-never forgive him if he went against us.'
+
+'But he must tell the truth, no matter who is damaged,' Jerrie said.
+'Ye-yes' Billy replied, 'of co-course he must, b-but he needn't
+volunteer information.'
+
+Jerry began to think that Billy had insisted upon coming with her for
+the sake of persuading her to caution Harold against saying too much
+when he was called to testify in the great lawsuit between Peterkin &
+Co., manufacturers in Shannondale, and Wilson & Co., manufacturers in
+Truesdale, an adjoining town; but she was undeceived when her companion
+turned suddenly off upon the river road, which would take them at least
+two miles out of their way.
+
+'Why are you coming here!' Jerrie said, in real distress. 'It is ever so
+much farther, and I must get home. I have piles of work to do.'
+
+'Co-confound the work,' Billy replied, very energetically for him, and
+reining his horse up under a wide spreading butternut tree, which grew
+upon the river bank, he sprang out and pretended to be busy with some
+part of the harness, while he astonished Jerrie by bursting out, without
+the least stammer, he was so earnest and so excited: 'I've something to
+say to you, Jerrie, and I may as well say it now as any time, and know
+the worst, or the best. I can't bear the suspense any longer, and I got
+out of the cart so as to stand where I could look you square in the face
+while I say it.'
+
+And he was looking her square in the face while she grew hot and cold
+and experienced a sensation quite different from what she had when Tom
+and Dick made love to her. She had felt no fear of them, but she was
+afraid of this little man, who stood up so resolutely, with his tongue
+loosened, and asked her to be his wife, for that was what he did, making
+his wishes known in a very few words, and then waiting for her answer
+with his eyes fixed upon her face and a firm, set look about his mouth
+which puzzled and troubled her and made her uncertain as to how she was
+to deal with this third aspirant for her hand within twenty-four hours.
+
+Billy had long had it in his mind that Jerry Crawford was the only girl
+in the world for him, but he might not have spoken quite; so soon had it
+not been for a conversation held with his father the previous night,
+when they were alone in a private room at the hotel in Shannondale,
+waiting for the train which Billy was to take, and which was half an
+hour late. Peterkin had exhausted himself in oaths and epithets with
+regard to the lawsuit and those who had brought it against him, and was
+regaling himself with a cigar and a glass of brandy and water, while
+Billy sat by the window watching for the train and wishing himself at
+Grassy Spring with Jerrie. Peterkin seldom drank to excess, but on this
+occasion he had taken a little too much. When under the influence of
+stimulants, he was either aggressive and quarrelsome, or jocose and
+talkative. The latter mood was on him now, and as he drank his brandy
+and water he held forth upon the subject of matrimony, wondering why his
+son did not marry, and saying it was quite time he did so and settled
+down.
+
+'You can have the south wing,' he said, 'and if the rooms ain't up to
+snuff now, why, I'll make 'em so. The fact is, Bill, I've got money
+enough--three millions and better; but somehow it doesn't seem to do the
+thing. It doesn't fetch us to the quality and make us fust-cut. We need
+better blood than the Peterkins or the Moshers--need boostin', and you
+must get a wife to boost us. Have you ever thought on't?'
+
+'Billy never had thought of it in that light,' he said, although he had
+thought of marrying, providing the girl would have him.
+
+'Have you! Thunderation! A girl would be a fool who wouldn't marry three
+millions, with Lubber-too thrown in! Who is she?' Peterkin asked.
+
+After a little hesitancy Billy replied:
+
+'Jerrie Crawford.'
+
+'Jerrie Crawford! I'll be dammed! Jerrie Crawford!' and Peterkin's big
+feet came down from the back of the chair on which they were resting,
+upsetting the chair and his brandy at the same time. 'Jerrie Crawford! I
+swow! A gal without a cent, or name either, though I used to have a
+sneakin' notion that I knew who she was, but I guess I didn't. 'Twould
+have come out afore now. What under heavens put her into your noddle?
+She can't _boost_! and then she's head and shoulders taller than you be!
+How you would look trottin' beside her! Jerrie Crawford! Wal, I swan!'
+and Peterkin laughed until his big stomach shook like a bowl of jelly.
+
+Billy was angry, and replied that he did not know what height had to do
+with it, or name either; and as for _boosting_, he wouldn't marry a
+king's daughter, if he did not love her; and for that matter Jerrie
+could boost, for she stood quite as high in town as any young lady.
+
+Both Nina St. Claire and Maude Tracy worshipped her, while Mrs. Atherton
+paid her a great deal of attention; and so did the Mungers and
+Crosbys--enough sight more than they did to Ann Eliza with all her
+money.
+
+'Mo-money isn't ev-everything.' Billy stammered, 'and Je-Jerrie would
+make a ve-very different pl-place of Le Bateau.'
+
+'Mebby she would--mebby she would; but I'd never thought of her for
+you,' Peterkin said. 'I'd picked out some; big bug, who perhaps wouldn't
+wipe her shoes on you. Jerrie is handsome as blazes and no mistake, with
+a kinder up and comin' way about her which takes the folks. Yes, it
+keeps growin' on me, and I presume Arthur Tracy would give her away,
+which would be a feather in your cap; but lord! you'll have to git a
+pair of the highest heels you ever seen to come within ten foot on her.'
+
+'She's only two inches t-taller than I am,' Billy said, and his father
+continued:
+
+'Wall, if your heart's set on her go it, and quick, too, I'm goin' to
+have a smasher of a party in the fall, and Jerrie'll be just the one to
+draw, I can see her now, standin' there with the diamonds we'll give her
+sparklin' on her neck, and she lookin' like a queen, and the _sinecure_
+of all eyes. But for thunder's sake don't marry the old woman and all.
+Leave her to Harold, the sneak! I never did like him, and I'll be mad
+enough to kill him if he goes agin me in the suit, and I b'lieve he
+will.'
+
+At this point Peterkin wandered off to the suit entirely and forgot
+Jerrie, who was to boost the house of Peterkin and make it 'fust-cut.'
+But not so Billy, and all the way from Shannondale to Springfield he was
+thinking of Jerrie, and wondering if it were possible that she could
+ever look upon him with favor. Like Tom and Dick, he could scarcely
+remember the time when he did not think Jerrie the loveliest girl in the
+world, and ever since he had grown to manhood he had meditated making
+her his wife, but had feared what his father might say, as he knew how
+much importance he attached to money. Now however, his father had
+signified his assent, and, resolving to lose no time, Billy, on his
+return next day to Le Bateau, seized the opportunity to take Jerrie
+home, as the occasion for declaring his love, which he did in a manly,
+straightforward manner, never hinting at any advantage it would be to
+her to be the wife of a millionaire, or offering any inducement in any
+way except to say that he loved her and would devote his life to making
+her happy. Tom Tracy Jerrie had scorned, Dick St. Claire she had pitied,
+but this little man she felt like ridiculing.
+
+'Oh, Billy,' she said, laughing merrily. 'You can't be in earnest. Why
+I'm head and shoulders taller than you are. I do believe I could pick
+you up and throw you into the river. Only think how we should look
+together; people would think you my little boy, and that I should not
+like. So, I can never be your wife.'
+
+Nothing cuts a man like ridicule, and sensitive as he was with regard to
+his size, Billy felt it to his heart's core; and as he stood nervously
+playing with the reins and looking at Jerrie sitting there so tall and
+erect in all the brightness of her wonderful beauty, it flashed upon him
+how impossible it was for that glorious creature ever to be his wife,
+and what a fool he had made of himself.
+
+'For-gi-give me, Jerrie,' he said, his chin beginning to quiver, and the
+great tears rolling down his face, 'I know you ca-can't, and I
+ou-oughtn't to have ask-asked it, bu-but I d-did love you so much, that
+I f-forgot how impossible it was f-for one like you to lo-love one
+li-like me. I am so small and insig-insignificant, and st-stutter so. I
+wish I was dead,' and laying his head upon the horse's neck, he sobbed
+aloud.
+
+In an instant Jerrie was out of the dog-cart and at his side, talking to
+and trying to soothe him as she would a child.
+
+'Oh, Billy, Billy,' she said. 'I am so sorry for you, and sorry I said
+those cruel words about your size. It was only in fun. Your size has
+nothing to do with my refusal. I know you have a big, kind heart, and
+next to Harold and Dick, and Mr. Arthur, I like you better than any man
+I ever knew; but I cannot be your wife. Don't cry, Billy; it hurts me so
+to see you and know that I have done it. Please stop, and take me home
+as quickly as possible.'
+
+With a great gulp, and a long sigh like a grieved child, Billy dried
+his tears, of which he was much ashamed, and helping Jerrie into the
+cart drove her rapidly to the door of the cottage.
+
+'I should not like Tom, nor Dick, nor Harold to know this,' he said to
+her, as he stood a moment with her at the gate.
+
+'Billy!' she exclaimed, 'do you know me so little as to think I would
+tell them, or anybody? I have more honor than that,' and she gave him
+her hand, which he held tightly in his while he looked earnestly into
+the sweet young face which could never be his, every muscle of his own
+quivering with emotion, and telling of the pain he was enduring.
+
+'Good-bye. I shall be more like a ma-man, and less a ba-baby when I see
+you again,' and springing into his cart he drove rapidly away.
+
+Jerrie found her grandmother seated at a table and trying to iron.
+
+'Grandma,' she said, 'this is too bad. I did not mean to stay so long.
+Put down that flat-iron this minute. I am coming there as soon as I lay
+off my hat.'
+
+Running up the stairs to her room, Jerrie put away her hat, and then,
+throwing herself upon the bed, cried for a moment as hard as she could
+cry. The look on Billy's face haunted her, and she pitied him now more
+than she had pitied Dick St. Claire.
+
+'Dick will get over it, and marry somebody else, but Billy never,' she
+said.
+
+Then, rising up, she bathed her eyes, and pushing back her tangled hair,
+stood for a moment before the mirror, contemplating the reflection of
+herself in it.
+
+'Jerrie Crawford,' she said, 'you must be a mean, heartless,
+good-for-nothing girl, for it certainly is not your Dutch face, nor
+yellow hair, nor great staring eyes, which make men think that you will
+marry them; so it must be your flirting, coquettish manners. I hate a
+flirt. I hate you, Jerrie Crawford.'
+
+Once when a little girl, Jerrie had said to Harold, 'Why do all the boys
+want to kiss me so much?' and now she might have asked, 'Why do these
+same boys wish to marry me?' It was a curious fact that she should have
+had three offers within twenty-four hours; and she didn't like it, and
+her face wore a troubled look all that hot afternoon as she stood at the
+ironing table, perspiring at every pore, and occasionally smiling to
+herself as she thought, 'Grassy Spring, Le Bateau, Tracy Park, I might
+take my choice, if I would, but I prefer the cottage,' and then at the
+thought of Tracy Park her thoughts went off across the sea to Germany,
+and the low room with the picture upon the wall, and her resolve to find
+it some day.
+
+'Far in the future it may be, but find it I will, and find, too, who I
+am,' she said to herself, little dreaming that the finding was close at
+hand, and that she had that day lighted the train which was so soon to
+bear her on to the end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+MAUDE.
+
+
+Harold did not finish his work at the Allen farm-house until Tuesday, so
+it was not until Wednesday afternoon that he started to pay his promised
+visit to Maude. Jerrie had seen her twice, and reported her as much
+better, although still very weak.
+
+'She is so anxious to see you. Don't you think you can go this
+afternoon?' she said to Harold, in the morning, as she helped him weed
+the garden and pick the few strawberries left upon the vines.
+
+'Ye-es, I guess I can--if you'll go with me,' he said.
+
+He was so loth to be away from Jerrie when it was not absolutely
+necessary, that even a call upon Maude without her did not seem very
+tempting. But Jerrie could not go now, for Nina and Marian Raymond came
+down to the cottage to spend the afternoon, and Harold went alone to the
+park house, where he found Maude in the room she called her studio
+trying to finish a little water-color which she had sketched of the
+cottage as it was before the roof was raised.
+
+'I mean it for Jerrie,' she had said to Harold, who stood by her when
+she sketched it, 'and I am going to put her under the tree, with her sun
+bonnet hanging down her back, as she used to wear it when she was a
+little girl, and you are to be over there by the fence, looking at me
+coming up the lane.'
+
+It was the best thing Maude had ever done, for the likeness to Jerrie
+and to herself was perfect, while the cottage, embowered in trees and
+flowers, made it a most attractive picture. Harold had praised it a
+great deal, and told her that it would make her famous. But when the
+carpenter work came in Maude put it aside until now, when she brought it
+out again, and was just beginning to retouch it in places, as Harold was
+announced.
+
+She was looking very tired, and it seemed to Harold that she had lost
+many pounds of flesh since he saw her last. Her face was pale, and
+pinched, and wan, but it flushed brightly as Harold came in, and she
+went eagerly forward to meet him.
+
+'Hally, you naughty boy!' she began, as she gave him her little, thin
+hand. 'Why didn't you come before? You don't know how I have missed you.
+You must not forget me now that Jerrie is at home.'
+
+She had led him to a seat, and then herself sank into a large cushioned
+easy chair, against which she leaned her head wearily, while she looked
+at him with eyes which ought to have told Harold how much he was to her,
+and so put him on his guard, and saved the misunderstanding which
+followed.
+
+'No, Maude, I couldn't forget you,' he said; and without really knowing
+that he was doing it, he put his hand upon the little soft white one
+lying on the arm of the chair.
+
+Every nerve in Maude's body thrilled to the touch of that hand upon
+which she involuntarily laid her other one, noticing as she did so the
+signs of toil upon it, and feeling sorry for him. One would have thought
+them lovers, sitting there thus together, but nothing could have been
+farther from Harold's mind. He was thinking only of Jerrie, and his
+resolve to confide in Maude, and get her opinion with regard to his
+chance.
+
+'Now is as good a time as any,' he thought, wondering how he should
+begin, and finding it harder than he had imagined it would he.
+
+At last after a few commonplaces, Maude told him again that he must not
+neglect her now that Jerrie was at home.
+
+'Neglect you? How can I do that?' he said, 'when I look upon you as one
+of my best friends, and in proof of it, I am going to tell you
+something, or, rather, ask you something, and I hope you will answer me
+truly. Better that I know the worst at first than learn it afterward.'
+
+Maude's face was aflame now with a great and sudden joy, and her soft
+eyes drooped beneath Harold's as he went on stammeringly, for he began
+to feel the awkwardness of telling one girl that he loved another, even
+though that other were her dearest friend.
+
+'I hardly know how to begin,' he said, 'it is such a delicate matter,
+and perhaps I'd better say nothing at all.'
+
+'Was he going to stop? Had he changed his mind--and would he not after
+all, say the words she had so longed to hear?' Maude asked herself, as
+she turned her eyes appealingly to him, while he sat silent and unmoved,
+his thoughts very, very far from her to whom he was all in all.
+
+Poor Maude! She was weak and sick, and impulsive and mistaken in the
+nature of Harold's feelings for her; so judge her not too harshly, my
+prudish reader, if she at last did what Arthur would have called
+'throwing herself at his head.'
+
+'I can guess what you mean,' she said, after a long pause, during which
+he did not speak. 'I have long suspected that you cared for me just as I
+care for you, and have wondered you did not tell me so, but supposed
+that you refrained because I was rich and you were poor; but what has
+that to do with those who love each other? I am glad you have spoken;
+and you have made me very happy; and even if we can never be more to
+each other than we are now, because I may die, as I sometimes fear I
+shall--'
+
+'Oh, Maude, Maude, you are mistaken. I--,' came from Harold like a cry
+of horror as he wrenched away his hand lying between hers, and to which
+her slender fingers hung caressingly.
+
+What could she mean? How had she understood him? he asked himself, while
+great drops of sweat gathered upon his forehead and in the palms of his
+hands, as like lightning the past came back to him, and he could see as
+in a printed page that what he had thought mere friendship for himself
+was a far different and deeper feeling, while he unwittingly had fanned
+the flame; and was now reaping the result.
+
+'What can I do?' he said aloud, unconsciously, while from the depths of
+the chair on which Maude was leaning back so wearily came a plaintive
+voice like that of a child:
+
+'Ring the bell, and give me my handkerchief.'
+
+He was at her side in a moment, bending over her, and looking anxiously
+into the pallid face from which the bright color had faded, leaving it
+gray, and pinched, and drawn, it seemed to him. Had he killed her by
+blurting out so roughly that she was mistaken; and thus filling her with
+mortification and shame? No, that could not be, for as he brought her
+handkerchief and bent still closer to her, she whispered to him:
+
+'I am not mistaken, Hally. I am going to die, but you have made the last
+days of my life very, very happy.'
+
+She thought he was referring to herself and her situation when he told
+her she was mistaken, and with a smothered groan he was starting for the
+camphor, as she bade him do, when the door opened, and Mrs. Tracy
+herself appeared.
+
+'What is it?' she asked, sharply; then, as she saw Maude's face she knew
+what it was, and going swiftly to her, said to Harold:
+
+'Why did you allow her to talk and get excited? What were you saying to
+her?'
+
+Instantly Maude's eyes went up to Harold's with an appealing look, as if
+asking him not to tell her mother then--a precaution which was needless,
+as he had no intention to tell Mrs. Tracy, or any one, of the terrible
+blunder he had made; and with a hope that the reality might dawn upon
+Maude, he answered, truthfully:
+
+'I was talking to her of Jerrie. I am very sorry.'
+
+If Maude heard she did not understand, for drops of pinkish blood were
+oozing from her lips, and she looked as if she were already dead, as in
+obedience to Mrs. Tracy's command, Harold took her in his arms and
+carried her to the couch near the open window, where he laid her down as
+tenderly as if she were indeed his affianced wife.
+
+'Thanks,' she sighed, softly, and her bright, beautiful eyes looked up
+at him with an expression which half tempted him to kiss the quivering
+lips from which he was wiping the stains so carefully, while Mrs. Tracy,
+at the door, gave some orders to a servant.
+
+'You can go now,' she said, returning to the couch, and dismissing him
+with her usual hauteur of manner; while Maude put up her hand and
+whispered:
+
+'Come soon--and Jerrie.'
+
+Had Harold been convicted of theft or murder he could scarcely have felt
+worse than he did as he walked slowly through the park, reviewing the
+situation and wondering what he ought to do.
+
+'If it almost killed her when she thought I loved her, it would surely
+kill her to know that I do not,' he thought. 'I cannot undeceive her
+now, while she is so weak; but when she is better and able to bear it, I
+will tell her the truth.'
+
+'And if she dies?' came to him like the stab of a knife, as he
+remembered how white she looked as he held her in his arms. 'If she
+does,' he said, 'no one shall ever know of the mistake she made. In this
+I will be true to Maude, even should the world believe I loved her and
+had told her so. But, oh, Heaven! spare me that, and spare Maude's life
+for many years. She is too young, too sweet, too good to die.'
+
+This was Harold's prayer as he rested for a moment in the pine-room,
+where he had often played with the little girl, and where he could now
+see her so plainly picking up the cones, or sitting on the soft bed of
+needles, with the bloom on her cheeks and the brightness in her soft
+black eyes which had looked so lovingly at him an hour ago. 'Spare
+Maude; do not let her die!' was his prayer, and that of many others
+during the week which followed, when Maude's life hung on a thread, and
+every bell at the park house was muffled, and the servants spoke only in
+whispers; while Frank Tracy sat day and night in the room where his
+daughter lay, perfectly quiet, except as she sometimes put up her hand
+to stroke his white hair or wipe away the tears constantly rolling down
+his cheeks.
+
+In Frank's heart there was a feeling worse than death itself, for keen
+remorse and bitter regret were torturing his soul as he sat beside the
+wreck of all his hopes and felt that he had sinned for naught. He knew
+Maude would die, and then what mattered it to him if he had all the
+money of the Rothschilds at his command?
+
+'Oh, Gretchen, you are avenged, and Jerrie, too! Oh, Jerrie!' he said,
+one day, unconsciously, as he sat by his daughter, who, he thought, was
+sleeping. But at the mention of Jerrie's name her eyes unclosed and
+fixed themselves upon her father with a look in which he read an earnest
+desires for something.
+
+'What is it, pet?' he asked. 'Do you want anything?'
+
+They had made her understand that, she must not speak, for the slightest
+effort to do so always brought on a fit of coughing which threatened a
+hemorrhage, of which she could not endure many more. But they had
+brought her a little slate, on which she sometimes wrote her requests,
+though that, too, was an effort. Pointing now to the slate, she wrote,
+while her father held it:
+
+'I want Jerrie.'
+
+'I thought so; and you shall have her for just as long as she will
+stay,' Frank said; and a servant was dispatched to the cottage with the
+message that Jerrie must come at once, and come prepared to pass the
+night, if possible.
+
+It had been very dreary for Maude during the time she had been shut up
+in her room, to which no one was admitted except her father and mother,
+the doctor, and the nurse. Many messages of enquiry and sympathy,
+however, had come to her from the cottage, and Grassy Spring, and Le
+Bateau, where Ann Eliza was still kept a prisoner with her sprained
+ankle; and once Jerrie had written to Maude a note full of love and
+solicitude and a desire to see her. As a postscript she added:
+
+'Harold sends his love, and hopes you will soon be better. You don't
+know how anxious he is about you. Why, I believe he has lost ten pounds
+since your attack, for which he seems to blame himself, thinking he
+excited you too much by talking to you.'
+
+Maude listened to this note, which her father read to her, with a smile
+on her face and tears on her long eyelashes; but when he came to the
+postscript she laughed aloud, as a little child laughs at the return of
+its mother, for whom it has been hungering. This was the first word she
+had had from him, except that he had called to enquire for her, and she
+had so longed for something which should assure her that he remembered
+her even as she did him. She had no distrust of him, and would as soon
+have doubted that the sun would rise again as to have doubted his
+sincerity; but she wanted to hear again that he loved her, and now she
+had heard it, and, folding her hands upon her breast, she fell into the
+most, refreshing sleep she had had since her illness. Could Maude have
+talked and seen people, or if she had been less anxious to live, she
+would probably have told Jerrie and Nina, and possibly Ann Eliza
+Peterkin, of what had passed between herself and Harold, but she had not
+seen them; while life, with Harold to love her, looked so bright and
+sweet, that if by keeping silence she could prolong it, she would do so
+for months, if necessary. To live for Harold was all she wished or
+thought about; and often when they hoped she was sleeping, she lay so
+still, with her eyes closed and her arms folded upon her breast, just as
+if she were praying in her dreams, her father thought. She _was_ praying
+for life and length of days, with strength to make Harold as happy as he
+ought to be, and was thinking of and planning all she meant to do for
+him when once they were married. First to Europe, where she would be so
+proud to show him the places she had seen, and where Jerrie would be
+with them, for in all her plans Jerrie had almost as prominent a place
+as herself.
+
+'I am nothing without Jerrie,' she thought 'She keeps me up, and Jerrie
+will live with us, and Mrs. Crawford; that makes four, just enough for a
+nice game of whist in long winter evenings, when it is so cold outside
+but warm and bright within--always bright for Harold, whose life has
+been so full of care and toil. Poor boy! how I pitied his great warm
+hand when it was holding mine so lovingly, and how I could have kissed
+every seam and scar upon it. But by and by his hands shall be white like
+Tom's, though not so soft. I hate a hand which feels like a fluff of
+cotton. He shall not live here, for Harold could never get along with
+mother and Tom; but we will build a house together, Hally and I, with
+Jerrie to help and plan--build one where the cottage stands, or near it,
+so Jerrie can still see the old Tramp House she is so fond of. Not a
+house like this, with such big rooms, but a pretty, modern Queen Ann
+house, with every room a corner room, and a bay-window in it. And Harold
+will have an office in town, and I shall drive down for him every
+afternoon and take him home to dinner and to Jerrie.'
+
+Such was the nature of Maude's thoughts, as she lay day after day upon
+the couch, too weak to do more thin lift her hands or rise her head
+when the dreadful paroxysms of coughing seized her and racked her
+fragile frame. Still she was very happy, and the happiness showed itself
+upon her, where there rested a look of perfect content and peace, which
+her father and mother had noticed and commented upon, and which Jerrie
+saw the moment she entered the room and stood by Maude's side.
+
+'Dear Maude,' she said, as she took the hot hands in hers and kissed
+them tenderly.
+
+Then she sat down beside her, and smoothed her hair, and told her how
+lovely she looked in her pretty rose-colored wrapper, and how sorry
+every one was for her, and that both she and Nina would have been there
+every day, only they knew they could not see her. Then, as the great
+black eyes fixed themselves steadily upon her, with a look of enquiry in
+them, she set her teeth hard, and began:
+
+'I don't think anyone has been more sorry than Harold. Why, for the
+first few days after you were taken so ill he just walked the floor all
+the time he was in the house, and when grandma asked what ailed him, he
+said, "I am thinking of Maude, and am afraid my call upon her was the
+cause of the attack."'
+
+'N--n--,' Maude began, but checked herself in time, and taking up her
+slate, wrote, 'Tell him it was not his call. I am glad he came.'
+
+'Yes I will,' Jerrie replied, scarcely able to keep back her tears, when
+she saw how cramped and irregular the handwriting was, so unlike
+Maude's, and realized more and more how weak and sick was the little
+girl whose eyes followed her everywhere and always grew brighter and
+softer when she was talking to her of Harold.
+
+All day and all night Jerrie sat by her, sometimes talking to her and
+answering the questions she wrote upon the slate, but oftener in perfect
+silence, when Maude seemed to be asleep. Then Jerrie's tears fell like
+rain, the face upon the pillow looked so much like death, and she kept
+repeating to herself the lines:
+
+  'We thought her dying when she slept.
+  And sleeping when she died.'
+
+When the warm July morning looked in at the windows of the sick-room,
+bringing with it the perfume of hundreds of flowers blooming on the
+lawn, and the scent of the hay cut the previous day, it found Jerrie
+still watching by Maude, her own face tired and pale, with dark rings
+about her eyes, which were heavy with tears and wakefulness. She had not
+slept at all, and her head was beginning to ache frightfully when the
+nurse came in and relieved her, telling her breakfast was ready. Maude
+was awake, and wrote eagerly upon the slate:
+
+'You'll come back? You'll stay all day? You do me so much good, and I am
+a great deal better for your being here.'
+
+Jerrie hesitated a moment; her head was aching so hard that she longed
+to get away. But selfishness was not one of Jerrie's faults, and putting
+her own wishes aside, she said:
+
+'Yes, I will stay until afternoon, and then I must go home. I did not
+tell you that Harold was going away to-night, did I?'
+
+Maude shook her head, and Jerry went on:
+
+'You know, perhaps, that some time ago a Mr. Wilson, of Truesdale, sued
+Peterkin for some infringement on a patent, or something of that sort.'
+
+Maude nodded, and Jerrie continued:
+
+'The suit comes off to-morrow, and Harold is subpoenaed as a witness, as
+he was in Peterkin's office a while and knows something about the
+arrangement between them. I am sorry he has got to swear against
+Peterkin; it will make him so angry, and he hates Harold now. The suit
+is to be called in the morning and Judge St. Claire and Harold are going
+to-night on the five o'clock train; and as he may be gone a day or two I
+must be home to see to packing his bag. But I will stay with you just as
+long as I can.'
+
+She said nothing of her head which throbbed in a most peculiar way,
+making her dizzy and half blind as she went down to breakfast, which she
+took alone with Mrs. Tracy. Frank had eaten his long before, and was now
+pacing up and down the long piazza with his head bent forward and his
+hands locked together behind him.
+
+'I shall never have rest or peace again until it is known. Oh, if it
+would only come out without my telling,' he said to himself, little
+dreaming how near it was to coming out and that before that day's sun
+had set Jerrie would know!
+
+Tom seldom appeared until after ten, and when Jerrie went for a few
+moments into the grounds, to see if the fresh air would do her good, she
+found him seated in an arm-chair under a horse chestnut tree, stretching
+himself and yawning as if he were just out of bed.
+
+'Jerrie, you here? Did you stay all night? If I'd known that, I'd have
+made an effort to come down to breakfast, though I think getting up in
+the morning a bore. Why, what's the matter? You look as if you were
+going to faint. Sit down here,' he continued, as he saw Jerrie reel
+forward as if she were about to fall.
+
+He put her into the chair and stood over her, fanning her with his hat
+and wondering what he should do, while for a moment she lost
+consciousness of the things about her, and her mind went floating off
+after the picture on the wall in Wiesbaden, which was haunting her that
+morning.
+
+When she came to herself, Tom and Dick and Billy were all three hovering
+around, and so close to her that without opening her eyes she could have
+told exactly where each one was standing, Tom by the smell of tobacco,
+with which his clothes were saturated, Billy by the powerful scent of
+white rose with which he always perfumed his handkerchief, and Dick,
+because, as she had once said to Nina when a child, he was so clean and
+looked as if he had just been scrubbed. The two young men had come to
+enquire for Maude, and had found Jerrie half swooning under the tree,
+with Tom fanning her frantically and acting like a wild man.
+
+Jerrie had seen Dick twice since her refusal of him, and both times her
+manner, exactly like what it had always been to him, had put him at his
+ease, so that a looker-on would never have dreamed of that episode under
+the pines when she nearly broke his heart. Billy, however, was more
+conscious. He had not seen Jerrie since he took her home in his
+dog-cart, and his face was scarlet and his manner nervous and
+constrained as he stood before her, longing and yet not daring to fan
+her with his hat just as Tom was doing.
+
+Of the three young men who had sought her hand, Billy's wound was the
+deepest, and Billy would remember it the longest; for, mingled with his
+defeat, was a sense of mortification and hatred of his own personal
+appearance, which he could not help thinking had influenced Jerrie's
+decision. 'And I don't blame her, by Jove!' he said to himself a
+hundred times. 'She could not marry a pigmy, and I was a fool to hope
+it; but I shall love her just the same as long as I live, and if I can
+ever help her I will.'
+
+And when at last Jerrie was better, and assured him so with her own
+sweet graciousness of manner, and put her hand upon his shoulder to
+steady herself as she stood up, he felt that paradise was opening to him
+again, and that although he had lost Jerrie as a wife, he still had her
+as a friend, which was more than he had dared expect.
+
+'Are you better now? Can you walk to the house?' Tom asked.
+
+'Oh, yes; I can walk. The giddiness is gone,' Jerrie replied. 'I don't
+quite know what ails me this morning.'
+
+Never before could she remember having felt as she did now, with that
+sharp pain in her head, that buzzing in her ears, and more than all,
+that peculiar state of mind which she called "spells," and which seemed
+to hold her now, body and soul. Even when she returned to Maude's room,
+and sat down beside her couch, her thoughts were far away, and
+everything which had ever come to her concerning her babyhood came to
+her now, crowding upon her so fast that once it seemed to her that the
+top of her head was lifting, and she put up her hand to hold it in its
+place. And still she staid on with Maude, although two or three times
+she arose to go, but something kept her there--chance, if one chooses to
+call by that name the something which at times moulds us to its will and
+influences our whole lives. Something kept her there until the morning
+was merged into noon and the noon into the middle of the afternoon, and
+then she could stay no longer. The hour had come when she must go, for
+the other force which was to be the instrument in changing all her
+future was astir, and she must go to keep her unconscious appointment
+with it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+'DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?'
+
+
+Judging from the result, this question might far better have been put to
+rather than by Peterkin, as he stood puffing, and hot, and indignant in
+the Tramp House, looking down upon Jerrie, who was sitting upon the
+wooden bench, with her aching head resting upon a corner of the old
+table standing against the wall just where it stood that stormy night
+fifteen years ago, when death claimed the woman beside her, but left her
+unharmed.
+
+After saying good-bye to Maude, Jerrie had walked very slowly through
+the park, stopping more than once to rest upon the seats scattered here
+and there, and wondering more and more at the feeling which oppressed
+her and the terrible pain in her head, which grew constantly worse as
+she went on.
+
+'I'm afraid I'm going to be sick,' she said to herself. 'I never felt
+this way before; and no wonder, with all I have gone through the last
+few weeks. The getting ready for the commencement, the coming home, and
+all the excitement which followed, with three men, one after another,
+offering themselves to me, and the drenching that night in the rain, and
+then watching by Maude without a wink of sleep, it is enough to make a
+behemoth sick, and I am so dizzy and hot--'
+
+She had reached the Tramp House by this time, and, feeling that she
+could go no farther without resting herself, she went in, and seating
+herself upon the bench, laid her tired, aching head upon the table, and
+felt again for a few moments that strange sensation as if the top of her
+head were rising up and up until she could not reach it with her hand,
+for she tried, and thought of Ann Eliza, with her hair piled so high on
+her head.
+
+'The loss of an inch or two might improve me,' she said, though I'd
+rather keep my scalp.'
+
+Then she seemed to be drifting away into the realms of sleep, and all
+around her were confusion and bewilderment. The window, across which
+the woodbine was growing, changed places with the door; the floor rose
+up and bowed to her, while the room was full of faces, beckoning to and
+smiling upon her. Faces like the one she knew so well, the pale face in
+the chair; faces like her own, as she remembered it when a child; faces
+like the dark woman dead so long ago and buried in the Tracy lot, and
+faces like Arthur's as she had seen him oftenest, when he spoke so
+lovingly, and called her little Cherry. Then the scene changed, and the
+old Tramp House was full of wondrous music, which came floating in at
+every crevice and through the open door and windows, while she listened
+intently in her dreams as the grand chorus went on. It as was if Arthur,
+from the top of the highest peak beyond the Rocky Mountains, and
+Gretchen, from her lonely grave in far-off Germany, were calling to each
+other across two continents, their voices meeting and mingling together
+in the Tramp House in a jubilistic strain, now wild and weird like the
+cry of the dying woman looking out into the stormy night, now soft and
+low as the lullaby a fond mother sings to her sleeping child, and now
+swelling louder and louder, and higher and higher, until the rafters
+rang with the joyous music, and the whole world outside was filled with
+the song of gladness.
+
+Wake up, Jerrie! Wake from the dream of rapture to a reality far more
+rapturous, for the time is at hand, the hour has come, heralded by the
+shadow which falls over the floor as Peterkin's burly figure crosses the
+threshold and enters the silent room.
+
+After Peterkin's conversation with his son concerning his future wife,
+Jerrie had grown rapidly in the old man's favor. It is true she had
+neither name nor money, the latter of which was scarcely necessary in
+this case, but he was not insensible to the fact that she possessed
+other qualities and advantages which would be a help to the house of
+Peterkin in its efforts to rise. No girl in the neighborhood was more
+popular or more sought after than Jerrie, or more intimate with the
+big-bugs, as he styled the St. Claires, and Athertons, and Tracys.
+Jerrie would _draw_; Jerry would _boost_; and he found himself forming
+many plans for the young couple, who were to occupy the south wing; and
+in fancy he saw Arthur at Le Bateau half the time at least, while the
+rest of the time the carriages from Grassy Spring, and Brier Hill, and
+Tracy Park, were standing under the stone arch in front of the door.
+How, then, was he disappointed, and enraged, too, when told by his son
+that Jerrie had refused him?
+
+Peterkin had been in Springfield nearly a week, and after his return
+home had waited a little before broaching the subject to his son; so
+that it was not until the morning before the day of the lawsuit that he
+learned the truth by closely questioning Billy, who shielded and
+defended Jerrie as far as possible.
+
+'Not have you! Refused you! Don't love you! Don't care for money!
+Thunderation! What does the girl mean? Is she crazy? Is she a fool? Is
+she in love with some other idiot?'
+
+'I th-think so, yes; th-though it did not occur to me then,' Billy
+answered, very meekly; 'and if so she ca-can't care for me any mo-more
+that I ca-can care for any other girl.'
+
+'And you are a fool, too,' was the affectionate rejoinder. 'I'll be
+dummed if you ain't a pair! Who is the lucky man? Not that dog Harold,
+who is goin' to swear agin' us to-morrow? If it is, I b'lieve I'll shoot
+him.'
+
+'Father,' Billy cried in alarm, 'be quiet; if I can st-stand it, you
+can.'
+
+But Peterkin swore he wouldn't stand it. He'd do something, he didn't
+know what; and all the morning he went about the house like a madman,
+swearing at his wife, because she wasn't _up to snuff_, and couldn't hoe
+her own with the 'ristocrats; swearing at Billy because he was a fool,
+and so small that 'twas no wonder a bean-pole like Jerrie wouldn't look
+at him, and swearing at Ann Eliza because her hair was so red, and
+because she had sprained her ankle for the sake of having Tom Tracy
+bring her home, hoping he would keep calling to see her, and thus give
+her a chance to rope him in, which she never could as long as the world
+stood.
+
+'Neither you nor Bill will ever marry, with all your money, unless you
+take up with a cobbler, and he with a washwoman,' was his farewell
+remark, as he finally left the house about three o'clock and started for
+the village, where he had some of his own witnesses to see before taking
+the train for Springfield at five.
+
+His wife had ventured to suggest that he go in a carriage, as it was so
+warm, but he had answered, savagely:
+
+'Go to thunder with your carriage and coat-of-arms! What good have they
+ever done us only to make folks laugh at us for a pack of fools? Nothing
+under heaven gives us a h'ist, and I'm just goin' to quit the folderol
+and pad it on foot, as I used to when I was cap'n of the 'Liza Ann--durn
+it!'
+
+And so, with his bag in his hand, he started rapidly down the road in
+the direction of Shannondale. But the sun was hot, and he was hot, and
+his bag was heavy, and, cursing himself for a fool that he had not taken
+the carriage, he finally struck into the park as a cooler, if a longer,
+route to the station.
+
+As he came near the Tramp House, which gave no sign of its sleeping
+occupant, something impelled him to look in at the door. And this he did
+with a thought of Jerrie in his heart, though with no suspicion that she
+was there; and when he saw her he started suddenly, and uttered an
+exclamation of surprise, which roused her from her heavy slumber.
+
+'Oh!' she exclaimed, shedding back her golden hair from her flushed face
+and lifting her eyes to him; but whatever else she might have said was
+prevented by his outburst of passion, which began with the question:
+
+'Do you know what you have done?'
+
+Jerrie looked at him wonderingly, but made no reply, and he went on:
+
+'Yes, do you know what you have done?--you, a poor, unknown girl, who,
+but for the Tracys, would have gone to the poor-house sure as guns,
+where you orter have gone! Yes, you orter. You refuse my Bill! you, who
+hain't a cent to your name; and all for that sneak of a Harold, who will
+swear agin me to-morrer. I know he's at the root on't, though Bill
+didn't say so, and I hate him wuss than pizen; he, who has been at the
+wheel in my shop and begged swill for a livin'! he to be settin' up for
+a gentleman and a cuttin' out my Bill, who will be wuth more'n a
+million,--yes, two millions, probably, and you have refused him! Do you
+hear me, gal?'
+
+He yelled this last, for something in Jerry's attitude made him think
+Jerrie was not giving him her undivided attention, for she was still
+listening to the music, which seemed to swell higher and higher, louder
+and clearer, until it almost drowned the voice of the man demanding a
+second time so fiercely:
+
+'Do you hear me, gal?'
+
+'Yes, I hear you,' she said. 'You are talking of Harold, and saying
+things you shall not repeat in my presence.'
+
+'Hoity-toity, miss! What's to hinder me repeatin' in your presence that
+Harold Hastings is a sneak and a snob, a hewer of wood, a drawer of
+water, and a--'
+
+Jerrie had risen to her feet, and stood up so tall and straight that, it
+seemed to Peterkin as if she towered even above himself, while something
+in the flash of her blue eyes made him think of Arthur when he turned
+him from the house for accusing Harold of theft, and also of the little
+child who had attacked him so fiercely on that wintry morning when the
+dead woman lay stretched upon the table at the Park House, with her dark
+face upturned to the ceiling above.
+
+'I shall hinder you,' she said, her voice ringing clear and distinct;
+'and if you breathe another word against Harold, I'll turn you from this
+room. The Tramp House is mine; Mr. Arthur gave it to me, and you cannot
+stay in it with me.'
+
+"Heavens and earth! hear the girl! One would s'pose she was the Queen of
+Sheby to hear her go on, instead of a beggar, whose father was the Lord
+only knows who, and whose mother was found in rags on this 'ere table.
+Drat the dum thing!" Peterkin roared, bringing his fist down with such
+force upon the poor old rickety table that it fell to pieces under the
+blow and went crashing to the floor.
+
+Jerrie's face was a face to fear then, and Peterkin was afraid, and
+backed himself out of the room, with Jerrie close to him, never speaking
+a word, but motioning him to the door, through which he passed swiftly,
+and picking up his bag, walked rapidly away, growling to himself:
+
+'There's the very Old Harry in that gal's eye. Bill did well to get shet
+of her; and yit, if she'd married him, how she would have rid over all
+their heads! Well, to be sure, what a dum fool she is!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+WHAT JERRIE FOUND UNDER THE FLOOR.
+
+
+Meantime Jerrie had gone back to the wreck of the table, which she tried
+to straighten up, handling it as carefully and as reverently as if it
+had been her mother's coffin she was touching. One of the legs had been
+broken off before, and she and Harold has fastened it on and turned it
+to the side of the house where it would be more out of the way of harm,
+and it was this leg which had succumbed first to the force of Peterkin's
+fist, and as the entire pressure of the table was brought to bear upon
+it in falling, it had been precipitated through a hole in the base
+board, which had been there as long as she could remember the place, not
+so large at first, but growing larger each year, as the decaying boards
+crumbled or were eaten away by rats.
+
+Jerrie called it a rat-hole, and had several times put a trap there to
+catch the marauders, who sometimes scampered across her very feet, so
+accustomed were they to her presence. But the rats would not go into the
+trap, and then she pasted a newspaper over the hole, but this had been
+torn, and hung in shreds, while the hole grew gradually larger.
+
+Taking up the top of the table, Jerrie dragged it to the centre of the
+room, and, putting three of the legs upon it, went to search for the
+fourth, one end of which was just visible at the aperture in the wall.
+As she stooped to take it out, a bit of the floor under her feet gave
+way, making the opening so large that the table leg disappeared from
+view entirely. Then Jerrie went down upon her knees, and, thrusting her
+hand under the floor, felt for the missing leg, striking against stones,
+and brushes, and bits of mortar, and finally touching something from
+which she recoiled for an instant, it was so cold and slimy.
+
+But she struck it again in her search, this time more squarely, and,
+grasping it hard in her hand, brought it out to the light, while an
+undefinable thrill, half of terror, half of joy, ran through her frame,
+as she held it up and examined it carefully.
+
+It was a small hand-bag of Russian leather, covered with mold and
+stained with the damp of its long hiding-place, while a corner of it
+showed that the rats had tested its properties, but, disliking either
+the taste or the smell had left it in quiet. And there under the floor,
+not two feet from where Jerrie had often played, it had lain ever since
+the wintry night years before when on the table a strange woman had
+struggled with death, and in her struggle the bag, which held so much
+that was important to the child beside her, had probably fallen from her
+rude bed into the hole just behind it, and which was then large enough
+to receive it. Then the rats, attracted by this novel appearance in
+their midst, had investigated and dragged it so far from the opening
+that it could not been seen unless one went down upon the floor to look
+for it.
+
+This was the conviction that flashed upon Jerrie as she stood, with
+widely dilated eyes and quivering nostrils, staring at the bag, without
+the power at first to speak or move.
+
+The music was gone now--Gretchen's voice and Arthur's--and there was
+only in her ears a roaring sound like the rushing of distant waters
+falling heavily, while the objects in the room swam around her, and she
+experienced again that ringing sensation as if the top of her head were
+leaving her. She was so sure that here at last was a message from the
+dead--that she had the mystery of her babyhood in her grasp--and yet,
+for full two minutes she hesitated and held back, until at last the
+sweet, pale face which had haunted her so often seemed about to touch
+her own with a caress which brought the hot tears to her eyes, and the
+spell which had bound her hands and feet was broken.
+
+The bag was clasped, but not locked, although there was a lock, and
+Jerrie thought involuntarily of the little key lying with the other
+articles on the dead woman's person. To unclasp the bag required a
+little strength, for the steel was covered with rust; but it yielded at
+last to Jerrie's strong fingers; and the bag came open, disclosing first
+some square object carefully wrapped in a silk handkerchief which had
+been white in its day, but which now was yellow and soiled by time. At
+this, however, Jerrie scarcely looked, for her eye had fallen upon a
+package of papers lying beneath it--papers folded with care, and
+securely tied with a bit of faded blue ribbon.
+
+Seating herself upon the bench where she had been sleeping when
+Peterkin's voice aroused her, Jerrie untied the package, and then began
+to read, first slowly, as if weighing every word and sentence, then
+faster and faster, until at last it seemed that her burning eyes, from
+which the hot tears were streaming like rain, fairly leaped from page to
+page, taking in the contents at a glance, and comprehending everything.
+
+When she had finished, she sat for a moment rigid as a corpse, and then,
+with a loud, glad cry, which made the very rafters ring, and went
+floating out upon the summer air, "Thank Heaven, I have found my
+mother!" she fell upon her face, insensible to everything.
+
+How long she lay thus she did not know, but when she came back to
+consciousness the sunlight had changed its position in the room, and she
+felt it was growing late.
+
+Starting suddenly up, and wiping from her face a drop of blood which has
+oozed from a cut in her forehead caused by her striking it against some
+hard substance when she fell, she looked about her for a moment in a
+bewildered kind of way, not realizing at first what had happened; and
+even when she remembered, she was too much stunned and astonished to
+take it all in as she would afterward when she was calmer and could
+think more clearer.
+
+Taking up the papers one by one, in the order in which she had found
+them, she tied them again with the blue ribbon, and put them into the
+bag.
+
+'There was something more,' she whispered, trying to think what it was.
+
+Then, as her eye fell upon the first package she had taken out, and
+which was wrapped in a silk handkerchief, she took it up, and removing
+the covering, started as suddenly as if a blow had been dealt her, for
+there was the tortoise-shell box, with its blue satin lining, and its
+diamonds, which seemed to her like so many sparks of fire flashing in
+her eyes and dazzling her with their brilliancy.
+
+Just such a box as this, and just such diamonds as these, Mrs. Frank
+Tracy had lost years ago, and as Jerrie held them in her hand and turned
+them to the light, till they showed all the hues of the rainbow, she
+experienced a feeling of terror as if she were a thief and had been
+convicted of the theft. Then, as she remembered what she had read, she
+burst into a hysterical fit of laughing and crying together, and
+whispered to herself:
+
+'I believe I am going mad like him.'
+
+After a time she arose, and with the bag on her arm and the diamonds in
+her hand, she started for home, with only one thought in her mind:
+
+'I must tell Harold, and ask him what to do.'
+
+She had forgotten that he was to leave that afternoon on the
+train--forgotten everything, except the one subject which affected her
+so strongly, so that in one sense she might be said to be thinking of
+nothing, when, as she was walking with her head bent down, she came
+suddenly face to face with Harold, who, with his satchel in his hand,
+was starting for the train due now in a few minutes.
+
+'Jerrie,' he exclaimed, 'how late you are! I waited until the last
+minute to say good-bye. Why, what ails you, and where have you been?' he
+continued, as she raised her head and he saw the bruise on her forehead
+and the strange pallor of her face.
+
+'In the Tramp House,' the answered, in a voice which was not hers at
+all, and made Harold look more curiously at her.
+
+As he did so he saw peeping from a fold of the silk handkerchief the
+corner of the tortoise-shell box which he remembered so well, and the
+sight of which brought back all the shame and humiliation and pain of
+that memorable morning when he had been suspected of taking it.
+
+'What is it? What have you in your hand?' he asked.
+
+Then Jerrie's face, so pale before, flushed scarlet, and her eyes had in
+them a wild look which Harold construed into fear, as, without a word,
+she laid the box in his hand, and then stood watching him is he opened
+it.
+
+Harold's face was whiter than Jerrie's had been, and his voice trembled
+as he said, in a whisper:
+
+'Mrs. Tracy's diamonds!'
+
+'Yes, Mrs. Tracy's diamonds,' Jerrie replied, with a marked emphasis on
+the _Mrs. Tracy_.
+
+'How came you by them, and where did you find them,' Harold asked next,
+shrinking a little from the glittering stones which seemed like fiery
+eyes confronting him.
+
+'I can't tell you now. Put them up quick. Don't let any one see them.
+Somebody is coming,' Jerrie said, hurriedly, as her ear caught a sound
+and her eye an object which Harold neither saw nor heard as he
+mechanically thrust the box into his side pocket and then turned just as
+Tom Tracy came up on horseback.
+
+'Hallo, Jerrie! hallo, Hal!' he cried, dismounting quickly and throwing
+the bridle-rein over his arm. 'And so you are off to that suit?' he
+continued, addressing himself to Harold. 'By George, I wish I were a
+witness. I'd swear the old man's head off; for, upon my soul, I believe
+he is an old liar?' Then turning to Jerrie, he continued: 'Are you
+better than you were this morning? Upon my word, you look worse. It's
+that infernal watching last night that ails you. I told mother you ought
+not to do it.'
+
+Just then a whistle was heard in the distance; the train was at
+Truesdale, four miles away.
+
+'You will never catch it,' Tom said, as Harold snatched up his bag and
+started to run, 'Here, jump on to Beaver, and leave him at the station.
+I can go there for him.'
+
+Harold knew it was impossible for him to make time against the train,
+and, accepting Tom's offer, he vaulted into the saddle and galloped
+rapidly away, reaching the station just in time to give his horse to the
+care of a boy and to leap upon the train as it was moving away.
+
+Meanwhile Tom walked on with Jerrie to the cottage, where he would have
+stopped if she had not said to him:
+
+'I would ask you to come in, but my head is aching so badly that I must
+go straight to bed. Good-bye, Tom,' and she offered him her hand, a most
+unusual thing for her to do on an ordinary occasion like this.
+
+What ailed her, Tom wondered, that she spoke so kindly to him and looked
+at him so curiously? Was she sorry for her decision, and did she wish to
+revoke it?
+
+'Then, by Jove, I'll give her a chance, for every time I see her I find
+myself more and more in love,' Tom thought, as he left her and started
+for the station after Beaver, whom he found hitched to a post and pawing
+the ground impatiently.
+
+Mrs. Crawford was in the garden when Jerrie entered the house, and thus
+there was no one to see her as she hurried up stairs and hid the leather
+bag away upon a shelf in her dressing-room. First, however, she took out
+two of the papers and read them again, as if to make assurance doubly
+sure; then she tried the little key to the lock, which it fitted
+perfectly.
+
+'There is no mistake,' she whispered; 'but I can't think about it now,
+for this terrible pain in my head. I must wait till Harold comes home;
+he will tell me what to do, and be so glad for me. Dear Harold; his days
+of labor are over, and grandmother's, too. Those diamonds are a fortune
+in themselves, and they are _mine_! my own! she said so! Oh, mother, I
+have found you at last, but I can't make it real; my head is so strange.
+What if I should be crazy?' and she started suddenly. 'What if that
+dreadful taint should be in my blood, or what if I should die just as I
+have found my mother! Oh, Heaven, don't let me die; don't let me lose my
+reason, and I will try to do right; only show me what right is.'
+
+She was praying now upon her knees with her throbbing head upon the side
+of the bed, into which she finally crept with her clothes on, even to
+her boots, for Jerrie was herself no longer. The fever with which for
+days she had been threatened, and which had been induced by over-study
+at Vassar, and the excitement which had followed her return home, could
+be kept at bay no longer, and when Mrs. Crawford, who had seen her enter
+the house, went up after a while to see why she did not come down to
+tea, she found her sleeping heavily, with spots of crimson upon her
+cheeks, while her hands, which moved incessantly, were burning with
+fever. Occasionally she moaned and talked in her sleep of the Tramp
+House, and rats, and Peterkin, who had struck the blow and knocked
+something or somebody down, Mrs. Crawford could not tell what, unless it
+were Jerrie herself, on whose forehead there was a bunch the size now of
+a walnut.
+
+'Jerrie, Jerrie,' Mrs. Crawford cried in alarm, as she tried to remove
+the girl's clothes. 'What is it, Jerrie? What has happened? Who hurt
+you? Who struck the blow?'
+
+'Peterkin,' was the faint response, as for an instant Jerrie opened her
+eyelids only to close them again and sink away into a heavier sleep or
+stupefaction. It seemed the latter, and as Mrs. Crawford could not
+herself go for a physician, and as no one came down the lane that
+evening, she sat all night, by Jerrie's bed, bathing the feverish hands
+and trying to lessen the lump on the forehead, which, in spite of all
+her efforts, continued to swell until it seemed to her it was as large
+as a hen's egg.
+
+'Did Peterkin strike you, and what for?' she kept asking; but Jerrie
+only moaned and muttered something she could not understand, except once
+when she said, distinctly:
+
+'Yes, Peterkin. Such a blow; it was like a blacksmith's hammer, and
+knocked the table to pieces. I am glad he did it.'
+
+What did she mean? Mrs. Crawford asked herself in vain, and when at last
+the early summer morning broke, she was almost as crazy as Jerrie, who
+was steadily growing worse, and who was saying the strangest things
+about arrests and blows, and Peterkin, and Harold, and Mr. Arthur, whose
+name she always mentioned with a sob and stretching out of her hands, as
+to some invisible presence. Help must be had from some quarter; and for
+two hours, which seemed to her years, Mrs. Crawford watched for the
+coming of someone, until at last she saw Tom Tracy galloping up on
+Beaver.
+
+'Tom, Tom,' she screamed from the window, as she saw him dismounting at
+the gate, 'don't get off, but ride for your life and fetch the doctor,
+quick. Jerrie is very sick; has been crazy all night, and has a bunch on
+her head as big as a bowl, where she says Peterkin struck her.
+
+'Peterkin struck Jerrie! I'll kill him!' Tom said as he tore down the
+lane and out upon the highway in quest of the physician, who was soon
+found and at Jerrie's side, where Tom stood with him, gazing awe struck
+upon the fever stricken girl, who was tossing and talking all the time,
+and whose bright eyes unclosed once and fixed themselves on him, as he
+spoke her name and laid his hand on one of hers.
+
+'Oh, Tom, Tom,' she said, 'you told me you'd kill her. Will you kill
+her? Will you kill her?' And a wild, hysterical laugh echoed through the
+room, as she kept repeating the words, 'Will you kill her? Will you kill
+her?' which conveyed no meaning to Tom, who had forgotten what he had
+said he would do if a claimant to Tracy Park should appear in the shape
+of a young lady.
+
+Whatever Jerrie took up she repeated rapidly until something else came
+into her mind, and when Mrs. Crawford, referring to the bunch on her
+head, said to the physician, 'Peterkin struck the blow, she says,' she
+began at once like a parrot. 'Peterkin struck the blow! Peterkin struck
+the blow!' until another idea suggested itself, and she began to ring
+changes on the sentence. 'In the rat-hole; in the Tramp House; in the
+Tramp House; in the rat-hole,' talking so fast that sometimes it was
+impossible to follow her.
+
+The blow on her head alone could not have produced this state of things;
+it was rather over-excitement, added to some great mental shock, the
+nature of which he could not divine, the doctor said to Tom, who in his
+wrath at Peterkin was ready to flay him alive, or at least to ride him
+on a rail the instant he entered town.
+
+It was a puzzling case, though not a dangerous one as yet, the physician
+said. Jerrie's strong constitution could stand an attack much more
+severe than this one; and prescribing perfect quiet, with strict orders
+that she should see no more people than was necessary, he left,
+promising to return in the afternoon, when he hoped to find her better.
+Tom lingered a while after the doctor had left, and showed himself so
+thoughtful and kind that Mrs. Crawford forgave him much which she had
+harbored against him for his treatment of Harold.
+
+All night Tom's dreams had been haunted with Jerrie's voice and Jerrie's
+look as she gave him her hand and said, 'Good-bye, Tom,' and he had
+ridden over early to see if the look and tone were still there, and if
+they were, and he had a chance, he meant to renew his offer. But words
+of love would have been sadly out of place to this restless, feverish
+girl, whose incoherent babblings puzzled and bewildered him.
+
+One fact, however, was distinct in his mind--Peterkin had struck her a
+terrible blow in the Tramp House. Of that he was sure, though why he
+should have done so he could not guess; and vowing vengeance upon the
+man, he left the cottage at last and rode down to the Tramp House, where
+he found the table in a state of ruin upon the door, three of the legs
+upon it and the other one nowhere to be seen.
+
+'He struck her with it and then threw it away, I'll bet,' he said to
+himself, as he hunted for the missing leg; 'and it was some quarrel he
+picked with her about Hal, who is going to swear against him. Jerrie
+would never hear Hal abused, and I've no doubt she aggravated the wretch
+until he forgot himself and dealt her that blow. I'll have him arrested
+for assault and battery, as sure as I am born.'
+
+Hurrying home, he told the story to his mother, who smiled incredulously
+and said she did not believe it, bidding him say nothing of it to Maude,
+who was not as well as usual that day. Then he told his father, who
+started at once for the cottage, where Mrs. Crawford refused to let him
+see Jerrie, saying that the doctor's orders were that she should be kept
+perfectly quiet. But as they stood talking together near the open door,
+Jerrie's voice was heard calling:
+
+'Let Mr. Frank come up.'
+
+So Frank went up, and, notwithstanding all he had heard from Tom, he was
+surprised at Jerrie's flushed face and the unnatural expression of her
+eyes, which turned so eagerly toward him as he came in.
+
+'Oh, Mr. Tracy,' she said, as he sat down beside her and took one of her
+burning hands in his, 'you have always been kind to me, haven't you?'
+
+'Yes,' he replied, with a keen pang of remorse, and wondering if she
+would call it kindness if she knew all that he did.
+
+'And I think you like me some,' she continued: 'don't you?'
+
+'Like you!' he repeated; 'yes, more than you can ever know. Why,
+sometimes I think I like you almost as much as I do Maude.'
+
+As if the mention of Maude had sent her thoughts backward in a very
+different channel, she said abruptly, while she held his gaze steadily
+with her bright eyes:
+
+'You posted that letter?'
+
+Frank knew perfectly well that she meant the letter which, together with
+the photograph, and the Bible, and the lock of the baby's golden hair,
+had lain for years in his private drawer--the letter whose
+superscription he had studied so many times, and which had seldom been
+absent from his thoughts an hour since that night when, from her perch
+on the gate-post, Jerrie had startled him with the question she was
+asking him now. But be affected ignorance and said, as indifferently as
+he could, with those blue eyes upon him seeming to read his inmost
+thoughts:
+
+'What letter do you mean?'
+
+'Why, the one Mr. Arthur wrote to Gretchen, or her friends, in
+Wiesbaden, and gave me to post. You took it for me to the office, and I
+sat on the gate so long in the darkness waiting for you to come and tell
+me you had posted it sure.'
+
+'Oh, yes, I remember it perfectly, and how you frightened me sitting up
+there so high like a goblin,' Frank answered, falteringly, his face as
+crimson now as Jerrie's, and his eyes dropping beneath her gaze.
+
+'Gretchen's friends never got that letter,' Jerrie continued.
+
+'No, they never got it,' Frank answered, mechanically.
+
+'If they had,' Jerrie went on, 'they would have answered it, for she had
+friends there.'
+
+Frank looked up quickly and curiously at the girl talking so strangely
+to him. What had she heard? What did she know? or was this only an
+outburst of insanity? She certainly looked crazy as she lay there
+talking to him. He was sure of it a moment after when, as if the nature
+of her thoughts had changed suddenly, she said to him:
+
+'Yes, you have been very kind to me, you and Maude--you and Maude--and I
+shan't forget it. Tell her I shan't forget it.--I shan't forget it.'
+
+She repeated this rapidly, and was growing so wild and excited that
+Frank thought it advisable to leave her. As he arose to go she looked up
+pleadingly at him, and said:
+
+'Kiss me, Mr. Tracy, please.'
+
+Had he been struck by lightning, Frank could hardly have been more
+astonished than he was at this singular request, and for a moment he
+stared blankly at the girl who had made it, not because he was at all
+averse to granting it, but because he doubted the propriety of the act,
+even if she were crazy. But something in Jerrie's face, like Arthur's,
+mastered him, and, stooping down, he kissed the parched lips through
+which the breath came so hotly, wondering as he did so what Dolly would
+say if she could see him, a white-haired man of forty-five, kissing a
+young girl of nineteen, and that girl Jerrie Crawford.
+
+'Thanks,' Jerrie said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. 'I
+think you have been chewing tobacco, haven't you? But I sha'nt forget
+it; I sha'nt forget it. I shall do right. I shall do right. Tell Maude
+so; tell Maude so.'
+
+She was certainly growing worse, Frank thought, as he went down to
+confer with Mrs. Crawford as to what ought to be done, and to offer his
+services. He would remain there that afternoon, he said, and send a
+servant over to be in the house during the night.
+
+'She is very sick,' he said; 'but it does not seem as if her sickness
+could be caused wholly by that bruise on her head. Do you think Peterkin
+struck her?'
+
+'She says so,' was Mrs. Crawford's reply, 'though why he should do it, I
+cannot guess.'
+
+Then she added that a servant would not be necessary, as Harold would be
+home by seven.
+
+'But he may not,' Frank replied. 'Squire Harrington came at two, and
+reported that the suit was not called until so late that they would not
+probably get through with the witnesses to-day, so Hal may not be here,
+and I will send Rob anyway.'
+
+On his way home Frank, too, looked in at the Tramp House, and saw the
+broken-down table, and hunted for the missing leg, and with Tom
+concluded that something unusual had taken place there, though he could
+not guess what.
+
+That evening, as Jerrie grew more and more restless and talkative, Mrs.
+Crawford listened anxiously for the train, and when it came, waited and
+watched for Harold, but watched in vain, for Harold did not come.
+Several of her neighbors, however, did come; those who had gone to the
+city out of curiosity to attend the lawsuit, and 'see old Peterkin
+squirm and hear him swear;' and could she have looked into the houses in
+the village that night, she would have heard some startling news, for
+almost before the train rolled away from the platform, everybody at or
+near the station had been told that Mrs. Tracy's diamonds, lost nine or
+ten years ago, had been found in Harold Hastings' pocket, and that he
+was under arrest.
+
+Such news travels fast, and it reached the Park House just as the family
+were finishing their late dinner.
+
+'I told you so! I always thought he was guilty, or knew something about
+them,' Mrs. Frank exclaimed, with a look of exultation on her face as
+she turned to her husband. 'What do you think now of your fine young
+man, who has been hanging around here after your daughter until she is
+half-betwaddled after him?'
+
+Frank's face was very grave as he answered, decidedly:
+
+'I do not believe it. Harold Hastings never took your diamonds.'
+
+'How came he by them, then?' she asked, in a loud, angry voice.
+
+'I don't know,' her husband replied; 'there is some mistake; it will be
+cleared in time. But keep it from Maude; I think the news would kill
+her.'
+
+Meantime Tom had sat with his brows knit together, as if intently
+thinking; and when at last he spoke he said to his father:
+
+'I shall go to Springfield on the ten o'clock train, and you'd better go
+with me.'
+
+To this Frank made no objections. If his wife's diamonds were really
+found, he ought to be there to receive them; and, besides, he might say
+a word in Harold's defence, if necessary. So ten o'clock found him and
+Tom at the station, where also was Dick St. Claire, with several other
+young men, pacing up and down the platform and excitedly discussing the
+news, of which they did not believe a word.
+
+'I almost feel as if they were hurting me when they touch Hal, he's such
+a noble fellow,' Dick said to Mr. Tracy and Tom. 'We are all as mad as
+can be, and so a lot of us fellows, who have always known him, are going
+over to speak a good word for him, and go his bail if necessary. I don't
+believe, though, they can do anything after all these years; but father
+will know. He is there with him.'
+
+And so the night train to Springfield carried fourteen men from
+Shannondale, thirteen of whom were going to stand by Harold, while the
+fourteenth hardly knew why he was going or what he believed. Arrived in
+the city, their first inquiry was for Harold, who, instead of being in
+the charge of an officer as they had feared, was quietly sleeping in his
+room at the hotel, while Judge St. Claire had the diamonds in his
+possession.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+HAROLD AND THE DIAMONDS.
+
+
+When Harold sprang upon the train as it was moving from the station and
+entered the rear car, he found old Peterkin near the door, button-holing
+Judge St. Claire, to whom he was talking loudly and angrily of that
+infernal cheat, Wilson, who had brought the suit against him.
+
+'Yes, yes, I see; I know; but all that will come out on the trial,' the
+judge said, trying to silence him.
+
+But Peterkin held on, until his eye caught Harold, when he let the judge
+go, and seating himself beside the young man began in a soft, coaxing
+tone for him:
+
+'I don't see why in thunder you are goin' agin me, who have allus been
+your friend, and gin you work when you couldn't git it any where else;
+and I can't imagine what you're goin' to say, or what you know.'
+
+Harold's face was very red, but his manner was respectful as he replied:
+
+'You cannot be more sorry than I am that I am subpoenaed as a witness
+against you. I did not seek it. I could not help it: but, being a
+witness, I must answer the questions truthfully.'
+
+'Thunder and lightning, man! Of course you must! Don't I know that?' the
+irascible Peterkin growled, getting angry at once. 'Of course you must
+answer questions, but you needn't blab out stuff they don't ask you, so
+as to lead 'em on. I know 'em, the blood-hounds; they'll squeeze you
+dry, once let 'em git an inklin' you know sunthin' more. Now, if this
+goes agin me, I'm out at least thirty thousand dollars; and between you
+and I, I don't mind givin' a cool two thousand, or three, or mebby five,
+right out of pocket, cash down, to anybody whose testimony, without
+bein' a lie--I don't want nobody to swear false, remember--but, heaven
+and earth, can't a body furgit a little, and keep back a lot if they
+want to?' 'What are you trying to say to me?' Harold asked, his face
+pale with resentment, as he suspected the man's motive.
+
+'Say to you? Nothin', only that I'll give five thousand dollars down to
+the chap whose testimony gits me off and flings old Wilson.'
+
+'Mr. Peterkin,' Harold said, looking the old wretch full in the face,
+'if you are trying to bribe me, let me tell you at once that I am not to
+be bought. I shall not volunteer information, but shall answer
+truthfully whatever is asked me.'
+
+'Go to thunder, then! I always knew you were a bad aig,' Peterkin
+roared; and as there was nothing to be made from Harold, he changed his
+seat to try his tactics elsewhere.
+
+Left to himself, Harold had time to think of the diamonds, which,
+indeed, had not been absent from his thoughts a moment, since Jerrie
+gave them to him. They were closely buttoned in his coat pocket, where
+they burned like fire, as he wondered where and how Jerrie had found
+them.
+
+'In the Tramp House it must have been,' he said to himself; 'but who put
+them there, and how did she chance to find them, and why did she look so
+wild and excited, so like a crazy person, when she gave them to me,
+bidding me let no one see them?'
+
+These questions he could not answer, and his brain was all in a whirl
+when the train reached Springfield, and, with the others, he registered
+himself at the hotel. Suddenly, like a gleam of lightning seen through a
+rift of clouds, there came back to him, with a horrible distinctness,
+the words the child Jerry had spoken to him that day years ago, when he
+had walked homeward with her through the leafy woods from the Park
+House, where he had been questioned so closely by Mrs. Tracy with regard
+to her diamonds and what he had been doing in the house on the morning
+of their disappearance.
+
+'I know where those diamonds are, but I shan't tell while there is such
+a fuss,' she had said, and in his abstraction he had scarcely noticed it
+then, but it came back to him now with fearful significance, making him
+sick, and faint, and cold, although the great drops of sweat stood
+thickly upon his lips and under his hair, as, after the gas was lighted,
+he sat alone in a little reception-room opening from one of the parlors.
+Did Jerrie know where they were, and had she known all the time and not
+spoken? And, if so, was she not guilty as an accessory, at least in
+trying to shield another? For that she took them herself he never for a
+moment dreamed. It was some one else, and she knew and did not tell. He
+was certain of it now, as every incident connected with her strange
+sickness came back to him, when she seemed to be doing penance for
+another's fault. She had called herself an accessory, and that was what
+she was, or rather what the world would call her, if it knew. To him she
+was Jerrie, the girl he loved, and he would defend her to the bitter
+end, no matter how culpable she had been in keeping silence so long.
+
+But who took them! That was the question puzzling him so much as he sat
+thinking with his head bent down, and so absorbed that he did not hear a
+step in the adjoining room, or know that Peterkin had seated himself
+just where a large mirror showed him distinctly the young man in the
+next room, whom he recognized at once, though Harold never moved for a
+few moments or lifted his head.
+
+At last, however, he unbuttoned his coat and after glancing cautiously
+around to make sure no one was near, he took the box from his pocket,
+and holding the stones to the light examined them carefully, taking in
+his hand first the ear-rings and then the pin, and holding them in such
+a way that two or three times they flashed directly in the eyes of the
+cruel man watching him.
+
+'Yes, they are Mrs. Tracy's diamonds; there can be no mistake,' he
+whispered, just as he became conscious that there was some one in the
+door looking at him.
+
+Quick as thought he put the box out of sight just as Peterkin's voice,
+exultant and hateful, cried out:
+
+'Hallo, Mr. Prayer-book! your piety won't let you keep back a darned
+thing you know agin me, but it lets you have in your possession diamonds
+which I'd eenamost sware was them stones Miss Tracy lost years ago and
+suspected you of takin. I know the box anyway, I heard it described so
+often, and I b'lieve I know them diamonds. I seen 'em in the
+lookin'-glass, settin' in t'other room, and seen you look all round like
+a thief afore you opened 'em. So, fork over, and mebby you can give me
+back May Jane's pin you stole at the party the night Mr. Arthur came
+home. Fork over, I say!'
+
+Too much astonished at first to speak, Harold stood staring at the man
+who had attacked him so brutally, while his hand closed tightly over the
+diamonds in his pocket, as if fearing they might be wrenched from him by
+force.
+
+'Will you fork over, or shall I call the perlice?' Peterkin asked.
+
+'Call the police as soon as you like,' Harold replied, 'but I shall not
+give you the diamonds.'
+
+'Then you own that you've got 'em! That's half the battle!' Peterkin
+said, coming up close to him, and looking at him with a meaning smile
+more detestable than any menace could have been. 'I know you've got 'em,
+and I can run you if I try, and then what will your doxie think of you!
+Will she refuse my Bill for a thief, and treat me as if I was dirt?'
+
+'What do you mean, sir?' Harold demanded, feeling intuitively that by
+his _doxie_ Jerrie was meant, and feeling a great horror, too, lest by
+some means Jerrie's name should be mixed up with the affair before she
+had a chance to explain.
+
+The reference to Billy was a puzzle, but Peterkin did not leave him in
+doubt.
+
+'I mean that you think yourself very fine, and always have, and that are
+girl of the carpet-bag thinks herself fine, too, and refused my Bill for
+you, who hain't a cent in the world. I seen it in her face when I
+twitted her on it, and she riz up agin me like a catamount. But I'll be
+even with you both yit. I've got you in my power, young man, but--' and
+here he came a step or two nearer to Harold, and dropping his voice to a
+whisper said: 'I sha'n't do nothin', nor say nothin' till you've gin
+your evidence, and if you hold your tongue I will. You tickle me, and
+I'll tickle you! see!'
+
+Harold was too indignant to reply, and feeling that he was degrading
+himself every moment he spent in the presence of that man, he left the
+room without a word, and went to his own apartment, but not to sleep,
+for never had he spent so wretched a night as that which followed his
+interview with Peterkin. Of what the man could do to him, he had no
+fear. His anxiety was all for Jerrie. Where did she find the diamonds,
+and for whom did she keep silence so long? and what would be said of
+the act when it was known, as it might be, though not from him?
+
+Two or three times he arose and lighted the gas, examined the diamonds
+carefully to see if there were not some mistake. But there could be
+none. He had seen them on the lady's person and had heard them described
+so accurately that he could not be mistaken; and then the box was the
+same he had once seen when Jack took him to his mother's room to show
+him what Uncle Arthur had brought. That was a tortoise shell, of an oval
+shape, lined with blue satin, and this was a tortoise shell, oval
+shaped, and lined with blue satin. Harold felt, when at last the
+daylight shone into his room, that if it had tarried a moment longer he
+must have gone mad. He was very white and haggard, and there were dark
+rings under his eyes, when he went down to the office, where the first
+person he met was Billy, who also looked pale and worn, with a different
+expression upon his face from anything Harold had ever seen before. It
+was as if all life and hope had gone, leaving him nothing now to care
+for. In his anxiety and worry about the diamonds Harold had scarcely
+given a thought to what Peterkin had said of Jerrie's refusal of Billy,
+for it seemed so improbable that the latter would presume to offer
+himself to her; but at sight of Billy's face it came back to him with a
+throb of pity for the man, and a thrill of joy for himself for whom
+Peterkin had said his son was rejected.
+
+'Does Billy know of the diamonds, I wonder?' he thought.
+
+As if to answer the question in the negative, Billy came quickly
+forward, and offering his hand, bade Harold good-morning, and then
+motioning him to a seat, took one beside him, and began:
+
+'I'm awful sorry, Hal, th-that you are mix-mixed up in th-this but I sup
+suppose you m-must t-tell the truth.'
+
+'Yes, I must tell the truth, Harold said.'
+
+'Fa-father will be so m-mad,' Billy continued. 'I wi-wish I could
+t-t-testify f-for you, bu-but I can't. You were th-there, I wa-wan't,
+and all I know fa-father told me; bu-but d don't volunteer information.'
+
+'No,' Harold said, slowly, wishing that the ocean were rolling between
+him and this detestable suit.
+
+Once he resolved to go to Judge St. Claire, deliver up the diamonds, and
+tell him all he knew about them, but this would be bringing Jerrie into
+the matter, and so he changed his mind and wondered aimlessly about the
+town until it was time for him to appear at the court-house, where a
+crowd was gathering. It was late before the suit known as _Wilson vs.
+Peterkin_ was called, and later still when Harold took the stand.
+
+White and trembling, so that both his hands and his knees were shaking
+visibly, he seemed more like a criminal than a witness, he was so
+agitated and pre-occupied, too, it would seem, for at first his answers
+were given at random, as if he hardly knew what he was saying; nor did
+he, for over and beyond the sea of long faces confronting him, Judge St.
+Claire's wondering and curious--Billy's wondering, too--Wilson's
+disappointed and surprised, and Peterkin's threatening and exultant by
+turns--he saw only Jerrie coming to him in the lane and asking him to
+keep the diamonds for her--saw her, too, away back years ago up in the
+little low room, with her fever-stained cheeks and shorn head, talking
+the strangest things of prisons, and substitutes, and accessories, and
+assuring some one that she would never tell, and was going for him, if
+necessary.
+
+Who was that man? Where was he now? and why had he imposed this terrible
+secret upon Jerrie?
+
+These were the thoughts crowding through his brain while he was being
+questioned as to what he knew of the agreement between the plaintiff and
+defendant while in the office of the latter. Once a thought of Maude
+crossed his mind with a keen pang of regret, as he remembered the lovely
+face which had smiled so fondly upon him, mistaking his meaning utterly,
+and appropriating to herself the love he was trying to tell her was
+another's. And with thoughts of Maude there came a thought of Arthur,
+the very first which Harold had given him, Arthur, the crazy man, who
+himself had hidden the diamonds and for whom Jerrie was ready to
+sacrifice so much. It was clear as daylight to him now, the anxiety and
+stain were over, and those who were watching him so intently as he gave
+his answers at random, with the sweat pouring like rain down his face,
+were electrified at the start he gave as he came to himself and realized
+for the first time where he was, and why he was there. Arthur would
+never see Jerrie wronged. _She_ was safe, and with this load lifted from
+him, he gave his whole attention to the business on hand, answering the
+questions now clearly and distinctly.
+
+When at last the lawyer said to him, 'Repeat what you can remember of
+the conversation which took place between the plaintiff and the
+defendant on the morning of ----, 18--,' he gave one sorry look at poor
+Billy, who was the picture of shame and confusion, and then, in a clear,
+distinct voice, which filled every corner of the room, told what he had
+heard said in his presence, and what he knew of the transaction, proving
+conclusively that the plaintiff was right and Peterkin a rascal, and
+this in the face of the man who had asked him not to _blab_ and who
+shook his fist at him threateningly as the narrative went on.
+
+'Would you believe the defendant under oath?' was asked at the close,
+and Harold answered, promptly:
+
+'Under oath--yes.'
+
+'Would you, if not under oath?'
+
+'If an untruth would be to his advantage, no,' and then Harold was
+through.
+
+As he stepped down from the witness stand old Peterkin arose, so angry
+that at first he could scarcely articulate his words.
+
+'You dog! you liar! you thief! he screamed; 'to stand there and lie so
+about me! I'll teach you--I'll show 'em what you are. If there's a
+perlice here, I call on 'em to arrest this feller for them diamonds of
+Miss Tracy's! They are in his pocket--or was last night. I seen 'em
+myself, and he dassent deny it.'
+
+By this time the court-house was in wild confusion, as the spectators
+arose from their seats and pressed forward to where Peterkin stood
+denouncing Harold, who was white as ashes, and looked as if he were
+going to faint, as Billy hastened to his side, whispering:
+
+'Lean on me, and I will get you out of this. Father is mad.'
+
+But order was soon restored, though not until Peterkin had yelled again,
+as Harold was leaving the room:
+
+'Search him, I tell you! Don't let him escape! He's got 'em in his
+pocket--Miss Tracy's diamonds! Lord of heavens! don't you remember the
+row there was about 'em years ago?'
+
+Of what followed during the next hour Harold knew very little. There
+was a crowd around him, and cries of 'He is going to faint!' while
+Billy's stammering voice called pleadingly, 'St-stand back, ca-can't
+you, and gi-give him air.'
+
+Then, a deluge of water in his face; then a great darkness and the
+voices sounded a long way off, and he felt so tired and sleepy, and
+thought of Jerry, and Maude, and lived over again the scene in the
+Tramp-House, when he found the former in the bag, and felt her little
+fat arms around his neck as he staggered with her through the snow,
+wondering why she was so heavy, and why her feet were dragging on the
+ground. When he came more fully to himself, he was in a little room in
+the court-house, and Billy's arm was lying protectingly across his
+shoulder, while Billy's father was bellowing like a bull:
+
+'Be you goin' to let him go! Ain't you goin' to git a writ and arrest
+him! Why don't you handcuff him, somebody? And you, Bill, be you a fool
+to stan' there a huggin' him as if he was a gal! What do you mean?'
+
+'Ha-Hal is my fr-friend, father. He never to-took the diamonds,' Billy
+answered, sadly, while Judge St. Claire, who had the box of jewels in
+his hand and was looking very anxious, turned to the angry man clamoring
+so loudly for a _writ_ and said, sternly:
+
+'Even if Harold took the diamonds--which he did not, I am certain of
+that--there is some mistake which he will explain; but if he took them,
+it is too late to arrest him. A theft commited ten years ago cannot be
+punished now.'
+
+'May the Lord give you sense,' Peterkin rejoined, with a derisive laugh.
+'Don't tell me that a body can't be punished for stealin' diamonds ef
+'twas done a hundred years ago,'
+
+'But it is true, nevertheless,' the judge replied.
+
+Turning to another lawyer who was standing near, Peterkin asked:
+
+'Is that so, square? Is it so writ? Is that the law?'
+
+'That is the law,' was the response.
+
+'Wall, I'll be condumbed, if that don't beat all!' Peterkin exclaimed.
+'Can't be sent to prison! I swow! There ain't no law or justice for
+nobody but _me_, and I must be kicked to the wall! I'll give up, and
+won't try to be nobody, I vurm!' And as he talked he walked away to
+ruminate upon the injustice of the law which could not touch Harold
+Hastings, but could throw its broad arms tightly around himself.
+
+Meanwhile the Judge had ordered a carriage and taken Harold with him to
+his private room in the hotel, where the hardest part for Hal was yet to
+come.
+
+'Now, my boy,' the judge said, after he had made Harold lie down upon
+the couch and had locked the door, 'now, tell me all about it. How came
+you by the diamond?'
+
+It was such a pitiful, pleading, agonized face which lifted itself from
+the cushion and looked at Judge St. Claire, as Harold began:
+
+'I cannot tell you now--I must not? but by and by perhaps I can. They
+were handed to me to keep by some one, just for a little while. I cannot
+tell you who it was. I think I would die sooner than do it. Certainly I
+would rather go to prison, as Peterkin wishes me to.'
+
+There was a thoughtful, perplexed look on the judge's face as he said:
+
+'This is very strange, Harold, that you cannot tell who gave them to
+you, and with some people will be construed against you.'
+
+'Yes, I know it; but I would rather bear it than have that person's name
+brought in question,' was Harold's reply.
+
+'Do you think that person took them?' the judge asked.
+
+'No, a thousand times, no!' and Harold leaped to his feet and began to
+pace the floor hurriedly. 'They never took them, never; I'd swear to
+that with my life. Don't talk any more about it, please; I can't bear
+it. I have gone through so much to-day, and last night I never slept a
+wink. Oh, I am so tired!' and with a groan he threw himself again upon
+the couch, and, closing his eyes, dropped almost instantly into a heavy
+slumber, from which the judge did not rouse him until after dinner, when
+he ordered some refreshments sent to his room, and himself awoke the
+young man, whose face looked pinched, and white, and haggard, and who
+could only swallow a cup of coffee and a part of a biscuit.
+
+'I am so tired,' he kept repeating; 'but I shall be better in the
+morning;' and long before the night train had come he was in bed
+sleeping off the effects of the day's excitement.
+
+The next morning when he went down to the office he was surprised and
+bewildered at the crowd which gathered around him--the friends who had
+came on the train to stand by and defend him, if necessary; and as the
+home faces he had known all his life looked kindly into his, and the
+familiar voices of his boyhood told him of sympathy for and faith in
+him, while hand after hand took his in a friendly clasp, that of Dick
+St. Claire clinging to his with a grasp which said plainer than words
+could have done: 'I believe in you, Hal, and am so sorry for you,' the
+tension of his nerves gave way entirely, and, sinking down in their
+midst, he cried like a child when freed from some terrible danger.
+
+He had not thought before that he cared for himself what people said,
+but he knew now that he did, and this assurance of confidence from his
+friends unnerved him for a time; then, dashing away his tears and
+lifting up his face, on which his old winning smile was breaking, he
+said:
+
+'Excuse me for this weakness; only girls should cry, but I have borne so
+much, and your coming was such a surprise. Thank you all. I cannot say
+what I feel. I should cry again if I did.'
+
+'Never mind, old boy,' Dick's cheery voice called out. 'We know what you
+would say. We came to help you, just a few of us; but if anything had
+really happened to you, why, all Shannondale would have turned out to
+the rescue.'
+
+'Thank you, Dick,' Harold said, the tears starting again; then, as his
+eye fell for the first time upon Tom, he exclaimed, with a glad ring in
+his voice, 'and you, too, Tom!'
+
+'Yes, I thought I'd come with the crowd and see the fun,' Tom answered,
+indifferently, as he walked away by himself.
+
+Tom had said very little, on the train, or after they had reached the
+hotel, but no one had listened with more eagerness to every detail of
+the matter than he had done, and all that morning he was busy gathering
+up every item of information, and listening to the guesses as to who the
+person could be who gave the diamonds to Harold.
+
+The jewels had been identified by his father and by himself, although an
+identification was scarcely necessary as Harold had distinctly said:
+
+'They are the Tracy diamonds, and the person who gave them, to me said
+so.'
+
+But who was the person? That was the question puzzling the heads of all
+the Shannondale people as the morning wore on, and each went where he
+liked. At last, toward noon, Tom found himself near Harold in front of
+the court-house, and going up to him, said:
+
+'Hal, I wan't to talk to you a little while.'
+
+'Yes,' Hal said, assentingly, and selecting out a retired corner, Tom
+began:
+
+'Hal, I've never shown any great liking for you, and I don't s'pose I
+have any, but I don't like to see a man kicked for nothing, and so I
+came over with the rest.'
+
+'Thank you, Tom,' Harold replied, 'I don't think you ever did like me,
+and I don't think I cared if you didn't, but I'm glad you came. Is that
+all you wished to say to me?'
+
+'So,' Tom answered. 'Jerrie is very sick--'
+
+'Jerrie! Jerrie sick! Oh, Tom!'
+
+It was a cry of almost despair as Harold thought, 'What if she should
+die and the people never know.'
+
+'She had an awful headache when you left her in the lane, and I walked
+home with her, and the next morning she was raving mad--kind of a brain
+fever, I guess.'
+
+Harold was stupefied, but he managed to ask:
+
+'Does she talk much? What does she say?'
+
+There was alarm in his voice, which the sagacious Tom detected at once,
+and, strengthened in his suspicion, he replied:
+
+'Nothing about the diamonds, and the Lord knows I hope she won't.'
+
+'What do you mean!' Harold asked, in a frightened tone.
+
+'Don't you worry,' Tom replied. 'I wouldn't harm Jerrie any more than
+you would, but--Well, Hal, you are a trump! Yes, you are, to hold your
+tongue and let some think you are the culprit. Hal, Jerrie gave you the
+diamonds. I saw her do it in the lane as I came up to you. I did not
+think of it at the time, but afterward it came to me that you took
+something from her and slipped it into your pocket, and that you both
+looked scared when you saw me. Jerrie was abstracted and queer all the
+way to the house, and had a bruise on her head, and she keeps talking of
+the Tramp House and Peterkin, who, she says, dealt the blow. I went to
+the Tramp House, and found the old table on the floor, with three of the
+legs on it; the fourth I couldn't find. I thought at first that the old
+wretch had quarreled with her about you on account of the suit, and she
+had squared up to him, and he had struck her; but now I believe _he_ had
+the diamonds, and she got them from him in some way, and he struck her
+with the missing table-leg. If you say so, I'll have him arrested.'
+
+Tom had told his story rapidly, while Harold listened breathlessly,
+until he suggested the arrest of Peterkin, when he exclaimed:
+
+'No, no, Tom. No; don't you see that would mix Jerrie's name up with the
+diamonds, and that must not be. She must not be mentioned in connection
+with them until she speaks for herself; and, besides, I do not believe
+it was Peterkin who took them. It might have been your Uncle Arthur.'
+
+'Uncle Arthur?' Tom said, indignantly. 'Why, he gave them to mother.'
+
+'I know he did,' Harold continued; 'but in a crazy fit he might have
+taken them away and secreted them and then forgotten it, and Jerrie
+might have known it, and not been able to find them till now. Many
+things go to prove that;' and very briefly Harold repeated some
+incidents connected with Jerrie's illness when she was a child.
+
+'That looks like it, certainly,' Tom said; 'but I am awfully loth to
+give up arresting the brute, and believe I shall do it yet for assault
+and battery. He certainly struck her. You will see for yourself the lump
+on her head.'
+
+So saying Tom arose to go away, but before he went made a remark quite
+characteristic of him and his feeling for Harold, to whom he said, with
+a laugh:
+
+'Don't for thunder's sake, think us a kind of a Damon and Pythias twins,
+because I've joined hands with you against Peterkin and for Jerrie.
+Herod and Pilate, you know, became friends, but I guess at heart they
+were Pilate and Herod still.'
+
+'No danger of my presuming at all upon your friendship for myself,
+though I thank you for your interest in Jerrie,' Harold replied.
+
+Then the two separated, Tom going his way and Harold his, until it was
+time for the afternoon train which was to take them home.
+
+The suit had gone against Peterkin, and it was in a towering rage that
+he stood in the long depot, denouncing everybody, and swearing he would
+sell out Lubbertoo and every dumbed thing he owned in Shannondale and
+take his money away, 'and then see how they'd git along without his
+capital to boost 'em.' At Harold he would not even look, for his
+testimony had been the most damaging of all, and he frowned savagely
+when on entering the car he saw his son in the same seat with him,
+talking in low, earnest tones, while Harold was evidently listening to
+him with interest. Small as he was and mean in personal appearance,
+there was more of true manhood in Billy's finger than in his father's
+whole body. The suit had been a pain and trouble to Billy, from
+beginning to end, for he knew his father was in the wrong, and he bore
+no malice toward Harold for his part in it, and when the diamonds came
+up, and his father was clamoring for a writ, he was the first to declare
+Harold's innocence and to say he would go his bail. Now, there was in
+his mind another plan by which to benefit his friend, and rival,
+too--for Billy knew he was that; and the heart of the little man ached
+with a bitter pain and sense of loss whenever he thought of Jerrie, and
+lived over again the scene under the butternut tree by the river, when
+her blue eyes had smiled so kindly upon him and her hands had touched
+his, even while she was breaking his heart. When Billy reached his
+majority his father had given him $100,000, and thus he had business of
+his own to transact, and a part of this was just now centered in
+Washington Territory, where, in Tacoma, on Puget Sound, he owned real
+estate and had dealings with several parties. To attend to this an agent
+was needed for a while, and he said to himself;
+
+'I'll offer it to Hal, with such a salary that he cannot refuse it; that
+will get him out of the way until this thing blows over.'
+
+Billy knew perfectly well that although everybody said Harold was
+innocent and that nine-tenths believed it, there would still be a few in
+Shannondale--the scum whose opinions his father's money controlled--who,
+without exactly saying they doubted him, would make it unpleasant for
+him in many ways; and from this he would save him by sending him to
+Tacoma at once, and thus getting him out of the way of any
+unpleasantness which might arise from his father's persecutions or those
+of his clan. It was this which he was proposing to Harold, who at once
+thought favorably of it--not because he wished to escape from the
+public, he said, but because of the pay offered, and which seemed to him
+far more than his services would be worth.
+
+'You are a noble fellow, Billy,' he said. 'I'll think of the plan, and
+let you know after I've seen Jerrie and Judge St. Claire.'
+
+'A-all ri-right; he'll a-advise you to go,' Billy said, as they arose to
+leave the car, followed by Peterkin, who had been engaged in a fierce
+altercation with Tom, who had accused him of having struck Jerrie, and
+threatened to have him arrested for assault and battery the moment they
+reached Shannondale.
+
+'Thunder and lightning and guns' old Peterkin exclaimed, while the
+spittle flew from his mouth like the spray from Niagara. 'I assault and
+batter Jerry Crawford!--a gal! What do you take me for, young man? I'm a
+gentleman, I be, if I ain't a Tracy; and I never salted nor battered
+nobody, and she'll tell you so herself. Heavens and earth! this is the
+way 'twas,' and Peterkin shook from his head to his feet--for, like most
+men who clamor so loudly for the law, he had a mortal terror of it for
+himself, and Tom's threatening looks and words made him afraid. 'This is
+how 'twas. I found her in the Tramp-House, and I was all-fired mad at
+her about somethin'--I shan't tell what, for Bill would kill me; but I
+pitched into her right and left; and, by gum, she pitched into me, so
+that for a spell it was nip-and-tuck betwixt us; and, by George, if she
+didn't order me out of the Tramp-House, and said it was her'n; and I'll
+be dumbed if I don't believe she'd av put me out, too, body and bones,
+if I hadn't gone. She was just like a tiger; and, I swan, I was kinder
+feared on her, and backed out with a kinder flourish of my fist on that
+darned old rotten table, which went all to smash; and that's all I know.
+You don't call that 'sault and batter, do you?'
+
+Tom could not say that he did, but he replied:
+
+'That's your version of it. Jerrie may have another, and her friends
+ain't going to have her abused by a chap like you; and my advice is that
+you hold your tongue, both about her and Harold. It will he better for
+you. Do you understand?'
+
+'You bet!' Peterkin said, with a meaning nod, breathing a little more
+freely as he caught sight of the highest tower of _Lubbertoo_, and more
+freely still when he arrived at the station, where he was met by his
+coat-of-arms carriage, instead of a writ, and was suffered to go
+peaceably home, a disappointed, if not a better man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+HAROLD AND JERRIE.
+
+
+The news which so electrified all Shannondale was slow in reaching Mrs.
+Crawford, but it did reach her at last, crushing and overwhelming her
+with a sense of shame and anguish, until as the day wore on, Grace
+Atherton, and Mrs. St. Claire, and Nina, and many others came to
+reassure her, and to say that it was all a mistake, which would be soon
+cleared up.
+
+Thus comforted and consoled, she tried to be calm, and wait patiently
+for the train. But there was a great pity for her boy in her heart as
+she sat by Jerrie's bedside and watched her in all her varying moods,
+now perfectly quiet, with her wide open eyes staring up at the ceiling
+as if she were seeing something there, now talking of Peterkin, and the
+Tramp House, and the table, and the blow, and again of the bag, which
+she said was lost, and which her grandmother must find.
+
+Thinking she meant the carpet bag, Mrs. Crawford brought that to her,
+but she tossed it aside impatiently saying:
+
+'No, no; the other one, which tells it all. Where is it! I must have
+lost it. Find it, find it. To be so near, and yet so far. What did it
+say? Why can't I think? Am I like Mr. Arthur--crazy, like him?'
+
+Mrs. Crawford thought her crazier than Arthur, and waited still more
+impatiently for Harold, until she heard his step outside, and knew that
+he had come.
+
+'Harold!'
+
+'Grandma!' was all they said for a moment while the poor old lady was
+sobbing on his neck, and then he comforted her as best he could,
+telling her that it was all over now--that no one but Peterkin had
+accused him--that everybody was ready to defend him, and that after a
+little he could explain everything.
+
+'And now I must see Jerrie,' he continued, starting for the stairs, and
+glad that his grandmother did not attempt to follow him.
+
+Jerrie had heard his voice, and had raised herself in bed, and as he
+came in, met him with the question:
+
+'Have you brought them? Has any one seen them?'
+
+The strange light in her eyes should have told Harold how utterly
+incapable she was of giving any rational answers to his questions, but
+he did not think of that, and instead of trying to quiet her, he plunged
+at once into the subject she had broached:
+
+'Do you mean the diamonds?' he asked.
+
+'Yes,' she replied, 'the diamonds! the diamonds! Where are they?'
+
+'Mrs. Tracy has them by this time,' Harold replied.
+
+'Mrs. Tracy!' Jerrie exclaimed. 'What has she to do with them? They are
+not hers. They are mine--they are mine! Bring them to me--bring them to
+me.'
+
+She was terribly excited, and for a time Harold bent all his energies to
+soothe her, and at last when from sheer exhaustion she became quiet he
+said to her:
+
+'Jerrie, where did you find the diamonds?'
+
+She looked at him curiously, but made no reply, and he continued:
+
+'You must tell me where you found them: it is necessary I should know.'
+
+Still she did not reply, but stared at him, as if not fully
+comprehending what he meant.
+
+'Jerrie,' he said again, 'do you love me?'
+
+Quickly her eyes filled with tears, and she replied:
+
+'Love you, Harold! Yes, more than you ever dreamed of; more than you
+love me.'
+
+Instantly Harold had his arms around her, for she had risen to a sitting
+posture, and pillowing her head upon his breast, he said:
+
+'No, darling, that is impossible, for I love you better than my life,'
+and his lips pressed hers passionately. He felt that this was their
+betrothal, for he did not take into consideration the state of her mind;
+but she undeceived him quickly, for although she kissed him back, she
+said, with a tinge of sarcasm in her voice:
+
+'Aren't you afraid they will see you?'
+
+'Who are they?' he asked, and she replied
+
+'The people, and the Harvard boys and Maude.'
+
+He did not know at all what she meant, but at the mention of Maude he
+groaned involuntarily, as the white face came up before him again and
+the eyes looked into his, fuller far of love and tenderness than those
+confronting him so steadily, with no consciousness of his real meaning
+in them.
+
+'Those diamonds have caused me a great deal of trouble,' he began again,
+'and will cause me more unless you tell me where you found them. Try and
+think. Was it in the Tramp House?'
+
+That started her at once, and she began to rave of the Tramp House, and
+the rat-hole, and the table, and Peterkin, who dealt the blow. The
+bruise on her head had not proved so serious as was at first feared, and
+with her tangled hair falling over her face Harold had not noticed it.
+But he looked at it now and questioned her of it, and asking if Peterkin
+had struck her there.
+
+'No,' she said, and began the senseless babbling of rat-holes, and
+table-legs and bags, and diamonds until Harold became alarmed and went
+for his grandmother.
+
+There was nothing to be learned from Jerrie in her present condition,
+and so Harold started for the Tramp House to see what that would tell
+him. The table was still upon the floor, with the three legs piled upon
+it, while the fourth one was missing. But Harold found it at last; for,
+remembering what Jerrie had said of the rat-hole, he investigated that
+spot, and from its enlarged appearance drew his own conclusion. Jerrie
+had found the diamonds there; he had no doubt of it, and he told Tom
+Tracy so; for, as if there was a fascination about the place for him,
+Tom appeared in the door-way just as Harold was leaving it. Sitting down
+upon the bench where Jerrie had sat that day when Peterkin attacked her,
+the two young men who had been enemies all their lives, but who were now
+drawn together by a common sympathy and love for the same girl, talked
+the matter over again, each arriving at the same theory as the most
+probable one they could accept.
+
+'Arthur, in a crazy fit, had secreted the diamonds, and Jerrie knew it,
+but possibly not where he had put them. This accounted for her strange
+sickness when a child, while her finding them later on, added to other
+causes, would account for her sickness now. Peterkin owns that he was
+blowing her up for something, and that he knocked the table down with
+his fist, but he swears he didn't touch her,' Tom said, repeating in
+substance all Peterkin had said to him in the train when shaking with
+fear of a _writ_.
+
+'And do you still mean to keep silent with regard to Jerrie?' Tom asked.
+
+'Yes,' Harold replied; 'her name must not be mentioned in connection
+with the diamonds. I can't have the slightest breath of suspicion
+touching Jerrie, _my sister_.'
+
+'Sister be hanged!' Tom began savagely, then checked himself, and added
+with a sneering laugh: 'Don't try to deceive me, Hal, with your sister
+business. You love Jerrie, and she loves you, and that is one reason why
+I hate you, or shall, when this miserable business is cleared up. Just
+now we must pull together and find out where she found the diamonds, and
+who put them there. To write to Uncle Arthur would do no good, though
+seeing him might; the last we heard he was thinking of taking the coast
+voyage from San Francisco to Tacoma.'
+
+'Tom,' Harold exclaimed, with great energy, as he sprang to his feet,
+'that decides me;' and then he told of the offer Billy had made him on
+the car. 'When I saw how sick Jerrie was, I made up my mind not to
+accept it, although I need the money badly. But now, if Jerrie gets no
+worse, I shall start for Tacoma in a few days and shall find your uncle
+Arthur, if he is to be found.'
+
+It was growing dark when the two young men finally emerged from the
+house and stood for a moment outside, while Harold inquired for Maude.
+
+'She is not very well, that's a fact,' Tom said, gloomily; 'and no
+wonder, when mother keeps her cooped up in one room, without enough
+fresh air, and lets nobody see her except the family and the doctor, for
+fear they will excite her. She knows nothing about the diamonds, nor
+that Jerrie is sick. I did tell her, though, that you had come home;
+and, by Jove! I pretty near forgot it. She wants to see you bad; but,
+Lord! mother won't let you in. No use to try. She's like a she-wolf
+guarding its cub. Good-night.'
+
+And Tom walked away, while Harold went back to the cottage, where he
+found Jerrie sleeping very quietly, with a look on her face so like that
+it had worn in her babyhood, when he called her his little girl, that he
+involuntarily stooped down and kissed it as one would kiss a beautiful
+baby.
+
+The next morning Jerrie was very restless, and talked wildly of the
+Tramp House and the diamonds, insisting that they were hers and must be
+brought to her.
+
+'Why did you tell her about them?' Mrs. Crawford asked, reproachfully.
+
+But Harold did not reply, his mind was so torn with distracting doubts
+as to whether he ought to take the western trip or not.
+
+If he went, he must go at once, and to leave Jerrie in her present state
+seemed impossible. He would consult the physician first, and Judge St.
+Claire next. The doctor gave it as his opinion that Jerrie was in no
+danger, if she were only kept quiet. She had taken a severe cold and
+overtaxed her strength, while most likely she had inherited from some
+one a tendency to be flighty when anything was the matter, and he
+thought Harold might venture to leave her.
+
+'Yes, I'd go if I were you,' he added, looking intently at the young
+man; for, like Billy, he too thought it might be pleasanter for him to
+be out of the way for a time, although he did not say so.
+
+And this was the view the judge took of it, after a few moments'
+conversation. His first question had been:
+
+'Well, my boy, can you tell me now who gave them to you?'
+
+'No, I can't,' was Harold's reply; and then, acting upon a sudden
+impulse, he burst out impetuously: 'Yes, I will tell you, for I can
+trust you, and I want your advice so badly.'
+
+So he repeated rapidly all he knew, and his theory with regard to
+Arthur, whom he wished so much to find, and of Billy's proposition that
+he should go on his business to Tacoma. For a few moments the judge
+seemed perplexed and undecided, for he was balancing in his mind the
+pros and cons for going from the people, or staying to face them. If he
+stayed he might have some unpleasant things to bear and hear, for there
+were those who would talk, in spite of their protestations of the young
+man's innocence; while to go might look like running away from the
+storm, with the matter unexplained. On the whole, however, he decided
+that it was better to go.
+
+'Jerrie's interests are safe with me,' he said, 'and by the time you
+return everything will be explained; but find Mr. Tracy as soon as
+possible. I am inclined to think your theory with regard to him
+correct.'
+
+So it was decided that Harold should go, and the next night was
+appointed for him to start. Had he known that Peterkin, and even Mrs.
+Tracy, were each in his or her own way insinuating that he was running
+from public opinion, nothing could have induced him to leave. But he did
+not know it, and went about his preparations with as brave a heart as he
+could command under the circumstances. Jerrie was more quiet now, though
+every effort on his part to learn anything from her concerning the
+diamonds brought on a fit of raving, when she would insist that the
+jewels were hers, and must be brought to her at once.
+
+'But you told me they were Mrs. Tracy's,' he said to her once.
+
+With a cunning gleam in her eyes, she replied:
+
+'So they are, or were; but oh, how little you know!'
+
+And this was all he could get from her.
+
+He told her he was going away, but that did not seem to affect her, and
+she only began to talk of Maude, who, she said, must not be harmed.
+
+'Have you seen her? have you seen her?' she kept saying.
+
+'Not yet,' he replied, 'but I am going to say good-bye;' and on the day
+of his departure he went to the Park House and asked if he could see
+Maude.
+
+'Of course not,' was Mrs. Tracy's prompt reply, when the request was
+taken to her. 'No one sees her, and I certainly shall not allow him to
+enter her room.'
+
+'But, Dolly,' Frank began, protestingly, but was cut short by the lady,
+who said:
+
+'You needn't "Dolly" me, or try to take his part, either. I have my
+opinion, and always shall. He cannot see Maude, and you may tell him
+so,' turning now to the servant who had brought Harold's message, and
+who softened it as much as possible.
+
+Harold had half expected a refusal, and was prepared for it. Taking a
+card from his pocket, he wrote upon it:
+
+    'DEAR MAUDE,--I am going away for a few weeks, and am very sorry
+    that I cannot see you; but your mother knows best, of course, and I
+    must not do anything to make you worse. I shall think of you very
+    often, and hope to find you much better when I return.
+
+    'HAROLD.'
+
+'Will you give this to her?' he said to the girl, who answered that she
+would, and who, of course, read every word before she took it to her
+young mistress, late in the afternoon, while the family were at dinner,
+and she was left in charge of the invalid.
+
+'Mr. Hastings sent you this,' she said, handing the card to Maude, into
+whose face the bright color rushed, but left it instantly as she read
+the few hurried lines.
+
+'Going away! Gone! and I didn't see him!' she exclaimed, regardless of
+consequences. 'And mother did it. I know she did. I _will_ talk till I
+spit blood; then see what she'll say!' she continued, as the frightened
+girl tried to stop her, and as she could not, ran for Mrs. Tracy, who
+came in much alarm, asking what was the matter.
+
+'You sent Harold away. You didn't let him see me, and he is--'
+
+Maude gasped, but could get no farther, for the paroxysm of coughing
+which came on, together with a hemorrhage which made her so weak that
+they thought her dying all night, she lay so white, and still, and
+insensible, save at times when her lips moved, and her mother, bending
+over her, heard her whisper:
+
+'Send for Harold.'
+
+But it was too late now; the train had come and gone, and taken Harold
+with it, away from the girl _he_ loved and from, the girls who loved him
+so devotedly, and both of whom, for a few days after his departure, went
+down very near to the gates of death, and whose first enquiry, when they
+at last came back to life and consciousness, was for Harold and why he
+stayed away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+JERRIE CLEARS HAROLD.
+
+
+The next day two items of news went like wildfire through the little
+town of Shannondale--the first, set afloat by Peterkin and helped on by
+Mrs. Tracy, that Harold had run away from public opinion, which was fast
+turning against him since he could not explain where he found the
+diamonds; and the second, that both Maude Tracy and Jerrie Crawford were
+at the point of death, which made Harold's sudden departure all the more
+heinous in the eyes of his enemies; for what but conscious guilt could
+have prompted him to leave his sister, who, it was said, was calling for
+him with every breath, and charging him with having taken the diamonds?
+Now, this was false; for although Jerrie's fever had increased rapidly
+during the night, and her babbling was something terrible to hear, there
+was in it no accusation of Harold, although she was constantly talking
+to him, and asking for the diamonds and the bag.
+
+'It is a pity he ever told her about them,' the doctor said, as twice
+each day, morning and night, for four successive days, he came and
+looked upon her fever-stained cheeks, and counted her rapid pulse, and
+took her temperature, and listened to her strange talk; and then, with a
+shake of his head, drove over to Tracy Park and stood by poor little
+Maude's couch, and looked into her death-white face, and counted her
+faint heartbeats, and tried in vain to find some word of encouragement
+for the stricken man, who looked about as much like death as the young
+girl so dear to him. And every morning, on his way from the cottage to
+Tracy Park, the doctor saw under the pines two young men, Tom and Dick,
+seated upon the iron bench each whittling a bit of pine, which one was
+unconsciously fashioning into a cross and the other into a grave-stone.
+
+Tom had found Dick there working at his cross, and, after a simple
+good-morning, had sat down beside him and whittled in silence upon
+another bit of wood until the doctor appeared on his way to Tracy Park.
+Then the whittling ceased, and both young men arose, and, going forward,
+asked how Jerrie was.
+
+'Pretty bad. Hal oughtn't to have gone, though I told him there was no
+danger. We must telegraph if she gets worse,' was the reply, as the
+doctor rode on.
+
+Tom and Dick separated, and saw no more of each other until the next
+morning, when they went again, and whittled in silence under the pines
+until the doctor came in sight, when the same questions were asked and
+answered as on the previous day.
+
+Billy never joined them, but sat under the butternut tree where Jerrie
+had refused him, for hours and hours watching the sluggish river, and
+wondering what the world would be to him if Jerrie were not in it. Had
+Billy been with Tom and Dick, he could not have whittled as they did,
+for all the nerve power had left his hands, which lay helplessly in his
+lap, and when he walked he looked more like a withered old man than a
+young one of twenty-seven.
+
+Maude was the first to rally--her first question for Harold, her second
+for Jerrie--and her father, who was with her, answered truthfully that
+Harold had not returned, and that Jerrie was sick and could not come to
+her. He did not say how sick, and Maude felt no alarm, but waited
+patiently until Jerrie should appear. For Maude, on her brass bedstead
+with its silken hangings, and every possible luxury around her, there
+were hired nurses and a mother's care, with many kind inquiries, while
+it would seem as if every hand in town was stretched out to Jerrie, who
+was a general favorite. Flowers and fruit and delicacies of every kind
+were sent to the cottage, carriage after carriage stopped before the
+door, offer after offer of assistance was made to Mrs. Crawford, while
+Nina and Marian Raymond were there constantly; and Billy went to
+Springfield for a chair in which to wheel his sister to the cottage, for
+she could not yet mount into the dog-cart; and Tom and Dick whittled on
+until the cross and the grave-stone were finished, and, with a sickly
+smile, Tom said to Dick:
+
+'Would you cut Jerrie's name upon it?'
+
+'No; oh, no!' Dick answered, with a gasp. 'She may be better to-morrow.'
+
+When, after a few days, the crisis was past, and Jerrie's strong
+constitution triumphed over the disease which had grappled with it, the
+whole town wore a holiday air as the people said to each other gladly:
+'Jerrie is better; Jerrie will live!'
+
+Her recovery was rapid, and within a week after the fever left her and
+she awoke to perfect consciousness, she was able to sit up a part of
+every day, and had walked across the floor and read a letter from Harold
+to his grandmother, full of solicitude for herself and enthusiasm for
+his trip over the wild mountains and across the vast plains to the
+lovely little city of Tacoma, built upon a cliff and looking seaward
+over the sound.
+
+'Dear Harold,' Jerrie whispered. 'I shall be so glad when he comes home.
+Nothing can be done till then, and I am so bewildered when I try to
+think.'
+
+In her weak state, everything seemed unreal to Jerrie, except the fact
+that she had found her mother--and such a mother!--and many times each
+day she thanked her God who had brought her this unspeakable joy, and
+asked that she might do right when the time came to act. She knew the
+bag was safe, for she had climbed to the top shelf and found it just
+where she had put it. But where were the diamonds? Had Harold taken them
+with him? Had he told any one? Did his grandmother know anything about
+them? she wondered. She tried in many ways to draw Mrs. Crawford out,
+but was unsuccessful, for there were now too much pain and bitterness
+connected with the diamonds for Mrs. Crawford to speak to her of them.
+The poisonous breath of gossip had been at work ever since Harold went
+away, quietly aided and abetted by Mrs. Tracy, who never failed to roll
+her eyes and shrug her shoulders when Harold's name was mentioned, and
+openly pushed on by Peterkin, until Tom Tracy went to him one day and
+threatened to have him tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail, if he
+ever breathed Harold's name again in connection with the diamonds.
+
+'Wall, I swow!' was all Peterkin said, as he put an enormous quid of
+tobacco in his mouth, and walked away, thinking to himself, 'Twould take
+an all-fired while to scrape them tar and feathers off of me, I'm so
+big, and I b'lieve the feller meant it. Them high bucks wouldn't like no
+better fun than to make a spectacle of me; so I guess I'll dry up a
+spell.'
+
+But the trouble did not stop with Peterkin's talk, for a neighboring
+Sunday paper, which fed its readers with all the choicest bits of
+gossip, came out with an article headed 'The Tracy Diamonds,' and after
+narrating the story in the most garbled and sensational manner, went on
+to comment upon the young man's having run away, rather than face public
+opinion, and to comment upon the law which could not touch him because
+the offence was committed so long ago.
+
+One after another, and without either knowing that the other had done
+so, Tom, and Dick, and Billy, waited upon the editor of the Sunday
+_News_, threatening to sue him for libel if he did not retract every
+word of the offensive article in his next issue, which he did. But the
+mischief was done, and the paper found its way at last to Jerrie, sent
+unwittingly by Ann Eliza, who covered it over a basket of fruit and
+flowers which was carried one afternoon to the cottage.
+
+Jerrie had been down stairs several times, but was in her room when the
+basket was brought to her. Raising the paper, she was about to throw it
+on the floor, when her eye caught the words, 'The Tracy Diamonds,' and
+with bloodless lips and wildly beating heart she read the article
+through, understanding the situation perfectly, and resolving at once
+how to act. It seemed to her that she was lifted above and out of
+herself, she felt so strong, and light, and well, as she threw on her
+bonnet and shawl, and taking the leather bag in her hand, hurried down
+stairs in quest of Mrs. Crawford.
+
+'Grandma!' she exclaimed, 'why haven't you told me about Harold, and the
+suspicion resting on him, and why did you let him go until I was better,
+and what are the people saying? Tell me everything.'
+
+Jerrie would not be put off, and Mrs. Crawford told her everything she
+knew, and that she herself had added to the mystery by the strange
+things she had said in her delirium about the diamonds, which she
+insisted were hers.
+
+'And they are mine!' Jerrie said, while Mrs. Crawford looked at her in
+alarm, for her madness had returned.
+
+'Where are you going?' she gasped, as Jerrie turned toward the door.
+
+'To Tracy Park, to claim my own and clear Harold!' was the reply. 'When
+I come back I will tell you all, but now I cannot wait.'
+
+'But, Jerrie, you are not strong enough to walk there, and besides they
+have company this afternoon, some kind of a new-fangled card party, and
+you must not go,' Mrs. Crawford said.
+
+'I have the strength of twenty horses,' Jerrie said, 'and if they have
+company, so much the better, for there will be more to hear my story.
+Good-bye.'
+
+She was off like an arrow, and went almost upon a run through the leafy
+woods until the house was reached, and then she stopped a moment to take
+breath and look about her. How very fair and beautiful it was, that home
+of the Tracys, and Jerrie's heart beat so hard that she felt for a
+moment as if she were choking to death as she sat under a maple tree and
+tried to think it all over, to make sure there was no mistake. Opening
+the box she took out two documents, and read them again as she had the
+night she was taken sick. One was a certificate of marriage, the other
+of a birth and baptism; there was no mistake.
+
+Holding the papers in one hand and the bag in the other, she went on to
+the house, from which shouts of laughter were issuing, Nina's voice, and
+Marian's, and Tom's, and Dick's, and Mrs. Tracy's. Jerrie shuddered a
+little when she heard that, for it brought back to her mind all the
+slights she had received from that woman who was so cruel to Harold, and
+the pity which had been springing up in her heart ever since she looked
+up at the windows of Maude's room and thought of the white-faced girl
+lying there, died out, and it was more a Nemesis than a gentle,
+forgiving woman who walked boldly into the hall and entered unbidden at
+the drawing-room door.
+
+Mrs. Tracy was having a progressive euchre party that afternoon. A
+friend in Boston had written her about it, and, proud to be the first to
+introduce it in Shannondale, she stood, flushed and triumphant, with the
+restored diamonds in her ears and at her throat, laughing merrily with
+the others at Judge St. Claire, who had won the booby prize--a little
+drum, as something he could beat--and who, with a perplexed look in his
+face, was staring at the thing as if he did not quite get the joke.
+
+Apart from the rest, Frank Tracy sat looking on, though with no apparent
+interest in the matter. He had joined in the game because his wife told
+him he must, and had borne meekly her sarcastic remarks when he trumped
+her ace and ordered up on nothing. His thoughts were not with the cards,
+but up stairs with Maude, who seemed to be much better, and for whom
+there was constantly a prayer in his heart.
+
+'Spare her, and I will make reparation; I will tell the truth.'
+
+He was trying to bribe the Lord to hear him, and there was some such
+thought in his mind when he saw Jerrie in the door--tall, thin, and
+white from her recent sickness, with eyes which rolled, and shone, and
+flashed as Arthur's did sometimes, and falling at last upon Mrs. Tracy,
+where they rested with an intensity which must have drawn that lady's
+notice to her, if Frank had not exclaimed, as he rose to his feet:
+
+'Jerrie! How did you get here?'
+
+Then all turned and looked at her, and crowded around her with
+exclamations of surprise and inquiries as to how she got there.
+
+For a moment Jerrie stood like one in a catalepsy, with no power to move
+or speak, but when Mrs. Tracy came forward, and in her iciest tones said
+to her: 'Good-afternoon, Miss Crawford. To what am I indebted for this
+unexpected pleasure?' her faculties came back, her tongue was loosened,
+and she replied in a clear voice, which rang through the room like a
+bell, and was, indeed, the knell to all the lady's greatness:
+
+'I am here to claim my own, and to clear Harold from the foul suspicion
+heaped upon him--by whom, at first, I do not know, but it was helped on
+by you. I have seen the paper, have heard the whole from grandma, and am
+here to defend him. It was I who gave him the diamonds! It was for me he
+kept silent, and let you think what you would.'
+
+'You gave him the diamonds?' Mrs. Tracy repeated, as one by one all the
+members of the party, even the judge and Tom, gathered close to her in
+their astonishment. 'You gave him the diamonds! You! and have come to
+confess yourself a--'
+
+She never finished the sentence, for something in Jerrie's face
+frightened her, while her husband, who had come forward, laid his hand
+warningly upon her arm.
+
+So absorbed were they all that no one saw the little white-robed girl,
+who, they supposed, was lying up stairs in her room, but who at the
+sound of Jerrie's voice had, in her eagerness to see her, crept down the
+stairs, and now stood in the door-way opposite to Jerrie, her large,
+bright eyes looking in wonder upon the scene, and her ears listening
+intently to what was as new to her as it had been to Jerrie an hour ago.
+
+'Don't give me the name you have more than once given to Harold,' Jerrie
+said, as with a gesture she silenced Mrs. Tracy. 'The diamonds are mine,
+not yours. Can one steal his own?'
+
+'Yours! Your diamonds! What do you mean?' Mrs. Tracy asked.
+
+'They were my mother's,' Jerrie replied, 'and she sent them to me.'
+
+They all thought her crazy except Frank, to whom there had come a horrid
+presentiment of the truth, and who had clutched hard his wife's arm as
+she said questioningly, in a mocking, aggravating tone:
+
+'And your mother was--?'
+
+Then Jerrie stepped into the room, and stood in their midst like a queen
+among her subjects as she answered:
+
+'My mother was Marguerite Heinrich, of Wiesbaden, better known to you as
+Gretchen; and my father is Arthur Tracy, and I am their lawful child. It
+is so written here,' and she held up the papers and the bag; 'I am
+Jerrie Tracy!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+WHAT FOLLOWED.
+
+
+'Thank God that it is out! I couldn't have borne it much longer,' leaped
+involuntarily from Frank's lips.
+
+No one heard it save Jerrie, and she scarcely heeded it then; for with
+one bound, as it seemed to the petrified spectators, who divided right
+and left to let her pass, she reached the opposite door-way, and
+stooping over the little figure lying there so still, lifted it
+tenderly, and carrying it up stairs, laid it down in the room it would
+never leave again until other hands than hers carried it out and laid
+it away in the Tracy lot, where only Jack and the dark woman were lying
+now.
+
+Maude had heard all Jerrie was saying, and understood it, too; and at
+the words, 'I am Jerrie Tracy,' she felt an electric thrill pass over
+her, like what she had experienced when watching the acting in some
+great tragedy; then all was darkness, and she knew no more until Jerrie
+was bending over her and she heard her mother saying:
+
+'Leave her to me, Miss Crawford. You have done harm enough for one day.
+You have killed my daughter!'
+
+'No!' Maude cried, exerting all her strength. 'She has not hurt me. She
+must not go, I want her; for if what she said is true, she is my own
+cousin. Oh, Jerrie, I am so glad!' and throwing her arms around Jerrie's
+neck, Maude sobbed convulsively.
+
+As yet Maude saw only the good which had come to her, if the news were
+true; the evil had not yet been presented to her, and she clung tightly
+to Jerrie, who, nearly distraught herself, did not know what to do. She
+knew that Mrs. Tracy looked upon her as an intruder, and possibly a
+liar; but she cared little for that lady's opinion. She only thought of
+Frank and what he would say.
+
+Lifting up her head at last from the pillow where she had lain it for a
+moment, while Maude's thin little hands caressed the golden hair, she
+saw him standing at the foot of the bed, taller, straighter than she had
+seen him in years, with a look on his face which she knew was not
+adverse to herself.
+
+'Jerrie,' he said, slowly and thickly, for something choked his speech,
+'I can't tell you now all I feel, only I am glad for you and Arthur, but
+gladder for myself.'
+
+What did he mean? Jerrie wondered; while Maude's eyes sought his
+questioningly, and his wife said, sharply:
+
+'You are talking like a lunatic! Do you propose to give up so easily to
+a girl's bare word! Let Jerrie prove it, before she is mistress here.'
+
+Then into Maude's eyes there crept a look of terror and pain, and she
+whispered:
+
+'Yes, Jerrie, prove it. There were papers in your hand, and a bag, and
+you said, "It is so written here." Bring the papers and read them to
+us--here in this room. I can bear it. I must hear them. I must know.'
+'Better let her have her way,' Frank said; and Dolly could have knocked
+him down, he spoke so cheerfully; while Jerrie answered:
+
+'I can't read them myself aloud. They are written in German.'
+
+'But Marian can. I saw her there. Let them all come up; they will have
+to know,' Maude persisted.
+
+After a moment, during which a powerful tonic had been given to his
+daughter, Frank went down to his guests, who were eagerly discussing the
+strange story, which not one of them doubted in the least.
+
+In her haste to reach Maude, Jerrie had dropped the bag and the two
+papers, which Judge St. Claire picked up and held for a moment in his
+hand; then passing the papers to Marian, he said:
+
+'It can be no secret now, and Jerrie will not care. What do the papers
+contain?'
+
+Running her eyes rapidly over them, Marian said:
+
+'The first is a certificate of marriage between Arthur Tracy and
+Marguerite Heinrich, who were married October 20th, 18--, in the English
+church at Wiesbaden, by the Rev. Mr. Eaton, then the officiating
+clergyman. The second is a certificate of the birth and baptism of
+Jerrine, daughter of Arthur and Marguerite Tracy, who was born at
+Wiesbaden, January 1st, 18--, and christened January 8th, 18--, by the
+Rev. Mr. Eaton.'
+
+Then a deep silence fell upon the group, while Tom stood like one
+paralyzed. He understood the situation perfectly, and knew that if
+Jerrie was mistress there, he could never hope to be master.
+
+'May as well evacuate at once,' he said at last, with an attempt to
+smile as he walked slowly out of the house, which he felt was his
+inheritance no longer.
+
+Just then Frank came down, saying that Maude insisted upon knowing what
+was in the papers which Marian was to read, while the others were to
+come up and listen. He did not seem at all like a man who had lost
+anything, but bustled about cheerily; and when the judge said to him
+apologetically, 'We know the contents of two of the papers. They are
+certificates of the marriage of Arthur with Gretchen, and of Jerrie's
+birth. I hope you don't mind if we read them,' he answered, briskly.
+
+'Not at all--not in the least. Arthur and Gretchen! I thought so. Where
+is Tom? He must hear the papers.'
+
+He found his son under the true where he had been sitting the morning
+when Jerrie came near fainting there, and in his hand was a curious bit
+of pine finished like a grave-stone--the same he had whittled under the
+pines, and on which he was now carving, 'Euchred, August --, 18--.'
+
+'This is the monument to our downfall,' he said, as his father came up
+to him with something so pitiful in his face and voice that Frank gave
+way suddenly, and, sitting down beside him, laid his hand upon his tall
+son's head and cried for a moment like a child, while Tom's chin
+quivered, and he was mortally afraid there was something like tears in
+his own eyes, and he meant to be so brave and not show that he was hurt.
+
+'I am sorry for you, my boy,' Frank said at last, 'but glad for
+Jerrie--so glad--and she will not be hard on us.'
+
+'I shall ask no favors of her. I can stand it if you can, though money
+is a good thing to have.'
+
+And then, without in the least knowing why, he thought of Ann Eliza, and
+wondered how her ankle was getting along, and if he ought not to have
+called upon her again.
+
+'Marian is going to read the papers in Maude's room, and I have come for
+you,' Frank said.
+
+'I don't care to hear them,' Tom replied. 'I am satisfied that we are
+beggars, and Jerrie the heiress.'
+
+But Frank insisted, and Tom went with him to his sister's room, followed
+by their friends, for whom the dinner was waiting and spoiling in the
+kitchen, where as yet no hint of what was transpiring had reached, save
+the fact that Maude had been down stairs and fainted. She was propped
+upon pillows scarcely whiter than her face save where two crimson spots
+burned brightly, and her eyes were fixed constantly upon Jerrie, who sat
+beside her, holding her cold, clammy hands, which she occasionally
+patted, and kissed and caressed.
+
+'Where did you find the bag?' the judge asked; and then Jerrie narrated
+the particulars of her interview with Peterkin, whose destruction of the
+table had resulted in her finding the bag with the diamonds in it.
+'They were mother's,' she said, the last words almost a sob, as she
+turned her eyes upon Mrs. Tracy, who stood like a block of stone, with
+no sympathy or credulity upon her face. 'Father bought them for her at
+the same time with Mrs. Tracy's, which they are exactly like. It is so
+written in her letter. And she sent them for me. They are mine and I
+gave them to Harold to keep untill I could think what to do. The
+diamonds are mine.'
+
+She was still looking at Mrs. Tracy, on whom all eyes were now resting
+as the precious stones flashed, and glittered, and shone in the sunlight
+in the hall in all the colors of the rainbow.
+
+For an instant the proud woman hesitated, then, quickly unclasping the
+ear-rings and the pin, she laid them in Jerrie's lap.
+
+'You are welcome to your property, if it is yours, I am sure,' she said,
+and was about to leave the room.
+
+But her husband kept her back.
+
+'No, Dolly,' he said. 'You must stay, and hear, and know. It concerns us
+all.'
+
+As he had closed the door and stood against it she had no alternative
+except to stay, but she walked to the window and stood with her back to
+them all, while Marian put into English and read, in a clear, distinct
+voice, and without the least hesitation, that message from the dead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+THE LETTERS.
+
+
+There were four of them--two in Arthur's handwriting: one directed to
+Mrs. Arthur Tracy, Wiesbaden, postmarked Liverpool; one to Margaret
+Heinrich, Wiesbaden, postmarked Shannondale; one in a strange
+handwriting to Arthur Tracy, if living; and one to Arthur Tracy's
+friends if he were dead, or incapable of understanding it. And it was
+this last which Marian read; for as Arthur was living, she felt that
+with his letters strangers had nothing to do. The letter to the friends,
+which had evidently been written at intervals, as the writer's strength
+would permit, was as follows:
+
+    'WIESBADEN, December ----, 18--,
+
+    'To the friends of Mr. Arthur Tracy, if he is dead, or incapable of
+    understanding this letter, from his wife, who was Marguerite
+    Heinrich, and whom he always called Gretchen.
+
+    'I want to tell you about it for the sake of my little Jerrie, whom,
+    if her father is dead, I give to your care, praying God to deal with
+    you as you are good and just to her. I was seventeen when I first
+    saw Mr. Tracy. My father was dead. I was an only child, and my
+    mother kept a little fancy shop in Wiesbaden. I went to school and
+    learned what other girls like me learned--to read and write, and
+    knit and sew, and fear God and keep His commandments. People called
+    me pretty. I don't know that I was, but he told me so when he came
+    to me one day as I was knitting under a tree in the park. He had a
+    picture made of me as I was then, and it is on the wall, but I have
+    pawned it for the rent, as I have almost everything.'
+
+'Oh, Jerrie!' Marian exclaimed at this point.
+
+But Jerrie's face was buried in Maude's pillow and she made no response.
+So Marian read on:
+
+    'He came many times, for I was always there waiting for him, I am
+    afraid; but when he said he loved me, and wanted me for his wife I
+    could not believe it, he was so grand, so like nobility, and I so
+    poor and plain. Then mother died suddenly--oh, so suddenly--well
+    to-day--dead to-morrow--with cholera, and I was left alone.
+
+    '"Gretchen we must he married now," he said to me, the night after
+    the funeral; and I answered him, "yes, we must be married;" and we
+    were, the next day, in the little English Church, by Mr. Eaton, the
+    pastor. You will find the certificate with the other papers. Do you
+    ever remember a beautiful moonlight night, when the air was soft,
+    and warm, and sweet with many summer flowers, and there was music in
+    the distance, and heaven seemed so near that you could almost touch
+    the blue lining which separates it from us? Well, just like that was
+    my life with Arthur for a few months. Oh, how I loved him, and how
+    he loved me! It frightened me sometimes, he was so fierce and--I
+    don't know what the word is--so something in his love. He never left
+    me a moment. He couldn't, he said, for I was his balance-wheel, and
+    without me he was lost. I think now he was crazy then. I know he was
+    afterward when he did such queer things and forgot so
+    often--sometimes the house we lived in, sometimes his own name, and
+    at last, me, his Gretchen! That was so sad, when he went away, and
+    stayed away for weeks, and said he had forgotten. But he was sorry,
+    too, and made it up, and for ten day heaven came down again so I
+    could touch it; then he went away and I have never seen him since.
+
+    'You must excuse me, his friends--if I stop a little while to cry;
+    it makes me no lonesome to think of the long years--four and
+    more--which have been buried with the yesterdays, under the flowers,
+    and under the snow, since Arthur went away and left me all alone. If
+    I had told him, he might have come back, he was so fond of children;
+    but I was not sure, and would not tell a lie, and let him go without
+    a hint. I wrote him once I had something to tell him when he came
+    which would make him glad, as it did me, and he never replied to it,
+    though he wrote two or three times more, and sent me money, but did
+    not tell me where he was, only he was being cured, he said--that was
+    all. In January my baby was born, and I had her christened Jerrine,
+    by Mr. Eaton. You will find it among the papers. Then, how I longed
+    for him, and waited, and watched; but he never came, and I knew he
+    had forgotten; but I did not doubt his love, or that he would one
+    day come back; and I tried to improve myself and learn what was in
+    books, so I could mate with him better when he came home, which he
+    never did; and the years went on, and my little Jerrine grew more
+    lovely every day. She is standing by me now, and says, "Are you
+    writing to him?"
+
+    'Darling Jerrie, you will be kind to her, won't you, for his sake,
+    and for me, too, who will be dead when you yet this?'
+
+Jerrie was sobbing now, and Maude's arm was around her neck, while Frank
+had walked to a window, and, like his wife, was looking out upon the
+lawn, which he did not see for the tears which filled his eyes.
+
+    'When the money stopped,' the letter went on, 'we grew so poor,
+    Jerrie and I and Nannine--that is the French woman who lives with me
+    and whom Jerrie calls Mah-nee. She will bring my child to you when I
+    am dead; and oh, be kind to her, for a truer, more faithful woman
+    never lived. She is such a comfort to me, except when she scolds
+    about Arthur and calls him a _bête noire_, which he is not, as you
+    will see. He was shut up, I don't know where, but think it was where
+    they put people with bad heads, and he forget everything till he was
+    out, and as far as Paris on his way to America. Then he remembered
+    and wrote me from Liverpool such a letter--full of love and sorrow
+    for the past, and sent me such lovely diamonds, just like those he
+    had bought for his sister in America, he said--and he was going home
+    at such a date on the Scotia, and he wished me to join him in
+    Liverpool. I send the letter with this to prove that I write true.
+    But it was too late, for I was too weak to travel; neither could I
+    write to him, for he gave me no address. 'That was last September,
+    and I have been dying ever since, for my heart broke when I thought
+    of what was and what might have been could I have found him. The
+    money he sent me then I am saving for Nannine and Jerrie to take
+    them to America when I am dead. All the days and nights I prayed
+    that Arthur might remember and write me again, and God heard, and he
+    did; and five days ago I received his letter. So crazy it was, but
+    just as full of love and tenderness and a desire to see me. He told
+    me of his lovely home and the Gretchen room, where my picture is in
+    the window; and in case there should be no one to meet me at the
+    station when I arrived he sent me directions how to find Tracy Park,
+    and told me just what to do when I reached New York. He would come
+    for me himself, he said, only the sea made him so sick and he was
+    afraid he should forget everything if he did. But you will see in
+    his letter what he wrote and how fond he was of me; and if he is
+    alive and too crazy to understand now, tell him, when he is better,
+    how I loved him and prayed for him every hour that God would bring
+    him, at last, where I am going so soon. Nannine will take him my
+    Bible, with passages marked by me, and a photograph which I had
+    taken a year ago, and which will tell you how I looked then. Now I
+    am so thin and pale that Arthur would hardly know me. I send, too, a
+    lock of Jerrie's hair, cut when she was three weeks old. Darling
+    Jerrie! She is such a comfort to me, and so old and womanly for her
+    years! She will remember much of our life here, for she notices
+    everything and understands it, too, and goes over, as in a play,
+    what she sees and hears.
+
+    'We have been cold and hungry sometimes; but not often; the
+    neighbors are so kind; and when I am dead they will see that Nannine
+    is made ready for America, with Jerrie; and the papers, and the
+    diamonds, which I might have pawned when our need was greatest, but
+    I could not. I must save them for Jerrie, and may she wear them some
+    day, and many days in the years to come, when her mother is dust and
+    ashes in the ground, but a glorified spirit in Paradise, where I
+    shall watch over her, and, if I can, be with her often, and keep
+    myself in her mind, so that she will never forget my face or the old
+    home in Germany.
+
+    'God bless my little daughter, and make her a true, noble woman; and
+    God bless you, Arthur's friends, who read this, and incline you to
+    be kind and just to Jerrie, and see that she has her own; for there
+    must be money at Tracy Park; and if you are poor and Jerrie comes
+    rich, tell her from her mother to be kind to you, and give as you
+    have given to her. Now I must stop, I am so tired, and it is growing
+    dark, and Nannie has opened the stove door to let the light fall on
+    the paper in my lap, and Jerrie is standing by me and says, "Are you
+    going to God pretty soon?"
+
+    'Yes, darling, very soon--to-night, perhaps, or to-morrow, or when
+    He will. The air grows cold, the night is coming on, my eyes grow
+    dim, my head is tired. I think, yes, I think it will be to-morrow.
+
+    'Good-bye.
+
+    'GRETCHEN TRACY.'
+
+As she finished reading Marian arose, and going up to Jerrie kissed her
+lovingly and said to her in German:
+
+'That was your mother's picture in our old home in Wiesbaden. I am so
+glad for you.'
+
+A low sob was Jerrie's reply, and then Judge St. Claire asked:
+
+'Is that all?'
+
+'Yes,' Marian said; 'All except Mr. Tracy's letters to Gretchen. Oh,
+no,' she added; 'there is something more;' and feeling in the bag, she
+drew out two small papers, one crumpled and worn, as if it had been
+often referred to, the other folded neatly and tied with a white ribbon.
+
+This Marian opened first, and found it to be a certificate, written in
+English, to the effect that Mrs. Arthur Tracy, _née_ Marguerite
+Heinrich, died at such a date and was buried by the Rev. Mr. Bellows,
+the resident rector of the English church; the other was in Arthur's
+handwriting, and the directions he had written to his wife, as to what
+she was to do and how to find Tracy Park.
+
+'Yes,' Judge St. Claire said, coming forward and taking the paper from
+her hand, 'this is what the station-master saw the poor woman examining
+that night in the storm. She probably dropped it into the bag without
+stopping to fold it. There can be no doubt.'
+
+Then a deep silence reigned for a moment in the room, until Mrs. Tracy,
+who, all through the reading had stood like a block of granite by the
+window, turned and walking swiftly up to Jerrie, said, in a bitter tone:
+
+'Of course there is no mistake. I do not doubt that you are mistress
+here, and am ready to leave at once. Shall we pack up and quit
+to-night?'
+
+'Dolly!' 'Mother!' came angrily and sternly from both Tom and Frank, and
+'Oh, mamma, please,' came faintly from Maude, while Jerrie lifted up her
+head, and looking steadily at the cruel woman, said:
+
+'Why are you so hard with me? I cannot help it. I am not to blame. I
+mean to do right; only wait--a little. I am so sick now--so dizzy and
+blind. Oh, somebody lead me out where I can breathe. I am choking here.'
+
+It was Tom who reached her first, and passing his arm around her, took
+her into the open air and to a seat under the tree where once before she
+had almost fainted, as she did now, with her head upon his shoulder, for
+he put it there, and then pushed her hair back from her face as he said
+lightly:
+
+'Don't take it so hard; if we can stand it, you can!'
+
+Then Jerrie straightened up and said:
+
+'Oh, Tom, do you want to kill me now?'
+
+'What do you mean?' he asked, and she replied:
+
+'Don't you know you said under the pines that you would kill any
+claimant to Tracy Park who might appear against you?'
+
+'I remember it,' Tom said, 'but I didn't think then that the claimant
+would be Jerrie, my cousin,' and he put his arm around her as he
+continued: 'I can't say that I am not awfully cut up to be turned neck
+and heels out of what I believed would be my own, but if it must be, I
+am glad it is you who do it, for I know you'll not be hard upon us, or
+let Uncle Arthur be, even if mother is so mean. Remember, Jerrie, that I
+loved you and asked you to be my wife when I believed you poor and
+unknown.'
+
+Tom was very politic and was speaking good words for himself, but all
+the good there was in him seemed now to be on the surface and while
+inwardly rebelling at his misfortune, he felt a thrill of joy in knowing
+that Jerrie was his cousin, and would not be hard upon him.
+
+'Shall we go back to the house?' he said at last, and they went back,
+meeting the people upon the piazza, where they stopped for a moment
+while Jerrie's hands were shaken, and she was kissed and congratulated
+that at last the mystery was cleared, and her rights restored to her.
+
+'Mr. Arthur Tracy ought to be here,' Judge St. Claire said.
+
+'Yes, I'd thought of that,' Tom replied, first, 'and shall telegraph him
+to-morrow,'
+
+Then they said good night, and without going in to see either Mr. or
+Mrs. Tracy again, Tom and Jerry walked slowly toward the cottage,
+through the leafy woods, where the trees met in graceful arches
+overhead, and the moonlight fell in silver flecks upon the grass, and
+the summer air was odorous and sweet with the smell of the pines and the
+balm of Gilead trees scattered here and there. It was a lovely place,
+and Tom thought so with a keen sense of pain, as, after leaving Jerrie
+at her gate, he walked slowly back until he reached the four pines,
+where he sat down to think and wonder what he should do as a poor man,
+with neither business nor prospects.
+
+'I don't suppose the governor has laid up much,' he said, 'for since
+Uncle Arthur came home he has done very little business, and has spent
+what really was his own recklessly and without a thought of saving, he
+was so sure to have enough at last, and Uncle Arthur was so free to give
+us what we asked for. But that will end when he knows he has a daughter,
+and as he never fancied me much, I shall either have to beg, or work, or
+starve, or marry a rich wife, which is not so easy for a poor dog to do.
+I don't suppose that Governor's daughter would look at me now, nor
+anyone else who is anybody. By George, I ought to have called on Ann
+Eliza before this time. I wonder if it's too late to go there now. I
+believe I'll walk round there anyway, and if I see a light, I'll go in,
+and if old _paterfamilias_--how I'd like to kick him--is there, I'll
+tell him the news, and that I know now he did not strike Jerrie with the
+table-leg, and perhaps I'll apologize for what I said when in the car.
+Tom Tracy, you are a scoundrel, and no mistake,' he added, with energy,
+as he arose, and struck into the field, through which he had dragged Ann
+Eliza the night of the storm.
+
+There were lights at Le Bateau, and Tom was soon shaking hands with old
+_paterfamilias_, who was at home, and with Ann Eliza, who was now able
+to come down stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+ARTHUR.
+
+
+He had enjoyed himself immensely, from the moment he first caught sight
+of grand old Pike's Peak on the distant plains until he entered the city
+of the Golden Gate, and, standing on the terrace of the Cliff House,
+looked out upon the blue Pacific, with the sea lions disporting on the
+rocks below. For he went there first, and then to China-town, and
+explored every nook and corner, and opium den in it, and drank tea at
+twenty dollars a pound in a high-toned restaurant, and visited the
+theatre and the Joss House, and patronized the push-cars, as he called
+them, every day, and experienced a wonderful exhilaration of spirits, as
+he sat upon the front seat, with the fresh air blowing in his face, and
+only the broad, steep street, lined with palaces, before him.
+
+'This is heaven! this clears the cobwebs!' he would say to Charles, who
+sat beside him with chattering teeth and his coat-collar pulled high
+about his ears, for the winds of San Francisco are cold even in the
+summer.
+
+Arthur's first trip was to the Yosemite, taking the Milton route, and
+meeting with the adventure he so much desired; for in the early morning,
+between Chinese Camp and Priest's, the stage was suddenly stopped by two
+masked marauders, one of whom stood at the horses' heads, while the
+other confronted the terrified passengers with the blood-curling words:
+
+'Hands up, every soul of you!'
+
+And the hands went up from timid women and strong men, until click-dick
+came in rapid succession from the driver's box, where Arthur sat, and
+shot after shot followed each other, one bullet grazing the ear of the
+highwayman at the horses' head, and another cutting through the slouched
+hat of his comrade near the stage.
+
+'Leave, or I'll shoot you dead! I've five more shots in this one, and
+two more revolvers in my pockets, and I'm not afraid!' Arthur yelled,
+jumping about like a maniac, as for the time being he was, and so
+startling the robbers that they fled precipitately, followed for a
+little distance by Arthur, who leaped from the stage and started in
+pursuit, with a revolver in each hand, and ball after ball flying ahead
+of him as he ran.
+
+When at last he came back, the passengers flocked around him, grasping
+his hands and blessing him as the preserver of their money, if not of
+their lives. After that Arthur was a lion, whom all people in the valley
+wished to see and talk with, and with whom the landlord bore as he had
+never borne with a guest before, for Arthur found fault with the rooms,
+which he likened to bath-tubs, and fault with the smells which came from
+the river, and fault with the smoke in the parlour, but made ample
+amends by the money he spent so lavishly, the scores of photographs he
+bought, and the puffs he wrote for the San Francisco papers, extolling
+the valley as the very gate of heaven, and the hotel as second only to
+the Palace, and signing himself "Bumble Bees."
+
+He went on every trail, and started for the highest possible peak, and
+when he stood on the top of old Capitan and looked down upon the world
+below, he capered and shouted like a madman, singing at the top of his
+voice, "Mine eye have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord, glory,
+glory, hallelujah!" until the rocky gorges rang with the wild echoes
+which went floating down the valley below, where the sun was shining so
+brightly and the grass was growing so green.
+
+On his return to San Francisco after an absence of several weeks, he
+took up his abode at the Palace Hotel, which he turned topsy-turvy with
+his vagaries; but as in the valley, so here in the city, the landlord
+could afford to bear much from one who spent his money so freely and
+paid so lavishly; and so he was allowed to change rooms every day if he
+liked, and half the plumbers in the city were called in to see what
+caused the smells which he declared worse than anything he had ever met
+in his life, and which were caused in part by the disinfectants which he
+bought by the wholesale and kept in his bath room, his wash-room, and
+under his bed, until the chambermaid tied her nose in camphor when she
+went in to do her work.
+
+But his career was brought to a close suddenly one morning in August,
+when, just as he was taking his coffee and rolls in his room, Charles
+brought him the following telegram:
+
+    'Come immediately. There's the devil to pay.
+
+    'TOM TRACY.'
+
+Arthur read the message two or three times, not at all disturbed by it,
+but vastly amused at its wording; then, putting it down, he went on with
+his breakfast until it was finished, when he took a card from his pocket
+and wrote upon it:
+
+    'Pay him then, for I sha'n't come. ARTHUR TRACY.'
+
+This was handed to Charles with instructions to forward it to Tracy
+Park. This done, he gave no further thought to the message so full of
+such import to himself, but began to talk of and plan his contemplated
+trip to Tacoma by the next steamer which sailed. It was six o'clock when
+he had his dinner in his own private parlour, where he was served by
+both Charles and a waiter, and where a second telegram was brought him.
+
+'Confound it,' he said, 'have they nothing to do at home but to torment
+me with telegrams? Didn't I tell them to pay the old Harry and have done
+with it? What do they mean?' and putting the envelope down by his plate
+he went quietly on with his dinner until he was through, when he took it
+up, and, breaking the seal, read:
+
+    'Come at once. I need you. JERRIE.'
+
+That changed everything, and with a bound he was in the next room,
+gesticulating fiercely, and ordering Charles to step lively and get
+everything in readiness to start home on the first eastward bound train
+which left San Francisco.
+
+'That rascally Tom is a liar,' he said. 'It's not the old Harry to pay.
+It's Jerrie. Do you hear, it's Jerrie. Bring me some paper, quick, and
+don't stand staring at me as if I were a lunatic. It's Jerrie who needs
+me.'
+
+Charles brought the paper, on which his master wrote:
+
+    'Coming on the wings of the wind, Yours respectfully,
+
+    'ARTHUR TRACY.'
+
+In less than half an hour this singular message was flying along the
+wires across the continent, and within a few hours Arthur was following
+it as fast as the steam horse could take him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+WHAT THEY WERE DOING AND HAD DONE IN SHANNONDALE.
+
+
+If the earth had opened suddenly and swallowed up half the inhabitants
+of Shannondale the other half could not have been more astonished than
+they were at the news which Peterkin was the first to tell them, and
+which he had risen very early to do, before some one else should be
+before him. Irascible and quick-tempered as he was, he was easily
+appeased, and the fact that Jerrie was Arthur Tracy's daughter changed
+his opinion of her at once.
+
+'The biggest heiress in the county except my Ann 'Liza, and, by gum, I'm
+glad on't for her and Arthur. I allus said she was hisen, and by George,
+to think that I helped her into her fortin, for if I hadn't of knocked
+that rotten old table down she'd of never found them memoirs,' he said
+to the first person to whom he communicated the news, and then hurried
+off to buttonhole and enlighten others, until everybody knew and was
+discussing the strange story.
+
+Before noon scores of people had found it in their way to walk past the
+cottage, hoping to catch sight of Jerrie, while several went in and told
+her how glad they were for her and Mr. Arthur, and looked at her with
+wondering eyes as if she were not quite the same girl they had known as
+Jerrie Crawford.
+
+When, the previous night, Mrs. Crawford had listened to the story Jerrie
+told her after her return from the Park House, she had been for a few
+moments stupefied with amazement, and had sat motionless on her chair
+until she felt Jerrie's soft hands upon her head smoothing her silvery
+hair, and Jerrie's voice said to her:
+
+'Dear grandma, I told you your working days were over, and they are, for
+what is mine is yours and Harold's, and my home is your home always, so
+long as you live.'
+
+The poor old lady put her head upon Jerrie's arm and cried hysterically
+for a moment; then she rallied, and brushing away her tears, kissed the
+young girl who had been so much to her, and whom for a brief moment she
+feared she might have lost. Far into the night they sat, talking of the
+past and the future, and of Harold, who was in Tacoma, where he might
+have to remain for three or four weeks longer. He had written several
+times to his grandmother and once to Jerrie, but had made no mention of
+the diamonds, while in her letters to him Mrs. Crawford had refrained
+from telling him what some of the people were saying, and the
+construction they were putting upon his absence. Jerrie had not yet
+written to him, but, 'I shall to-morrow,' she said, 'and tell him to
+hurry home, for I need him now, if ever.'
+
+Jerrie was very tired when she went at last to bed, but the dreamless
+sleep which came upon her, and which lasted until a late hour in the
+morning, did her good, and probably saved her from a relapse, which
+might have proved fatal. Still she was very pale and weak when she went
+down stairs about nine o'clock and found Tom waiting for her. He had
+been up since sunrise, strolling through the park, with a troubled,
+sorry look on his face for he was extremely sorry for himself, though
+very glad for Jerrie, whose sworn ally he was and would be to the end.
+In a way he had tried to comfort his mother by telling her that neither
+his uncle nor Jerrie would be unjust to her, if she'd only behave
+herself, and treat the latter as she ought, and not keep up such a high
+and mighty and injured air, as if Jerrie had done something wrong in
+finding out who she was.
+
+But Dolly would not be comforted, and her face wore a sullen, defiant
+expression, as she moved about the handsome house where she had queened
+it so long that she really looked upon it as her own, resenting bitterly
+the thought that another was to be mistress there. She had talked with
+her husband, and made him tell her exactly how much he was worth in his
+own right, and when he told her how little it was, she had exclaimed,
+angrily:
+
+'We are beggars, and may as well go back to Langley and sell codfish
+again.'
+
+She had seen Tom that morning, and when to her question, 'Why are you up
+so early?' he replied, 'To attend to Jerrie's affairs,' she tossed her
+head scornfully, and said: 'Before I'd crawl after any girl, much less
+Jerrie Crawford! You'd better be attending to your own sister. She's
+worse this morning, and looks as if she might die any minute.'
+
+Then Tom went to Maude, who, since the shock of the night before, had
+lain as if she were dead, except for her eyes, in which there was a new
+and wondrous light, and which looked up lovingly at Tom as he came in
+and kissed her, a most unusual thing for him to do.
+
+'Dear Tom,' she whispered, 'come closer to me,' and as he bent down to
+her, she continued, 'is every thing Jerrie's?'
+
+'Yes, or will be. She is Uncle Arthur's daughter.'
+
+'Shall we be very poor?'
+
+'Yes, poor as a church mouse.'
+
+Then there was a pause, and when Maude spoke again she said slowly:
+
+'For me, no matter--sorry for you, and father and mother; but glad for
+Jerrie. Stand by her, Tom; tell mother not to be so bitter--it hurts me.
+Tell Harold, when he comes, I meant to do so much for him, but Jerrie
+will do it instead. Tell her I must see her, and send for Uncle Arthur.'
+
+There was a lump in Tom's throat as he left his sister's room, and going
+to the village, telegraphed to his uncle's head-quarters at the Palace
+Hotel, San Francisco, that he was to come at once.
+
+At least a hundred people stopped him on his way to the office, asking
+if what they had heard was true, and to all he replied:
+
+'True as the gospel; we are floored, as Peterkin would say.'
+
+And then he hurried to the cottage to see Jerrie, and tell her of the
+message sent to Arthur, though not how it was worded After a moment he
+continued, hesitatingly, as if half ashamed of it:
+
+'I called at _Lubbertoo_ last night to enquire after Ann Eliza's foot,
+and you ought to have seen Peterkin when I told him the news. At first
+he could not find any word in his vocabulary big enough to swear by, but
+after a little one came to him, and what do you think it was?'
+
+Jerrie could not guess, and Tom continued.
+
+He said, "by the great Peterkin!" and then he swowed, and vowed, and
+snummed, and vummed, and dummed, and finally said he was glad of it,
+and had always known you were a Tracy. Ann Eliza was so glad she cried,
+and I think Billy cried, too, for he left the room suddenly, with very
+suspicious-looking eyes. Why, everybody is glad for you, Jerrie, and
+nobody seems to think how mean it is for us; but I'm not going to whine.
+I'm glad it's you, and so is Maude, and she wants to see you. I believe
+she's going to die, and--and--Jerrie--'
+
+Something choked Tom for a moment, then he went on:
+
+'If Uncle Arthur should get high, and order us out at once, as father
+seems to think he will, you'll--you'll--let us stay while Maude lives,
+won't you?'
+
+'Tom,' Jerrie said, reproachfully, 'What do you take me for, and why
+does your father think his brother will order him out?'
+
+'I don't know,' Tom replied, 'but he seems awfully afraid to meet him.
+Mother says he was up all night walking the floor and talking to
+himself, and yet he says he is glad, and he is coming this morning to
+see you and talk it over. I believe I hear him now speaking to Mrs.
+Crawford. Yes, 'tis he; so I guess I'll go; and when I hear from my
+telegram I'll let you know. Good-bye.'
+
+A moment after Tom left the room his father entered it, looking haggard
+and old, and frightened, too, it seemed to Jerrie, as she went forward
+to meet him with a cheery 'good-morning, Uncle Frank.'
+
+It was the first time she had addressed him by that name, and her smile
+was so bright and her manner so cordial that for an instant the cloud
+lifted from his face, but soon came back darker than ever as he declined
+the seat she offered him and stood tremblingly before her.
+
+Frank had not slept a wink the previous night, nor had he been in bed,
+but had walked his room until his wife said to him angrily:
+
+'I thought you were glad; seems to me you don't act like it; but for
+pity's sake stop walking, or go somewhere else do it and not keep me
+awake.'
+
+Then he went into the hall outside, and there he walked the livelong
+night, trying to think what he should say to Jerrie, and wondering what
+she would say to him, for he meant to tell her everything. Nothing could
+prevent his doing that; and as soon as he thought she would see him he
+started for the cottage, taking with him the Bible, the photograph and
+the letter he had secreted so long. All the way there, he was repeating
+to himself the form of speech with which he should commence, but when
+Jerrie said to him, so graciously, 'Good morning, Uncle Frank,' the
+words left him, and he began, impetuously;
+
+'Don't call me uncle. Don't speak to me, Jerrie, until you have heard
+what I have come to confess on my knees, with my white head upon the
+floor, if you will it so, and that would not half express the shame and
+remorse with which I stand before you and tell you I am a cheat, a liar,
+a villain, and have been since that day when I first saw you and that
+dead woman we thought your mother.'
+
+Jerrie was dumb with surprise, and did not speak or move as he went on
+rapidly, telling her the whole, with no attempt at an excuse for
+himself, except so far as to report what he had done in a business point
+of view, making provision for her in case of his death and enjoining it
+upon his children to see that his wishes were carried out.
+
+'Here is the Bible,' he said, laying the book in her lap. 'Here is the
+photograph, and here the letter which you gave me to post, and which,
+had it been sent, might have cleared the mystery sooner.'
+
+He had made his confession, and he stood before her with clasped hands
+and an expression upon his face such as a criminal might wear when
+awaiting the jury's decision. But Jerrie neither looked at him nor
+spoke, for through a rain of tears she was gazing upon the sweet face,
+sadder and thinner than the face of Gretchen in the window, but so like
+it that there could be no mistaking it, and so like to the face which
+had haunted her so often, and seemed so near to her.
+
+'Mother, mother! I remember you as you are here, sick and sorry, but oh,
+so lovely!' she said, as she pressed her lips again and again to the
+picture, with no thought or care for the wretched man who had come a
+step nearer to her, and who said at last:
+
+'Will you never speak to me, Jerrie? Never tell me how much you despise
+me?'
+
+'Then she looked up at the face quivering with anguish and entreaty, and
+the sight melted her at once. Indeed, as he had talked she had scarcely
+felt any resentment toward him, for she was sure that though his error
+had been great, his contrition and remorse had been greater, and she
+thought of him only as Maude's father and the man who had always been
+kind to her. And she made him believe at last that she forgave him for
+Maude's sake, if not for his own.
+
+'Had my life been a wretched one because of your conduct,' she said, 'I
+might have found it harder to forgive you, but it has not. I have not
+been the daughter of Tracy Park, it is true, but I have been the petted
+child of the cottage, and I would rather have lived with Harold in
+poverty all these years than to have been rich without him. And do you
+know, I think it was noble in you to tell me, when you might have kept
+it to yourself.'
+
+'No, no. I couldn't have done that much longer,' he exclaimed,
+energetically, as he began to walk up and down the room. 'I could not
+bear it. And the shadow which for years has been with me night and day,
+counselling me for bad, was growing so black, and huge, and unendurable
+that I must have confessed or died. But it is gone now, or will be when
+I have told my brother.'
+
+'Told your brother! Mr. Tracy--Uncle Frank--you cannot mean to do that?'
+Jerrie exclaimed.
+
+'But I do mean to do it,' Frank replied, 'as a part of my punishment,
+and he will not forgive as you have done. He will turn me out at once,
+as he ought to do.'
+
+Jerrie thought this very likely, and with all her powers she strove to
+dissuade Frank from making a confession which could do no possible good,
+and might result in untold harm.
+
+'Remember Maude,' she said, 'and the effect this thing would have upon
+her if your brother should resort to immediate and violent means, as he
+might in his first frenzy.'
+
+'But, I mean to tell Maude, too,' Frank replied.
+
+Then Jerrie looked upon him as madder than Arthur himself, and talked so
+rapidly and argued so well that he consented at last to keep his own
+counsel, for the present at least, unless the shadow still haunted him,
+in which case he must tell as an act of contrition or penance.
+
+'He will think the photograph came with the other papers in the bag,'
+Jerrie said, as she kissed the sweet face, which looked so much like
+life that it was hard to think there was not real love and tenderness in
+the eyes which looked into hers so steadfastly.
+
+It was the hardest to forgive the letter hidden so long, and Jerrie did
+feel a pang of resentment, or something like it, as she took it in her
+hand and thought of the day when Arthur had confided it to her, saying
+he could trust her when he could not another. And she had trusted Frank,
+who had not been true to the trust, and here, after the lapse of years,
+was the letter, in her hands, with its singular superscription, covering
+its whole side, and its seal unbroken. But she would break it now.
+Surely she might do that, if Arthur was never to see it; and after a
+moment's hesitancy, she opened it, and read, first, wild, crazy
+sentences, full of love and tenderness for the little Gretchen to whom
+they were addressed, and whom the writer sometimes spoke to as living,
+and again as dead. There was the expression of a strong desire to see
+her, a wish for her to come where her husband was waiting for her, and
+her diamonds too. Here Jerrie started with an exclamation of surprise,
+and involuntarily read aloud:
+
+'The most exquisite diamonds you ever saw, and I long to see them on
+you. They are safe, too--safe from her--Mrs. Frank Tracy--who had the
+boldness to flaunt them in my face at a party the other night. How she
+came by them I can't guess; but I know how she lost them, I found them
+on her dressing-table, where she left them when she went to breakfast,
+and took possession at once. That was no theft, for they are mine, or
+rather yours, and are waiting for you in my private drawer, where no one
+has ever looked, except a young girl called Jerrie, who interests me
+greatly, she is so much like what you must have been when a child. There
+has been some trouble about the diamonds--I hardly know what, my head is
+in such a buzzing most of the time that everything goes from me but you.
+Oh, if I had remembered you years ago as I do now--'
+
+Jerrie could read no further, for the letter dropped from her hands, as
+she cried joyfully:
+
+'I knew he had them. I was sure of it, though I did not know where they
+were.'
+
+Then very briefly she explained to Frank that on the morning when the
+diamonds were missed, Arthur was so excited because Harold had been in a
+way accused, and had rambled off into German, and said many things which
+made her know that he had taken them himself and secreted them.
+
+'You remember my sickness,' she said, and how strangely I talked of
+going to prison as an accessory or a substitute? Well, it was for your
+brother I was ready to go; and when he told me, as he did one day, that
+he knew nothing of the diamonds, I was never more astonished in my life;
+but afterward, as I grew older, I came to believe that he had forgotten
+them, as he did other things, and that some time he would remember and
+make restitution, I am glad we know where they are, but we cannot get
+them until he returns. When do you think that will be?'
+
+Frank did not know. It would depend, he said, upon whether he was in San
+Francisco when Tom's telegram was received. If he were and started at
+once, travelling day and night, he would be home in a week.
+
+It seemed a long time to wait in Jerrie's state of mind, and very, very
+short to the repentant man, who shrank from his brother's return as from
+an impending evil, although it was a relief to think that he need not
+tell him what a hypocrite he had been.
+
+'Thank you, Jerrie,' he said at last, as he rose to go, 'Thank you for
+being so kind to me. I did not deserve it. I did not expect it. Heaven
+bless you. I am glad for you, and so is Maude. Oh, Jerrie, heaven is
+dealing hard with me to take her from me, and yet it is just. I sinned
+for her; sinned to see her in the place I was sure was yours, although
+the shadow was always telling me that I did not and never could know for
+sure that you were Arthur's child; but I did, and I meant to go to
+Germany some day, when I had the language a little better, and clear it
+up, and then I had promised myself to tell you. Will you lay again that
+you forgive me before I go back to Maude?'
+
+He was standing before her with his white head dropped upon his hat, the
+very picture of misery and remorse, and Jerrie laid her hand upon his
+head, and said:
+
+'I do forgive you, Uncle Frank, fully and freely, for Maude's sake if no
+other; and if she lives what is mine shall be hers. Tell her so, and
+tell her I am coming to see her as soon as I am able, I am so tired
+to-day, and everything is so strange. Oh, if Harold were here.'
+
+Jerrie was indeed so tired and exhausted that for the remainder of the
+day she lay upon the couch in her room, seeing no one but Judge St.
+Claire and Tom, both of whom came up together, the latter bringing the
+answer to his telegram, and asking what to do next.
+
+'Why, Tom,' Jerrie said, as she read Arthur's reply, 'pay him then, for
+I shan't come,' what does he mean? What did you say to him, and whom are
+you to pay?'
+
+With a half comical smile Tom replied, 'I told him the Old Nick was to
+pay, though I am afraid I used a stronger name for his Satanic majesty
+than that. I guess you'll have to try what you can do.'
+
+And so Jerrie's message, 'I need you,' went across the continent, and
+brought the ready response, 'coming on the wings of the wind.' It was
+Judge St. Claire who wrote to Harold, for Jerrie's nerveless fingers
+could not grasp the pen, and she could only dictate what she wished the
+judge to say.
+
+'Tell him everything,' she said, 'and how much I want him here; and tell
+him, too, of Maude, whose life hangs on a thread. That may bring him
+sooner.'
+
+It was three days before Jerrie went again to the Park House, and then
+Tom came for her, saying Maude was failing very fast. The shock which
+had come upon her so suddenly with regard to Jerrie's birth and the
+suspicions resting upon Harold had shortened the life nearing its close,
+and the moment Jerrie entered the room she knew the worst, and with a
+storm of sobs and tears knelt by the sick girl's couch and cried:
+
+'Oh, Maude, Maude, I can't bear it. I'd give up everything to save you.
+Oh, Maude, Maude, you don't know how much I love you!'
+
+Maude was very calm, though her lips quivered a little and the tears
+filled her eyes as she put her hand caressingly upon Jerrie's golden
+hair. A great change had come over Maude since the night when she heard
+Jerrie's strange story--a change for the better some might have thought,
+although the physician who attended her gave no hope. She neither
+coughed nor suffered pain, and could talk all she liked, although often
+in a whisper, she was so very weak. 'Yes, Jerrie,' she said, 'I know
+you love me, and it makes me very glad, and dying seems easier for it;
+for, Jerrie, oh, Jerrie! once before I knew about you, and when I feared
+I might die, I wrote something on paper for father to see when I was
+dead, and it was that he should take you in my place, you and Harold.'
+
+Maude's voice shook a little here, but she soon steadied it and went on:
+
+'I wanted him to give you what I thought would be mine had I lived, and
+what all the time was yours. Oh, Jerrie, how can you help hating me, who
+have stood so long where you ought to have stood, and enjoyed what you
+ought to have enjoyed?'
+
+'Maude,' Jerrie cried, as she kissed the little wan face, 'don't talk
+like that; as if I, or any one, could ever have hated you. Why, I
+worshiped you as some little empress when I used to see you in your
+bright sashes and yellow kid boots, with the amber beads around your
+neck; and if the contrast between your finery and my high-necked gingham
+apron and white sun-bonnet sometimes struck me painfully, I had no wish
+to take the boots and sashes from you, whom they fitted so admirably;
+and as we grew older and you did not shrink from or slight Jerrie
+Crawford, I cannot tell you how great was the love which grew in my
+heart for you, the dearest girl friend I ever had, and a thousand times
+dearer now that I know you are my cousin.'
+
+Maude was silent for a moment, and then she asked abruptly:
+
+'Jerrie, why did you never fall in love with Harold?'
+
+'Oh, Maude!' and Jerrie started as if Maude had struck her, while the
+tell-tale blood rushed to her face, and into her eyes there came a look
+which even Maude could not understand.
+
+'Jerrie,' she exclaimed, 'forgive me. I didn't know, I never guessed, I
+was go stupid; but I have been thinking so much since Harold went away.
+Does he know about you? who you are? and how long before he will come
+home?'
+
+'Judge St. Claire wrote him everything three days ago,' Jerrie replied,
+'and told him how sick you were. That will surely bring him at once, if
+it is possible for him to leave; but it will he three or four days now
+before the letter will reach him, and take a week for him to come. Would
+you like to see him very much?'
+
+'Yes,' Maude answered with a sob, 'very much, but I never shall. Jerrie,
+did Harold ever--did he--does he--love you?'
+
+'He never told me so,' Jerrie answered, frankly; 'but I have thought
+that he loved you'
+
+'N--no,' Maude answered, piteously, with the great tears in her eyes.
+'It is all a mistake, and when I am dead and Harold comes, promise to
+tell him something from me, will you?'
+
+'Yes,' Jerrie answered, and Maude continued:
+
+'Tell him the very first time you and he are alone together, and speak
+of me, that I have been thinking and thinking until it came to me clear
+as day that it was all a mistake, a stupid blunder on my part. I was
+always stupid, you know; but I believe my brain is a little clearer now.
+Will you tell him, Jerrie?'
+
+'Mistake about what?' Jerrie asked with a vague apprehension that the
+task imposed upon her might not be a pleasant one if she know all it
+involved.
+
+'Harold will tell you what,' Maude answered 'He will understand what I
+mean, and you must tell him, for I shall not be here when he comes, I am
+sure of it. I hope to live till Uncle Arthur comes, for I must see him
+and ask him not to be hard on poor father, and tell him that I am sorry
+that I have been so long in your place where you should have been. You
+will stay here when he comes, and be with me to the last. I want you
+with me--want you to hold my hand when I say good-bye for ever. You are
+so strong that I shall not be afraid with you to see and hear as long as
+I hear and see anything.'
+
+'And are you afraid?' Jerrie asked, and Maude replied:
+
+'Of the death struggle, yes; but not what lies beyond where He is, the
+Saviour, for I know I am going to Heaven; and when you think me asleep I
+am often praying silently for more faith and love, and for you all, that
+you may one day come where I soon shall be. Heaven is very, very
+beautiful, for I have seen it in my dreams--a material heaven some would
+say, for there are trees and flowers, and grass; and on a golden bench,
+beneath a tree whose leaves are like emeralds, and whose blossoms are
+like pearls, I am sitting, on the bank of a shining river, resting,
+resting, and waiting, as little Pilgrim waited for the coming of the
+Master, and for you all.'
+
+Maude was very tired now, and her voice was so low that Jerrie could
+scarcely hear it, while the eyelids drooped heavily, and in a few
+moments she fell asleep, with a rapt look on her as if she were already
+resting on the golden seat beneath the tree whose leaves were emeralds
+and whose blossoms were like pearls.
+
+That night Jerrie wrote as follows:
+
+    'Dear Harold, come home as soon as you can, for Maude is very low,
+    and, unless you come soon, you will never see her again. The judge
+    has written you of me, but I must tell you myself that nothing can
+    ever change me from the Jerrie of old; and the fact which makes me
+    the happiest is that now I can help you who have been so kind to me.
+    How I long to see you and talk it all over. We expect Mr. Arthur in
+    a few days. I cannot call him father yet, until he has given me the
+    right to do so by calling me daughter first; but to myself I am
+    calling Gretchen mother all the time--dear, sweet, darling little
+    mother! Oh, Harold, you must come home and share my happiness. Truly
+    Harold, you ought to see how stiffly Mrs. Tracy carries herself
+    toward me--stiffer, if possible, than she did when I came up the
+    front steps in my muddy shoes and she bade me go round to the back
+    door. Poor Mrs. Tracy!'
+
+During the next few days Jerrie stayed with Maude, who constantly grew
+weaker and weaker, and who asked about every hour if anything had been
+heard from her uncle since his message that he was coming.
+
+'I shall never see Harold,' she said to Jerrie; but I must live till
+uncle Arthur comes, and you are put in your right place.'
+
+And at last, one lovely September morning, a telegram was brought to
+Frank from Charles, which said the travellers would be home that
+afternoon, and that the carriage must be sent to meet them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+TELLING ARTHUR.
+
+
+Who should do the telling was the question which for some time was
+discussed by Frank and Judge St. Claire and Jerrie. Naturally the task
+fell upon the latter, who for three or four days prior to Arthur's
+arrival remained altogether at the Park House, watching by Maude, and
+going over and over again in her mind what she should say and how she
+should commence.
+
+At last the announcement came that Arthur was in Albany, and then it
+seemed to Jerrie that she had suddenly turned into stone, for every
+thought and feeling had left her, and she had no plan or action or
+speech as she moved mechanically about Arthur's rooms, making them
+bright with flowers, especially the Gretchen room, which seemed a bower
+of beauty when her skilful hands had finished it. Once, as she was
+passing through the hall with her arms full of flowers she met Mrs.
+Tracy, whose face wore a most forbidding expression as she said:
+
+'I hope you will leave a few flowers for Maude. You know she likes them
+so much.'
+
+Jerrie made no reply, but by the pang of resentment which shot through
+her heart at the smallness of the woman, she knew she was not past all
+feeling, and that there was still something human in the stone, as she
+had styled herself.
+
+Slowly the day wore on, every minute seeming an hour, and every hour a
+day, until at last Jerrie heard the carriage driving down the avenue,
+and not long after the whistle of the engine in the distance. Then,
+bending over Maude and kissing her fondly, she said:
+
+'Pray for me, darling, I am going to meet my father.'
+
+Arthur had been very quiet during the first part of the journey from San
+Francisco, and it was with difficulty that Charles could get a word from
+him.
+
+'Let me alone,' he said once, when spoken to. 'I am with Gretchen. She
+is on the train with me, and I'm trying to make out what it is she is
+telling me.'
+
+But after Chicago was left behind his mood changed, and he became as
+wild and excitable as he had before been abstracted and silent.
+Sometimes he was on the top of old Capitan, looking down into the valley
+below, and singing 'glory, hallelujah,' at the top of his voice, while
+the startled passengers kept aloof from him as from a lunatic. Again he
+was out upon the platform urging the conductor to greater speed; and
+when at last Shannondale was reached, he bounded from the car upon the
+platform before the train stopped, and was collaring Rob, the coachman,
+and demanding of him to know what was the matter with Jerrie, and why he
+had been sent for. Rob, who had received his instructions to be wholly
+non-committal answered stolidly that nothing was the matter with Jerrie,
+but that Miss Maude was very sick and probably would not live many days.
+
+'Is that all?' Arthur said, gloomily, as he entered the carriage. 'I do
+not see what the old Harry has to do with Maude's dying, and certainly
+Tom's telegram said something about that chap. I have it in my pocket.
+Yes, here it is. "Come immediately. The devil is to pay." That doesn't
+mean Maude. There is something else Rob has not told me. 'Here, you
+rascal, you are keeping something from me! What is it? Out with it!' he
+shouted to the driver, as he thrust his head from the carriage window,
+where he kept it, and in this way was driven to the door of the Park
+House, where Frank was waiting for him outside, and where, inside,
+Jerrie stood, holding fast to the banisters of the stairs, her heart
+throbbing wildly one moment, and the next seeming to lie pulseless as a
+piece of lead.
+
+She heard Arthur's voice as he came up the steps, speaking to Frank, and
+asking why he had been sent for; and the next moment she saw him
+entering the hall, tall and erect, but with the wild look in his eyes
+which she knew so well, but which changed at once to a softer expression
+as they fell upon her.
+
+'Cherry, you here!' he cried, with a joyful ring in his voice as he
+sprang to her side and kissed her forehead and lips.
+
+Then Jerrie grew calm instantly, although she could scarcely restrain
+herself from falling on his neck and sobbing out, 'Oh, my father! I am
+your daughter Jerrie!' But the time for this had not come, and when he
+questioned her eagerly as to why she had sent for him, she only
+replied:
+
+'Maude is very sick. But come with me to your rooms, and I will tell you
+everything.'
+
+'Then there is the deuce to pay; I thought so,' he said, as he followed
+her upstairs into the Gretchen room, where he stood for a moment, amazed
+at the effect produced by the flowers and vines which Jerrie had
+arranged so skilfully, 'It is like Eden,' he said, 'and Gretchen is here
+with me. Darling Gretchen!' he continued, as he walked up to the picture
+and kissed the lovely face which, it seemed to Jerrie, smiled in
+benediction upon them both, the husband and the daughter, as they stood
+there side by side, Jerrie's hands resting on his shoulder, which she
+pressed hard, as if to steady herself, while he talked to the inanimate
+face before him.
+
+'Have you been lonesome, Gretchen, and are you glad to have me back
+again! Poor little Gretchen!' And now he turned to Jerrie, who was pale
+to the lips, and said: 'It all came to me on the top of those mountains
+about Gretchen--who she was, and how I forgot her so long--that is the
+strangest of all; and, Cherry,' here his voice dropped to a whisper, 'I
+know for sure that Gretchen is dead--that came to me, too.'
+
+'Yes, Gretchen is dead,' Jerrie answered him, with the sound of a sob in
+her own voice, while her hands tightened their grasp on his shoulder, as
+she went on; 'I have had a message from Gretchen, and that is why we
+sent for you.'
+
+Jerrie's hands were not strong enough to hold him then, and, wrenching
+himself from her, he stood confronting her with a look more like that of
+a maniac than any she had ever seen in him before, and which might have
+frightened one with nerves less strong than Jerrie's. But she was not
+afraid, and a strange calmness fell upon her, now that she had actually
+reached a point where she must act, and her eyes, which looked so
+steadily into Arthur's, held them fast, even while he interrogated her
+rapidly.
+
+'A message from Gretchen! How, when, and where is it? Give it to me
+quick, or tell me about it? Where is she, and when is she coming?'
+
+'Never!' answered Jerrie sadly. 'I told you she was dead. But sit here,'
+and she motioned him to a large cushioned chair. 'Sit here and let me
+tell you what I know of Gretchen.'
+
+Something in the girl's manner mastered him and made him a child in her
+hands.
+
+Sinking into the chair, pale and panting with excitement, he leaned his
+head back wearily, and closing his eyes, said to her:
+
+'Begin. What did Gretchen write?'
+
+Jerrie felt that she could not stand all through the interview, and
+bringing a low ottoman to Arthur's side, seated herself upon it just
+where she could look into his face and detect every change in it.
+
+'Let me tell you of Gretchen as she was when you first knew her,' she
+said, 'and then you will be better able to judge of the truth of all I
+know.'
+
+He did not reply, and she went on:
+
+'Gretchen was very young--sixteen or seventeen--when you first saw her
+knitting in the sunshine under the trees in Wiesbaden, and very
+beautiful, too--so beautiful that you went again and again to look at
+her and talk to her, until you came to love her very much, and told her
+so at last; but you seemed so much above her that she could not believe
+you at first. At last, however, you made her understand, and when her
+mother died suddenly--'
+
+'Her mother was Mrs. Heinrich, and kept a kind of fancy store,' Arthur
+interposed, as if anxious that nothing should be omitted.
+
+'Yes, she kept a fancy store,' Jerrie rejoined; 'and when she died
+suddenly and left Gretchen alone, you said to her, "We must be married
+at once," and you were, in the little English chapel, by the Rev. Mr.
+Eaton, who was then rector.' Here Arthur's eyes opened wide and fixed
+themselves wonderingly upon Jerrie, as he said:
+
+'Are you the old Harry that you know all this? But go on; don't stop; it
+all comes back to me so plain when I hear you tell it. She wore a straw
+bonnet trimmed with blue, and a white dress, but took it off directly
+for a black one because her mother was dead. Did she tell you that?'
+
+'No,' Jerrie replied. 'She told me nothing of the dress, only how happy
+she was with you, whom she loved so much, and who loved her and made her
+so happy for a time that earth seemed like heaven to her, and then--'
+
+Here Jerrie faltered a little, but Arthur's sharp 'What then?' kept her
+up, and she continued:
+
+'Then something came to you, and you began to forget everything, even
+poor little Gretchen, and went away for weeks and left her very sad and
+lonely, not knowing where you were; and then, after some months, you
+went away and never came back again to the little wife who waited, and
+watched, and prayed, and wanted you so badly.'
+
+'Oh, Cherry! oh, Gretchen! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to do it; I
+surely didn't. May God forgive me for forgetting the little wife! Was it
+long? Was it months, or was it years? I can't remember, only that there
+was a Gretchen, and I left her,' Arthur said.
+
+'It was years, four or five, and--and'--Jerrie's breath came heavily now
+and her words slowly, for she was nearing the point relating to herself
+and wondering what the effect would be upon him. 'After a while there
+came into Gretchen's life the dawning of a great hope, a great joy,
+which she felt would make you glad, and wishing to keep it a secret till
+you came home, she only gave you a hint of it. She wrote: "I have
+something to tell you which will make you as happy as it does me--"'
+
+'Stop!' and Arthur put out both his hands as if groping for something
+which he could not find; then he said, 'Go on,' and Jerrie went on,
+slowly now, for every word was an effort, and spoken so low that Arthur
+bent forward to listen to her.
+
+'I don't know just where Gretchen's home was when she lived alone
+waiting for you. I only know that after a while there came to it a
+little baby--a girl baby--Gretchen's and yours--'
+
+She did not get any further, for with a bound Arthur was on his feet,
+every faculty alert, every nerve strung to its utmost pitch, and every
+muscle of his face quivering with wild excitement, as he exclaimed:
+
+'A baby! Gretchen's baby and mine! A little girl! Oh, Cherry, if you are
+deceiving me now!'
+
+Jerrie, too, had risen, and was standing before him with her hands upon
+his arm and her eyes, so like Gretchen's, looking into his, as she said:
+
+'I am not deceiving you. There was a baby born to you and Gretchen
+sometime in January, 18--, and it was christened in the little church
+where you were married by the Rev. Mr. Eaton. Oh, Mr. Arthur, how can I
+tell you; she, the baby, is living yet--grown to womanhood now, for this
+happened about twenty years ago, and the girl is almost twenty--and is
+waiting and longing so much for her father to recognize and claim her.
+Oh, don't you understand me? Look at _me_ and then at Gretchen's
+picture!'
+
+For an instant Arthur stood like one stricken with catalepsy, his eyes
+leaping from Jerry's face to Gretchen's, and from Gretchen's back to
+Jerrie's, and then, with a motion of his hands as if fanning the air
+furiously, he gasped:
+
+'Twenty years ago--twenty years ago? How old are you, Cherry?'
+
+'About twenty,' she answered, but her voice was a whisper, and her head
+fell forward a little, though she kept her eyes upon Arthur, who went
+on:
+
+'And they christened my baby and Gretchen's you say? What name did they
+give her? Speak quick, for I believe I am dying.'
+
+'They called her Jerrine, but you know her as Jerrie, for--for I am
+Gretchen's daughter,' fell from Jerrie's lips.
+
+With a wild, glad cry, 'My daughter! oh, my daughter! Thank God! thank
+God!' Arthur sank back into the chair, from which he had risen, fainting
+and insensible.
+
+For hours he lay in a state so nearly resembling death that but for the
+physician's reassurance that there was no danger, Jerrie would have
+believed the great joy given her was to be taken from her at once. But
+just as the twilight shadows began to gather in the room he came to
+himself, waking as from some quiet dream, and looking around him until
+his eyes fell upon Jerrie sitting by his side; then into his white face
+there flashed a look of ineffable joy and tenderness and love, as he
+said, with a smile the most willing and sweet Jerrie had ever seen.
+
+'My daughter, my little Cherry, who came to me up the ladder, with
+Gretchen's eyes and Gretchen's voice, and I did not know her--have not
+known her all these years, although she has so puzzled and bewildered me
+at times. My daughter! oh, my daughter!'
+
+He accepted her unquestioningly, and with a glad cry Jerrie threw
+herself into the arms he stretched toward her, and on her father's
+bosom gave free vent to the feelings she had restrained so long, sobbing
+passionately as she felt Arthur's kisses upon her face, and his
+caressing hands upon her hair, as he kept repeating:
+
+'My daughter! Gretchen's baby and mine!'
+
+'There is more to tell. I have not heard it all, or how you came by the
+information,' he said, when Jerrie was little composed and could look at
+and speak to him without a burst of tears.
+
+'Yes, there is much more. There is a letter for you, with those you
+wrote to her,' Jerrie said, 'but you must not have them to-night.
+To-morrow you will be stronger, now you must rest.'
+
+She spoke like one with authority, and he did just what she bade him
+do--took the food she brought him, went to bed when she said he must,
+and, with her hand locked in his, fell into a heavy slumber, which
+lasted all through the night, and late into the next morning. It almost
+seemed as if he would never waken, the sleep was so like death; but the
+doctor who watched him carefully quieted Jerrie's fears and told her it
+would do her father good, and that in all probability he would awake
+with a clearer mind than he had had in years, for as a great and sudden
+shock sometimes produces insanity, so, contrarywise, it sometimes
+restored a shattered mind to its equilibrium.
+
+And the doctor was partially correct, for when at last Arthur awoke he
+seemed natural and bright, with a recollection of all which had happened
+the day before, and an earnest desire for the letters and the rest of
+the story which Jerrie told him, with her arm across his neck, and her
+cheek laid occasionally against his, as she read him the letter directed
+to his friends, and then showed him the certificate of her birth and her
+mother's death.
+
+'Born January 1st, 18--, to Arthur Tracy and Marguerite, his wife, a
+daughter,' Arthur repeated, again and again, and as often as he did so
+he kissed the bright face which smiled at him through tears, for there
+was almost as much sadness as joy mingled with the reading of those
+messages from the dead.
+
+Just what Gretchen's letter to Arthur contained, Jerrie never knew,
+except that it was full of love and tenderness, with no word of
+complaint for the neglect and forgetfulness which must have hastened her
+death.
+
+'Oh, Gretchen, I can't bear it, I can't,' Arthur moaned, as he laid his
+hand upon Jerrie's shoulder and sobbed like a child. 'To think I could
+forget her, and she so sweet and good.'
+
+Everything came back to him for a time, and he repeated to Jerrie much
+which was of interest to her concerning her mother, but with which the
+reader has nothing to do; while Jerrie, in turn, told him all she could
+remember of her life in the old house where Gretchen had died. Idle
+fancies she had sometimes thought these memories of the past, but now
+she knew they were real. And Arthur hung upon her words with breathless
+interest, moaning occasionally when she told of the sweet-faced woman
+who cried so much and prayed so much, and whose death scene she had once
+enacted for him when a little child. At his own letters addressed to
+Gretchen he barely glanced, muttering, as he did so, 'how could I have
+written such crazy bosh as that?' and then suddenly recollecting
+himself, he asked for the photograph mentioned in Gretchen's letter to
+his friends, and which he seemed to think had come with the other
+papers, just as Jerrie meant he should. Taking it from the bag she
+handed it to him, while his tears fell like rain as he gazed upon the
+face which was far too young to wear the sad, wan look it did.
+
+'That is as I remember her,' Jerrie said, referring again to the strange
+ideas which had filled her brain and made her sure that not the dark
+woman found dead at her side was her mother, but another and far
+different person, whose face haunted her so continually and whose voice
+she sometimes seemed to hear speaking to her from the dim shadows of the
+far-off past when they lived in the little house in Wiesbaden, where the
+picture hung on the wall.
+
+Arthur remembered the picture well and when it was taken, though that,
+too, had faded from his mind, until Jerrie told him of it.
+
+'We will go there together, Cherry,' he said, 'you and I, and find the
+house and the picture, and Gretchen's grave, and bring them home with
+us. There is room for them at Tracy Park.
+
+He was beginning to talk wildly now, but Jerrie quieted him, and taking
+up the box of diamonds opened it suddenly and held it before his eyes.
+In reading the letters he had not seemed to pay any attention to the
+diamonds, but when Jerrie said to him; 'These were mother's. You sent
+them to her from England,' he replied, 'Yes, I remember. I bought them
+in Paris with other things--dresses, I think--for her,' while into his
+face there came a troubled look as if he were trying to think of
+something.
+
+Jerrie, who could read him so well, saw the look, and, guessing at once
+its cause, hastened to say:
+
+'Father, do you remember that you gave Mrs. Tracy some diamonds like
+these, and that some one took them from her? Try and think,' she
+continued, as she saw the troubled look deepen on his face, and the fire
+beginning to kindle in his eyes. 'It was years ago, just after a party
+Mrs. Tracy gave, and at which she wore them. You were there and thought
+they were Gretchen's, did you not?'
+
+'Ye-es,' he answered slowly. 'I believe I did. What did I do with them?
+Do you know?'
+
+'I think you put them in your private drawer. Suppose you look and see.'
+
+Obedient to her as a child, Arthur opened his private drawer, bringing
+out one thing after another, all mementoes of the old Gretchen days, and
+finally the diamonds, at which be looked with wonder and fear, as he
+said to Jerrie:
+
+'Did I take them? Will they call it a steal? I thought they were
+Gretchen's. I remember now.'
+
+Jerrie did not tell him then of the trouble the secreting of the
+diamonds had brought to her and Harold, but she said:
+
+'No one will think it a steal, and Mrs. Tracy will be glad to get her
+jewels back. May I take them to her now?'
+
+'Take them to her?--no,' Arthur said, decidedly. 'She has another set--I
+bought them for her, and she wears them all day long. Ha, ha! diamonds
+in the morning, with a cotton gown;' and he laughed immoderately at what
+be thought Dolly's bad taste. 'Take them to her? No! They are yours.'
+
+'But I have mother's,' Jerrie pleaded; 'and I cannot wear two sets.'
+
+'Yes, you can--one to-day, one to-morrow. I mean you shall have
+seven--one for everyday in the week. What has Dolly to do with
+diamonds. They are for ladies, and she is only a whitewashed one.'
+
+He was very much excited, and it took all Jerrie's tact to soothe and
+quiet him.
+
+'Father,' she began and then he stopped short, for the sound of that
+name spoken by Jerrie had a mighty power over him--'Father, listen to me
+a moment.'
+
+And then she told him of the suspicions cast upon Harold, and said:
+
+'You do not wish him to suffer any more?'
+
+'Harold? The boy who found you in the carpet-bag--Amy's boy! No, never!
+Where is he that I have not seen him yet? Does he know you are my
+daughter?'
+
+Jerrie had not mentioned Harold before, but she told her father now
+where he was, and why he had gone, and that she had written him to come
+home, on Maude's account, if on no other.
+
+'Yes--Maude--I remember; but Harold did not care for Maude. Still, he
+had better come. I want him here with you and me; and you must stay here
+now, day and night. Select any room or rooms you please; all is yours,
+my daughter.'
+
+'But I cannot leave grandma,' Jerrie said.
+
+'Let her come, too,' Arthur replied. 'There is room for her.'
+
+'No,' Jerrie persisted; 'that would not be best. Grandma could not live
+with Mrs. Tracy.'
+
+'Then let Dolly go at once, I'll give the order now;' and Arthur put out
+his hand to the bell-cord.
+
+But Jerrie stopped him instantly, saying to him:
+
+'Remember Maude. While she lives she must stay here.'
+
+'Yes, I forgot Maude. Poor little Maude, I have not seen her yet,'
+Arthur replied, subdued at once, and willing now that Jerrie should take
+the jewels to Dolly, who deserved but little forbearance from Jerrie's
+hand.
+
+Up to the very last Mrs. Tracy had, unconsciously perhaps, clung to a
+shadowy hope that Arthur might repudiate his daughter and call it a
+trumped-up affair; but when she heard how joyfully he had acknowledged
+and claimed her, she lost all hope, and her face wore a sullen, defiant
+expression as she walked about the house and through the handsome rooms,
+the very furniture of which had nearly all been bought with Arthur's
+money, and consequently was not her own. Since the coming of Jerrie,
+when the dark shadow settled upon Frank, and remorse was always
+torturing him, he had had no heart for business, and had, to all intents
+and purposes, lived upon his brother's generosity, which had never
+failed.
+
+'Get what you like; there is money enough,' was always Arthur's reply,
+when a request for anything was made to him, and thus they had literally
+been sponges, taking everything and giving nothing, until now, when all
+was lost--the luxury, the elegance, the ease, and the prestige of Tracy
+Park, which they had enjoyed so much. It was hard, and Dolly felt that
+she could not bear it, and that she hated the girl through whom this
+change had come, and in every possible way she meant to wound and annoy
+her; so when the cook came to her that day for orders for dinner, she
+answered, curtly:
+
+'Go to the heiress. She is mistress now.'
+
+In the hall, coming to seek her, Jerrie met the cook, who, with a
+comical look on her face, asked what she would have for dinner.
+
+'I don't know what you mean,' Jerrie said, and when the cook explained,
+her cheeks flushed for an instant and her eyes blazed with resentment
+But she controlled herself quickly and said, 'Tell Mrs. Tracy--but, no,
+I am going to her room and will tell her myself.'
+
+Knocking at Mrs. Tracy's door, she was admitted to the presence of the
+lady, who simply stared at her as if asking why she were there. Jerrie
+told her in a few words that her own diamonds had been found, and where
+they had been secreted, and that she had come to return them.
+
+'Then your father was the thief,' Dolly said, with that rasping,
+aggravating tone so hard to hear unmoved.
+
+'Call him what you please. A crazy man is not responsible for his acts,'
+Jerrie answered, calmly; then, more proudly and decidedly, went on, 'By
+the way, Mrs. Tracy, I was met by the cook with a singular request, and
+I wish to say that as there can be but one mistress in a house, it is my
+wish that so long as you remain here you are that mistress in your own
+department; of course I shall take charge of my father's, and see that
+his wishes are carried out. Good afternoon,' and with a proud, lofty
+bearing, Jerrie walked from the room, leaving Dolly to her own morbid
+and angry thoughts.
+
+Not even the restored diamonds had power to conciliate her, and they
+were so beautiful as she held them up, admiring their brilliancy and
+their size.
+
+'I'll never wear them, never, because she has some like them,' she said
+to herself; and then the thought flashed upon her that she could sell
+them, and thus add to the sum which her husband had invested in his own
+name.
+
+Ten thousand dollars, that was all, he had told her, and she had
+calculated the income, only six hundred dollars a year to live on--less
+than she now wasted yearly upon bric-a-brac and things of which she
+tired so soon.
+
+It was a sombre outlook, and it is not strange that her tears fell fast
+upon the costly stones, whose value she could not guess, although she
+knew it must be great, they were so superior in size and quality to any
+she had ever seen.
+
+'Yes, I will sell them,' she said, 'and invest the proceeds in my own
+name; but even that will hardly keep the wolf from the door, for Frank
+is growing more and more imbecile every day, and Tom is good for
+nothing. He'll have to scratch for himself, though, I can tell him.'
+
+Here her ladylike, but very characteristic, soliloquy was brought to an
+end by a faint call, which had the power to drive every other thought
+from her heart, for the mother-love was strong even with her, and going
+to Maude, she asked what she wanted.
+
+'Uncle Arthur,' Maude replied; 'I have not seen him yet. And Jerrie,
+too, she has scarcely been here to-day.'
+
+Maude's request was made known to Arthur, who, two or three hours later,
+went to her room, and kissing her lips, told her how sorry he was to see
+her so sick, and that he hoped she would soon be better.
+
+Frank had been alone with Maude for a long time that day, and he was
+with her now, sitting upon the side of her bed, near the head, with his
+arm across her pillow, and his eyes fixed anxiously upon her as she held
+her conference with his brother.
+
+'No, uncle,' she said; 'I shall never be any better in this world; but
+by-and-by, pretty soon, I shall be well in the other And I want to tell
+you how glad I am for you and Jerrie, and to thank you for your kindness
+to us all these years, when Jerrie should have been here in our place.'
+
+'Yes, yes,' Arthur said, with a wave of his hand. 'Only I didn't know.
+If I had--'
+
+'It would have been so different,' Maude interrupted him. 'I know that,
+but I want you to be kind to poor father still, and forgive him, he is
+sorry, and--'
+
+'Oh, Maude, Maude,' came like a groan from Frank, as he laid his hand on
+Maude's lips, while Arthur replied:
+
+'Forgive him! For what? He couldn't help being here. I sent for him. He
+did not keep Jerrie from her rightful position as my daughter. If he had
+I could never forgive him. Why, I believe I'd kill him, or any other one
+who, knowing that Jerrie was my daughter, kept it from me.'
+
+He was gesticulating now with both hands, and Jerrie, who had listened
+wonderingly to the conversation, took hold of them as they were swaying
+in the air, and said to him softly:
+
+'Father!'
+
+The word quieted him, and with a gasp his mind seemed to change at once.
+
+'Maude is very tired,' Jerrie went on; 'perhaps we'd better go now and
+come again to-morrow.'
+
+'Yes, yes, that's best, child. I'm not fond of sick rooms, though I must
+say this is very free from smells,' Arthur replied; then stooping down
+he kissed Maude again, saying to her as he rose to go:
+
+'Don't worry about your father; he is my brother, and he was kind to
+Jerry. I shan't forget that. Come, my daughter.'
+
+And putting his arm fondly around Jerrie he left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+THE FLOWER FADETH.
+
+
+It took some days after Arthur's return for the household to settle down
+into anything like order and quiet, Arthur was so restless and so happy,
+and so anxious for everyone to recognise Jerrie as his daughter--Miss
+Tracy, as he called her when presenting her to the people who had known
+her all her life--the St. Claires, and Athertons, and Crosbys, and
+Warners--who came to call upon and congratulate him. Even Peterkin came
+in his coat-of-arms carriage, with a card as big as the back of
+Webster's spelling book, and himself gotten up in a dress coat, with
+lavender kids on his burly hands, which nearly crushed Arthur's in their
+grasp as he expressed himself 'tickleder than he ever was before in his
+life.'
+
+'And to think I was the means on't,' he said, 'for if I hadn't of kicked
+that darned old table into slivers when I was givin' on't to Jerrie,
+she'd never of know'd what was in that dumbed rat-hole. I was a leetle
+too upstrupulous, I s'spose, but I'll be darned if she didn't square up
+to me like a catamount, till my hair riz right up, and I concluded the
+Tramp House was no place for me. But I respect her for it; yes, I do,
+and by George, old chap, I congratulate you with my whole soul, and so
+does May Jane, and so does Ann 'Lizy, and so does Bill, and so does the
+whole caboodle on us.'
+
+This was Peterkin's speech, which Arthur received more graciously than
+Jerrie, who, remembering Harold, could not be very polite to the man who
+had injured him so deeply. As if divining her thoughts, Peterkin turned
+to her and said:
+
+'Now, one word, Miss Tracy, about Hal. I hain't one to go halves in any
+thing, and I was meaner to him than pussly; but you'll see what I'll do.
+I've met with a change, I swow, I have,' and he laid his lavender kid on
+his stomach. 'He never took them diamonds, nor May Jane's pin, nor
+nothin', and I've blasted it all over town that he didn't, and I've got
+a kerridge hired, and some chaps, and a brass band, and a percession,
+and when Hal comes, there's to be an oblation to the depot, with the
+bugle a playin' "Hail to the Chief," and them hired chips a histen' him
+inter the kerridge, with the star-spangled banner a floatin' over it,
+and a drawin' him home without horses! What do you think of that for
+high?' and he chuckled merrily as he represented the programme he had
+prepared for Harold's reception.
+
+Jerrie shuddered, mentally hoping that Harold's coming might be at
+night, and unheralded, so as to save him from what she knew would fill
+him with disgust.
+
+That call of Peterkin's was the last of a congratulatory nature made at
+Tracy Park for weeks, for the shadow of death had entered the grand old
+house, the doors and windows of which stood wide open, one lovely
+September morning, about a week after Arthur's return. But there was no
+stir or sign of life, except in the upper hall, near the door, and in
+the room where Maude Tracy was dying. Jerrie had been with her
+constantly for two or three days, and the converse the two had held
+together would never be forgotten, Maude was so peaceful and happy, so
+sure of the home beyond, where she was going, and so lovely and sweet to
+those around her, thinking of everything and planning everything, even
+whose hands were to lower her into the grave.
+
+'Dick, and Fred, and Billy, and Harold,' she said to Jerrie, one day,
+'Something tells me Harold will be here in time for that; and if he is,
+I want those four to put me in the grave. They can lift me, for I shall
+not be very heavy,' and, with a smile, she held up her wasted arms and
+hands, not as large now as a child's. 'And, Jerrie,' she went on, 'I
+want the grave lined with boughs from our old playing place--the four
+pines, you know--and many, many flowers, for I shudder at the thought of
+the cold earth which would chill me in my coffin. So, heap the grave
+with flowers, and come often to it, and think lovingly of me, lying
+there alone. I am thinking so much of that poem Harold read me long ago
+of poor little Alice, the May queen, who said she should hear them as
+they passed, with their feet above her in the long and silent grass.
+Maybe the dead can't do that. I don't know, but if they can, I shall
+listen for you, and be glad when you are near me, and I know I shall
+wait on the golden seat by the river. Remember your promise to tell
+Harold that it was all a mistake. My mind gets clearer toward the end,
+and I see things differently from what I did once, and I know how I
+blundered. You will tell him?'
+
+Again Jerrie made the promise, with a sinking heart, not knowing to what
+it bound her; and as Maude was becoming tired, she bade her try to rest
+while she sat by and watched her.
+
+The next day, at the same hour, when the balmy September air was
+everywhere, and the mid-afternoon sun was filling the house with golden
+light, and the crickets' chirp was heard in the long grass, and the
+robins were singing in the tree-tops, another scene was presented in the
+sick room, where Frank Tracy knelt at his dying daughter's side, with
+his face bowed on his hands, while her fingers played feebly with his
+white hair as she spoke to Arthur, who had just come in. They had told
+him she was dying and had asked for him, and with his nervous horror of
+everything painful and exciting, he had shrunk from the ordeal; but
+Jerrie's will prevailed, and he went with her to the room, where Frank,
+and his wife, and Tom were waiting--Tom standing, with folded arms, at
+the foot of the bed, and looking, with hot, dry eyes, into the face on
+the pillow, where death was setting his seal; the mother, half-fainting
+upon the lounge, with the nurse beside her; and Frank, oblivious of
+everything except the fact that Maude was dying.
+
+'Kiss me good-bye, Uncle Arthur,' she said, when he came in, 'and come
+this side where father is.' Then, as he went round and stood by Frank,
+she reached her hand for his, and, putting it on her father's head, said
+to him: 'Forgive him, Uncle Arthur; he is so sorry, poor father--the
+dearest, the best man in the world. It was for me; say that you forgive
+him.'
+
+Only Frank and one other knew just what she meant, although a sudden
+suspicion darted through Jerrie's mind, and, when Arthur looked
+helplessly at her, she whispered to him:
+
+'Never mind what she means--her mind may be wandering; but say that you
+forgive him, no matter what it is.'
+
+Thus adjured, Arthur said to the grief-stricken man, who shook like an
+aspen:
+
+'I know of nothing to forgive except your old disbelief in Gretchen, and
+deceiving me about sending the carriage the night Jerrie came; but if
+there is anything else, no matter what it is, I do forgive you freely.'
+
+'Thanks,' came faintly from Maude, who whispered:
+
+'It is a vow, remember, made at my death-bed.'
+
+She had done all she could, this little girl, whose life had been so
+short, and who, as she once said, had been capable of nothing but loving
+and being loved; and now, turning her dim eyes upon Jerrie, who was
+parting the damp hair upon her brow, she went on:
+
+'Remember the promise, and the flowers, and the golden seat where you
+will find me resting by the flowing river whose shores I am now looking
+upon, for I am almost there, almost to the golden seat, and the tree
+whose leaves are like emeralds, and where the grass and flowers are like
+the flowers and grass of summer just after a rain. I am glad for you,
+Jerrie. Good-bye; and you, father dear, good-bye.'
+
+That was the last, for Maude was dead; and the servants, who had been
+standing about the door, stole noiselessly back to their work, with wet
+eyes and a sense of pain and loss in their hearts, for not one of them
+but had loved the gentle girl now gone forever from their midst.
+
+If was Jerrie who led Frank from the room to his own, where she left him
+by himself, knowing it would be better so, and it was Arthur who took
+Dolly out, for Tom had disappeared, and no one saw him again until the
+next day, when he came down to breakfast, with a worn, haggard look upon
+his face, which told that he did care, though his mother thought he did
+not, and taunted him with his indifference. Poor Tom! He had gone
+directly to his room and locked the door, and smoked and smoked, and
+thought and thought, and then, when it was dark, he had stolen out into
+the park as far as the four pines, and smoked, and looked up at the
+stars and wondered if Maude were there with Jack, sitting on the golden
+seat by the river. Then going back to the house where no one saw him, he
+went into the silent room where Maude was lying, and looked long and
+earnestly upon her white, still face, and wondered in a vague kind of
+way if she knew he was there, and why he had never thought before what a
+nice kind of girl she was, and why he had not made more of her as her
+brother.
+
+'Maude,' he whispered, with a lump in his throat, 'if you can hear me,
+I'd like to tell you I am sorry that I was ever mean to you, and I guess
+I did like you more than I supposed.'
+
+Then he kissed her pale forehead and went to his room, where he smoked
+the night through, and in the morning felt as if he had lived a hundred
+years since the previous night, and wondered how he should get through
+the day. It occurred to him that it might be the proper thing to see
+his mother; and after his breakfast he went to her room, and was
+received by her with a burst of tears and reproaches for his
+indifference and lack of feeling in keeping himself away from everybody,
+as if it were nothing to him that Maude was dead, or that there was
+nothing for him to do.
+
+'Thunderation, mother!' Tom exclaimed, 'would you have me yell and
+scream, and make a fool of myself? I sat up all night long, which was
+more than you did, and I've been meditating in the woods, and have seen
+Maude and made it square with her. What more can I do?'
+
+'You can see to things,' Mrs. Tracy replied. 'Your father is all broken
+up and has gone to bed, and it is not becoming in me to be around.
+Somebody must take the helm.'
+
+'And somebody has,' Tom answered her. 'Uncle Arthur is master of the
+ceremonies now. He is running the ranch, and running it well, to.'
+
+And Tom was right, for Arthur had taken the helm, and aided and abetted
+by Jerrie, was quietly attending to matters and arranging for the
+funeral, which Dolly said must be in the house, as she would not go to
+the church, with a gaping crowd to stare at her. So it was to take place
+at the house on Friday afternoon, and Arthur ordered a costly coffin
+from New York, with silver mountings and panels, and almost a car-load
+of flowers and floral designs, for Jerrie had explained to him Maude's
+wishes with regard to her grave, which they lined first with the
+freshest of the boughs from the four pines, filling these again with
+flowers up to the very top, so that the grave when finished seemed like
+one mass of flowers, in which it would not be hard to lie.
+
+Dolly had objected to Billy as one of the pall-bearers. He was too short
+and inferior looking, she said, and not at all in harmony with Dick, and
+Fred, and Paul Crosby, the young man who, in Harold's absence, had been
+asked to take his place. But Arthur overruled her with the words 'It was
+Maude's wish,' and Billy kept his post.
+
+The day arrived, and the hour, and the people came in greater crowds
+than they had done when poor Jack was buried, or the dark woman,
+Nannine, with only Jerrie as chief mourner, and the procession was the
+longest ever seen in Shannondale; and Dolly, even while her heart was
+aching with bitter pain, felt a thrill of pride that so many were
+following her daughter to the grave.
+
+Arrived at the cemetery, there was a halt for the mourners to alight and
+the bearers to take the coffins from the hearse and carry it to the
+grave--a halt longer than necessary, it seemed to Jerrie, who under the
+folds of her veil did not see the tall young man making his way through
+the ranks of the people crowding the road, straining every nerve to
+reach the hearse, which he did just as the four young men were taking
+the coffin from it.
+
+With a quick movement he put Paul Crosby aside, saying, apologetically:
+
+'Excuse me, Paul. I must carry Maude to her grave. She wished it so.'
+
+Then, taking the young man's place, he went slowly on to the open grave
+near which piles and piles of flowers were lying ready to cover the
+young girl who it was hard for him to believe was there beneath his
+hand, cold and dead, with no word of welcome for him who had tried so
+hard to see her, and was only in time for this, to help lay her in the
+grave and to listen to the solemn words 'ashes to ashes,' and hear the
+dreadful sound of earth to earth falling upon the box which held the
+beautiful coffin and the lovely girl within it.
+
+Even then Jerrie did not see him, but when she took a step or two
+forward to look into the grave before it was filled up, and someone put
+a hand upon her shoulder and said, 'Not too near, Jerrie,' she started
+suddenly, with a suppressed cry, and turning, saw Harold standing by
+her, tall, and erect, and self-possessed, as he faced the multitude,
+some of whom had suspected him of a crime, but all of whom were ready
+now to do him justice and bid him welcome home.
+
+'Oh, Harold,' Jerrie said, as she grasped his arm, 'I am so glad you are
+here. I wish you had come before.'
+
+Harold could not reply, for they were now leaving the spot, and many
+gathered around him; first and foremost, Peterkin, who came tramping
+through the grass, puffing like an engine, and, unmindful of the time or
+place, slapping him upon the shoulder, as he said: 'Well, my boy, glad
+to see you back, 'pon my soul, I be; but you flustrated all my plans. I
+was meanin' to give you an oblation; got it, all arranged, and you
+spiled it by takin' us onawares, like a thief in the night. I beg your
+pardon,' he continued, as he met a curious look in Harold's eyes, 'I'm a
+blunderin' cuss, I be. I didn't mean nothin', I've ever meant nothin',
+and if I hev' I'm sorry for it.'
+
+Harold did not hear the last, for he was handing Jerrie into the
+carriage with her father, who bade him enter, too; saying they would
+leave him at the cottage where he wished to go as soon as possible.
+There was no time for much conversation before the cottage was reached,
+and Harold alighted at the gate, and no allusion whatever had been made
+to Jerrie's changed relations until Harold stood looking at her as she
+kept her seat by her father and made no sign of an intention to stop.
+Then he said, as calmly as he could:
+
+'Do you stay at the Park House altogether now?'
+
+'Oh, no,' she answered quickly. 'I have been there a great deal with
+Maude, but am coming home to-night. I could not leave grandma alone, you
+know.'
+
+She acknowledged the home and the relationship still, and Harold's face
+flushed with a look of pleasure, which deepened in intensity when
+Arthur, with a wave of the hand habitual to him, said:
+
+'I must keep her now that you are here to see to the grandmother, but
+will let you have her to-night. Come up later, if you like, and walk
+home with her.'
+
+'I shall be most happy to do so,' Harold said, and then the carriage
+drove away, while he went in to his grandmother, who had not attended
+the funeral, but who knew that he had returned and was waiting for him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+UNDER THE PINES WITH HAROLD.
+
+
+It seemed to Harold that it had been a thousand years since he had left
+Shannondale, so much had come into and so much had gone out of his life
+since he said good-bye to the girl he loved and to the girl who loved
+him. One was dead, and he had only come in time to help lay her in her
+grave; while the other, the girl he loved, was, some might think,
+farther removed from him than death itself could have removed her.
+
+But Harold did not feel so. He had faith in Jerrie--that she would not
+change, though there had been a time during the first homesick weeks in
+Tacoma, when, knowing from his grandmother of her convalescence, and
+still hearing from her no explanation with regard to the diamonds, which
+he knew a few still suspected him of having taken, in his impatience and
+humiliation he had cried out, 'Jerrie has forgotten. She is not standing
+by me, forever and ever, amen, as she once promised to do.' But this
+feeling quickly passed, and there came a day when he read the judge's
+letter in the privacy of his room at the Tacoma, and rejoiced with an
+exceeding great joy for Jerrie, whose house and birthright had been so
+strangely restored. He never doubted the story for a moment, but felt
+rather as if he had known it always, and wondered how any one could have
+imagined for a moment that blue-eyed, golden-haired Jerrie was the child
+of the dark, coarse looking woman found dead beside her. 'I am so glad
+for Jerrie,' he said, without a thought that her relations to himself
+would in any way be changed.
+
+Once, when she had told him of the fancies which haunted her so often,
+he had put them from him with a fear that, were they true, Jerrie would
+be lost to him forever. But he had no such misgivings now; and when
+Jerrie's letter came, urging his return, both for her own sake and
+Maude's, he wrote a few hurried lines to her, telling her how glad he
+was for her, and of his intention to start for the East as soon as
+possible. 'To-morrow, perhaps,' he wrote, 'in which case I may be there
+before this letter reaches you, for the mails are sometimes slow, and
+the judge's communication was overdue three or four days.'
+
+Starting the second day after his letter, Harold travelled day and
+night, while something seemed beckoning him on--Maude's thin, white
+face, and Jerrie's, too; and when, between St. Paul and Chicago, there
+came a detention from a freight car off the track, he felt that he must
+fly, so sure was he that he was wanted and anxiously looked for at Tracy
+Park, where at that very time Maude was dying. The next afternoon he
+left Chicago, and with no further accident reached Shannondale just as
+the long procession was winding its way to the cemetery.
+
+He had heard from an acquaintance in Springfield that Maude was dead,
+and of her request that he should be one of the pall-bearers, together
+with Dick, and Fred, and Billy. 'And I will do it yet,' he said, with a
+throb of pain, as he thought of the little girl who had died believing
+that he loved her. Once or twice he had resolved to write and tell her
+as carefully as possible of her mistake, but as often had changed his
+mind, thinking to wait until she was better; and now she was dead, and
+the chance for explanation gone forever; but he would, if possible,
+carry out the wish she had expressed with regard to himself.
+
+Striking into the fields from the station, he reached the cemetery in
+time to take his place by Billy and carry poor little Maude to her last
+resting place; and then he looked for Jerrie, and felt an indefinable
+thrill when he saw her on her father's arm, and began to realize that
+she was Jerrie Tracy. But all that was over now; he had talked with her
+face to face, and had found her the Jerrie he had always known, and he
+was going to see her in her own home, at Tracy Park--the daughter of the
+house, the heiress of Arthur Tracy, and of more than two millions, it
+was said--for, despite Frank's extravagance, all of which Arthur had met
+without a protest, his money had accumulated rapidly, so that he was a
+much richer man now, than when he first came home from Europe.
+
+Harold found the family at dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Tracy and Tom in the
+dining-room, and Arthur and Jerrie in the Gretchen room, to which he was
+taken at once.
+
+'Come in--come in, my boy. You are just in time for dessert,' Arthur
+said, rising with alacrity and going forward to meet him; while Jerrie,
+too, arose and took his hand, and made him sit by her, and questioned
+him on his journey, and helped him to the fairest peach and the finest
+bunch of grapes, and, without seeming to do so, examined him from head
+to foot, and thought how handsome and grand he was, and felt sure that
+her father thought so too.
+
+With a part of the first money Billy had paid him, or rather had told
+him to draw in Tacoma, Harold had bought himself the clothes which he
+needed sadly; and though it was only a business suit, and had travelled
+thousands of miles, it fitted him well, and it was not at all a shabby
+Harold sitting at Arthur's table, but a young man of whom anyone might
+have been proud. And Jerrie was proud of him and of her father, too, as
+they talked together; and Harold showed no sign of any inequality, even
+if he felt it, which he did not.
+
+'A fine young man, with the best of manners, and carries himself as he
+were the lord high chancellor,' Arthur said, when, after dinner, Harold
+left there to pay his respects to the other inmates of the family, whom
+he found just leaving the dining-room.
+
+Dolly bowed to him coldly at first, and was about to pass on, when, with
+a burst of tears, she offered him her hand, and sobbed:
+
+'Oh, Harold, why didn't you come before? Maude wanted to see you so
+badly.'
+
+This was a great deal for Dolly, and Tom stared at her in amazement,
+while Harold explained that he had come as soon as he possibly could,
+and tried to say something of Maude, but could not, for the tears which
+choked him. Frank was unfeignedly glad to see him, and told him so.
+
+'Our dear little girl was fond of you, Hal. I am sure she was, and I
+shall always like you for that. Heaven bless you, my boy,' he said, as
+he wrung Harold's hand and then hurried away after his wife, leaving
+Harold alone with Tom, who, awfully afraid he should break down, said,
+indifferently:
+
+'Glad to see you, Hal. Wish you had come before Maude died. She was in
+a tearin' way to see you. Have a cigar? Got a prime lot in my room. Will
+you go there?
+
+Harold was in no mood for cigars, and, declining Tom's offer, sauntered
+awhile around the grounds, where he found himself constantly expecting
+to find the dead girl sitting under a tree wailing for him with the
+light whose meaning he now knew kindling in her beautiful eyes as she
+bade him welcome and told him how glad she was to see him. He was glad
+now that he had not written and told her of her mistake, and he felt in
+his heart a greater tenderness for the Maude dead than he ever could
+have felt for the Maude living.
+
+It was beginning to grow dark when he returned to the house where he
+found Jerrie in the hall ready to go home. Arthur was at her side, with
+his arm thrown lovingly around her, and as he passed her over to Harold,
+he said:
+
+'Make the most of her to-night, my boy, for to-morrow she comes home to
+stay. Heaven bless you, my daughter!'
+
+His words sent a thrill through both Harold and Jerrie, who walked on in
+silence until they reached the four pines, where Jerrie halted suddenly
+and said:
+
+'Let us sit down, Harold. I have a message from Maude, which I promised
+to deliver the first time we were alone together after you came home.'
+
+Jerrie's voice trembled a little, and after they were seated she was
+silent until Harold said to her:
+
+'You were going to tell me of Maude;' then she started and replied:
+
+'Yes; she wanted so much to see you and tell you herself. I don't know
+what she meant, but she said she had made a mistake, and I must tell you
+so, and that you would understand it. She had been thinking and
+thinking, she said, and knew it was a stupid blunder of hers; that was
+what she called it--a stupid blunder; and she was sorry for you that she
+had made it, and bade me say so, and tell you no one knew but herself
+and you. Dear little Maude! I wish she had not died.'
+
+Jerrie was crying now, and perhaps that was the reason she did not mind
+when Harold put his arm around her and drew her closer to him, so close
+that his brown hair touched her golden curls, for the night was warm and
+she had brought her bonnet in her hand all the way, while he had taken
+off his hat when they sat down under the pines, which moaned and sighed
+above them for a moment, and then grew still, as if listening for what
+Harold would say.
+
+'Yea,' he began slowly, 'I think I know what Maude meant by the mistake.
+Did she say I must tell you what it was?'
+
+'She said you would tell me, but perhaps you'd better not,' Jerrie
+replied,
+
+'Yes, I must tell you,' he continued, 'as a preliminary to what I have
+to say to you afterward, and what I did not mean to say quite so soon;
+but this decides me,' and Harold drew Jerrie a little closer to him as
+he went on: 'Did you ever think that I loved poor little Maude?'
+
+'Yes, I have thought so,' was Jerrie's answer.
+
+'She thought so, too,' Harold continued, 'and it was all my fault; my
+blunder, not hers. I loved her as I would a sister; as I did you in the
+olden days, Jerrie. She was so sweet and good, and so interested in you
+and all I wanted to do for you, that I regarded her as a very dear
+friend, nothing more. And because I looked upon her this way, I
+foolishly went to her once to confess my love for another; her dearest
+and most intimate friend, and ask if she thought I had a chance for
+success. I must have bungled strangely, for she mistook my meaning and
+thought I was speaking of herself and in a way she accepted me; and
+before I had time to explain, her mother came in and I have never seen
+her since; but I shall never forget the eyes which looked at me so
+gladly, smiting me so cruelly for the delusion in which I had to leave
+her. That is what Maude meant. She saw the mistake, and wished to
+rectify it by giving me the chance to tell you myself what I wanted to
+tell you then and dared not.'
+
+Jerrie trembled violently, but made no answer, and Harold went on:
+
+'It may seem strange that I, who used to be so much afraid of Jerrie
+Crawford that I dared not tell her of my love, have the courage to do it
+now that she is Jerrie Tracy, and I do not understand it myself. Once
+when you told me your fancies concerning your birth, a great fear took
+possession of me, lest I should lose you, if they were true; but when I
+heard that they were true, I felt so sure of you that I could scarcely
+wait for the time when I could ask you, as I now do, to be my wife, poor
+as I am, with nothing but love to give you. Will you, Jerrie?'
+
+His face was so close to hers now that her hot cheeks touched his as she
+bent her head lower and lower, but she made no reply for a moment, and
+then she cried:
+
+'Oh, Harold, it seems so soon, with Maude only buried to-day. What shall
+I say? What ought I to say?'
+
+'Shall I tell you?' he answered, taking her hand in his. 'Say the first
+English word you ever spoke, and which I taught you. Do you remember
+it?'
+
+'_Iss_' came involuntarily from Jerrie, in the quick, lisping accent of
+her babyhood, when that was all the English she could master; and almost
+before it had escaped her, Harold smothered it with the kisses he
+pressed upon her lips as he claimed her for his own.
+
+'But, Harold,' she tried to explain between his kisses, 'I meant that I
+_did_ remember. You must not--you must not kiss me so fast. You take my
+breath away. There! I won't stand it any longer. I'm going straight home
+to tell grandma how you act!'
+
+'And so am I,' Harold said, rising as she did, but keeping his arm
+around her as they went slowly along in the soft September night, with
+the stars, which were shining for the first time on Maude's grave,
+looking down upon then, and a thought of Maude in their hearts, and her
+dear name often upon their lips, as they talked of the past as lovers
+will, trying to recall just when it was that friendship ceased and love
+began, and deciding finally that neither knew nor cared when it was, so
+great was their present joy and anticipation of the future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+'FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE.'
+
+
+'Grandma, Jerrie has promised to be my wife!' Harold said to his
+grandmother that night when he took Jerrie in to her about ten o'clock,
+during which time they had walked to the Tramp House, and sitting down
+upon the chair which would hold but one, had talked the whole matter
+over, from the morning Harold first saw the sweet little face in the
+carpet-bag to the present moment when the same sweet face was pressed
+lovingly against his, and the same arms which had clung to him in the
+snow were around his neck in the darkness, as they went over with the
+old, old story, newest always and best to the last one who listens to it
+and believes that it is true.
+
+'Father, I have promised to marry Harold,' Jerrie said to Arthur the
+next morning as she stood before him in the Gretchen room, with Harold's
+hand in hers, and a look in her face something like what Gretchen's had
+worn when Arthur first called her his wife.
+
+'Lord bless you, I knew it was coming, but did not think it would be
+quite so soon. You shock my nerves dreadfully,' Arthur exclaimed,
+springing up and walking two or three times across the room. Then,
+confronting the young couple, he said, 'Going to marry Harold? I knew
+you would all this time. Well, he will do as well as any one to look
+after the business. Frank is no good, and Colvin is too old. So, get
+married at once, within a week if you like. I'm off for Germany next
+month, to find Gretchen's grave, and the house, and the picture, and
+everything, and as I shall take you with me I shall need some one with
+brains to look after things while I am gone.'
+
+'But father,' Jerrie began, 'if I go to Germany, Harold will go, too,
+and if he stops here, I shall stay.'
+
+Arthur looked at her inquiringly a moment, and then, as he begun to
+understand, replied: 'Ah, yes, I see; "where thou goest, I go, and
+where thou--" and so forth, and so forth. Well, all right; only you must
+come here directly; it will never do to stay there, now you are engaged;
+and you must be married in this room, with Gretchen looking on, and
+soon, too. No wedding, of course, Maude's death is too recent for that;
+but soon, very soon, so we can get off. I'll engage passage at once in
+the Germanic, which sails the 15th of October, and you shall be married
+the 10th. That's three weeks from to-day, and will give you a few days
+in New York. I'll leave Frank here till we return, and then he must go,
+of course, and the new mistress step in with Mrs. Crawford to
+superintend. We will get some nice man and woman to stay with her while
+we are gone.'
+
+He had settled everything rapidly, but Jerrie had something to say upon
+the subject. She did not wish to come to Tracy Park altogether while
+Mrs. Tracy was there; she would rather enjoy the lovely room which
+Harold had built for her, she said, and preferred to be married in the
+cottage, the only home she had ever known.
+
+'I shall stay with you all day,' she continued, 'but go home at night.'
+
+'And so have a long walk with Harold. Yes, I see,' Arthur said,
+laughingly, but assenting finally to her proposal.
+
+It was Jerrie now who planned everything, with Harold's assistance, and
+who broached the subject of Frank's future to her father, asking what
+provision he intended to make for him when he left Tracy Park.
+
+'What provision?' Arthur said. 'I guess he has made provision for
+himself all these years, when my purse has been as free to him as
+myself. Colvin tells me there has been an awful lot of money spent
+somewhere.'
+
+'Yes,' Jerrie replied, 'but you gave him permission to spend it, and it
+would hardly be fair now to leave him with little or nothing, and he so
+broken down. When Maude feared she was going to die, and before she knew
+who I was, she wrote a letter for her father and you, asking him to give
+me what he would have given her, and you to do the same. So now, I want
+you to give Maude's father what you would have given me for Maude's
+sake.'
+
+'Bless my soul, Jerrie!' Arthur said. 'What a beggar you are! I don't
+know what I should have given you; all I am worth, perhaps. How much
+will satisfy you for Frank? Tell me, and it is done.'
+
+Jerrie thought one hundred thousand dollars would not be any too much,
+nor did it seem so to Arthur, who placed but little value upon his
+money, and Jerrie was deputed to tell her uncle what provision was to be
+made for him, and that, if he wished, he was to remain at the park until
+his brother's return from Europe.
+
+Frank was not in his own room, but Mrs. Tracy was, and to her Jerrie
+first communicated the intelligence that she was to be married and go
+with her father to Germany. The look which the highly scandalized lady
+gave her was wonderful, as she said:
+
+'Married! almost before the crape is off the door, or the flowers wilted
+on Maude's grave! Well, that shows how little we are missed; and I am
+not surprised, though I think Maude would be, at Harold, certainly. I
+suppose you know there was something between them; but a man will do any
+thing for money. I wish you joy of your husband.'
+
+Jerrie was too indignant to explain any thing, and hurried off in quest
+of her uncle, whom she found in Maude's room, where he spent the most of
+his time, walking up and down and examining the different articles which
+had belonged to his daughter, and which, at his request, remained
+untouched as she had left them. Her brushes, her comb, her bottled
+perfumery, her work-box, her Bible, a little half-finished sketch, and
+her soft bed-slippers she had worn when she died, and one of which he
+held in his hand when Jerrie went in to him.
+
+'It is so like Maude,' he said, with quivering lips, as she went to his
+side, 'and when I hold it in my hand I can almost hear the dear little
+feet, which I know are cold and dead, coming along the hall as she used
+to come, and will never come again. I think I should like to die here in
+this room and go where Maude has gone, and I believe I should go there.
+I am sure God has forgiven me, and Maude forgave me, too, for I told
+her.'
+
+'You did! I thought so,' Jerrie said.
+
+'Yes, I had to tell her,' he continued, 'and I am glad I did, and she
+loved me just the same. You saw her die. You heard what she said to me.
+She must have believed in me, and that keeps me from going mad. I told
+Dolly, too; the shadow was so black I had to; and she said she'd never
+speak to me again as long as she lived, and she didn't either until last
+night, when I was alone in here, crying on Maude's bed; then she came to
+me and called me Frank, and said she was sorry she had been so hard, and
+asked me what we were going to do, and where we were going. I'm sure I
+don't know; do you?'
+
+He was so broken, so like a child in his appeal to her, that Jerrie's
+tears came fast as she told him of her approaching marriage and what her
+father intended doing for him. Then Frank broke down entirely, and cried
+like a child.
+
+'I don't deserve it, and I know I owe it to you, whom I have injured so
+much,' he said, while Jerrie tried to comfort him.
+
+'I must go back now to father,' she said at last; and, with a kiss upon
+his worn face, she went out into the hall, where she encountered Tom
+just coming from his mother's room.
+
+'Hallo!' Tom cried, with an attempt at a smile, 'and so you are going to
+marry Harold?'
+
+'Yes, Tom; I'm going to marry Harold,' Jerrie replied, unhesitatingly,
+as she laid her hand on Tom's arm and walked with him down the stairs.
+
+It seemed to her the most natural thing in the world that she should
+marry Harold, and she was not at all abashed in speaking of it to Tom;
+but when outside they saw Harold coming up the walk, the color rushed to
+her cheeks, and her eyes grew wondrously bright with the love-light
+which shown in them, as she dropped Tom's arm and hurried to Harold's
+side.
+
+'By George, I b'lieve I'll go and hang myself!' Tom said, under his
+breath, as he stalked moodily away; but instead of that he went across
+the fields to Le Bateau, where he sat for an hour, talking with old
+Peterkin and waiting for Ann Eliza, who had gone to Springfield, her
+father said, after a new gown, for which he was to pay two hundred
+dollars.
+
+'Think on't!' he continued. 'When we was fust married and run the 'Liza
+Ann, the best gown May Jane had to her back was a mereener or
+balzarine--dummed if I know what you call it--at one and ninepence a
+yard; but now, lord land, what's two hundred dollar gownd to me! Ann
+Eliza can have forty on 'em, if she wants to. There she is; there's the
+kerridge! By gosh, though, ain't she a neat little filly!' and the
+father's face glowed with pride as he watched his daughter alighting
+from the carriage, to which Tom had hastened in order to assist her, for
+she was still a little lame and limped as she walked.
+
+He saw the two hundred dollar gown, for Peterkin would have it
+displayed, and admired it, of course, and wished thut he had half the
+sum it cost in his own right, and wondered if he could stand it, as he
+walked slowly home, where he heard from his mother that they were still
+to remain at Tracy Park for a while, and that his father was to have one
+hundred thousand dollars settled upon him.
+
+'I guess now I'll wait a spell, and let old Peterkin go to thunder,' he
+decided, and for two weeks and more Ann Eliza watched in vain for his
+coming, while Peterkin remarked to his wife that if Tom Tracy was goin'
+to play fast and loose with his gal, he'd find himself brought up
+standin' mighty lively.
+
+The news that Harold and Jerrie were soon to be married, and go with
+Arthur to Germany, created some surprise, and some talk, too, in town,
+where many of the people had believed that there had been an
+understanding, if not an engagement, between Harold and Maude. But Tom
+put that right with a few decided words. There had never been an
+engagement, he said. Maude had liked Harold very much, and he had liked
+her, but had always preferred Jerrie; in short, matters had been as good
+as settled between them, long ago.
+
+This last was a little fiction of Tom's brain, but the people accepted
+it as true, and began to look eagerly forward to the approaching
+marriage, wondering, as people will, who would be invited, and who would
+not. It took place the 10th of October, in Mrs. Crawford's little
+parlor, with only a few intimate friends present--Grace Atherton, the
+St. Claires, Ann Eliza Peterkin, and the Tracys, with the exception of
+Dolly, who could not do so great violence to her feeling, as to attend a
+wedding. Billy was not there, but he sent a magnificent emerald ring to
+Jerrie, with the following note:
+
+    DEAR JERRIE,--I can't see you married, although I am glad for you,
+    and glad for Hal. God bless you both. I shall never forget you as
+    long as I live; and when you come back, maybe I can bear to see you
+    as Hal's wife, but now it would kill me. Good-bye.
+
+Jerrie read this note with wet eyes up in her room, and then passed it
+to Harold, to whom she told of that episode under the butternut tree,
+when Billy asked her to be his wife.
+
+'Poor Billy! I am awful sorry for him, but I can't let him have you,
+Jerrie,' Harold said, passing the note back to her, and kissing her
+tenderly, as he added: 'That is my last kiss for Jerrie Tracy, my little
+girl of the carpet-bag. When I kiss you again, you will be my wife.'
+
+'Come, children, we are waiting,' came with startling distinctness from
+Arthur at the foot of the stairs, and then Harold and Jerrie went down
+to the parlor, where they were soon made one, Arthur giving the bride
+away, and behaving pretty well under the circumstances.
+
+He had been very flighty the day before, insisting that Jerrie should be
+married in white, with a blue ribbon on her bonnet, just as Gretchen had
+been, and when she reminded him of Maude's recent death, he replied:
+
+'Well, Gretchen will wear colors if you do not.'
+
+And again he brought out and laid upon his bed the dress bought in Paris
+years before, and which had been waiting for Gretchen on that stormy
+night when he heard the wild cry of the dying woman above the wintery
+gale. She was with him again in fancy, and when he went out to the
+carriage which was to carry him to the cottage, he stepped back and
+stood a moment by the door as if to let some one enter before him, and
+all during the ceremony those nearest to him heard him whispering to
+himself, 'I, Arthur, take thee, Gretchen,' and so forth; but when it was
+over he came to himself and seemed perfectly rational, as he kissed his
+daughter and shook hands with his son-in-law, to whom he gave a check
+for ten thousand dollars, saying as he did so, that young men must have
+a little spending money.
+
+It was a very pleasant wedding, and every one seemed happy, even to
+Dick, whose spirits, however, were rather too gay to be quite natural,
+and whose voice shook just a little as he called Jerrie Mrs. Hasting,
+and told her he hoped to see her in Paris in the spring as he thought of
+going over there with Nina to join the Raymonds.
+
+'Oh, I hope you will! Nothing could make me so happy as to meet you
+there,' Jerrie said, looking at him with an expression which told him
+she was thinking of the pines and was sorry for him.
+
+The newly married pair were going directly to New York, where Arthur was
+to join them on the 4th, as the _Germanic_ sailed the 15th.
+
+All the wedding guests accompanied them to the station, Tom accepting a
+seat in the coupé with Ann Eliza, who wore her two hundred dollar gown,
+and was, of course, overdressed. But Tom did not think much about that.
+He was ill at ease that morning, though trying to seem natural; and when
+the train which took Jerrie away disappeared from view, he felt as if
+everything which had made life desirable had left him forever, and he
+cared but little now what he did, or with whom his lot was cast.
+
+So when Ann Eliza, who had cried at parting with Jerrie, dried her eyes
+and said to him, 'It is such a fine day; suppose we drive along the
+river; it may dispel the blues,' he assented, and soon found himself
+bowling along the smooth turnpike with Ann Eliza, whom he thought rather
+interesting, with the tears shed for Jerrie on her long, light
+eyelashes.
+
+'I shall miss her so much, and be so lonely without her. I hope you'll
+call often,' she said to him, when at last the drive was over, and Tom
+promised that he would, and kept his promise, too; for after Arthur
+left, he found Tracy Park so insupportably dull, with his father always
+in Maude's room and his mother always in tears, that it was a relief to
+go to Le Bateau and be made much of as if he were a prince and treated
+to nice little lunches and suppers, even if old Peterkin did make one of
+the party and disgust him so at times that he felt as if he must snatch
+up his hat and fly.
+
+And one night, when the old man had been more than usually disagreeable
+and pompous, he did start up abruptly and leave the house, mentally
+vowing never to enter it again.
+
+'I'd rather saw wood and gather swill, as Hal used to, than listen to
+that infernal old brag,' he was saying to himself, when he heard a
+wheezy sound behind him, and looking round saw the old brag in full
+pursuit and beckoning him to stop.
+
+'I'm goin' to walk a spell with you,' he said, locking his arm in Tom's
+as he came up. 'I want to have a little talk.'
+
+'Yes,' Tom faltered, with a dreadful sinking of the heart, while
+Peterkin went on:
+
+'You see you've been a comin' to Lubbertoo off and on for mighty nigh a
+month, and as the parents of a family it's time I as't your intentions.'
+
+'Intentions!' Tom stammered, trying to draw his arm from Peterkin's.
+
+But he might as well have tried to wrench it from a vise, for Peterkin
+held it fast and went on:
+
+'Yes, intentions! Thunderation, hain't a chap 'sposed to have intentions
+when he hangs round a gal who has money like my Ann 'Liza! I tell you
+what, Thomas,' and his manner became very insinuating and frank, 'as
+nigh as I can kalkerlate I'm worth three millions, fair and square, and
+there's three on 'em to divide it amongst--May Jane, Bill, and Ann
+'Liza. Now, s'posin' we say three into three million, don't it leave a
+million?'
+
+Tom acknowledged that it did, and Peterkin continued:
+
+'Jess so. Now I ain't one of them mean skunks that wants his folks to
+wait till he's dead afore they enjoys themselves; and the day my Ann
+'Liza is married, I plank down a million in hard cash for her and her
+husband to do what they darned please with; cut a dash in Europe as Hal
+is doin', if they like, or cut a splurge to hum, it's all one to me. I
+call that square, don't you?'
+
+Tom admitted that he did, and Peterkin went on:
+
+'Now, then, I ain't goin't to have Ann 'Liza's affections trifled with,
+and if I catch a feller a doin' on't, d'ye know what I'll do?'
+
+Tom could not guess, and Peterkin continued:
+
+'I'll lick him within an inch of his life, and then set the dogs on him,
+and heave him inter the river! See?'
+
+It was not a warm day, but Tom was perspiring at every pore as he saw
+presented to him the choice between a million or to be 'licked within an
+inch of his life and then dogged into the river.' Naturally he chose the
+first as the lesser evil of the two, and began to lie as he had never
+lied in his life before. He was very glad, he said, that Peterkin had
+broached the subject, as it made matters easier for him by showing him
+that his suit might not be rejected, as he had feared it might be.
+
+'You know, of course, Mr. Peterkin,' he said, 'that I am a poor young
+man, with no expectations whatever, for though Uncle Arthur has settled
+something upon father, I cannot depend upon that, and how could I dare
+to look as high as your daughter without some encouragement?'
+
+'Encouragement, boy? Great Scott!' and releasing Tom's arm, Peterkin hit
+him a friendly slap, which nearly knocked him down. 'Great Scott! What
+do you call encouragement? When a gal is so flustified at seeing you,
+and so tickled that she tetters right up and down, while her mother
+hunts heaven and earth for tit-bits to tickle your palate with--quail on
+toast, mushrooms, sweet-breads, and the Lord knows what--ain't that a
+sign they are willin'? Thunder and guns! what would you have? Ann 'Liza
+can't up and say "Marry me, Tom;" nor I can't up and say, "Thomas, marry
+my daughter," can I? But if you want to marry her, say so like a man,
+and I swan I'll meet you like a man, and a father!'
+
+Alas for Tom! he had nothing left him to do except to say that he wished
+to marry Ann Eliza, and that he would come the next evening and tell her
+so.
+
+It was Peterkin who answered his ring when he presented himself at the
+door of Le Bateau, Peterkin more inflated and pompous than ever as he
+shook the young man's hand, calling him Thomas--a name which aggravated
+him beyond all description--and telling him to go right into the parlor,
+where he would find Ann 'Liza waitin' for him, and where they could bill
+and coo as much as they liked, for he and May Jane would keep out of the
+way and give 'em a chance.
+
+Even then Tom cast one despairing glance toward the door, with a half
+resolve to bolt; but Peterkin was behind him, pushing him on to his
+fate, which, after all, was not so very bad when he came to face it.
+There was nothing low, or mean, or coarse about Ann Eliza, who, but for
+her very bright red hair, would have been called pretty by some, and who
+was by no means ill-looking, even with her red hair, as she stood up to
+receive her lover, with a droop in her eyes, and a flush on her cheeks;
+for she knew the object of his visit, into which he plunged at once. He
+did not say that he loved her, but he asked her in a straightforward
+way to be his wife, and then waited for her answer, which was not long
+in coming, for Ann Eliza was no dissembler. She loved Tom Tracy with her
+whole soul, and felt herself honored in being sought by him.
+
+'Oh, Tom!' she said, while the tears shone in her eyes, which Tom
+noticed for the first time were large and clear and very blue. 'It does
+not seem possible for you to love me, but, if you really do, I will be
+your wife and try to make you happy, and--and--'
+
+She hesitated a moment and then went on:
+
+'Save you as much as possible from father. We cannot live here; you and
+he would not get on; he means well and is the kindest of fathers to me,
+but he is not like you, and we must go away.'
+
+She was really a very sensible girl, Tom thought, and in his joy at
+finding her so sensible he stooped and kissed her forehead as the proper
+thing for him to do, while she, the poor little mistaken girl, threw
+herself into his arms and began to cry, she was so glad and happy.
+
+Tom did not know exactly what he ought to do. It was a novel situation
+for him to be in, with a girl sobbing on his bosom, and his first
+impulse was to push her off; but when he remembered that she represented
+a million of dollars, he did what half the men in the world would have
+done in his place: he held her close and tried to quiet her, and told
+her he was not half good enough for her, and knew in his heart he was
+telling the truth, and felt within him that stirring of a resolve that
+she should never know he did not love her, and that he would make her
+happy, if he could.
+
+And so they were betrothed without much billing and cooing, and Peterkin
+came in with Mary Jane and made a speech half-an-hour long to his future
+son-in-law, and settled just when they were to be married and what they
+were to do.
+
+Christmas week was the time, and he vowed he'd give 'em a wedding which
+should take the starch entirely out of Gusty Browne, whose mother, Mrs.
+Rossiter Browne, would think Gusty was never married at all when she saw
+what he could do. Greatly he lamented that Harold and Jerry could not be
+present. 'But they'll see it in the papers,' he said, 'for I'll have a
+four column notice, if I write it myself, and pay for it too! And when
+you meet 'em in Europe you can tell 'em what they missed.'
+
+To all this Tom listened, with great drops of cold sweat running down
+his back as he thought of the ridicule he should incur if Peterkin
+should carry out his intentions to 'take the rag off the bush,' as he
+expressed it. The trip to Europe pleased him, but the party filled him
+with a horror from which he saw no escape, until he consulted his
+mother, to whom he at once announced his engagement, but did not tell
+her of the check on a Springfield bank for $2,000 which Peterkin had
+slipped into his hand at parting with him, saying, when he protested
+against taking it:
+
+'Don't be a fool, Thomas. I'm to be your dad, so take it; you'll need
+it. I know your circumstances; they ain't what they was, and I don't
+s'pose you've got enough to buy the engagement ring, I want a big one. A
+solitary--no cluster for me. I know what 'tis to be poor. Take it,
+Thomas.'
+
+So Tom took it with a sense of shame which prompted him several times to
+tear it in shreds and throw them to the winds. But this he did not do,
+for he knew he should need money, as he had none of his own; and when, a
+few days before, he had asked Colvin for some, that worthy man, who had
+never taken kindly to him, had bidden him go to a very warm place for
+money, as he had no orders to give him any.
+
+'Your uncle,' he said, 'settled one hundred thousand dollars on your
+father--the more fool he--and expects him to live on it. So my advice to
+you is that you go to work.'
+
+Now, Tom couldn't work, and after a little Peterkin's gift did not seem
+so very humiliating to him, although he could not bring himself to tell
+his mother of it when he announced his engagement to her, which he did
+bluntly and with nothing apologetic in his manner or speech.
+
+'I am going to marry Ann Eliza Peterkin some time during the holidays,
+and start at once for Europe,' he said, and then brought some water and
+dashed it in her face, for she immediately went into hysterics and
+declared herself dying.
+
+When she grew calm, Tom swore a little, and talked a good deal, and told
+her about the million, which he said was not to be sneezed at, and told
+her what Colvin had said to him, and asked what the old Harry he was to
+do if he didn't marry Ann Eliza, and told her of the proposed party,
+asking her to save him from it if she could.
+
+When she found she could not help herself, Dolly rose to the situation,
+and said she would see her daughter-in-law elect, whom Tom was to bring
+to her, as she could not think of calling at Le Bateau in her present
+state of affliction. So Ann Eliza came over in the coat-of-arms
+carriage, and her mother came with her. But her Dolly declined to see.
+She could not endure everything, she said to Tom, and was only equal to
+Ann Eliza, whom she met with a bow and the tips of her fingers, without
+rising from her chair. Still, as the representative of a million, Ann
+Eliza was entitled to some consideration, and Dolly motioned her to a
+seat beside her, and, with her black-bordered handkerchief to her eyes,
+said to her:
+
+'Tom tells me you are going to marry him, and I trust you will try to
+make him happy. He is a most estimable young man now, and if he should
+develop any bad habits, I shall think it owing to some new and bad
+influence brought to bear upon him.'
+
+'Yes'm,' Ann Eliza answered, timidly; and the great lady went on to talk
+of family, and blood, and position, as something for which money could
+not make amends, and to impress upon her a sense of the great honor it
+was to be a member of the Tracy family.
+
+Then she spoke of the wedding party, which she trusted Ann Eliza would
+prevent, as nothing could be in worse taste when they were in such
+affliction, adding that neither herself nor Mr. Tracy could think of
+being present.
+
+'Be married quietly, without any display, if you wish to please me,' she
+said; and with a wave of her cobweb handkerchief she signified that the
+conference was ended.
+
+'Well, Annie, how did you and my lady hit it?' Tom asked, meeting Ann
+Eliza in the hall as she came out, flushed and hot from the interview.
+
+'We didn't hit it at all,' Ann Eliza replied, with a sound of tears in
+her voice, and a gleam in her eye which Tom had never seen before. 'She
+just talked as if I were dirt, and that you were only marrying me for
+money. She don't like me and I don't like her, there!' and the indignant
+little girl began to cry.
+
+Tom laughed immoderately, and, passing his arm around her as they went
+down the stairs, he said:
+
+'Of course you don't like her. Who ever did like her mother-in-law? But
+you are marrying me, not my mother, so don't cry, _petite_.'
+
+Tom was making an effort to be very kind, and even lover-like to his
+_fiancée_, who was easily comforted, and who, on her return to Le Bateau
+told her father plainly that the party must be given up, as it would be
+sadly out of place and deeply offend the Tracys. Very unwillingly
+Peterkin gave it up, and sent word to that effect to Mrs.
+Rossiter-Browne, who had already been apprised of the coming event and
+was having a wonderful gown made for the occasion.
+
+'I find,' he wrote, 'that it wouldn't be at all _rachelshay_ to have a
+blow out whilst the family is in deep black; but when they git into
+lavender, and the young folks is home from their tower, I'll have a
+tearer.'
+
+Peterkin tried two or three times to see Mrs. Tracy, but she put him off
+with one excuse after another, until Tom took the matter in hand and
+told her she was acting like a fool and putting on quite too many airs.
+Then she appointed an interview, and, bracing herself with a tonic, went
+down to the darkened, cheerless room, and by her manner so managed to
+impress him with her superiority over him and his that he forgot
+entirely the speech he had prepared with infinite pains, and which had
+in it a good deal about family _bonds_, and family _units_, and _Aaron's
+beard_, and brotherly love. This he had rehearsed many times to May
+Jane, with wonderful gestures and flourishes; 'but, I'll be bumped' he
+said to her on his return from the Park House, 'if I didn't forget every
+blessed word, she was so high and mighty. Lord! as if I didn't know what
+she sprung from; but that's the way with them as was born to nothin'.
+May Jane, if I ever catch you puttin' on airs 'cause you're a Peterkin,
+I b'lieve I'll kill you!'
+
+After this, anything like familiar intercourse ceased between the heads
+of the two families until the morning after Christmas day, when Frank
+and Dolly drove over to Le Bateau, where were assembled the same people
+who had been present at Jerrie's wedding, and where Peterkin insisted
+upon darkening the rooms and lighting the gas, as something a little out
+of the usual order of things in Shannondale. Peterkin was very happy,
+and very proud of this alliance with the Tracy, and his pride and
+happiness shone in his face all through the ceremony; and when the
+clergyman asked, 'Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?' his
+manner was something grand to see as he stepped forward and responded,
+'I do, sir,' in a voice so loud and full of importance that Dolly
+involuntarily groaned, while Tom found it hard to refrain from laughing.
+
+Tom behaved very well, and kissed his bride before any one else had a
+chance to do so, and called May Jane mother and Peterkin father, after
+he saw the papers which made Ann Eliza own in her own right a million
+dollars; and when, an hour later, she handed over to him as his own, a
+deed of property valued at one hundred thousand dollars, he took her in
+his arms and kissed her again, telling her what was very true, that she
+was worth her weight in gold. Tom had felt his poverty keenly, and all
+the more so that Ann Eliza's engagement-ring, a superb solitaire, had
+actually been bought with her father's gift, as had their passage
+tickets to Europe. But now he was a rich man, made so by his wife's
+thoughtful generosity, and he was conscious of a new set of feelings and
+emotions with regard to her, and inwardly vowed that, so far as in him
+lay, he would make her happy.
+
+They took the train for New York that afternoon, accompanied by
+Peterkin, who, when the ship sailed away next day, stood upon the wharf
+waving his hands and calling out as long as they could hear him, 'God
+bless you, my children! God bless you, my children!' Then he went back
+to Shannondale and called at Tracy Park, and reported to Frank, the only
+one he saw, that the youngsters had gone, and that Mrs. Thomas Tracy
+looked as well as the best on 'em in the ship, and a darned sight better
+than some!
+
+After this the great houses of Le Bateau and Tracy Park settled down
+into perfect quiet, especially that of Tracy Park, where Dolly shut
+herself up in her mourning and crape, and Frank spent most of his time
+in Maude's room, with her photograph in his hand, and his thoughts busy
+with memories of the dear little girl lying in her grave of flowers
+under the winter snow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+AFTER TWO YEARS.
+
+
+Two years since Harold and Jerrie went away, and it was October again,
+and the doors and windows of the Park House were all open to the warm
+sunshine which filled the rooms, where the servants were flitting in and
+out with an air of importance and pleased expectancy, for that afternoon
+the master was coming home, with Harold and Jerrie; and what was more
+wonderful and exciting still, there was in the party a little boy, born
+in Wiesbaden six months before, and christened Frank Tracy. They had
+gone directly to Germany--Arthur, Harold, and Jerrie--for the former
+would not stop a day until Wiesbaden was reached; and there, overcome
+with fatigue and the recollections of the past which crowded upon him so
+fast, Arthur fell sick and was confined to his room in the hotel for a
+week, during which time Jerrie explored the city with Harold and a
+guide, finding every spot connected with Gretchen and her life, even to
+the shop were Frau Heinrich had sold her small wares.
+
+As soon as her father was able, she took him to them one by one. Hand in
+hand, for he seemed weak as a little child, they went to the bench under
+the trees where he had first seen Gretchen knitting in the sunshine,
+with the halo on her hair, and here Arthur took off his hat as if on
+consecrated ground, and whispered, 'May God forgive me!' then to the
+little shop once kept by Frau Heinrich, where Arthur astonished the
+woman by buying out half her stock, which he ordered sent to his hotel,
+and afterward gave away; then to the English church, where he knelt
+before the altar and seemed to be praying, though the words he said were
+spoken more to Gretchen than to God; then to the house where he had
+lived with his bride, when heaven came down so close that she could
+touch it, or rather, to the site of the house, for fire had done its
+work there and they could only stand before the ruins, while Arthur said
+again and again, 'May God forgive me!' then to the house where Jerrie
+had lived and Gretchen had died, and where the picture still hung upon
+the wall, a wonder and delight to all who had rented the place since
+Marian's parents parents lived there. Jerrie recognized it in a moment,
+and so did Arthur, but he could only wring his hands before it and sob,
+'Oh, Gretchen, my darling, my darling!' Changed as the house was, Jerrie
+found the room she remembered so well, where she had played and her
+mother had died.
+
+'The big stove stood here,' she said, indicating the spot, 'and mother
+sat there writing to you, when Nannine opened the door and let the
+firelight shine upon the paper. I can see it all so distinctly, and over
+there in the corner was the bed where she died.'
+
+Then Arthur knelt down upon the spot, and as if the oft-repeated
+ejaculation, 'May God forgive me!' were wholly inadequate now, he said
+the Lord's Prayer, with folded hands and streaming eyes, while Jerrie
+stood over him, with her arm around his neck.
+
+'Oh, Gretchen,' he cried; 'do you know I am here after so many
+years?--Arthur, your husband, who loved you through all? Come back to
+me, Gretchen, and I'll be so tender and true--tender and true! My heart
+is breaking, Gretchen, and only for Cherry, our dear little girl baby, I
+should wish I were dead, like you. Oh, Gretchen! Gretchen! sweetest wife
+a man ever called his! and yet I forgot you, darling--forgot that you
+had ever lived! May heaven forgive me for I could not help it; I forgot
+everything. Where are you, Cherry? It's getting so dark and cold, and
+Gretchen is not here--I think you must take me home.
+
+Jerrie took him back to the hotel, where he kept his room for three
+days, and then they went to Gretchen's grave beside her mother, which
+Jerrie had found after some little search and enquiry. Here Arthur stood
+like a statue, holding fast to Jerrie, and gazing down upon the
+neglected grave, on which clumps of withered grass were growing and
+blowing in the November wind.
+
+'Gretchen is not here in this place,' he said mournfully, with a shake
+of his head. 'She couldn't rest there a moment, for she liked everything
+beautiful and bright, and this is like the Potter's field. But we'll put
+up a monument for her, and make the place attractive; and by and by,
+when she is tired of wandering about, she may come back and rest when
+she sees what we have done, and knows that we have been here. We will
+buy that house too, he said, as he walked away from the lonely grave;
+and the next day Harold found the owner of the place and commenced
+negotiations for the house, which soon changed hands and became the
+property of Arthur.
+
+Just what he meant to do with it he did not know, until Jerrie suggested
+that he should make it an asylum for homeless children, who should
+receive the kindest and tenderest care from competent and trustworthy
+nurses, hired for the purpose.
+
+'Yes, I'll do it,' Arthur said, 'and will call it "The Gretchen Home."
+Maybe she will come there some time, and know what I have done.'
+
+This idea once in his mind, Arthur never let go of it until the house
+was fitted up with school-rooms and dormitories, with the little white
+beds and chairs suggestive of the little ones rescued from want and
+misery and placed in the Gretchen home until it would hold no more. The
+general supervision of this home was placed in the hands of the English
+rector, the Rev. James Dennis, whose many acts of kindness and humanity
+among the poor had won for him the sobriquet of St. James, and with whom
+the interests of the children were safe as with a loving father.
+
+'There is money enough--money enough,' said Arthur, when giving his
+instructions to the matron, a good-natured woman, who, he knew, would
+never abuse a child. 'Money enough; to give them something besides bread
+and water for breakfast, and mush and molasses for supper. Children like
+cookies and custard pie, and if there comes a circus to town let them go
+once in a while; it won't hurt them to see a little of the world.'
+
+Frau Hirch looked at him in some surprise, but promised compliance with
+his wishes; and when in the middle of December he left Wiesbaden for
+Italy he had the satisfaction of knowing that the inmates of the
+Gretchen home were enjoying a bill of fare not common in institutions of
+the kind.
+
+Another odd fancy had entered his brain, upon which he acted with his
+usual promptness. Every child not known to have been baptized, was to be
+christened with a new name, either Gretchen, or Jerrie, or Maude or
+Arthur, or Harold, or Frank.
+
+'Suppose you have Tom, and Ann Eliza, and Hilly,' Jerrie suggested, and
+after a little demur Arthur consented, and the names of Tom, and Ann
+Eliza, and Billy were added to the list, which, in the course of time,
+created some little confusion in the Gretchen home, where Jerries, and
+Maudes, and Harolds, and Arthurs abounded in great profusion, these
+being the favorites of the children, who in most instances were allowed
+to choose for themselves.
+
+It was not difficult to find in Wiesbaden people who had remembered
+Gretchen and the grand marriage she had made with the rich American, who
+afterward abandoned her. That was the way they worded it, and they
+remembered too, the little girl, Jerrine, whom, after her mother's
+death, the nurse, Nannine, took to her father's friends, since which
+nothing had been heard from her. Thus, had there been in Arthur's mind
+any doubt as to Jerrie's identity, it would have been swept away; but
+there was none. He had accepted her from the first as his daughter, and
+he always looked up to her as a child to its mother whom it fears to
+lose sight of.
+
+The winter was mostly spent in Rome, where Harold and Jerrie explored
+every part of the city, while Arthur staid in his room talking to an
+unseen Gretchen, who afforded him almost as much satisfaction as the
+real one might have done. In May they visited the lakes and in June
+drifted to Paris, where Jerrie was overjoyed to meet Nina and Dick, who
+were staying with the Raymonds at a charming chateau just outside the
+city. Here she and Harold passed a most enjoyable week, and before she
+left she was made happy by something which she saw and which told her
+that Dick was forgetting that night under the pines, and that some day
+not far in the future he would find in Marian all he had once hoped to
+find in her. In Paris, too, she came one day upon Ann Eliza at the Bon
+Marché, with silks and satins piled high around her, and two or three
+obsequious clerks in attendance, for La Petite Américaine, who bought so
+lavishly everything she saw and fancied, was well known to the
+tradespeople, who eagerly sought her patronage and that of my lord
+monsieur, who inspired them greatly with his air of importance and
+dignity. Tom was enjoying himself immensely, and was really a good deal
+improved and a good deal in love with his little wife, whom he always
+addressed as Petite or Madame, and who was quite a belle and a general
+favorite in the American colony. Following a fashion, which Tom was sure
+had been made for his benefit, she had cut off her obnoxious red hair
+and substituted in its place a wig of reddish brown, which for
+naturalness and beauty was a marvel of art and skill, and became her so
+well that Tom really thought her handsome, or at least very stylish and
+stunning, which was better than mere beauty. They had a suite of rooms
+at the Continental, and there Harold and Jerrie dined with them in their
+private parlor, for Tom was quite too fine a gentleman to go to _table
+d'hôte_ with the common herd. Ann Eliza's grand maid, Doris, was with
+her still, and had come to look upon her young mistress as quite as
+great a personage as the Lady Augusta Hardy, whom she had ceased to
+quote, and who, with her mother, Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, was now in the
+city, attended, it was said, by a Polish count, who had an eye upon her
+money. Once, when they were alone, Jerrie asked Tom when he was going
+home, and, with a comical twinkle in his eye, he replied, 'When I hear
+that my respected father-in-law has gone off with apoplexy, and not
+before.' Jerrie thought this a shocking speech, but she was glad to see
+him so happy, and, as she told Harold, 'so much more of a man than she
+had ever supposed he could be.'
+
+That summer Harold and Jerrie spent in Switzerland, with the Raymonds
+and St. Claires and Tracys, while Arthur went to Wiesbaden to see to the
+Gretchen Home, which he found so much to his taste that he remained
+there until Harold and Jerrie, after a trip through Austria and Germany,
+joined him in November, when they went again for the winter to Italy,
+coming back in the spring to Wiesbaden, and because Arthur would have it
+so, taking up their abode for a while in the Gretchen Home, which had
+been greatly enlarged and improved, and now held thirty deserted and
+homeless children. Here, in April, Jerrie's little boy was born, in the
+same room and corner where Gretchen had died, and where Arthur again
+went down upon his knees and said the Lord's Prayer, to which he added a
+fervent thanksgiving for Jerrie spared and a baby given to him.
+
+'I hoped it would be a girl,' he said, 'for then we should have called
+it Gretchen; but as it is a boy, suppose we name it Heinrich?'
+
+'No, father,' Jerrie said decidedly, 'Baby is not to be Heinrich, or
+Arthur, or Harold, although I think the last the dearest name in the
+world,' and she put up her hand caressingly to the brown beard of the
+tall young man bending over to kiss her pale face and look at his son.
+'We will call the baby Frank Tracy.'
+
+And so Frank Tracy was the name given to the child, who was more like
+its father than its mother, and whom Arthur called Tracy, which he liked
+better, he said, than he did Frank.
+
+They remained in Wiesbaden until June, then went to Switzerland and
+Paris, and in October sailed for home, where the Park House was ready
+for them, with no mistress to dispute Jerrie's rights and no master
+except the lawful one. Just out of town on a grassy ridge overlooking
+the river, a gentleman from New York had built a pretty little cottage,
+which, as his wife died suddenly, he never occupied, but offered for
+sale, with all its furniture and appointments.
+
+'Let's buy it,' Dolly said to her husband. 'We must go somewhere before
+Arthur comes home, and we can live there very respectably and
+economically, too.'
+
+She was beginning to count the cost of everything now, and was almost
+penurious in her efforts to make their income go as far as possible. So
+they bought the pretty place, which she called Ridge Cottage, but Frank
+did not live to occupy it. After Tom went away and left him alone with
+his wife, who was not the most agreeable of companions, he failed
+rapidly, both in body and mind, and those who saw him walking about the
+house, with his white hair and bent form, would have said he was seventy
+rather than fifty years old. Every day, when the weather permitted, he
+visited Maude's grave, where he sometime stayed for hours looking down
+upon the mound talking to the insensible clay beneath.
+
+'I am coming soon, Maude, very soon, to be here beside you,' he would
+say. 'Everybody has gone, even to Tom, and your mother is sometimes hard
+upon me because of what I did. And I am tired, and cold, and old, and
+the world is dark and dreary, and I am coming very soon.'
+
+Then he would walk slowly back, taking the post office on his way, to
+inquire for letters from the folks, as he designated the absent ones.
+These letters were a great comfort to him, especially those from Jerrie,
+who wrote him very often and told him all they were doing and seeing,
+and tried to make him understand how much she loved and sympathised with
+him. Not a hint had been given him of the baby; and when, in June, he
+received a letter from her containing a photograph of the little boy
+named for him, he seemed childish in his joy, and started with the
+picture at once for Maude's grave. Kneeling down, with his face in the
+long grass, he whispered:
+
+'Look, Maude!--Jerrie's baby boy, named for me--Frank Tracy! Do you hear
+me, Maude? Frank Tracy, for me--who wronged her so. God bless Jerrie,
+and give her many years of happiness when I am dead and gone, which will
+not now be long. I am coming very soon, Maude; sooner than you think,
+and shall never see Jerrie's little boy, God bless him!'
+
+That night Frank seemed brighter than usual, and talked a great deal
+with his wife, who, to the last day of her life, was glad that she was
+kind to him and humored all his fancies; and once, when he lay upon the
+couch, with the baby's picture in his hand, she went and sat by him and
+ran her fingers caressingly through his white hair, and asked if he were
+not better.
+
+'Yes, Dolly,' he said, taking her fingers in his hand and holding them
+fast. 'A great deal better. Jerrie's baby has done me good, and you,
+too, Dolly. You don't knew how nice it seems to have you smooth my hair;
+it is like the old days at Langley, when we sang in the choir together,
+and you were fond of me.'
+
+'I am fond of you now, Frank,' Dolly replied, as she stooped to kiss the
+face in which there was a look she had never seen before, and which
+haunted her long after he had said good-night and gone to Maude's room,
+where he said he would sleep, as he was likely to be restless and might
+keep her awake.
+
+The next morning Dolly took her breakfast alone, for Frank did not join
+her.
+
+'Let him sleep,' she said to the servant, who suggested calling him; but
+when some time later, he did not appear, she went herself to Maude's
+room, into which the noonday sun was shining, for every blind and window
+was open and the light was so dazzling that for a moment she did not see
+the still figure stretched upon the bed, where with Maude's picture in
+one hand and Jerrie's baby's in the other, her husband lay, calmly
+sleeping the sleep which knows no waking.
+
+On his face there was a look of rapturous joy, and on his lips a smile
+as if they were framing the loved name of Maude when death came and
+sealed them forever. Around him was no sign of struggle or pain, for the
+covering was not disturbed; and the physician when he came said he must
+have died quietly and possibly instantly without a note of warning. They
+buried him beside his daughter and then Dolly was alone in the great
+house, which became so intolerable to her that she left it early in
+August and took possession of the cottage on the Ridge, which, though
+scarcely less lovely, was not as large as the Park House and did not
+seem haunted with the ghosts of the dead.
+
+And so it happened that Mrs. Crawford alone stood in the door-way to
+welcome the travellers when, late in the bright October afternoon they
+came, tired and dusty, but oh, so glad to be home once more and to feel
+that now it really was home to all intents and purposes.
+
+'I never was so glad in my life, and if Uncle Frank were here I should
+be perfectly happy,' Jerrie cried, as she threw herself upon Mrs.
+Crawford's neck, hugging and kissing her awhile, and then taking her
+baby from the nurse she put it into the old lady's arms, saying as she
+did so:
+
+'Another grandson for you--Harold's baby. Isn't he a beauty?'
+
+And little Tracy was a most beautiful child, with his father's features
+and complexion, but Jerrie's expression and ways, and Mrs. Crawford
+felt, as she folded him to her bosom and cried over him, that he would
+be the crowning joy of her old age. At first Harold puzzled and
+perplexed her, he was so changed from the Harold who had shingled roofs
+and painted barns and worked in Peterkin's furnace. Foreign travel and
+prosperity set well upon him, and one could scarcely have found a more
+refined or polished young man than Harold as he moved about the
+premises, every inch a gentleman and every inch the master, with a
+bright smile and pleasant word for everyone, whether of high or low
+degree. He had known what poverty meant, with slights on account of it,
+and had risen above it all, and remembering the days when he worked in
+the Tracy fields and envied his companions their leisure and freedom
+from toil, he had resolved that, if possible, some portion of mankind
+should be happier because of him. He knew he was very fine-looking, for
+his tailor told him so, and his mirror told him so, and Jerrie told him
+so twenty times a day as she kissed his handsome face, and his
+grandmother frequently took off her spectacles to wipe away her glad
+tears as she looked at her boy and felt so proud of him.
+
+All Shannondale hastened to call upon the travellers, and no one was
+louder or more demonstrative in his welcome than Peterkin, who called
+himself their _kin_, and was very proud of the connection and of his son
+_Thomas_, for whom he made many inquiries. It did not take long for the
+family to settle down into every-day quiet, Jerrie proving herself a
+competent and thorough housekeeper, while Harold was to all intents and
+purposes the head to whom everyone deferred and went for directions.
+Arthur, who had half died from seasickness, had at once taken to his
+rooms and his old mode of life, telling Harold and Jerrie to do what
+they liked and not bother him. One change, however, he made; he put
+Harold into the office in the place of Colvin, who had done his business
+for so many years, and who was glad to give it up, while Harold was glad
+to take it, as it gave him something to do and did not greatly interfere
+with his law studies, which he immediately resumed, applying himself so
+closely that he was admitted to practice within the year, and in time
+became one of the ablest lawyers in the State.
+
+And now there remains but little to do except to gather up the few
+tangled threads of our story and bring it to a close. For another year
+the Raymonds and St. Claires remained abroad, and then, just before they
+sailed for home, there was a double wedding one morning in London, when
+Fred and Dick were the bridegrooms, and Marian and Nina were the brides.
+Dick had not forgotten the night under the pines, but he had ceased to
+remember it with pain; and when he asked Marian to be his wife he told
+her of it, and of his old love for Jerrie, while she in turn told him of
+a grave among the Alps by which she had stood with an aching heart,
+while strangers buried from her sight forever a young artist from
+Boston, who, had he lived, would have made it impossible for her to be
+the wife of Dick St. Claire. But Allan was dead, and Jerrie was a wife
+and mother, and so across the graves of a living and a dead love the two
+grasped hands, and, forgetting the past as far as possible, were content
+with the new happiness offered to them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is five years now since Harold and Jerrie came home, and toddling
+about the house is a little girl two years old, whom they call Gretchen,
+and who has all the soft beauty of the Gretchen in the picture, together
+with Jerrie's stronger and more marked features. This little girl is
+Arthur's idol, and has succeeded in luring him from his den, in which,
+until she came, he was staying closer than ever. Now, however, he is
+with her constantly, either in the house or in the grounds, or sitting
+under a tree holding her in his lap, while he talks his strange talk to
+the other Gretchen, and the child listens wonderingly, with her great
+blue eyes fixed upon him.
+
+'This is our grandchild,' he will say, nodding to the space beside him,
+while little Gretchen nods too, as if she also saw a figure sitting
+there. 'Our grandchild and Jerrie's baby, and you are its grandmother.
+Grandma Gretchen! That's funny;' and then he laughs, and baby laughs,
+and says after him, lispingly, 'Danma Detchen, that's funny.'
+
+Then Tracy comes up with his whip and his cart, and his straw hat
+hanging down his back, and Arthur points him out to the spirit Gretchen
+as her grandson, who, he says, is all Hastings, with a very little Tracy
+and not a grain of German in him, 'but very nice, very nice; and you are
+his grandmother, too, and I am his grandfather, whom he once called an
+old crazy man because I wouldn't let him play in my room with a little
+alligator which his Aunt Dolly sent him from Florida.'
+
+'Well, you be crazy, ain't you?' the boy says, seating himself upon the
+bench and nestling his brown head against the arm of the man, who
+replies:
+
+'I don't know whether I am or not, but if to be very happy in the
+companionship of the living and of the dead, and to have one as real as
+the other is craziness, then I am crazy.'
+
+And then, for the hundredth time, he tells to the boy, and to the baby,
+too, who seems to understand the story of the carpet-bag and the little
+girl, their mother, whom the boy, their father, found in the Tramp House
+one wintry morning years ago, and carried through the snow. And Tracy
+starts to his feet with dilating eyes, and says:
+
+'I just wish I'd been there. I'd carried mamma, and wouldn't let her
+drop in the snow as papa did. Where was I then, grandpa?'
+
+But grandpa does not answer, and begins the story of the cherries and
+the ladder, which Tracy likes even better than that of the carpet bag,
+particularly the part where the white sun-bonnet appears in the window,
+and the shrill voice calls out: 'Mr. Crazyman, Mr. Crazyman, don't you
+want some cherries?'
+
+This Arthur makes very dramatic and real, and Tracy holds his breath;
+and sometimes when the question is more real than usual, little Gretchen
+puts out her hand, and says:
+
+'_Iss_, div me some.'
+
+Then the boy and the old man laugh, and Tracy runs off after a passing
+butterfly, and Arthur goes on with talk to the baby and the other
+Gretchen beside him, until the former falls asleep, and he takes her to
+the crib he has had put in the bay window under the picture which smiles
+down upon the sleeping infant, whose guardian angel it seems to be.
+
+The Tramp House has been repaired and renovated, the table mended, and
+the rat hole stopped up; and the trio frequently go there together, for
+it is the children's play-house, where Arthur is sometimes a horse,
+sometimes a bear, and sometimes a whole menagerie of animals. Once or
+twice he has been the dead woman on the table, with little Gretchen
+beside him in the carpet-bag, and Tracy tugging with all his might to
+lift her out; but after the day when he let her fall, and gave her a big
+bump upon the forehead, that kind of play ceased, and the boy was
+compelled to try some other make believe than that of the tragedy on the
+wintry night many years before.
+
+Billy Peterkin has never married, and never will. His heart-wound was
+too deep to heal without a scar to tell where it had been; but he and
+Jerrie are the best of friends, and he is very fond of her children.
+
+Tom is still abroad, waiting for that fit of apoplexy which is to be the
+signal for his return; but the probabilities are that he will wait a
+long time, for Peterkin, who is himself afraid of apoplexy, has gone
+through the Banting process, which has reduced his weight from fifty to
+seventy-five pounds, and as he is very careful in his diet Tom may stay
+abroad longer than he cares to do, unless Ann Eliza's persuasions bring
+him home to his dreaded father-in-law. There was a little girl born to
+them in Rome, whom they called Maude, but she only lived a few weeks,
+and then they buried her under the daisies in the Protestant burying
+ground, where so many English and Americans are lying. Ann Eliza sent a
+lock of the little one's hair to her father, who had it framed and hung
+in his bedroom, and wore on his hat a band of crape which nearly covered
+it.
+
+Dolly still calls the Ridge Cottage her home, but she is not often
+there, for a mania for travelling has seized her, and she is always upon
+the move, searching for some new place, where she hopes to find rest and
+quiet. She still dresses in black, relieved at times with something
+white, but she has laid aside crape and sports her diamonds, which she
+did not find it necessary to sell, and which attract a great deal of
+attention, they are so clear and large. One year she spent in Europe
+with Tom and Ann Eliza, the latter of whom she made so uncomfortable
+with her constant dictation and assumption of superiority that Tom at
+last came to the rescue, and told her either to mind her business and
+let his wife alone or go home. As she could not do the former she came
+home, and joined a Raymond party to California, but soon separated
+herself from it, as the members were not to her taste. Every summer she
+goes either to Saratoga or the sea-side or the mountains, and every
+winter she drifts southward to Florida, where, at certain hotels, she is
+as well known as the oldest _habituée_. We saw her recently at Winter
+Park, where, at the Seminole, she has a maid and a suit of rooms, and as
+far as possible keeps herself aloof from the common herd, consorting
+only with the noted ones of the place, those she knows who have money
+and position at home. Poor foolish Dolly, who has forgotten Langley and
+its humble surroundings. There are many like her in real life, but only
+one in our story, to which we now write
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tracy Park, by Mary Jane Holmes</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Tracy Park, by Mary Jane Holmes</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Tracy Park</p>
+<p>Author: Mary Jane Holmes</p>
+<p>Release Date: March 10, 2005  [eBook #15321]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRACY PARK***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    from page images generously made available by<br />
+    the Kentuckiana Digital Library</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="10" style="background-color: #ccccff;">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages of the printed work can be seen at
+      the Electonic Text Collection of the Kentuckiana Digital Library
+         <a href="http://kdl.kyvl.org/">
+         http://kdl.kyvl.org/</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't stand and cry; press forward and remove the difficulty.&quot;&mdash;Dickens.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>TRACY PARK.</h1>
+
+<h2>A Novel.</h2>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>MRS. MARY J. HOLMES,</h2>
+
+<h3>AUTHOR OF BESSIE'S FORTUNE, QUEENIE HETHERTON, EDITH LYSLE'S
+SECRET, HOMESTEAD ON THE HILLSIDE, ETC., ETC., ETC.</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h6>Toronto:<br />
+Rose Publishing Company.<br />
+<br />
+Hunter Rose &amp; Co.<br />
+Printers &amp; Book Binders<br />
+Toronto<br />
+25 Wellington St</h6>
+
+<h4>1886</h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2">
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>CHAPTER VII</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>CHAPTER IX.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>CHAPTER X.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>CHAPTER XI.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>CHAPTER XII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>CHAPTER XIII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>CHAPTER XIV.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>CHAPTER XV.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>CHAPTER XVI.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>CHAPTER XVII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>CHAPTER XVIII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b>CHAPTER XIX.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><b>CHAPTER XX.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><b>CHAPTER XXI.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII"><b>CHAPTER XXII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII"><b>CHAPTER XXIII</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV"><b>CHAPTER XXIV.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV"><b>CHAPTER XXV.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI"><b>CHAPTER XXVI.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII"><b>CHAPTER XXVII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII"><b>CHAPTER XXVIII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX"><b>CHAPTER XXIX.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX"><b>CHAPTER XXX.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI"><b>CHAPTER XXXI.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII"><b>CHAPTER XXXII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII"><b>CHAPTER XXXIII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV"><b>CHAPTER XXXIV.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV"><b>CHAPTER XXXV.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI"><b>CHAPTER XXXVI.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII"><b>CHAPTER XXXVII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII"><b>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIX"><b>CHAPTER XXXIX.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XL"><b>CHAPTER XL.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLI"><b>CHAPTER XLI.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLII"><b>CHAPTER XLII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIII"><b>CHAPTER XLIII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIV"><b>CHAPTER XLIV.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLV"><b>CHAPTER XLV.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVI"><b>CHAPTER XLVI.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVII"><b>CHAPTER XLVII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVIII"><b>CHAPTER XLVIII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIX"><b>CHAPTER XLIX.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_L"><b>CHAPTER L.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_LI"><b>CHAPTER LI.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_LII"><b>CHAPTER LII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_LIII"><b>CHAPTER LIII.</b></a></td></tr>
+ </table></div>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TRACEY_PARK" id="TRACEY_PARK" ></a>TRACEY PARK.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I" ></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE TELEGRAM.</h2>
+
+
+<p>'BREVOORT HOUSE, NEW YORK, Oct. 6th, 18&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>To Mr. Frank Tracy, Tracy Park, Shannondale</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'I arrived in the Scotia this morning, and shall take the train
+for Shannondale at 3 p.m. Send someone to the station to meet
+us.</p>
+
+<p>'ARTHUR TRACEY.'</p>
+
+<p>This was the telegram which the clerk in the Shannonville
+office wrote out one October morning, and despatched
+to the Hon. Frank Tracy, of Tracy Park, in the
+quiet town of Shannondale, where our story opens.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Frank Tracy, who, since his election to the State Legislature
+for two successive terms, had done nothing except to attend
+political meetings and make speeches on all public occasions,
+had an office in town, where he usually spent his mornings,
+smoking, reading the papers and talking to Mr. Colvin,
+his business agent and lawyer, for, though born in one of the
+humblest of New England houses, where the slanting roof almost
+touched the ground in the rear, and he could scarcely
+stand upright in the chamber where he slept, Mr. Frank Tracy was
+a great man now, and as he dashed along the turnpike behind his
+blooded bays, with his driver beside him, people looked admiringly
+after him, and pointed him out to strangers as the Hon.
+Mr. Tracy, of Tracy Park, one of the finest places in the county.
+It is true it did not belong to him, but he had lived there so
+long that he had come to look upon it as his, while his neighbors,
+too, seemed to have forgotten that there was across the
+ocean a Mr. Arthur Tracy, who might at any time come home to
+claim his own, and demand an account of his brother's stewardship.
+And it was this very Arthur Tracy, whose telegram
+announcing his return from Europe was read by his brother
+with mingled feelings of surprise and consternation.</p>
+
+<p>'Not that everything isn't fair and above-board, and he is welcome
+to look into matters as much as he likes,' Frank said over
+and over to himself, as he sat stating blankly at the telegram,
+while the cold chills ran up and down his back and arms. 'Yes,
+he can examine all Colvin's books and he will find them straight
+as a string, for didn't he tell me to use what I needed as remuneration
+for looking after his property while he was gallivanting
+over the world; and if he objects that I have paid
+myself too much, why, I can at once transfer those investments
+in my name to him. No, it is not that which affects
+me so, it is the suddenness of the thing, coming without warning
+and to-night of all nights, when the house will be full of carousing
+and champagne. What will Dolly say! Hysterics of
+course, if not a sick headache. I don't believe I can face her
+till she has had a little time to get over it. Here, boy, I want,
+you!' and he rapped at the window at a young lad who happened
+to be passing with a basket on his arm. 'I want you to
+do an errand for me,' he continued, as the boy entered the
+office, and, removing his cap, stood respectfully before him
+'Take this telegram to Mrs. Tracy, and here is a dime for
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you, but I don't care for the money,' the boy said
+'I was going to the park anyway to tell Mrs. Tracy that grandma
+is sick and can't go there to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>'Cannot go! Sick! What is the matter?' Mr. Tracy asked,
+in some dismay, feeling that here was a fresh cause of trouble
+and worry for Dolly, as he designated his wife when off
+his guard and not on show before his fashionable friends, to
+whom she was Dora, or Mrs. Tracy.</p>
+
+<p>'She catched cold yesterday fixing up mother's grave,' the
+boy replied; and, as if the mention of that grave had sent Mr.
+Tracy's thoughts straying backward to the past, he looked
+thoughtfully at the child a moment, and then said:</p>
+
+<p>'How old are you, Harold?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ten, last August,' was the reply; and Mr. Tracy continued:</p>
+
+<p>'You do not remember your mother?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, sir, only a great crowd, and grandma crying so hard,'
+was Harold's reply.</p>
+
+<p>'You look like her,' Mr. Tracy said.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir,' Harold answered, while into his frank, open face
+there came an expression of regret for the mother who had died
+when he was three years old, and whose life had been so short
+and sad.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, hurry off with the telegram, and mind you don't lose
+it. It is from my brother. He is coming to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Arthur Tracy, who sent the monument for my mother&mdash;is
+he coming home? Oh, I am so glad!' Harold exclaimed,
+and his handsome face lighted up with childish joy, as he put
+the telegram in his pocket and started For Tracy Park, wondering
+if he should encounter Tom, and thinking that if he did, and
+Tom gave him any chaff, he should lick him, or try to.</p>
+
+<p>'Darn him!' he said to himself, as he recalled the many
+times when Tom Tracy, a boy of his own age, had laughed at
+him for his poverty and coarse clothes. 'Darn him! he ain't
+any better than I am, if he does wear velvet trousers and live
+in a big house. 'Taint his'n; it's Mr. Arthur's, and I'm glad
+he is coming home. I wonder if he will bring grandma anything.
+I wish he'd I bring me a pyramid. He's seen 'em, they say.'</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, Mr. Frank Tracy had resumed his seat, and, with
+his hands clasped together over his head, was wondering what
+effect his brother's return would have upon him. Would he be
+obliged to leave the park, and the luxury he had enjoyed so
+long, and go back to the old life which he hated so much.</p>
+
+<p>'No; Arthur will never be so mean,' he said. 'He has always
+shown himself generous, and will continue to do so. Besides
+that, he will want somebody to keep his house for him,
+unless&mdash;' and here the perspiration started from every
+pore, as Frank Tracy thought: 'What if he is married, and the
+<i>us</i> in his telegram means a wife, instead of a friend or servant,
+as I imagined!'</p>
+
+<p>This would indeed be a calamity, for then his own and Dolly's
+reign was over at Tracy Park, and the party they were to give
+that night to at least three hundred people would be their last
+grand blow-out.</p>
+
+<p>'Confound the party!' he thought, as he arose from his
+chair and began to pace the room. 'Arthur won't like that as
+a greeting after eleven years' absence. He never fancied being
+cheek by jowl with Tom, Dick and Harry; and that is just
+what the smash is to-night. Dolly wants to please everybody,
+thinking to get me votes for Congress, and so she has invited
+all creation and his wife. There's old Peterkin, the roughest
+kind of a canal bummer when Arthur went away. Think of
+my fastidious brother shaking hands with him and Widow
+Shipley, who kept a low tavern on the tow-path! She'll be
+there; in her silks and long gold chain, for she has four boys,
+all voters, who call me <i>Frank</i> and slap me on the shoulder.
+Ugh! even I hate it all; and in a most perturbed state of
+mind, the Hon. Frank and would-be Congressman continued to
+walk the room lamenting the party which must be, and wondering
+what his aristocratic brother would say to such a crowd in
+his house on the night of his return.</p>
+
+<p>And if there should be a Mrs. Arthur Tracy, with possibly
+some little Tracys! But that idea was too horrible to contemplate,
+and so he tried to put it from his mind, and to be as
+calm and quiet as possible until lunch-time, when, with no very
+great amount of alacrity and cheerfulness, he started for home,
+where, as he had been warned by his wife when he left her in
+the morning, 'he was to lunch standing up or anyhow, as she
+had no time for parade that day.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II" ></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h2>ARTHUR TRACY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Although it was a morning in October, the grass in
+the park was as green as in early June, while the
+flowers in the beds and borders, the geraniums, the
+phlox, the stocks, and verbenas were handsomer, if possible,
+than they had been in the summer-time: for the rain, which
+had fallen almost continually during the month of September,
+had kept them fresh and bright. Here and there the scarlet
+and golden tints of autumn were beginning to show on the
+trees; but this only added a new charm to a place which was
+noted for its beauty, and was the pride and admiration of the
+town.</p>
+
+<p>And yet Mrs. Frank Tracy, who stood on the wide piazza,
+looking after a carriage which was moving down the avenue
+which led through the park to the highway, did not seem as
+happy as the mistress of that house ought to have been, standing
+there in the clear, crisp morning, with a silken wrapper
+trailing behind her, a coquettish French cap on her head, and
+costly jewels on her short, fat hands, which once were not as
+white and soft as they were now. For Mrs. Frank Tracy, as
+Dorothy Smith, had known what hard labor and poverty
+meant, and slights, too, because of the poverty and labor. Her
+mother was a widow, sickly and lame, and Dorothy in her girlhood
+had worked in the cotton mills at Langley, and bound
+shoes for the firm of Newell &amp; Brothers, and had taught a district
+school, 'by way of elevating herself,' but the elevation did
+not pay, and she went back to the mills in the day-time and
+her shoes at night, and rebelled at the fate which had made her
+so poor and seemed likely to keep her so.</p>
+
+<p>But there was something better in store for her than binding
+shoes, or even teaching a district school, and, from the time
+when young Frank Tracy came to Langley as clerk in the
+Newell firm, Dorothy's life was changed and her star began to
+rise. They both sang in the choir, standing side by side, and
+sometimes using the same book, and once or twice their hands
+met as both tried to turn the leaves together. Dorothy's were
+red and rough, and not nearly as delicate as those of Frank,
+who had been in a store all his life: and still there was a magnetism
+in their touch which sent a thrill through the young
+man's veins, and made him for the first time look critically at
+his companion.</p>
+
+<p>She was very pretty, he thought, with bright black eyes, a
+healthful bloom, and a smile and blush which went straight to
+his heart and made him her slave at once. In three months'
+time they were married and commenced housekeeping in a very
+unostentatious way, for Frank had nothing but his salary to
+depend upon. But he was well connected, and boasted some
+blue blood, which, in Dorothy's estimation, made amends for
+lack of money. The Tracys of Boston were his distant relatives,
+and he had a rich bachelor uncle who spent his winters
+in New Orleans and his summers in Shannondale, at Tracy
+Park, on which he had lavished fabulous sums of money.
+From this uncle Frank had expectations, though naturally the
+greater part of his fortune would go to his god-son and name-sake,
+Arthur Tracy, who was Frank's elder brother, and as unlike
+him as one brother could well be unlike another.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur was scholarly in his tastes, quiet and gentlemanly in
+his manners, with a musical voice which won him friends at
+once, while in his soft black eyes there was a peculiar look of
+sadness, as if he were brooding over something which filled him
+with regret. Frank was very proud of his brother, and with
+Dorothy felt that he was honored when, six months after their
+marriage, he came for a day or so to visit them, and with him
+his intimate friend Harold Hastings, an Englishman by birth,
+but so thoroughly Americanized as to pass unchallenged for a
+native. There was a band of crape on Arthur's hat, and his
+manner was like one trying to be sorry, while conscious of a
+great inward feeling of resignation, if not content. The rich
+uncle was dead. He had died suddenly in Paris, where he had
+gone on business, and the whole of his vast fortune was left to
+his nephew Arthur&mdash;not a farthing to Frank, not even the
+mention of his name in the will: and when Dorothy heard it
+she put her white apron over her face, and cried as if her heart
+would break. They were so poor, she and Frank, and they
+wanted so many things, and the man who could have helped
+them was dead and had left them nothing. It was hard, and
+she might not have made the young heir very welcome if he
+had not ensured her that he should do something for her husband.
+And he kept his word, and in course of time bought out
+a grocery in Langley and put Frank in it, and paid the mortgage
+on his house, and gave him a thousand dollars, and invited
+them for a few days to visit him; and then it would
+seem as if he forgot them entirely; for with his friend Harold
+he settled himself at Tracy Park, and played the role of the
+grand gentleman to perfection.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner parties and card parties, where it was said the play
+was for money, and where Arthur always allowed himself to
+lose and his friends to win; races and hunts were of frequent
+occurrence at Tracy Park, where matters generally were managed
+on a magnificent scale, and created a great deal of talk
+among the plain folks of Shannondale, whose only dissipation
+then was going to church twice on Sunday and to the cattle
+show once each year.</p>
+
+<p>Few ladies ever graced these festivities, for Arthur was very
+aristocratic in his feelings, and with two or three exceptions,
+held himself aloof from the people of Shannondale. It was
+said, however, that sometimes, when he and his friend were
+alone, there was the sweep of a white dress and the gleam of
+golden hair in the parlor, where sweet Amy Crawford, daughter
+of the housekeeper, played and sang her simple ballads to the
+two gentlemen, who always treated her with as much deference
+as if she had been a queen, instead of a poor young girl dependent
+for her bread upon her own and her mother's exertions.
+But beyond the singing in the twilight Amy never advanced,
+and so far as her mother knew she had never for a
+single instant been alone with either of the gentlemen. How,
+then, was the household electrified one morning when it was
+found that Amy had fled, and that Harold Hastings was the
+companion of her flight?</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I wanted to tell you,' Amy wrote to her mother in the note left
+on her dressing table. 'I wanted to tell you and be married at
+home, but Mr. Hastings would not allow it. It would create trouble,
+he said, between himself and Mr. Tracy, who I may confess
+to you in confidence, asked me twice to be his wife, and when I refused,
+without giving him a reason, for I dared not tell him of my
+love for his friend, he was so angry and behaved so strangely, and
+there was such a look in his eyes, that I was afraid of him, and it
+was this fear, I think, which made me willing to go away secretly
+with Harold and be married in New York. We are going to Europe;
+shall sail to-morrow morning at nine o'clock in the Scotia. The
+marriage ceremony will be performed before we go on board. I
+shall write as soon as we reach Liverpool. You must forgive me,
+mother, and I am sure you would not blame me, if you knew how
+much I love Mr. Hastings. I know he is poor, and that I might
+be mistress of Tracy Park, but I love Harold best. It is ten o'clock,
+and the train, you know, passes at eleven; so I must say good-bye.</p>
+
+<p>'Yours lovingly,</p>
+
+<p>'Amy Crawford, now, but when you read this,</p>
+
+<p>'Amy Hastings.'</p></div>
+
+<p>This was Amy's letter which her mother found upon entering
+her room after waiting more than an hour for her daughter's
+appearance at the breakfast, which they always took by
+themselves. To say that she was shocked and astonished would
+but faintly portray the state of her mind as she read that her
+beautiful young daughter had gone with Harold Hastings,
+whom she had never liked, for though he was handsome, and
+agreeable, and gentlemanly as a rule, she knew him to be thoroughly
+selfish and indolent, and she trembled for her daughter's
+happiness when a little time had quenched the ardor of his passion.
+Added to this was another thought which made her brain
+reel for a moment an she thought what might have been.
+Arthur Tracy had wished to make Amy his wife, and mistress
+of Tracy Park, which she would have graced so well, for in all
+the town there was not a fairer, sweeter girl than Amy Crawford,
+or one better beloved.</p>
+
+<p>It did not matter that she was poor, and her mother was only
+a housekeeper. She had never felt a slight on that account,
+and had been reared as carefully and tenderly as the daughters
+of the rich, and if away down, in her mother's heart there had
+been a half defined hope that some time the master of Tracy
+Park might turn his attention to her, it had been hidden so
+closely that Mrs. Crawford scarcely knew of it herself until
+she learned what her daughter was and what she might have
+been. But it was too late now. There was no turning back
+the wheels of fate.</p>
+
+<p>Forcing herself to be as calm as possible, she took the note
+to Arthur, who had breakfasted alone, and was waiting impatiently
+in the library for the appearance of his friend.</p>
+
+<p>'Lazy dog!' Mrs. Crawford heard him say, as she approached
+the open door. 'Does he think he has nothing to do
+but to sleep? We were to start by this time, and he in bed
+yet!'</p>
+
+<p>'Are you speaking of Mr. Hastings?' Mrs. Crawford asked,
+as she stepped into the room.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' was his crisp and haughty reply, as if he resented the
+question, and her presence there.</p>
+
+<p>He could be very proud and stern when he felt like it, and
+one of these moods was on him now, but Mrs. Crawford did not
+heed it, and sinking into a chair, for she felt that she could not
+stand and face him, she began:</p>
+
+<p>'I came to tell you of Mr. Hastings and&mdash;Amy. She did
+not come to breakfast, and I found this note in her room. She
+has gone to New York with him. They took the eleven o'clock
+train last night. They are to be married this morning, and sail
+in the Scotia for Europe.'</p>
+
+<p>She had told her story, and paused for the result, which was
+worse than she had expected.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Arthur Tracy stood staring at her, while his
+face grew white as ashes, and into his dark eyes, usually so soft
+and mild, there came a fiery gleam like that of a madman, as he
+seemed for a time to be.</p>
+
+<p>'Amy gone with Harold, my friend!' he said at last. 'Gone
+to New York! Gone to be married! Traitors! Vipers! Both
+of them. Curse them! If he were here I'd shoot him like a
+dog; and she&mdash;I believe I would kill her.'</p>
+
+<p>He was walking the floor rapidly, and to Mrs. Crawford it
+seemed as if he really were unsettled in his mind, he talked so
+incoherently and acted so strangely.</p>
+
+<p>'What else did she say?' he asked, suddenly, stopping and
+confronting her. 'You have not told me all. Did she speak
+of me? Let me see the note,' and he held his hand for it.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Mrs. Crawford hesitated, but as he grew more
+and more persistent she suffered him to take it, and then watched
+him as he read it, white the veins on his forehead began to
+swell until they stood out like a dark blue net-work against his
+otherwise pallid face.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' he snapped between his white teeth. 'I did ask her
+to be my wife, and she refused, and with her soft, kittenish
+ways made me more in love with her than ever, and more her
+dupe. I never suspected Harold, and when I told him of my
+disappointment, for I never kept a thing from him&mdash;traitor that
+he was&mdash;he laughed at me for losing my heart to my housekeeper's
+daughter! I, who, he said, might marry the greatest
+lady in the land. I could have knocked him down for his
+sneer at Amy, and I wish now I had, the wretch! He will not
+marry your daughter, madam; and if he does not I will kill
+him!'</p>
+
+<p>He was certainly mad, and Mrs. Crawford shrank away from
+him an from something dangerous, and going to her room took
+her bed in a fit of frightful hysterics. This was followed by a
+state of nervous prostration, and for a few days she neither saw,
+nor heard of, nor inquired for Mr. Tracy. At the end of the
+fourth day, however, she was told by the house-maid that he
+had that morning packed his valise and, without a word to any
+one, had taken the train for New York. A week went by, and
+then there came a letter from him, which ran as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'New York, May &mdash;&mdash;, 18&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p>'Mrs. Crawford:&mdash;I am off for Europe to-morrow, and when I
+shall return is a matter of uncertainty. They are married; or at
+least I suppose so, for I found a list of the passengers who sailed in
+the Scotia, and the names, Mr. and Mrs. Hastings, were in it. So
+that saves me from breaking the sixth commandment, as I should
+have done if he hid played Amy false. I may not make myself
+known to them, but I shall follow them, and if he harms a hair of
+her head I shall shoot him yet. My brother Frank is to live at
+Tracy Park. That will suit his wife, and as you will not care to
+stay with her, I send you a deed of that cottage in the lane by the
+wood where the gardener now lives. It is a pretty little place, and
+Amy liked it well. We used to meet there sometimes, and more
+than once I have sat with her on that seat under the elm tree, and
+it was there I asked her to be my wife. Alas! I loved her so much,
+and I love her still as I can never love another woman, and I could
+have made her so happy; but that is past, and I can only watch
+her at a distance. When I have anything to communicate, I will
+write again.</p>
+
+<p>'Yours truly, 'Arthur Tracy.'</p>
+
+<p>'P.S.&mdash;Take all the furniture in your room and Amy's, and
+whatever else is needful for your house. I shall tell Colvin to give
+you a thousand dollars, and when you want more let him know, I
+shall never forget that you are Amy's mother.</p></div>
+
+<p>This was Arthur's letter to Mrs. Crawford, while to his brother
+he wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Dear Frank:&mdash;I am going to Europe for an indefinite length
+of time. Why I go it matters not to you or any one. I go to suit
+myself, and I want you to sell out your business at Langley and live
+at Tracy Park, where you can see to things as if they were your
+own. You will find everything straight and square, for Colvin is
+honest and methodical. He knows all about the bonds, and mortgages,
+and stocks, so you cannot do better than to retain him in
+your service, overseeing matters yourself, of course, and drawing
+for your salary what you think right and necessary for your support
+and for keeping up the place as it ought to be kept up. I enclose
+a power of attorney. When I want money I shall call upon
+Colvin. I may be gone for years and perhaps forever.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall never marry, and when I die, what I have will naturally
+go to you. We have not been to each other much like brothers for
+the past few years, but I do not forget the old home in the mountains
+where we were boys together, and played, and quarreled, and
+slept up under the roof, where the blankets were hung to keep the
+snow from sifting through the rafters upon our bed.</p>
+
+<p>'And, Frank, do you remember the bitter mornings, when the
+thermometer was below zero, and we performed our ablutions in
+the wood-shed, and the black-eye you gave me once for telling
+mother that you had not washed yourself at all, it was so cold?
+She sent you from the table, and made you go without your breakfast,
+and we had ham and johnny-cake toast that morning, too.
+That was long ago, and our lives are different now. There are marble
+basins, with silver chains and stoppers, at Tracy Pack, and you
+can have a hot bath every day if you like, in a room which would
+not shame Caracalla himself. And I know you will like it all, and
+Dolly, too; but don't make fools of yourselves. Nothing stamps a
+person as a <i>come-up</i> from the scum so soon as airs and ostentation.
+Be quiet and modest, as if you had always lived at Tracy Park.
+Imitate Squire Harrington and Mr. St. Claire. They are the true
+gentlemen, and were to the manner born. Be kind to Mrs. Crawford.
+She is a lady in every sense of the word, for she comes of
+good New England stock.</p>
+
+<p>'And now, good-bye. I shall write sometimes, but not often.</p>
+
+<p>'Your brother,</p>
+
+<p>'Arthur Tracy.'</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III" ></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h2>MR. AND MRS. FRANK TRACY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Frank, in his small grocery store at Langley, was
+weighing out a pound of butter for the Widow Simpson,
+who was haggling with him about the price,
+when his brother's letter was brought to him by the boy who
+swept his store and did errands for him. But Frank was too
+busy just then to read it. There was a circus in the village that
+day, and it brought the country people into the town in larger
+numbers than usual. Naturally, many of them paid Frank a
+visit in the course of the morning, so that it was not until he
+went home to his dinner that be even thought of the letter,
+which was finally brought to his mind by his wife's asking if
+there was any news.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Frank was always inquiring for and expecting news, but
+she was not prepared for what this day brought her. Neither
+was her husband, and when he read his brother's letter, which
+he did twice to assure himself that he was not mistaken, he sat
+for a moment perfectly bewildered, and staring at his wife, who
+was putting his dinner upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>'Dolly,' he gasped at last, when he could speak at all&mdash;'Dolly,
+what do you think? Just listen. Arthur is going to
+Europe, to stay forever, perhaps, and has left us Tracy Park.
+We are going there to live, and you will be as grand a lady as
+Mrs. Atherton, of Brier Hill; or that young girl at Collingwood.'</p>
+
+<p>Dolly had a platter of ham and eggs in her hand, and she
+never could tell, though she often tried to do so, what prevented
+her from dropping the whole upon the floor. She did spill some
+of the fat upon her clean tablecloth, she put the dish down so
+suddenly, and sinking into a chair, demanded what her husband
+meant. Was he crazy, or what?</p>
+
+<p>'Not a bit of it,' he replied, recovering himself and beginning
+to realize the good fortune which had come to him. 'We
+are rich people, Dolly. Read for yourself;' and he passed her
+the letter, which she seemed to understand better than he had
+done.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, yes,' she said. 'We are going to Tracy Park to live;
+but that doesn't make us rich. It is not ours.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know that,' her husband replied. 'But we shall enjoy it
+all the same, and hold our heads with the best of them. Besides,
+don't you see, Arthur gives me <i>carte blanche</i> as to pay for my
+services, and, though I shall do right, it is not in human nature
+that I should not feather my nest when I have a chance. Some
+of that money ought to have been mine. I shall sell out at
+once if I can find a purchaser, and if I cannot, I shall rent the
+grocery and move out of this hole double quick.'</p>
+
+<p>His ideas were growing faster than those of his wife, who was
+attached to Langley and its people, and shrank a little from the
+grander opening before her. She had once spent a few days at
+Tracy Park, as Arthur's guest, and had felt great restraint even
+in the presence of Mrs. Crawford and Amy, whom she recognized
+as ladies notwithstanding their position in the house. On
+that occasion she had, with her brother-in-law, been invited to
+dine at Brier Hill, the country-seat of Mrs. Grace Atherton, a
+gay widow, whose dash and style had completely overawed the
+plain, matter-of-fact Dolly, who did not know what half the
+dishes were, or what she was expected to do. But, by watching
+Arthur, and declining some things which she felt sure were
+beyond her comprehension, she managed tolerably well, though
+when the dinner was over, and she could breathe freely again,
+she found that the back of her new silk gown was wet with
+perspiration, which had oozed from every pore during the hour
+and a half she had sat at the table. And even then her troubles
+were not ended, for coffee was served in the drawing-room, and
+as Arthur took his clear, she did not know whether she was
+expected to do the same or not, but finally ventured to say she
+would have hers with 'trimmin's.' There was a mischievous
+twinkle in Mrs. Atherton's eyes which disconcerted her so
+much that she spilled her coffee in her lap, and felt, as she afterward
+told a friend to whom she was describing the dinner, as if
+she could have been knocked down with a feather.</p>
+
+<p>'Such folderol!' she said. 'Changing your plates all the
+time&mdash;eating peas in the winter greener than grass, with
+nothing under the sun with them, and drinking coffee out of a
+cup about as big as a thimble. Give me the good old-fashioned
+way, I say, with peas and potatoes, and meat, and things, and
+cups that will hold half a pint and have some thickness that
+you can feel in your mouth.'</p>
+
+<p>And now she was to exchange the good, old-fashioned way
+for what she termed 'folderol,' and for a time she did not like
+it. But her husband was so delighted and eager that he succeeded
+in impressing her with some of his enthusiasm, and after
+he had returned to his grocery, and her dishes were washed, she
+removed her large kitchen apron, and pulling down the sleeves
+of her dress, went and stood before the mirror, where she examined
+herself critically and not without some degree of
+complacency.</p>
+
+<p>Her hair was black and glossy, or would be if she had time
+to care for it as it ought to be cared for; her eyes were bright,
+and perhaps in time she might learn to use them as Mrs.
+Atherton used hers.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Atherton stood as the criterion for everything elegant
+and fashionable, and naturally it was with her that she compared
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>'She is older than I am,' she said to herself; 'there are crow-tracks
+around her eyes, and her complexion is not a bit better
+than mine was before I spoiled it with soap-suds, and stove
+heat, and everything else.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she looked at her hands, but they were red and rough,
+and the nails were broken and not at all like the nails which
+an expert has polished for an hour or more. Mrs. Atherton's
+diamond rings would be sadly out of place on Dolly's fingers,
+but time and abstinence from work would do much for them,
+she reflected, and after all it would be nice to live in a grand
+house, ride in a handsome carriage, and keep a hired girl to do
+the heavy work. So, on the whole, she began to feel quite reconciled
+to her change of situation, and to wonder how she
+ought to conduct herself in view of her future position. She
+had intended going to the circus that night, but she gave that
+up, telling her husband that it was a second-class amusement
+any way, and she did not believe that either Mrs. Atherton or
+the young lady at Collingwood patronized such places. So they
+staid at home and talked together of what they should do at
+Tracy Park, and wondered if it was their duty to ask all their
+Langley friends to visit them. Mrs. Frank, as the more democratic
+of the two, decided that it was. She was not going to
+begin by being <i>stuck up</i>, she said, and when at last she left
+Langley four weeks later, every man, woman, and child of her
+familiar acquaintance in town had been heartily invited to call
+upon her at Tracy Park if ever they came that way.</p>
+
+<p>Frank had disposed of his business at a reasonable price, and
+had rented his house with all the furniture, except such articles
+as his wife insisted upon taking with her. The bureau, and
+bedstead, and chairs which she and Frank had bought together
+in Springfield just before their marriage, the Boston rocker her
+mother had given her, and in which the old mother had sat
+until the day she died, the cradle in which she had rocked her
+first baby boy who was lying in the Langley grave-yard, were dear
+to the wife and mother, and though her husband told her she
+could have no use for them at Tracy Park, where the furniture
+was of the costliest kind, and that she would probably put them
+in the servants' rooms or attic, there was enough of sentiment
+in her nature to make her cling to them as something of the
+past, and so they were boxed up and forwarded by freight to
+Tracy Park, whither Mr. and Mrs. Tracy followed them a week
+later.</p>
+
+<p>The best dressmaker in Langley had been employed upon
+the wardrobe of Mrs. Frank, who, in her travelling dress of
+some stuff goods of a plaided pattern, too large and too bright
+to be quite in good taste, felt herself perfectly <i>au fait</i> as the
+mistress of Tracy Park, until she reached Springfield, where
+Mrs. Grace Atherton, accompanied by a tall, elegant looking
+young lady, entered the car and took a seat in front of her.
+Neither of the ladies noticed her, but she recognized Mrs. Atherton
+at once and guessed that her companion was the young lady
+from Collingwood, who, rumor said, was soon to marry her
+guardian, Mr. Richard Harrington, although he was old enough
+to be her father.</p>
+
+<p>Dolly scanned both the ladies very closely, noting every article
+of their costumes from their plain linen collars and cuffs to
+their quiet dresses of gray, which seemed so much more in
+keeping with the dusty cars than her buff and purple plaid.</p>
+
+<p>'I ain't like them, and never shall be,' she said to herself,
+with a bitter sense of her inferiority pressing upon her. 'I
+ain't like them, and never shall be, if I live to be a hundred.
+I wish we were not going to be grand. I shall never get used
+to it,' and the hot tears sprang to her eyes as she longed
+to be back in the kitchen where she had worked so hard.</p>
+
+<p>But Dolly did not know then how readily people can forget
+the life of toil behind them and adapt themselves to one of
+luxury and ease; and with her the adaptability commenced in
+some degree the moment Shannondale station was reached, and
+she saw the handsome carriage waiting for them. A carriage
+finer far and more modern than the one from Collingwood, in
+which Mrs. Atherton and the young lady took their seats,
+laughing and chatting so gayly that they did not see the woman
+in the big plaid who stood watching them with a rising feeling
+of jealousy and resentment as she thought of Mrs. Atherton,
+'She does not even notice me.'</p>
+
+<p>But when the Tracy carriage drew up, Grace Atherton saw
+and recognized her, and whispered, in an aside to her companion:</p>
+
+<p>'For goodness' sake, Edith, look! There are the Tracys,
+our new neighbors.' Then she bowed to Mrs. Tracy, and said:
+'Ah, I did not know you were on the train.'</p>
+
+<p>'I sat right behind you,' was Mrs. Tracy's rather ungracious
+reply: and then, not knowing whether she ought to do it or
+not, she introduced her husband.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Mr. Tracy&mdash;how do you do?' was Mrs. Atherton's response;
+but she did not in return introduce the young girl,
+whose dark eyes were scanning the strangers so curiously, and
+this Dolly took as a slight and inwardly resented it.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Atherton had spoken to her and that was something,
+and helped to keep her spirits up as she was driven along
+the turnpike to the entrance of the park.</p>
+
+<p>On the occasion of Mrs. Frank's first and only visit to her
+brother-in-law it was winter, and everything was covered with
+snow. But it was summer now, the month of roses, and fragrance,
+and beauty, and as the carriage passed up the broad,
+smooth avenue which led to the house, Dolly's eyes wandered
+over the well-kept lawn, sweet with the scent of newly-mown
+grass, the parteries of flowers and shrubs, the winding walks
+and clumps of evergreens here and there formed into fancy
+rooms, with rustic seats and tables under the over-hanging
+boughs; and when she reflected that all this was hers to enjoy
+for many years, and perhaps for her life-time, she felt the first
+stirring of that pride, and satisfaction, and self-assertion which
+was to grow upon her so rapidly and transform her from the
+plain, unpretentious woman who had washed, and ironed, and
+baked, and mended in the small house in Langley into the arrogant,
+haughty lady of fashion, who courted only the rich and
+looked down upon her less fortunate neighbors. Now, however,
+she was very meek and humble, and trembled as she
+alighted from the carriage before the great stone house which
+was to be her home.</p>
+
+<p>'Isn't this grand, Dolly?' her husband said, rubbing his
+hands together and looking about him complacently.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, very grand,' Dolly answered him; but somehow it
+makes me feel weaker than water. I suppose, though, I shall
+get accustomed to it.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV" ></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h2>GETTING ACCUSTOMED TO IT.</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the absence of Mrs. Crawford, who for a week or more
+had been domesticated in the cottage in the lane, as the
+house was designated which Arthur had given her, there
+was no one to receive the strangers except the cook and the
+house-maid, and as Mrs. Tracy entered the hall the two came
+forward, bristling with criticism, and ready to resent anything
+like interference in the new-comers.</p>
+
+<p>The servants at the park had not been pleased with the change
+of administration. That Mr. Arthur was a gentleman whom it
+was an honor to serve, they all conceded; but with regard to the
+new master and mistress, they had grave doubts. Although
+none of them had been at the park on the occasion of Mrs.
+Tracy's first visit there, many rumors concerning her had reached
+them, and she would scarcely have recognized herself could she
+have heard the remarks of which she was the subject. That she
+had worked in a factory&mdash;which was true&mdash;was her least offence,
+for it was whispered that once, when the winter was unusually
+severe, and work scarce, she had gone to a soup-house,
+and even asked and procured coal from the poor-master for herself
+and her mother.</p>
+
+<p>This was not true, and would have argued nothing against
+her as a woman if it had been, but the cook and the house-maid
+believed it, and passed sundry jokes together while preparing
+to meet 'the pauper,' as they designated her.</p>
+
+<p>In this state of things their welcome could not be very cordial,
+but Mrs. Tracy was too tired and too much excited, to observe
+their demeanor particularly. They were civil, and the
+house was in perfect order, and so much larger and handsomer
+than she had thought it to be, that she felt bewildered and embarrassed,
+and said 'Yes 'em,' and 'No, ma'am,' to Martha, the
+cook, and told Sarah, who was waiting at dinner, that she
+'might as well sit down in a chair as to stand all the time; she
+presumed she was tired with so many extra steps to take.'</p>
+
+<p>But Sarah knew her business, and persisted in standing, and
+inflicting upon the poor woman as much ceremony as possible,
+and then, in the kitchen, she repeated to the cook and the
+coachman, with sundry embellishments of her own, the particulars
+of the dinner, amid peals of laughter at the expense of the
+would-be lady, who had said 'she could just as soon have her
+salad with her other things, and save washing go many dishes.'</p>
+
+<p>It was hardly possible that mistress and maids would stay together
+long, especially as Mrs. Tracy, when a little more assured,
+and a little less in awe of her servants, began to show a disposition
+to know by personal observation what was going on in
+the kitchen, and to hint broadly that there was too much waste
+here and expenditure there, and quite too much company at all
+hours of the day.</p>
+
+<p>'She didn't propose to keep a boarding-house,' she said, 'or
+to support families outside, and the old woman who came so often
+to the basement door with a big basket under her cloak
+must discontinue her calls.'</p>
+
+<p>Then there occurred one of those Hibernian cyclones which
+sweep everything before them, and which in this instance swept
+Mrs. Tracy out of the kitchen for the time being, and the cook
+out of the house. Her self-respect, she said, would not allow
+her to stay with a woman who knew just how much coal was
+burned, how much butter was used, and how much bread was
+thrown away, and who objected to giving a bite now and then
+to a poor old woman, who, poor as she was, had never yet been
+helped by the poor-master, or gone to a soup-house like my
+lady!</p>
+
+<p>Martha's departure was followed by that of Sarah, and then
+Mrs. Tracy was alone, and for a few days enjoyed herself immensely,
+doing her own work, cooking her own dinner, and eating
+it when and where she liked&mdash;in the kitchen mostly, as that
+kept the flies from the dining-room, and saved her many steps,
+for Dolly was beginning to find that there was a vast difference
+between keeping a house with six rooms and one with twenty
+or more.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband urged her to try a new servant, saying there was
+no necessity for her to make a slave of herself: but she refused
+to listen. Economy was a part of her nature, and besides that
+she meant to show them that she was perfectly independent of
+the whole tribe; the <i>tribe</i> and <i>them</i> referring to the hired
+girls
+alone, for she knew no one else in town.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody had called except the clergyman, not even Mrs.
+Crawford, whose friendship and possible advice Mrs. Tracy had
+counted upon, and with whom she knew she should feel more
+at ease than with Mrs. Atherton from Brier Hill, or Miss Hastings
+from Collingwood. She had seen both the last named
+ladies at church and had a nod from Mrs. Atherton, and that
+was all the recognition she had received from her neighbors up
+to the hot July morning, a week or more after the house-maid's
+departure, when she was busy in the kitchen canning black
+raspberries, of which the garden was full.</p>
+
+<p>Like many housekeepers who do their own work, Dolly was
+not very particular with regard to her dress in the morning,
+and on this occasion her hair was drawn from her rather high
+forehead, and twisted into a hard knot at the back of her head;
+her calico dress hung straight dawn, for she was minus hoops,
+which in those days were worn quite large; her sleeves were
+rolled above her elbows, and, as a protection against the juice of
+the berries, she wore a huge apron made of sacking. In this
+garb, and with no thought of being interrupted, she kept on with
+her work until the last kettle of fruit, was boiling and bubbling
+on the stove, and she was just glancing at the clock to see if it
+were time to put over the peas for dinner, when there came a
+quick, decisive ring at the front door.</p>
+
+<p>'Who can that be?' she said to herself, as she wiped her
+hands upon her apron. 'Some peddler or agent, I dare say.
+Why couldn't he come round to the kitchen, door, I'd like to
+know?'</p>
+
+<p>She had been frequently troubled with peddlers and agents
+of all kinds, and feeling certain that this was one&mdash;ringing the
+bell a second time, as if in a hurry&mdash;she started for' the door in
+no very amiable frame of mind, for peddlers were her abomination.
+Something ailed the lock or key, which resisted all her
+efforts to turn it; and at last, putting her mouth to the keyhole,
+she called out, rather sharply:</p>
+
+<p>'Go to the back door: I cannot open this,'</p>
+
+<p>Then, as she caught a whiff of burnt syrup, she hurried to the
+kitchen, where she found that her berries had boiled over, and
+were hissing and sputtering on the hot stove, raising a cloud of
+smoke so dense that she did not see the person who stood on
+the threshold of the door until a voice wholly unlike that of
+any peddler or agent said to her;</p>
+
+<p>'Good morning, Mrs. Tracy. I hope I am not intruding.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned, and to her horror and surprise, saw Grace
+Atherton, attired in the coolest and daintiest of morning costumes,
+with a jaunty French bonnet set coquettishly upon her
+head, and a silver card-case in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment Dolly's wits forsook her and she stood staring
+at her visitor, who, perfectly at her ease, advanced into the
+room and said:</p>
+
+<p>'I hope you will excuse me, Mrs. Tracy, for this morning call
+I came&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>But she did not finish the sentence, for by this time Dolly
+had recovered herself a little, and throwing off her apron, she
+replied, nervously:</p>
+
+<p>'Not at all&mdash;not at all, I supposed you were some peddler
+or agent when I sent you to this door. They are the plague of
+my life, and think I'll buy everything and give to everything
+because Arthur did. I am doing my own work, you see.
+Come into the parlor;' and she led the way into the dark
+drawing-room, and where the chairs and sofas were surrounded
+in white linen, looking like so many ghosts in the dim, uncertain
+light.</p>
+
+<p>But Dolly opened one of the windows, and pushing back the
+blinds, let in a flood of sunshine, so strong and bright that she
+at once closed the shutters, saying, apologetically, that she did
+not believe in fading the carpets, if they were not her own.
+Then she sat down upon an ottoman and faced her visitor, who
+was regarding her with a mixture of amusement and wonder.</p>
+
+<p>Grace Atherton was an aristocrat to her very finger-tips, and
+shrank from contact with anything vulgar and unsightly, and,
+to her mind, Mrs. Tracy represented both, and seemed sadly out
+of place in that handsome room, with her sleeves rolled up and
+the berry stains on her hands and face. Grace knew nothing
+by actual experience of canning berries, or of aprons made of
+sacking, or of bare arms, except it were of an evening when
+they showed white and fair against her satin gown, with bands
+of gold and precious stones upon them, and she felt that there
+was an immeasurable distance between herself and this woman,
+whom she had come to see partly on business and partly because
+she thought she must call upon her for the sake of Arthur
+Tracy, the former occupant of the park.</p>
+
+<p>Grace and Arthur had been fast friends, and Brier Hill was
+almost the only place where he had visited on anything like
+terms of intimacy. Indeed, it was rumored by the busy knowing
+ones of Shannondale that, had the pretty widow been six
+years his junior instead of his senior, she would have left no
+art untried to win him. But here the wise ones were in fault,
+for though Grace Atherton's heart was not buried in her husband's
+grave, and, in fact, had never been her husband's at all,
+it was given to one who, though he cared for it once, did not
+prize it now, for, with all the intensity of his noble nature,
+Richard Harrington, of Collingwood; loved the beautiful girl
+whom, years ago, he had taken to his home as his child, and
+whom, it was said, he was to marry. But if the belief that the
+love she once refused and which she would fain recover was
+lost to her forever rankled in her breast, Grace never made a
+sign, and laughed as gayly and looked almost as young and
+handsome as in the days when Richard was wooing her in the
+pleasant old English town across the sea. She had loved
+Richard then, but, alas! loved money more, and she chose a
+richer man, old enough to be her father, who had died when
+she was twenty-one and left her the possessor of nearly half a
+million, every dollar of which she would have given to have
+recalled the days which were gone forever.</p>
+
+<p>Grace had been intending to call upon Mrs. Tracy ever since
+she came to the park. 'Not,' as she said to her friend, Edith
+Hastings, 'for the woman's sake, for she knew her to be vulgar:
+but because she was a neighbor and the sister-in-law of
+Arthur Tracy,' And so at last she came, partly out of compliment
+and partly on business, into which last she plunged at
+once. She was going to the mountains with Mr. Harrington
+and Miss Hastings: her cook, who had been with her seven
+years, had gone to attend a sick mother, and had recommended
+as a fit person to take her place the woman who had just left
+Tracy Park.</p>
+
+<p>'I do not like to take a servant without first knowing something
+of her from her last employer,' she said: 'and, if you do
+not mind, I should like to ask if Martha left for anything very
+bad.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Tracy colored scarlet, and for a moment was silent.
+She could not tell that fine lady in the white muslin dress, with
+seas of lace and embroidery, that Martha had called her <i>second
+classy</i>, and <i>stingy</i> and <i>strooping</i>, and <i>mean</i>,
+because
+she objected
+to the amount of coal burned, and bread thrown away, and
+time consumed at the table, besides turning down the gas in the
+kitchen when she thought it too light, to say nothing of turning
+it off at the meter at ten o'clock, just when the servants
+were beginning to enjoy themselves. All this she felt would
+scarcely interest a person like Mrs. Atherton, who might sympathize
+with Martha more than with herself, so she finally said:</p>
+
+<p>'Martha was saucy to me, and on the whole it was better
+for them all to go; and so I am doing my own work.'</p>
+
+<p>'Doing your own work!' and Grace gave a little cry of surprise,
+while her shoulders shrugged meaningly, and made Mrs.
+Tracy almost as angry as she had been with Martha when she
+called her mean and second-class. 'It cannot be possible that
+you cook, and wash, and iron, and do everything,' Mrs. Atherton
+continued. 'My dear Mrs. Tracy, you can never stand it
+in a house like this, and Mr. Arthur would not like it if he
+knew. Why he kept as many as six servants, and sometimes
+more. Pray let me advise you, and commend to you a good
+girl; who lived with me three years, and can do everything,
+from dressing my hair to making a blanc-mange. I only parted
+with her because she was sick, and now that she is well, her
+place is filled. Try her, and do not make a servant of yourself.
+It is not fitting that you should.'</p>
+
+<p>Grace was fond of giving advice, and had said more than she
+intended saying when she began, but Mrs. Tracy, though annoyed,
+was not angry, and consented to receive the girl who
+had lived at Brier Hill three years, and who, she reflected,
+could be of use to her in many ways.</p>
+
+<p>While sitting there in her soiled working dress talking to the
+elegant Mrs. Atherton she had felt her inferiority more keenly
+than she had ever done before, while at the same time she was
+conscious that a new set of ideas and thoughts had taken possession
+of her, reawaking in her the germ of that ambition to
+be somebody which she had felt so often when a girl, and which
+now was to bud and blossom, and bear fruit a hundred fold.
+She would take the girl, and from her learn the ways of the
+world as presented at Brier Hill. She would no longer wear
+sacking aprons, and open the door herself. She would be more
+like Grace Atherton, whom she watched admiringly as she went
+down the walk to the handsome carriage waiting for her, with
+driver and footman in tall hats and long coats on the box.</p>
+
+<p>This was the beginning of the fine lady into which Dolly finally
+blossomed, and when that day Frank went home to his
+dinner he noticed something in her manner which he could not
+understand until she told him of Mrs. Atherton's call, and the
+plight in which that lady had found her.</p>
+
+<p>'Served you right, Dolly,' Frank said, laughing till the tears
+ran. 'You have no business to be digging round like a slave
+when we are able to have what we like. Arthur said we were
+to keep up the place us he had done, and that does not mean
+that you should be a scullion. No, Dolly; have all the girls
+you want, and hold up your head with the best of them. Get
+a new silk gown, and return Mrs. Atherton's call at once, and
+take a card and turn down one corner or the other, I don't
+know which, but this girl of hers can tell you. Pump her dry
+as a powder horn; find out what the quality do, and then do it,
+and not bother about the expense. I am going in for a good
+time, and don't mean to work either. I told Colvin this morning
+that I thought I ought to draw a salary of about four thousand
+a year, besides our living expenses, and though he looked
+at me pretty sharp over his spectacles he said nothing. Arthur
+is worth half a million, if he is worth a cent. So, go it,
+Dolly, while you are young,' and in the exuberance of his joy
+Frank kissed his wife on both cheeks, and then hurried back to
+his office, where he spent most of his time trying to be a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>That day they dined in the kitchen with a leaf of the table
+turned up as they had done in Langley, but the next day they
+had dinner in the dining-room, and were waited upon by the
+new girl as well as it was possible for her to do with her mistress'
+interference.</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind; Mr. Tracy's in a hurry. Give him his pie at
+once,' she said, as Susan was about to clear the table preparatory
+to the dessert, but she repented the speech when she saw
+the look of surprise which the girl gave her and which expressed
+more than words could have done.</p>
+
+<p>'Better let her run herself,' Frank said, when Susan had left
+the room, 'and if she wants to take every darned thing off the
+table and tip it over to boot, let her do it. If she has lived
+three years with Mrs. Atherton, she knows what is what better
+than we do.'</p>
+
+<p>'But it takes so long, and I have much to see to in this great
+house,' Dolly objected, and her husband replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Get another girl, then; three of them if you like. What
+matter how many girls we have so long as Arthur pays for
+them, and he is bound to do that. He said so in his letter.
+You are altogether too economical. I've told you so a hundred
+times, and now there is no need of saving. I want to see you
+a lady of silks and satins like Mrs. Atherton. Pump that girl.
+I tell you, and find out what ladies do!'</p>
+
+<p>This was Frank's advice to his wife, and as far as in her lay
+she acted upon it, and whatever Susan told her was done by
+Mrs. Atherton at Brier Hill, she tried to do at Tracy Park:
+all except staying out of the kitchen. That, from her nature,
+she could not and would not do. Consequently she was constantly
+changing cooks, and frequently took the helm herself,
+to the great disgust of her husband, who managed at last to imbue
+her with his own ideas of things.</p>
+
+<p>In course of time most of the neighbors who had any claim
+to society called at the park, and among them Mrs. Crawford.
+But Mrs. Tracy had then reached a point from which she looked
+down upon one who had been housekeeper where she was now
+mistress, and whose daughter's good name was under a cloud,
+as there were some who did not believe that Harold Hastings
+had ever made her his wife. When told that Mrs. Crawford
+had asked for her Mrs. Tracy sent word that she was engaged,
+and that if Mrs. Crawford pleased she would give her errand to
+the girl.</p>
+
+<p>'I have no errand. I came to call,' was Mrs. Crawford's reply,
+and she never crossed the threshold of her old home again
+until the March winds were blowing and there was a little boy
+in the nursery at the park.</p>
+
+<p>At the last moment the expected nurse had fallen sick, and
+in his perplexity Mr. Tracy went to the cottage in the lane and
+begged of Mrs. Crawford to come and care for his wife. Mrs.
+Crawford was very proud, but she was poor, too, and as the
+price per week which Frank offered her was four times as much
+as she could earn by sewing, she consented at last and went as
+nurse to the sick-room, and the baby, Tom, on whose little red
+face she imprinted many a kiss for the sake of her daughter
+who was coming home in June, and over whom the shadow of
+hope and fear was hanging.</p>
+
+<p>Dolly Tracy's growth after it fairly commenced, was very
+rapid, and when Mrs. Crawford went to her as nurse she had
+three servants in her employ, besides the coachman, and was
+imitating Mrs. Atherton to the best of her ability; and when,
+early in the summer, she received the wedding cards of Edith
+Hastings, the young lady from Collingwood, who had married
+a Mr. St. Claire instead of her guardian, she felt that her position
+was assured, and from that time her progress was onward and
+upward until the October morning, ten years later, when our
+story proper opens, and we see her standing upon the piazza of
+her handsome house, with every sign of wealth and luxury
+about her person, from the silken robe to the jewels upon her
+soft, white hands, which once had washed her own dishes, and
+canned berries in her own kitchen, where she had received
+Grace Atherton, with her sleeves above her elbows.</p>
+
+<p>There were five servants in the house now, and they ran over
+and against each other, and quarrelled, and gossipped, and worried
+her life nearly out of her, until she was sometimes tempted
+to send them away and do the work herself. But she was far
+too great a lady for that. She dressed in silk and satin every
+day, and drove in her handsome carriage, with her driver and
+footman in tall hats and long coats. She was thoroughly up in
+etiquette, and did not need Susan to tell her what to do. She
+knew all about visiting cards, and dinner cards, and cards of
+acceptance, and regret, and condolence, and she read much oftener
+than she did her Bible a book entitled 'Habits of Good
+Society.'</p>
+
+<p>Three children played in the nursery now, Tom, and Jack,
+and baby Maude, and she kept a nurse constantly for them, and
+strove with all her might to instil into their infant minds that
+they were the Tracys of Tracy Park, and entitled to due respect
+from their inferiors; and Tom, the boy of ten and a half, had
+profited by her teaching, and was the veriest little braggart in
+all Shannondale, boasting of his father's house, and his father's
+money, without a word of the Uncle Arthur wandering no one
+knew where, or cared particularly for that matter.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur had never been home since the day he quitted it to
+look after Amy Crawford, now lying in the grave-yard of Shannondale,
+under the shadow of the tall monument which Arthur's
+money had bought. At first he had written frequently to Mrs.
+Crawford, and occasionally to his brother, and his agent, Mr.
+Colvin; then his letters came very irregularly, and sometimes a
+year would intervene between them. Then he would write
+every week, and he once told them not to be anxious if they did
+not hear from him in a long time, as in case of his death he had
+arranged to have the news communicated to his friends at once.
+After this letter nothing had been heard from him for more
+than two years, until the morning when his telegram came and
+so greatly disturbed the mental equilibrium of Mr. Frank Tracy
+that for an hour or more he sat staring into the street in a bewildered
+kind of way, wondering what would be the result of
+his brother's return, and if he should be required to give up the
+investments he had made from the exorbitant sum he had
+charged for looking after the place. Once he thought he would
+ask Colvin's opinion; but he was a little afraid of the old man,
+who had sometimes hinted that his salary was far greater than
+the services rendered, but as Mr. Arthur, to whom he made reports
+of the expenditures, had never objected, it was not for him
+to do so, he said. And still Frank distrusted him, and decided
+that, on the whole, his better plan was to wait, or at least to
+consult no one but his wife, and he was glad when lunch-time
+came, and he started home, where preparations were going forward
+for the first large party they had ever given.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V" ></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h2>AT THE PARK.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Frank Tracy had at first grown faster than his wife, and
+the change in his manner had been more perceptible;
+for with all her foolishness Dolly had a kind heart, and
+a keen sense of right, and wrong, and justice than her husband.
+She had opposed him stoutly when he raised his own
+salary from $4,000 to $6,000 a year, on the plea that his services
+were worth it, and that two thousand more or less was
+nothing to Arthur; and when he was a candidate for the Legislature
+she had protested loudly against his inviting to the house
+and giving beer and cider to the men whose votes he wanted,
+and for whom as men he did not care a farthing; but when he
+came up for Congress she forgot all her scruples, and was as
+anxious as himself to please those who could help him secure
+the nomination and afterward the election. It was she who had
+proposed the party, to which nearly everybody was to be invited,
+from old Peterkin, with his powerful influence among
+a certain class, and Widow Shipleigh with her four sons, to
+Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire, from Grassy Spring, Squire Harrington,
+from Collingwood, and Grace Atherton, from Brier Hill. Very
+few who could in any way help Frank to a seat in Congress were
+omitted from the list, whether Republican or Democrat, for
+Frank was popular with both parties and expected help
+from both. Over three hundred cards had been issued for
+the party, which was the absorbing topic of conversation in
+the whole town, and which brought white kids and white muslins
+into great requisition, while swallow-tails and non swallow-tails
+were discussed in the privacy of households, and discarded
+or decided upon according to the length of the masculine purse
+or the strength of the masculine resistance, for dress coats were
+not then the rule in Shannondale. It was said that Mr. St. Claire
+and Squire Harrington always wore them to dinner, but they
+were the nobility <i>par excellence</i> of the town, and were expected
+to do things differently from the middle class, who had
+their bread to earn. Old Peterkin, however, whom Frank in
+his soliloquy, had designated a <i>canal bummer</i>, had become a rich
+man, and was resolved to show that he knew what was <i>au fait</i>
+for the occasion; a new suit throughout, in the very latest
+style, was in progress of making for him, and he had been
+heard to say that 'Tracy should have his vote and that of fifty
+more of the boys to pay for his ticket to the doin's'. This
+speech, which was reported to Mrs. Tracy, reconciled her to the
+prospect of receiving as a guest the coarsest, roughest man in
+town, whose only recommendation was his money and the brute
+influence he exercised over a certain class.</p>
+
+<p>Dolly has scarcely slept for excitement since the party had
+been decided upon, and everything seemed to be moving on
+very smoothly and in order. They were to have music, and
+flowers, and a caterer from Springfield, where a lovely party-dress
+for herself of peach-blow satin was making, and nothing occurred
+of any importance to disturb her until the morning of
+the day appointed for the party, when it seemed as if every
+evil culminated at once. First, the colored boy who was to
+wait in the upper hall came down with measles. Then
+Grace Atherton drove round in her carriage to say that it
+would be impossible for her to be present, as she had received
+news from New York which made it necessary for her to go
+there by the next train. She was exceedingly sorry, she said,
+and for once in her life Grace was sincere. She <i>was</i> anxious
+to attend the party, for, as she said to Edith St. Claire in confidence,
+she wanted to see old Peterkin in his swallow-tail and
+white vest, with a shirt-front as big as a platter. There was a
+great deal of sarcasm and ridicule in Grace Atherton's nature,
+but at heart she was kind and meant to be just, and after a
+fashion really liked Mrs. Tracy, to whom she had been of service
+in various ways, helping her to fill her new position more gracefully
+than she could otherwise have done, and enlightening her
+without seeming to do so on many points which puzzled her
+sorely; on the whole they were good friends, and, after expressing
+her regret that she could not be present in the evening,
+Grace stood a few moments chatting familiarly and offering to
+send over flowers from her greenhouse, and her own maid to
+arrange Mrs. Tracy's hair and assist her in dressing. Then she
+took her leave, and it was her carriage Mrs. Tracy was watching
+as it went down the avenue, when little Harold Hastings
+appeared around the corner of the house, and, coming up the
+steps, took off his cap respectfully as he said:</p>
+
+<p>'Grandma sends you her compliments, and is very sorry that
+she has rheumatism this morning and cannot come to-night to
+help you. She thinks, perhaps, you can get Mrs. Mosher.'</p>
+
+<p>'Your grandmother can't come, when I depended so much
+upon her, and she thinks I can get Mrs. Mosher, that termagant,
+who would raise a mutiny in the kitchen in an hour!' Mrs.
+Tracy said this so sharply that a flush mounted to the handsome
+face of the boy, who felt as if he were in some way a culprit
+and being reprimanded. 'She <i>must</i> come, if she does nothing
+but sit in the kitchen and keep order,' was Mrs. Tracy's next
+remark.</p>
+
+<p>'She can't,' Harold replied; 'her foot and ankle is all swelled
+and aches so she almost cries. She is awful sorry, and so am I,
+for I was coming with her to see the show.'</p>
+
+<p>This speech put a new idea into Mrs. Tracy's mind, and she
+said to the boy:</p>
+
+<p>'How would you like to come anyway, and stay in the upper
+hall, and tell the people where to go? The boy I engaged
+has disappointed me. You are rather small for the place, but I
+guess you'll do, and I will give you fifty cents.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'd like it first-rate,' Harold said, his face brightening at
+the thought of earning fifty cents and seeing the show at the
+same time.</p>
+
+<p>Half-dollars were not very plentiful with Harold, and he was
+trying to save enough to buy his grandmother a pair of spectacles,
+for he had heard her say that she could not thread her
+needle as readily as she once did, and must have glasses
+as soon as she had the money to spare. Harold had seen
+a pair at the drug-store for one dollar, and, without knowing
+at all whether they would fit his grandmother's eyes or
+not, had asked the druggist to keep them until he had the
+required amount. Fifty cents would just make it, and he
+promised at once that he would come; but in an instant
+there fell a shadow upon his face as he thought of <i>Tom</i>, his
+tormentor, who worried him so much.</p>
+
+<p>'What is it?' Mrs. Tracy asked, as she detected in him a disposition
+to reconsider.</p>
+
+<p>'Will Tom be up in the hall?' Harold asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course not,' Mrs. Tracy replied. 'He will be in the parlors
+until ten o'clock, and then he will go to bed. Why do you
+ask?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because,' Harold answered fearlessly, 'if he was to be there
+I could not come; he chaffs me so and twits me with being poor
+and living in a house his uncle gave us.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is very naughty in him, and I will see that he behaves
+better in future,' said Mrs. Tracy, rather amused than other
+wise at the boy's frankness.</p>
+
+<p>As the mention of the uncle reminded Harold of the telegram,
+he took it from his pocket and handed it to her.</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Tracy said I was to bring you this. It's from Mr.
+Arthur, and he's coming to-night. I'm so glad, and grandma
+will be, too!'</p>
+
+<p>If Mrs. Tracy heard the last of Harold's speech she did not
+heed it, for she had caught the words that Arthur was coming
+that night, and, for a moment, she felt giddy and faint, and her
+hand shook so she could scarcely open the telegram.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur had been gone so long and left them in undisputed
+possession of the park, that she had come to feel as if it belonged
+to them by right, and she had grown so into a life of ease and
+luxury, that to give it up now and go back to Langley seemed
+impossible to her. She could see it all so plainly&mdash;the old life
+of obscurity and toil in the little kitchen where she had eaten
+her breakfast on winter mornings so near the stove that she
+could cook her buckwheats on the griddle and transfer them to
+her own and her husband's plates without leaving her seat. She
+had been happy, or comparatively so there, she said to herself,
+because she knew no better. But now she did know better, and
+she ate her breakfast in an oak-paneled dining-room, with a waitress
+at her elbow, and her buckwheats hot from a silver dish
+instead of the smoking griddle. She had a governess for her
+two boys, Tom and Jack, and a nurse for her little Maude, who,
+in her ambitious heart, she hoped would one day marry Dick
+St. Clair, the young heir of Grassy Spring.</p>
+
+<p>It never occurred to Dolly that they might possibly remain
+at the park if Arthur did come home. She felt sure they could
+not, for Arthur would hardly approve of his brother's stewardship
+when he came to realize how much it had cost him.
+They would have to leave, and this party she was giving would
+be her first and last at Tracy Park. How she wished she had never
+thought of it, or, having thought of it, that she had omitted from
+the list those who, she knew, would be obnoxious to the foreign
+brother, and who had only been invited for the sake of their political
+influence, which would now be useless, for Frank Tracy
+as a nobody, with very little money to spend, would not run as
+well, even in his own party, as Frank Tracy of Tracy Park, with
+thousands at his command if he chose to take them.</p>
+
+<p>'It is too bad, and I wish we could give up the party,' she
+said aloud, forgetting in her excitement that Harold was
+still standing there, gazing curiously at her. 'You here yet? I
+thought you had gone!' she said, half angrily, as she recovered
+herself a little and met the boy's wondering eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes'm; but you ain't going to give the party up?' he said,
+afraid of losing his half-dollar.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course not. How can I, with all the people invited?' she
+asked, questioningly, and a little less sharply.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know, unless I get a pony and go round and tell 'em
+not to come,' Harold suggested, thinking he might earn his
+fifty cents as easily that way as any other.</p>
+
+<p>But, much as Mrs. Tracy wished the party had never been
+thought of, she could not now abandon it, and declining the
+services of Harold and his pony, she again bade him go home,
+with a charge that he should be on time in the evening,
+adding, as she surveyed him critically:</p>
+
+<p>'If you have no clothes suitable, you can wear some of
+Tom's. You are about his size.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you; I have my meetin' clothes, and do not want
+Tom's,' was Harold's reply, as he walked away, thinking he
+would go in rags before he would wear anything which belonged
+to his enemy, Tom Tracy.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the morning was passed by Mrs. Frank in a
+most unhappy frame of mind, and she was glad when, at an
+hour earlier than she had reason to expect him, her husband
+came home.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, Dolly,' he said, the moment they were alone, 'this is
+awfully unlucky, the whole business. If Arthur must come
+home, why couldn't he have written in advance, and not take
+us by surprise? Looks as if he meant to spring a trap on us,
+don't it? And if he did, by Jove, he has caught us nicely.
+It will be somewhat like the prodigal son, who heard the
+sound of music and dancing, only I don't suppose Arthur
+has spent his substance in riotous living, with not over nice
+people; but there is no telling what he has been up to all
+these years that he has not written to us. Perhaps he is married.
+He said in his telegram, &quot;Send to meet <i>us</i>.&quot; What
+does that mean, if not a wife?'</p>
+
+<p>'A wife! Oh, Frank!' and with a great gasp Dolly sank
+down upon the lounge near where she was standing, and
+actually went into the hysterics her husband had prophesied.</p>
+
+<p>In reading the telegram she had not noticed the little
+monosyllable '<i>us</i>,' which was now affecting her so powerfully.
+Of course it meant a wife and possibly children, and her day
+was surely over at Tracy Park. It was in vain that her husband
+tried to comfort her, saying that they knew nothing
+positively, except that Arthur was coming home and somebody
+was coming with him; it might be a friend, or, what
+was more likely, it might be a valet; and at all events he was
+not going to cross Fox River till he reached it, when he might
+find a bridge across it.</p>
+
+<p>But Frank's reasoning did not console his wife, whose hysterical
+fit was succeeded by a racking headache, which by
+night was almost unbearable. Strong coffee, aconite, brandy,
+and belladonna, were all tried without effect. Nothing helped
+her until she commenced her toilet, when in the excitement of
+dressing she partly forgot her disquietude, and the pain in her
+head grew leas. Still she was conscious of a feeling of wretchedness
+and regret as she sat in her handsome boudoir and felt
+that it might be for the last time&mdash;that on the morrow another
+would be mistress where she had reigned so long.</p>
+
+<p>It was known in the house that Arthur was expected, and
+some one with him, but no hint had been given of a wife, and
+Mrs. Tracy had ordered separate rooms prepared for the
+strangers, who were to arrive on the half-past ten train. How
+she should manage to keep up and appear natural until that
+time Mrs. Tracy did not know, and her face and eyes wore an
+anxious, frightened look, which all her finery could not hide.
+And still she was really very handsome and striking in her
+dress of peach blow satin, and the bare arms which had once
+been more familiar with soap-suds and dishwater than lace and
+gold bracelets, looked very fair and girlish when at last she
+descended to the drawing-room and stood waiting for the first
+ring which would open the party.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI" ></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE COTTAGE IN THE LANE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was called thus because it stood at the end of a broad,
+grassy avenue or lane, which led from the park to the
+entrance of the grounds of Collingwood, whose chimneys
+and gables were distinctly visible in the winter when the trees
+were stripped of their foliage. At the time when Mrs. Crawford
+took possession of it its color was red, but the storms and rains
+of eleven summers and winters had washed nearly all the red
+away; and as Mrs. Crawford had never had the money to
+spare for its repainting, it would have presented a brown and
+dingy appearance outwardly, but for the luxurious woodbine,
+which she had trained with so much care and skill that it
+covered nearly three sides of the cottage, and made a gorgeous
+display in the autumn, when the leaves had turned a bright
+scarlet.</p>
+
+<p>Thanks to the thoughtfulness of Arthur Tracy, the cottage
+was furnished comfortably and even prettily when Mrs. Crawford
+entered it, and it was from the same kind friend that her
+resources mostly had come up to the day when, three years
+after her marriage, Amy Hastings came home to die, bringing
+with her a little two-year-old boy, whom, she called Harold,
+for his father. Just where the father was, if indeed he were
+living, she did not know. He had left her in London six
+months before, saying he was going over to Paris for a few
+days, and should be back almost before she had time to miss
+him. Just before he left her he said to her, playfully:</p>
+
+<p>'Cheer up, <i>petite</i>. I have not been quite as regular in my
+habits as I ought to have been, but London is not the place
+for a man of my tastes&mdash;too many temptations for a fellow
+like me. When I come back we will go into the country,
+where you can have a garden, with flowers and chickens, and
+grow fat and pretty again. You are not much like the girl I
+married. Good-bye.'</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her and the baby, and went whistling down the
+stairs. She never saw him again, and only heard from him
+once. Then he was in Paris, and had decided to go for a
+week to Pau, where he said they were having such fine fox
+hunts. Weeks went by and he never wrote nor came, and
+Amy would have been utterly destitute and friendless but for
+Arthur Tracy, who, when her need was greatest, went to her,
+telling her that he had never been far from her, but had watched
+over her vigilantly to see that no harm came to her. When
+her husband went to Paris he knew it through a detective,
+and from the same source knew when he went to Pau, where
+all trace of him had been lost.</p>
+
+<p>'But we are sure to find him again,' he said, encouragingly;
+'and meantime I shall see that you do not suffer. As an old
+friend of your husband, you will allow me to care for you until
+he is found.'</p>
+
+<p>And Amy, who had no alternative, accepted his care, and
+tried to seem cheerful and brave while waiting for the husband
+who never came back.</p>
+
+<p>At last when all hope of seeing him again was gone, Arthur
+sent her home to the cottage in the lane, where her mother
+received her gladly, thanking Heaven that she had her daughter
+back again. But not for long. Poor Amy's heart was
+broken. She loved her husband devotedly, and his cruel
+desertion of her&mdash;for she knew now it was that&mdash;hurt her
+more than years of suffering with him could have done. Occasionally
+she heard from Arthur, who was still busy in search
+of the delinquent, and who always sent in his letter a substantial
+proof of his friendship and generosity.</p>
+
+<p>And so the weeks and months went by; and then, one day,
+there came a letter in the well-known handwriting. But it
+was Mrs. Crawford who opened it and read that Harold Hastings
+was dead: that Amy was free, and that Arthur Tracy,
+who through all had loved her just as well as when he first
+asked her to be his wife, now put the question again, offering
+to make her the mistress of Tracy Park and surround her
+with every possible comfort.</p>
+
+<p>'Say yes, darling Amy,' he wrote, 'and we may yet be
+very happy. I will be a good husband to you and a father to
+your child, who shall share my fortune as if he were my own.
+Answer at once, telling me to come, and, before you know it
+I shall be there to claim you for my wife.'</p>
+
+<p>With a low moan, Mrs. Crawford hid her face in her hands
+and sobbed aloud, for the Amy who might have been the
+honored wife of Arthur Tracy lay dead in her coffin; and that
+day they buried her under the November snow, which was falling
+in great sheets upon the frozen ground. What Arthur felt
+when he heard the news no one ever knew, for he made no
+sign to any one, but at once gave orders to Colvin that a costly
+monument should be placed at her grave, with only this
+inscription upon it:</p>
+
+<p>
+AMY<br />
+<br />
+<i>Aged</i> 23.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Of course the low-minded people talked, and Mrs. Crawford
+knew they did; but her heart was too full of sorrow to
+care what was said. Her beautiful daughter was dead, and
+she was alone with the little boy, the child Harold, who had
+inherited his mother's beauty, with all her lovely traits of
+character. Had Mrs. Crawford consented, Arthur would have
+supported him entirely; but she was too proud for that. She
+would take care of him herself as long as possible, she wrote
+him, but if, when Harold was older, he chose to educate him,
+she would offer no objection.</p>
+
+<p>And there the matter dropped, and Mrs. Crawford struggled
+on as best she could, sometimes going out to do plain sewing,
+sometimes taking it home, sometimes going to people's houses
+to superintend when they had company, and sometimes selling
+fruit and flowers from the garden attached to the cottage. But
+whatever she did, she was always the same quiet, lady-like
+woman, who commanded the respect of all, and who, poor as
+she was, was held in high esteem by the better class in
+Shannondale. Grace Atherton's carriage and that of Edith
+St. Claire stood oftener before her door than that at Tracy
+Park; and though the ladies came mostly on business, they
+found themselves lingering after the business was over to talk
+with one who, in everything save money, was their equal.</p>
+
+<p>Harold was his grandmother's idol. For him she toiled and
+worked, feeling more than repaid for all she did by his love
+and devotion to her. And Harold was a noble little fellow,
+full of manly instincts, and always ready to deny himself for
+the sake of others. That he and his grandmother were poor
+he knew, but he had never felt the effects of their poverty,
+save when Tom Tracy had jeered at him for it, and called him
+a pauper. There had been one square fight between the two
+boys, in which Harold had been the victor, with only a torn
+jacket, while Tom's eye had been black for a week, and Mrs.
+Tracy had gone to the cottage to complain and insist that
+Harold should be punished. But when she heard that Dick
+St. Claire had assisted in the fray, taking Harold's part, and
+himself dealing Tom the blow which blackened his eye, she
+changed her tactics, for she did not care to quarrel with Mrs.
+Arthur St. Claire, of Grassy Spring.</p>
+
+<p>Harold and Richard St. Claire, or Dick, as he was familiarly
+called, were great friends, and if the latter knew there was
+a difference between himself and the child of poverty he never
+manifested it, and played far oftener with Harold than with
+Tom, whose domineering disposition and rough manners were
+distasteful to him. That Harold would one day be obliged to
+earn his living, Mrs. Crawford knew, but he was still too young
+for anything of that kind; and when Grace Atherton, or Mrs.
+St. Claire offered him money for the errands he sometimes did
+for them, she steadily refused to let him take it. Had she
+known of Mrs. Tracy's proposition that he should be present
+at the party as hall-boy, she would have declined, for though
+she could go there herself as an employee, she shrank from
+suffering Harold to do so. That Mrs. Tracy was not a lady,
+she knew, and in her heart there was always a feeling of
+superiority to the woman even while she served her, and she
+was not as sorry, perhaps, as she ought to have been, for the
+attack of rheumatism which would prevent her from going to
+the park to take charge of the kitchen during the evening.</p>
+
+<p>'I am sorry to disappoint her, but I am glad not to be there,'
+she was thinking to herself as she sat in her bright, cheerful
+kitchen, waiting for Harold, when he burst in upon her,
+exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, grandma, only think! I am invited to the party, and
+I told her I'd go, and I am to be there at half-past seven sharp,
+and to wear my meetin' clothes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Invited to the party! What do you mean? Only grown
+up people are to be there,' Mrs. Crawford said.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I know;' replied Harold, 'but I'm not to be with the
+<i>grown-ups</i>. I'm to stay in the upper hall and tell 'em where to
+go.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you are to be a <i>waiter</i>,' was Mrs. Crawford's rather
+contemptuous remark, which Harold did not heed in his excitement.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I'm to be at the head of the stairs, and somebody else
+at the bottom; and they are to have fiddlin and dancin'; I've
+never seen anybody dance; and ice-cream and cake, with something
+like plaster all over it, and oranges and grapes, and, oh,
+everything! Dick St. Claire told me; he knows; his mother
+has had parties, and she's going to-night, and her gown is crimson
+velvet, with black and white fur in it like our cat, only
+they don't call it that; and&mdash;oh, I forgot&mdash;they have had a
+telegraph, and I took it to Mrs. Tracy, who looked mad and
+almost cried when she read it, Mr. Arthur Tracy is coming
+home to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>Harold had talked so fast that his grandmother could hardly
+follow him, but she understood what he said last, and started
+as if he had struck her a blow.</p>
+
+<p>'Arthur Tracy! Coming home to-night!' she exclaimed.
+'Oh, I am so glad, so glad.'</p>
+
+<p>'But Mrs. Tracy did not seem to be, and I guess she wanted
+to stop the party,' Harold said, repeating as nearly as he could
+what had passed between him and the lady.</p>
+
+<p>Harold was full of the party to which he believed he had
+been invited, and when in the afternoon Dick St. Claire came
+to the cottage to play with him, he felt a kind of patronizing
+pity for his friend who was not to share his honor.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps mother will let me come over and help you,' Dick
+said, 'I know how they do it. You mustn't talk to the people
+as they come up the stairs, nor even say good-evening, only;</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Ladies will please walk this way, and gentlemen that!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And Dick went through with a pantomime performance for
+the benefit of Harold, who, when the drill was over, felt himself
+competent to receive the Queen's guests at the head of the
+great staircase in Windsor Castle.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I know,' he said, '&quot;Ladies this way, and gentlemen
+that;&quot; but when am I to go down and see the dancing and get
+some ice-cream?'</p>
+
+<p>On this point Dick was doubtful. He did not believe, he
+said, that waiters ever went down to see the dancing, or to get
+ice cream, until the party was over, and then they ate it in the
+kitchen, if there was any left.</p>
+
+<p>This was not a cheerful outlook for Harold, whose thoughts
+were more intent upon cream and dancing than upon showing
+the people where to go, and it was also the second time the word
+waiter had been used in connection with what he was expected
+to do. But Harold was too young to understand that he was
+not of the party itself. Later on it would come to him fast
+enough, that he was only a part of the machinery which moved
+the social engine. Now, he felt like the engine itself, and long
+before six o'clock he was dressed, and waiting anxiously for his
+grandmother's permission to start.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'll tell you all about it,' he said to her. 'What they do,
+and what they say, and what they wear, and if I can, I'll speak
+to Mr. Arthur Tracy and thank him for mother's grave-stone.'</p>
+
+<p>By seven o'clock he was on his way to the park, walking
+rapidly, and occasionally saying aloud with a gesture of his
+hand to the right and the left, and a bow almost to the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>'Ladies this way,' and 'gentlemen that.'</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the house the gas-jets had just been turned
+up, and every window was ablaze with light from the attic to
+the basement.</p>
+
+<p>'My eye! ain't it swell!' Harold said to himself, as he stood
+a moment, looking at the brilliantly lighted rooms. 'Don't I
+wish I was rich and could burn all that gas, and maybe I shall
+be. Grandma says Mr. Arthur Tracy was once a poor boy like
+me; only he had an uncle and I haven't. I've got do earn my
+money, and I mean to, and sometimes, maybe, I'll have a house
+us big as this, and just such a party, with a boy up stairs to
+tell 'em where to go. I wonder now if I'm expected to go into
+the kitchen door. Of course not, I've got on my Sunday
+clothes, and am invited to the party. I shall ring,'</p>
+
+<p>And he did ring&mdash;a sharp, loud ring, which made Mrs. Tracy,
+who had not yet left her room, start nervously as she
+wondered who had come so early.</p>
+
+<p>'Old Peterkin, of course. Those whom you care for least
+always come first.'</p>
+
+<p>Peering over the banister Tom Tracy saw Harold when the
+door was opened, and screaming to his mother at the top of his
+voice, 'It ain't old Peterkin, mother; it's Hall Hastings, come
+to the front door,' he ran down the stairs, and confronting the
+intruder just as he was crossing the threshold, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>'Go 'long; go back. You hain't no business ringin' the bell
+as if you was a gentleman. Go to the kitchen door with the
+other servants!'</p>
+
+<p>With a thrust of the hand he pushed Harold back and was
+about to shut the door upon him when, with a quick, dextrous
+movement, Harold darted past him into the hall, saying, as he
+did so:</p>
+
+<p>'Darn you, Tom Tracy, I won't go to the back kitchen door,
+and I'm not a servant, and if you call me so again I'll lick
+you!'</p>
+
+<p>How the matter would have ended is doubtful, if Mrs. Tracy
+had not called from the head of the stairs:</p>
+
+<p>'Thomas! Thomas Tracy! I am ashamed of you! Come
+to me this minute! And you, boy, go to the kitchen; or,
+no&mdash;now you are here, come up stairs, and I'll tell you what you
+are to do.'</p>
+
+<p>Her directions were much like those of Dick St. Claire,
+except that she laid more stress upon the fact that he was not
+to speak to any one familiarly, but was to be in all respects a
+machine. Just what she meant by that Harold did not know;
+but he hung his cap on a bracket, and taking his place where
+she told him to stand, watched her admiringly as she went
+down the staircase, with her peach-blow satin trailing behind
+her, and followed, by her husband, who looked and felt anxious
+and ill at ease.</p>
+
+<p>Tom had disappeared, but his younger brother, Jack, who was
+wholly unlike him, came to Harold's side, and began telling him
+what quantities of good things there were in the dining-room
+and pantry, and that his Uncle Arthur was coming home that
+night, and his mother was so glad, she cried; then, with a
+spring he mounted upon the banister of the long staircase and
+slipped swiftly to the bottom. Ascending the stairs almost as
+quickly as he had gone down, he bade Harold try it with him.</p>
+
+<p>'It's such fun! and mother won't care. I've done it forty
+times,' he said, as Harold demurred; and then, as the temptation
+became too strong to be resisted, two boys instead of one
+rode down the banister and landed in the lower hall, and two
+pairs of little legs ran nimbly up the stairs just as the door
+opened and admitted the first arrival.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII" ></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h2>THE PARTY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The invitations had been for half-past seven, and precisely
+at that hour Peterkin arrived, magnificent in his swallow-tail
+and white shirt front, where an enormous diamond
+shone conspicuously. With him came the second Mrs. Peterkin,
+whose name was Mary Jane, but whom her husband always called
+<i>May</i> Jane. She was a frail, pale faced little woman, and had
+once been Grace Atherton's maid, but had married Peterkin for
+his money. This was her first appearance at a grand party,
+and in her excitement and timidity she did not hear Harold's
+thrice repeated words, 'Ladies go that way,' but followed her
+husband into the gentlemen's dressing-room, where she deposited
+her wraps, and then, shaking in every limb, descended to the
+drawing-room, where Peterkin's boisterous laugh was soon
+heard, as he slapped his host on the shoulder, and said:</p>
+
+<p>'You see, we are here on time, though May Jane said it was
+too early. But I s'posed half-past seven meant half-past seven
+and then I wanted a little time to talk up the ropes with you.
+We are going to run you in, you bet!' and again his coarse
+laugh thrilled every nerve in Mrs. Tracy's body, and she longed
+for fresh arrivals to help quiet this vulgar man.</p>
+
+<p>Soon they began to come by twos, and threes, and sixes, and
+Harold was kept busy with his 'Ladies this way, and gentlemen
+that.'</p>
+
+<p>After Mrs. Peterkin had gone down stairs, leaving her wraps
+in the gentlemen's rooms, Harold, who knew they did not belong
+there, had carried them to the ladies' room and deposited
+them upon the bed, just as the girl who was to be in attendance
+appeared at her post, asked him sharply why he was in
+there rummaging the ladies' things.</p>
+
+<p>'I'm not rummaging. They are Mrs. Peterkin's. She left
+them in the other room, and I brought them here,' Harold said,
+as he returned to the hall, never dreaming that this little circumstance,
+trivial as it seemed, would be one of the links in
+the chain of evidence which must for a time overshadow him so
+darkly.</p>
+
+<p>Now, he was eager and excited, and interested in watching
+the people as they came up the stairs and went down again.
+With the quick instinct of a bright, intelligent boy, he decided
+who was accustomed to society and who was not, and leaning
+over the banister when not on duty, watched them when they
+entered the drawing-room and were received by Mr. and Mrs.
+Tracy. Unconsciously he began to imitate them, bowing when
+they bowed, and saying softly to himself:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, how do you do? Good evening. Happy to see you.
+Pleasant to-night. Walk in. Ye-as!'</p>
+
+<p>This was the monosyllable with which he finished every sentence,
+and was the affirmation to the thought in his mind that
+he, too, would some day go down those stairs and into those
+parlors as a guest, while some other boy in the upper hall bade
+the ladies go this way and the gentlemen that.</p>
+
+<p>It was after nine when Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire arrived, with
+Squire Harrington, from Collingwood. Harold had been looking
+for them, anxious to see the crimson satin trimmed with
+ermine, of which Dick had told him. Many of the guests he
+had mentally criticised unsparingly, but Mrs. St. Claire, he
+knew, was genuine, and his face beamed, when in passing him,
+she smiled upon him with her sweet, gracious manner, and said,
+pleasantly:</p>
+
+<p>'Good evening, Harold. I knew you were to be here. Dick
+told me, and he wanted to come and assist you, but I thought
+he'd better stay home with Nina.'</p>
+
+<p>Up to this time no one had spoken to Harold, and he had
+spoken to no one except to tell them where to go, but had, as
+far as possible, followed Mrs. Tracy's injunction to be a machine.
+But the machine was getting a little tired. It was hard work
+to stand for two hours or more, and Mrs. Tracy had impressed
+it upon him that he was not to sit down. But when Mrs. St. Claire
+came from the dressing-room and stood before him a
+moment in her crimson satin and pearls, he forgot his weariness
+and forgot that he was not to talk, and said to her, involuntarily:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Mrs. St. Claire, how handsome you look! Handsomer
+than anybody yet, and different, too, somehow.'</p>
+
+<p>Edith knew the compliment was genuine, and she replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you, Harold,' then, laying her hand on the boy's head
+and parting his soft, brown hair, she said, as she noticed a look
+of fatigue in his eyes, 'are you not tired, standing so long?
+Why don't you bring a chair from one of the rooms and sit
+when you can?'</p>
+
+<p>'She told me to stand,' Harold replied, nodding toward the
+parlors, from which a strain of music then issued.</p>
+
+<p>The dancing had commenced, and Harold's feet and hands
+beat time to the lively strains of the piano and violin, until he
+could contain himself no longer. The dancing he must see at
+all hazards and know what it was like, and when the last guests
+came up the stairs there was no hall boy there to tell them,
+'Ladies this way, gentlemen that,' for Harold was in the thickest
+of the crowd, standing on a chair so as to look over the heads
+of those in front of him and see the dancers. But, alas, for poor
+Harold! He was soon discovered by Mrs. Tracy, who, asking
+him if he did not know his place better than that, ordered him
+back to his post, where he was told to stay until the party was
+over.</p>
+
+<p>Wholly unconscious of the nature of his offence, but very
+sorry that he had offended, Harold went up the stairs, wondering
+why he could not see the dancing, and how long the party
+would last. His head was beginning to ache with the glare
+and gas; his little legs were tired, and he was growing sleepy.
+Surely he might sit down now, particularly as Mrs. St. Claire
+had suggested it, and bringing himself a chair from one of the
+rooms he sat down in a corner of the hall and was soon in a
+sound sleep, from which, however, he was roused by the sound
+of Mr. Tracy's voice, as he came up the stairs, followed by a tall,
+distinguished-looking man, who wore a Spanish cloak wrapped
+gracefully around him, and a large, broad-brimmed hat drawn
+down so closely, as to hide his features from view.</p>
+
+<p>As he reached the upper landing he raised his head, and
+Harold, who was now wide awake and standing up, caught a
+glimpse of a thin, pale face and a pair of keen, black eyes,
+which seemed for an instant to take everything in; than the
+head was dropped, and the two men disappeared in a room at
+the far end of the hall.</p>
+
+<p>'I'll bet that's Mr. Arthur. How grand he is! looks just
+like a pirate in that cloak and hat,' was Harold's mental comment.</p>
+
+<p>Before he had time for further thought, Frank Tracy came
+from the room and hurried down the stairs to rejoin his guests.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes later and the door at the end of the long hall
+which communicated with the back staircase and the rear of the
+house, opened, and a man whom Harold recognized as the expressman
+from the station appeared with a huge trunk on his
+shoulder and a large valise in his hand. These he deposited in
+the stranger's room and then went back for more, until four had
+been carried in. But when he came with the fifth and largest
+of all, a hand, white and delicate as a woman's, was thrust
+from the door-way with an imperative gesture, and a voice with
+a decided foreign accent exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>'For heaven's sake, don't bring any more boxes in here.
+Why, I am positively stumbling over them now. Surely there
+must be some place in the house for my luggage besides my
+private apartment.'</p>
+
+<p>Then the door was shut with a bang, and Harold heard the
+sliding of the bolt as Arthur Tracy fastened himself in his
+room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII" ></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h2>ARTHUR.</h2>
+
+
+<p>All the time that Frank Tracy had been receiving his
+guests and trying to seem happy and at his ease, his
+thoughts had been dwelling upon his brother's telegram
+and the ominous words, 'Send some one to meet us.' How
+slowly the minutes dragged until it was ten o'clock, and he
+knew that John had started for the station to meet the dreaded
+'<i>us</i>.' He had told everybody that he was expecting his long-absent
+brother, and had tried to seem glad on account of it.</p>
+
+<p>'You and he were great friends, I believe,' he said to Squire
+Harrington.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, we were friends,' the latter replied; 'but when he lived
+here my health was such that I did not mingle much in society.
+I met him, however, in Paris four years ago, and found him
+very companionable and quite Europeanized in his manner and
+tastes. He spoke French or German altogether, and might
+easily have passed for a foreigner. I shall be glad to see him.'</p>
+
+<p>'And so shall I,' chimed in Peterkin, whose voice was like a
+trumpet and could be heard everywhere. 'A first-rate chap,
+though we didn't use to hitch very well together. He was all-fired
+big feelin', and them days Peterkin was nowhere; but circumstances
+alter cases. He'll be glad to see me now, no doubt;'
+and with the most satisfied air the half millionaire put his hand
+as if by accident to his immense diamond pin, and pulling down
+his swallow-tail, walked away.</p>
+
+<p>Frank saw the faint smile of contempt which showed itself
+in Squire Harrington's face, and his own grew red with shame,
+but paled almost instantly as the outer door was opened by
+some one who did not seem to think it necessary to ring; and
+a stranger, in Spanish cloak and broad-brimmed hat, stepped
+into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur had come, and was <i>alone</i>. The train had been on
+time, and at just half-past ten the long line of cars stopped before
+the Shannondale station, where John, the coachman from
+Tracy Park, was waiting. The night was dark, but by the light
+from the engine and the office John saw the foreign-looking
+stranger, who stepped upon the platform, and felt sure it was
+his man. But there was no one with him, though it seemed as
+if he were expecting some one to follow him from the car as he
+stood for a moment waiting. Then, as the train moved on, he
+turned with a puzzled look upon his face to meet John, who said
+to him, respectfully:</p>
+
+<p>'Are you Mr. Arthur Tracy?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; who are you?' was the not very cordial response.</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Frank Tracy sent me from the park to fetch you,' John
+replied. 'I think he expected some one with you. Are you
+alone?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;no, no!' and Arthur's voice indicated growing alarm
+and uneasiness as he looked rapidly around him, 'Where is
+she? Didn't you see her? She was with me all the way.
+Surely she got off when I did. Where can she have gone?'</p>
+
+<p>He was greatly excited, and kept peering through the darkness
+as he talked; while John, a good deal puzzled, looked
+curiously at him, as if uncertain whether he were in his right
+mind or not.</p>
+
+<p>'Was there some one with you in the car?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, in the car, and in New York, and on the ship. She
+was with me all the way,' Mr. Tracy replied. 'It is strange
+where she is now. Did no one alight from the train when I
+did?'</p>
+
+<p>'No one,' John answered, more puzzled than ever.... 'I was
+looking for you, and there was no one else. She may have
+fallen asleep and been carried by.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, probably that is it,' Mr. Tracy said, more cheerfully,
+'she was asleep and carried by. She will come back to-morrow.'</p>
+
+<p>He seemed quite content with this solution of the mystery,
+and began to talk of his luggage, which lay upon the platform&mdash;a
+pile so immense that John looked at it in some alarm, knowing
+that the carriage could never take it all.</p>
+
+<p>'Eight trunks, two portmanteaus, and a hat-box!' he said,
+aloud, counting the pieces.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, and a nice sum those rascally agents in New York
+made me pay for having them come with me,' Arthur rejoined.
+'They weighed them all, and charged me a little fortune. I
+might as well have sent them by express; but I wanted them
+with me, and here they are. What will you do with them?
+This is hers,' and he designated a black trunk or box, longer
+and larger than two ordinary trunks ought to be.</p>
+
+<p>'I can take one of them with the box and portmanteau, and
+the expressman will take the rest. He is here. Hallo, Brown,'
+John said, calling to a man in the distance, who came forward,
+and, on learning what was wanted, begun piling the trunks into
+his wagon, while Arthur followed John, to the carriage, which
+he entered, and, sinking into a seat, pulled his broad-brimmed
+hat over his face and eyes, and sat as motionless as if he had
+been a stone.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment John stood looking at him, wondering what
+manner of man he was, and thinking, too, of the woman who,
+he said, had been with him in the train, and who should have
+alighted with him. At last, remembering suddenly a message
+his master had given him, he began:</p>
+
+<p>'If you please, sir, Mr. Tracy told me to tell you he was very
+sorry that he could not come himself to meet you. If he had
+known that you were coming sooner, he would have done different;
+but he did not get your telegram till this morning, and
+then it was too late to stop it. We are having a great break-down
+to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>During the first of these remarks Arthur had given no sign
+that he heard, but when John spoke of a break-down, he lifted
+his head quickly, and the great black eyes, which Harold
+noticed later as peculiar, flashed a look of inquiry upon John,
+as he said:</p>
+
+<p>'Break-down? What is that!'</p>
+
+<p>'A party&mdash;a smasher! Mr. Tracy is running for Congress.'
+was John's reply.</p>
+
+<p>And then over the thin face there crept a ghost of a smile,
+which, faint as it was, changed the expression wonderfully.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, a party!' he said. 'Well, I will be a guest, too. I
+have my dress-suit in some of those trunks. Frank is going to
+Congress, is he? That's a good joke! Drive on. What are you
+standing there for?'</p>
+
+<p>The carriage door was shut, and, mounting the box, John
+drove as rapidly toward Tracy Park as the darkness of the night
+would admit, while the passenger inside sat with his hat over
+his eyes, and his chin almost touching his breast, as if absorbed
+in thought, or else not thinking at all. Once, however, he spoke
+to himself, and said:</p>
+
+<p>'Poor little Gretchen! I wonder how I could have forgotten
+and left her in the train. What will she do alone in a
+strange place? But perhaps Heaven will take care of her. She
+always said so. I wish I had her faith and could believe as she
+does. Poor little Gretchen!'</p>
+
+<p>They had turned into the park by this time, and very soon
+draw up before the house, from every window of which lights
+were flashing, while the sounds of music and dancing could be
+distinctly heard.</p>
+
+<p>Something like Frank's idea came into Arthur's mind at the
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>'It makes me think of the return of the prodigal, only I have
+not wasted my substance and my father does not come to meet
+me,' he said, as he descended from the carriage and went up the
+broad steps to the piazza, on which a few young people were
+walking, unmindful of the chill night air.</p>
+
+<p>'I need not ring at my own house,' Arthur thought, as he
+opened the door and stepped into the hall; and thus it was
+that the first intimation which Frank had of his arrival was
+when he saw him standing in the midst of a crowd of people,
+who were gazing curiously at him.</p>
+
+<p>'Arthur!' he exclaimed, rushing forward and taking his
+brother's hand. 'Welcome home again! I did not hear the
+carriage, though I was listening for it. I am so glad to see you!
+Come with me to your room;' and he led the way up stairs to
+the apartment prepared for the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>He had seen at a glance that Arthur was alone, unless, indeed,
+he had brought a servant who had gone to the side door;
+and thus relieved from a load of anxiety, he was very cordial
+in his manner, and began at once to make excuses for the
+party, repeating in substance what John had already said.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I know; that fellow who drove me here told me,'
+Arthur said, throwing off his coat and hat, and beginning to
+lave his face, and neck, and hands in the cold water which he
+turned into the bowl until it was full to the brim, and splashed
+over the sides as he dashed it upon himself.</p>
+
+<p>All this time Frank had not seen his face distinctly, nor did
+he have an opportunity to do so until the ablutions were ended
+and Arthur had rubbed himself with, not one towel, but two,
+until it seemed as if he must have taken off the skin in places.
+Then he turned, and running his fingers through his luxuriant
+hair, which had a habit of curling around his forehead as in his
+boyhood, looked full at his brother, who saw that he was very pale
+and thin, and that his eyes were unnaturally large and bright,
+while there was about him an indescribable something which
+puzzled Frank a little. It was not altogether the air of foreign
+travel and cultivation which was so perceptible, but a something
+else&mdash;a restlessness and nervousness of speech and manner
+as he moved about the room, walking rapidly and gesticulating
+as he walked.</p>
+
+<p>'You are looking thin and tired. Are you not well?' Frank
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, perfectly well,' Arthur replied: 'only this infernal
+heat in my blood, which keeps me up to fever pitch all the
+time. I shall have to bathe my face again,' and, turning a
+second time to the bowl, he began to throw water over his face
+and hands as he had done before.</p>
+
+<p>'I'd like a bath in ice water,' he said, as he began drying
+himself with a fresh towel. 'If I remember right, there is no
+bath-room on this floor, but I can soon have one built. I intend
+to throw down the wall between this room and the next,
+and perhaps the next, so as to have a suite.'</p>
+
+<p>He was asserting the ownership at once, and Frank had
+nothing to say, for his brother was master there, and had a
+right to tear the house down if he chose. The second washing
+must have cooled him, for there came a change in his manner,
+and he moved more slowly and spoke with greater deliberation,
+as he asked some questions about the people below.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you come down by-and-bye,' Frank said, after having
+made some explanations with regard to his guests.</p>
+
+<p>'No, you will have to excuse me,' Arthur replied. 'I am
+too tired to encounter old acquaintances or make new. I do
+not believe I could stand old Peterkin, who you say is a millionaire.
+I suppose you want his influence; your coachman
+told me you were running for Congress,' and Arthur laughed
+the old merry musical laugh which Frank remembered so well:
+then, suddenly changing his tune, he said: 'When does the
+next train from the East pass the station?'</p>
+
+<p>Frank told him at seven the next morning, and he continued:</p>
+
+<p>'Please send the carriage to meet it. Gretchen will probably
+be there. She was in the train with me, and should have gotten
+out when I did, but she must have been asleep and carried
+by.'</p>
+
+<p>'Gr-gr-gretchen! Who is she?' Frank stammered, while
+the cold sweat began to run down his back.</p>
+
+<p>The 'us' in the telegram did mean something, and mischief,
+too, to his interests, he felt intuitively.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly into Arthur's eyes there stole a look of cunning,
+and a peculiar smile played round his mouth as he replied:</p>
+
+<p>'She is Gretchen. See that the carriage goes for her, will
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>His voice and manner indicated that he wished the conference
+ended, and with a great sinking at his heart Frank left
+the room and returned to his guests and his wife, who had not
+seen the stranger when he entered the hall, and thus did not
+know of Arthur's arrival until her husband rejoined her.</p>
+
+<p>'He has come,' he whispered to her, while she whispered
+back:</p>
+
+<p>'Is he alone?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but somebody is coming to-morrow; I do not know
+who; Gretchen, he calls her,' was Frank's reply.</p>
+
+<p>'Gretchen!' Mrs. Tracy repeated, in a trembling voice.
+'Who is she?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know. He merely said she was Gretchen; his
+daughter, perhaps,' was Frank's answer, which sent the color
+from his wife's cheeks, and made her so faint and sick that she
+would have given much to be alone and think over this evil
+coming upon her the next day in the shape of the mysterious
+Gretchen.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime when left to himself, Arthur changed his mind
+with regard to going down into the parlors to see his brother's
+guests, and, unlocking the trunk which held his own wardrobe
+he took out an evening suit fresh from the hands of a
+London tailor, and, arraying himself in it, stood for a moment
+before the glass to see the effect. Everything was faultless,
+from his neck-tie to his boots; and, opening the door, he went
+out into the hall, which was empty, except for Harold, who
+was sitting near the stairs, half asleep again. Most of the
+guests were in the supper-room, but a few of the younger portion
+were dancing, and the strains of music were heard with
+great distinctness in the upper hall.</p>
+
+<p>'Ugh!' Arthur said, with a shiver, as he stopped a moment
+to listen, while his quick eye took in every detail of the furniture
+and its arrangement in the hall. 'That violinist ought to
+be hung&mdash;the pianist, too! Don't they know what horrid discord
+they are making? It brings that heat back. I believe,
+upon my soul, I shall have to bathe my face again.'</p>
+
+<p>Suiting the action to the word, he went back and washed his
+face for the third time; then returning to the hall, he advanced
+toward Harold, who was now wide awake and stood up
+to meet him. As Arthur met the clear-brown eyes fixed so
+curiously upon him, he stopped suddenly, and put his hand to
+his head as if trying to recall something; then going a step or
+two nearer to Harold, he said:</p>
+
+<p>'Well, my little boy, what are you doing up here?'</p>
+
+<p>'Telling the folks which way to go,' was Harold's answer.</p>
+
+<p>'Who are you?' Arthur continued. 'What is your name?'</p>
+
+<p>'Harold Hastings,' was the reply; and instantly there came
+over the white, thin face, and into the large, bright eyes, an
+expression which made the boy stand back a little as the tall
+man came up to him and, laying a hand on his shoulder, said,
+excitedly:</p>
+
+<p>'Harold Hastings! He was once my friend, or, I thought
+he was; but I hate him now. And he was your father, and
+Amy Crawford was your mother? <i>N'est ce pas?</i> Answer me!'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir&mdash;yes, sir; but I don't know what you mean by
+&quot;<i>na-se par</i>,&quot;' Harold said, in a frightened voice; and Arthur
+continued, as he tightened his grasp on his shoulder:</p>
+
+<p>'Don't you know you ought to have been my son, instead of
+his?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir&mdash;yes, sir; I'll never do so again,' Harold stammered,
+too much alarmed now to know what he was saying, or
+of what he was accused.</p>
+
+<p>'No, you never will do it again. I hated your father, and
+I hate you, and I am going to throw you over the stair railing!'
+Arthur said, and seizing Harold's coat-collar, he swung him
+over the banister as if he had been a feather, while the boy
+struggled and fought, and held onto the rails, until help appeared
+in the person of Frank Tracy, who came swiftly up the
+stairs, demanding the cause of what he saw.</p>
+
+<p>He had been standing near the drawing-room door, and had
+caught the sound of his brother's voice and Harold's as if in
+altercation. Excusing himself from those around him, he
+hastened to the scene of action in time to save Harold from a
+broken limb, if not a broken neck.</p>
+
+<p>'What is it? What have you been doing?' he asked the
+boy, who replied, amid his tears:</p>
+
+<p>'I hain't been doing anything, only minding my business,
+and he came and asked me who I was, and when I told him, he
+was going to chuck me over the railing&mdash;darn him! I wish I
+was big; I'd lick him!'</p>
+
+<p>Harold's cheeks were flushed, and the great tears glittered in
+his eyes, as he stood up, brave and defiant, and resentful of the
+injustice done him.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you mad, Arthur?' Frank said.</p>
+
+<p>And whether it was the tone of his voice, or the words he
+uttered, something produced a wonderful effect upon his brother,
+whose mood changed at once, and who advanced toward
+Harold with outstretched hand, saying to him:</p>
+
+<p>'Forgive me, my little man. I think I must have been mad
+for the instant; there is such a heat in my head, and the crash
+of that music almost drives me wild. Shall it be peace between
+us, my boy?'</p>
+
+<p>It was next to impossible to resist the influence of Arthur
+Tracy's smile, and Harold took the offered hand and said, between
+a sob and a laugh:</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know now why you wanted to throw me down
+stairs.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nor I, and I will make it up to you some time,' was Arthur's
+reply, as he took his brother's arm and said: 'Now introduce
+me to your guests.'</p>
+
+<p>The moment the gentlemen disappeared from view Harold's
+resolution was taken. He was of no use there any longer, as
+he could see. It was nearly midnight. He was very tired
+and sleepy, and his head was aching terribly. He could not
+see the dancing. He had had nothing to eat; he had stood
+until his legs were ready to drop off, and to crown all a lunatic
+had tried to throw him over the banister.</p>
+
+<p>'I won't stay here another minute,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>And leaving the hall by the rear entrance, and slipping down
+a back stairway, he was soon in the open air, and running
+swiftly through the park toward the cottage in the lane.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the two brothers had descended to the drawing-room,
+where Arthur was soon surrounded by his friends and
+old acquaintances, whom he greeted with that cordiality and
+friendliness of manner which had made him so popular with
+those who knew him best. Every trace of excitement had disappeared,
+and had he been master of ceremonies himself, at
+whose bidding the guests were there, he could not have been
+more gracious or affable. Even old Peterkin, when he came
+into notice, was treated with a consideration which put that
+worthy man at ease, and set his tongue again in motion. At
+first he had felt a little overawed by Arthur's elegant appearance,
+and had whispered to his neighbor:</p>
+
+<p>'That's a swell, and no mistake. I s'pose that's what you
+call foreign get up. Well, me and ma is goin' to Europe some
+time, and hang me if I don't put on style when I come home.
+I'd kind of like to speak to the feller. I wonder if he remember
+that I was runnin' a boat when he went away?'</p>
+
+<p>If Arthur did remember it he showed no sign when Peterkin
+at last pressed up to him, claiming his attention, as Captain
+Peterkin, of the <i>'Liza Ann</i>, the fastest boat on the canal, and
+by George, the all-tiredest meanest, too, I guess, he said: 'but
+them days is past, and the old captain is past with them. I
+dabbled a little in ile, and if I do say it, I could about buy up
+the whole canal if I wanted to; but I ain't an atom proud, and
+I don't forget the old boatin' days, and I've got the old '<i>Liza
+Ann</i> hauled up inter my back yard as a relict. The children
+use it for a play-house, but to me it is a&mdash;a&mdash;what do you call
+it? a&mdash;gol darn it, what is it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Souvenir,' suggested Arthur, vastly amused at this tirade,
+which had assumed the form of a speech, and drawn a crowd
+around him.</p>
+
+<p>'Wall, yes; I s'pose that's it, though 'taint exactly what I
+was trying to think of,' he said. It's a reminder, and keeps
+down my pride, for when I get to feelin' pretty big, after
+hearin' myself pointed out as Peterkin the millionaire, I go out
+to that old boat in the back yard, and says I, '<i>'Liza Ann</i>,' says
+I, 'you and me has took many a trip up and down the canal,
+with about the wust crew, and the wust hosses, and the wust
+boys that was ever created, and though you've got a new coat of
+paint onto you, and can set still all day and do nothing while
+I can wear the finest broadcloth and set still, too, it won't do
+for us to forget the pit from which we was dug, and I don't forget
+it neither, no more than I forgit favors shown when I was
+not fust cut. You, sir, rode on the <i>'Liza Ann</i> with that
+crony of yours&mdash;Hastings was his name&mdash;and you paid me
+han'some, though I didn't ask nothin'; and ther's your brother&mdash;Frank,
+I call him. I don't forgit that he used to speak
+to me civil when I was nobody, and now, though I'm a Dimocrat,
+as everybody knows me knows, and everybody most does
+know me, for Shannondale allus was my native town, I'm goin'
+to run him into Congress, if it takes my bottom dollar, and anybody,
+Republican or Dimocrat; who don't vote him ain't my
+friend, and must expect to feel the full heft of my&mdash;my&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Powerful disapprobation,' Arthur said, softly, and Peterkin
+continued:</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you, sir, that's the word&mdash;powerful, sir, powerful,
+powerful,' and he glowered threateningly at two or three young
+men in white kids and high shirt collars, who were known to
+prefer the opposing candidate.</p>
+
+<p>Peterkin had finished his harrangue, and was wiping his wet
+face with his handkerchief, when Arthur, who had listened to
+him with well-bred attention, said:</p>
+
+<p>'I thank you, Captain Peterkin, for your interest in my
+brother, who, if he succeeds, will, I am sure, owe his success to
+your influence, and be grateful in proportion. Perhaps you
+have a bill you would like him to bring before the House?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' Peterkin said, with a shake of the head. 'My Bill is
+a little shaver, eight or nine years old; too young to go from
+home, but'&mdash;and he lowered his voice: a little&mdash;'I don't mind
+saying that if there should be a chance, I'd like the post-office
+fust-rate. It would be a kind of hist, you know, to see my
+name in print, Captain Joseph Peterkin, P.M.'</p>
+
+<p>Here the conversation ended, and the aspirant for the post-office,
+who had tired himself out, stepped aside and gave place
+to others who were anxious to renew their acquaintance with
+Arthur. It was between one and two o'clock in the morning
+when the party finally broke up, and, as the Peterkins had
+been the first to arrive, so they were the last to leave, and Mrs.
+Peterkin found herself again in the gentlemen's dressing-room,
+looking after her wraps. But they were not there, and after a
+vain and anxious search she said to her husband:</p>
+
+<p>'Joe, somebody has stole my things, and 'twas my Indian
+shawl, too, and gold-headed pin, with the little diamond.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Tracy was at once summoned to the scene, and the
+missing wraps were found in the ladies' room, where Harold had
+carried them, but the gold-headed shawl-pin was gone and
+could not be found.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy, the girl in attendance, said, when questioned, that she
+knew nothing of the pin or Mrs. Peterkin's wraps either, except
+that on first going up to the room after the lady's arrival,
+she found Harold Hastings fumbling them over, and that she
+sent him out with a sharp reprimand. Harold was then
+looked for and could not be found, for he had been at home and
+in bed for a good two hours. Clearly, then, he knew something
+of the pin; and Peterkin and his wife said good-night, resolving
+to see the boy the first thing in the morning, and demand
+their property.</p>
+
+<p>When the Peterkins were gone, Arthur started at once for his
+room, but stopped at the foot of the stairs and said to his
+brother:</p>
+
+<p>'Don't forget to have the carriage at the station at seven
+o'clock. Gretchen is sure to be there.'</p>
+
+<p>'All right,' was Frank's reply.</p>
+
+<p>While Mrs. Tracy asked:</p>
+
+<p>'Who is Gretchen?'</p>
+
+<p>If Arthur heard her he made no reply, but kept on up the stairs
+to his room, where they heard him for a long time walking
+about, opening and shutting windows, locking and unlocking
+trunks, and occasionally splashing water over his face and
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>'Your brother is a very elegant-looking man,' Mrs. Tracy
+said to her husband as she was preparing to retire. 'Quite like
+a foreigner, but how bright his eyes are, and they look at you
+sometimes as if they would see through you and know what
+you were thinking. They almost make me afraid of him.'</p>
+
+<p>Frank made no direct reply. In his heart there was an undefined
+fear which he then could not put into words, and with
+the remark that he was very tired, he stepped into bed, and was
+just falling into a quiet sleep when there came a knock upon his
+door loud enough, it seemed to him, to waken the dead. Starting
+up he demanded who was there and what was wanted.</p>
+
+<p>'It is I,' Arthur said. 'I thought I smelled gas, and I have
+been hunting round for it. There is nothing worse to breathe
+than gas, whether from the furnace, the pipes, or the drain. I
+hope that is all right.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Frank answered, a little crossly. 'Had a new one put
+in two weeks ago.'</p>
+
+<p>'If there's gas in the main sewer it will come up just the
+same, and I am sure I smell it,' Arthur said. 'I think I shall
+have all the waste-pipes which connect with the drain cut off.
+Good-night. Am sorry I disturbed you.'</p>
+
+<p>They heard him as he went across the hall to his room, and
+Frank was settling down again to sleep when there came a
+second knock, and Arthur said, in a whisper:</p>
+
+<p>'I hope I do not trouble you, but I have decided to go myself
+to the station to meet Gretchen. She is very timid, and
+does not speak much English. Good-night once more, and
+pleasant dreams.'</p>
+
+<p>To sleep now was impossible, and both husband and wife
+turned restlessly on their pillows, Frank wondering what ailed
+his brother, and Dolly wondering who Gretchen was and how
+her coming would affect them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX" ></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h2>WHO IS GRETCHEN?</h2>
+
+
+<p>This was the question which Mr. and Mrs. Tracy asked
+of themselves and each other many times during the
+hours which intervened between their retiring and rising.
+But speculate as they might they could reach no satisfactory
+conclusion, and were obliged to wait for what the morning
+and the train might bring. The party had been a success,
+and Frank felt that his election to Congress was almost certain;
+but of what avail would all this be if he lost his foothold at
+Tracy Park, as he was sure to do if a woman appeared upon
+the scene. Both he and his wife had outgrown the life of eleven
+years ago, and could not go back to it without a struggle, and
+it is not strange if both wished that the troublesome brother
+had remained abroad instead of coming home so suddenly and
+disturbing all their plans. They heard him moving in his room
+before the clock struck six, and knew he was getting himself
+in readiness to meet the dreaded Gretchen. Then, long before
+the carriage came round they heard him in the hall opening the
+windows and admitting a gust of wind which blew their door
+open, and when Frank arose to shut it he saw the top of
+Arthur's broad-brimmed hat disappearing down the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>'I believe he is going to walk to the station; he certainly is
+crazy,' Frank said to his wife, as they dressed themselves and
+waited with feverish impatience for the return of the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur did walk to the station, which he reached just as
+the ticket agent was unlocking the door, and there, with his
+Spanish cloak wrapped around him, he stalked up and down the
+long platform for more than an hour, for the train was late,
+and it was nearer eight than seven when it finally came in
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>Standing side by side Arthur and John looked anxiously for
+some one to alight, but nobody appeared and the expression of
+Arthur's face was pitiable as he turned it to John, and said:</p>
+
+<p>'Gretchen did not come. Where do you suppose she is?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure I don't know. On the next train, may be,' was
+John's reply, at which Arthur caught eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, the next train, most likely. We will come and meet
+it; and now drive home as fast as you can. This disappointment
+has brought that heat to my head, and I must have a bath.
+But, stop a bit; who is the best carpenter in town?'</p>
+
+<p>John told him that Belknap was the best, and Burchard the
+highest priced.</p>
+
+<p>'I'll see them both,' Arthur said. 'Take me to their houses;'
+and in the course of half an hour he had interviewed both
+Burchard and Belknap, and made an appointment with both
+for the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Then he was driven back to Tracy Park, where breakfast had
+been waiting until it was spoiled, and the cook's temper was
+spoiled, too, and when Frank and Dolly met him at the door,
+both asked in the same breath:</p>
+
+<p>'Where is she?'</p>
+
+<p>'She was not on this train. She will come on the next. We
+must go and meet her,' was Arthur's reply, as he passed up the
+stairs, while Frank and his wife looked wonderingly at each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>The spoiled breakfast was eaten by Mr. and Mrs. Tracy alone,
+for the children had had theirs and gone to their lessons, and
+Arthur had said that he never took anything in the morning
+except a cup of coffee and a roll, and these he wished sent to
+his room, together with a time-table.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast Mrs. Tracy, who was suffering from a sick
+headache, declared her inability to sit up a moment longer and
+returned to her bed, leaving her husband and the servants to
+bring what order they could out of the confusion reigning
+everywhere, and nowhere to a greater extent than in Arthur's
+room, or rather the rooms which he had appropriated to himself,
+and into which he had had all his numerous boxes and
+trunks brought, so that he could open them at his leisure.
+There were more coming by express, he said, boxes which came
+through the custom-house, for he had brought many valuable
+things, such as pictures, and statuary, and rugs and inlaid tables
+and chinas, with which to adorn his home.</p>
+
+<p>The house, which was very large, had a wing on either side,
+while the main building was divided by a wide hall, with three
+rooms on each side, the middle one being a little smaller than
+the other two, with each of which it communicated by a door.
+And it was into this middle room on the second floor Arthur
+had been put, and which he found quite too small for his use.
+So he ordered both the doors to be opened and took possession
+of the suite, pacing them several times, and then
+measuring their length, and breadth, and height, and the
+distance between the windows. Then he inspected the wing
+on that side of the house, and, going into the yard, looked
+the building over from all points, occasionally marking a few
+lines on the paper he held in his hand. Before noon every room
+in the house, except the one where Dolly lay sick with a headache
+had been visited and examined minutely, while Frank
+watched him nervously, wondering if he would think they had
+greatly injured anything, or had expended too much money on
+furniture. But Arthur was thinking of none of these things,
+and found fault with nothing except the drain and the gas fixtures,
+all of which he declared bad, saying that the latter must
+be changed at once, and that ten pounds of copperas must be
+bought immediately and put down the drain, and that quantities
+of chloride of lime and carbolic acid must be placed where
+there was the least danger of vegetable decomposition.</p>
+
+<p>'I am very sensitive to smells, and afraid of them, too, for
+they breed malaria and disease of all kinds,' he said to the cook,
+whose nose and chin both were high in the air, not on account
+of any obnoxious odor, but because of this unreasonable meddling
+with what she considered her own affairs. If things were
+to go on in this way, she said to the house-maid, and if that
+man was going to poke his nose into drains, and gas-pipes, and
+kerosene lamps, and bowls of sour milk which she might have
+forgotten, she should give notice to quit.</p>
+
+<p>But when, half an hour later, some boxes and trunks which
+had come by express were deposited in the back hall, and
+Arthur, who was superintending them, said to her, as he pointed
+to a large black trunk, 'I think this has the dress patterns and
+shawls I brought for you, girls; for though I did not know you
+personally, I knew that women were always pleased with anything
+from Paris' her feelings underwent a radical change, and
+Arthur was free to smell the drain and the gas fixtures as much
+as he liked.</p>
+
+<p>He was very busy, and though always pleasant, and even
+familiar at times, there was in all he said and did an air of ownership,
+as if he had assumed the mastership. And he had.
+Everything was his, and he knew it, and Frank knew it, too,
+and gave no sign of rebelling when the reins were taken
+from him by one who seemed to be driving at a break-neck
+speed.</p>
+
+<p>At lunch, while the brothers were together, Arthur announced
+his intentions in part, but not until Frank, who was anxious
+to get it off his mind, said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'By the way, I suppose you will be going to the office this
+afternoon, to see Colvin and look over the books. I believe you
+will find them straight, and hope you will not think I have
+spent too much, or drawn too large a salary. It you do, I
+will&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Nonsense!' was Arthur's reply, with a graceful shrug of his
+shoulders. 'Don't bother about that there is money enough
+for us both. What I invested in Europe has trebled itself,
+and more too, and would make me a rich man if I had nothing
+else. I am always lucky. I played but once at Monte Carlo,
+just before I came home, and won ten thousand dollars, which
+I invested in&mdash;But no matter; that is a surprise&mdash;something
+for your wife and Gretchen. I have come home to stay. I do
+not think I am quite what I used to be. I was sick all that
+time when you heard from me so seldom, and I am not strong
+yet. I need quite a rest. I have seen the world, and am tired
+of it, and now I want a house for Gretchen and myself, and you
+too. I expect you to stay with me as long as we pull together
+pleasantly and you do not interfere with my plans. I am going
+to take the three south rooms on the second floor for my own.
+I shall put folding-doors, or rather a wide arch between two of
+them, making them almost like one, and these I shall fit up to
+suit my own taste. In the smaller and middle room, where I
+slept last night, I shall have a large bow window, with shelves
+for books in the spaces between and beneath, and by the sides
+of the windows. I got the idea in a villa a little way out of
+Florence. Opposite this bow window, on the other side of the
+room, I shall have niches in the wall and corners for statuary,
+with shelves for books above and below. I have some beautiful
+pieces of marble from Florence and Rome. The Venus de Milo,
+Apollo Belvidere, Nydra and Psyche, and Ruth at the Well.
+But the crowning glory of this room will be the upper half of
+the middle window of the bow. This is to be of stained glass,
+bright but soft colors which harmonize perfectly, two rows on
+the four sides, and in the centre a lovely picture of Gretchen,
+also of cathedral glass, and so like her that it seems to speak to
+me in her soft German tongue. I had it made from a photograph
+I have of her, and it is very natural&mdash;the same sad, sweet
+smile around the lips which never said an unkind word to any
+one&mdash;the same bright, wavy hair, and eyes of blue, innocent as
+a child&mdash;and Gretchen is little more than that. She is only
+twenty-one&mdash;poor little Gretchen!' and, leaning back in his
+chair, Arthur seemed to be lost in recollections of the past.</p>
+
+<p>Not pleasant, all of them, it would seem, for there was a
+moisture in his eyes when he at last looked up in response to his
+brother's questioning.</p>
+
+<p>'Who did you say Gretchen was?'</p>
+
+<p>Instantly the expression of the eye changed to one of weariness
+and caution, as Arthur replied:</p>
+
+<p>'I did not say who she was, but you will soon know. I saw
+by the time-table that the train which passes here at eleven
+does not stop, but the three o'clock does, and you will please
+see that John goes with the carriage. I may be occupied with
+the carpenters, Burchard and Belknap, who were coming to
+talk with me about the changes I purpose to make, and which I
+wish commenced immediately. It is a rule of mine that when
+I am to do a thing, to do it at once. So I shall employ at least
+twenty men, and before Christmas everything will be finished,
+and I will show you rooms worthy of a palace. It is of Gretchen
+I am thinking, more than of myself. Poor little Gretchen!'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur's voice was inexpressibly sad and pitiful as he said
+'Poor Gretchen,' while his eyes again grew soft and tender,
+with a far-away look in them, as if they were seeing things in
+the past rather than in the future.</p>
+
+<p>There was not a particle of sentiment in Frank's nature, and
+Gretchen was to him an object of dread rather than a romance.
+So far as he could judge, his brother had no intention of routing
+him; but a woman in the field would be different, and he
+should at once lose his vantage-ground.</p>
+
+<p>'You seem to be very fond of Gretchen,' he said, at last.</p>
+
+<p>'Fond!' Arthur replied, 'I should say I am, though the poor
+child has not much cause to think so. But I am going to
+atone, and this suite of rooms is for her. I mean to make her
+a very queen, and dress her in satin and diamonds every day.
+She has the diamonds. I sent them to her when I wrote to
+her to join me in Liverpool.'</p>
+
+<p>'And she did join you, I suppose?' Frank said, determined
+by adroit questioning to learn something of the mysterious
+Gretchen.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, she joined me,' was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>'Was she very seasick?' Frank continued.</p>
+
+<p>'Not a minute. She sat by me all the time while I lay in my
+berth, but she would not let me hold her hand, and if I tried
+to touch even her hair, she always moved away to the other
+side of the state-room, where she sat looking at me reproachfully
+with those soft blue eyes of hers.'</p>
+
+<p>'And she was with you at the Brevoort in New York!'
+Frank said.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, with me at Brevoort.'</p>
+
+<p>'And in the train?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, and in the train.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you left her there?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; she left herself. She did not follow me out. She
+went on by mistake, but is sure to come back this afternoon,'
+Arthur replied, rather excitedly, just as a sharp ring at the bell
+announced the arrival of Burchard and Belknap, the leading
+carpenters of the town, with whom he was closeted for the next
+two hours, and both of whom he finally hired in order to expedite
+the work he had in hand.</p>
+
+<p>At precisely three o'clock the carriage from Tracy Park drew
+up before the station, awaiting the arrival of the train and
+Gretchen, but though the former came, the latter did not, and
+John returned alone, mentally avowing to himself that he would
+not be sent on a fool's errand a third time; but five o'clock found
+him there again with the same result. Gretchen did not come,
+and Arthur's face wore a sad, troubled expression, and looked
+pale and worn, notwithstanding the many times he bathed it in
+the coldest water and rubbed it with the coarsest towels.</p>
+
+<p>He had unpacked several of his trunks and boxes, and made
+friends of all she servants by the presents, curious and rare,
+which he gave them, while Dolly's headache had been wholly
+cured at sight of the exquisite diamonds which her husband
+brought to her room and told her were hers, the gift of Arthur,
+who had bought them in Paris, and who begged her to accept
+them with his love.</p>
+
+<p>The box itself, which was of tortoise shell, lined with blue
+velvet, was a marvel of beauty, while the pin was a cluster of
+five diamonds with a larger one in the center, but the ear-rings
+were solitaires, large and brilliant, and Dolly's delight knew no
+bounds as she took the dazzling stones in her hands and examined
+them carefully. Diamond were the jewels of all others
+which she coveted, but which Frank never felt warranted in
+buying, and now they were hers, and for a time she forgot even
+Gretchen, whose arrival, or rather non-arrival, troubled her as
+much as it did her brother-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur had been very quiet and gentle all the afternoon,
+showing no sign of the temper he had exhibited the previous
+night at sight of Harold until about six o'clock, when Tom, his
+ten-year-old nephew, came rushing into the library, followed by
+Peterkin, very hot and very red in the face, which he mopped
+with his yellow silk handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, mother,' Tom began, 'what do you think Harold Hastings
+has done? He stole Mrs. Peterkin's gold pin last night.
+It was stuck in her shawl, and she couldn't find it, and Lucy
+saw him fumbling with the things, and he denies it up hill and
+down, and Mr. Peterkin is going to arrest him. I guess Dick
+St. Claire won't think him the nicest boy in town now. The
+thief! I'd like&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>But what he would like was never known, for with a spring
+Arthur bounded toward him, and seizing him by the coat
+collar, shook him vigorously, while he exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>'Coward and liar! Harold Hastings is not a thief! No
+child of Amy Crawford could ever be a thief, and if you
+say that again, or even insinuate it to any living being, I'll
+break every bone in your body. Do you understand?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir; no sir, I won't; I won't,' Tom gasped, as well as
+he could, with his head bobbing forward and back so rapidly
+that his teeth cut into his under lip.</p>
+
+<p>'But <i>I</i> shall,' Peterkin roared. 'I'll have the young dog arrested,
+too, if he don't own up and give up.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a wicked look in Arthur's black eyes, which he
+fastened upon Peterkin, as he said;</p>
+
+<p>'What does it all mean, sir? Will you please explain?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, in double quick time,' replied Peterkin, a little nettled
+by Arthur's manner, which he could not understand. 'You
+see, me and Mary Jane was early to the doin's; fust ones, in
+fact, for when your invite says half past seven it means it, I take
+it. Wall, we was here on time, and Mary Jane has been on a
+tear ever since, and says Miss St. Claire nor none of the big
+bugs didn't come till nine, which I take is imperlite, don't
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind, we are not discussing etiquette. Go on with
+the pin and the boy,' Arthur said haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>'Mary Jane,' Peterkin continued, 'had a gold-headed shawl
+pin, with a small diamond in the head&mdash;real, too, for I don't
+b'lieve in shams, and haint sense the day I quit boatin' and
+hauled ther 'Liza Ann up inter my back yard. Well, she left
+this pin stickin' in her shawl, and no one up there but this boy
+of that Crawford gal's, and nobody knows who else.'</p>
+
+<p>Something in Arthur's face and manner made Frank think of
+a tiger about to pounce upon its prey, and he felt himself growing
+cold with suspense and dread as he watched his brother,
+while Peterkin continued:</p>
+
+<p>'When Mary Jane came to go home, her things wa'n't there,
+and the pin was missin'; and Lucy, the girl, said she found the
+boy pullin' them over by himself, when he had no call to be in
+there; and, sir, there ain't a lawyer in the United States that
+would refuse a writ on that evidence, and I'll get one of St. Claire
+afore to-morrow night. I told 'em so, the widder and the boy, who
+was as brassy as you please, and faced me down and said he never
+seen the pin, nor knowed there was one; while she&mdash;wall, I
+swow, if she didn't start round lively for a woman with her leg
+bandaged up in vinegar and flannel. When I called the brat a
+thief and said I'd have him arrested, she made for the door and
+ordered me out&mdash;me, Joe Peterkin, of the 'Liza Ann! I'll make
+her smart, though, wus than the rheumatiz. I'll make her feel
+the heft&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>He did not have time to finish the sentence, for the tiger in
+Arthur was fully roused, and with a bound toward Peterkin he
+opened the door, and, in a voice which seemed to fill the room,
+although it was only a whisper, he said:</p>
+
+<p>'Clown! loafer! puff-ball! Leave my house instantly, and
+never enter it again until you have apologized to Mrs. Crawford
+and her grandson for the insult offered them by your vile accusations.
+If it were not for soiling my hands, I would throw you
+down the steps,' he continued, as he stood holding the door
+open, and looking with his flashing eyes and dilated nostrils, as
+if he were fully equal to anything.</p>
+
+<p>Like most men of the boasting sort, Peterkin was a coward,
+and though he probably had twice the strength of Arthur, he
+went through the door-way out upon the piazza, where he stopped,
+and, with a flourish of his fist, denounced the whole Tracy
+tribe, declaring them but a race of upstarts, no better than he
+was, and saying he would yet be even with them, and make
+them feel the heft of his powerful disapprobation. Whatever
+else he said was not heard, for Arthur shut the door upon him,
+and returning to the library, where his brother stood, pale,
+trembling, and anxious for the votes he felt he had lost, he became
+on the instant as quiet and gentle as a child, and, consulting
+his watch, said in his natural tone:</p>
+
+<p>'Quarter of seven, and the train is due at half-past. Please
+tell John to have the carriage ready. I am going myself this
+time.'</p>
+
+<p>Frank opened his lips to protest against it, but something in
+his brother's manner kept him quiet and submissive. He was
+no longer master there&mdash;unless&mdash;unless&mdash;he scarcely dared whisper
+to himself what; but when the carriage went for the fourth
+time to the station after Gretchen and returned without her, he
+said to his wife:</p>
+
+<p>'I think Arthur is crazy, and possibly we shall have to shut
+him up.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I wish you would,' was Dolly's reply, in a tone of relief,
+for, thus far, Arthur's presence in the house had not added to
+her comfort. 'Of course he is crazy, and ought to be taken
+care of before he tears the house down over our heads, or does
+some dreadful thing.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's so, and I will see St. Claire to-morrow and find out
+the proper steps to be taken,' said Frank.</p>
+
+<p>That night he dreamed of windows with iron bars across
+them, and strait-jackets, into which he was thrusting his brother,
+while a face, the loveliest he had ever seen, looked reproachfully
+at him, with tears in the soft blue eyes, and a
+pleading pathos in the voice which said words he could not
+understand, for the language was a strange one to him who
+only knew his own.</p>
+
+<p>With a start Frank awoke, and found his wife sitting up in
+bed, listening intently to sounds which came from the hall,
+where some one was evidently moving around.</p>
+
+<p>'Hark!' she said, in a whisper. 'Do you hear that? There's
+a burglar in the house after my diamonds. What shall I do?'</p>
+
+<p>But Frank knew that no burglar ever made the noise this
+disturber of their rest was making and stepping out of bed
+he opened the door cautiously, and looking out, saw his brother,
+wrapped in a long dressing-gown, with a candle in his hand,
+opening one window after another until the hall was filled with
+the cold night wind, which swept down the long corridor
+banging a door at the farther end and setting all the rest to rattling.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh! Frank, is that you?' Arthur said. 'I am sorry I
+woke you, but I smelled an awful smell somewhere, and traced
+it to the hall, which you see I am airing; better shut the door
+or you will take cold. The house is full of malaria.'</p>
+
+<p>He was certainly crazy; there could be no doubt of it; and
+next morning, when Mr. St. Claire entered his office, he found
+Frank Tracy waiting there to consult him with regard to the
+legal steps necessary to procure his brother's incarceration in a
+lunatic asylum.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur St. Claire's face wore a grave, troubled look as he
+listened, for he remembered a time, years before, when he, too,
+had been interested in the lunatic asylum at Worcester, where
+a beautiful young girl, his wife, had been confined. She was
+dead now, and the Florida roses were growing over her grave,
+but there were many sad, regretful memories connected with
+her short life, and not the least sad of these were those connected
+with the asylum.</p>
+
+<p>'If it were to do over again I would not put her there,
+unless she became dangerous,' he had often said to himself, and
+he said much the same thing to Frank Tracy with regard to his
+brother.</p>
+
+<p>'Keep him at home, if possible. Do not place him with a
+lot of lunatics if you can help it. No proof he is crazy because
+he smells everything. My wife does the same. Her nose is
+over the registers half the time in winter to see if any gas is
+escaping from the furnace. And as to this Gretchen, it is possible
+there was some woman with him on the ship, or in New
+York, and he may be a little muddled there. You can inquire
+at the hotel where he stopped.'</p>
+
+<p>This was Mr. St. Claire's advice, and Frank acted upon it,
+and took immediate steps to ascertain if there had been a lady
+in company with his brother at the Brevoort House, where he
+had stopped, or if there had been any one in his company on
+the ship, which was still lying in the dock at New York. But
+there no one had been with him. Arthur Tracy alone was
+registered among the list of passengers, and only Arthur Tracy
+was on the books at the hotel. He had come alone, and been
+alone on the sea and at the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Gretchen was a myth, or at least a mystery, though he still
+persisted that she would arrive with every train from Boston;
+and for nearly a week they humored him, and the carriage
+went to meet her, until at last there seemed to dawn upon his
+mind the possibility of a mistake, and when the carriage had
+made its twentieth trip for nothing, and Mr. St. Claire, who
+was standing by him on the platform when the train came up
+and brought no Gretchen, said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'She did not come.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid she will never come,' he answered, sadly. 'No,
+she will never come. There has been some mistake. She will
+never come. Poor little Gretchen!' Then, after a moment
+he added, but there <i>is</i> a Gretchen, and I wrote to her to join
+me in Liverpool, and I thought she did and was with me on
+the ship and in the train, but sometimes, when my head is so
+hot, I get things mixed, and am not sure but&mdash;' and he
+looked wistfully in his companion's face, while his voice trembled
+a little. 'Don't let them shut me up; I have a suspicion
+that they will try it, but it will do no good. I was in an
+asylum nearly three years near Vienna; went of my own accord,
+because of that heat in my head.'</p>
+
+<p>'Been in an asylum?' Mr. St. Claire said, wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Arthur continued, 'I was only out three months ago.
+I wrote occasionally to Frank and Gretchen, but did not tell
+them where I was. They called it a <i>maison de sant&eacute;</i>, and
+treated me well because I paid well, but the sight of so many
+crazy people made me worse, and if I had staid I should have
+been mad as the maddest of them. As it was, I forgot almost
+everything that ever happened, and fancied I was an Austrian.
+As soon as I came out I was better, though I was not quite
+myself till I got to Liverpool. Then things came back to me.
+Stand by me, St. Claire. I can see I am in the way, and
+Frank would like to be rid of me; but stand by me, and don't
+let them do it.'</p>
+
+<p>His manner was very pleading, and like one who was in fear
+of something, and remembering the past when a golden-haired
+girl had begged him to save her from iron bars and bolts, Mr.
+St. Claire assured him of his support against any steps which
+might be taken to prove him mad enough for the asylum.</p>
+
+<p>'But I would not come for Gretchen any more,' he said. 'I
+would give her a rest. Who is she?'</p>
+
+<p>Instantly the old look of cunning came into Arthur's eyes,
+as he replied:</p>
+
+<p>'She is Gretchen;' and then he walked toward the carriage,
+while Mr. St. Claire looked curiously after him, and said to
+himself:</p>
+
+<p>'That fellow is not right, but he is not a subject for a mad
+house, and I should oppose his being sent there. I do not
+believe, however, that they will try it on.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X" ></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h2>ARTHUR SETTLES HIMSELF.</h2>
+
+
+<p>They did try it on, but not until after the November
+election, at which Frank was defeated by a large majority,
+for Peterkin worked against him and brought all the
+'heft of his powerful disapprobation' to bear upon him. Although
+Frank had had no part in turning him from the door
+that morning after the party, he had not tried to prevent it by
+a word, and this the low, brutal man resented, and swearing
+vengeance upon the whole Tracy tribe, declared his intention
+to defeat Frank if it cost him half his fortune to do so. And it
+did cost him at least two thousand dollars, for Frank Tracy
+was popular with both parties; many of the Democrats voted
+for him, but the rabble, the scum, those who could be bought
+on both sides, went against him, even to the Widow Shipley's
+four sons; and when all was over, Frank found himself defeated
+by just as many votes as old Peterkin had paid for, not only
+in Shannondale, but in the adjoining towns, where his money
+carried 'heft,' as he expressed it.</p>
+
+<p>It was a terrible disappointment to Frank and his wife, who
+had looked forward to enjoying a winter in Washington, where
+they intended to take a house and enjoy all society had to offer
+them in the national metropolis. Particularly were they anxious
+for the change now that Arthur had come home, for it
+was not altogether pleasant to be ruled where they had so
+long been rulers, and to see the house turned upside down
+without the right to protest.</p>
+
+<p>'I can't stand it, and I won't,' Frank said to his wife in the first
+flush of his bitter disappointment. 'Ever since he came home
+he has raised Cain generally, with his carpenters, and masons,
+and painters, and stewing about water-pipes, and sewer-gas,
+and smells. He's mad as a March hare, and if I can't get
+rid of him by going to Washington, I'll do it in some other
+way. You know he is crazy, and so do I, and I'll swear to it
+on a stack of Bibles as high as the house.'</p>
+
+<p>And Frank did swear to it, not on a stack of Bibles, but before
+two or three physicians and Mr. St. Claire, who, at his solicitation,
+came to Tracy Park, and were closeted with him for
+an hour or more, while he related his grievances, asserting
+finally that he considered his brother dangerous, and did not
+think his family safe with him, citing as proof that he had on
+one occasion threatened to kill his son Tom for accusing Harold
+Hastings of theft.</p>
+
+<p>How the matter would have terminated is doubtful, if Arthur
+himself had not appeared upon the scene, calm, dignified,
+and courtly in his manner, which insensibly won upon his
+hearers, as in a few well-chosen and eloquent words, he proceeded
+to prove that though he might be peculiar in some respects,
+he was not mad, and that a man might repair his own
+house, and cut off his own water-pipes, and take up his
+sewer, and detect a bad smell, and still not be a subject for a
+lunatic asylum.</p>
+
+<p>'And,' he continued, addressing his brother, 'it ill becomes
+you to take this course against me&mdash;you, who have enriched
+yourself at my expense, while I have held my peace. Suppose
+I require you to give an account of all the money which you
+have considered necessary for your support and salary&mdash;would
+you like to do it? Would the world consider you strictly honorable,
+or would they call you a lunatic on the subject of
+money and not responsible for your acts? But I have no wish
+to harm you. I have money enough, and cannot forget that
+you are my brother. But molest me, and I shall molest you.
+If I go to the asylum you will leave Tracy Park. If I am allowed
+to stay here in peace, you can do so, too&mdash;at least, until
+Gretchen comes, when it will, perhaps, be better for us to separate.
+Two masters may manage to scramble along in the same
+house, but two mistresses never can, and Dora and Gretchen
+would not be congenial. Good morning, gentlemen!' and he
+bowed himself from the room, leaving Frank covered with confusion
+and shame as he felt that he was beaten.</p>
+
+<p>The physicians did not think it a case in which they were
+warranted to interfere. Neither could conscientiously sign a
+certificate which should declare Arthur a lunatic, and their advice
+to Frank was that he should suffer his brother to have his
+own way in his own house, and when he felt that he could not
+bear with his idiosyncracies he could go elsewhere. But it was
+this going elsewhere which Frank did not fancy; and, after a
+consultation with his wife, he decided to let matters take their
+course for a time at least, or until Gretchen came, if she ever
+did.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur's allusion to the sums of money his brother had appropriated
+to his own use had warned Frank that he was not
+quite so indifferent or ignorant of his business affairs as he had
+seemed, and this of itself served to keep him quiet and patient
+during the confusion which ensued, as walls were torn down,
+and doors and windows cut, while the house was filled with
+workmen, and the sound of the hammer and saw was heard
+from morning till night.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the middle of October when Arthur fairly commenced
+his repairs, but so many men did he employ, and so
+rapidly was the work pushed on, that the first of January
+found everything finished and Arthur installed in his suite of
+rooms, which a prince might have envied, so richly and tastefully
+were they fitted up. Beautiful pictures and rich tapestry
+covered the walls in the first room, where the floor was inlaid
+with colored woods in lovely Mosaic designs, and the centre
+was covered with a costly Oriental rug, which Arthur had
+bought at a fabulous price in Paris, where it had once adorned
+a room in the Tuileries. But the gem of the whole was the
+library, where the statuary stood in the niches, and where,
+from the large bow-window at the south, a young girl's face
+looked upon the scene with an expression of shy surprise and
+half regret in the soft blue eyes, as if their owner wondered
+how she came there, and was always thinking of the fields and
+forests of far-away Germany. For it was decidedly a German
+face of the higher type, and such as is seldom found among
+the lower or even middle classes. And yet you instinctively
+felt that it belonged to the latter, notwithstanding the richness
+of the dress, from the pearl-embroidered cap set jauntily on the
+reddish golden hair to the velvet bodice and the satin peasant
+waist. The hands, small and dimpled like those of a child,
+were clasped around a prayer-book and a bunch of wild flowers
+which had evidently just been gathered. It was a marvelously
+beautiful face, pure and sweet as that of a Madonna, and the
+workmen involuntarily bowed their heads before it, calling it,
+not without some reason, a memorial window, for the name
+Gretchen was under the picture, and one unconsciously found
+himself looking for the date of birth and death. But only the
+one word 'Gretchen' was there, with no sign to tell who she
+was, or where, if living, she was now, or what relation she bore
+to the strange man who often stood before her whispering to
+himself:</p>
+
+<p>'Poor little Gretchen! Will you never come?'</p>
+
+<p>For a few days after the rooms were completed, they were
+thrown open to such of Arthur's friends as cared to see them,
+and the question 'Who is Gretchen?' was often asked, but
+the answer was always the same: 'She is Gretchen. I am expecting
+her every day.'</p>
+
+<p>But if he were expecting her, he no longer asked that the
+carriage be sent to meet her. That had been one of the proofs
+of his insanity as alleged by his brother, and Arthur was sane
+enough and cunning enough to avoid a repetition of that offence,
+but he often went himself to the station, when the New
+York trains were due, for it was from the west rather than the
+east that he was now looking for her.</p>
+
+<p>Frank, who watched him nervously, with all his senses sharpened,
+guessed what had caused the change and grew more
+nervous and morbid on the subject of Gretchen than ever. At
+first his brother, who was greatly averse to going out, had
+asked him to post his letters; business letters they seemed to
+be, for they were addressed to business firms in New York,
+London, and Paris, with all of which Arthur had relations.
+But one morning when Frank went as usual to his brother's
+room asking if there was any mail to be taken to the office,
+Arthur, who was just finishing a letter, replied:</p>
+
+<p>'No, thank you, I will post this myself. I have been writing
+to Gretchen.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, to Gretchen?' Frank said, quickly, as he advanced
+nearer to the writing desk, hoping to see the address on the
+envelope.</p>
+
+<p>But Arthur must have suspected his motive, for he at once
+turned over the envelope and kept his hand upon it, while
+Frank said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'Is she in London now?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; she was never in London,' was the curt reply, and
+then, turning suddenly, Arthur faced his brother and said:
+'Why are you so curious about Gretchen? It is enough for
+you to know that the is the sweetest, truest little girl that ever
+lived. When she comes I shall tell you everything, but not
+before. You have tried to prove me crazy; have said I was
+full of cranks; perhaps I am, and Gretchen is one of them, but
+it does not harm you, so leave me in peace, if you wish for
+peace yourself.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a menacing look in Arthur's eyes which Frank did
+not like, and he retreated from the room, resolved to say no
+more to him of Gretchen, whose arrival he again began to look
+for and dread. But Gretchen did not come, or any tidings of
+her, and Christmas came and went, and the lovely bracelets
+which Arthur brought from the trunk he said was hers, and
+into which no one had ever looked but himself, remained unclaimed
+upon his table, as did the costly inlaid work-box, and
+the cut-glass bottles with the gold stoppers. All these were to
+have been Gretchen's Christmas presents; but when she did
+not come they disappeared from view and were not seen again,
+while Arthur seemed to be settling into a state of great depression,
+caring nothing for the outside world, but spending all his
+time in the lovely rooms he had prepared for himself and one
+who never came.</p>
+
+<p>As far as was possible he continued his foreign habits, having
+his coffee and rolls at eight in the morning, his breakfast,
+as he called it, at half-past twelve, and his dinner at half-past
+six. All these meals were served in his room as elaborately,
+and with as much ceremony, as if lords and ladies sat at the
+table instead of one lone man, who never let himself down a
+particle, but required the utmost subservience and care in the
+waiting. The finest of linen, and china, and glass, and silver
+adorned his table, with bits of fanciful crockery gathered here
+and there in his extended wanderings, and always flowers for
+a centre-piece&mdash;roses mostly, if he could get them&mdash;tea roses
+and Marshal Neils, for Gretchen, he said, was fond of these,
+and, as she might surprise him at any moment, he wished to be
+ready for her, and show that he was expecting her.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite him, at the end of the table, was always an empty
+plate with its surroundings, and the curiously-carved chair,
+which had seen the lion at Lucerne. But no one ever sat in
+it. No one ever used the decorated plate, or the glass mug at
+its side, with its twisted handle and the letter 'G.' on the silver
+cover. Just what this mug was for none of the household
+knew until Grace Atherton, who had travelled in Europe, and
+to whom Mrs. Tracy showed it one day when Arthur was out,
+said:</p>
+
+<p>'Why, it is a beer-mug, such as is used in Germany, though
+more particularly among the Bavarian Alps and in the Tyrol.
+This Gretchen is probably a tippler, with a red nose and a
+double chin. I wish to goodness she would come and satisfy
+our curiosity.'</p>
+
+<p>This wish of Grace's was not shared by Mrs. Tracy, who felt
+an uneasy sense of relief as the days went on, and the beer-drinking
+Gretchen did not appear, while Arthur became more
+and more depressed and remained altogether in his room, seeing
+no one and holding no intercourse with the outside world.
+He had returned no calls, and had been but once to the cottage
+in the lane to see Mrs. Crawford. That interview had been a
+long and sad one, and when they talked of Amy, whose grave
+Arthur had visited on his way to the cottage, both had cried
+together, and Gretchen seemed for the time forgotten. They
+talked of Amy's husband, who, Arthur said, had died at Monte
+Carlo; and then he spoke of Amy's son, who was not present,
+and whom he seemed to have forgotten entirely, for when Mrs.
+Crawford said to him, 'You saw him on the night of your return
+home,' he looked at her in a perplexed kind of way, and if
+trying to recall something which had gone almost entirely from
+his mind. It was this utter forgetfulness of people and events
+which was a marked feature of his insanity, if insane he were,
+and he knew it and struggled against it; and when Mrs.
+Crawford told him he had seen Harold he tried to recall him,
+and could not until the boy came in, flushed and excited from
+a race with Dick St. Claire through the crisp November wind,
+which had brought a bright color to his cheek and a sparkle to
+his eye. Then Arthur remembered everything, and something
+of his old prejudice came back to him, and his manner was a
+little constrained as he talked to the boy, whose only fault was
+that Harold Hastings had been his father and that he bore his
+name.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur did not stay long after Harold came in, but said
+good-morning to Mrs. Crawford and walked slowly away, going
+again to Amy's grave, and taking from it a few leaves of the
+ivy which was growing around the monument. And this was
+all the intercourse he held with Mrs. Crawford, except to send
+her at Christmas a hundred dollars, which he said was for the
+boy Harold, to whom he had done an injustice.</p>
+
+<p>After this he seldom went out, but gave himself heart and
+soul to the completion of his rooms, and when they were finished
+he settled down into the life of a recluse, seeing very few
+and talking but little, except occasionally to himself, when he
+seemed to be carrying on a conversation with some unseen visitant,
+who must have spoken in a foreign tongue or tongues,
+for sometimes it was French, sometimes Italian, and oftener
+German, in which he addressed his fancied guest, and neither
+Frank nor Dolly could understand a word of the strange jargon.
+On the whole, however, he was very quiet and undemonstrative,
+and but for the habit of talking to himself and smelling
+odors where there were none, he would not have seemed
+very different from many peculiar people who are never suspected
+of being crazy.</p>
+
+<p>If he were still expecting Gretchen, he gave no sign of it,
+except the place at his table always laid for her, and Frank
+was beginning to breathe freely, and to look upon his brother's
+presence in the house as not altogether unbearable, when an
+event occurred which excited all Shannondale, and for a time
+made Frank almost as crazy as his brother.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI" ></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE STORM.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The winter since Christmas had been unusually severe,
+and the oldest inhabitant, of whom there are always
+many in every town, pronounced the days as they came
+and went the coldest they had ever known. Ten, twelve, and
+even fourteen degrees below zero the thermometers marked
+more than once, while old Peterkin's, which was hung inside
+the Lizy Ann and always took the lead, went down one morning
+to seventeen, and all the water-pipes and pumps in town
+either froze or burst, and Arthur Tracy, who, with his absorption
+of self, never forgot the poor, sent tons and tons of coal to
+them, and whispered to himself:</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Gretchen! It is hard for her if she is on the sea in
+such weather as this. Heaven protect her, poor little Gretchen!'</p>
+
+<p>That night when Frank went, as his custom was, to sit a few
+moments with his brother, he found him on his knees, with his
+face toward the picture, repeating the prayer for those upon
+the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The next day there was a change for the better, and the next,
+and the next, until when the last day of February dawned
+Peterkin's thermometer registered only two, and people began
+to show themselves in the streets, while the sun tried to break
+through the grey clouds which shrouded the wintry sky. But
+this was only temporary, for before noon the mercury fell again
+to eight below, the wind began to rise, and when the New York
+train came panting to the station at half-past six, clouds of snow
+so dense and dark were driving over the hills and along the line
+of track that nothing could be distinctly seen.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until the train had moved on that the station-master,
+who, half blinded with the sleet, was gathering up the
+mail-bag, which had been unceremoniously dropped, saw across
+the track at a little distance from him the figure of a woman
+who seemed to be trying to examine a paper she held in her
+hand, while clinging to her skirts and crying piteously was a
+little child, but whether boy or girl, he could not tell.</p>
+
+<p>'Can I do anything for you?' he said advancing toward the
+stranger, who, thrusting the paper from sight, caught up the
+child in her arms, and without word of answer, hurried away in
+the storm and rapidly-increasing darkness.</p>
+
+<p>'Curis! She must have got off t'other side of the cars. I
+wonder who she is and where she is goin'. Not fur, I hope,
+such a night as this. Ugh! the wind is like so many screech
+owls and almost takes a feller off his feet, the agent said to himself,
+as he looked after the stranger, and then went back to the
+light and warmth of his office, where he soon forgot the woman,
+who, with the child held closely in her arms, walked rapidly on,
+her eyes strained to their utmost tension as they peered through
+the darkness and the storm until she reached a gate opening
+into a grassy road which led through the fields in a straight line
+to Tracy Park and Collingwood beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Carriages seldom traversed this road, but in the summer
+time the people from Collingwood and Tracy Park frequently
+walked that way, as it was a much nearer route to town than
+the main highway. Here the woman stopped, and looking up
+at the tall arch over the gate, said aloud, as if repeating a lesson
+learned by heart, 'Leave the car on your right hand; take
+the road to the right, as I have drawn it on paper; go straight
+on for a quarter of a mile until you come to a wide iron gate
+with a tall arch over it. This gate is also at your right. You
+cannot mistake it.'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' she continued, 'I cannot mistake it. This is the place.
+We are almost there,' and putting down the child, she tugged
+with all her strength at the ponderous gate, which she at last
+succeeded in opening, and resuming her burden, passed through
+into the field where the snow lay on the ground in great white
+drifts, while the blinding flakes and cutting sleet from the
+leaden clouds above, beat pitilessly upon her as she struggled
+on the wearisome way.</p>
+
+<p>And while she toiled on, fighting bravely with the storm, and
+occasionally speaking a word of encouragement to the little
+child nestled in her bosom, Arthur Tracy stood at one of the
+windows in his library, with his white face pressed close against
+the pane, as he looked anxiously out into the gathering darkness,
+shuddering involuntarily as the wind came screaming
+round a corner of the house, bending the tall evergreens until
+their slender tops almost touched the ground, and then rushing
+on down the carriage-drive with a shriek like so many demons
+let loose from the ice-caves of the north, where the winds are
+supposed to hold high carnival.</p>
+
+<p>They were surely holding carnival to-night, and their king
+was out with all his legions, and as Arthur listened to the roar of
+the tempest he whispered to himself:</p>
+
+<p>'A wild, wild night for Gretchen to arrive, and her dear little
+feet and hands will be so cold; but there is warmth and
+comfort here, and love such as she never dreamed of, poor Gretchen!
+I will hold her in my arms and chafe her cold fingers
+and kiss her tired face until she feels that her home-coming is
+a happy one. It must be almost time,' and he glanced at a
+small cathedral clock which stood upon the mantel.</p>
+
+<p>In the adjoining room the dinner table was as usual laid for
+two, but one could see that more care than usual had been given
+to its arrangement, while the roses in the centre were the largest
+and finest of their kind. In the low, wide grate a bright
+fire was burning, and Arthur placed a large easy chair before it,
+and then brought from the library a covered footstool, with a
+delicate covering of blue and gold. No foot had ever yet profaned
+this stool with a touch, for it was one of Arthur's specialties,
+bought at a great price in Algiers; but he brought it now
+for Gretchen and saw in fancy resting upon it the cold little
+feet his hands were to rub and warm and caress until life came
+back to them, and Gretchen's blue eyes smiled upon him and
+Gretchen's sweet voice said:</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you, Arthur. It is pleasant coming home.'</p>
+
+<p>For the last two or three weeks, Arthur had been very quiet
+and taciturn, but on the morning of this day he had seemed restless
+and nervous, and his nervousness and excitability increased
+until a violent headache came on, and Charles, the servant,
+who attended him, reported to Mrs. Tracy that his midday meal
+had been untouched and that he really seemed quite ill. Then
+Frank went to him, and sitting down beside him as he lay upon
+a couch in the room with Gretchen's picture, said to him, not
+unkindly:</p>
+
+<p>'Are you sick to-day? What is the matter?'</p>
+
+<p>For a few moments Arthur made no reply, but lay with his
+eyes closed as if he had not heard. Then suddenly rousing
+himself, he burst out, vehemently:</p>
+
+<p>'Frank, you think me crazy, or you have thought so, and
+you have based that belief in part on the fact that I am always
+expecting Gretchen. And so for a long time I have suppressed
+all mention of her, though I have never ceased to look
+for her arrival, since&mdash;since&mdash;well, I may as well tell you the
+truth. I know now that she could not have been with me on
+the ship and in the train, although I thought she was. I wrote
+her to join me in Liverpool, and fancied she did. But my brain
+must have been a little mixed. She did not come with me, but
+I wrote to her weeks ago, telling her to come at once, and giving
+her directions how to find the park if she should arrive at
+the station and no one there to meet her. She has had more
+than time to get here, but I have said nothing about sending
+the carriage for her, as that seemed to annoy you. But to-day,
+Frank, to-day'&mdash;and Arthur's voice grew softer and pleading,
+and trembled as he went on. 'I dreamed of her last night, and
+to-day she seems so near to me that more than once I have put
+out my hand to touch her. Frank, it is not insanity, this presentiment
+of mine that she is near me, that she is coming to me,
+or tidings of her; it is mind acting upon mind; her thoughts
+of me reaching forward and fastening upon my thoughts of her,
+making a mental bridge on which to see her coming to me.
+And you will send for her. You will let John go again. Think
+if she should arrive in this terrible storm and no one there to
+meet her. You will send this once, and if she is not there I will
+not trouble you again.'</p>
+
+<p>There was something in Arthur's white face which Frank
+could not resist, and though he had no idea that anything would
+come of it, he promised that John should go.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Frank,' Arthur exclaimed, his face brightening at once,
+'you have made me so happy! My headache is quite gone,' and
+then he began to plan for the dinner, which was to be more
+elaborate than usual, and served an hour later, so as to give
+plenty of time for Gretchen to rest and dress herself if she
+wished to do so.</p>
+
+<p>'And she will when she sees the lovely dress I have for her,'
+he thought to himself, and after his brother had gone he went
+to the large closet where he kept the long black trunk which
+he called Gretchen's, and into which Dolly's curious eyes had
+never looked, although she longed to know the contents.</p>
+
+<p>This Arthur now opened, and had Dolly been there she
+would have held her breath in wonder at the many beautiful
+things it contained. Folded in one of the trays, as only a French
+packer accustomed to the business could have arranged it, was
+an exquisite dinner-dress of salmon-colored satin, with a brocaded
+front and jacket of blue and gold, and here and there a
+knot of duchess lace, which gave it a more airy effect. This
+Arthur took out carefully and laid upon the bed in his sleeping-apartment,
+together with every article of the toilet necessary to
+such a dress, from a lace pocket handkerchief to a pair of pale-blue
+silk hose, which he kissed reverently as he whispered to himself:</p>
+
+<p>'Dear little feet, which, no doubt, are so cold now in the
+wretched car; but they will never be cold when once I have
+them here.'</p>
+
+<p>He was talking in German, as he always did when Gretchen
+was the subject of his thought, and so Dolly, who came to say
+that some things which he had ordered for dinner were impossible
+now, could not understand him, but she caught a glimpse
+of the dress upon the bed, and advanced quickly toward the
+open door, exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Arthur, what a lovely gown! Whose&mdash;?'</p>
+
+<p>But before she completed her question Arthur was upon the
+threshold and had closed the door, saying as he did so:</p>
+
+<p>'It is Gretchen's. I had it made at Worth's. She is coming
+to-night, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>Dolly had heard from her husband of Arthur's fancy, and
+though she had no faith in it, she replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Frank told me you were expecting her again, and I
+came to say that we cannot get the fish you ordered, for no one
+can go to town in this storm, and I doubt if we could find it
+if we did. You will have to skip the fish.'</p>
+
+<p>'All right; all right. Gretchen will be too much excited to
+care,' Arthur replied, standing with his hand upon the door-knob
+until Dolly left the room and went to this kitchen, where Frank
+was interviewing the coachman.</p>
+
+<p>He had found that important personage before the fire, bending
+nearly double and complaining bitterly of a fall he had just
+had on his way from the stable to the house. According to his
+statement, the wind had taken him up bodily, and carrying him
+a dozen rods or so, had set him down heavily upon a stone flowerpot
+which was left outside in the winter, nearly breaking his
+back, as he declared. This did not look very promising for the
+drive to the station, and Frank opened the business hesitatingly,
+and asked John what he thought of it.</p>
+
+<p>'I think I would not go out in such a storm as this with my
+back if Queen Victoria was to be there,' John answered gruffly.
+'And what would be the use?' he continued. 'I have been to
+meet that woman, if she is a woman, with the outlandish name,
+more than fifty times, I'll bet; he don't know what he is talking
+about when he gets on her track. And s'posin' she does
+come, she can find somebody to fetch her. She ain't going to
+walk.'</p>
+
+<p>This seemed reasonable; and as Frank's sympathies were
+with his coachman and horses rather than with Gretchen and
+his brother, he decided with John that he need not go, but
+added, laughingly, as he saw the man walk across the floor as
+well as he ever did on his way to the woodshed:</p>
+
+<p>'Seems to me your broken back has recovered its elasticity
+very soon.'</p>
+
+<p>To this John made no reply except an inaudible growl, and
+Frank returned to the library, resolving not to go near his brother
+until after train time, but to let him think that John had
+gone to the station.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past five, however, Arthur sent for him, and said:</p>
+
+<p>'Has he gone? It must be time.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not quite; it is only half-past five. The train does not
+come until half-past six, and is likely to be late,' was Frank's
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I know,' Arthur continued, 'but he should be there
+on time. Tell him to start at once, and take an extra robe with
+him, and say to Charles that I will have sherry to-night, and
+champagne, too, and Hamburg grapes, and&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>The remainder of his speech was lost on Frank, who was
+hurrying down the stairs with a guilty feeling in his heart, although
+he felt that the end justified the means, and that under
+the circumstances he was justified in deceiving his half-crazy
+brother. Still he was ill at ease. He had no faith in Arthur's
+presentiments, and no idea that any one bound for Tracy Park
+would be on the train that night, but he could not shake off a
+feeling of anxiety, amounting almost to a dread of some impending
+calamity, which possibly the sending of John to the station
+might have averted, and going to a window in the library, he,
+too, stood looking out into the night, trying not to believe that
+he was watching for some possible arrival, when, above the
+storm, he heard the shrill scream of the locomotive as it stopped
+for a moment and then dashed on into the white snow clouds;
+trying to believe, too, that he was not glad, as the minutes became
+a quarter, the quarter a half, and the half three-quarters,
+until at last he heard the clock strike the half-hour past seven,
+and nobody had come.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall have to tell Arthur,' he thought, and, with something
+like hesitancy, he started for his brother's room.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur was standing before the fire, with his arm thrown
+caressingly across the chair where Gretchen was to sit, when
+Frank opened the door and advanced a step or two across the
+threshold.</p>
+
+<p>'Has she come? I did not see the carriage. Where is she?'
+Arthur cried, springing swiftly forward, while his bright, eager
+eyes darted past his brother to the open door-way and out into
+the hall.</p>
+
+<p>'No, she has not come. I knew she wouldn't; and it was
+nonsense to send the horses out such a night as this,' Frank
+said, sternly, with a mistaken notion that he must speak sharply
+to the unfortunate man, who, if rightly managed, was gentle as
+a child.</p>
+
+<p>'Not come! Gretchen not come! There must be some
+mistake!' Arthur said, all the brightness fading from his face,
+which seemed to grow pinched and pallid as he turned it
+piteously toward his brother and continued: 'Not come! Oh,
+Frank! did John say so? Was no one there? Let me go
+and question him&mdash;there must be a mistake.'</p>
+
+<p>He was hurrying toward the door, when Frank caught his
+arm and detained him, while he said, decidedly:</p>
+
+<p>'No use to see John. Can't you believe me when I tell you
+no one was there&mdash;and I knew there would not be. It was
+folly to send.'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment a pale, haggard face, which looked still more
+haggard and pale with the firelight flickering over it, confronted
+Frank steadily; then the lips began to quiver, and the
+eyelids to twitch, while great tears gathered in Arthur's eyes,
+until at last, covering his face with his hands, he staggered to
+the couch, and throwing himself upon it, sobbed convulsively.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Gretchen, my darling!' he said. 'I was so sure, and
+now everything is swept away, and I am left so desolate.'</p>
+
+<p>Frank had never seen grief just like this, and, with his conscience
+pricking him a little for the deception he had practised,
+he found himself pitying his brother as he had never done
+before; and when at last the latter cried out loud, he went to
+him, and laying his hand gently upon his bowed head, said to
+him, soothingly:</p>
+
+<p>'Don't, Arthur; don't feel so badly. It is terrible to see a
+man cry as you are crying.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no; let me cry,' Arthur replied. 'The tears do me
+good, and my brain would burst without them. It is all on
+fire, and my head is aching so hard again.'</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Charles appeared, asking if his master would
+have dinner served. But Arthur could not eat, and the table
+which had been arranged with so much care for Gretchen was
+cleared away, while Gretchen's chair was moved back from the
+fire and Gretchen's footstool put in its place, and nothing
+remained to show that she had been expected except the
+pretty dress, with its accessories, which lay upon Arthur's bed.
+These he took care of himself, folding them with trembling
+hands and tear-wet eyes, as a fond mother folds the clothes her
+dead child has worn, sorrowing most over the half-worn shoes,
+so like the dear little feet which will never wear them again.
+So Arthur sorrowed over the high-heeled slippers, with the
+blue rosettes and pointed toes, fashionable in Paris at that time.
+Gretchen had never worn them, it is true, but they seemed so
+much like her that his tears fell fast as he held them in his
+hands, and, dropping upon the pure white satin, left a stain
+upon it.</p>
+
+<p>When everything was put away and the long trunk locked
+again, Arthur went back to the couch and said to his brother,
+who was still in the room:</p>
+
+<p>'Don't leave me, Frank; at least not yet, till I am more
+composed. My nerves are dreadfully shaken to-night, and I
+feel afraid of something, I don't know what. How the wind
+howls and moans! I never heard it like that but once before,
+and that was years ago, among the Alps in Switzerland. Then
+it blew off the roof of the chalet where I was staying, and I
+heard afterward that Amy died that night. You remember
+Amy, the girl I loved so well, though not as I love Gretchen.
+If she had come, I should have told you all about her, but now
+it does not matter who she is, or where I saw her first, knitting
+in the sunshine, with the halo on her hair and the blue of
+the summer skies reflected in her eyes. Oh, Gretchen, my
+love, my love!'</p>
+
+<p>He was talking more to himself than to Frank, who sat
+beside him until far into the night, while the wild storm
+raged on and shook the solid house to its very foundations. A
+tall tree in the yard was uprooted, and a chimney-top came
+crushing down with a force which threatened to break through
+the roof. For a moment there was a lull in the tempest, and,
+raising himself upon his elbow, Arthur listened intently, while
+he said, in a whisper which made Frank's blood curdle in his
+veins:</p>
+
+<p>'Hark! there's more abroad to-night than the storm! Something
+is happening or has happened which affects me. I have
+heard voices in the wind&mdash;Gretchen calling me from far away.
+Frank, Frank, <i>did</i> you hear that? It was a woman's cry; her
+voice&mdash;Gretchen's. Yes, Gretchen, I am coming!'</p>
+
+<p>And with a bound he was at the window, which he opened
+wide, and leaning far out of it, listened to hear repeated a
+sound which Frank, too, had heard&mdash;a cry like the voice of one
+in mortal peril calling for help.</p>
+
+<p>It might have been the wind, which on the instant swept
+round the corner in a great gust, driving the snow and sleet
+into Arthur's face, and making him draw in his body, nearly
+half of which was leaning from the window as he waited for
+the strange cry to be repeated. But it did not come again,
+though Frank, whose nerves were strung to almost as high a
+tension as his brother's, thought he heard it once above the
+roar of the tempest, and a vague feeling of disquiet took possession
+of him as he sat for an hour longer watching his brother
+and listening to the noise without.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the storm subsided, and when the clock struck
+one the wind had gone down, the snow had ceased to fall, and
+the moon was struggling feebly through a rift of dark clouds in
+the west. After persuading his brother to go to bed, Frank
+retired to his own room and was soon asleep, unmindful of the
+tragedy which was being enacted not very far away, where a
+little child was smiling in its dreams, while the woman beside
+it was praying for life until her mission should be accomplished.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII" ></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE TRAMP HOUSE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>About midway between the entrance to the park and
+the Collingwood grounds, and fifty rods or more from
+the cross-road which the strange woman had taken on
+the night of the storm, stood a small stone building, which had
+been used as a school-house until the Shannondale turnpike was
+built and the cross-road abandoned. After that it was occupied
+by one poor family after another, until the property of which
+it was a part came into the hands of the elder Mr. Tracy, who,
+with his English ideas, thought to make it a lodge and bring
+the gates of his park down to it. But this he did not do, and
+the house was left to the mercy of the winds, and the storms,
+and the boys, until Arthur became master there, and with his
+artistic taste thought to beautify it a little and turn it to some
+use.</p>
+
+<p>'I would tear it down,' he said to his neighbor, Mr. St.
+Claire, who stood with him one day looking at it, 'I would tear
+it down, and have once or twice given orders to that effect, but
+as often countermanded them. I do not know that I am
+exactly superstitious, but I am subject to fancies, or presentiments,
+or whatever you choose to call those moods which take
+possession of you and which you cannot shake off, and, singularly
+enough, one of these fancies is connected with this old
+hut, and as often as I decide to remove it something tells me
+not to; and once I actually dreamed that a dead woman's hand
+clutched me by the arm and bade me leave it alone. A case of
+&quot;Woodman spare that tree,&quot; you see.'</p>
+
+<p>And Arthur laughed lightly at his own morbid fancies, but
+he left the house and planted around it quantities of woodbine,
+which soon crept up its sides to the chimney-top and made it
+look like the ivy-covered cottages so common in Ireland. It
+was the nicest kind of rendezvous for lovers, who frequently
+availed themselves of its seclusion to whisper their secrets to
+each other, and it was sometimes used as a dining-room by the
+people of Shannondale, where in summer they held picnics in
+the pretty pine grove not far away. But during Arthur's
+absence it had been suffered to go to decay, for Frank cared
+little for lovers or picnics, and less for the tramps who often
+slept there at night, and for whom it came at last to be called
+the Tramp House. So the winds, and the storms, and the boys
+did their work upon it unmolested, and when Arthur returned,
+the door hung upon one hinge, and there was scarcely a whole
+light of glass in the six windows.</p>
+
+<p>'Better tear the old rookery down. It is of no earthly use
+except to harbor rats and tramps. I've known two or three to
+spend the night in it at a time, and once a lot of gipsies quartered
+themselves here for a week and nearly scared Dolly to
+death,' Frank said to his brother as they were walking past it
+a few days after his return, and Arthur was commenting upon
+its dilapidated appearance.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, the tramps sleep here, do they?' Arthur said. 'Well,
+let them. If any poor, homeless wretches want to stay here
+nights they are very welcome, I am sure, and I will see that the
+door is rehung and glass put in the windows. May as well
+make them comfortable.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do as you like,' Frank replied, and there, so far as he was
+concerned, the matter ended.</p>
+
+<p>But while the carpenters were at work at the Park Arthur
+sent one of them to the old stone house and had the door fixed
+and glass put in two of the windows, while rude but close shutters
+were nailed before the others, and then Arthur went himself
+into the room and pushed a long table which the picnic
+people had used for their refreshments and the tramps for a
+bed into a corner, where one sleeping upon it would be more
+sheltered from the draught. All this seemed nonsense to
+Frank, who laughingly suggested that Arthur should place in
+it a stove and a ton of coal for the benefit of his lodgers. But
+Arthur cared little for his brother's jokes. His natural kindness
+of heart, which was always seeking another's good, had
+prompted him to this care for the Tramp House, in which he
+felt a strange interest, never dreaming that what he was doing
+would reach forward to the future and influence not only his
+life but that of many others.</p>
+
+<p>The storm which had raged so fiercely around the house in
+the park had not spared the cottage in the lane, which rocked
+like a cradle as gust after gust of wind struck it with a force
+which made every timber quiver, and sent the boy Harold close
+to his grandmother's side as he asked, tremblingly:</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think we shall be blown away?'</p>
+
+<p>The rheumatism from which Mrs. Crawford had been suffering
+in the fall had troubled her more or less during the entire
+winter, and now, aggravated by a cold, it was worse than it had
+ever been before, and on the night of the storm she was suffering
+intense pain, which was only relieved by the hot poultices
+which Harold made under her direction and applied to the
+swollen limb. This kept him up later than usual, and the clock
+was striking eleven when his grandmother declared herself
+easier, and bade him go to bed.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this hour that Arthur Tracy had fancied he heard
+the cry for help, and the snow was sweeping past the cottage
+in great billows of white when Harold went to the window and
+looked out into the night. In the summer when the leaves
+were upon the trees the old stone house could not he seen from
+the cottage, from which it was distant a quarter of a mile or
+more, but in the winter when the trees were stripped of their
+foliage it was plainly discernible, and as Harold glanced that
+way a gleam of light appeared suddenly, as if the door had been
+opened and the flickering rays of a candle had for a moment
+shone out into the darkness. Then it disappeared, but not
+until Harold had cried out:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, grandma, there's a light in the Tramp House; I saw
+it plain as day. Somebody is in there.'</p>
+
+<p>'God pity them.' was Mrs. Crawford's reply, though she did
+not quite credit Harold's statement, or think of it again that
+night.</p>
+
+<p>It was late next morning when Harold awoke to find the
+sun shining into the room, and without any sign of the terrible
+storm, except the snow, which lay in great piles everywhere
+and came almost to the window's edge. But Harold was not
+afraid of snow, and soon had the walks cleared around the
+cottage, and when, after breakfast, which he prepared himself,
+for his grandmother could not step, he was told that a doctor
+must be had and he must go for him, he did not demur at all,
+but commenced his preparations at once for the long and wearisome
+walk.</p>
+
+<p>'Better go through the park,' his grandmother said to him,
+as he was tying his warm comforter about his ears and putting
+on his mittens. 'It is a little farther that way, but somebody
+has broken a path by this time, and the cross-road, which is
+nearer, must be impassable.'</p>
+
+<p>Harold made no reply, but remembering the light he had
+seen in the Tramp House, resolved within himself to take the
+cross-road and investigate the mystery. Bidding his grandmother
+good-by, and telling her he should be back before she
+had time to miss him, he started on his journey, and was soon
+plunging through the snow, which, in some places, was up to
+his armpits, so that his progress was very slow, but by kicking
+with his feet and throwing out his arms like the paddles of a
+boat, he managed to get on until he was opposite the Tramp
+House, which looked like an immense snow-heap, so completely
+was it covered. Only the chimney and the slanting roof
+showed any semblance to a house as Harold made his way
+toward it, still beating the snow with his arms, and thinking it
+was not quite the fun he had fancied it might be.</p>
+
+<p>He was close to the house at last, and stood for a moment
+looking at it, while a faint thrill of fear stirred in his veins as
+he remembered to have heard that burglars and thieves sometimes
+made it their rendezvous after a night's marauding.
+What if they were there now, and should rush upon him if he
+ventured to disturb them!</p>
+
+<p>'I don't believe I will try it,' he thought, as he glanced nervously
+at the door, which was blockaded by a great bank of
+snow; and he was about to retrace his steps, when a sound
+met his ear which made him stand still and listen until it was
+repeated a second time.</p>
+
+<p>Then forgetting both burglar and thief, he started forward
+quickly, and was soon at the door, from which he dug away
+the snow with a desperate energy, as if working for his life.
+For the sound was the cry of a little child, frightened and
+pleading.</p>
+
+<p>'Mah-nee! mah-nee!' it seemed to say; and Harold, thinking
+it was mamma, answered, cheerily:</p>
+
+<p>'I am coming as fast I can.'</p>
+
+<p>Then the crying ceased, and all was still inside, while
+Harold worked on until enough snow was cleared away to allow
+of his opening the door about a foot, and through this narrow
+opening he forced his way into the cold, damp room, where for
+a moment he could see nothing distinctly, for the sunlight outside
+had blinded him, and there was but little light inside,
+owing to the barred and snow-bound windows.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, however, as he became accustomed to the place,
+he saw upon the long table in the corner where Arthur Tracy
+had moved it months before, what looked like a human form
+stretched at full length and lying upon its back, with its
+white, stony face upturned to the rafters above, and no sound
+or motion to tell that it still lived.</p>
+
+<p>With an exclamation of surprise, Harold sprang forward
+and laid his hand upon the pale forehead of the woman, but
+started back as quickly with a cry of horror, for by the touch
+of the ice-cold flesh he knew the woman was dead.</p>
+
+<p>'Frozen to death!' he whispered, with ashen lips; and then,
+as something stirred under the gray cloak which partly covered
+the woman, he conquered his terror and went forward again to
+the table, over which he bent curiously.</p>
+
+<p>Again the cry, which was more like 'mah-nee' now than
+'mamma,' met his ear, and, stooping lower, he saw a curly
+head nestle close to the bosom of the woman, while a little
+fat white hand was clasping the neck as if for warmth and
+protection.</p>
+
+<p>At this sight all Harold's fear vanished, and, bending down
+so that his lips almost touched the bright, wavy hair, he said:</p>
+
+<p>'Poor little girl!'&mdash;he felt instinctively that it was a girl&mdash;'poor
+little girl! come with me away from this dreadful place!'
+and he tried to lift up her head, but she drew it away from
+him, and repeated the piteous cry of 'Mah-nee, mah-nee!'</p>
+
+<p>At last, however, as Harold continued to talk to her, the
+cries ceased, and, cautiously lifting her head, she turned toward
+him a fat, chubby face and a pair of soft, blue eyes in
+which the great tears were standing. Then her lips began to
+quiver in a grieved kind of way, as if the horror of the previous
+night had stamped itself upon her tender mind and she
+were asking for sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>'Mah-nee!' she said again, placing one hand on the cold,
+dead face, and stretching the other toward Harold, who put
+out his arms to take her.</p>
+
+<p>But something resisted all his efforts, and a closer inspection
+showed him a long, old-fashioned carpet-bag, which enveloped
+her body from her neck to her feet, and into which she had
+evidently been put to protect her from the cold.</p>
+
+<p>'Not a bad idea either,' Harold said, as he comprehended
+the situation; 'and your poor mother gave you the most of
+her cloak, too, and her shawl,' he continued, as he saw how
+carefully the child had been wrapped, while the mother, if it
+were her mother, had paid for her unselfishness with her life.</p>
+
+<p>'What is your name, little girl?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The child, who had been staring at him while he talked as
+if he were a lunatic, made no reply until he had her in his
+arms, when she, too, began to talk in a half-frightened way.
+Then he looked at her as if she were the lunatic, for never had
+he heard such speech as hers.</p>
+
+<p>'I do believe you are a Dutchman,' he said, as he wrapped
+both shawl and cloak around her and started for the door,
+which he kicked against some time in order to make an opening
+wide enough to allow of his egress with his burden.</p>
+
+<p>When at last they emerged from the cold, dark room into
+the bright sunshine, the child gave a great cry of delight, and
+the blue eyes fairly danced with joy as they fell upon the
+dazzling snow. Then she put both arms around Harold's
+neck, and nestling her face close to his, kissed him as fondly
+as if she had known him all her life, while the boy paid her
+back kiss after kiss as he proceeded slowly toward home.</p>
+
+<p>The child was heavy, and the bag and shawl made such an
+unwieldy bundle that his progress was very slow, and he
+stopped more than once to rest and take breath, and as often
+as he stopped the blue eyes would look up enquiringly at him
+with an expression which made his boyish heart beat faster as
+he thought what pretty eyes they were and wondered who she
+was. Once he fell down, and bag and baby rolled in the snow;
+but only the vigorous kicking of a pair of little legs inside the
+bag showed that the child disapproved of the proceeding, for
+she made no sound, and when he picked her up she brushed
+the snow from his hair, and laughed as if the thing had been
+done for fun.</p>
+
+<p>He reached the cottage at last, and bursting into the room
+where his grandmother was sitting with her foot in a chair,
+exclaimed, as he put down the child, who, as she was still enveloped
+in the bag, stood with difficulty:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh grandma, what do you think? I did see a light in the
+Tramp House, and there is somebody there&mdash;a woman&mdash;dead&mdash;frozen
+to death, with nothing over her, for she had given
+her cloak and shawl to her little girl. I went there. I found
+her, and brought the baby home in the carpet-bag, and now I
+must go back to the woman. Oh, it was dreadful to see her
+white face, and it is so cold there and dark;' and if the horror
+of what he had seen had just impressed itself upon him, the
+boy turned pale and faint, and, staggering to a chair, burst
+into tears.</p>
+
+<p>Too much astonished to utter a word, Mrs. Crawford stared
+at him a moment in a bewildered kind of way, and then
+when the child, seeing him cry, began also to cry for &quot;Mah-nee,&quot;
+and struggle in the bag, she forgot her lame foot, on
+which she had not stepped for a week, and going to the little
+girl, released her from the bag, and taking her upon her lap,
+began to untie the soft woollen cloak and to chafe the cold
+fingers, while she questioned her grandson.</p>
+
+<p>Having recovered himself somewhat, Harold repeated his
+story, and asked with a shudder:</p>
+
+<p>'Must I go for her alone? I can't, I can't. I was not afraid
+with the baby there, but it is so awful, and I never saw any
+one dead before.'</p>
+
+<p>'Go back alone! Of course not!' his grandmother replied.
+'But you must go to the park at once and tell them; go as
+fast as you can. She may not be dead.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, she is,' Harold answered, decidedly. 'I touched
+her face, and nothing alive could feel like that.'</p>
+
+<p>He was buttoning his overcoat preparatory to a fresh start,
+but before he went he kissed the little girl who was sitting on
+his grandmother's lap, and who, as she saw him leaving her,
+began to cry for him and to utter curious sounds unintelligible
+to them both. But Harold brought her a piece of bread,
+which she began to devour ravenously, and then he stepped
+quietly out and was soon breaking through the drifts which
+lay between the cottage and the park.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII" ></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE WOMAN.</h2>
+
+
+<p>They slept later than usual at the park house that morning,
+and Frank and his family were just sitting down to
+breakfast, and Arthur was taking his rolls and coffee in
+his own room, when John, with a white, scared face, looked in
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>'Excuse me, Mr. Tracy, but&mdash;but something dreadful has
+happened. There's a woman frozen to death in the Tramp
+House, with a baby, and Harold Hastings found them, and&mdash;but
+he is here, sir; he will tell you himself;' and he went for
+the boy, who soon entered the room, followed by every servant
+in the house.</p>
+
+<p>Harold had come upon John first in the stable, and sinking
+down exhausted upon the hay, had told his story, while the
+man, John, listened terror-stricken and open-mouthed. Then
+seeing how weak and tired Harold seemed, and how he sank
+back upon the hay when he attempted to rise, he took him in
+his arms, and carrying him to the kitchen, left him there while
+he went with the news to his master.</p>
+
+<p>'A woman dead in the Tramp House, and a baby!' Frank
+exclaimed, and for an instant he felt as if he were dying, for
+there flashed over him a conviction that the woman had come
+in the train the previous night, and that it was her cry for
+help which had been borne to him on the winds, and to which
+he had paid no heed.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you sick? Are you going to faint?' his wife said to
+him, as she saw how white he grew, and how heavily he
+leaned back in his chair as Harold related the particulars of
+his finding the woman and the child.</p>
+
+<p>'I am not going to faint; but it makes me sick and shaky
+to think of a woman freezing to death so near us that if she
+had cried for help we might perhaps have heard her,' Frank
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>Then turning to Harold, he continued:</p>
+
+<p>'How did she look? Was she young? Was she pretty?
+Was she dark or fair?'</p>
+
+<p>He almost gasped the last word, as if it choked him, and
+no one guessed how anxiously he waited for Harold's answer,
+which did not afford him much relief.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know; it was so dark in there, and cold, and I
+was afraid some of the time, and in a hurry. I only know
+that her nose was long and large, for I touched it when I was
+trying to get at the little girl, and it was so cold&mdash;oh, oh!'</p>
+
+<p>And Harold shuddered as if he still felt the icy touch of the
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>'A long nose and a large one,' Frank said, involuntarily,
+while a sigh of relief escaped him as he remembered that the
+nose of the picture in his brother's room was neither long nor
+large.</p>
+
+<p>Still Harold might be mistaken, and though he had no good
+cause for believing that the woman lying dead in the Tramp
+House was Gretchen, there was a horrible feeling in his heart,
+while a lump came into his throat and affected his speech,
+which was thick and indistinct, as he rose from his chair at
+last and said to John:</p>
+
+<p>'We have no time to lose. Hitch up the horses to the
+long sleigh as quick as you can. We must go to the Tramp
+House after the woman, and send to the village for a doctor,
+and telegraph to Springfield for the coroner. I suppose there
+must be an inquest; and, Dolly, see that a room is prepared
+for the body.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Frank, must it come here? Why not take it to the
+cottage? The child is there,' Mrs. Tracy said, not because
+she cared so much for the trouble, but because of her aversion
+to having the corpse of a stranger in the house, with all that
+it involved.</p>
+
+<p>'I tell you that woman must come here,' was Frank's decided
+reply, as he began to make himself ready for the ride.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't tell Arthur yet,' he said, as he left the house and
+took his seat in the sleigh, which was soon ploughing its way
+through the snow banks in the direction of the Tramp House.</p>
+
+<p>It was Harold who acted as master of ceremonies, for John
+was nervous and hung back from the half open door, while
+Frank was too much unstrung to know just what he was doing
+or saying, as he squeezed through the narrow space and then
+stood for a moment, snow-blind and dizzy, in the cheerless room.</p>
+
+<p>Harold was not afraid now. He had been there before alone,
+had seen and touched the white face of the corpse, and now,
+with companionship in its presence, he went fearlessly up to it,
+followed by Frank, who could scarcely stand, and who laid his
+hand for support on Harold's shoulder, and then turned curiously
+and eagerly toward the woman.</p>
+
+<p>John had lingered outside, shovelling the snow from the door
+which he succeeded in opening wide, so that the full, broad
+sunlight fell upon the face, which was neither young, nor pretty,
+nor fair, while the hair was black as night.</p>
+
+<p>Frank noted all these points at a glance, and could have
+shouted aloud for joy, so great was the revulsion of his feelings.
+It was not Gretchen lying there before him, and he was not a
+murderer, as he had accused himself of being, for she did not
+come by the train; she had no connection with Tracy Park;
+she was going somewhere else&mdash;to Collingwood, perhaps&mdash;when,
+overcome by the storm and the cold, she had sought shelter for
+the night in this wretched place.</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose the proper thing to do is to leave her here till the
+coroner can see her,' he said to John; 'but no train can get
+through from Springfield to-day, I am sure, and I shall have
+her taken to the park. Bring me the blankets from the
+sleigh.'</p>
+
+<p>He was very collected now, for a great load was lifted from
+his mind.</p>
+
+<p>'Had she nothing with her? nothing to cover her?' he asked,
+as they proceeded to wrap her in the warm blankets, which,
+had they sooner come, would have saved her life.</p>
+
+<p>Harold told him again of the carpet-bag and the cloak and
+the shawl, which had covered the child, and added, 'That's all;
+there don't seem to be anything else. Oh, what's this?' and
+stooping down, he picked up some hard substance which he had
+kicked against the table.</p>
+
+<p>It proved to be one of those olive wood candle sticks, so
+convenient in travelling, as when not in use, they can be made
+into a small round box or ball, and take but little room. It
+contained but the remains of a wax candle, which had burned
+down into the socket and then gone out. Near by, upon the
+floor, was a tiny box of matches, with two or three charred
+ones among them.</p>
+
+<p>'The poor woman must have had a light for at least a portion
+of the time,' Frank said, as he picked up the box.</p>
+
+<p>'She had, I know she had,' Harold cried, excitedly; 'for I saw
+it and told grandma so. It was like she had opened the door
+and let out a big blaze, and then everything was dark, as if the
+door was shut or the wind had blown the candle out.'</p>
+
+<p>'What time was that, do you think?' Frank asked.</p>
+
+<p>'It must have been about eleven,' Harold replied, 'for I remember
+hearing the clock strike and grandma's saying I must
+go to bed, it was so late. I was up with her because her foot
+was so bad, and I warmed the poultices.'</p>
+
+<p>Frank groaned aloud, unmindful of the boy looking so curiously
+at him, for that was the time when he had heard the
+sound like a human voice is distress. He had thought it a
+fancy then communicated to him by his brother's nervousness,
+but now he was certain it must have been the stranger calling
+through the storm, in the vain hope that somebody would hear
+and come. Somebody had heard, but no one had come; and
+so in the cold and the darkness, with the snow sifting through
+every crevice and blowing down the wide chimney to the hearth
+where it made a drift like a grave, she had battled for her own
+life and that of the child beside her, saving the latter but losing
+her own.</p>
+
+<p>'If I had only believed it was a cry,' Frank thought, and as
+he wrapped the body in the blankets and buffalo robe as tenderly
+and reverently as if the stiffened limbs had belonged to
+his mother, he saw distinctly before him as if painted upon canvas
+the driving gale, the inky sky, the half-opened door,
+through which the sleet was driving, the light behind, and the
+frantic, freezing woman, screaming for help, while only the
+winds made answer, and the pitiless storm raged on.</p>
+
+<p>This was the picture which Frank was destined to see in his
+dreams for many and many a night, until the mystery was
+solved concerning the woman whom they carried to the sleigh,
+which was driven back to the park house, where, within fifteen
+or twenty minutes a crowd of anxious, curious people gathered.
+The messenger sent to town had done his work rapidly and
+thoroughly, and half the villagers who heard of the tragedy
+enacted at their very door started at once for Tracy Park. The
+boy had stopped at the station and told his story there, making
+the baggage-master feel as if he, too, were a murderer, or at
+least an accessory.</p>
+
+<p>'If I had only gone after that woman,' he said, as he told of
+the stranger who had come on the train and gotten off on the
+side of the car farthest from the depot&mdash;'if I had gone after
+her and made her take a conveyance to where she was going,
+this would not have happened; but it was so all-fired cold, and
+the wind was yelling so, and she walked off so fast, as if she
+knew her own business. So I just minded mine, or rather I
+didn't, for I never even seen the box, or trunk, which was pitched
+out helter-skelter, and which I found this morning, all covered
+up with snow. It was hers, of course, and I shall send it right
+over there, as it may tell who the poor critter was.'</p>
+
+<p>This trunk, which was little more than a strong wooden box
+with two double locks upon it, was still further secured by a bit
+of rope wound twice around it and tied in a hard knot. There
+was no name upon it to tell whose it was, or whence it came,
+except the name of a German steamer, on which its owner had
+probably crossed the ocean, and the significant word 'Hold,'
+showing that it had not been used in the state-room. It had
+been checked at the Grand Central depot in New York for
+Shannondale, and the check was still attached to the iron handle
+when it was put down in the kitchen at Tracy Park, where
+the utmost excitement prevailed, the servants huddling together
+with scared faces, and talking in whispers of the terrible thing
+which had happened, while Mrs. Tracy and the housekeeper,
+scarcely less excited than the servants, gave their attention to
+the dead.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the rear hall was a small room, where Frank
+sometimes received business calls when at home, and there they
+laid the body, after the physician, who had arrived, declared
+that life had been extinct for many hours.</p>
+
+<p>Seen in the full daylight, she seemed to be at least thirty-five
+years of age, and her features, though not unpleasing, were
+coarse and large, especially the nose. Her hair was black, her
+complexion dark, and the hands, which lay folded upon her
+bosom, showed marks of toil, for they were rough and unshapely,
+though smaller in proportion than the other members of her
+body. Her woollen dress of grayish blue was short and scant;
+her knit stockings were black and thick, and her leather shoes
+were designed fur use rather than ornament. A wide white
+apron was tied around her waist, and she wore a small black
+and white plaided shawl pinned about her neck.</p>
+
+<p>And there she lay, not a pleasant picture to contemplate,
+helpless and defenceless against the curious eyes bent upon her
+and the remarks concerning her, as one after another of the
+villagers came in to look at her and speculate as to who she was
+or how she came in the Tramp House.</p>
+
+<p>Among the crowd was Mr. St. Claire, who gave it as his
+opinion that she was a Frenchwoman of the lower class, and
+asked if nothing had been found with her except the clothes she
+wore. Harold told him of the shawl, and cloak, and carpet-bag
+which he had carried with the child to the cottage.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, there is something more&mdash;her trunk,' chimed in the
+baggage-master, who had just entered the room, trembling and
+breathless.</p>
+
+<p>'Her trunk! Did she come in the cars?' Frank asked, his
+hands dropping helplessly at his side, and his lips growing
+pale, as the man replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; last night, on the quarter-past-six from New York;
+and what is curi's, she got out on the side away from the depot,
+and I never seen her till the cars went on, when she was
+lookin' at a paper, and the child cryin' at her feet. I spoke to
+her, but she did not answer, and snatching up the child, she
+hurried off, almost on a run. It was storming so I did not see
+her trunk till this mornin', when I found it on the platform. I
+wish I had gone after her and made her take a sleigh. If I had
+she wouldn't now have been dead, and, I swow, I feel as if I
+had killed her. I wonder why under the sun she turned into
+the lots, unless she was goin' to Collingwood&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Or Tracy Park,' Frank said, involuntarily.</p>
+
+<p>'Were you expecting any one?' Mr. St. Claire asked.</p>
+
+<p>Sinking into a chair, Frank replied:</p>
+
+<p>'No, I was not, but Arthur, who has been worse than usual
+for a few days, has again a fancy that Gretchen is coming. He
+says now that she was not in the ship with him, but that he
+has written her to join him here, and yesterday he took it into
+his head that she would be here last night, and insisted that the
+carriage be sent to meet her; but John had hurt his back, and
+as I had no faith in her coming, he did not go. I wish he had;
+it might have saved this woman's life, although she is not
+Gretchen.'</p>
+
+<p>Frank had made his confession, except so far as deceiving his
+brother was concerned, and he felt his mind eased a little,
+though there was still a lump in his throat, and a feeling of
+disquiet in his heart, with a wish that the dead woman had
+never crossed his path, and a conviction that he had not yet
+seen the worst of it.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. St. Claire looked at him thoughtfully a moment, and
+then said:</p>
+
+<p>'I should not accuse myself too much. You could not know
+that any one would be there, and this woman certainly is not
+the Gretchen of whom your brother talks so much, and whose
+picture is in his room. Has he seen her? Does he know of
+the accident?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not told him yet. He is not feeling well to-day.
+Charles says he is still in bed,' was Frank's reply.</p>
+
+<p>'We may find something in her trunk,' Mr. St. Claire
+continued, 'which will give us a clue to her history. Where
+do you suppose she kept her key?'</p>
+
+<p>No one volunteered an answer, until Harold suggested that
+if she had a pocket it was probably there, when half a dozen
+hands or more at once felt for the pocket, which was found at
+last, and proved to be one of great capacity, and to contain a
+heterogeneous mass of contents: A purse, in which were two
+or three small German coins, an English sovereign, and a five
+dollar green-back; two handkerchiefs, one soiled and coarse,
+bearing in German text the initials 'N.B.' the other small and
+fine, bearing the initial 'J.,' also in German text: a pair of
+scissors, a thimble, a small needle-case, a child's toy, a worn
+picture-book, printed in Leipsic, a box of pills, some peanuts,
+some cloves, a piece of candy, a seed cake, a pocket comb, half
+a biscuit; and at the very bottom, the brass check whose number
+corresponded with that upon the trunk; also a ring to
+which were attached three keys, one belonging to the trunk,
+another evidently to the carpet-bag, while the third, which was
+very small and straight, must have been used for fastening
+some box or dressing-case.</p>
+
+<p>It was Mr. St. Claire who opened the trunk, from which
+one of the servants had removed the rope, while Frank sat near
+still trembling in every limb, and watching anxiously as article
+after article was taken out and examined, but afforded no satisfaction
+whatever, or gave any sign by which the stranger might
+be traced.</p>
+
+<p>There was a black alpaca dress and a few coarse garments
+which must have belonged to the woman. Some of them bore
+the initials 'N.B.,' some were without a mark, and all were
+cheap and plain, like the clothes of a servant before her head
+is turned and she apes her mistress' wardrobe. The child's
+dresses were of a better quality, and one embroidered petticoat
+bore the name 'Jerrine,' while the letter 'J.' was upon them
+all, except a towel of the finest linen, on one corner of which
+was the letter 'M.' worked with colored floss.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrine!' Mr. St. Claire repeated, pronouncing it 'Jerreen.'
+'That is a French name, and a pretty one. It is the child's, of
+course.'</p>
+
+<p>To this no one replied, and he continued his examination of
+the trunk until it was quite empty.</p>
+
+<p>'That is all,' he said in a tone of disappointment; and
+Frank, who had been sitting by and holding some of the things
+in his lap as they were taken from the trunk, answered, faintly:</p>
+
+<p>'No, here is a book. It was done up in a handkerchief,'
+and he held up what proved to be a German Bible; but he did
+not tell that he had found something else, which he had thrust
+into his pocket when no one was looking at him.</p>
+
+<p>What he had found was a photograph, which had slipped
+from the leaves of the Bible, and at sight of the face, of which
+he only had a glimpse, every drop of blood seemed to leave his
+heart and came surging to his brain, making him so giddy and
+wild that he did not realise what he was doing when he hid
+away the picture until he could examine it by himself. Once
+in his pocket he dared not take it out, although he raised his
+hand two or three times to do so, but was as often deterred by
+the thought that everybody would think that he had intended
+to hide it and suspect his motive. So he kept quiet and saw
+them examine the book, the blank page of which had been torn
+half off, leaving only the last three letters of what must have
+been the owner's name, '&mdash;&mdash;ich'&mdash;that was all, and might as
+well not have been there, for any light it shed upon the matter.</p>
+
+<p>Opening the book by chance at 1st Corinthians, 2nd chapter,
+Mr. St. Claire, who could read German much better than he
+could speak it, saw pencil-marks around the ninth verse, and
+read aloud:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into
+the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that
+love Him.'</p></div>
+
+<p>On the margin opposite this verse was written, in a girlish
+hand:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Think of me as there when you read this, and do not be sorry.'</p></div>
+
+<p>A lock of soft, golden hair, which might have been cut from
+a baby's head, and a few faded flowers, which still gave forth a
+faint perfume like heliotrope, were tied with a bit of thread,
+and lying between the leaves. And except that the book was
+full of marked passages, chiefly comforting and conciliatory,
+there was nothing more to indicate the character of the owner.</p>
+
+<p>'If this Bible were hers, she was a good woman,' Mr. St.
+Claire said, laying his hand reverently upon the forehead of the
+dead, while Frank, who saw another meaning between the
+lines, shook like one in an ague fit, for he did not believe that
+those hands, so pulseless and cold, had ever traced the words,
+'Think of me as there when you read this, and do not be sorry.'
+She who wrote them might be, and probably was dead, but
+her grave was far away, and the fact did not at all change the
+duty which he owed to her and him for whom the message was
+intended.</p>
+
+<p>'What shall I say to Arthur, and how shall I tell him,' he
+was wondering to himself, when Mr. St. Claire roused him by
+saying:</p>
+
+<p>'You seem greatly unstrung by what has happened. I never
+saw you look so ill.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I feel as if I had murdered her by not sending John to
+the station,' Frank stammered, glad to offer this as an excuse
+for his manner, which he knew must seem strange and unnatural.</p>
+
+<p>'You are too sensitive altogether. John might not have
+seen her, she hurried off so fast, and you have no particular
+reason to think she was coming here,' Mr. St. Claire said, adding:
+'We'd better leave her now. We can do nothing more
+until the coroner comes, which will hardly be to-day. I hear
+the roads are all blocked and impassable. Let everything remain
+in the trunk where he can see them.'</p>
+
+<p>Mechanically Mrs. Tracy, who was present, put the different
+articles into the trunk, leaving the Bible on the top,
+and then followed her husband from the room. She knew
+there was more affecting him than the fact that a dead
+woman was in the house, or that he had not sent John to the
+station. But what it was she could not guess, unless, and she,
+too, felt faint and giddy for a moment, as a new idea entered
+her mind.</p>
+
+<p>'Frank,' she said to him when they were alone for a few
+moments, 'Arthur had a fancy that Gretchen was coming last
+night. You do not think this woman is she?'</p>
+
+<p>'Gretchen? No. Don't be a fool, Dolly. Gretchen is fair and
+young, and the woman is old and black as the ace of spades.
+Gretchen! No, indeed!'</p>
+
+<p>He did not show her the picture he had secreted; he knew
+she would not approve of the act, and if she had no suspicion
+with regard to the woman and the child he did not care
+to share his with her, particularly as it was only a suspicion,
+and so far as he could judge in his perturbed state of mind, nothing
+he could do would ever make things sure. His wife
+seemed to have forgotten the child at the cottage, and he
+would not bring it to her mind until it was necessary to do so.
+Just then Charles came to the room and said that his master
+was very much excited and wished to know the reason for so
+much commotion in the house, and why so many people were
+coming and going down and up the avenue.</p>
+
+<p>'I thought it better that you should tell him,' Charles added,
+and with a sinking heart Frank started for his brother's room.</p>
+
+<p>He had not seen him before that day, and now as he looked
+at him it seemed to him that he had grown older since the
+previous night, for there were lines about his mouth, and his
+face was very thin and pale. But his eyes were unusually
+bright, and his voice rang out clear as a bell as he said:</p>
+
+<p>'What is it, Frank? What has happened that so many people
+are coming here, banging doors and talking so loud that I
+heard them here in my room, but I could not distinguish what
+they said. What's the matter? Any one hurt or dead?'</p>
+
+<p>He put the question direct, and Frank gave a direct reply.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, a woman was found frozen to death in the Tramp
+House this morning, and was brought here. She is lying in the
+office at the end of the back hall.'</p>
+
+<p>'A women frozen to death in the Tramp House!' Arthur repeated.
+'Then I did hear a cry. Oh, Frank, who is she?
+Where did she come from?'</p>
+
+<p>'We do not know who she is, or where she came from!'
+Frank replied, 'Mr. St. Claire thinks she is French. There is nothing
+about her person to identify her, but I would like you to
+see her, and&mdash;and&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'I see her! Why should I see her, and shock my nerves
+more than they are already shocked?' Arthur said, with a decided
+shake of his head.</p>
+
+<p>'But you must see her,' Frank continued. 'Perhaps you
+know her. She came last night. She&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Before he could utter another word Arthur was at his side,
+Frank seizing him by the shoulder with the grip of a giant, demanded,
+fiercely:</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean by her coming last night? How did she
+come? Not by train, for John was there. Frank, there is
+something you are keeping back. I know it by your face. Tell
+me the truth. Is it Gretchen dead in this house?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' Frank answered huskily. 'It is not Gretchen, if that
+picture is like her, for this woman is very dark and old, and,
+besides that, has Gretchen a child?'</p>
+
+<p>For an instant Arthur stood staring at him, or rather at the
+space beyond him, as if trying to recall something too distant
+or too shadowy to assume any tangible form; then bursting into
+a laugh he said:</p>
+
+<p>'Gretchen a child! That is the best joke I have heard. How
+should Gretchen have a child? She is little more than one herself,
+or was when I saw her last. No, Gretchen has no child.
+Why do you ask?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because,' Frank replied, 'there was a little girl found in the
+Tramp House with this woman, a girl three or four years old, I
+judge. She is at the cottage now, where Harold carried her.
+He found the woman this morning. Will you see her now?'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur answered 'no,' decidedly, and then Frank, who knew
+that he should never again know peace of mind if his brother
+did not see her, summoned all his courage and said:</p>
+
+<p>'Arthur, you must. I have not told you all. This woman
+did come by train from New York.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then why did not John see her?' interrupted Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>'He was not there,' Frank replied. 'Forgive me, Arthur, I
+did not send him as you thought. It was so cold and stormy,
+and I had no faith in your presentiments, and so&mdash;so&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'And so you lied to me, and I will never trust you again as
+long as I live, and if this had been Gretchen, I would kill
+you, where I stand!' Arthur hissed in a whisper, more terrible
+to hear than louder tones would have been, 'Yes, I will see
+this woman whose death lies at your door,' he continued, with
+a gesture that Frank should precede him.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur was very calm, and collected, and stern, as he followed
+to the office where the body lay, covered now from view,
+but showing terribly distinct through the linen sheet folded
+over it.</p>
+
+<p>'Remove the covering,' he said, in the tone of a master to
+his slave, and Frank obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>Then bending close to the stiffened form, Arthur examined
+the face minutely, while Frank looked on alternately between
+hope and dread, the former of which triumphed as his brother
+said, quietly:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, she is French: but I do not know her. I never saw
+her before. Had she nothing with her to tell who she was?'</p>
+
+<p>His mood had passed, and Frank did not hear him now.</p>
+
+<p>'She had a trunk,' he replied. 'Here it is, with her clothes,
+and the child's, and&mdash;a Bible.'</p>
+
+<p>'He said the last slowly, and, taking up the book, opened it
+as far as possible from the writing on the margin, which might
+or might not be dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>'It is a German Bible,' he continued, and then Arthur took
+it quickly from him as if it had been a long-lost friend, turning
+the worn pages rapidly, but failing to discover the marked
+passage and the message for some one.</p>
+
+<p>The lock of baby hair and the faded flowers caught his attention,
+and his breath came hard and pantingly, as for a moment
+he held the little golden tress which seemed almost to
+twine itself lovingly around his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>'That must be her child's hair. You know I told you there
+was a little girl found with her. Would you like to see her?'
+Frank said.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no!' Arthur answered, hastily. 'Let her stay where
+she is, I don't like children as a rule. You know I can't abide
+the noise yours sometimes make.'</p>
+
+<p>He was leaving the room with the Bible in his hand, but
+Frank could not suffer that, and he said:</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose all these things must stay here till the coroner
+sees them; so I will put the Bible where I found it.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur gave it up readily enough, and then, as he reached
+the door, looked back, and said:</p>
+
+<p>'If forty coroners and undertakers come on this business,
+don't bother me any more. My head buzzes like a bee-hive.
+See that everything is done decently for the poor woman, and
+don't let the town bury her. Do it yourself, and send the bill
+to me. There is room enough on the Tracy lot; put her in a
+corner.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Frank answered, standing in the open door and
+watching him as he went slowly down the long hall and until
+he heard him going up stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Then locking the door, which shut him in with the dead, he
+took the photograph from his pocket and examined it minutely,
+feeling no shadow of doubt in his heart that it was
+Gretchen&mdash;if the picture in the window was like her. It was
+the same face, the same sweet mouth and sunny blue eyes, with
+curls of reddish-golden hair shading the low brow. The dress
+was different and more in accordance with that of a girl who
+belonged to the middle class, but this counted for nothing, and
+Frank felt himself a thief, and a liar, and a murderer as he
+stood looking at the lovely face; and debating what he should
+do.</p>
+
+<p>Turning it over he saw on the back a word traced in English
+letters, in a very uncertain scrawling hand, as if it were
+the writer's first attempt at English. Spelling it letter by letter
+he made out what he called 'Wiesbaden,' and knew it was
+some German town. Did Gretchen live there, he wondered,
+and how could he find out, and what should he do? He had
+not yet seen the child at the cottage, but from some things
+Harold said, he knew she was more like this picture than like
+the dead woman found with her, and in his heart he felt almost
+sure who she was, and that his course of duty was plain.
+He ought to show Arthur the photograph, and tell him his
+suspicions, and take every possible step to ascertain who the
+woman was and where she came from.</p>
+
+<p>Frank was not a bad man, nor a hard-hearted man, but he
+was ambitious and weak. He had enjoyed money, and ease,
+and position long enough to make him unwilling to part with
+them now, while for his children he was more ambitious than
+for himself. To see Tom master of Tracy Park was the great
+desire of his life, and this could not be, if what he feared were
+proved true. If Arthur had no wife, no child, no will adverse
+to him, why, then his interest was safe, for no will his brother
+could now make would be held as valid, and when he died
+everything would naturally go to him. Of all this Frank
+thought during the few minutes he staid in the silent room.
+Then he said to himself:</p>
+
+<p>'I will see the child first. After all I know nothing for certain&mdash;can
+never know anything for certain, and I should be a
+fool to give up all my children's interests for a fancy, an idea,
+which may have no foundation. Arthur does not know half
+the time what he is saying, and might not tell the truth about
+Gretchen. She may not have been his wife. On the whole, I
+do not believe she was. He would never have left her if she
+had been, and if so, this child, if she is Gretchen's, has no right
+to come between me and mine. No, I shall wait a little while
+and think, though in the end I mean to do right.'</p>
+
+<p>With these specious arguments Frank tried to quiet his conscience,
+but he could not help feeling that Satan had possession
+of him, and as he hurried through the hall he said aloud,
+as if speaking to something seen:</p>
+
+<p>'Go away&mdash;go away! I shall do right if I only know what
+right is.</p>
+
+<p>He did not see his brother again that day, or go to the cottage
+either, but as he was dressing himself next morning he
+said to his wife:</p>
+
+<p>'That little girl ought to see her mother before she is buried.
+I shall send for her to-day. The coroner will be here, too.
+Did I tell you I had a telegram last night? He is coming on
+the early train.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Tracy passed the allusion to the coroner in silence, but
+of the little girl she said:</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose the child must come to the funeral, but you
+surely do not mean to keep her? We are not bound to do
+that because her mother froze to death on our premises.'</p>
+
+<p>'Would you let her go to the poor-house?' Frank asked,
+but Dolly did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>As the breakfast-bell just then rang, no more was said of the
+little waif until the sleigh was brought to the door, and Frank
+announced his intention of stopping for the child on his way
+back from the station, where he was going to meet the coroner.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV" ></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h2>LITTLE JERRY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was nearly noon when Harold left Tracy Park the previous
+day and started for home, eager and anxious with
+regard to the child whom he claimed as his own. He
+had found her. She was his and he should keep her, he said
+to himself, and then he wondered how his grandmother had
+managed with her, and if she had cried for him or for her
+mother, and as he reached the house he stood still a moment,
+to listen. But the sounds which met his ear were peals of
+laughter, mingled with mild, and, as it would seem, unavailing
+expostulations from his grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>Opening the door suddenly he found the child seated at the
+table in the high chair he used to occupy, and which Mrs.
+Crawford had brought from the attic, where it was stored.
+Standing before the child was a dish of bread and milk, of
+which she had evidently eaten enough, for she was playing
+with it now, and amusing herself by striking the spoon into
+the milk, which was splashed over the table, while three or
+four drops of it were standing on the forehead and nose of the
+distressed woman, who was vainly trying to take the spoon
+from the little hand clenching it so firmly.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Crawford had had a busy and exciting day with her
+charge, who, active and restless, and playful, kept her on the
+alert and made her forget in part how lame she was. As she
+could not put her foot to the floor without great pain, and as
+she must move about, she adopted the expedient of placing her
+knee on a chair to the back of which she held, while she hobbled
+around the room, followed by the child, who, delighted
+with this novel method of locomotion, put her knee in a low
+chair, and holding to Mrs. Crawford's skirts, limped after her,
+imitating her perfectly, even to the groans she sometimes uttered
+when a twinge sharper than usual ran up her swollen
+limb. It was fun for the child, but almost death to the woman,
+who, when she could endure it no longer, sank into a chair,
+and tried by speaking sharply, to make the little girl understand
+that she must keep quiet. But when she scolded, baby
+scolded back, in a language wholly unintelligible, shaking her
+curly head, and sometimes stamping her foot by way of emphasizing
+her words.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Crawford laughed the child laughed, and when
+once a pang severer than usual wrung the tears from her eyes,
+baby looked at her compassionately a moment, while her little
+face puckered itself into wrinkles as if she too were going to
+cry; then, putting up her soft hand she wiped the tears from
+Mrs. Crawford's cheeks, and, climbing into her lap, became as
+quiet as a kitten. But a touch sufficed to start her up, for she
+was full of fun and frolic, and her laughing blue eyes, which
+were of that wide-open kind which see everything, were brimming
+over with mischief. Once or twice she called out 'Mahnee,'
+and going to the window, stood on tip-toe looking out, to
+see if she were coming. But on the whole she seemed happy
+and content, exploring every nook and corner of the kitchen
+and examining curiously every article of furniture as if it were
+quite new to her.</p>
+
+<p>Once when Mrs. Crawford was talking earnestly to her, trying
+to make her understand, she stood for a moment watching
+and imitating the motion of the lady's lips and the expression
+of her face; then going up to her she began to examine her
+mouth and her teeth, as if she would know what manner of
+machinery it was which produced sounds so new and strange
+to her. She certainly was a remarkable child for her age,
+though Mrs. Crawford was puzzled to know just how old she
+was. She was very small, and, judging from her size, one
+would have said she was hardly three; but the expression of
+her face was so mature, and she saw things so quickly and understood
+so readily, that she must have been older. She was
+certainly very precocious, with a most inquiring turn of mind,
+and Mrs. Crawford felt herself greatly interested in her as she
+watched her active movements and listened to the musical
+prattle she could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>She had examined the carpet-bag, in which were found the
+articles necessary for an ocean voyage, and little else. Most of
+these were soiled from use, but there was among them a little
+clean, white apron, and this Mrs. Crawford put upon the child,
+after having washed her face and hands and brushed her wavy
+hair, which had a trick of coiling itself into soft, fluffy curls all
+over her head.</p>
+
+<p>The bread and milk had been given her about twelve o'clock,
+and the laugh she gave when she saw it showed her appreciation
+of it quite as much as the eagerness with which she ate it.
+Her appetite appeased, however, she began to play with it and
+throw the milk over the table and into Mrs. Crawford's face,
+just as Harold came in, full of what he had seen at the park,
+and anxious to see his baby, as he called her.</p>
+
+<p>Taking her on his lap and kissing her rosy cheeks, he began
+to narrate to his grandmother all that had been done, and told
+her that Mr. St. Claire had given it as his opinion that the
+woman was French.</p>
+
+<p>'And if so,' he continued, 'baby must be French, too,
+though she does not look a bit like her mother, who is very
+dark and not&mdash;well, not at all like you or Mrs. St. Claire.'</p>
+
+<p>Then he told of the trunk which the baggage-master had
+taken to the park, and of what it contained.</p>
+
+<p>'The woman's clothes were marked &quot;N.B.&quot;' he said, 'and
+some of the baby's&mdash;such a funny name. Mr. St. Claire said
+it was French, and pronounced &quot;Jerreen,&quot; though it is spelled
+&quot;Jerrine.&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>'That is the name of the child's things in the bag,' Mrs.
+Crawford said.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course it is baby's, then,' Harold replied; 'but, I shall
+call her Jerry for short, even if it is a boy's name, and so my
+little lady, I christen you Jerry;' and kissing the forehead,
+the eyes, the nose, and the chin, he marked the shape of the
+cross upon the face upturned to his, and named his baby
+'Jerry.'</p>
+
+<p>Later, when he knew more of the world, he would change
+the 'y' into 'ie,' but now she was simply Jerry, and when he
+called her that she laughed and nodded as if the sound were not
+new to her. She was a beautiful child, with complexion as
+pure as wax, and eyes which might have borrowed their color
+from the blue lakes of Italy, or from the skies of England when
+they are at their brightest.</p>
+
+<p>'I wish she could talk to me. I suppose she must speak
+French,' he said, as he was trying in vain to make her understand
+him. 'Don't you know a word I say?' he asked her, and
+her reply was what sounded to him like 'We, we.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's English,' he cried, delighted with her progress, but
+when he spoke to her again, her answer was, 'Yah, yah,' which
+seemed to him so nonsensical that after a few attempts to make
+her say 'yes,' and to teach her what it meant, he gave up his
+lesson for the remainder of the day and talked to her by signs
+and gestures which she seemed to understand.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever he did she did, and he saw her more than once
+imitating his grandmother's motions as well as his own, to the life.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the afternoon Mr. St. Claire came to the cottage,
+curious to see the child, who, at sight of him, retreated behind
+Harold, and then peered shyly up at him, with a look in her
+great blue eyes which puzzled him on the instant, as one is
+frequently puzzled with a likeness to something or somebody
+he tries in vain to recall. In this instance it was hardly the
+eyes themselves, but rather the way they looked at him, and
+the sweep of the long lashes, together with a firm shutting together
+of the lips, which struck Mr. St. Claire as familiar, and
+when with a swift movement of her little hand, she swept the
+mass of golden hair back from her forehead, he would have
+sworn that he had seen that trick a thousand times, and yet
+he could not place it. That she was the child of the dead woman
+he believed, and as the mother was French, so also was
+she. He had once passed two years in France, and was master
+of the language; so he spoke to the child in French, but
+though she seemed to understand him she made no reply, until
+he said to her:</p>
+
+<p>'Where is your mother, little one?'</p>
+
+<p>'Then she answered, promptly, 'Dead,' but the language was
+German, not French.</p>
+
+<p>'Ho-ho! You are a little Dutchman,' Mr. St. Claire said,
+with some surprise in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>Then as he noted the purity of her complexion, her fair hair
+and blue eyes, he said to himself:</p>
+
+<p>'Her father was a German, and probably they lived in Germany,
+but the mother was certainly French.'</p>
+
+<p>His own knowledge of German was very limited, but he
+could speak it a little, and turning again to the child he managed
+to say:</p>
+
+<p>'What is your name!'</p>
+
+<p>'Der-ree,' was the reply, and Harold exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>'That's it; she means Jerry; that's short for the name on
+her clothes, which you said was pronounced Jereen. I have
+christened her Jerry, and she is my little girl, ain't you,
+Jerry!'</p>
+
+<p>'Yah&mdash;oui&mdash;'ess,' was the answer, and there was a gleam of
+triumph in the blue eyes which flashed up to Harold for approbation.</p>
+
+<p>She had not, of course, understood a word he said, except,
+indeed her name; but the tone of his voice was interrogatory,
+and seemed to expect an affirmative answer, which she gave in
+three languages, emphasizing the ''ess' with a nod of her head,
+as if greatly pleased with herself.</p>
+
+<p>'Bravo!' Harold shouted. 'She can say yes. I taught her,
+and I shall have her talking English in a few days as well as I
+do, shan't I, Jerry?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yah&mdash;'ess,' was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. St. Claire tried to question her further with regard
+to herself and her home, but his phraseology was probably
+at fault, for no satisfactory result was reached beyond the
+fact that her mother was dead, that her name was Jerry, or
+Derree, as she called it, and that she had been on a ship with
+Mah-nee, who did <i>so</i>&mdash;and she imitated perfectly the motions
+and contortions of one who is deathly sea-sick.</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose she means her mother by Mah-nee,' said Mr. St.
+Claire; and when he asked her if it were not so, she answered
+'yah,' and ''ess,' as she did to everything, adopting
+finally the latter word altogether because she saw it pleased
+Harold.</p>
+
+<p>No matter what was the question put to her, her reply was
+''ess,' which she repeated quickly, with a prolonged sound on
+the 's.'</p>
+
+<p>When at last Mr. St. Claire took his leave, it was with a
+strange feeling of interest for the child, whose antecedents
+must always be shrouded in mystery, and whose future he could
+not predict.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed impossible for Mrs. Crawford to keep her, poor as
+she was, and as he had no idea that the Tracys would take her,
+there was no alternative but the poor-house, unless he took her
+himself and brought her up with his own little five-year-old
+Nina. He would wait until after the funeral and see, he decided,
+as he went back to his home at Brier Hill, where his
+children, Dick and Nina, were eager to hear all he had to
+tell them of the poor little girl whose mother had been frozen
+to death.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning the sleigh from Tracy Park stopped before
+the cottage door, and Frank, who had been to meet the
+coroner, alighted from it. He was pale and haggard as he entered
+the room where Jerry was playing on the floor with
+Harold's Maltese kitten. As he came in she looked up at him,
+and, lifting her hand, swept the hair back from her forehead just
+as she had done the day before when Mr. St. Claire was there.
+The peculiar motion had struck the latter as something familiar,
+though he could not define it; but Frank did, or in his nervous
+condition he thought he did, and his knees shook so he
+could hardly stand as he talked with Mrs. Crawford and told
+her he had come for the child, who ought to be where her
+mother was until after the funeral.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then she will come back again. You will not keep her.
+She is mine, ain't you, Jerry?' Harold exclaimed, eagerly;
+while Jerry, who, with a child's instinct scented danger from
+Harold's manner and associated that danger with the strange
+man looking so curiously at her, sprang to her feet, which she
+stamped vigorously, while she cried, ''ess, 'ess, 'ess,' with her
+face all in wrinkles, and her blue eyes anything but soft and
+sunny, as they usually were.</p>
+
+<p>In this mood she was not much like Gretchen in the picture,
+but she was like some one else whom Frank had seen in excited
+moods, and he grew faint and sick as he watched her, and
+saw the varying expression of her face and eyes. The way she
+shook her head at him and flourished her hands was a way he
+had seen many times and remembered so well, and he felt as
+if his heart would leap from his throat as he tried to speak to
+her. A turn of the head, a gesture of the hands, a curve of
+the eyelashes, a tone in the voice, seemed slight actions on
+which to base a certainty; but Frank did feel certain, and his
+brain reeled for a second as his thoughts leaped forward years
+and years until he was an old man, and he wondered if he could
+bear it and make no sign.</p>
+
+<p>Then, just as he had decided that he could not, the tempter
+suggested a plan which seemed so feasible and fair that the
+future, with a secret to guard, did not look so formidable, and
+to himself he said:</p>
+
+<p>'It is not likely I can ever be positive; and so long as there
+is a doubt, however small, it would be preposterous to give up
+what otherwise must come to my children, if not to me; but I
+will not wrong her more than I can help.'</p>
+
+<p>'Come, little girl, go with me,' he said, in his kindest tones,
+as he advanced toward her, while Harold went for her cloak
+and hood.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry knew then that she was expected to go with the
+stranger, and without Harold, and resisted with all her
+might. Standing behind him, as if safe there, and clinging to
+his coat, she sobbed piteously, intermingling her sobs with
+'Ess, 'ess, 'ess,' the only English word she knew, and which
+she seemed to think would avail in every emergency.</p>
+
+<p>And it did help her now, for Harold pleaded that he might
+go, too, and when Jerry saw him with his coat and hat, and
+understood that he was to be her escort, she ceased to sob, and
+allowing herself to be made ready, was soon in the sleigh, and
+on her way to Tracy Park.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV" ></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h2>JERRY AT THE PARK.</h2>
+
+
+<p>And so this is the poor little girl. We'll take her
+right to the kitchen, where she can get warm,' Mrs.
+Tracy said, as she met her husband in the hall, with
+Harold and the mite of a creature wrapped in the foreign looking
+cloak and hood.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Dolly!' and Frank spoke very decidedly, as Harold
+was turning in the direction of the kitchen. 'She is going to
+the nursery, with the other children, and when they have their
+dinner she shall have hers with them.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ess, 'ess, 'ess,' Jerry said, as if she comprehended that
+there was a difference of opinion between the man and woman,
+and that she was on the affirmative side.</p>
+
+<p>'Take her to the nursery! Oh, Frank! she may have something
+about her which the children will catch,' Mrs. Tracy said,
+blocking the way as she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>But Jerry, who through the half-open door had caught sight
+of the pretty sitting-room, with its warm carpet and curtains,
+and cheerful fire, shook her head defiantly at the lady, and
+brushing past her, went boldly into the room, whose brightness
+had attracted her.</p>
+
+<p>Marching up to the fire, she stood upon the rug and looked
+about her with evident satisfaction; then glancing at the three
+who were watching her, she nodded complacently, and said,
+''ess, 'ess, 'ess,' while she held her little cold hands to the
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>'Acts as if she belonged here, doesn't she?' Frank said to
+his wife, who did not reply, so intent was she upon watching
+the strange child, who deliberately took off her cloak and hood
+and tossing them upon the floor, drew a small low chair to the
+fire, and climbing into it, sat down as composedly as if she were
+mistress there instead of an intruder.</p>
+
+<p>Once she swept the hair back from her forehead with the
+motion Frank knew so well, and then the lump came
+into his throat again, and he steadied himself against the
+mantel, while he looked curiously at the young girl, making
+herself so much at home and seeming so well pleased with her
+surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>'Take her to the nursery now. I must see to that coroner,'
+he said to his wife, adding: 'Harold must go too, or there
+will be the Old Harry to pay.'</p>
+
+<p>''Ess, 'ess,' came decidedly from the child, who went willingly
+with Harold, and was soon ushered into the large upper room,
+which was used as both nursery and school-room, for Mrs.
+Tracy could not allow her two sons, Tom and Jack, to come in
+contact with the boys at school; so she kept a governess, a
+middle-aged spinster, who, glad of a home, and the rather liberal
+compensation, sat all day in the nursery and bore patiently
+with Tom's freaks and Jack's dullness: to say nothing of the
+trouble it was to have the three-year-old Maude toddling about
+and interfering with everything.</p>
+
+<p>'Hallo!' Tom cried, as his mother came in, followed by
+Harold and Jerry. 'Hallo, what's up?' And throwing aside
+the slate on which he had been trying to master the difficulties of
+a sum in long division, he went toward them, and said: 'Has
+the coroner come, and can't I go and see the inquest? You
+said maybe I could if I behaved, and I do, don't I, Miss
+Howard?'</p>
+
+<p>Just then he caught sight of Jerry, and stopping short, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>'By Jingo! ain't she pretty! I mean to kiss her.'</p>
+
+<p>And he made a movement toward the little face, which
+looked up so shyly at him. But his mother caught his arm
+and held him back, as she said, sharply:</p>
+
+<p>'Don't touch her, there is no tolling what you may catch. I
+wanted her to go to the kitchen, the proper place for her, but
+your father insisted that she should be brought here. I hope,
+Miss Howard, you will see that she does not go near the children.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Madam,' Miss Howard replied, 'but I am sure there
+can be no danger. She looks as clean and sweet as a rose.'</p>
+
+<p>Miss Howard was fond of children, and she held out her
+hand to the little girl, who seemed to have a most wonderful
+faculty for discriminating between friends and enemies, and
+who went to her readily, and leaning against her arm, looked
+curiously at the group of children&mdash;at Tom, and Jack, and
+Maude, the latter of whom wished to go to her, but was restrained
+by the nurse. The moment the door closed on Mrs.
+Tracy, Tom walked up to the child, and said:</p>
+
+<p>'I shall kiss her now, anyhow.'</p>
+
+<p>But Jerry hid her face, and could not be induced to look up
+until he had moved away from her.</p>
+
+<p>'Catty as well as pretty,' Tom said. 'I wonder who she is
+anyway, and how she will like the poor-house?'</p>
+
+<p>'Who said she was going to the poor-house?' Harold exclaimed
+indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>'Mother said so,' Tom replied. 'I heard her talking to the
+cook. Where would she go if she did not go to the poor-house?
+Who would take care of her?'</p>
+
+<p>'I!' Harold answered, and to Miss Howard he seemed to grow
+older a dozen years, as he stood there with his arms folded and
+the light of a brave manhood in his brown eyes. 'I shall take
+care of her. She will live with grandmother and me. I found
+her, and she is mine.'</p>
+
+<p>''Ess, 'ess, 'ess,' came from Jerry, as she swung one little foot
+back and forth and looked confidingly at her champion.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>You</i> take care of her!' Tom sneered, with that supercilious
+air he always assumed toward those he considered his inferiors.
+Why, you and your grandmother can't take care of yourselves,
+or you couldn't if it wasn't for Uncle Arthur. Mother says so.
+You wouldn't have any house to live in if he hadn't given it to
+you,'</p>
+
+<p>Harold's arms were unfolded now and the doubled fists were
+in his pockets clenching themselves tighter and tighter as he
+advanced to Tom, who, remembering his black eye, began to
+back towards the nurse for safety.</p>
+
+<p>'It's a lie, Tom Tracy,' Harold said. 'Mr. Arthur does not
+take care of us. We do it ourselves, and have for ever so long.
+He did give us the house, but it ain't for you to twit me of
+that. Whose house is this, I'd like to know? It isn't yours, nor
+your father's, and there isn't a thing in it yours. It is all Mr.
+Arthur's.'</p>
+
+<p>'Wall, we are to be his <i>hares</i>&mdash;Jack, and Maude, and me.
+Mother says so,' Tom stammered out, while Jerry, who had
+been looking intently, first at one boy, and then at the other,
+called out in her own language:</p>
+
+<p>'Nein, nein, nein,' and struck her hand toward Tom.</p>
+
+<p>'What does she mean by her &quot;Nine, nine, nine,'&quot; he asked of
+Miss Howard, who replied that she thought it was the German
+for 'No, no, no,' and that the child probably did not approve of
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Tom knew she did not, and though she was only a baby, be
+felt chagrined and irritable. Had he dared, he would have
+struck Harold, who asked him what he meant by being his
+uncle's <i>hare.</i> But he was afraid of Miss Howard, and remembering
+it must be time for the inquest, he slipped from the
+room, whispering fiercely to Harold as he passed him:</p>
+
+<p>'Darn you, Hal Hastings, I'll thrash you yet.'</p>
+
+<p>'Let me know when you are ready, and also when you get
+to be your uncle's <i>hare</i>,' was Harold's taunting reply, as the
+door closed upon the discomfited Tom.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The inquest was a mere matter of form, for there was no doubt
+in any one's mind that the woman had been frozen to death,
+and she had no friends to complain that due attention had not
+been paid her. So after a few questions put to Mr. Tracy, and
+more to Harold, who was summoned from the nursery to tell
+what he knew, and a look at the cold rigid face, a verdict was
+rendered of 'Frozen to death.'</p>
+
+<p>Then came the question of burial, as to when, and where,
+and at whose expense. Quite a number of people had assembled
+and the little room was full. Conspicuous among them was
+Peterkin, who, having been elected to an office, which necessitated
+a care for the expenditures of the village, was swelled with
+importance, and dying for a chance to be heard.</p>
+
+<p>When Harold came into the room Jerry was with him. She
+had refused to let him leave her, and he led her by the hand
+into the midst of the men, who grew as silent and respectful
+the moment she appeared as if she had been a woman instead of a
+little child, who could speak no word of their language, or understand
+what was said to her. It was her mother lying there
+dead, and they made way for her as, catching sight of the white
+face, she uttered a cry of joy, and running up to the body, patted
+the cold cheeks, while she kept calling 'Mah-nee, Mah-nee,' and
+saying words unintelligible to all, but full of pathos and love, and
+child-like coaxing for the inanimate form to rouse itself, and
+speak to her again.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor little thing,' was said by more than one, and hands went
+up to eyes unused to tears, for the sight was a touching one&mdash;that
+lovely child bending over the dead face, and imprinting kisses
+upon it.</p>
+
+<p>Harold took her away from the body, and lifting her into a
+chair, kept by her, as with her arm around his neck, she stood
+listening to, and watching, and sometimes imitating the gestures
+of the men around her.</p>
+
+<p>It was Peterkin who spoke first; standing back so straight
+that his immense stomach, with the heavy gold watch-chain
+hanging across it, seemed to fill the room, he gave his opinion
+before any one had a chance to express theirs.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time he had been in the house since the
+morning after the party, when Arthur had turned him from the
+door. He had vowed vengeance against the Tracys then, and
+kept his vow by spending two thousand dollars in order to defeat
+Frank as member of Congress and to get himself elected as
+one of the village trustees, and now he had come, partly out of
+curiosity to see the woman, and partly to oppose her being
+buried by the town, if such a thing were suggested.</p>
+
+<p>'Let them Tracys bury their own dead,' he said to his wife
+before he left home, and he said it again in substance now, as
+with a tremendous 'ahem!' he commenced his speech standing
+close to little Jerry, who never took her eyes from him, but
+watched him with a face which varied in its expression with
+every variation in his voice and manner, and reached its climax
+when he said: 'I don't b'lieve in saddlin' the town with a debt
+we don't orto pay. Let the Tracys bury their own dead, I say!'</p>
+
+<p>''Ess, 'ess, 'ess,' Jerry chimed in with an emphatic shake of
+her head with each ''ess,' and a flourish of her hand more
+threatening than approving toward the speaker, who glanced
+at her and went on:</p>
+
+<p>'Do you see, gentlemen of the jury, who this cub looks like.
+I do! and so can you with half an eye. She looks like Arthur
+Tracy!'</p>
+
+<p>Just then Jerry swept back her golden hair, and, opening her
+eyes, flashed them around the room until they rested by accident
+upon Frank, who, pale, and faint, and terrified, was leaning
+against the door-way trying to seem only amused at the
+tirade which was concluded as follows:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Arthur Tracy! Not her skin, perhaps, nor hair, nor her
+eyes, leastwise not the color, but something I can't describe;
+and this woman, her mother, you say is a furriner; that may
+be, but I've seen her afore, or I'm mistaken. She took passage
+once on the 'Liza Ann, I'm sure on't, and Arthur look passage
+same day as far as Chester and was as chipper as you
+please with her. I don't say nothin', nor insinerate nothin',
+but I won't consent to have the town pay what belongs to the
+Tracys. Let 'em run their own canoes and funerals, too, I say;
+and as for this young one with the yaller hair&mdash;though where
+she got that the lord only knows; 'tain't her's,' pointing to the
+corpse; 'nor 'tain't his'n,' pointing in the direction of Arthur's
+rooms; 'as for her, I'm opposed to sendin' to the poor-house
+another pauper.'</p>
+
+<p>'She is not a pauper, and she is not going to the poor-house
+either,' Harold exclaimed, while Jerry came in with her <i>nein,
+nein, nein</i>, which made the bystanders laugh, as Peterkin went
+on, addressing himself to Harold:</p>
+
+<p>'You are her champion, hey, and intend to take care of her.
+Mighty fine, I'm sure, but hadn't you better fetch back May
+Jane's pin that you took at the party.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is false,' Harold cried. 'I never saw the pin, never!'
+and the hot tears sprang to his eyes at this unmanly assault.</p>
+
+<p>By this time Peterkin, who felt that everybody was against
+him, was swelling with rage, and seizing Harold by the collar,
+roared out:</p>
+
+<p>'Do you tell me I lie! You rascal! I'll teach you what belongs
+to manners!' and he would have struck the boy but for
+Jerry, who had been watching him as a cat watches a mouse,
+and who, raising her war-cry of '<i>nein, nein, nein</i>,' sprang at him
+like a little tiger, and by the fierceness of her gestures and the
+volubility of her German jargon actually compelled him to retreat
+step by step until she had him outside the door, which
+she barred with her diminutive person. No one could help
+laughing at the discomfited giant and the mite of a child facing
+him so bravely, while she scolded at the top of her voice.</p>
+
+<p>Peterkin saw that he was beaten and left the house, vowing
+vengeance against both Harold and Jerry, if he should ever have
+it in his power to harm them.</p>
+
+<p>When he was gone, Frank, who had recovered his composure
+during the ludicrous scene, said to those present:</p>
+
+<p>'I would not explain to that brute, but it is not my intention
+to trouble the town. I have no more idea who this woman
+is than you have, and I'll swear that Peterkin's vile insinuations
+with regard to her are false. My brother says he never
+saw her in his life, and he speaks the truth. She may have been
+on Peterkin's boat, but I doubt it. She has every appearance of
+a foreigner, and her child'&mdash;here Frank's tongue felt a little
+thick, but he cleared his throat and went on&mdash;'her child speaks
+a foreign language&mdash;German, they tell me. This poor woman
+died on my&mdash;or rather my brother's premises. I have consulted
+with him, and he thinks as I do, that she should be cared
+for at our expense. He says, further, that there is room on the
+Tracy lot; she is to be buried there. I shall attend to it at once,
+and the funeral will take place to-morrow morning at ten
+o'clock from this house. What disposition will be made of the
+child I have not yet decided, but she will <i>not</i> go to the
+poor-house.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Mr. Tracy,' Harold burst out, 'she is mine. She is to
+live with grandma and me. You will not take her from me&mdash;say
+you will not?'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Vill not</i>,' Jerry reiterated, imitating as well as she could
+Harold's last words.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Mr. Tracy looked fixedly at the boy, pleading
+for a burden which would necessitate toil, and self-denial, and
+patience of no ordinary kind and never had he despised himself
+more than he did then, when, believing what he did believe,
+he said at last:</p>
+
+<p>'I will talk with your grandmother, and see what arrangements
+we can make. I rather think you have the best right to
+her. But she must stay here to-night and until after the funeral,
+when she can go with you, if you like.'</p>
+
+<p>To this Harold did not object, and as Jerry seemed very
+happy and content, he left her, while she was exploring the
+long drawing-room, and examining curiously the different articles
+of furniture. As she did not seem disposed to touch anything,
+she was allowed to go where she liked, although Mrs. Frank remonstrated
+against her roaming all over the house as if she belonged
+there, and suggested again that she be sent to the kitchen.
+But Frank said 'no,' decidedly, and Jerry was left to herself,
+except as the nurse-girl and Charles looked after her a little.</p>
+
+<p>And so it came about that towards evening she found herself
+in the upper hall, and after making a tour of the rooms, whose
+doors were open, she came to one whose door was shut&mdash;nor
+could she turn the knob, although she tried with all her might.
+Doubling her tiny fist, she knocked upon the door, and then,
+as no one came, kicked against it with her foot, but still with
+no result.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the room, with Gretchen's picture, Arthur sat in his
+dressing-gown, very nervous and a little inclined to be irritable
+and captious. He knew there had been an inquest, and that
+many people had come and gone that day, for he had seen them
+from his window, and had seen, too, the sleigh, with Frank,
+and the coroner, and Harold, and a blue hood, drive into the
+yard. But to the blue hood he never gave a thought, as he
+was only intent upon the dead woman, whose presence in the
+house made him so nervous and restless.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall be glad when she is buried. I have been so cold
+and shaky ever since they brought her here,' he said to Charles,
+as, with a shiver, he drew his chair nearer to the fire and leaning
+back wearily in it fixed his eyes upon Gretchen's picture smiling
+at him from the window, 'Dear little Gretchen,' he said
+in a whisper, 'you seem so near to me now that I can almost
+hear your feet at the door, and your voice asking to come
+in. Hush!' and he started suddenly, as Jerry's kicks made
+themselves heard even to the room where he sat. 'Hush!
+Charles, who is that banging at the door? Surely not Maude?
+They would not let her come up here. Go and see, and send
+her away.'</p>
+
+<p>He had forgotten that he was listening for Gretchen, and
+when Charles, who had opened the door cautiously and described
+the intruder, said to him. 'It is that woman's child.
+Shall I let her in? She is a pretty little thing,' he replied,
+'Let her in? No; why should you and why is she allowed to
+prowl around the house? Tell her to go away.'</p>
+
+<p>So Jerry was sent away with a troubled disappointed look
+in her little face, and as the chill March night came on and the
+dark shades crept into the room and Gretchen's picture gradually
+faded from sight in the gathering gloom until it seemed
+only a confused mixture of lead and glass, Arthur felt colder,
+and drearier, and more wretched than he had ever felt before.
+It was a genuine case of homesickness, if one can be homesick
+who is in his own house, surrounded by every possible comfort
+and luxury. He was tired, and sick, and disappointed, and
+his head was aching terribly, while thoughts of the past were
+crowding his brain where the light of reason seemed struggling
+to reinstate itself. He was thinking of Gretchen, and longing
+for her so intensely that once he groaned aloud and whispered
+to himself:</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Gretchen! I am so sorry for it all. I can see it clearer
+now, how I left her and did not write, and I don't know where
+she is, or if she will ever come; and yet, I feel as if she had
+come, or tidings of her. Perhaps my letter reached her. Perhaps
+she is on her way. God grant it, and forgive me for all I
+have made her suffer.'</p>
+
+<p>It was very still in the room where Arthur sat, for Charles
+had gone out, and only the occasional crackling of the coal in
+the grate and ticking of the clock broke the silence which
+reigned around him; and at last, soothed into quiet, he fell
+asleep and dreamed that on his door he heard again the thud
+of baby feet, while Gretchen's voice was calling to him to let
+the baby in.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI" ></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE FUNERAL AND AFTER.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Long before ten o'clock, the hour appointed for the funeral,
+the next morning, people began to gather at the
+Park House, and the avenue seemed full of them. The
+news that an unknown woman had been frozen to death in the
+Tramp House had spread far and wide, awakening in many a
+curiosity to see the stranger, and discover, if possible, a likeness
+to some one they might have known.</p>
+
+<p>It was strange how many reminiscences were brought to
+mind by this circumstance of girls who had disappeared years
+before and were supposed to be dead&mdash;or worse. And this
+woman might be one of them; indeed, Peterkin had said that
+she was, and they came in crowds to see her, and to see, as
+well, the inside of the handsome house, of which they had heard
+so much, especially since Mr. Arthur's return. But in this they
+were disappointed, for all the front rooms were locked against
+them, and only the large dining-room, the breakfast-room, the
+servants' hall, and the little back office were thrown open to
+the public. In the first of these the corpse was lying in a substantial,
+handsome coffin, for Frank, who ordered it, would
+have no other; and when the undertaker suggested a cheaper
+one would answer just as well, had said, decidedly:</p>
+
+<p>'I mean to bury her decently. Give me this one, and send
+the bill to me, not to Arthur.'</p>
+
+<p>It was <i>his</i> funeral, and, judging from his face, he was burying
+all his friends, instead of a poor, unknown woman, whose
+large, coarse features and plain woollen dress looked out of place
+in that handsome black coffin, with its silver-plated trimmings.
+Frank had suggested that she should have a white merino
+shroud, but his wife had overruled him. It was <i>not</i> her funeral,
+and she had no interest in it, except that it should be over as
+soon as possible, and the house cleansed from the atmosphere
+of death. So when her husband asked if the child ought not
+to have a mourning-dress, she scoffed at him for the suggestion
+saying she did not like to see children in black anyway, and
+even if she died herself she should not wish hers to wear it.</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot imagine,' she continued, 'why you have taken so
+unaccountable a fancy to and interest in these people, especially
+the child. One would think she belonged to royalty, the fuss
+you make over her. What are we to do with her to-night?
+Where is she to sleep?'</p>
+
+<p>'In the nursery,' was his reply; and he saw his wishes carried
+out and ordered in a crib, which used to be Jack's, and bade
+the nurse see that she was comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>So Jerry was put to bed in the nursery and slept very quietly
+until about, ten o'clock when she awoke and cried piteously for
+both 'Man-nee' and 'Ha-roll.' Frank, who was sitting alone in
+the library, heard the cry, and knew it was not Maude's. Had
+it been he would not have minded it, for he knew that she
+would be cared for without his interference. But something
+in the crying of this little foreign girl stirred him strangely,
+and after listening to it a few moments he arose, and going softly
+to the door of the nursery, stood listening until a sharp hush
+from the nurse girl decided him to enter, and going to the crib
+he bent over the sobbing child and tried to comfort her. She
+could not understand him, but the tone of his voice was kind,
+and when he put his hand on her hot head she took it in hers
+and held it fast, as if she recognized in him a friend. And Frank
+as he felt the clasp of the soft, warm fingers, and saw the confiding
+look in the wide-open eyes, grew faint and cold, and
+asked himself again, as he had many times that day, <i>if he could
+do it</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry was asleep at last, but she sobbed occasionally in her
+sleep, and there were great tears on her eyelashes, while her
+fingers clutched Frank's hand tightly as if fearing to let it go.
+But he managed to disengage it and stealing cautiously from
+the room went back to the library where he sat late into the
+night, facing the future and wondering if he could meet it.</p>
+
+<p>He had Jerry at the table next morning and saw that she
+was helped to everything she wanted without any regard to
+its suitability for her, and when his wife said rather curtly that
+she never knew that he was so fond of children before, he answered
+her:</p>
+
+<p>'I am only doing as I would wish some one to do to Maude
+if she were like this poor little girl.'</p>
+
+<p>When, at last, the hour for the funeral arrived he placed her
+himself upon the high chair close to the coffin, where she sat
+through the short service, conspicuous in her gray cloak and
+blue hood, with her golden hair falling on her neck and piled
+in wavy masses on her forehead, while her bright eyes scanned
+the crowd curiously as if asking why they were there and why
+they were all looking so intently at her. More than one kind-hearted
+woman went up and kissed her, and when, at the close
+of the services, Mr. Tracy held her in his arms for a last look
+at her mother, their tears fell fast for the child, so unconscious
+of the meaning of what was passing around her.</p>
+
+<p>'Isn't she beautiful! Such lovely hair, and eyes, and dazzling
+complexion!' was said by more than one; and then they
+speculated as to her future.</p>
+
+<p>Would she go to the poor-house? Would Frank Tracy keep
+her with all his children, or was it true, as they had heard,
+that Mr. Arthur Tracy was to adopt her at his own? And
+where was Mr. Arthur? He might, at least, have shown
+enough respect for the dead woman to come into the room,
+and they wanted so much to see him, for there was a great
+deal of curiosity with regard to the lunatic of Tracy Park
+among the lower class of people who had come to Shannondale
+during the eleven years of his absence.</p>
+
+<p>But Arthur was sick in bed, suffering alternately from
+chills and a raging fever, which set his brain on fire and made
+him wilder than usual. He had not slept well during the
+night. Indeed, he said, he had not slept at all. But this was
+a common assertion of his, and one to which Charles now paid
+little heed.</p>
+
+<p>'A man can't snore and not sleep,' was the unanswerable
+argument with which he refuted the sleepless nights of his
+master.</p>
+
+<p>On this occasion, however, he had heard no snoring, and
+Arthur's face, seen by the morning light, was a sufficient proof
+of the wakeful hours he had passed. He, too, had heard the
+distant crying, and felt instinctively that it was not Maude's.
+Starting up in bed to listen, he said:</p>
+
+<p>'What's that? Is that child here yet?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes sir: she is to stay till after the funeral,' was Charles'
+reply, and Arthur continued:</p>
+
+<p>'Bring me some cotton for my ears. I never can stand that
+noise. It is a peculiar cry.'</p>
+
+<p>The cotton was brought. A window in the hall which had
+a habit of rattling with every breath of wind was made fast
+with a bit of shingle whittled out for that purpose, and then
+Arthur became tolerably quiet until morning, when he began
+to talk to himself in the German language, which Charles
+could not understand. But he caught the name Gretchen, and
+knew she was the subject of the sick man's thoughts. Suddenly
+turning to his attendant, to whom he always spoke in
+English, Arthur said:</p>
+
+<p>'The funeral is to-day?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir, at ten o'clock.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, lock every door leading up this way, and shut out
+the gossipping blockheads who will come by hundreds, and, if
+we would let them, swarm into my room as thick as the frogs
+were in the houses of the Egyptians. Shut the doors, Charles,
+and keep them out.'</p>
+
+<p>So the doors were shut and bolted, and then Arthur lay
+listening with that intensity which so quickens one's hearing,
+that the faintest sounds are distinct at great distances. He
+heard the trampling footsteps as the people came crowding in,
+and the tread of horses' feet as sleigh after sleigh drove up the
+avenue, and once, with a shudder, he said:</p>
+
+<p>'That is the hearse. I am sure of it.'</p>
+
+<p>Then all was still, and listen as he might he could not distinguish
+the faintest sound until the services were over and the
+people began to leave the house.</p>
+
+<p>'There,' he said, with a sigh of relief; 'it will soon be over.
+Bring me my clothes, Charles. I am going to get up and see
+the last of this poor woman. God help her, whoever she was.'</p>
+
+<p>He was beginning to feel a great pity for the woman whose
+coffin they were putting in the hearse, which moved off a few
+rods, and then stopped until the open sleigh came up, the
+sleigh in which Frank Tracy sat, muffled in his heavy overcoat,
+for the day, though bright and sunny, was cold, and a
+chill March wind was blowing. Dolly had taken refuge in a
+headache which had prevented her from being present at the
+funeral and kept her from going to the grave as her husband
+had wished her to do. So only Harold and Jerry occupied
+the sleigh with Frank, and these sat opposite him, with their
+backs to the horses, Jerry in her gray cloak and blue hood
+showing conspicuously as she came into full view of the window
+where Arthur stood looking at the procession with a feeling
+at his heart, as if in some way he were interested in the
+sad funeral, where there was no mourner, no one who
+had ever seen or known the deceased, save the little helpless
+girl, looking around her in perfect unconcern save as she rather
+liked the stir and all that was going on.</p>
+
+<p>They had tied a thin veil over her head to shield her from
+the cold, and thus her face was not visible to Arthur. But he
+saw the blue hood and the golden hair on the old gray cloak,
+and the sight of it moved him mightily, making him hold fast
+to the window-casing for support, while he stood watching it.
+Just as far as he could see it his eye followed that hood, and
+when it disappeared from view, he turned from the window,
+deathly sick, and tottering back to his bedroom, vomited from
+sheer nervous excitement.</p>
+
+<p>'Thank Heaven it is over and the rabble gone,' he said,
+when he became easier. 'Go now and open all the doors and
+windows to let in the fresh air and out the smell they are sure
+to have left. Ugh! I get a whiff of it now. Burn some of
+that aromatic paper; but open the hall windows first.'</p>
+
+<p>Charles did as he was ordered, and the wind was soon
+sweeping through the wide hall, while Arthur's rooms were
+filled with an odor like the sweet incense burned in the old
+cathedrals.</p>
+
+<p>'I am very giddy and faint,' Arthur said, when Charles
+came back to him after his ventilating operation. 'I have
+looked at the bright snow too long, and there are a thousand
+rings of fire dancing before my eyes, and in every ring I see a
+blue hood and veil, with waves of hair like Gretchen's, when
+she was a child. There is a redder tinge now on Gretchen's
+hair, because she is older. Wheel me out there, Charles, where
+I can see her.'</p>
+
+<p>Charles obeyed, and moved the light bed-lounge into the
+library, where his master could feast his eyes upon the sweet
+face which knew no change, but which always, night and day,
+smiled upon him the same. The picture had a soothing effect
+upon Arthur, and he gazed at it now until it began to fade
+away and lose itself in the blue hood and veil he had seen in
+the sleigh far down the avenue; and when, a few minutes
+later, Charles came in to look at him, he found him fast
+asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the funeral train had reached the cemetery, where
+the snow was piled in great drifts, and where, in a corner of
+the Tracy lot, they buried the stranger, with no tear to hallow
+her grave, and no pang of regret save that she had ever come
+there, with the mystery and the doubt which must always
+cling to her memory. Frank Tracy's face was very pale and
+stern as he held little Jerry in his arms during the committal
+of the body to the grave, and then bade her take one last look
+at the box which held her mother. But Jerry, who was growing
+cold and tired, began to cry, and so Frank took her back
+to the sleigh, which was driven to the cottage in the lane.
+Here she felt at home, and drawing to the fire the low rocking
+chair she had appropriated to herself, was soon supremely
+happy devouring the ginger cookie which Mrs. Crawford had
+given her, and in trying to pronounce English words under
+Harold's teaching.</p>
+
+<p>While the children were thus employed, Mr. Tracy was
+divulging to Mrs. Crawford the object of his visit. He could
+hardly explain, he said, why he was so deeply interested in the
+child, except it were that her mother had died on his premises
+and she seemed to be thrown upon his care.</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot see her go to the poor-house,' he continued, with
+a trembling in his voice which made Mrs. Crawford wonder a
+little, as she had never credited him with much sympathy for
+anything outside his own family. 'I cannot see her go to the
+poor-house, and I cannot well take her into my family, as we
+have three children of our own. But I have made up my
+mind to care for her, and I have come to ask if, for a compensation,
+you will keep her here?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, grandma&mdash;say yes!' Harold cried; while Jerry, with
+her mouth full of cookie, repeated, 'ay 'ess.'</p>
+
+<p>'You see, the children plead for me,' Mr. Tracy said, with a
+smile at the little girl, whose hand just then swept back the
+hair from her eyes, which looked steadily at him as he went on:
+'While she is young&mdash;say, until she is ten years old&mdash;I will
+pay you three dollars a week, and after that more, if necessary.
+I know you will be kind to her, and that she will be happy
+here and well brought up. Is it a bargain?'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Crawford had never seen him so interested in anything
+and felt somewhat surprised and puzzled, but she expressed
+her willingness to take the child and do what she could for
+her.</p>
+
+<p>'It will be a good thing for Harold,' she said, 'as he is in
+danger of growing selfish here alone with me.'</p>
+
+<p>And so Jerry's future was settled, and counting out twelve
+dollars, Frank handed them to Mrs. Crawford, saying:</p>
+
+<p>'I will pay you for four weeks in advance, as you may need
+the money, and&mdash;and&mdash;perhaps&mdash;' His face grew very red
+as he stammered on, 'perhaps it may be as well not to tell
+how much I pay you. People&mdash;or rather&mdash;well, Mrs. Tracy
+might think it strange, and not understand why I feel such an
+interest in the child. I don't understand it myself.'</p>
+
+<p>But he did understand, and his knees were shaking under
+him as, when the transaction was over, and he was on his way
+to the Park, he felt that he had sold himself to Satan.</p>
+
+<p>'And yet I know nothing for sure,' he kept repeating to
+himself. 'Arthur is expecting Gretchen, whoever she may
+be. He says he has written to her, and he has one of his presentiments
+that she is coming on the night when this woman
+arrives, who is no more like the Gretchen he raves about than
+I am. This woman has a child. He says Gretchen has none,
+and that he never saw this woman. And yet I find among the
+things a photograph exactly like the picture in the window,
+and also like the child, who certainly bears a resemblance to
+my brother, though no one else, perhaps, would see it. Now,
+sir,' he appeared to be addressing himself to some person unseen,
+from whom he shrank, for he drew himself as far as was
+possible to his side of the sleigh and shivered as he went on:
+'Now, sir, is that sufficient proof to warrant me in turning
+everything topsy-turvy, and making Arthur crazier than he
+is?'</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly not,' he seemed to hear in reply, either from
+within or without, he hardly knew which, and he went on:</p>
+
+<p>'I shall try to find out who the woman was, and where she
+came from; but how am I to do it? how begin? Arthur will
+not tell me a word about Gretchen, who she is, or what she is
+to him. Still, I mean to be on the safe side, and do right by
+the child. Arthur cannot live many years. His nerves will
+wear him out, if nothing else, and when he does, his money
+will naturally come to me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Naturally,' his spectral companion replied, and he continued:</p>
+
+<p>'Well, what I intend doing is this: I shall make my will,
+in which Jerry will share equally with my children, and I
+shall further draw up a written request that in case I die before
+my brother, any money which may fall to my children
+from him shall be shared equally with her. I shall, out of my
+own private funds, provide for her support and education, until
+she comes of age, or marries, and if possible, I shall bring
+about a marriage between her and Tom, who will probably one
+day be master of Tracy Park. Can anything more be required
+of me?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing,' was the consoling reply; and as the sleigh just
+then drew up before his door, Frank alighted from it, and said
+to himself as he ran up the steps:</p>
+
+<p>'I believe I have been riding with the devil, and have made
+a league with him!'</p>
+
+<p>He found the house thoroughly aired and cleansed from all
+signs of the recent funeral; and when, at one o'clock, he sat down
+to lunch in the handsome dining-room, and sipped his favorite
+claret, and ate his foreign preserves, and thought how much
+comfort and luxury money could buy, he was sure he had done
+well for himself and his children after him. But, like Bishop
+Hatto, of Mouse-Tower memory, Frank Tracy never knew real
+peace of mind from the day he deliberately sold himself to the
+Evil One for filthy lucre, until the day, years after, when full
+restitution was made, and, with the sin confessed, he held his
+head up again, free from the shadow which he did not leave in
+the sleigh, but which followed him day and night, walking by
+him when he walked, sitting by him when he sat, and watching
+by him when he slept, so as to be ready when he woke
+with the specious argument that he was acting justly and even
+generously by the little waif, who was like a sunbeam in the
+cottage in the lane, whom many people went to see, marvelling
+at her beauty and wondering in vain whose likeness they sometimes
+saw in her as she frolicked around the house, full of life,
+and fun, and laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Frank made his will, as he promised his shadow he would,
+but he went to Springfield to have it drawn up, for he knew
+that Colvin, or any lawyer whom he might employ in Shannondale,
+would wonder at it. He also wrote out himself what
+he called his dying request to his children, in case he should
+die before his brother. In this he stated emphatically his wish
+that Jerry should have her share of whatever might come to
+them from the Tracy estate, the same as if she were his own
+child.</p>
+
+<p>'I have a good and sufficient reason for this,' he wrote in
+conclusion, 'and I enjoin it upon you to carry out my wishes
+as readily as you would were I to speak to you from my grave,'</p>
+
+<p>This done, Frank felt a little better, and the shadow at his
+side was not quite as real as it had been before. He put his
+will and his dying request together in a private drawer with
+Gretchen's photograph, and the testament with the handwriting
+in it. He had kept this back when the stranger's trunk
+was sent to the cottage, thinking that if it were missed and inquired
+for, he could easily produce it as having been mislaid.
+At the suggestion of Mr. St. Claire he went to New York, to
+the office of the German line of steamers, and made inquiries
+with regard to the passengers who had come on a certain ship
+at such a time. But nothing could be learned of any woman
+with a child, and after inserting in several of the New York
+papers a description of the woman, with a request for any information
+concerning her which could be given, he returned
+home, with a feeling that he had done all that could be required
+of him, and that he might now enjoy himself.</p>
+
+<p>He was accordingly kind and even tender to his brother,
+who for several weeks suffered from low nervous depression,
+which kept him altogether in his room, to which he refused to
+admit any one except his attendant and Frank. He had
+ceased for the time being, to talk of Gretchen, or to expect her,
+and he never inquired for the child, whose blue hood had so
+affected him. Once Frank spoke of her to him and told him
+where she was, and that she was learning to speak English very
+rapidly, and growing prettier every day. But Arthur did not
+seem at all interested and only said:</p>
+
+<p>'How can Mrs. Crawford afford to keep the child?'</p>
+
+<p>Others than Arthur asked that question, and among them
+Dolly, who with a woman's quick wit, sharpened by something
+she accidentally saw, divined the truth, which she wrung at
+last from her husband. There was a fierce quarrel&mdash;almost
+their first&mdash;a sick headache which lasted three days, and a
+month or more of coldness between the married pair, and then,
+finding she could accomplish nothing, for Frank was as firm as
+a rock, Dolly gave up the contest, and tried by economizing
+in various ways, to save the money which she felt was taken
+from her children by the little girl, who had become so dear to
+Mrs. Crawford, that she would not have parted with her had
+nothing been paid for her keeping.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII" ></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<h2>&quot;MR. CRAZYMAN, DO YOU WANT SOME CHERRIES?&quot;</h2>
+
+
+<p>More than two years had passed away since the terrible
+March night when the strange woman was frozen to
+death in the Tramp House, and her history was still
+shrouded in mystery. Not a word had been heard concerning
+her, and her story was gradually being forgotten by the
+people of Shannondale. Her grave, however, was tolerably
+well kept, and every Saturday afternoon, in summer time,
+a few flowers were put upon it by Harold. Not so much for
+the sake of the dead as for the beautiful child who always accompanied
+him, laughing, and frolicking, and sometimes dancing
+around the grave where he told her her mother was buried.</p>
+
+<p>As there had been no date on which to fix Jerry's birth, they
+had called the first day of March her birthday, so that when
+more than two years later we introduce her to our readers on a
+hot July morning, she was said to be six years and four months
+old. In some respects, however, she seemed much older, for
+there was about her a precocity only found in children who
+have always associated with people much older than themselves,
+or into whose lives strange experiences have come. In stature
+she was very short, though round and plump as a partridge.
+'Dutchy,' Mr. Tracy called her, for Mrs. Tracy did not like
+her, and took no pains to conceal her dislike, though it was
+based upon nothing except the money which she knew was
+paid regularly to Mrs. Crawford for the child's maintenance.</p>
+
+<p>There could be no reason, she said to her husband, why he
+should support the child of a tramp, and the woman had been
+little better, judging from appearances, unless, indeed&mdash;and
+then she told what old Peterkin had said more than once, to
+the effect that Jerry Crawford, as she was called, was growing
+to be the image of the Tracys, especially Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>'And if so,' she added, 'you'd better let Arthur take care
+of her, and save your money for your own children,'</p>
+
+<p>To this Frank never replied. He knew better than old
+Peterkin that Jerry was like the Tracys, or, rather, like his
+brother, and that it was not so much in the features as in the
+expression and certain movements of the head and hands, and
+tones of the voice when she was very much in earnest, and
+raised it to a higher pitch than usual. She could speak English
+very well now, and sometimes, when Frank, who was a frequent
+visitor at the cottage, sat watching her at her play, and
+listening to her as she talked to herself, as was her constant
+habit, he could have shut his eyes and sworn it was his brother's
+voice calling to him from the hay-loft or apple tree where
+they had played together when boys.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry's favorite amusement when alone was to make believe
+that either herself, or a figure she had made out of a shawl,
+was a sick woman, lying on a settee which she converted into
+a bed. Sometimes she was the nurse and took care of the sick
+woman to whom she always spoke in German, bending fondly
+over her, and occasionally holding up before her a doll which
+Mrs. St. Claire had given her, and which she played was the
+woman's baby. Then she would be the sick woman herself,
+and trying on the broad frilled cap which had been found in
+the trunk, would slip under the covering, and laying her head
+upon the pillow, go through with all the actions of some one
+very sick, occasionally hugging to her bosom and kissing the
+doll.</p>
+
+<p>Once she enacted the pantomime of dying. Folding her
+hands together and closing her eyes, her lips moved as if in
+prayer, for a moment, then stretching out her feet she lay perfectly
+motionless, with a set expression in the little face which
+looked so comical under the broad frilled cap. Then, as if it
+had occurred to her that action was necessary from some one,
+she exchanged places with the lay figure, and tying the cap upon
+its head, tucked it carefully in the bed, by which she knelt,
+and covering her face with her hands imitated perfectly the
+sobs and moans of a middle-aged person, mingled occasionally
+with the clearer, softer notes of a child's crying.</p>
+
+<p>The first time Frank witnessed this piece of acting was on a
+Saturday afternoon, when he had come to the cottage as usual
+to pay his weekly due. Both Mrs. Crawford and Harold were
+gone, but knowing they would soon return, as it was not their
+habit to leave Jerry long alone he sat down to wait, while she
+went back to the corner in the kitchen, which she used as her
+play-house.</p>
+
+<p>'Somebody is sick and I am taking care of her,' she said to
+Mr. Tracy, who watched her through the pantomime of the
+death scene with a feeling, when it was over, that he had seen
+Gretchen die.</p>
+
+<p>There was not a shadow of doubt in his mind that the sick
+woman was Gretchen, the nurse the stranger found in the
+Tramp House, and the doll baby the little girl upon whose
+memory that scene had been indelibly stamped, and who, with
+her wonderful powers of imitation, could rehearse it in every
+particular. To herself she always spoke in German, which no
+one could understand sufficiently to make out what she meant.
+Once Mr. St. Claire suggested to Frank that he take her to his
+brother, to whom German was as natural as English, and who
+might be able to learn something of her antecedents. And
+Frank had answered that he would do so, knowing the while
+that nothing could tempt him to bring her and his brother together
+until all the recollections of her babyhood, if she had
+any, were obliterated, and she had in part forgotten her own
+language.</p>
+
+<p>His first step in evil doing had to be followed by others until
+he was so far committed that he could not retrace his steps,
+and two shadows were with him constantly now, one always
+reproaching him for what he had done, and the other telling
+him it was now too late to turn back.</p>
+
+<p>He was very fond of Jerry, and on the Saturday afternoon
+when he sat watching her strange play, noticing how graceful
+was every movement, and how lovely the constantly varying
+expression of her face&mdash;from concern and anxiety when she
+was the nurse to distress and pain and then resignation and
+quietude in death when she took the role of the sick woman&mdash;he
+felt himself moved by some mighty influence to right her at
+once and put her in her proper place.</p>
+
+<p>'It is more than I can bear. I can't even look Dolly straight
+in the eye,' he said to his evil shadow, which answered back.</p>
+
+<p>'You know nothing sure. Will you give up your prospects
+for a photograph and a likeness which may be accidental?'</p>
+
+<p>So his conscience was smothered again; but he would question
+the child, and after her play was over he called her to him
+and taking her in his lap, kissed the little grave face upon which
+the shadow of the scene she had been enacting had left its impress.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerry,' he said, 'that lady who just died in the bed with
+the cap on was your mamma, was it not?'</p>
+
+<p>''Ess,' was Jerry's reply, for she still adhered to her first
+pronunciation of the word.</p>
+
+<p>'And the other was the nurse?'</p>
+
+<p>''Ess,' Jerry said again; 'Mah-nee.'</p>
+
+<p>This was puzzling, for he had always supposed that by 'mah-nee'
+the child meant 'mam-ma;' but he went on:</p>
+
+<p>'Try to understand me, Jerry; try to think away back
+before you came in the ship.'</p>
+
+<p>''Ess, I vill,' she said, with a very wise look on her face,
+while Mr. Tracy continued:</p>
+
+<p>'Had you a papa? Was he there with you?'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Nein</i>,' was the prompt reply, and Mr. Tracy continued:</p>
+
+<p>'Where did your mamma live? Was it in Wiesbaden?'</p>
+
+<p>He knew he did not pronounce the word right, and was surprised
+at the sudden lighting up of the child's eyes as she tried
+to repeat the name. 'Oo-oo-ee,' she began, with a tremendous
+effort, but the W mastered her, and she gave it up with a
+shake of her head.</p>
+
+<p>'I not say dat oo-oo-ee,' she said, and he put the question in
+another form:</p>
+
+<p>'Where did your mamma die?'</p>
+
+<p>'Tamp House; f'oze to deff,' was now the ready answer, a
+natural one, too, for she had been taught by Harold that such
+was the case, and had often gone with him to the house where
+he found her, and where the old table still stood against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>No one picnicked there now, for the place was said to be
+haunted, and the superstitious ones told each other that on
+stormy nights, when the wild winds were abroad, lights had
+been seen in the Tramp House, where a pale-faced woman,
+with her long, black hair streaming down her back, stood in the
+door-way, shrieking for help, while the cry of a child mingled
+with her call. But Harold shared none of these fancies. He
+was not afraid of the building, and often went there with Jerry,
+and sitting with her on the table, told her again and again how
+he had found her mother that wintry morning, and how funny
+she herself had looked in the old carpet-bag, and so it is not
+strange that when Mr. Tracy asked her where her mother died,
+she should answer, 'In the Tramp House,' although she had
+acted a pantomime whose reality must have taken place under
+very different circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course your mother died in the Tramp House, and I
+have nothing with which to reproach myself. I am altogether
+too morbid on the subject,' Frank said, and he had decided
+that he was a pretty good sort of fellow, after all, when at last
+Mrs. Crawford came in and he paid her for Jerry's board.</p>
+
+<p>It was a part of Frank's plan to save the money out of his
+own personal expenses, so he smoked two cigars less each day
+and went without claret for dinner, except on Sunday, and
+never touched champagne, and wore his hats and coats until
+his wife said they were shabby and insisted upon new ones. In
+this way he saved more than three dollars a week, but the
+overplus was laid aside for the time when Jerry must necessarily
+cost him more because she would be older. In some
+respects he was doing his duty by the child, who, next to
+Harold and Mrs. Crawford, whom she called grandma, loved
+him better than any one else. She always ran to meet him
+when he came, and sometimes, when he went away, accompanied
+him down the lane, holding his hand and asking him
+numberless questions about Tracy Park and about his little
+girl, and why she never came to see her.</p>
+
+<p>Frank could not tell Jerry of his wife's bitter prejudice
+against her, and that this was the reason why Maude had never
+been to the cottage or Jerry to the park. But if Jerry had
+not visited it in person, she was greatly interested in the handsome
+house and grounds, and the lovely rooms where the crazy
+man lived. This was Harold's designation of Mr. Arthur&mdash;the
+crazy man&mdash;and perhaps of all the things at Tracy Park, Jerry
+was most desirous to see him and his rooms. Harold, who, on
+one of the rare occasions when Arthur was out to dine, had
+been sent to the house on an errand, had gone with Jack into
+these rooms, which he described minutely to his grandmother
+and Jerry, dwelling longest upon the beautiful picture in the
+window. 'Gretchen, he calls it,' he said; and then Jerry,
+who was listening intently, gave a sudden upward and sidewise
+turn to her Lead, just as she had done when Mr. Tracy spoke
+to her of Wiesbaden.</p>
+
+<p>'Detchen,' she repeated, with a little hesitancy. 'Vat the
+name vas? Say again.'</p>
+
+<p>He said it again, and over the child's face there came a
+puzzled expression, as if she were trying to recall something
+which baffled all her efforts. But she did not forget the name,
+and that evening Mrs. Crawford heard her singing to herself,</p>
+
+<p>'Detchen, Detchen, who are you? Detchen, Detchen, where
+are you?' and she noticed that the doll baby with which Jerry
+played the most was ever after called 'Detchen,' instead of
+Maude, as it had been christened when first given to her.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry had seen Maude Tracy many times and had admired
+her greatly, with her pretty white dresses and costly embroideries;
+and once, at church, when Maude passed near where
+she was standing, she stood back as far as possible out of the
+way and held her plain gingham dress aside, as if neither it nor
+herself had any right to come in close contact with so superior
+a being. Of the house in the park she knew nothing, except
+what Harold had told her, and that it was a place to be admired
+and gazed at breathlessly at a respectful distance. She had
+never been there since the day of the funeral But she was
+going at last with Harold, who had permission to gather cherries
+for his grandmother from some of the many trees which
+grew upon the place.</p>
+
+<p>It was a hot morning in July, and the air seemed thunderous
+and heavy when she set off on what to her was as important an
+expedition as is a trip to Europe to an older person. She had
+wanted to wear her pink gingham dress, the one kept sacred
+for Sunday, and had even hoped that she might be allowed to
+display her best straw hat with the blue ribbons and cluster of
+apple blossoms. She had no doubt that she should go into the
+house and see the crazy man, and Mrs. Tracy, who she had
+heard wore silk stockings every day, and she wished to be suitably
+attired for such honor.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Crawford dispelled her air castles by telling her
+that she was only to go into the side yard where the cherry
+trees were, and that she must be very quiet, so as not to disturb
+Mr. Arthur, whose windows looked that way. To wear her
+pink dress was impossible, as she would get it stained with the
+juice of the cherries, while the best hat was not for a moment
+to be thought of.</p>
+
+<p>So Jerry submitted to the dark calico frock and high-necked,
+long-sleeved apron which Mrs. Crawford thought safe and
+proper for her to wear on a cherry expedition. A clean, white
+sun-bonnet with a wide cape covered her head and concealed
+her face when she started from the cottage, with her quart tin
+pail on her arm; but no sooner was she on the path which led
+to the park that the obnoxious bonnet was removed and was
+swinging on her arm, while she was admiring the shadow which,
+her long, bright curls made in the sunshine as she shook her
+head from side to side.</p>
+
+<p>To tell the truth, our little Jerry was rather vain. Passionately
+fond of pictures and flowers, and quick to detect everything
+beautiful both in art and nature, she knew that the little
+face she sometimes saw in Mrs. Crawford's old-fashioned mirror
+was pretty, and after the day when Dick St. Claire told her
+that her hair was 'awful handsome,' she had felt a pride in it
+and in herself, which all Mrs. Crawford's asseverations that
+'Handsome is that handsome does' could not destroy. Maude
+Tracy's hair was black and straight, and here she felt she had
+the advantage over her.</p>
+
+<p>'I do hope we shall see her,' she said to Harold, as she
+danced along, swaying her bonnet and shaking her hair. 'Do
+you think we shall?'</p>
+
+<p>Harold thought it doubtful, and, even if they did, it was not
+likely she would speak to them, he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Why not?' Jerry asked, and he replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I suppose they feel big because they are rich and we
+are poor.'</p>
+
+<p>'But why ain't I rich, too? Why don't I live at the park
+like Maude, and wear low-necked aprons instead of this old
+high one?' Jerry asked; but Harold could not tell, and only
+said:</p>
+
+<p>'Would you rather live at the park than with me?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' Jerry answered, promptly, stopping short and digging
+her heel into the soft loam of the path. 'I would not stay anywhere
+without you; and when I live at the park you will live
+there, too, and have codfish and tatoe every day.'</p>
+
+<p>Strangely enough this was Harold's favorite dish, and, as it
+was not his grandmother's, his taste was not gratified in that
+respect as often as he would have liked, hence Jerry's promise
+of the luxury.</p>
+
+<p>Just here, at a sudden turn in the path, they came upon Jack
+and Maude Tracy playing on a bench under a tree, while the
+nurse was at a distance either reading or asleep. Harold
+would have passed them at once, as he knew his grandmother
+was in a hurry for the cherries, but Jerry had no such intention.</p>
+
+<p>Stopping short in front of Maude, she inspected her carefully,
+from her white dress and bright plaid sash to the string
+of amber beads around her neck; while, side by side with this
+picture, she saw herself in her dark calico frock and high-necked
+apron, with her sun-bonnet and tin pail on her arm.
+Jerry did not like the contrast, and a lump began to swell in
+her throat. Then, as a happy thought struck her, she said,
+with something like exultation in her tone:</p>
+
+<p>'My hair curls and yours don't.'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' Maude answered, slowly&mdash;'no it don't curl, but it's
+black, and yours is yaller.'</p>
+
+<p>This was a set back to Jerry, who hated everything yellow,
+and who had never dreamed of applying that color to her hair.
+She only knew that Dick St. Claire had called it pretty, but in
+this new light thrown upon it all her pride vanished, for she
+recognized like a flash that it might be 'yaller,' and stood there
+silent and vanquished, until Maude, who in turn had been
+regarding her attentively, said to her:</p>
+
+<p>'Ain't you Jerry Crawford?'</p>
+
+<p>That broke the ice of reserve, and the two little girls were
+soon talking together familiarly, and Jerry was asking Maude
+if she wore beads and her best clothes every day.</p>
+
+<p>'Phoo! These ain't my best clothes. I have one gown all brawdery
+and lace,' was Maude's reply, while Jack, who was standing
+near, chimed in:</p>
+
+<p>'My father's got lots of money, and so has Uncle Arthur,
+and when he dies we are going to have it; Tom says so.'</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the shadows gathered on Jerry's brow as she said,
+sadly;</p>
+
+<p>'I wish I had an Uncle Arthur, and could wear beads and a
+sash every day' Then, as she looked at Harold, her face
+brightened immediately and she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'But I have Harold and a grandma, and you hain't,' and
+running up to Harold, she threw her arms around his neck and
+kissed him lovingly, as if to make amends for the momentary
+repining.</p>
+
+<p>'We must go now,' Harold said, and taking her hand in his,
+he led her away toward the house, which impressed her with
+so much awe that as she drew near to it, she held her breath
+and walked on tiptoe, as if afraid that any sound from her
+would be sacrilege in that aristocratic atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, isn't it grand, Harold?' Isn't it grand!' she kept
+repeating, with her mouth full of cherries, after they had
+reached the trees on which the ripe, red fruit hung so thickly.
+'Do you s'pose we shall see the crazy man?' she asked, and
+Harold replied:</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know. I guess not, unless he comes to the window.
+Those are his rooms, and that window which looks so ugly
+outside, is the one with the picture in it,' and he pointed to the
+south wing, most of the windows of which were open, while
+against one a long ladder was standing.</p>
+
+<p>It had been left there by a workman who had been up on it
+to fix the hinge of a blind, and who had gone to the village in
+quest of something he needed, Jerry saw the ladder and its
+close proximity to the open window, and she thought to herself.</p>
+
+<p>'I mean to fill my pail with cherries, and go up that ladder
+and take them to him, I wonder if he would bite me?'</p>
+
+<p>Suiting the action to the word she stopped eating; and began
+to pick from the lower limbs as rapidly as possible until
+her pail was full.</p>
+
+<p>'Pour them into the basket,' Harold called to her from the
+top of the tree, but Jerry did not heed him. She had seen the
+tall figure of a man pass before the window, and a pale, thin
+face had for a moment, looked out, apparently to discover
+whence the talking came.</p>
+
+<p>'I'm going to take the crazyman some cherries,' she tried,
+and almost before Harold could protest, she was half way up
+the ladder, which she climbed with the agility of a little cat.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerry, Jerry! What are you doing!' Harold exclaimed,
+'Come back this minute. He doesn't like children; he tried to
+throw me over the banister once; he will knock you off the
+ladder; oh, Jerry!' and Harold's voice was almost a sob as he
+watched the girl going up round after round until the top was
+reached, and she stood with her flushed, eager face, just on a
+level with the window so that by standing on tiptoe, she could
+look into the room.</p>
+
+<p>It was Arthur's bedroom, and there was no one in it, but she
+heard the sound of footsteps in the adjoining apartment, and
+raising herself as far as possible, and holding up her pail, she
+called out in a clear, shrill voice;</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Crazyman, Mr. Crazyman, don't you want some cherries?'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII" ></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h2>ARTHUR AND JERRY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Arthur had passed a restless night. Indeed all his
+nights were restless, but this one had been especially
+so. Thoughts of Gretchen had troubled him in his
+dreams, and two or three times he had started up to listen,
+thinking that he heard her calling to him from a distance. He
+had dreamed also of the blue hood seen that day of the funereal,
+now more than two years ago, and of the child who had
+come knocking at his door, first with her hands and then with
+her feet, but whom he had refused to admit. He had never
+seen her since, and had never inquired for her of his own accord.
+Two or three times his brother had spoken of her in a
+casual way, telling him once that she was with Mrs. Crawford.
+Arthur had then asked how she could afford to keep her, and
+Frank had made no reply. But the second time when he spoke
+of Jerry, and Arthur, more interested in Mrs. Crawford than
+in her, had asked the same question, Frank had said:</p>
+
+<p>'She cannot afford it, I pay her three dollars a week.'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Arthur looked inquiringly at him; then he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>'You are a good fellow after all, even if you did deceive me
+about sending John for Gretchen. Tell Colvin, when Christmas
+comes, to give Mrs. Crawford a hundred dollars for me.'</p>
+
+<p>After this Mrs. Crawford and her affairs passed completely
+out of Arthur's mind. He never went to the cottage, or near
+it. He never went anywhere, in fact, but lived the life of a recluse,
+growing thinner, and paler, and more reticent every day,
+talking now but seldom of Gretchen, though he never arose in
+the morning or retired at night without kissing her picture and
+murmuring to it some words of tenderness in German.</p>
+
+<p>He had measured the length of his three rooms and dressing-room,
+and found them to be nearly one hundred feet, or six
+rods do that by passing back and forth twenty-five times he
+would walk almost a mile.</p>
+
+<p>Regularly each morning, when it was not too cold or stormy,
+he would throw open his windows and take his daily exercise,
+which was but a poor substitute for what might be had in the
+fresh air outside, but was nevertheless much better than
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>On this particular morning, when Harold and Jerry were at
+the park, he was taking his walk as usual, though very slowly,
+for he felt weak and sick, and, oh, so inexpressibly lonely and
+desolate that it seemed to him he would gladly lie down and
+die.</p>
+
+<p>'If I thought Gretchen were dead, nothing would seem so
+desirable to me as the grave, for then there would be nothing
+to live for,' he was saying to himself, when the sound of voices
+outside attracted his attention, and going to the window, he
+saw the children, Harold in the top of the tree, and Jerry at
+the foot, with her white sun-bonnet shading her face.</p>
+
+<p>Recognizing Harold, he guessed who the little girl was,
+and a strange feeling of interest stirred in his heart for her, as
+he said:</p>
+
+<p>'Poor little waif! I wonder where she came from, or what
+will become of her?'</p>
+
+<p>'Then resuming his walk, he forgot all about the little
+waif, until startled by a voice which rang, clear and bell-like,
+through the rooms:</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Crazyman! Mr. Crazyman! don't you want some
+cherries?'</p>
+
+<p>It was not so much the words as something in the tone, the
+foreign accent, the ring like a voice he never could forget, and
+which the previous night had called to him in his dreams. And
+now it was calling again&mdash;not in his sleep, but in reality, for he
+knew he was awake&mdash;calling from the adjoining room, which
+no one could enter without his knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Mentally weak as he was, and apt to be superstitious, his
+limbs shook, and his heart beat faster than its wont, as he went
+toward his sleeping-apartment, from which the voice came again
+a little louder and more peremptory:</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Crazyman! where are you? I've brought you some
+cherries!'</p>
+
+<p>He had reached the door by this time, and saw the pail on the
+broad window-ledge where Jerry had put it, and to which she
+was clinging, with her white sun-bonnet just in view.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Gretchen! how did you get here?' he said, bounding
+across the floor, with no thought of Jerry in his mind, no
+thought of any one but Gretchen, whom he was constantly expecting
+to come, though not exactly in this way.</p>
+
+<p>'I climbed the ladder to fetch you some cherries, and I'm
+standing on the toppest stick,' Jerry said, craning her neck
+until her bonnet fell back, disclosing to view her beautiful face
+flushed with excitement, and her bright, wavy hair, which,
+moist with perspiration, clung in masses of round curls to her
+head and forehead.</p>
+
+<p>'Great Heaven!' Arthur exclaimed, as he stood staring at
+the wide-open blue eyes confronting him so steadily. 'Who
+are you, and where did you come from?'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm Jerry, and I comed from the carpet-bag in the Tramp
+House. Take me in, won't you?' Jerry said; and, mechanically
+leaning from the window, Arthur took her in, while Harold
+from below looked on, horror-struck with fear as to what
+the result might be if Jerry were left any time alone with a
+madman who did not like children.</p>
+
+<p>'He may kill her; I must tell the folks,' he said; and, going
+round to the side door, he entered, without knocking, and asked
+for Mrs. Tracy.</p>
+
+<p>But she was not at home, and so he told the servants of
+Jerry's danger, and begged them to go to her rescue.</p>
+
+<p>'Pshaw, he won't hurt her. Charles will come pretty soon,
+and I'll send him up. Don't look so scared; he is harmless,'
+the cook said to Harold, who, in a wild state of nervous fear,
+went back to the cherry trees, where he could listen and hear
+the first scream which should proclaim Jerry's danger.</p>
+
+<p>But none came, and could he have looked into the room,
+where Jerry sat, or rather stood, he would have been amazed.</p>
+
+<p>As Arthur lifted Jerry through the window, and put her
+down upon the floor, he said to her:</p>
+
+<p>'Take off that bonnet and let me look at you.'</p>
+
+<p>She obeyed and stood before him with all her wealth of hair
+tumbling about her glowing face, and an eager, questioning expression
+in her blue eyes, which looked at him so fearlessly.
+Arthur knew perfectly well who she was, but something about
+her so dazed and bewildered him that for a moment he could
+not speak, but stared at her with the hungry, wistful look of
+one longing for something just within his reach, but still unattainable.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you like me?' Jerry asked at last.</p>
+
+<p>'Like you?' he replied. 'Yes. Why did you not come to
+me sooner?'</p>
+
+<p>And, stooping, he kissed the cherry-stained mouth as he had
+never kissed a child before.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting down upon the lounge, he took her in his lap and said
+to her again:</p>
+
+<p>'Who are you, and where did you come from? I know your
+name is Jerry, which is a strange one for a girl, and I know you
+live with Mrs. Crawford, but before that night where did you
+live? Where did you come from?'</p>
+
+<p>'Out of the carpet-bag in the Tramp House. I told you that
+once,' Jerry said. 'Harold found me. I am his little girl.
+He is out in the cherry tree, and said I must not come up, because
+you were crazy and would hurt me. You won't hurt me,
+will you? And be you crazy?'</p>
+
+<p>'Hurt you? No,' he answered, as he parted the rings of her
+hair from her low brow. 'I don't know whether I am crazy or
+not They say so, and perhaps I am, when my head is full of
+bumble-bees.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh&mdash;h!' Jerry gasped, drawing back from him. 'Can they
+get out? And will they sting?'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur burst into a merry laugh, the first he had known since
+he came back to Shannondale. Jerry was doing him good.
+There was something very soothing in the touch of the little
+warm hands he held in his, and something puzzling and fascinating,
+too, in the face of the child. He did not think of a likeness
+to any one; he only knew that he felt drawn toward her
+in a most unaccountable manner, and found himself wondering
+greatly who she was.</p>
+
+<p>'Harold told me there were pictures and marble people up
+here with nothing on, and everything, and that's why I comed&mdash;that
+and to bring you some cherries. I like pictures. Can I
+see them?' Jerry said.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, you shall see them,' Arthur replied; and he led her
+into the room where Gretchen's picture looked at them from
+the window.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my!' Jerry exclaimed, with bated breath, 'Ain't she
+lovely! Is she God's sister?' and folding her hands together,
+she stood before the picture as reverently as a devout Catholic
+stands before a Madonna.</p>
+
+<p>It was some time since Jerry had spoken a word of German,
+but as she stood before Gretchen's picture old memories seemed
+to revive, and with them the German word for <i>pretty</i>, which
+she involuntarily spoke aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Low as was the utterance, it caught Arthur's ear, and grasping
+her shoulder, he said:</p>
+
+<p>'What was that? What did you say, and where did you
+learn it?'</p>
+
+<p>His manner frightened her; perhaps the bumble-bees were
+coming out, and she drew back from him, forgetting entirely
+what she had said.</p>
+
+<p>'It was a German word,' he continued, 'and the accent is
+German, too; can you speak it.'</p>
+
+<p>Unconsciously as he talked, he dropped into that language,
+and Jerry listened intently, with a strained look on her face,
+as if trying to recall something which came and went, but went
+more than it came, if that could be.</p>
+
+<p>'I talked that once,' she said, 'when I lived with mamma;
+but she is dead. Harold found her, and I put flowers on her
+grave.'</p>
+
+<p>Half the time she was speaking in German, or trying to,
+and Arthur listened in amazement, while his interest in her
+deepened every moment, as he took her through the rooms and
+showed her 'the marble people with nothing on them,' and
+the beautiful pictures which adorned his walls.</p>
+
+<p>'How would you like to come and be my little girl?' he
+asked her at last, when, remembering Harold and the cherries,
+she told him she must go, and started toward the window as
+if she would make her egress as she had come in.</p>
+
+<p>'Can Harold come, too? I can't leave Harold,' she said
+Then, as she caught sight of him still standing at a distance,
+gazing curiously up at the window through which she had disappeared,
+she called out, 'Yes Harold; I'm coming. I have
+seen him and everything, and he did not hurt me. Good-bye!'
+and she turned toward Arthur with a little nod.</p>
+
+<p>Then, before he could stop her, she sprang out upon the ladder,
+and went down faster than she had come up, leaving the pail
+of cherries upon the window-sill, and leaving, too, in Arthur's
+breast a tumult of emotions which he could not define.</p>
+
+<p>That night, when Frank, who had heard in much alarm of
+Jerry's visit to his brother, went up to see him, he found him
+more cheerful and natural than he had seen him in weeks. As
+Frank expected, his first words were of the little girl who had
+come to him through the window and left him the cherries, of
+which he said he had eaten so many that he feared they might
+make him sick. What did Frank know of the child? What
+had he learned of her history? Of course he had made enquiries
+everywhere?</p>
+
+<p>It was just in the twilight, before the gas was lighted, and
+so Arthur did not see how his brother's face flamed at first and
+then grew white as he recapitulated what the reader already
+knows, dwelling at length upon the enquiries he had made in
+New York, all of which had been fruitless. There was the name
+Jerrine on the child's clothing, he said and the initials 'N.B.'
+on that of her mother, who was evidently French, although she
+must have come from Germany.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Arthur replied, 'the child is a German, and interests
+me greatly. Her face and something in her voice has haunted
+me all the afternoon. Was there nothing in that trunk or the
+carpet-bag which would be a clue?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing,' Frank replied, although it seemed to him it was
+the shadow speaking for him, or at least putting the lie into his
+mouth. There were articles of clothing, all very plain, and a picture
+book printed at Leipsic, I can get that for you if you
+like, though it tells nothing unless it he that the mother lived
+in Leipsic.'</p>
+
+<p>Frank talked very rapidly, and laid so much stress on Leipsic,
+that Arthur got an idea that Jerry had actually come from
+there, just as his brother meant he should, and he began to
+speak of the town and recall all he knew of it.</p>
+
+<p>'I was never there but once,' he said, 'for although I spent
+a great deal of time in Germany, it was mostly in Heidleberg
+and Wiesbaden. Oh, that is lovely,&mdash;Wiesbaden&mdash;and nights
+now, when I cannot sleep, I fancy that I am there again, in the
+lovely park, and hear the music of the band, and see the
+crowds of people strolling through the grounds, and I am there
+with them, though apart from the rest, just where a narrow
+path turns off from a bridge, and a seat is half hidden from view
+behind the thick shrubberies. There I sit again with Gretchen,
+and feel her hand in mine and her dear head on my arm. Oh,
+Gretchen&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>There was a sob now in his voice, and he seemed to be talking
+to himself rather than to his brother, who said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'Gretchen lived in Wiesbaden, then?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; but for heaven's sake pronounce it with a V, and not
+a W, and in two syllables instead of three,' Arthur answered,
+pettishly, his ear offended as it always was with a discordant
+sound or mispronounciation.</p>
+
+<p>'Veesbaden, then,' Frank repeated, understanding now why
+Jerry had stumbled over the name when he once spoke it to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly she had come from Wiesbaden, where Gretchen had
+lived, and where he believed she had died, though he did not
+tell Arthur so; he merely said:</p>
+
+<p>'Gretchen was your sweetheart, I suppose?'</p>
+
+<p>But Arthur did not reply; he never replied to direct questions
+as to who Gretchen was, but after a moment's silence, he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>'You speak of her as something past. Do you believe she is
+dead?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I do,' was Frank's decided answer. You have never
+told me who she was, though I have my own opinion on the
+subject, and I know that you loved her very much, and if she
+loved you so much&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'She did&mdash;she did; she loved me more&mdash;far more than I
+deserved,' was Arthur's vehement interruption.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, then,' Frank continued, 'if she did, and were living,
+she would have come to you, or answered your letters, or sent
+you some messenger.'</p>
+
+<p>Frank's voice trembled here, and be seemed to see again the
+cold, still face of the dead woman, whose lips, could they have
+spoken, might have unlocked the mystery and brought a message
+from Gretchen'</p>
+
+<p>'True, true,' Arthur replied. 'She would have come or
+written. How long is it since I came home?'</p>
+
+<p>'Four years next October,' Frank said.</p>
+
+<p>'Four years;' Arthur went on, 'is it so long as that? And
+it, was then more than three years since I had seen her. Everything
+was blotted out from my mind from the time that I entered
+that accursed <i>maison de sant&eacute;</i> until I found myself in
+Paris. I am afraid she <i>is</i> dead.'</p>
+
+<p>Just then Charles came in with lights and the chocolate his
+master always took before retiring, and so Frank said good-night,
+and went out upon the broad piazza, hoping the night
+air would cool his heated brow, or that the laughter and prattle
+of Jack and Maude, who were frolicking on the gravel walk,
+would drown the voice of the shadow which said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'But for the number of years he says it is since he saw
+Gretchen, there could be no doubt, and you would be the biggest
+rascal living. As it is, you need not distress yourself&mdash;Jerry
+is nothing to him; and if she were, you have gone too
+far now to go back. People would never respect you again.
+And then there is Maude. You cannot disgrace her.'</p>
+
+<p>No, he could not disgrace his darling Maude, who, as if
+guessing that he was thinking of her, came up the steps to his
+side, and seating herself upon his lap, pushed the hair from his
+forehead with her soft fingers, and kissed him lovingly as she
+was wont to do.</p>
+
+<p>'My beautiful Maude,' he thought, for he knew she would
+be beautiful, with her black hair, and starry eyes, and brilliant
+complexion, and he loved her with all the strength of his
+nature. To see her grow into womanhood, admired and sought
+after by everyone, was the desire of his heart, and as he believed
+that money was necessary to the perfect fulfilment of his
+desire, for her sake he would carry his secret to the grave.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you sick, papa?' Maude asked, looking into his pale
+face, on which the moon shone brightly.</p>
+
+<p>'No, pet,' he answered, 'only tired. I am thinking of little
+Jerry Crawford. She was here this afternoon,'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I saw her in the park with Harold. Isn't he handsome,
+papa? and such a nice boy! so different from Tom,'
+said Maude, and then she went on: 'Jerry is pretty too;
+prettier than I am; her hair curls and mine doesn't, but her
+dress is so ugly&mdash;that old high apron and calico gown. What
+makes her so poor and me so rich?'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Tracy groaned inwardly, as he replied:</p>
+
+<p>'You are not rich, my child.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, I am,' Maude said, 'I heard mamma tell Mrs.
+Brinsmade so. She said Uncle Arthur was worth a million,
+and when he died we should have it all, because he could not
+make a will if he wanted to, and he had no children of his
+own,'</p>
+
+<p>Although little more than seven years old, Maude Tracy was
+very knowing and precocious in some respects, and, like her
+brother Tom, had heard so much from her mother and others
+of their prospective wealth, that she understood the situation
+far better than she ought, and was already counting on the
+thousands waiting for her when her uncle died. And yet
+Maude Tracy had in her nature qualities which were to ripen
+into a noble womanhood. Truthful and generous, her instincts
+of right and wrong were very keen, and young as she was she
+had no respect for anything like deception or trickery. This
+her father knew, and his bitterest pang of remorse came from
+this thought, 'What would Maude say if she knew?' And it
+was more for her sake he was sinning than for his own or that of
+any other. She was so pretty, or would be when grown to
+young ladyhood, and the adornments which money could bring
+would so well become her.</p>
+
+<p>'Maude,' he said at last, 'how would you like to change
+places with Jerry? That is, let her come here and live, while
+we go away and be poor; not quite as she is, but like many
+people.'</p>
+
+<p>'And not wear a sash, and beads, and buttoned boots every
+day?' Maude interrupted him quickly. 'I should not like it
+at all. Why, Jerry dresses herself, and wipes the dishes, and
+wears those big aprons all the time. No, I don't want to be
+poor;' and as if something in her father's mind had communicated
+itself to her, she raised her head from his shoulder and
+looked beseechingly at him.</p>
+
+<p>'Nor shall you be poor, if I can help it,' he said; 'but you
+must be very kind to Jerry, and never let her feel that you
+are richer than she. Do you understand?'</p>
+
+<p>'I think I do,' Maude answered, adding as she kissed him
+fondly: 'And now I s'pose I must go, for there is Hetty
+come for me; so, good-night, you dearest, best papa in the
+world.'</p>
+
+<p>He knew that she believed in him fully; that should he
+confess his fault she would understand it, and lose faith in him.
+He would bear the burden, he said to himself. There should be
+no more repining or looking back, Maude must never know;
+and so Jerry's chance was lost.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Arthur awoke with a racking headache.
+He was accustomed to it, it is true; but this one was particularly
+severe.</p>
+
+<p>'It's the cherries; no wonder; a quart of those sour things
+would turn upside down any stomach,' Charles said, as he
+glanced at the empty tin pail which was adorning an inlaid
+table, and then suggested a dose of ipecac as a means of dislodging
+the offending cherries.</p>
+
+<p>But Arthur declined the medicine. His stomach was well
+enough, he said. It was his head which ached, and nothing
+would help that like the touch of the cool little hands he had
+held in his the previous day. Charles must go for Jerry&mdash;go
+at once, for he wanted her, and as when Arthur wanted a
+thing he wanted it immediately, Charles was soon on his way
+to the cottage in the lane, where he found the little girl under a
+tall lilac bush, busy with the mud pies she was making, and
+talking to herself, partly in English and partly in broken
+German, which she had resumed since visiting the park.</p>
+
+<p>'Seemed like something I had dreamed, when he talked like
+that, and I could almost do it myself,' she said to Harold when
+describing the particulars of her interview with Mr. Tracy, and
+her tongue fell naturally into the language of her babyhood.</p>
+
+<p>On hearing Charles' errand, her delight was unbounded.</p>
+
+<p>'Iss. You'll let me go,' she cried, as she stood before Mrs.
+Crawford, with the mud-spots on her hands and face; 'and
+you'll let me wear my best gown now, and my white apron
+with the shoulder-straps, and my morocco shoes, because this
+visiting.'</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Crawford could see no objection to the plan, Jerry
+was soon dressed, and on her way to the Park House, which
+seemed to her to be a very palace, and until the day before a
+place to be looked upon with awe, and admired breathlessly
+at a distance. Indeed, she had sometimes, when passing near
+the house, walked on tiptoe, as if on sacred ground, and held
+back her humble dress lest it should harm a shrub or vine by
+contact. But matters now were changed. She had been there,
+and was going there again by special invitation from the master,
+and she tripped along airily with a sense of dignity and importance
+unusual in one so young.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Tracy, who seldom troubled herself with her brother-in-law's
+affairs, knew nothing of his having sent for Jerry, and
+was surprised when she saw her coming up the walk with
+Charles, whose manner indicated that he knew perfectly what
+he was about. She had heard of Jerry's visit on the previous
+day, and had wondered what Arthur could find in that child to
+interest him, when he would never allow Maude in his room.
+She knew nothing of the shadow which night and day was
+nearer to her husband than she was herself, but she did not fancy
+Jerry, because of the three dollars a week, which she felt was
+so much taken from herself. Why they should be burdened
+with the support of the child, just because her mother happened
+to be found dead upon their premises, she could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>Had Jerry been older, she might, she said, have taken her
+into the kitchen as maid of all work, for Dolly had reached a
+point where she liked a great many servants in the household,
+and prided herself upon employing more help than either Grace
+Atherton or Edith St. Claire. Only that morning she had
+spoken to her husband of Jerry, and asked him how long he
+proposed to support her.</p>
+
+<p>'Just as long as I have a dollar of my own, and she needs
+it,' was his reply, as he left the room, slamming the door behind
+him and leaving her to think him almost as crazy as his
+brother.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was not in a very quiet frame of mind that she went
+out upon the cool, broad piazza, and, taking one of the large
+willow chairs standing there, began to rock back and forth and
+wonder what had so changed her husband, making him silent
+and absent-minded, and even irritable at times, as he had been
+that morning. Was there insanity in his veins as well as in
+his brother's, and would her children inherit&mdash;her darling
+Maude, of whom she was so proud, and who, she hoped, would
+some day be the richest heiress in the county and marry Dick
+St. Claire, if, indeed, she did not look even higher?</p>
+
+<p>It was at this point in her soliloquy that she saw Jerry coming
+up the walk, her face glowing with excitement and her
+manner one of freedom and assurance.</p>
+
+<p>Ascending the steps, Jerry nodded and smiled at the lady,
+whose expression was not very inviting, and who, to the child's
+remark, 'I've comed again,' answered, icily:</p>
+
+<p>'I see you have. Seems to me you come pretty often.' Turning
+to Charles, Mrs. Tracy continued:</p>
+
+<p>'Why is she here again so soon? What does she want?'</p>
+
+<p>Quick to detect and interpret the meaning of the tones of a
+voice, and hearing disapprobation in Mrs. Tracy's, Jerry's face
+was shadowed at once, and she looked up entreatingly at
+Charles, who said:</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Tracy sent me for her. She was with him yesterday,
+and he will have her again to-day.'</p>
+
+<p>Then Jerry's face brightened, and she chimed in:</p>
+
+<p>'Iss, I'm visiting, I'm invited, and I'm going to stay to eat.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Tracy dared not interfere with Arthur, even if he took
+Jerry to live there altogether, and, with a bend of her head, she
+signified to Charles that the conference was ended.</p>
+
+<p>'Come, Jerry,' Charles said; but Jerry held back a moment,
+and asked:</p>
+
+<p>'Where's Maude?'</p>
+
+<p>If Mrs. Tracy heard, she did not reply, and Jerry followed
+on after Charles through the hall and up the broad staircase to
+the darkened room where Arthur lay, suffering intense pain in
+the head, and moaning occasionally. But he heard the patter
+of the little feet, for he was listening for it, and when Jerry
+entered his room he raised himself upon his elbow, and reaching
+the other hand toward her, said:</p>
+
+<p>'So you have come again, little Jerry; or, perhaps I should
+call you little <i>Cherry</i>, considering how you first came to me.
+Would you like that name?'</p>
+
+<p>'Iss,' was Jerry's reply, in the quick, half-lisping way which
+made the monosyllable so attractive.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, then, Cherry,' Arthur continued, 'take off that bonnet,
+and open the blind behind me so I can see your face.
+Then bring that stool and sit where I can look at you while
+you rub my head with your hands. It aches enough to split,
+and I believe the bumble bees are swarming; but they can't
+get out, and if they could, they are the white-faced kind, which
+never sting.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerry knew all about white-faced bumble-bees, for Harold
+had caught them for her, and with this fear removed, she did
+as Arthur bade her, and was soon seated at his side, rubbing
+his forehead, where the blue veins were standing out full and
+round, and smoothing his hair caressingly with her fingers,
+which seemed to have in them a healing power, for the pain
+and heat grew less under their touch, and, after a while Arthur
+fell into a quiet sleep.</p>
+
+<p>When he awoke, after half an hour or so, it was with a delicious
+sense of rest and freedom from pain. Jerry had dropped
+the shades to shut out the sunlight, and was walking on tiptoe
+round the room, arranging the furniture and talking to herself
+in whispers, as she usually did when playing alone.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerry,' Arthur said to her, and she was at his side in a
+moment, 'you are an enchantress. The ache is all gone from
+my head, charmed away by your hands. Now, come and sit
+by me again, and tell me all you know of yourself before Harold
+found you. Where did you live? What was your mother's
+name? Try and recall all you can.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerry, however, could tell him very little besides the Tramp
+House, and the carpet-bag, and Harold letting her fall in the
+snow. Of the cold and the suffering she could recall nothing, or
+of the journey from New York in the cars. She did remember
+something about the ship, and her mother's seasickness, but
+where she lived before she went to the ship she could not tell.
+It was a big town, she thought, and there was music there, and
+a garden, and somebody sick. That was all. Everything else
+was gone entirely, except now and then when vague glimpses
+of something in the past bewildered and perplexed her. Her
+pantomime of the dying woman and the child had not been repeated
+for more than a year, for now her acting always took
+the form of the tragedy in the Tramp House, with herself in
+the carpet-bag and a lay figure dead beside her. But gradually, as
+Arthur questioned her, the old memories began to come back
+and shape themselves in her mind, and he said at last:</p>
+
+<p>'It was like this&mdash;playin' you was a sick lady and I was
+your nurse. I can't think of her name, I guess I'll call her
+Manny. And there must be a baby; that's me, only I can't
+think of my name.'</p>
+
+<p>'Call it Jerry, then,' Arthur suggested, both interested and
+amused, though he did not quite understand what she meant.</p>
+
+<p>But he was passive in her hands, and submitted to have a
+big handkerchief put over his head for a cap, to hold on his
+arm the baby she improvised from a sofa-cushion of costly
+plush, around which she arranged as a dress an expensive tablespread,
+tied with the rich cord and tassel of his dressing-gown.</p>
+
+<p>'You must cry a great deal,' she said, 'and pray a great deal,
+and kiss the baby a great deal, and I must scold you some for
+crying so much, and shake the baby some in the kitchen for
+making a noise, because, you know, the baby can walk and
+talk, and is me, only I can't be both at a time.'</p>
+
+<p>She was not very clear in her explanations, but Arthur began
+to have a dim perception of her meaning, and did what she
+bade him do, and rather enjoyed having his face and hands
+washed with a wet rag, and his hair brushed and <i>turled</i>, as she
+called it, even though the fingers which <i>turled</i> it sometimes made
+suspicious journeyings to her mouth. He cried when she told
+him to cry; he coughed when she told him to cough; he kissed
+the baby when she told him to kiss it; he took medicine from
+the tin pail in the form of the cherry juice left there, and did
+not have to make believe that it sickened him, as she said he
+must, for that was a reality. But when she told him he must
+die, but pray first, he demurred, and asked what he should
+say. Jerry hesitated a little. She knew that her prayers were
+'Our Father,' and 'Now I lay me,' but it seemed to her that a
+person dying should say something else, and at last she replied:</p>
+
+<p>'I can't think what she did say, only a lot about <i>him</i>. There
+was a <i>him</i> somewhere, and I guess he was naughty, so pray for
+<i>him</i>, and the baby&mdash;that's me&mdash;and tell Manny she must take
+me to Mecky,'</p>
+
+<p>'To whom?' Arthur asked, and she replied:</p>
+
+<p>'To Mecky, where he was, don't you know?'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur did not know, but he prayed for <i>him</i>, saying what she
+bade him say&mdash;a mixture half English, half German.</p>
+
+<p>'There now, you are dead,' she said at last, as she closed his
+eyes and folded his hand upon his chest, 'You are dead, and
+mustn't stir nor breathe, no matter how awful we cry, Man-nee
+and I.'</p>
+
+<p>Kneeling down beside him, she began to cry so like that
+of two persons that if Arthur had not known to the contrary,
+he would have sworn there were two beside him, a woman and
+a child, the voice of the one shrill and clear, and young, and
+frightened, the other older, and harsher, and stronger, and both
+blending together in a most astonishing manner.</p>
+
+<p>'With a little practice she would make a wonderful ventriloquist,'
+Arthur thought, as he watched her flitting about the
+room, talking to unseen people and giving orders with regard
+to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Once Frank had witnessed a pantomine very similar to this,
+only then the play had ended with the death, while now there
+was the burial, and when Arthur moved a little and asked if he
+might get up, she laid her hand quickly on his mouth, with a
+peremptory 'hush! you are dead and we must bury you.'</p>
+
+<p>But here Jerry's memory failed her, and the funeral which
+followed was an imitation of the one which had left the Park
+House three years before, and which Arthur had watched from
+his window. Frank was there, and his wife, and Peterkin, and
+Jerry imitated the voices of them all, and when someone bade
+her kiss her mother she stooped and kissed Arthur's forehead,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>'Good-bye, mamma,' then throwing a thin tidy over his face,
+she continued, 'Now, I am going to shut the coffin,' and as
+she worked at the corners, as if driving down the screws,
+Arthur felt as if he were actually being shut out from life, and
+light, and the world.</p>
+
+<p>To one of his superstitious tendencies the whole was terribly
+real, and when at last she told him he was buried, and
+the folks had come back, and he could get up, the sweat
+was standing upon his face and hands in great drops, and
+he felt that he had in very truth been present at the obsequies
+of some one, whose death had made an impression so
+strong upon Jerry's mind that time had not erased it. There
+was in his heart no thought of Gretchen, as there had been
+in Frank's when he was a spectator at the play. He had no
+cause for suspicion, and thought only of the child whose
+restlessness and activity were something appalling to him.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, what shall we play next?' she asked, as he sat white
+and trembling in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, nothing, nothing,' he groaned, 'I cannot stand any
+more now.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, then, you sit still, and I'll clean house; it needs it
+badly. Such mud as that boy brings in I never saw, and I'm
+so lame, too!' Jerry responded, and Arthur recognized Mrs.
+Crawford, whose tidiness and cleanliness were proverbial, and
+for the next half hour he watched the little actress as she limped
+around the room exactly as Mrs. Crawford limped with her
+rheumatism, sweeping, dusting, and scolding a little, both to
+Harold and Jerry, the latter of whom once retorted:</p>
+
+<p>'I would not be so cross as that if I had forty rheumatisses
+in my laigs, would you, Harold?'</p>
+
+<p>But Harold only answered, softly:</p>
+
+<p>'Hush, Jerry I you should not speak so to grandmamma, and
+she so good to us both, when we haven't any mother.'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur would have laughed, so perfect was the imitation of
+voice and gesture, but at the mention of Harold's mother there
+came into his mind a vision of sweet Amy Crawford, who had
+been his first love, and for whose son he had really done so little.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerry,' he said, 'I guess you have cleaned house long enough.
+Wash your hands and come to me.'</p>
+
+<p>She obeyed him, and looking into his face, said:</p>
+
+<p>'Now, what? can you play cat's cradle or casino?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; I want to talk to you of Harold. You love him very
+much?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, a hundred bushels&mdash;him and grandma, too.'</p>
+
+<p>'And he is very kind to you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I guess he is. He never talks back, and I am awful
+sometimes, and once I spit at him, and struck him; but I was
+so sorry and cried all night, and offered to give him my best
+doll 'cause it was the plaything I loved most, and I went without
+my piece of pie so he could have two pieces if he wanted,'
+Jerry said, her voice trembling as she made this confession,
+which gave Arthur a better insight into her real character than
+he had had before.</p>
+
+<p>Hasty, impulsive, repentant, generous, and very affectionate,
+he felt sure she was, and he continued;</p>
+
+<p>'Does Harold go to school?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; and I too&mdash;to the district; but I hate it!' Jerry replied.</p>
+
+<p>'Why hate it?' Arthur asked. 'What is the matter with
+the district school?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it smells awful there sometimes when it is hot,' Jerry
+replied with an upward turn to her nose. 'And the boys
+are so mean, some of them. Bill Peterkin goes there and I
+can't bear him, he plagues me so. Wants to kiss me. A-a-h,
+and says I am to be his wife, and he has got warts on his
+thumb!'</p>
+
+<p>Jerry's face was sufficiently indicative of the disgust she felt
+for Bill Peterkin with his warts, and leaning back in his chair,
+Arthur laughed heartily, as he said:</p>
+
+<p>'And you do not like Bill Peterkin? Well, what boys do
+you like?'</p>
+
+<p>'Harold and Dick St. Claire,' was the prompt response, and
+Arthur continued:</p>
+
+<p>'What would you have in place of the district school?'</p>
+
+<p>'A governess,' was Jerry's answer. 'Nina St. Claire has
+one, and Ann Eliza Peterkin has one, and Maude Tracy has
+one.'</p>
+
+<p>Here Jerry stopped suddenly, as if struck with a new idea.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, Maude is your little girl, isn't she? You are her rich
+uncle, and she is to have all your money when you die. I wish
+I was your little girl.'</p>
+
+<p>She spoke the last very sadly, and something in the expression
+of her face brought Gretchen to Arthur's mind, and his
+voice was choked as he said to her:</p>
+
+<p>'I'd give half my fortune if you were my little girl.'</p>
+
+<p>Then laying his hand on her bright hair, he questioned her
+adroitly of her life at the cottage, finding that it was a very
+happy one, and that she had never known want, although Mrs.
+Crawford was unable to work as she once had done, and was
+largely dependent upon the price for Jerry's board, which
+Frank paid regularly. Of this, however, Jerry did not speak.
+She only said:</p>
+
+<p>'Harold works in the furnace, and in folks' gardens, and does
+lots of things for everybody, and once Bill Peterkin twitted him
+because he goes to Mrs. Baker's sometimes after stuff for the
+pig, and Harold cried, and I got up early the next morning and
+went after it myself and drew the cart home. After that grandma
+wouldn't let Harold go for any more, so I s'pose the pig will
+not weigh as much, I'm sorry, for I like sausage, don't you?'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur hated it, but he did not tell her so, and she went on.</p>
+
+<p>'Harold studies awful hard, and wants to go to college. He
+is trying to learn Latin and recites to Dick St. Claire; but
+grandma says it is up-hill business. Oh, if I's only rich I'd give
+it all to Harold, and he should get learning like Dick. Maybe
+I can work some time and earn some money. I wish I
+could.'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur did not speak for a long time, but sat looking at the
+child whose face now wore an old and troubled look. In his
+mind he was revolving a plan which, with, his usual precipitancy,
+he resolved to carry into effect at once. But he said
+nothing of it to Jerry, whose attention was diverted by the entrance
+of Charles and the preparations for luncheon, which on
+the little girl's account, was served with more care than usual.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry, who had a great liking for everything luxurious, had
+taken tea once or twice at Grassy Spring with Nina St. Claire,
+and had been greatly impressed with the appointments of the
+table, prizing them more even than the dainties for her to eat.
+But what she had seen there seemed as nothing compared to
+this round Swiss table, with its colored glass and rare china, no
+two pieces of which were alike.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it is just like a dream!' she cried, as she watched
+Charles' movement and saw that there were two places laid.</p>
+
+<p>'Am I to sit down with you?' she said in an awe-struck voice,
+'and in that lovely chair? I am glad I wore my best gown. It
+won't dirty the chair a bit.'</p>
+
+<p>But she took her pocket handkerchief and covered over the
+satin cushion before she dared seat herself in the chair, which
+had once been brought out for Gretchen, and in which she now
+sat down, dropping her head and shutting her eyes a moment
+Then, as she heard no sound, she looked up wonderingly, and
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>'Ain't you going to say &quot;for Christ's Sake?&quot; grandma does.'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur's face was a study with its mixed expression of surprise,
+amusement, and self-reproach. He never prayed except
+it were in some ejaculatory sentences wrung from him in his
+sore need, and the thought of asking a blessing on his food had
+never occurred to him. But Jerry was persistent.</p>
+
+<p>'You must say &quot;for Christ's sake,&quot;' she continued, and, with
+his weak brain all in a muddle, Arthur began what he meant to
+be a brief thanksgiving, but which stretched itself into a lengthy
+prayer, fall of the past and of Gretchen, whom he seemed to be
+addressing rather than his Maker.</p>
+
+<p>For a while Jerry listened reverently; then she looked up
+and moved uneasily in the chair, and at last when the prayer
+had continued for at least five minutes, she burst out impulsively:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, dear, do say &quot;amen.&quot; I am so hungry!'</p>
+
+<p>That broke the spell, and with a start Arthur came to himself,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>'Think you, Jerry, praying is a new business for me, and I
+do believe I should have gone on forever if you had not stopped
+me. Now, what will you have?'</p>
+
+<p>He helped her to whatever she liked best, but could eat
+scarcely anything himself. It was sufficient for him to watch
+Jerry sitting there in Gretchen's chair and using Gretchen's
+plate, which every day for so many years had been laid for her.
+Gretchen had not come. She would never come, he feared, but
+with Jerry he did not feel half as desolate as when alone, with
+only his morbid fancies for company. And he must have her
+there, at least a portion of the time. His mind was made up
+on that point, and when about four o'clock, Jerry said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'I want to go now. Grandma said I was to be home by
+five,' she replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I am going with you. I wish to see your grandmother.
+I am going to drive you in the phaeton. How would you like
+that?'</p>
+
+<p>Her dancing eyes told him how she would like it, and Charles
+was sent to the stable with an order to have the little pony
+phaeton brought round as soon as possible as he was going
+for a drive.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX" ></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<h2>ARTHUR'S PLAN</h2>
+
+
+<p>'Why, the madam is going to drive, too, and I've come
+to harness; there'll be a row somewhere,' John said.</p>
+
+<p>'Can't help it,' Charles replied, 'Mr. Arthur wants the phaeton,
+and will have it for all of Madam.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I s'p'o' so. Wall, I'll go and tell her,' was John's rejoinder,
+as he started for the house, where Mrs. Tracy was just
+drawing on her long driving gloves, and admiring her new hat
+and feather before the glass.</p>
+
+<p>Dolly looked almost as young, and far prettier, than when
+the came to the park, eleven years before. A life of luxury
+suited her. She had learned to take things easily, and the old
+woman with the basket might now come every day to her
+kitchen door without her knowing it. She aped Mrs. Atherton
+of Brier Hill, in everything, and had the satisfaction of knowing
+that she was on all occasions quite as stylish-looking and
+well-dressed as that aristocratic lady whom she called her intimate
+friend. She had also grown very proud and very exclusive
+in her ideas, and when poor Mrs. Peterkin, who was
+growing, too, with <i>her</i> million, ventured to call at the park, the
+call was returned with a card which Doily's coachman left at the
+door. Since the night of her party, and the election which followed
+when Frank was defeated, she had ignored the Peterkins,
+and laughed at what she called their vulgar imitation of
+people above them, and when she heard that Mary Jane hail
+hired a governess for her two children, Bill and Ann Eliza, she
+scoffed at the airs assumed by <i>come-up</i> people, and wondered if
+Mrs. Peterkin had forgotten that she was one of Grace
+Atherton's hired girls. Dolly had certainly forgotten the Langley
+life, and was to all intents and purposes the great lady of
+the park, who held herself aloof from the common herd, and
+taught her children to do the same.</p>
+
+<p>She had seen Jerry enter the house that morning with a feeling
+of disapprobation, which had not diminished as the day
+wore on and still the child staid, and what was worse, Maude
+was not sent for to join her.</p>
+
+<p>'Not that I would have allowed it, if she had been,' she said
+to herself, for she did not wish her daughter intimate with one
+of whose antecedents nothing was known, but Arthur might at
+least have invited her. He had never noticed her children
+much, and this she deeply resented. Maude, who knew of
+Jerry's presence in the house had cried to go in and play with
+her, but Mrs. Tracy had refused, and promised as an equivalent
+a drive in the phaeton around the town. And it was for
+this drive Dolly was preparing herself, when John came with
+the message that she could not have the phaeton, as Mr. Arthur
+was going to take Jerry home in it.</p>
+
+<p>Usually Arthur's slightest wish was a law in the household,
+for that was Frank's order; but on this occasion Dolly felt herself
+justified in rebelling.</p>
+
+<p>'Not have the phaeton! That's smart, I must say,' she exclaimed.
+'Can't that child walk home, I'd like to know? Tell
+Mr. Tracy Maude has had the promise of a drive all day, and I
+am ready, with my things on. Ask him to take the Victoria;
+he never drives.'</p>
+
+<p>All this in substance was repeated to Arthur, who answered,
+quietly:</p>
+
+<p>'Let Mrs. Tracy take the victoria. I prefer the phaeton myself.'</p>
+
+<p>That settled it, and in few moments Jerry was seated at Arthur's
+side, and skimming along through the park, and out upon
+the highway which skirted the river for miles.</p>
+
+<p>'This is not going home, and grandma will scold,' Jerry said.</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind the grandma&mdash;I will make it right with her.
+I am going to show you the country,' Arthur replied, as he
+chirruped to the fleet pony who seemed to fly along the smooth
+road.</p>
+
+<p>No one who saw the tall, elegant-looking man, who sat so
+erect, and handled the reins so skilfully, would ever have suspected
+him of insanity, and more than one stopped to gaze after
+him and the little girl whose face, with the golden hair blowing
+about it, looked out from the white sun bonnet with so joyous
+an expression. On the homeward route they met the victoria,
+with John upon the box, and Mrs. Tracy and Maude inside.</p>
+
+<p>'There's Maude! Hallo, Maude&mdash;see me! I'm riding!'
+Jerry called out, cheerily, while Maude answered back:</p>
+
+<p>'Hallo, Jerry!'</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Tracy gave no sign of recognition, and only rebuked
+her daughter for her vulgarity in saying 'Hallo,' which
+was second class and low.</p>
+
+<p>'Then Nina St. Claire is second class and low, for she says
+&quot;Hallo,&quot;' was Maude's reply, to which her mother had no answer.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the phaeton was going swiftly on toward the cottage,
+which it reached a few minutes after the furnace whistle
+blew for six, and Harold, who had been working there, came
+up the lane. There were soiled spots on his hands and on his
+face, and his clothes showed marks of toil, all of which Arthur
+noted, while he was explaining to Mrs. Crawford that he had
+taken Jerry for a drive, and kept her beyond the prescribed
+hour. Then, turning to Harold, he said:</p>
+
+<p>'And so you work in the furnace?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir, during vacation, when I can get a job there,' Harold
+answered, and Mr. Tracy continued:</p>
+
+<p>'How much do you get a day?'</p>
+
+<p>'Fifty cents in dull times,' was the reply, and Arthur
+went on:</p>
+
+<p>'Fifty cents from seven in the morning to six at night, and
+board yourself. A magnificent sum truly. Pray, how do you
+manage to spend so much? You must be getting rich.'</p>
+
+<p>The words were sarcastic, but the tone belied the words, and
+Harold was about to speak, when his grandmother interrupted
+him, and said,</p>
+
+<p>'What he does not spend for us he puts aside. He is trying
+to save enough to go to the High School, but it's slow work. I
+can do but little myself, and it all falls upon Harold.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I like it, grandma. I like to work for you and Jerry,
+and I have almost twenty dollars saved,' Harold said, 'and in a
+year or two I can go away to school, and work somewhere for
+my board. Lots of boys do that.'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur was hitching his pony to the fence, while a new idea
+was dawning in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>'Fifty cents a day,' he said to himself, 'and he has twenty
+dollars saved, and thinks himself rich. Why, I've spent more
+than that on one bottle of wine, and here is this boy, Amy's
+son, wanting an education, and working to support his grandmother
+like a common laborer. I believe I <i>am</i> crazy.'</p>
+
+<p>He was in the cottage by this time&mdash;in the clean, cool
+kitchen where the supper table was laid with its plain fair,
+most unlike the costly viands which daily loaded his board.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't wait for me, Harold must be hungry,' he said, adding
+quickly: 'Or stay, if you will permit me, I will take a cup of
+tea with you. The drive has given me an appetite, and your
+tea smells very inviting.'</p>
+
+<p>It was a great honor to have Arthur Tracy at her table, and
+Mrs. Crawford felt it as such, and was very sorry, too, that she
+had nothing better to offer him than bread and butter and radishes,
+with milk, and a dish of cold beans, and chopped beets,
+and a piece of apple pie saved for Harold from dinner. But she
+made him welcome, and Jerry, delighted to return the hospitality
+she had received, brought him a clean plate and cup and
+saucer, and asked if she might get the best sugar-bowl and the
+white sugar. Then, remembering the beautiful flowers which
+had adorned the table at Tracy Park, she ran out and gathering
+a bunch of June pinks, put them in a little glass by his plate.</p>
+
+<p>When all was ready and they had taken their seats at the
+table, Mrs. Crawford closed her eyes reverently and asked the
+accustomed blessing which in that house preceded every meal.
+Jerry's amen was a good deal louder and more emphatic than
+usual, while she nodded her head to Arthur, with an expression
+which he understood to mean, 'You know now what you
+ought to say, instead of that long prayer,' and he nodded back
+that he did so understand it.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur enjoyed the supper immensely, or pretended that he
+did. He ate three slices of bread and butter; he drank three
+cups of tea; he even tried the beans and the beets, but declined
+the radishes, which, he said, would give him the nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>When supper was over and the table cleared away, he still
+showed no signs of going, but asking Mrs. Crawford to take a
+seat near him, he plunged at once into the business which had
+brought him there, and which, since he had seen Harold in his
+working-dress and heard what he was trying to do, had grown
+to be of a two-fold nature. He was very lonely, he said, and
+all the elegance and luxuriousness of his handsome house failed
+to give him pleasure or to make him forget the past. He
+wanted some one to love who would love him in return, and the
+little taste he had had of Jerry's society had made him wish for
+more, and he must have her with him a part at least of every
+day.</p>
+
+<p>'In short,' he said, 'I should like to undertake her education
+myself until she is older, when I shall see that she has the
+proper finishing. She tells me she hates the district school,
+with Bill Peterkin and his warts&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Trying to kiss me,' Jerry interrupted, as open-eyed and open-mouthed,
+she stood, with her hand on his shoulder, listening to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, trying to kiss you, though I do not blame him much for
+that,' Arthur said, with a smile, and then continued: 'She is
+ambitious enough to want a governess like Ann Eliza Peterkin
+and my brother's daughter, but I am better than a dozen
+governesses. I can teach her all the rudiments of an English
+education, with French and German, and Latin, too, if she
+likes; and my plan is, that she come to me every day except Saturdays
+and Sundays&mdash;come at ten in the morning, get her
+lessons and her lunch with me, and return home at four in the
+afternoon. Would you like it, Cherry?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh-h-oh!' was all the answer Jerry could make for a
+moment, but her cheeks were scarlet, and tears of joy stood in
+her eyes, until she glanced at Harold; then all the brightness
+faded from her face, for how could she accept this great good
+and leave him to drudge and toil alone?</p>
+
+<p>'What is it, Cherry?' Mr. Tracy asked; and, with a half
+sob, she replied:</p>
+
+<p>'I can't go without Harold. If I get learning, he must get
+learning, too,' and leaving Arthur, the crossed over to the boy,
+and putting her arm around him, looked up at him with a look
+which in after years he would have given half his life to win.</p>
+
+<p>She was a little girl now and did not care if he did know
+how much she loved him, and that for him she would sacrifice
+everything. But in this case the sacrifice was not required, for
+Arthur hastened to say:</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not forget Harold. I have something better in store
+for him than reciting his lessons to me. When the High
+School opens in September, he is going there, and if he does
+well he shall go to Andover in time, and perhaps to Harvard.
+It will all depend upon himself, and how he improves his
+opportunities. What! crying? Don't you like it?' Arthur
+asked, as he saw the great tears gathering in Harold's eyes and
+rolling down his cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, oh, yes; but it don't seem real, and&mdash;and&mdash;I guess it
+makes me kind of sick,' Harold gasped, as, freeing himself from
+Jerry's encircling arm, he hurried from the room, to think over
+this great and unexpected joy which had come so suddenly to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>With his naturally refined tastes and instincts the dirty
+furnace work had not been pleasant to him, and he had shrunk
+with inexpressible loathing from the swill cart and the other
+menial duties he had been obliged to perform for the sake of
+those he loved. How to get an education was the problem he
+was earnestly trying to solve, and lo! it was now solved for
+him. For a moment the suddenness of the thing overcame
+him, and he sat down upon a table in the yard, faint and bewildered,
+while Arthur made his plan clear to Mrs. Crawford,
+saying that what he meant to do was partly for Jerry's sake
+and partly for the sake of the young girl who had been his
+early love.</p>
+
+<p>'I always intended to take care of you,' he said; 'but things
+go from my mind, and I forget the past as completely as if it
+had never been. But this will stay by me, for I shall have Cherry
+as a reminder, and if I am in danger of forgetting she
+will jog my memory.'</p>
+
+<p>Fur a moment Mrs. Crawford could not speak, so great was
+her surprise and joy that the good she had thought unattainable
+was to be Harold's at last. And yet something in her
+proud, sensitive nature rebelled against receiving so much from
+a stranger, even if that stranger were Arthur Tracy. It seemed
+like charity, she said, when at last she spoke at all. But
+Arthur overruled her with that persuasive way he had of converting
+people to his views; and when at last he left the cottage
+it was with the understanding that Jerry should commence her
+lessons with him the first week in September, and that Harold
+should enter the High School in Shannondale when it opened
+in the autumn.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX" ></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE WORKING OF ARTHUR'S PLAN.</h2>
+
+
+<p>As Arthur was wholly uncommunicative with regard to
+his affairs, and as Mrs. Crawford kept her own counsel,
+and bade Harold and Jerry do the same, the
+Tracys knew nothing whatever of the plan until the September
+morning when Jerry presented herself at the park house, and
+was met in the door-way by Mrs. Frank, who was just going
+out. Very few could have resisted the bright little face, so full
+of childish happiness, or the clear, assured voice, which said so
+cheerily:</p>
+
+<p>'Good-morning, Mrs. Tracy. I'm come to school.'</p>
+
+<p>But, prejudiced as she was against the girl, Mrs. Tracy
+could resist any thing, and she answered, haughtily;</p>
+
+<p>'Come to school! What do you mean? This is not a
+school-house, and if you have any errand here, go round to the
+other door. Only company come in here.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I'm company. I'm going to get learning; he told me
+to come,' Jerry answered, flushed and eager, and altogether
+sure of her right to be there.</p>
+
+<p>Before Mrs. Frank could reply, a voice, distinct and authoritative,
+and to which she always yielded, called from the top
+of the stairway inside:</p>
+
+<p>'Mrs. Tracy, if that is Jerry to whom you are talking, send
+her up at once. I am waiting for her.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerry did not mean the nod she gave the lady as she passed
+her to be disrespectful, but Mrs. Frank felt it as such, and went
+to her own room in a most perturbed state of mind, for which
+she could find no vent until her husband came in, when she
+stated the case to him, and asked if he knew what it meant.</p>
+
+<p>But Frank was as ignorant as herself, and could not enlighten
+her until that night, after he had seen his brother, and
+heard from him what he was intending to do.</p>
+
+<p>'God bless you, Arthur. You don't know how happy you
+have made me,' Frank said, feeling on the instant that a great
+burden was lifted from his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry was to be educated and cared for, and would probably
+receive all that the world would naturally concede to her if the
+truth were known. He believed, or thought he did, that Gretchen
+had never been his brother's wife, though to believe so
+seemed an insult to the original of the sweet face which looked
+at him from the window every time he entered his brother's
+room. Jerry was a great trouble to him, and he would not
+have liked to confess to any one how constantly she was in his
+mind, or how many plans he had devised in order to atone for
+the wrong he knew he was doing her. And now his brother
+had taken her off his hands, and she was to be cared for and
+receive the education which would fit her to earn her own livelihood,
+and make her future life respectable. No particular
+harm was done her after all, and he might now enjoy himself,
+and cast his morbid fancies to the winds, he reflected, as he
+went whistling to his wife's apartment, and told her what he
+had heard.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Dolly was speechless with astonishment, and
+when at last she opened her lips, her husband silenced her with
+that voice and manner of which she was beginning to be afraid.</p>
+
+<p>It was none of their business, he said, what Arthur did in his
+own house, provided they were not molested, and if he chose
+to turn schoolmaster, he had a right to do so. For his part,
+he was glad of it, as it saved him the expense of Jerry's education,
+for if Arthur had not taken it in hand, he should; and
+Dolly was to keep quiet and let the child come and go in
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>After delivering himself of these sentiments, Frank went
+away, leaving his wife to wonder, as she had done more than
+once, if he, too, were not a little crazy, like his brother. But,
+she said no mare about Jerry's coming there, except to suggest
+that she might at least come in at the side door instead of the
+front, especially on muddy days when she was liable to soil the
+costly carpets. And Jerry, who cared but little how she
+entered the house, if she only got in, came through the kitchen
+after the second day, and wiped her feet upon the mat; and
+once, when her shoes were worse than usual, took them off, lest
+they should leave a track.</p>
+
+<p>It is not our intention to linger over the first few months of
+Jerry's school days at Tracy Park, but rather to hasten on to
+the summer four years after her introduction to Tracy Park as
+Arthur's pupil. During all that time he had never once seemed
+to grow weary of the task he had imposed upon himself, but,
+on the contrary, his interest had daily deepened in the child
+who developed so rapidly under his training that he sometimes
+looked at her in astonishment, marvelling more and more who
+she was and from whom she had inherited her wonderful
+memory and power to grasp points which are usually far beyond
+the comprehension of a child of ten, or even twelve, and which
+Maude Tracy could no more have mastered than her brother,
+the stupid Jack. His intellect had not grown with his body,
+and when at thirteen he was asked the question, 'If there are
+five peaches on the table, and Tom eats three of them, how
+many will there be left?' he answered, promptly:</p>
+
+<p>'None, 'cause Tom would eat them all.'</p>
+
+<p>In this reply there was a shrewdness which poor Jack never
+intended, and the laugh which followed his answer confused
+and bewildered him. There was a tutor now at Tracy Park
+for Jack, but Maude had been transferred to Arthur's care.
+This was wholly due to Jerry, who alone could have induced
+him to let Maude share her instruction. Arthur did not care
+for Maude. She was dull, he said, and would never learn her
+lessons. But Jerry coaxed so hard that Arthur consented at
+last, and when Jerry had been with him about three years,
+Maude became his pupil, and that of Jerry as well, for nearly
+every day when the lessons were over the two little girls might
+have been seen sitting together under the trees in the park, or
+in some corner of the house, Maude puzzled, and perplexed,
+and worried, and Jerry anxious, decided, and peremptory, as
+she went over and over again with what was so clear to her
+and so hazy to her friend.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, dear me, suz, what does ail you?' she said, one day,
+with a stamp of her foot, after she had tried in vain to make
+Maude see through a simple sum in long division. 'Can't you
+remember first to divide, second multiply, third subtract, and
+fourth bring down?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I can't. I can't remember anything, and if I could,
+how do I know what to divide or what to bring down? I am
+stupid, and shall never know anything,' was Maude's sobbing
+reply, as she covered her face with her slate.</p>
+
+<p>Maude's tears always moved Jerry, who tried to reassure the
+weeping girl with the assurance that perhaps, if she tried very
+hard, she might some time know enough to teach a district
+school. This was the height of Jerry's ambition, to teach a
+district school and board around; but Maude's aspirations
+were different. She was rich. She was to be a belle and wear
+diamonds and satins like her mother; and so it did not matter
+so much whether she understood long division or not, though
+it did hurt her a little to be so far outstripped by Jerry, who
+was younger than herself.</p>
+
+<p>To Arthur, Jerry was a constant delight and surprise, and
+nothing astonished or pleased him more than the avidity with
+which she took up German. This language was like play to
+her, and by the time she was ten years old she spoke, and read,
+and wrote it almost as well as Arthur himself.</p>
+
+<p>'It takes me back somewhere, I can't tell where,' she said
+to him; 'and I seem to be somebody else than Jerry Crawford,
+and I hear music and see people, and a pale face is close
+to me, and I get all confused trying to remember things which
+come and go.'</p>
+
+<p>Only once after her first day at the park had she enacted
+the pantomime of the sick woman and the nurse, and then she
+had done it at Arthur's request. But it was not quite as thrilling
+as at first; the <i>him</i> for whom the dying woman had
+prayed was omitted, and the whole was mixed with the Tramp
+House, and the carpet-bag, and Harold, who was now a youth
+of seventeen, and a student at the high school in Shannondale,
+where he was making as rapid progress in his studies as Jerry
+was at the park.</p>
+
+<p>But Harold's life was not as serene and happy as Jerry's,
+for it was not pleasant for him to hear, as he often did, that
+he was a charity student, supported by Arthur Tracy. Such
+remarks were very galling to the high-spirited boy, and he was
+constantly revolving all manner of schemes by which he could
+earn money and cease to be dependent. All through the summer
+vacations, which were long ones, he worked at whatever
+he could find to do, sometimes in people's gardens, sometimes
+on their lawns, but oftener in the hay-fields, where he earned
+the most. Here Jerry was not infrequently his companion.
+She liked to rake hay, she said; it came natural to her, and
+she had no doubt she inherited the taste from her mother, who
+had probably worked in the fields in Germany.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, when Jerry knew that Harold was busy in
+one of Mr. Tracy's meadows, she started to join him, for he had
+complained of a headache at home, and had expressed a fear
+that he might not be able to finish the task he had imposed
+upon himself. The road to the field was by the Tramp House,
+which looked so cool and quiet, with its thick covering of
+woodbine and ivy over it, that Jerry turned aside for a moment
+to look into the room which had so great a fascination
+for her, and where she spent so much time. Indeed, she seldom
+passed near it without going in for a moment and standing by
+the old table which had once held her and her dead mother.
+Things came back to her there, she said, and she could almost
+give a name to the pale-faced woman who haunted her so
+often.</p>
+
+<p>As she entered the damp, dark place now, she started, with
+an exclamation of surprise, which was echoed by another, as
+Frank Tracy sprang up and confronted her. It was not often
+that he entered the Tramp House, and he would not have confessed
+to any one his superstitious dread of it, or that, when
+he did visit it, he always had a feeling that the dead woman
+found there years ago would start up to accuse him of his deceit
+and hypocrisy. Could he have had his way he would have
+pulled the building down, but it was not his, and when he
+suggested it to Arthur, as he sometimes did, the latter opposed
+it, saying latterly, since Jerry had been so much to him:</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, Frank; let it stand. I like it, because but for it
+Jerry might have perished with her mother, and I should not
+have had her with me.'</p>
+
+<p>So the Tramp House stood, and grew damper and mustier
+each year, as the moss and ivy gathered on the walls outside,
+and the dust and cobwebs gathered on the walls within.
+These, however, Jerry was careful to brush away, for she had
+a play house in one corner, and a little work-bench and chair,
+and she often sat there alone and talked to herself, and the
+woman dead so long ago, and to others whose faces were dim
+and shadowy, but whom she had felt sure she had known.
+Very frequently she went through the process of cleaning up,
+as she called it, and her object in stopping there now was, in
+part, to see if it did not need her care again.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Mr. Tracy! are you here! How you scared me? I
+thought it was a tramp!' she said, as he came toward her.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you come here often?' he asked, as he offered her his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, pretty often. I like it, because mother died here, and
+sometimes I feel as if she would make it known to me here
+who she was. I talk to her and ask her to tell me, but she
+never has. Oh, don't you wish she would?'</p>
+
+<p>Frank shuddered involuntarily, for to have Jerry told who
+she really was, was the last thing he could desire, but as a
+criminal is said always to talk about the crime he has committed
+and is hiding, so Frank, when with Jerry, felt impelled
+to talk with her of the past and what she could remember of
+it. Seating himself upon the bench with her at his side, he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>'And you really believe the woman found here was your
+mother?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, yes. Don't you? Who was my mother, if she
+wasn't?' and Jerry's eyes opened wide as he looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know, I am sure. Does my brother talk of
+Gretchen now?' was the abrupt reply.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, at times,' Jerry answered: 'and yesterday, after I
+sang him a little German song, which he taught me, he had
+them pretty bad&mdash;the bees in his head, I mean: that is what
+he calls it when things are mixed; and he says he is going to
+write to her, or her friends.'</p>
+
+<p>'Write to her! I thought he had given that up. I thought
+he&mdash;Did he say, &quot;Write to her friends?&quot;' Frank gasped as
+he felt himself grow cold and sick with this threatened danger.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur had seemed so quiet and happy with Jerry, and had
+said so little of Gretchen, that Frank had grown quite easy in
+his mind, and the black shadow of fear did not trouble him
+quite so much as formerly. But now it was over him again,
+and grew in intensity as he questioned the child.</p>
+
+<p>'Have you ever tried to find out who Gretchen is?' he
+asked at last.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' she replied, 'but I guess she is his wife.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Frank said, falteringly, 'his wife; and where do you
+think she lived?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I know that. In Wiesbaden. He told me so once,
+and it seems as if I had been there, too, when he talked about
+it, and I hear the music and see the flowers, and a white-faced
+woman is with me, not at all like mother, who, they say, was
+ugly and dark; black as a nigger, Tom told me once, when he
+was mad. Was she black?'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Tracy made no reply to this, but said, suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>'Jerry, do you like me well enough to do me a favor, a great
+favor?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, yes, I guess I do. I like you very much, though
+not as well as I do Harold and Mr. Arthur. What do you
+want?' was Jerry's answer.</p>
+
+<p>After hesitating a moment, Mr. Tracy began:</p>
+
+<p>'There are certain reasons why I ought to know if my brother
+writes to Gretchen, or her friends, or any one in Germany,
+especially Wiesbaden. A letter of that kind might do me a
+great deal of harm; if he should write to any one in Germany,
+you would, perhaps, he asked to post the letter, as he never
+goes to town?'</p>
+
+<p>He said this interrogatively, and Jerry answered him
+promptly:</p>
+
+<p>'I think he would give it to me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, well; Jerry, can you keep a secret, and never tell any
+one what I am saying to you?' was Frank's next remark, to
+which Jerry responded:</p>
+
+<p>'I think I should tell Harold, and, perhaps, Mr. Arthur.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, no, Jerry, never!' and Frank laid his hand half
+menacingly upon the little girl's shoulder. 'I have been kind
+to you, have paid your board to Mrs. Crawford ever since you
+have been there&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>He felt how mean it was to say this, and do not at all resent
+Jerry's quick reply:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but Mrs. Peterkin says you do not pay enough.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps not,' he continued, 'but if Mrs. Crawford is satisfied,
+it matters little what Mrs. Peterkin thinks. Jerry, you
+<i>must</i> do this for me,' he went on rapidly, as his fears kept growing.
+'You must never tell anyone of our conversation, and if
+my brother writes that letter soon, or at any time, you must
+bring it to me. Will you do it? Great harm would come if it
+were sent&mdash;harm to me, and harm to Maude, and&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'To Maude!' Jerry replied. 'I would do anything for
+Maude. Yes, I will bring the letter to you if he writes one.
+You are sure it would be right for me to do so?'</p>
+
+<p>Frank had touched the right cord when he mentioned his
+daughter's name, for during these years of close companionship
+the two little girls had learned to love each other devotedly,
+though naturally Jerry's was the stronger and less selfish attachment
+of the two. To her Maude was a queen who had a
+right to tyrannize over and command her if she pleased; and
+as the tyranny was never very severe, and was usually followed
+by some generous act of contrition, she did not mind it at all,
+and was always ready to make up and be friends whenever it
+suited the capricious little lady.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I will do it for Maude,' she said again; but there was
+a troubled look on her face, and a feeling in her heart as if, in
+some way, she was false to Arthur in thus consenting to his
+brother's wishes.</p>
+
+<p>But, she reflected, Arthur was crazy, so people said, and she
+herself knew better than anyone else of his many fanciful vagaries,
+which, at times, took the form of actual insanity. For
+weeks he would seem perfectly rational, and then suddenly his
+mood would change, and he would talk strange things to himself
+and the child, who was now so necessary to him, and who
+alone had a soothing influence over him. Only the day before,
+as Jerry had told Frank, Arthur had been unusually excited,
+after listening to a simple air which he had taught to her, and
+which, at his request, she sang to him after Maude had gone
+out and left them alone.</p>
+
+<p>'I could swear you were Gretchen, singing to me in the twilight,
+and across the meadow comes the tinkle of the bells
+where the cows and goats are feeding,' he said to her, as he
+paced up and down the room.'</p>
+
+<p>Then, stopping suddenly, he went up to her, and pushing
+her soft, wavy hair from her forehead, looking long and earnestly
+into her face.</p>
+
+<p>'Cherry,' he said at last, using the pet name he often gave
+her, 'you <i>are</i> some like Gretchen as she must have been when
+of your age. Oh, if you only were hers and mine! But there
+was no child; and yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to be thinking intently for a moment, and then
+going to a drawer in his writing desk, which Jerry had never
+seen open before, he took out a worn, yellow letter, and ran his
+eye rapidly over it until he found a certain paragraph, which he
+bade Jerry read.</p>
+
+<p>The paragraph was as follows:</p>
+
+<p>'I have something to tell you when you come, which I am
+sure will make you as glad as I am.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerry read it aloud slowly, for the handwriting was cramped
+and irregular, and then looked up questioningly to Arthur, who
+said to her:</p>
+
+<p>'What do you think she meant by the something which
+would make me glad as she was?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know,' Jerry answered him. 'Who wrote it?
+Gretchen?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Gretchen; it is her last letter to me, and I never
+went back to see what she meant, for the bees were bad in my
+head and I forgot everything, even Gretchen herself. Poor
+little Gretchen! What was the idea which came to me like
+a flash of lightning, in regard to this letter, when I heard you
+sing? It is gone, and I cannot recall it.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a worried, anxious look on his face as he put the
+letter away, and went on talking to himself of Gretchen, saying
+he was going to write her again, or her friends, and find out
+what she meant.</p>
+
+<p>The next day Jerry met Frank in the Tramp House, as we
+have described, and gave him the promise to bring him any
+letter directed to Germany which Arthur might entrust to her.
+But the promise weighed heavily upon her as she walked slowly
+on towards the field where Harold was at work, and where she
+found him resting for a moment under the shadow of a wide-spreading
+butternut. He looked tired and pale, and there were
+great drops of sweat upon his white forehead, and an expression
+on his face which Jerry did not understand.</p>
+
+<p>Harold was not in a very happy frame of mind. Naturally
+cheerful and hopeful, it was not often that he gave way to fits
+of despondency, or repining at his humble lot, so different from
+that of the boys of his own age, with whom he came in daily
+contact, both at school and in the town.</p>
+
+<p>Dick St. Claire, his most intimate friend, always treated
+him as if he were fully his equal, and often stood between him
+and the remarks which boys made thoughtlessly, and which,
+while they mean so little, wound to the quick such sensitive
+natures as Harold's. But not even Dick St. Claire could keep
+Tom Tracy in check. With each succeeding year he grew more
+and more supercilious and unbearable, pluming himself upon
+his position as a Tracy of Tracy Park, and this wealth he was
+to inherit from his Uncle Arthur. For the last year he had been
+at Andover, where he had formed a new set of acquaintances,
+one of whom was spending the vacation with him. This was
+young Fred Raymond, whose home was at Red Stone Hall, in
+Kentucky, and whose parents were in Europe. Between the
+two youths there was but little similarity of taste or disposition,
+for young Raymond represented all that was noble and true,
+and though proud of his State and proud of his name, never
+assumed the slightest superiority over those whom the world
+considered his inferiors. He was Tom's room-mate, and hence
+the intimacy between them which had resulted in Fred's accepting
+the invitation to Tracy Park. If anything had been
+wanting to complete Tom's estimate of his own importance this
+visit of the Kentuckian would have done it. All his former
+friends were cut except Dick St. Claire, while Harold was as
+much ignored as if he had never existed. Tom did not even
+see him or recognize him with so much as a look, but passed
+him by as he would any common day laborer whom he might
+chance to meet. All through the summer days, while Harold
+was working until every bone in his body ached, Tom and his
+friend were enjoying themselves in hunting, fishing, driving,
+or rowing, or lounging under the trees in the shady lawns.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon when Jerry joined him in the hayfield, Tom
+and the Kentuckian had passed him in their fanciful hunting-suits
+with their dogs and guns, but though Harold was within a few
+yards of them, Tom affected not to see him, and kept his head
+turned the other way, as if intent upon some object in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>Leaning upon his rake, Harold watched them out of sight,
+with a choking sensation in his throat as he wondered if it
+would always be thus with him, and if the day would never
+come when he, too, could know what leisure meant, with
+no thought for the morrow's bread.</p>
+
+<p>'I am Tom's superior in everything but money, and yet he
+treats me like a dog,' he said, as he seated himself upon the
+grass, where he sat fanning himself with his straw hat.</p>
+
+<p>When Jerry appeared in view he brightened at once, for in
+all the world there was not anything half so sweet and lovely
+to him as the little blue-eyed girl who seated herself beside
+him, and, nestling close to him, laid her curly head upon his
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>'I've come to help you rake the hay,' she said, 'for grandma
+told me you had a headache at noon, and couldn't eat your
+huckleberry pie. I am awfully sorry, Harold, but I ate it myself,
+it looked so good, instead of saving it for your supper. It
+was nasty and mean in me, and I hope it will make me sick.'</p>
+
+<p>But Harold told her he did not care for the pie, and would
+rather that she would eat it if she liked it. Then he questioned
+her of the park house and of Arthur; asking if the bees were
+often in his head now, or had she driven them out.</p>
+
+<p>'No, I guess I haven't. They were awful yesterday and to-day,'
+Jerry replied. 'He was talking of Gretchen all the time.
+I wonder who she was. Sometimes I look at her until it seems
+to me I have seen her or something like her, a paler face with
+sadder eyes. How he must have loved her, better than you or
+I could ever love anybody; don't you think so?'</p>
+
+<p>Harold hesitated a moment, and then replied:</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know, but it seems to me I love you as much as a
+man could ever love another.'</p>
+
+<p>'Phoo! Of course you do; but that's boy love; that isn't
+like when you are old enough to have a beau!' and Jerry
+laughed merrily, as she sprang up, and, taking Harold's rake,
+began to toss the hay about rapidly, bidding him sit still and
+see how fast she could work in his place.</p>
+
+<p>Harold was very tired, and his head was aching badly, so
+for a time he sat still, watching the graceful movements of the
+beautiful child, who, it seemed to him, was slipping away from
+him. Constant intercourse with a polished man like Arthur
+Tracy had not been without its effect upon her, and there was
+about her an air which with strangers would have placed her
+at once above the ordinary level of simple country girls. This
+Harold had been the first to detect, and though he rejoiced at
+Jerry's good fortune, there was always with him a dread lest
+she should grow beyond him, and that he should lose the girl
+he loved so much.</p>
+
+<p>'What if she should think me a clown and a clodhopper, as
+Tom Tracy does?' he said to himself, as he watched her raking
+up the hay faster, and quite as well as he could have done
+himself. 'I believe I should want to die.'</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible that Jerry should have guessed the nature
+of Harold's thoughts, but once, as she passed near him, she
+dropped her rake, and going up to him, wiped his forehead
+with her apron, and, kissing him fondly, said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'Poor, tired boy, is your head awful? You look as if you
+wanted to vomit? Do you?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, Jerry,' Harold answered, laughingly. 'I am not as
+bad as that. I was only thinking and wishing that I were
+rich and could sometime give you and grandma a home as
+handsome as Tracy Park. How would you like it?'</p>
+
+<p>'First-rate, if you were there,' Jerry replied; 'but if you
+were not I shouldn't like it at all. I never mean to live anywhere
+without you; because, you know, I am your little girl,
+the one you found in the carpet-bag, and I love you more than
+all the world, and will love and stand by you forever and
+ever, amen!'</p>
+
+<p>She said the last so abruptly, and it sounded so oddly, that
+Harold burst into a laugh, and taking up the rake she had
+dropped, began his work again, declaring that the headache
+was gone, and that he was a great deal better.</p>
+
+<p>'Forever and ever, amen!' The words kept repeating themselves
+over and over in Harold's mind as he walked homeward
+in the gathering twilight with Jerry hip-pi-ty-hopping at
+his side, her hand in his, and her tongue running rapidly, as
+it usually did when with him.</p>
+
+<p>She would 'love and stand by him forever and ever, amen!'
+It was a singular remark for a child, and in after years, when
+his sky was the blackest, the words would come back to the
+man Harold like so many stabs as he whispered in his anguish:</p>
+
+<p>'She has forgotten her promise to &quot;stand by me forever and
+ever, amen!&quot;'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI" ></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+<h2>MRS. TRACY'S DIAMONDS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Tracy was going to have a party&mdash;not a general
+one, like that which she gave when our readers first
+knew her, and Harold Hastings stood at the head of
+the stairs and bade 'the ladies go this way and the gentlemen
+that.' Since Dolly had become so exclusive and a leader of
+fashion, she had ignored general parties and limited her invitations
+to a select few, which, on this occasion, numbered about
+sixty or seventy. But the entertainment was prepared as elaborately
+as if hundreds had been expected, and the hostess was
+radiant in satin and lace, and diamonds, as she received her
+guests and did the honors of the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>The September night was soft and warm, and the grounds
+were lighted up, while quite a crowd collected near the house
+to hear the music and watch the proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Tracy would have liked to have had Jerry in the upper
+hall, where Harold had once stood.</p>
+
+<p>'It would help to keep the child in her place,' she thought,
+'for she is getting to feel herself of quite too much consequence,
+with so much attention from Arthur.'</p>
+
+<p>But her husband promptly vetoed the proposition, saying
+that when Jerry Crawford came to the park house to an entertainment
+it would be as a guest, and not as a waiter. So a
+colored boy stood in the upper hall, and a colored boy stood
+in the lower hall, and there were colored waiters everywhere,
+and Dolly had never been happier or prouder in her life: for
+Governor Markham and his wife, from Iowa, were there, and
+a judge's wife from Springfield&mdash;all guests of Grace Atherton,
+and, in consequence, bidden to the party.</p>
+
+<p>Another remarkable feature of the evening was the presence
+of Arthur in the parlors. He had known both Governor
+Markham and his wife, Ethelyn Grant, and had been present
+at their wedding, and it was mostly on their account that he
+had consented to join in the festivities. Jerry, it is true, had
+done a great deal toward persuading him to go down, repeating,
+in her own peculiar way, what she had heard people say
+with regard to his seclusion from society.</p>
+
+<p>'You just make a hermit of yourself,' she said, 'cooped up
+here all the time. I don't wonder folks say you are crazy. It
+is enough to make anybody crazy, to stay in one or two rooms
+and see nobody but Charles and me. Just dress yourself in
+your best clothes and go down and be somebody, and don't
+talk of Gretchen all the time! I am tired of it, and so is everybody.
+Give her a rest for one evening, and show the people
+how nice you can be if you only have a mind to.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerry delivered this speech with her hands on her hips, and
+with all the air of a woman of fifty; while Arthur laughed
+immoderately, and promised her to do his best not to disgrace
+her, and to appear as if he were not crazy.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry's anxiety was somewhat like that of a mother for a
+child whose ability she doubts; and, after her supper was over
+she took her way to the park house to see that Arthur was
+dressed properly for the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>'It would be like him to go without his neck-tie and wear
+his every-day boots,' she thought.</p>
+
+<p>But she found him as faultlessly gotten up as he well could
+be in his old-fashioned evening dress, which sat rather loosely
+upon him, for he had grown thinner with each succeeding year.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry thought him splendid, and watched him admiringly as
+if he left the room and started for the parlors, with her last
+injunction ringing in her ears:</p>
+
+<p>'Not a word out of your head about Gretchen, but try and
+act as if you were not crazy.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'll do it, Cherry. Don't you worry,' he said to her, with a
+little reassuring nod, as he descended the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>And he kept his promise well. There was no word out of
+his head about Gretchen, and no one ignorant of the fact would
+ever have suspected that his mind was unsettled as he moved
+among the guests, talking to one another with that pleasant,
+courtly manner so natural to him. A very close observer,
+however, might have seen his eyes dilate and even flash with
+some sudden emotion when his brother's wife passed him and
+her brilliant diamonds, his gift, sparkled in the bright gaslight.
+The setting was rather peculiar, but Mrs. Tracy liked it for the
+peculiarity, and had never had it changed. She was very proud
+of her diamonds, they were so large and clear, and she had the
+satisfaction of knowing that there were no finer, if as fine, in
+town. She seemed to know, too, just in what light to place
+herself in order to show them to the best advantage, and at
+times the gleams of fire from them were wonderful, and once
+Arthur put his hand before his eyes as she passed him, and muttering
+something to himself moved quickly to another part of
+the room. This was late in the evening, and soon after he
+excused himself to those around him, saying it was not often
+that he dissipated like this, and as he was growing tired he must
+say good-night.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Charles found him looking very pale and
+worn, with a bad pain in his head. He had rested badly, he
+said, and would have his coffee in bed, after which Charles was
+to leave him alone and not come back until he rang for him, as
+he might possibly fall asleep.</p>
+
+<p>It was very late that morning when the family breakfasted,
+and as they lingered around the table, discussing the events of
+the previous night, it was after eleven o'clock when at last Mrs.
+Tracy went up to her room.</p>
+
+<p>As she ascended the stairs to the upper hall, she caught a
+glimpse of Harold disappearing through a door at the lower end
+of the hall, evidently with the intention of going down the back
+stairway and making his exit from the house by the rear door,
+rather than the front. Mrs. Tracy knew that he was sometimes
+sent by his grandmother on some errand to Arthur, and giving
+no further thought to the matter went on to her own room,
+which her maid had put in order. All the paraphernalia of
+last night's toilet were put away, diamonds and all. Contrary
+to her usual custom, for she was very careful of her diamonds,
+and very much afraid they would be stolen, she had left them
+in their box on her dressing bureau. But they were not there
+now. Sarah, who knew where she kept them, had put them
+away, of course, and she gave them no more thought until three
+days later, when she received an invitation to a lunch party at
+Brier Hill.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall wear my dark blue satin and diamonds,' she said to
+her maid, who was dressing her hair, but the diamonds, when
+looked for, were not in their usual place.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah had not put them away, nor in fact had she seen them
+at all, for they were not upon the bureau when she went to arrange
+her mistress' room the morning after the party. The
+diamonds were gone, nor could any amount of searching bring
+them to light. And they looked everywhere, in every box and
+drawer and corner, and Mrs. Tracy grew cold and sick and faint,
+and finally broke down in a fit of crying, as she explained to
+her husband that her beautiful diamonds were stolen. She
+called it that, now, and the whole household was roused and
+questioned as to when and where each had last seen the missing
+jewels. But no one had seen them since they were in the lady's
+ears, and she knew she had left them upon her bureau when
+she went down to breakfast. She was positive of that. No
+one had been in the room, or that part of the house, except
+Tom, Fred Raymond, Charles and Sarah. Of these the first two
+were not to be thought of for a moment, while the last two had
+been in the family for years, and were above suspicion. Clearly,
+then, it was some one from outside, who had watched his or her
+portunity and come in.</p>
+
+<p>Had any one been seen about the house at that hour? Yes,
+Charles remembered having met Harold Hastings coming out
+of the rear door; 'but,' he added, 'I would sooner suspect myself
+than him.'</p>
+
+<p>And this was the verdict of all except Mrs. Tracy, who now
+recalled the fact that she, too, had seen Harold 'sneaking
+through the door as if he did not wish to be seen.'</p>
+
+<p>That was the way she expressed herself, and her manner had
+in it more meaning even than her words.</p>
+
+<p>'What was Harold doing in the house? What was his errand?
+Does any one know?' she asked, but no one volunteered
+any information until Charles suggested that he probably
+came on some errand to Mr. Arthur; he would inquire, he said,
+and he went at once to his master's room.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur was sitting by his writing-desk, busy with a letter,
+and did not turn, his head when Charles asked if he remembered
+whether Harold Hastings had been to his room the
+morning after the party.</p>
+
+<p>'No, I have not seen him for more than a week,' was the
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>'But he must have been here that morning,' Charles continued.
+'Try and think.'</p>
+
+<p>'I tell you no one was here. I am not quite demented yet.
+Now go. Don't you see you are interrupting me?' was Arthur's
+rather savage response, and without having gained any satisfactory
+information Charles returned to the group anxiously
+awaiting him:</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Well</i>?' was Mrs. Tracy's sharp interrogatory, to which
+Charles responded:</p>
+
+<p>'He does not remember what happened that morning; but
+that is not strange. He was very tired and unusually excited
+after the party, and when he is that way he does not remember
+anything. Harold might have been there a dozen times and
+he would forget it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bring the boy, then. He will know what he was doing
+here,' was Mrs. Tracy's next peremptory remark, and her husband
+said to her, reproachfully:</p>
+
+<p>'Surely you do not intend to charge him with the theft?'</p>
+
+<p>'I charge no one with the theft until it is proven on him;
+but I must see the boy and know what he was doing here. I
+never liked this free running in and out of those people in the
+lane. I always knew something would come of it,' Mrs. Tracy
+said, and Charles was despatched for Harold.</p>
+
+<p>He found him mowing the lawn for a gentleman whose premises
+joined Tracy Park, and without any explanation told him
+that he was wanted immediately at the park house.</p>
+
+<p>'But it is noon,' Harold said, glancing up at the sun. 'And
+there is Jerry coming to call me to dinner.'</p>
+
+<p>'No; better come at once. Jerry can go with you, if she
+likes,' Charles said, feeling intuitively that in the little girl
+Harold would find a champion.</p>
+
+<p>Harold left his lawn mower, and explaining to Jerry, who
+had come up to him, that he had been summoned to the park
+house, whither she could accompany him if she chose, he started
+with her and Charles, whom he questioned as to what was
+wanted with him.</p>
+
+<p>'Were you in the park house the morning after the party?
+That would be Wednesday,' Charles asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I went to see Mr. Arthur Tracy, but could get no answer
+to my knock,' Harold promptly replied, while his face
+flushed scarlet, and he seemed annoyed at something.
+He could not explain to Charles his motive in going to see
+Arthur, as, now that the first burst of indignation was over, he
+felt half ashamed of it himself. On the afternoon of the day
+of the party he had been at Grassy Spring, helping Mrs. St.
+Claire with her flowers, and after his work was done he had
+gone with Dick into the billiard-room, where they found Tom
+Tracy and his friend, young Raymond. They had come over
+for a game, and the four boys were soon busily engaged in the
+contest. Harold, who had often played with Dick and was
+something of an expert, proved himself the most skilful of them
+all, greatly to the chagrin of Tom, who had not recognized
+him even by a nod. Dick, on the contrary, had introduced him
+to Fred Raymond with as much ceremony as if he had been the
+Governor's son, instead of the boy who sometimes worked in
+his mother's flower garden. And the Kentuckian had taken
+him by the hand and greeted him cordially, with a familiar:</p>
+
+<p>'How d'ye do, Hastings? Glad to make your acquaintance'</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing snobbish about Fred Raymond, whose
+every instinct was gentlemanly and kind, and Harold felt at
+ease with him at once, and all through the game appeared at
+his best, and quite as well bred as either of his companions.</p>
+
+<p>When the play was over Dick excused himself a moment,
+as he wished to speak with his father, who was about driving
+to town. As he stayed away longer than he had intended doing,
+Tom grew restless and angry, too, that Fred should treat
+Harold Hastings as an equal, for the two had at once entered
+into conversation, comparing notes with regard to their standing
+in school and discussing the merits of Cicero and Virgil,
+the latter of which Harold had just commenced.</p>
+
+<p>'We can't wait here all day for Dick,' Tom said. 'Let us
+go out and look at the pictures.'</p>
+
+<p>So they went down the stairs to a long hall, in which many
+pictures were hanging&mdash;some family portraits and others, copies
+of the old masters which Mr. St. Claire had brought from
+abroad. Near one of the portraits Fred lingered a long time,
+commenting upon its beauty, and the resemblance he saw in it
+to little Nina St. Claire, the daughter of the house, and whose
+aunt the original had been. The portrait was not far from the
+stairway which led to the billiard-room, and Harold, who had
+remained behind, and was listlessly knocking the balls, could
+not help hearing all they said:</p>
+
+<p>'By the way, who is that Hastings? I don't think I have
+seen him before; he is a right clever chap,' Fred Raymond said.</p>
+
+<p>Tom replied, in that sneering, contemptuous tone which
+Harold knew so well, and which always made his blood boil
+and his fingers tingle with a desire to knock the speaker
+down:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, that's Hal Hastings, a poor boy, who does chores for us
+and the St. Claires. His grandmother used to work at the
+park house, and so uncle Arthur pays for his schooling, and
+Hal allows it, which I think right small in him. I wouldn't be
+a charity student, anyway, if I never knew anything. Besides
+that, what's the use of education to chaps like him. Better stay
+as he was born. I don't believe in educating the masses, do
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>Of himself Tom could never have thought of all this, but he
+had heard it from his mother, who frequently used the expression
+'not to elevate the masses,' forgetting that she was
+once herself a part of the mass which she would now keep
+down.</p>
+
+<p>Just what Fred said in reply Harold did not hear. There
+was a ringing in his ears, and he felt as if every drop of blood
+in his body was rushing to his head as he sat down, dizzy and
+bewildered, and smarting cruelly under the wound he had received
+this time. He had more than once been taunted with
+his poverty and dependence upon Mr. Tracy, but the taunts
+had never hurt him so before, and he could have cried out in
+his pain as he thought of Tom's words, and knew that in himself
+there was the making of a far nobler manhood than Tom
+Tracy would ever know.</p>
+
+<p>Was poverty, which one could not help, so terrible a disgrace,
+an insuperable barrier to elevation, and was it mean and
+small in him to accept his education from a man on whom he
+had no claim? Possibly; and if so, the state of things should
+not continue. He would go to Arthur Tracy, thank him for all
+he had done, and tell him he could receive no more from him;
+that if he had an education, he must get it himself by the work
+of his own hands, and thus be beholden to no one.</p>
+
+<p>Full of this resolution, he went down the stairs and out into
+the open air, which cooled his hot head a little, though it was
+still throbbing terribly as he went through the leafy woods toward
+home.</p>
+
+<p>In the lane he saw Jerry coming toward him, with her sun-bonnet
+hanging down her back and her soft, curly hair blowing
+around her forehead. The moment she saw him she knew
+something was the matter, and, hastening her steps to run,
+asked him what had happened, and why he looked so white
+and mad.</p>
+
+<p>Harold was sure of sympathy from Jerry, and he told her
+his story, which roused her to a high pitch of indignation.</p>
+
+<p>'The miserable, nasty, sneaking Tom!' she said, stopping
+short and emphasizing each adjective with a stamp of her foot
+as if she were trampling upon the offending Tom. 'I wish I
+had heard him. I'd have scratched his eyes out! talking
+of you as if you were dirt! I hate him, and I told him so the
+other day, and spit at him when he tried to kiss me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Kiss you! Tom Tracy kiss you!' Harold exclaimed, forgetting
+his own grief in this insult to Jerry; for it seemed to
+him little less than profanity for lips like Tom Tracy's to touch
+his little Jerry.</p>
+
+<p>'No, he didn't, but he tried, right before that boy from Kentucky;
+but I wriggled away from him, and bit him, too, and
+he called me a cat, and said he guessed I wouldn't mind if <i>you</i>
+or Dick St. Claire tried to kiss me, and I shouldn't; but I'll
+fight <i>him</i> and Bill Peterkin every time. I wonder why all the
+boys want to kiss me so much!'</p>
+
+<p>'I expect it is because you have just the sweetest mouth in
+the world,' Harold said, stooping down and kissing the lips
+which seemed made for that use alone.</p>
+
+<p>This little episode had helped somewhat to quiet Harold's
+state of mind, but did not change his resolve to speak to Mr.
+Tracy, and tell him that he could not receive any more favors
+from his hands. He would, however, wait until to-morrow, as
+Jerry bade him to.</p>
+
+<p>'You will worry him so that he will be crazier than a loon
+at the party,' she said, and so Harold waited, but started for the
+park the next morning as soon as he thought Mr. Tracy would
+see him.</p>
+
+<p>He had rung at the door of the rear hall, but as no one
+heard him he ventured in, as he had sometimes done before,
+when sent for Jerry if it rained, and ascending the stairs to
+the upper hall, knocked two or three times at Arthur's door,
+first gently, and then louder as there came no response.</p>
+
+<p>'He cannot be there, and I must come again,' he thought as
+he retraced his steps, reaching the door at the lower end of the
+hall just as Mrs. Tracy came up the broad staircase on her way
+to her room.</p>
+
+<p>As that day wore on, and the next, and the next, Harold began
+to care less for Tom's insult, and to think that possibly he had
+been hasty in his determination to decline Arthur's assistance,
+especially as he meant to pay back every dollar when he was a
+man. He would at all events wait a little, he thought, and so
+had made no further effort to see Mr. Tracy, when Charles
+found him, and told he was wanted at the park house.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII" ></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<h2>SEARCHING FOR THE DIAMONDS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>They went directly to Mrs. Tracy's room, where they found
+that lady in a much higher fever of excitement than
+when she first discovered her loss. All the household
+had assembled in the hall and in her room, except Arthur,
+who sat in his library, occasionally stopping to listen to the
+sound of the many voices, and to wonder why there was
+much noise.</p>
+
+<p>Tom was there with his friend, Fred Raymond, anxiously
+awaiting the arrival of Harold, whose face wore a look of wonder
+and perplexity which deepened into utter amazement as
+Mrs. Tracy angrily demanded of him what his business was in
+the hall on Wednesday morning when she saw him sneaking
+through the door.</p>
+
+<p>'Where had you been, and did you see my diamonds?
+Somebody has stolen them,' she said, while Harold gazed at her
+in utter astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>'Somebody stolen your diamonds!' he repeated, without the
+shadow of an idea that she could in any way connect him with
+a theft; nor would the idea have come to him at all, if Tom
+had not said to him with a sneer:</p>
+
+<p>'Better own up, Hal, and restore the property. It is your
+easiest way out of it.'</p>
+
+<p>Then he comprehended, and had Tom knocked him senseless
+the effect could not have been greater. With lips as white as
+ashes and fists tightly clenched, he stood, shaking like a leaf
+and staring helplessly, first at one and then at another, unable
+to speak until his eyes fell on Jerry, whose face was a study.
+She had thrown her head forward and on one side, and was
+looking intently at Tom Tracy, while her blue eyes flashed fire,
+and her whole attitude was like that of a tiger ready to pounce
+upon its prey. And when Harold said faintly, 'Ask Jerry;
+she knows,' she did pounce upon Tom, not bodily, but with her
+tongue, pouring out her words so rapidly and mingling with
+them so much German that it was almost impossible to understand
+all she said.</p>
+
+<p>'You miserable, good-for-nothing, nasty fellow,' she began.
+'Do you dare accuse Harold of stealing! Stealing! You, who
+are not fit to tie his shoes! And do you want to know why he
+was here that morning? I can tell you; but no, I won't tell
+<i>you</i>! I won't speak to you! I'll never speak to you again; and
+if you try to kiss me as you did the other day, I'll&mdash;I'll scratch
+out every single one of your eyes! <i>You</i> twit Harold for being
+poor, and call him a charity! What are you but a charity
+yourself, I'd like to know! Is this your house? No, sir! It is
+Mr. Arthur's! Everything is Mr. Arthur's, and if you don't
+quit being so mean to Harold I'll tell him every single nasty
+thing I know about you! Then see what he will do!'</p>
+
+<p>As Jerry warmed with her subject, every look, every gesture,
+and every tone of her voice was like Arthur's, and Frank
+watched with a fascination which made him forget everything
+else, until she turned suddenly to him, and in her own peculiar
+style and language told him why Harold had come to the park
+house that morning when the diamonds were missing.</p>
+
+<p>'I advised him to come,' she said, with all the air of a grown
+woman, 'and I said I'd stand by him, and I will, forever and
+ever, amen!'</p>
+
+<p>The words dropped from her lips the more maturely, perhaps,
+because she had used them once before with reference to
+the humiliated boy, to whose pale, set face there came a smile
+as he heard them again, and stretching out his hand he laid it
+on Jerry's curly head with a caressing motion which told plainer
+than words could have done of his affection for and trust
+in her.</p>
+
+<p>What more Jerry might have said was prevented by the appearance
+of a new actor upon the scene in the person of Arthur
+himself. He had borne the noise and confusion as long as he
+could, and then had rung for Charles to enquire what it meant.
+But Charles was too much absorbed with other matters to heed
+the bell, though it rang three times sharply and loudly. At
+last, as no one came, and the bustle outside grew louder, and
+Jerry's voice was distinctly heard, excited and angry, Arthur
+started to see for himself what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Mr. Arthur,' Jerry cried, as she caught sight of him
+coming down the hall, 'I was just going after you, to come and
+turn Tom out of doors, and everybody else who says that Harold
+took Mrs. Tracy's diamonds. She has lost them, and
+Tom&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>But here she was interrupted by Tom himself, who, always
+afraid of his uncle, and now more afraid than ever because of
+the fiery gleam in his eyes, stammered out that he had not accused
+Harold, nor any one; that he only knew the diamonds
+were gone and could not have gone without help.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean those stones your mother flashed in my eyes
+that night? Serves her right if she has lost them,' Arthur said,
+without manifesting the slightest interest or concern in the
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>But when Jerry began her story, which she told rapidly in
+German, he became excited at once, and his manner was that
+of a maniac, as he turned fiercely upon Tom, denouncing him
+as a coward and a liar, and threatening to turn him out of the
+house if he dared harbor such a suspicion against Harold
+Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>'I'll turn you all into the street,' he continued, 'if you are
+not careful, and bring Harold and Jerry here to live; then see
+if I can have peace. Diamonds, indeed! what has a poor man's
+wife to do with diamonds? Gretchen's diamonds, too! If they
+are lost, search the house, but never accuse Harold again.'</p>
+
+<p>At this paint Arthur wandered off into German, which no
+one could understand except Jerry, who stood, holding fast to
+his arm, her face flushed and triumphant at Harold's victory
+and Tom's defeat; but as the tirade in German went on, she
+started suddenly forward, and with clasped hands and staring
+eyes stood confronting Arthur until he had ceased speaking, and
+with a wave of his hand signified that he was through and his
+audience dismissed. Jerry, however, did not move, but stood
+regarding him with a frightened, questioning expression in her
+face, which was lost upon the spectators, who were too much
+interested in the all-absorbing topic to notice anyone particularly.</p>
+
+<p>Tom was the first to go away, and his example was followed
+by all the servants, except Charles, who succeeded in getting
+his master back to his room and quieting him somewhat,
+though he kept talking to himself of diamonds, and Paris, and
+Gretchen, who, he said, should not he wronged.</p>
+
+<p>'I am sorry, Harold, that this thing has happened. I have
+no idea that you know anything of the matter. I would as
+soon suspect my own son,' Frank said to Harold, as he was
+leaving the house.</p>
+
+<p>With this grain of comfort, the boy went slowly home, humiliated
+and cut to the heart with the indignity put upon him;
+while Jerry walked silently at his side, never speaking a word
+until they were nearly home, when she said, suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>'I know where the diamonds are, but I shan't tell now while
+there is such a fuss;' but Harold was too much absorbed in his
+own thoughts to pay much attention to the remark, although it
+recurred to him years after, when the diamonds came up to
+confront him again.</p>
+
+<p>It did not take long for the whole town to know of Mrs.
+Tracy's loss. The papers were full of it. The neighbors talked
+of it constantly, and two detectives were employed to work the
+matter up and discover the thief, if possible. A thorough search
+was also made at the park house. Every servant was examined
+and cross-examined, and all their trunks and boxes searched;
+every nook and corner and room was gone through in the most
+systematic order, even to Arthur's apartments. This last was
+merely done as a matter of form, and to let the indignant servant
+see that no partiality was shown, the polite officers explained
+to Arthur, who at first refused to let them in, but who
+finally opened the door himself, and bade them go where they
+liked.</p>
+
+<p>Half hidden among the cushions of the sofa from which Arthur
+had arisen when he let the officers in and to which he returned
+again, was Jerry, her face pale to her lips and her eyes
+like the eyes of some haunted animal, when she saw the policemen
+cross the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>After her return home the previous day she had been unusually
+taciturn and had taken no part in the conversation relative
+to the missing diamonds, but just before going to bed she said
+to Harold:</p>
+
+<p>'What will they do with the one who took the diamonds, if
+they find him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Send him to state prison,' Harold answered.</p>
+
+<p>'And what do they do to them in state prison?' Jerry
+continued.</p>
+
+<p>'Cut their hair off; make them eat bread and water and
+mush, and sleep on a board, and work awful hard,' was
+Harold's reply, given at random and without the least suspicion
+why the question had been asked.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry said no more, but the next morning she started for the
+park house, which she knew was to be searched, and going to
+Mr. Arthur's room looked him wistfully in the face as she asked
+in a whisper:</p>
+
+<p>'Are they found?'</p>
+
+<p>'Found! What found?' he said, as if all recollection of the
+missing jewels had passed entirely from his mind.</p>
+
+<p>'The diamonds; Mrs. Tracy's diamonds; the ones you gave
+her,' was Jerry's answer.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment, Arthur looked perplexed and bewildered and
+confused, and seemed trying to recall something which would
+not come at his bidding.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know anything about it,' he said at last. 'I don't
+seem to think of anything, my head is so thick with all the
+noise there was here yesterday and the tumult this morning.
+Search-warrants, Charles says, and two strange men driving up
+so early. Who are they, Jerry?'</p>
+
+<p>'Police, come to search the house; search everybody and
+everything. Ain't you afraid?' Jerry said.</p>
+
+<p>'Afraid? No: why should I be afraid? Why, child, how
+white you are, and what makes you tremble so? You didn't
+take the diamonds,' was Arthur's response, as he drew the little
+girl close to him and looked into her pallid face.</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Arthur,' Jerry began, very low, as if afraid of being
+heard, 'if I should give Maude something for her very own,
+and she should accept and keep it a good while, and then some
+day I should take it from her, when she did not know it, and
+hide it, and not give it up, would that be stealing?'</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly. Why do you ask?'</p>
+
+<p>Jerry did not say why she asked, but put the same question
+to him she had put to Harold:</p>
+
+<p>'If they find the one who took the diamonds will they send
+him to state prison?'</p>
+
+<p>'Undoubtedly. They ought to.'</p>
+
+<p>'And cut off his hair?'</p>
+
+<p>She was threading Arthur's luxuriant locks caressingly, and
+almost pityingly, with her fingers as she asked the last question,
+to which he replied, shortly:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes.'</p>
+
+<p>'And make him eat bread and water and mush?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; I believe so.'</p>
+
+<p>'And sleep on a board?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, or something as bad.'</p>
+
+<p>'And make him work awful hard until his hands are blistered?'</p>
+
+<p>Now she had in hers Arthur's hands, soft and white as a
+woman's, and seemed to be calculating how much hard work it
+would take to blister hands like these.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, work till his hands drop off,' Arthur said.</p>
+
+<p>With a shudder, she continued:</p>
+
+<p>'I could not bear it: could you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Bear it? No; I should die in a week. Why, what does
+ail you? You are shaking like a leaf. What are you afraid of?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know; only state prison seems so terrible, and they
+are looking everywhere. What if they should come in here?'</p>
+
+<p>'Come in here? Impossible, unless they break the door
+down,' Arthur replied; and then Jerry said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'If they do, suppose you lie down and let me cover you with
+the afghan and cushions?'</p>
+
+<p>'But I don't want to lie down and be smothered with
+cushions,' Arthur returned, puzzled, and wondering at the
+excitement of the child, who nestled close to his side and held
+fast to his hand, as if she were guarding him, or expected him
+to guard her, while the examination went on outside, and the
+frightened and angry servants submitted to having their boxes
+and trunks examined.</p>
+
+<p>At last footsteps were heard on the stairs and the sound of
+strange voices, mingled with that of Frank, who was protesting
+against his brother's rooms being entered.</p>
+
+<p>'You will lose every servant you have if we do not serve all
+alike,' was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>Then Frank knocked at his brother's door and asked admittance.</p>
+
+<p>'We must do it to pacify the servants,' he said, as Arthur
+refused, bidding him go about him business.</p>
+
+<p>After a little further expostulation Arthur arose, and, unlocking
+the door, bade them enter and look as long as they
+pleased and where they pleased.</p>
+
+<p>It was a mere matter of form, for not a drawer or box was
+disturbed; but Jerry's breath came in gasps, and her eyes were
+like saucers, as she watched the men moving from place to place,
+and then looked timidly at Arthur to see how he was taking it.
+He took it very coolly, and when it was over and the men were
+about to leave, he bade them come again as often as they liked;
+they would always find him there ready to receive them, but
+the diamonds&mdash;<i>nix</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This last he said in a low tone as he turned to Jerry, who,
+the moment they were alone and he had seated himself beside
+her, put her head on his arm and burst into a hysterical fit of
+crying.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, Cherry, what is it? Why are you crying so?' he
+asked, in much concern.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I don't know,' the sobbed; 'only I was so scared all the
+time they were in the room. What if they had found them!
+What if they should think that&mdash;that&mdash;<i>I</i> took them, and should
+send me to prison, and cut off my hair: and make me eat bread
+and water and mush, which I hate!'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur looked at her a moment, and then with a view to
+comfort her, said, laughingly:</p>
+
+<p>'They would not send you to prison, for I would go in your
+stead.'</p>
+
+<p>'Would you? Could you? I mean could somebody go for
+another somebody, if they wanted to ever go much?' Jerry
+asked, eagerly, as she lifted her tear-stained face to Arthur's.</p>
+
+<p>Without clearly understanding her meaning, and with only a
+wish to quiet her, Arthur answered, at random:</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly. Have you never heard of people who gave life
+for another's? So, why not be a substitute, and go to prison,
+if necessary?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Jerry answered, with a long-drawn breath, and the
+cloud lifted a little from her face.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment, however, she asked, abruptly:</p>
+
+<p>'Suppose the one who took the diamonds will not give them
+up, and somebody else knows where they are, ought that somebody
+else tell?'</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly, or be an accessory to the crime,' was Arthur's
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry did not at all know what an accessory was, but it had
+an awful sound to her, and she asked:</p>
+
+<p>'What do they do to an accessory? Punish her&mdash;him, I
+mean&mdash;just the same?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, of course,' Arthur said, scarcely heeding what she was
+asking him, and never dreaming of the wild fancy which had
+taken possession of her.</p>
+
+<p>That one could go to prison in another's stead, and that an
+accessory would be punished equally with the criminal, were
+the two ideas distinct in her mind when she at last arose to go,
+saying to Arthur, as she stood in the door:</p>
+
+<p>'You are sure you are not afraid to have them come here
+again, if they take it into their heads to do so?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not in the least; they can search my rooms every day and
+welcome, if they like,' was Arthur's reply.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, that beats me!' Jerry said aloud to herself, with a
+nod for every word, as she went down the stairs and started for
+home, taking the Tramp House on her way. 'I guess I'll go
+in there and think about it,' she said, and entering the deserted
+building, she sat down upon the bench and began to wonder
+if she <i>could do it</i>, if worst came to worst, as it might.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I could for him, and I'll never tell; I'll be that thing
+he said, and a substitute, too, if I can,' she thought, 'though I
+guess it would kill me. Oh, I hope I shan't have to do it! I
+mean to say a prayer about it, anyway.'</p>
+
+<p>And kneeling down in the damp, dark room, Jerry prayed,
+first, that it might never be found out, and second, that if it
+were she might not be called to account as an accessory, but
+might have the courage to be the substitute, and stand by him
+forever and ever, amen!'</p>
+
+<p>'I may as well begin to practice, and see if I can bear it,'
+she thought, as she walked slowly home, where she astonished
+Mrs. Crawford by asking her to make some mush for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>'Mush! Why, child, I thought you hated it' Mrs. Crawford
+exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'I did hate it,' Jerry replied, 'but I want it now real bad.
+Make it for me, please. Harold likes it, don't you, Hally?'</p>
+
+<p>Harold did like it very much; and so the mush was made,
+and Jerry forced herself to swallow it in great gulps, and made
+up her mind that she could not stand that any way. She preferred
+bread and water. So, for supper she took bread and
+water and nothing else, and went up to bed us unhappy and
+nervous as a healthy, growing child well could be.</p>
+
+<p>She had tried the mush, and the bread and water, and now
+she meant to try the shorn head, which was the hardest of all,
+for she had a pride in her hair, which so many had told her
+was beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Standing before her little glass, with the lamp beside her, she
+looked at it admiringly for a while, turning her head from side
+to side to see the bright ringlets glisten; then, with an unsteady
+hand the severed, one by one, the shining tresses, on
+which her tears fell like rain as she gathered them in a paper
+and put them away, wondering if the prison shears would cut
+closer or shorter, and wondering if it would make any difference
+that she was only a substitute, or at most an accessory.</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange idea which had taken possession of her, and
+a senseless one, but it was terribly real to her, and that little
+shorn head represented as noble and complete a sacrifice as
+was ever made by older and wiser people. There was no hard
+board to sleep upon, and so she took the floor, with a pillow
+under her head and a blanket over her, wondering the while
+if this were not a more luxurious couch than convicts, who
+had stolen diamonds, were accustomed to have.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, Jerry, what have you done?' and 'Oh, Jerry, how
+you look!' were the ejaculatory remarks which greeted her next
+morning, when she went down to her breakfast of bread and
+water, for she would take nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>'Why did you do it?' Mrs. Crawford asked a little angry
+and a good deal astonished; but Jerry only answered at first
+with her tears, as Harold jeered at her forlorn appearance and
+called her a picked chicken.</p>
+
+<p>'Maude's hair is short, and all the girls', and mine was always
+in my eyes and snarled awfully,' she said at last, and this was
+all the excuse she would give for what she had done; while
+for her persisting in a bread and water diet she would give no
+reason for three or four days. Then she said to Harold, suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>'You told me that the one who stole the diamonds would
+have to eat bread and water and have his head shaved, and I
+am trying to see how it would seem&mdash;am playing that I am
+the man, and in prison; but I find it very hard, I don't believe
+I can stand it. Oh, Harold, do you think they will ever
+find the diamonds? I am so tired and hungry, and the blackberry
+pie we had for dinner did look so good!'</p>
+
+<p>'Jerry,' Harold exclaimed, in amazement, and but dimly
+comprehending her real meaning, 'you are crazy, to be playing
+you are a convict! And is that what you have been
+doing?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ye-es,' Jerry sobbed; 'but I can't bear it, and I hope they
+will not find him,'</p>
+
+<p>'Him! Who?' Harold asked.</p>
+
+<p>'The one who took the diamonds,' she replied.</p>
+
+<p>'And I hope they will. He ought to be found and punished.
+Think what harm he has done to me by letting them accuse
+me,' Harold answered, indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, Hally,' Jerry replied. 'No one accused you but
+Tom, and he is meaner than dirt; and if they did think you
+took them, and if you had to go, I should not let you; I should
+go in your place. I could do it for you and Mr. Arthur, but
+for no one else. Oh, I hope they will never find them.'</p>
+
+<p>She put her hands to her head, and looked so white and
+faint that Harold was alarmed, and took her at once to his
+mother, who, scarcely less frightened than himself, made her
+lie down, and brought her a piece of toast and a cup of milk,
+which revived her a little. But the strain upon her nerves for
+the last few days, and the fasting on bread and water proved
+too much for the child, who for a week or more lay up in her
+little room, burning with fever, and talking strange things at
+intervals, of diamonds, and state prison, and accessories, and
+substitutes, the last of which she said she was, assuring some
+one to whom she seemed to be talking that she would never
+tell, never!</p>
+
+<p>Every day Arthur came and sat for an hour by her bed, and
+held her hot hands in his, and listened to her talk, and marvelled
+at her shorn head, which he did not like. Whatever
+he said to her was spoken in German, and as she answered
+in the same tongue, no one understood what they said to each
+other, though Harold, who understood a few German words,
+knew that she was talking of the diamonds, and the prison,
+and the substitute.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall <i>never</i> tell!' she said to Arthur, 'and I shall go! I
+can bear it better than you. It is not that which makes my
+headache so. It's&mdash;oh, Mr. Arthur, I thought you so good,
+and I am so sorry about the diamonds&mdash;Mrs. Tracy was so
+proud of them. Can't you contrive to get them back to her?
+I could, if you would let me. I am thinking all the time how
+to do it, and never let her know, and the back of my head
+aches so when I think.'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur could not guess what she really meant, except that
+the lost diamonds troubled her, and that she wished Mrs. Tracy
+to have them. Occasionally his brows would knit together,
+and he seemed trying to recall something which perplexed
+him, and which her words had evidently suggested to his
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>'Cherry,' he said to her one day when he came as usual, and
+her first eager question was, 'Have they found them?' 'Jerry,
+try and understand me. Do you know where the diamonds
+are?'</p>
+
+<p>Instantly into Jerry's eyes there came a scared look, but she
+answered, unhesitatingly:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, don't you?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' was the prompt reply; 'though it seems to me I did
+know, but there has been so much talk about them, and you
+are so sick, that everything has gone from my head, and the
+bees are stinging me frightfully. Where are the diamonds?'</p>
+
+<p>But by this time Jerry was in the prison, sleeping on a
+board and eating bread and mush, and Arthur failed to get any
+satisfaction from her. Indeed, they were two crazy ones talking
+together, with little or no meaning in what they said. Only this
+Arthur gathered&mdash;that Jerry would be happy if 'Mrs. Tracy had
+her diamonds again and did not know how they came to her.
+When this dawned upon him he laughed aloud, and kissing
+her hot cheek, said to her:</p>
+
+<p>'I see; I know, and I'll do it. Wait till I come again.</p>
+
+<p>It was ten o'clock in the morning when he left Mrs. Crawford's
+house; there was a train which passed the station at
+half-past ten, bound for New York, and without returning to
+the park, Arthur took the train, sending word to his brother
+not to expect him home until the next day, and not to be
+alarmed on his account, as he was going to New York and
+would take care of himself.</p>
+
+<p>Why he had gone Frank could not guess, and he waited in
+much anxiety for his return. It was evening when he came
+home, seeming perfectly composed and well, but giving no
+reason for his sudden journey to the city. His first inquiry
+was for Jerry, and his second, if anything had been heard of
+the diamonds. On being answered in the negative, he remarked:</p>
+
+<p>'Those rascally detectives are bunglers, and oftentimes would
+rather let the culprit escape than catch him. I doubt if you
+ever see the jewels again. But no matter; it will all come
+right. Tell your wife not to fret,'</p>
+
+<p>The next morning when Mrs. Tracy went to her room after
+breakfast she was astonished to find upon her dressing bureau
+a velvet box with Tiffany's name upon it, and inside an exquisite
+set of diamonds; not as fine as those she had lost, or quite
+as large, but white, and clear, and sparkling as she took them
+in her hand with a cry of delight, and ran with them to her
+husband. Both knew from whence they came, and both went
+at once to Arthur, who, to his sister-in-law's profuse expressions
+of gratitude, replied indifferently:</p>
+
+<p>'Don't bother me with thanks; it worries me. I bought
+them to please the little girl, who talks about them all the time.
+She will yet well now, I am going to tell her.'</p>
+
+<p>He found Jerry better, and perfectly sane. She was very
+glad to see him, though she seemed somewhat constrained, and
+shrank from him a little, when he sat down beside her. Her
+first rational question had been for him, and her second for the
+diamonds; were they found, and if not, were they still looking
+for them.</p>
+
+<p>'No, they have not found them,' Harold had said, 'and the
+officers are still hunting for the thief, while the papers are full
+of the reward offered to any one who will return them. Five
+hundred dollars now, for Mr. Arthur has added two hundred
+to the first sum. He has quite waked up to the matter. You
+know he seemed very indifferent at first.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Arthur offered two hundred more!' Jerry exclaimed.
+'Well, that beats me!'</p>
+
+<p>This was Mrs. Crawford's favorite expression, which Jerry
+had caught, as she did most of the peculiarities in speech and
+manner of those about her.</p>
+
+<p>'Two hundred dollars! He must be crazy.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course he is. He don't know what he does or says half
+the time, and especially since you have been sick,' Harold said.</p>
+
+<p>'Sick!' Jerry repeated, quickly. 'Have I been sick, and is
+that why I am in bed so late? I thought you had come in to
+wake me up, and I was glad, for I have had horrid dreams.'</p>
+
+<p>Harold told her she had been in bed since the day of the investigation,
+when she came from the park house with a dreadful
+headache.</p>
+
+<p>'And you've been crazy, too, as a loon,' he continued, 'and
+talked the queerest things about state prison, and hard boards,
+and bread and water, and accessories, and substitutes, and so
+on. Seemed as if you thought you were a felon, and a body
+would have supposed that you had either taken the diamonds
+yourself or else knew who did, the way you went on by spells.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Harold!' Jerry gasped, while her face grew spotted
+and the perspiration came out upon her forehead. 'Did I speak
+anybody's name?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' Harold replied. 'I could not make you do that. I
+asked you ever so many times if you knew who took the
+diamonds, and you said &quot;Yes,&quot; but when I asked who it was,
+you always answered, &quot;Don't you wish you knew?&quot; and that
+was all I could get out of you. Mr. Arthur was here every
+day, and sometimes twice a day, but you spoke German to him.
+Still I knew it was about the diamonds, for I understood that
+word. He was not here yesterday at all. There, hark! I do
+believe he is coming now. Don't you know who is said to be
+near when you are talking about him?'</p>
+
+<p>And, with a laugh, Harold left the room just as Arthur
+entered it.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, Cherry,' he said to her, as he drew a chair to her bedside,
+'Mrs. Crawford tells me the bees are out of your head this
+morning, and I am glad. I have some good news for you.
+Mrs. Tracy has some diamonds, and is the happiest woman in town.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerry had not noticed his exact words, and only understood
+that Mrs. Tracy had found her diamonds.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Mr. Arthur, I am so glad!' the cried; and springing
+up in bed, she threw both arms around his neck and held him
+fast, while she sobbed hysterically.</p>
+
+<p>'There, there, child! Cherry, let go. You throttle me.
+You are pulling my neck-tie all askew, and my head spins like
+a top,' Arthur said, as he unclasped the clinging arms and put
+the little girl back upon her pillow, where she lay for a moment,
+pale and exhausted, with the light of a great joy shining in her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Did she know where they came from? how did you
+manage it? Are you sure she did not suspect!' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>'I put them on her dressing-bureau while she was at breakfast,'
+he replied, 'and when she came up there they were&mdash;large
+solitaire ear-rings and a bar with five stones, not quite as large
+or as fine as the ones she lost, but the best I could find at Tiffany's.
+Why, Jerry, what is the matter? You do not look
+glad a bit. I thought you wanted me to give them to her surreptitiously,
+and I did,' he continued, as the expression of
+Jerry's face changed to one of blank dismay and disappointment,
+and the tears gathered in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'I did&mdash;I do,' she said; 'but I meant, not new ones, but
+her very own&mdash;the ones you gave her.'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Arthur sat looking at her with a perplexed
+and troubled expression, as if wondering what she could mean,
+and why he had so utterly failed to please her; then he said,
+slowly:</p>
+
+<p>'The ones I gave her? You make my head swim trying to
+remember, and the bumble-bees are black-faced, instead of
+white, and stinging me dreadfully. I wish you would say
+nothing more of the diamonds. It worries me, and makes me
+feel as if I were in a nightmare, and I know nothing of them.'</p>
+
+<p>Raising herself on her elbow and pointing her finger toward
+him in a half beseeching, half threatening way, Jerry said:</p>
+
+<p>'As true as you live and breathe, and hope not to be hung
+and choked to death, don't you know where they are?'</p>
+
+<p>This was the oath which Jerry's companions were in the
+habit of administering to each other in matters of doubt, and
+she now put it to Arthur as the strongest she knew.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course not,' he answered, with a little irritation in his
+tone. 'What ails you, Cherry? Are you crazy, like myself?
+Struggle against it. Don't let the bees get into your brain and
+swarm and buzz until you forget everything. You ought to
+remember; you do things you ought not to do. It is terrible
+to be crazy and half conscious of it all the time&mdash;conscious that
+no one believes what you say or holds you responsible for what
+you do.'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't they?' Jerry asked, eagerly, for she knew the meaning
+of the word 'responsible.' 'If a crazy man or woman took
+the diamonds, and then forgot, and did not tell, and it was ever
+found out, wouldn't they be punished?'</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly not,' was the reassuring reply, 'Don't you know
+how many murders are committed and the murderer is not
+hung, because they say he is crazy?'</p>
+
+<p>In a moment the cloud lifted from Jerry's face, which grew
+so bright that Arthur noticed the change, and said to her:</p>
+
+<p>'You are better now, I see, and I must go before I undo it
+all. Good-bye, and never say diamonds to me again; it gets me
+all in a&mdash;m a&mdash;well, a French pickle&mdash;mixed, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her tenderly, and promising to take her for a drive
+as soon as she was able, went out and left her alone, wondering
+why it was that his having given the diamonds to his sister-in-law
+had failed in its effect upon her, and upon himself,
+too.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time after he was gone Jerry lay thinking with
+her eyes closed, so that if Harold or her grandmother came in
+they would think her asleep. Mr. Arthur was certainly crazy
+at times&mdash;very crazy. She could swear to that, and so could
+many others. And if a crazy man was not responsible for his
+acts, then he was not, and the law would not touch him; but
+with regard to the accessory, she was not sure. If that individual
+were not crazy, why, then he or she might be punished;
+and as the taste she had had of bread and water, and hard
+boards, in the shape of the floor, was not very satisfactory, and
+as Mrs. Tracy had other diamonds in the place of the lost ones,
+she finally determined to keep her own counsel and never tell
+what she had heard Arthur say that morning when the theft
+was discovered and he had talked so fast in German to her and
+to himself. If she had known where the diamonds were she
+might have managed to return them to their owner. But she
+did not know, and her better course was to keep quiet, hoping
+that in time Mr. Arthur himself would remember and make
+restitution; for that he had forgotten and was sincere in saying
+that he knew nothing of them she was certain, and her faith in
+him, which for a little time had been shaken, was restored.</p>
+
+<p>With this load lifted from her mind Jerry's recovery was
+rapid, and when the autumnal suns were just beginning to
+tinge the woodbine on the Tramp House and the maples in the
+park woods with scarlet, she took her accustomed seat in Arthur's
+room and commenced her lessons again with Maude, who
+had missed her sadly and who would have gone to see her every
+day during her sickness if her mother had permitted it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII" ></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<h2>ARTHUR'S LETTER.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Two weeks had passed since Jerry's return to her lessons,
+and people had ceased to talk of the missing diamonds,
+although the offered reward of $500 was still in the
+weekly papers, and a detective still had the matter in charge,
+without, however, achieving the slightest success. No one had
+ever been suspected, and the thief, whoever he was, must have
+been an expert, and managed the affair with the most consummate
+skill. Now that she had another set, Mrs. Tracy was
+content, and peace and quiet reigned in the household, except
+so far as Arthur was concerned. He was restless and nervous,
+and given to fits of abstraction, which sometimes made him
+forget the two little girls, one of whom watched him narrowly;
+and once when they were alone and he seemed unusually absorbed
+in thought, she asked him if he were trying to think of
+something.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' he said, looking up quickly and eagerly; 'that is it.
+I am trying to remember something which, it seems to me, I
+ought to remember; but I cannot, and the more I try, the farther
+it gets from me. Do you know what it is?'</p>
+
+<p>Jerry hesitated a moment, and then she asked:</p>
+
+<p>'Is it the diamonds?'</p>
+
+<p>'Diamonds! No. What diamonds? Didn't I tell you
+never to say diamonds to me again? I am tired of it,' he said,
+and in his eyes there was a gleam which Jerry had never seen
+there before when they rested upon her. It made her afraid,
+and she answered, meekly:</p>
+
+<p>'Then I cannot help you to remember.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course not. No one can,' Arthur replied, in a softened
+tone. 'It is something long ago, and has to do with Gretchen.'</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly brightening, as if that name had been the key
+to unlock his misty brain, he added;</p>
+
+<p>'I have it; I know; it has come to me at last! Gretchen
+always sets me right. I wrote her a letter long ago&mdash;a year,
+it seems to me&mdash;and it has never been posted. Strange that
+I should forget that; but something came up&mdash;I can't tell
+what&mdash;and drove it from my mind.'</p>
+
+<p>As he talked he was opening and looking in the drawer which
+Jerry had never seen but once before, and that when he took
+from it the letter in German, a paragraph of which he had bidden
+her read.</p>
+
+<p>'Here it is!' he said, joyfully, as he took out a sealed envelope
+and held it up to Jerry. 'This is the letter which you
+must post to-day. I can trust it to you.'</p>
+
+<p>He gave her the letter, which she took with a beating heart
+and a sense of shame and regret as she remembered her pledge
+to Mr. Frank Tracy. She had promised to take him any letter
+which Mr. Arthur might intrust to her care, and if she took
+this one from Arthur she must keep her word.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I can't do it&mdash;I can't! It would be mean to Mr. Arthur,'
+she thought; and returning him the letter, she said:
+'Please post it yourself; then you will be sure, and I might
+lose it, or forget. I am careless sometimes. Don't ask me to
+take it.'</p>
+
+<p>She was pleading with her might; but Arthur paid no heed,
+and only laughed at her fears.</p>
+
+<p>'I know you will not forget, and I'd rather trust you than
+Charles. Surely, you will not refuse to do so small a favor
+for me?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' she said, at last, as she put the letter in her pocket,
+with the thought that, after all, there might be no harm in
+showing it to Mr. Frank, who, of course, merely wished to see
+it, and would not think of keeping it.</p>
+
+<p>But she did not know Frank Tracy or guess how great was
+his anxiety lest any message should ever reach a friend of
+Gretchen, if friend there were living. She found him in the
+room he called his office, where the dead woman had lain in her
+coffin, and where he often sat alone thinking of the day when
+the inquest was held, and when he took his first step in the
+downward road, which had led him so far that now it seemed
+impossible to turn back, even had he wished to do so, as he sometimes
+did.</p>
+
+<p>'If I had never secreted the photograph, or the book with
+the handwriting, if I had shown them to Arthur, everything
+would have been so different, and I should have been free,' he
+was thinking, when Jerry knocked timidly at the door, rousing
+him from his reverie, and making him start with a nameless
+tsar which was always haunting him.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Jerry, it is you,' he said, as the little girl crossed the
+threshold, and shutting the door, stood with her back against
+it, and her hands behind her. 'What is it?' he asked, as he
+saw her hesitating.</p>
+
+<p>With a quick, jerky movement of the head, which set in
+motion the little rings of hair, now growing so fast, and brought
+his brother to his mind, Jerry replied:</p>
+
+<p>'I came to tell you that Mr. Arthur has written the letter.'</p>
+
+<p>'What letter?' Frank asked, for the moment forgetting the
+conversation he had held with the child in the Tramp House.</p>
+
+<p>'The one I promised to bring you to show you&mdash;the one to
+Germany,' was Jerry's answer.</p>
+
+<p>And then Frank remembered at once what, in the excitement
+of the diamond theft, had passed from his mind.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, I know; give it to me,' he said, advancing rapidly
+toward her, and putting out his hand. 'When did he write it?
+Give it to me, please.'</p>
+
+<p>'But not to keep,' Jerry said, struck by something in his
+face and manner which, it seemed to her, meant danger to the
+letter.</p>
+
+<p>'Let me see it,' he continued.</p>
+
+<p>And rather reluctantly Jerry handed him a bulky letter, the
+direction of which covered nearly the whole of one side of the
+envelope.</p>
+
+<p>Very nervously Frank scanned the address, which might as
+well have been in the Fiji language for any idea it conveyed to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>'To whom is it directed? I cannot read German,' he said</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know,' Jerry replied. 'I have not looked at it, and
+would rather not.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, what a little prude you are;' and Frank laughed uneasily.
+'What possible harm is there in reading an address?
+The postmaster has to do it, and any one who took it to the
+office would do it if he could.'</p>
+
+<p>This sounded reasonable enough, and standing beside him,
+while he held the letter a little way from her, Jerry read the
+address in German first, then, as he said to her: 'I don't understand
+that lingo, put it into English,' she read again:</p>
+
+<p>'To Marguerite Heinrich, if living, and if dead to any of her
+friends; or to the postmaster at Wiesbaden, Germany. If not
+delivered within two months, return to Arthur Tracy, Tracy
+Park, Shannondale, Mass., U.S.A.'</p>
+
+<p>'Marguerite&mdash;Marguerite Heinrich!' Frank repeated, 'That
+is not Gretchen. The letter is not to her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I guess it is,' Jerry replied. 'He told me once that Gretchen
+was a pet name for Marguerite.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Frank returned, with a sigh, as this little crumb of
+hope was swept away, while to himself he added: 'At all
+events it is not Marguerite Tracy, and that makes me less a
+scoundrel than I should otherwise be. If he had written a little
+more it would have run over to the other side of the envelope.
+Any one would know he was crazy,' he continued, with a sickly
+attempt at a smile, while Jerry stood waiting to take the letter
+from him.</p>
+
+<p>He knew she was waiting, and said to her, as he put it in his
+pocket:</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you for bringing this to me. It is probably some
+nonsense which ought not to go, even if the sending it would
+do no harm, as it certainly would.'</p>
+
+<p>Until then Jerry had not realised that he did not mean the
+letter to go at all. She had remembered her promise to take
+it to him, and forgotten that he had said it must not be sent
+lest it should do harm to Maude. But it all came back to her
+now, and her tears fell like rain as she stood for a moment
+irresolute. But loyalty to Arthur conquered every other feeling.
+Surely he would not suffer any wrong to come to his own
+brother and niece. The letter was harmless, and must go.</p>
+
+<p>'Give it to me, please. You do not mean to keep it?' she
+said, at last, in a tone and manner she might have borrowed
+from Arthur himself, it was so like him when on his dignity.</p>
+
+<p>And Frank felt it, and knew that he had more than a child
+to deal with, and must use duplicity if he would succeed. So
+he said to her quietly and naturally:</p>
+
+<p>'Why, how excited you are! Do you think I intend to keep
+the letter? It is as safe with me as with you. It is true that
+when I talked with you in the Tramp House I thought that it
+must not be sent, but I have changed my mind since then, and
+do not care. I am going to the office, and will take it myself.
+John is saddling my horse now, and if I hurry I shall be in time
+for the western mail. Good-bye, and do not look so worried. Do
+you take me for a villain?'</p>
+
+<p>He was leaving the room as he talked, and before he had
+finished he was in the hall and near the outer door, leaving
+Jerry stupefied, and perplexed, and only half reassured.</p>
+
+<p>'If I had not sold myself to Satan before, I have now, for
+sure; and still I did not actually tell her that I would post it,
+though it amounted to that,' Frank thought, as he galloped
+through the park toward the highway which led to the town.</p>
+
+<p>Once he took the letter from his pocket and examined it
+again, wishing so much that he knew its contents.</p>
+
+<p>'If I could read German, I believe I am bad enough now to
+open it; but I can't, and I dare not take it to any one who
+can,' he said, as he put it again in his pocket, half resolving to
+post it and take the chances of its ever reaching Gretchen's
+friends, or any one who had known her. 'I'll see how I feel
+when I get inside,' he thought, as he dismounted from his horse
+before the door of the post-office.</p>
+
+<p>The mail was just in, and the little room was full of people
+waiting for it to be distributed; and Frank waited with them,
+leaning against the wall, with his head bent down, and beating
+his boot with his riding-whip.</p>
+
+<p>'I must decide soon,' he thought, when a voice not far from
+him caught his ear, and glancing from under his hat, he saw
+Peterkin coming in, portly and pompous, and with him a dapper
+little man, who, in the days of the 'Liza Ann, had been a
+driver for the boat, but who now, like his former employer, was
+a millionaire, and wore a thousand-dollar diamond ring. To
+him Peterkin was saying:</p>
+
+<p>'There, that's him&mdash;that's Frank Tracy, the biggest swell in
+town&mdash;lives in that handsome place I was telling you about.'</p>
+
+<p>Strange that words like these from a man like old Peterkin
+should have inflated Frank's pride; but he was weak in many
+points; and though he detested Peterkin, it gratified him to be
+pointed out to strangers as a swell who lived in a fine house,
+and with the puff of vanity came the reflection that, as Frank
+Tracy of some other place than Tracy Park, with all its appliances
+of wealth, he would not be a swell whom strangers cared
+to see, and Jerry's chance was lost again.</p>
+
+<p>'Here is your mail, Mr. Tracy,' the postmistress said; and
+stepping forward, Frank took his letters from her, just as
+Peterkin slapped him on the shoulder, and, with a familiarity
+which made Frank want to knock him down, called out:</p>
+
+<p>'Hallo, Tracy! Just the feller I wanted to see. Let me
+introduce you to Mr. Bijah Jones, from Pennsylvany; used to
+drive hosses for me in the days I ain't ashamed of, by a long
+shot. He's bought him a place out from Philadelphy, and
+wants to lay it out <i>&agrave; la&mdash;&agrave; la</i>&mdash;dumbed if I know the word,
+but like them old chaps' gardens in Europe, and I told him of
+Tracy Park, which beats everything holler in this part of the
+country. Will you let us go over it and take a survey?'</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly; go where you like,' Frank said, struggling to
+reach the door; but Peterkin button-holed him and held him
+fast, while he continued:</p>
+
+<p>'I say, Tracy, heard anything from them diamonds?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing,' was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>'Didn't hunt in the right quarter,' Peterkin continued,
+'leastwise didn't foller it up, or you'd a found 'em without so
+much advertisin'.'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean?' Frank asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, nothin',' Peterkin replied; 'only them diamonds never
+went off without hands, and them hands ain't a thousand miles
+from the park.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps not,' Frank answered, mechanically, more intent
+upon getting away than upon what Peterkin was saying.</p>
+
+<p>He longed to be in the open air, and as he mounted his
+horse, he said, as if speaking to some one near him:</p>
+
+<p>'Well, old fellow, I've done it again, and sunk myself still
+lower. You are bound to get me now some day, unless I have
+a death-bed repentance and confess everything. The thief was
+forgiven at the last hour, why not I?'</p>
+
+<p>The black shadow which Frank felt sure was beside him, did
+not answer, though he could have sworn that he heard a
+chuckle as he rode on, fast and far, until his horse was tired
+and he was tired, too. Then he began to retrace his steps, so
+slowly that it was dark when, he reached the village, and took
+the road which led by the gate through which the woman had
+passed to her death on the night of the storm. It was the
+shortest route to the park, and he intended to take it.</p>
+
+<p>As he drew near to the gate, it seemed to him that there was
+something on the wide post nearest the fence which had not
+been there in the afternoon when he rode by&mdash;something dark,
+and large, and peculiar in shape, and motionless as a stone.
+He was not by nature a coward, and once he had no belief in
+ghosts or supernatural appearances, but now he did not know
+what he believed, and this object, whose outline, seen against,
+the western sky, where a little dim light was lingering, seemed
+almost like that of a human form, made his heart beat faster
+than its wont, and he involuntarily checked his horse, just as a
+clear, shrill voice called out:</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Tracy, is that you? I have waited so long, and I'm
+so cold sitting here. Did you post the letter?'</p>
+
+<p>It was Jerry who, after he had left her in his office, had been
+seized with an indefinable terror lest he might not post the
+letter after all. It seemed wrong to doubt him, and she did not
+really think that she did doubt him; still she would feel happier
+if she knew, and after supper was over she started along the
+grassy road until she reached the gate. Here she waited a long
+time, and then, as Mr. Tracy did not appear, she walked up
+and down the lane until the sun was down and the ground began
+to feel so damp and cold that she finally climbed up to the top
+of the gate-post, which was very broad, and where, on her way
+to town, she had frequently sat for a while. It was very cold
+and tiresome waiting there, and she was beginning to get impatient
+and to wonder if it could be possible that he had gone
+home by some other road, when she heard the sound of a horse's
+hoofs and felt sure he was coming.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, Jerry, how you frightened me!' Frank said, as he
+reined his horse close up to her. 'Jump down and get up
+behind me. I will take you home.'</p>
+
+<p>She obeyed, and with the agility of a little cat, got down from
+the gate-post and on to the horse's back, putting both arms
+around Frank's waist to keep herself steady, for the big
+horse took long steps, and she felt a little afraid.</p>
+
+<p>'Did you post the letter?' she asked again, as they left the
+gate behind them and struck into the lane.</p>
+
+<p>To lie now was easy enough, and Frank answered without
+hesitation:</p>
+
+<p>'Of course. Did you think I would forget it?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' Jerry answered. 'I knew you would not. I only
+wanted to be sure, because he trusted it to me, and not to have
+sent it would have been mean, and a sneak, and a lie, and a
+steal. Don't you think so?'</p>
+
+<p>She emphasized the 'steal,' and the 'lie,' and the 'sneak,'
+and the 'mean,' with a kick that made the horse jump a little
+and quicken his steps.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Frank assented; it would be all she affirmed, and
+more too, and the man who could do such a thing was wholly
+unworthy the respect of any one, and ought to be punished to
+the full extent of the law.</p>
+
+<p>'That's so,' Jerry said, with another emphatic kick and a
+slight tightening of her arm around the conscience-stricken
+man, who wondered if he should ever reach the cottage and be
+free from the clasp of those arms, which seemed to him like
+bands of fire burning to his soul. 'I'd never speak to him
+again,' Jerry continued, 'and Mr. Arthur wouldn't either. He
+is so right-up, and hates a trick. I don't believe, either, that
+any harm will come to Maude from that letter, as you said. If
+there does, and Mr. Arthur can fix it, he will, I know, for I
+shall ask him, and he once told me he would do anything for
+me, because I look as he thinks Gretchen must have looked
+when she was a little girl like me.'</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the cottage by this time, where they found
+Harold in the yard looking up and down the lane for Jerry,
+whose protracted absence at that hour had caused them some
+anxiety, even though they were accustomed to her long rambles
+by herself and frequent absences from home. It was not an
+unusual thing for her to linger in the Tramp House, even after
+dark, talking to herself, and Gretchen, and Mah-nee, and her
+mother and a sick woman, whose face was far back in the past.
+She was there now, Harold supposed, and this belief was confirmed
+when Mr. Tracy said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'You see I have picked up your little girl and brought her
+home. Jump down, Jerry, and good-night to you.'</p>
+
+<p>She was on the ground in an instant, and he was soon galloping
+toward home, saying to himself:</p>
+
+<p>'I don't believe I can even have a death-bed repentance now.
+I have told too many lies for that, and more than all, must go
+on lying to the end. I have sold my soul for a life of luxury,
+which after all is very pleasant,' he continued, as he drew near
+the house, which was brilliantly lighted up, while through the
+long windows of the drawing-room he could see the table, with
+its silver and glass and flowers, and the cheerful blaze upon the
+hearth of the fire-place, which Dolly had persuaded Arthur
+to have built. There was every kind of bric-a-brac on the tall
+mantel, and Frank saw it as he passed, and saw the colored
+man moving slowly about the room after the manner of a well-trained
+servant who understands his business. There was company
+staying in the house, Mr. and Mrs. Raymond, from Kentucky,
+father and mother to Fred; and Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire,
+and Grace Atherton, and Squire Harrington had been invited
+to dinner, and were already in the dining-room when Frank
+entered it after a hasty toilet.</p>
+
+<p>He had been out in the country and ridden further than he
+had intended, he said by way of apology, as he greeted his
+guests, and then took Mrs. Raymond into dinner, which, with
+the exception of the soup and fish, was served from side tables.
+This was Dolly's last new kink, as Frank called it, and Dolly
+was very fine, in claret velvet, with her new diamonds,
+which were greatly admired, Grace Atherton declaring that she
+liked them quite as well as the stolen ones, whose setting was
+rather <i>pass&eacute;.</i></p>
+
+<p>'That is just why I liked them so, because they were old-fashioned;
+it made them look like heir-looms, and showed that
+one had always had a family,' Dolly said.</p>
+
+<p>Grace Atherton shrugged her still plump shoulders just a
+little, and thought of the first call she ever made upon Dolly,
+when she entered through the kitchen and the lady entertained
+her in her working-apron!</p>
+
+<p>Dolly did not look now as if she had ever seen a working-apron,
+and was very bright and talkative, and entertaining,
+and all the more so because of her husband's silence. He was
+given to moods, and sometimes aggravated his wife to desperation
+when he left all the conversation to her.</p>
+
+<p>'Do talk,' she would say to him when they were alone. 'Do
+talk to people and not sit so glum, with that great wrinkle
+between your eyes as if you were mad at something; and do
+laugh, too, when anybody tells anything worth laughing at, and
+not leave it all to me. Why, I actually giggle at times until I
+feel like a fool, while you never smile or act as if you heard a
+word. Look at me occasionally, and when I elevate my
+eyebrows&mdash;<i>so</i>&mdash;brace
+up and say something, if it isn't so cunning.'</p>
+
+<p>This <i>elevating of the eyebrows</i> and <i>bracing up</i> were matters of
+frequent occurrence, as Frank grew more and more silent and
+abstracted, and now after he had sat through a funny story
+told by Mr. St. Claire and had not even smiled, or given any
+sign that he heard it, he suddenly caught Dolly's eye and saw
+that both eyebrows, and nose, and chin were up as marks of
+unusual disapprobation, for how could she guess of what he was
+thinking as he sat with his head bent down, and his eyes seemingly
+half shut. But they came open wide enough, and his
+head was high enough when he saw Dolly's frown; and turning
+to Mrs. Raymond he began to talk rapidly and at random. She
+had just returned from Germany, where she had left her
+daughter, Marion, in school, and Frank asked her of the
+country, and if she had visited Wiesbaden, and had there met
+or heard of anyone by the name of Marguerite Heinrich.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Raymond had spent some months in Wiesbaden, for it
+was there her daughter was at school, and she was very enthusiastic
+in her praises of the beautiful town. But she had never
+seen or heard of Marguerite Heinrich, or of anyone by the
+name of Heinrich.</p>
+
+<p>'Marguerite Heinrich?' Dolly repeated. 'Who in the world
+is she&mdash;and where did you know her?'</p>
+
+<p>'I never did know her. I have only heard of her,' Frank
+replied, again lapsing into a silence from which he did not rouse
+again.</p>
+
+<p>He was thinking of the letter hidden away with the photograph
+and the book&mdash;of the lies he had told since his deception
+began, and now sure it was that he had sinned beyond forgiveness.
+When he was a boy he had often listened, with the
+blood curdling in his veins, to a story his grandmother told him
+with sundry embellishments, for he was not well versed in German
+literature, of a man&mdash;Foster it seemed to him was the
+name&mdash;who sold his soul to the devil in consideration that for
+a certain number of years he was to have every pleasure the
+world could give. It had been very pleasant listening to the
+recital of the fine things the man enjoyed, for Satan kept his
+promise well; but the boy's hair had stood on end as the story
+neared its close, and he heard how, when the probation was
+ended, the devil came for his victim down the wide-mouthed
+chimney, scattering bricks and fire-brands over the floor, as he
+carried the trembling soul out in the blackness of the stormy
+night.</p>
+
+<p>Strangely enough this story came back to him now, and notwithstanding
+the horror of the thing he laughed aloud as he
+glanced up at the tall oak fire-place, wondering if it would be
+that way he would one day go with his master, and seeing in
+fancy Dolly's dismay when the tea-cups, and saucers, and vases,
+and plaques, came tumbling to the floor as he disappeared from
+sight in a blue flame, which smelled of brimstone.</p>
+
+<p>It was a loud, unnatural laugh, but fortunately for him it came
+just as Grace Atherton had set the guests in a roar with what
+she was saying of the Peterkin's final struggle to enter society,
+and so it passed unnoticed by most of them. But that night in
+the privacy of his room, where Dolly delivered most of her
+lectures, she again upbraided him with his taciturnity, telling
+him that he never laughed but once, and then it sounded more
+like a groan than a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>'You have hit the nail on the head this time, for it was a
+groan,' Frank said, as he plunged into bed; and Dolly, as she
+undressed herself deliberately, and this time put her diamonds
+carefully away, little dreamed what was passing in the mind of
+the man, who, all through the long hours of the night, lay
+awake, seldom stirring lest he should disturb her, but repeating
+over and over to himself, the words:</p>
+
+<p>'Lost now forever and ever, but if Maude is happy I can
+bear it.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV" ></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+<h2>JERRIE&mdash;NINE YEARS LATER.</h2>
+
+
+<p>She spelled her name with an <i>ie</i> now, instead of a <i>y.</i> She
+was nineteen years old; she had been a student at Vassar
+for four years, together with Nina St. Claire and
+Ann Eliza Peterkin, and in July was to be graduated with the
+highest honors of her class. In her childhood, when we knew
+her as little Jerry, she had been very small, but at the age of
+twelve she suddenly shot up like an arrow, and had you first
+seen her, with her back to you, you might have said she was
+very tall, but had you waited till she turned her face toward
+you, or walked across the floor, you would have thought that if
+an eighth of an inch were taken from her height it would spoil
+her splendidly developed form. Her school companions called
+her the Princess, she was so tall and straight, and graceful in
+every movement, with that sweet graciousness of manner which
+won all hearts to her and made her a general favorite. Whether
+she spelled her name with an <i>ie</i> or a <i>y</i> and stood five feet
+six or four feet five, she was the same Jerry who had defended
+Harold against Tom Tracy, and been ready to go to prison, if
+need be, for Mr. Arthur. Frank, unselfish, truthful, and original,
+she had been as a child, with perhaps a little too much
+pride in her hair, which she hid once cut off to see how it
+would seem, and she was original, and truthful, and unselfish
+now, with a pardonable pride in her luxuriant tresses, which
+lay in waves upon her finely-shaped head and glistened in the
+sunlight like satin of a golden hue. But nothing could spoil
+Jerrie, not even the adulation of her friends or the looking-glass
+which told her she was beautiful, just as Nina St. Claire
+told her every day.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; I am not blind, and I know that I am rather good-looking,'
+she once said to Nina, 'and I am glad, for, as a rule,
+people like pretty things better than ugly ones, but I am not
+an idiot to think that looks are everything, and I don't believe
+I am very vain. I used to be though, when a child, but
+Harold gave me so many lectures upon vanity that I should
+not do credit to his teachings were I now to be proud of what
+I did not do myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'But Harold thinks you are beautiful,' Nina replied.</p>
+
+<p>'He does? I did not know that. When did he say so?'
+Jerrie asked; with kindling eyes and a quick, sideways turn of
+her head, of which she had a habit when startled by some sudden
+emotion.</p>
+
+<p>'He said so last vacation, when we were home, and I had
+that little musicale, and you played and sang so divinely, and
+wore that dress of baby-blue which Mr. Arthur gave you, with
+the blush-rose, in your belt.' Nina said; 'I was so proud of you
+and so was mamma and Mrs. Atherton. You remember there
+were some New Yorkers there who were visiting Mrs. Grace,
+and I was glad for them to know that we had some talent, and
+some beauty, too, in the country; and Harold was proud, too. I
+don't think he ever took his eyes off you from the time you sat
+down to the piano until you left it, and when I said to him,
+&quot;Doesn't she sing like an angel, and isn't the lovely?&quot; he replied:
+&quot;I think my sister Jerry has the loveliest face I ever
+saw, and that blue dress is very becoming to her.&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>'Wasn't that rather a stiff speech to make about his <i>sister</i>?'
+Jerry said, with a slight emphasis upon the last word, as she
+walked away, leaving Nina to wonder if she were displeased.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently not, for a few minutes later she heard her whistling
+softly the air 'He promised to buy me a knot of blue ribbon
+to tie up my bonny brown hair,' and could she have looked
+into Jerry's room she would have seen her standing before the
+mirror examining the face which Harold had said was the
+loveliest he had ever seen. Others had said the same, and their
+sayings had been repeated to her. Billy Peterkin, and Tom
+Tracy, and Dick St. Claire, and even Fred Raymond, from
+Kentucky, who was supposed to be devoted to Nina. But Jerry
+cared little for the compliments of either Fred or Dick, while
+those of Tom she scorned and those of Billy she ridiculed.
+One word of commendation from Harold was worth more to
+her than the praises of the whole world besides. But Harold
+had always been chary of his commendations, and was rather
+more given to reproof than praise, which did not altogether
+suit the young lady.</p>
+
+<p>As Jerry had grown older, and merged from childhood into
+womanhood, a change had come over both the girl and boy, a
+change which Jerry discovered first, awaking suddenly one day
+to find that the brother and sister delusion was ended, and Harold
+stood to her in an entirely new relation. Just when the
+change had commenced she could not tell. She only knew that
+it had come, and that she was not quite so happy as she had
+been in the days when she called Harold her brother, and kissed
+him whenever she felt like it, which was very often, for she was
+naturally affectionate, and showed her affection to those she
+loved. She was seventeen when the dream came&mdash;the old, old
+story which transformed her from a romping, a rather gushing
+child, into a woman more quiet and more dignified, especially
+with Harold, who missed and mourned in secret for the playful
+loving ways which had been so pleasant to him, even if he did
+not always make a return.</p>
+
+<p>Though capable of loving quite as devotedly and unselfishly
+as Jerry, he was not demonstrative, while a natural shyness
+and depreciation of himself made him afraid to tell in words
+just what or how much he did feel. He would rather show it
+by acts; and never was brother tenderer or kinder toward a
+sister than he was to Jerry, whose changed mood he could not
+understand. And so there gradually arose between them a little
+cloud, which both felt, and neither could exactly define.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur had kept his promise well with regard to Jerry, who
+had passed from him to Vassar, and he would have kept it with
+Harold, if the latter had permitted it. But the boy's pride and
+independence had asserted themselves at last. He had accepted
+the course at Andover, and one year at Harvard, on condition
+that he should be allowed to pay Arthur back all he had received
+as soon as he was able to do it. As he entered Harvard
+in advance, he was a junior when he decided to care for himself, and
+during the remainder of his college course, which, of course, was
+longer than usual, he struggled on, doing what he could during
+the summer vacation&mdash;teaching school for months at a time&mdash;and
+in the college reducing his expenses by acting as proctor, and
+compelling obedience to the rules of the institution. Even the few
+who were aware of his limited means, and his efforts to increase
+them, had to acknowledge, as he stood before the multitude,
+delivering the valedictory, and exciting thunders of applause by
+his graceful gestures and thrilling eloquence, that he was not
+only an orator, but every inch a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>His fellow students who saw him then, and listened entranced
+to his clear, well-trained voice, thought not of Harold's threadbare
+coat and shining old-fashioned pants, which were so conspicuous
+as he pursued his studies in the class-room, but which
+were now concealed by the gown he wore over them. They saw
+only the large, dark eyes, the finely chiseled features, and the
+manly form. But as they listened to the burning words which
+showed so much clear, deep thought, they said to each other:</p>
+
+<p>'The young man has a future before him. Such eloquence as
+that could move the world, and rouse or quiet the wildest mob
+that ever surged through the streets of mad Paris.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerry was there, and saw and heard. And when Harold's
+speech was over, and the building was shaking with applause,
+and flowers were falling around him like rain, she, too, stood
+up and cheered so loudly that a Boston lady, who sat in front
+of her, and who thought any outward show of feeling vulgar
+and ill-bred, turned and looked at her wonderingly and reprovingly.
+But in her excitement Jerry did not see the disapprobation
+in the cold, proud eyes. She saw only what she mistook
+for enquiry, and she answered eagerly:</p>
+
+<p>'That's Harold&mdash;that's my brother! Oh, I am so proud of
+him!'</p>
+
+<p>And leaning forward so that a curl of her bright hair touched
+the Boston woman's bonnet, she threw the bunch of pond lilies
+which she had herself gathered that day on the river at home,
+before the sun was up, and while the white petals were still
+folded in sleep. For Jerry had come down on the early train
+to see Harold graduated, and Maude had found her in the
+crowd and sat beside her, almost as pleased and happy as herself
+to see Harold thus acquit himself.</p>
+
+<p>Maude's roses had been bought at a florist's in Boston at a
+fabulous price, for they were the choicest and rarest in market.
+Harold had seen both the roses and the lilies long before they
+fell at his feet. It was a fancy, perhaps, but it seemed to him
+that it sweet perfume from the latter reached him with the
+brightness of Jerry's eyes. He knew just where the lilies came
+from, for he had often waded out to the green bed when the
+water was low to get them for Jerry; and all the time he was
+speaking there was in his heart a thought of the old home, and
+the woods, and the river, and the tall tree on the bank, with
+the bench beneath, and on it the girl, whose upturned, eager
+face he saw above the sea of heads confronting him.</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie's approval was worth more to the young man than
+that of all the rest; for he knew that, though she would be
+very lenient toward him, she was a keen and discriminating
+critic, and would detect a weakness which many an older person
+would fail to see. But she was satisfied&mdash;he was sure of
+that; and if there had been in his mind any doubt it would have
+been swept away when, after the exercises were over, and he
+stood receiving the congratulations of his friends, she worked
+her way through the crowd and threw her arms around his
+neck, kissing him fondly, and bursting into a flood of tears as
+she told him how proud she was of him.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of half his classmates were upon him, and though
+Harold felt a thrill of keen delight run through his veins at the
+touch of Jerrie's lips, he would a little rather she had waited
+until they were alone.</p>
+
+<p>'There, there, Jerrie, that will do!' he whispered, as he unclasped
+her arms, and put her gently from him, though he still
+held her hand. 'Don't you see they are all looking at us.'</p>
+
+<p>With a sudden, jerk Jerrie withdrew her hand from his and
+stepped back into the crowd, her heart beating wildly, and
+her cheeks burning with shame, as she thought what she had
+done and how it must have mortified Harold.</p>
+
+<p>Maude was speaking to him now&mdash;Maude with her bright
+black eyes and brilliant color. But she was neither crying nor
+strangling him with kisses. She was shaking hands with him
+very decorously, and telling him how pleased and glad she was.
+And in his hand he held her roses, which he occasionally smelled
+as he listened, and smiled upon her with that peculiar smile of
+his which made him so attractive. But the lilies were nowhere
+to be seen; and when, an hour later, all the baskets and bouquets
+bearing his name were piled together, the lilies were not
+there.</p>
+
+<p>'He has thrown them away! He did not care for them at
+all, and I might as well have staid in bed as to have gotten up
+at four o'clock and risked my neck to get them. He likes
+Maude and her roses better than he does me,' Jerrie thought,
+with a swelling heart and all through the journey home&mdash;for
+they returned that night&mdash;she was very quiet and tactiturn,
+letting Maude do all the talking, and saying when asked why
+she was so still, that her head was aching, and that she was too
+tired and sleepy to talk.</p>
+
+<p>That was the last time for years that Jerrie put her arms
+around Harold's neck, or touched her lips to his; for it had
+come to her like a blow how much he was to her, and, as she believed,
+how little she was to him.</p>
+
+<p>'Maude is preferred to me&mdash;I see it now so plainly; he likes
+me well enough, but he loves <i>her</i>&mdash;I saw it in the way he looked
+at her that time I mortified him so dreadfully with my <i>gush</i>,'
+she thought; and although of all her girl friends, not even excepting
+Nina St. Claire, Maude was the nearest and dearest, she
+was half-glad when a week or two later, Maude said good-bye
+to her, and with her mother sailed away to Europe, where she
+remained for more than a year and a half.</p>
+
+<p>During her absence the two girls corresponded regularly, and
+Jerrie never failed to write whatever she thought would please
+her friend to hear of Harold; and when at last Maude returned,
+and wrote to Jerrie of failing health, and wakeful nights, and
+lonely days, and her longing for the time when Jerrie would be
+home, and be with her, and read to her, or recite bits of poetry,
+as she had been wont to do, Jerrie trampled every jealous, selfish
+thought under her feet, and in her letters to Harold urged
+him to see Maude as often as possible, and read to her whenever
+she wished him to do so.</p>
+
+<p>'You have such a splendid voice, and read so well,' she wrote,
+'that it will rest her just to listen to you, and will keep her
+from being so lonely; so offer your services if she does not ask
+for them&mdash;that's a good boy.'</p>
+
+<p>Then, as she remembered how weak Maude was, mentally,
+she thought:</p>
+
+<p>'He never can be happy with her as she is now. A girl who
+cannot do a sum in simple fractions, and who, when abroad,
+thought only of Rome as a good place in which to buy sashes
+and ribbons, and who asked me in a letter to tell her who all
+those Caesars were, and what the Forum was for, is not the wife
+for a man like Harold, and however much he might love her at
+first he would be sure to tire of her after a while, unless he can
+bring her up. Possibly he can.'</p>
+
+<p>Resuming her pen, she wrote:</p>
+
+<p>'Don't give her all sentimental poetry and love trash, but
+something solid&mdash;something historical, which she can remember
+and talk about with you.'</p>
+
+<p>In his third letter to Jerrie, after the receipt of her instructions,
+Harold wrote as follows:</p>
+
+<p>'I have offered my services as reader, and tried the solid on
+Maude as you advised&mdash;have read her fifty pages of Grote's
+History of Greece; but when I got as far as Homeric Theogony,
+she looked piteously at me, while with Hesiod and Orpheus she
+was hopelessly bewildered, and by the time I reached the extra
+Hellenic religion she was fast asleep! I do not believe her
+mind is strong enough to grapple with those old Greek chaps;
+at all events they worry her, and tire her more than they rest.
+So I have abandoned the gods and come down to common
+people, and am reading to her Tennyson's poems. Have read
+the May Queen four times, until I do believe she knows it by
+heart. She has a great liking for the last portion of it, especially
+the lines:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&quot;I shall not forget you, mother:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I shall hear you when you pass,</span><br />
+With your feet above my head<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the long and pleasant grass.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>'I saw her cry one day when I read that to her. Poor little
+Maude! She is very frail, but no one seems to think her in
+danger, she has so brilliant a color, and always seems so bright.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie read this letter two or three times, and each time with
+an increased sense of comfort. No man who really loved a girl
+could speak of her mental weakness to another as Harold had
+spoken of Maude's to her, and it might be after all that he
+merely thought of her as a friend, whom he had always known.
+So the cloud was lifted in part, and she only felt a greater anxiety
+for Maude's health, which as the spring advanced, grew stronger,
+so that it was almost certain that she would come to Vassar in
+the summer and see her friend graduated.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the state of affairs when Nina repeated to Jerrie
+what Harold had said to her at the musicale the previous winter.
+All day long there was a note of gladness in Jerrie's heart
+which manifested itself in snatches of song, and low, warbling,
+whistled notes, which sounded more as if they came from a
+canary's than from a human throat. Jerrie did <i>not</i> chew gum,
+but she whistled, and the teachers who reproved her most for
+what they called a boyish trick, always listened intently, when
+the clear, musical notes, now soft and low, now loud and shrill,
+were heard outside, or in the building.</p>
+
+<p>'Whistling Jerrie,' the girls sometimes called her, but she
+rather liked the name, and whistled on whenever she felt like it.</p>
+
+<p>And it was a very joyous, happy song she trilled, as she
+thought of Harold's compliment, and wished she might wear
+at commencement the dress of baby-blue which he had admired,
+for Harold would, of course, be there to see and hear,
+and as, when he wrote his valedictory two years before there
+had been in every line a thought of her, so in her essay, which
+was peculiarly German in its method and handling, thoughts of
+Harold had been closely interwoven. She knew she should receive
+a surfeit of applause&mdash;she always did; but if Harold's
+were wanting the whole thing would be a failure. So she wrote
+him twice a week, urging him to come, and he always replied
+that nothing but necessity would keep him from doing so.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV" ></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE TWO FACES IN THE MIRROR.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Toward the last of May Arthur came to Vassar, bringing
+with him the graduating dress which he had bought
+in New York, with Maude as his adviser. He had Jerrie
+at the hotel to spend Saturday and Sunday with him, and took
+her to drive and to shop, and then in the evening asked her to
+put on her finery, that he might see how it looked.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not come to hear you spout out your erudition,' he
+said, 'for I detest crowds, with the dreadful smell of the rooms.
+I have gotten the park house tolerably free from odors, though
+the cook's drain is terrible at times, and I shall have brimstone
+burned in the cellar once a week. But what was I saying?
+Oh, I know&mdash;I shall not be here at commencement, and I wish
+to see if my Cherry is likely to look as well as any of them.'</p>
+
+<p>So Jerrie left him alone while she donned the white dress,
+which fell in soft, fluffy folds around her feet, and fitted her
+superb figure perfectly. She knew how well it became her, and
+sure of Arthur's approbation, went back to the parlor, where
+she had left him. Arthur was standing with his back to the
+door when she came in, and going up to him, she said:</p>
+
+<p>'Here I am in all my gewgaws. Do you think I shall pass
+muster?'</p>
+
+<p>She spoke in German, as she always did to him, and when
+he turned quickly, there was a startled look on his face, as he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Cherry, it's you! I thought for a moment it was Gretchen
+speaking to me. Just so she used to come in with her
+light footstep and soft voice, so much like yours. Where is she,
+Cherry, that she never comes nor writes? Where is Gretchen
+now?'</p>
+
+<p>His chin quivered as he talked, and there was a moisture
+in his eyes, bent so fondly upon the young girl beside him. He
+was worn with the fatigue and excitement of his journey and the
+long drive he had taken, and Jerrie knew that whenever he was
+tired his mind was weaker and wandered more thin usual. So
+she tried to quiet and divert him by calling his attention to her
+dress, and asking how he liked it.</p>
+
+<p>'It is lovely,' he said, examining the lace and the soft flounces.
+'It is the prettiest Maude and I could find. You know,
+she was with me, and helped me select it. Yes, it's lovely,
+and so are you, Cherry, with Gretchen's eyes and hair, and
+smile, and that one dimple in your cheek. She used to wear
+soft, white dresses, and in this you are enough like her to be
+her daughter.'</p>
+
+<p>They were standing side by side before a long mirror, she
+taller for a woman than he was for a man, so that her face was
+almost in a range with his, as he stooped a little forward.</p>
+
+<p>Glancing into the mirror at the two faces so near to each
+other, Jerrie saw something which for an instant made her cold
+and sick, and set every nerve to quivering as she stepped suddenly
+back, looking first at the man's face and then at her own in
+the mirror. It was gone now, the look which had so startled
+her, but it had certainly been there&mdash;a likeness between the
+two faces&mdash;and she had seen it plainer than she had ever seen
+any resemblance between herself and the picture. Gretchen
+had blue eyes, and fair hair, and fair complexion, and so had
+she, and so had hundreds of German girls, and all Arthur had
+ever said to her had never brought to her mind a thought like
+the two faces in the mirror. <i>What if it were so?</i> That was
+the thought which had flashed like lightning through her brain,
+making her so weak that she grasped Arthur's arm to steady
+herself as she tried to speak composedly.</p>
+
+<p>'You are white as your dress,' he said. 'It is this confounded
+hot room; let us sit nearer the window.'</p>
+
+<p>They sat down together on a sofa, and taking up a newspaper,
+Arthur fanned Jerrie gently, while she said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'Do you really think I look like Gretchen?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; except that you are taller. You might be her
+daughter.'</p>
+
+<p>'Had she&mdash;had Gretchen a daughter?' was Jerrie's next
+question, put hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>'None that I ever heard of,' Arthur replied. 'Why do you
+ask that?'</p>
+
+<p>'And her name when a girl was Marguerite Heinrich, was it
+not?' Jerrie went on.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes. Who told you that?' Arthur said.</p>
+
+<p>'I saw it on a letter which you gave me to post years ago,
+when I was a child,' Jerrie replied. 'You never received an
+answer to that letter, did you?'</p>
+
+<p>'What letter did you post for me to Marguerite Heinrich?
+I don't know what you mean,' Arthur said, the old worried
+look settling upon his face, which always came there when he
+was trying to recall something he ought to remember.</p>
+
+<p>As he grew older he seemed to be annoyed when told of
+things he had forgotten, and as the letter had evidently gone
+entirely from his mind, Jerrie said no more of it. <i>She</i> remembered
+it well; and never dreaming that it had not been posted,
+she had watched a long time for an answer, which never came.
+Gretchen was dead; that was settled in her mind. But who was
+she? With the words, 'What if it were so?' still buzzing in her
+brain, the answer to this question was of vital importance to
+her, and after a moment, she continued, as if she had all the
+time been talking of Gretchen:</p>
+
+<p>'She was Marguerite Heinrich when a girl in Wiesbaden,
+but she had another name afterward, when she was married.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are talking of something you know nothing about.
+Can't you let Gretchen alone?' Arthur said, petulantly, and
+springing up he began to pace the room in a state of great excitement,
+while Jerrie sat motionless, with a white, stony look
+on her face and a far off look in her eyes, as if she were seeing
+in a vision things she could not retain, they passed to rapidly
+before her, and were so hazy and indistinct.</p>
+
+<p>The likeness she had seen in the glass was gone now. She was
+not like Arthur at all; it was madness in her to have thought
+so. And she was not like Gretchen either. Her mother was
+lying under the little pine tree which she and Harold had
+planted above the lonely grave. Her mother had been dark,
+and coarse, and bony, and a peasant woman&mdash;so Ann Eliza
+Peterkin, who had heard it from her father, had told her once,
+when angry with her, and Harold, when sorely pressed, had admitted
+as much to her.</p>
+
+<p>'Dark, with large, hard hands,' he had said; and Jerrie
+with the great tears shining in her eyes, had answered, indignantly:</p>
+
+<p>'But hard and black as they were, they always touched <i>me</i>
+gently and tenderly, and sometimes I believe I can remember
+just how lovingly and carefully they wrapped the old cloak
+around me to keep me warm. Dear mother, what do I care
+how black she was, and coarse. She was mine, and gave her
+life for me.'</p>
+
+<p>This was when Jerrie was a child, and now that she was
+older she was seeking to put away this woman with the dark
+face and the coarse hands, and substitute in her place a fairer,
+sweeter face, with hands like wax and features like a Madonna.
+But only for a few moments, and then the wild dream vanished,
+and the sad, pale face, the low voice, the music, the trees, the
+flowers, the sick-room, the death-bed, the woman who died, and
+the woman who served, all went out together into the darkness,
+and she was Jerrie Crawford again, wearing her commencement
+dress to please the man still pacing the floor abstractedly,
+and paying no heed to her when she went out to change her
+dress for the blue muslin she bud worn through the day.</p>
+
+<p>When she returned to the parlor she found him seated at the
+tea-table, which had been laid during her absence. Taking her
+seat opposite to him, she made his tea, and buttered his toast,
+and chatted, and laughed until she succeeded in bringing back
+a quiet expression to the face which bore no likeness now to
+her own, but looked pale and haggard as it always did after any
+excitement. He was talking of the commencement exercises,
+and regretting that he could not be present.</p>
+
+<p>'I may not be home,' he said. 'And if I am. I shall not
+come. Crowds kill me, and smells kill me, and we are sure to
+have both. I wish I had a different nose, but it is as it was
+made, and I think I detect some bad odor in here, don't you?'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie, who knew from experience that the better way was to
+humor his fancy, said she did smell something; perhaps it was
+the carpet, or the curtains, both of which were new.</p>
+
+<p>'Very likely, and in that case the smell is a clean one,' he
+replied, and began again to speak of commencement.</p>
+
+<p>'Harold is sure to be here,' he said, 'and he is better than
+forty old coves like me. It is astonishing what a fancy I have
+taken to that young man. I don't see a fault in him, except
+that he is too infernally proud. Think of his refusing to take
+any more money from me unless I would accept his note promising
+to pay it all back in time&mdash;just as if he ever can, or
+will.'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed he will,' Jerrie exclaimed, rousing at once in
+Harold's defence. 'He will pay every dollar, and I shall help him.'</p>
+
+<p>'You!' and Arthur laughed, merrily, 'How will you help
+him, I'd like to know.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall teach school, or give music lessons, or do both to
+earn something for grandmother,' Jerrie answered, quickly.
+'And I shall help Harold, and shall pay Mr. Frank all he gave
+grandmother for my board. I know just how much it is.
+Three dollars a week from the time I was four years old until I
+was sixteen and came here to school&mdash;almost two thousand dollars;
+a big sum, I know, but I shall pay it. You will see,' she
+went on rapidly and earnestly; as she saw the amused look on
+Arthur's face, and felt that he was laughing at her.</p>
+
+<p>'You are going to pay my brother to the uttermost farthing,
+but what of me? Am I to be left in the cold?' he asked, as he
+arose from the table and seated himself upon the sofa near the
+window.</p>
+
+<p>'I expect to be your debtor all my life,' Jerrie said, as went
+over to him and laid her soft, white arms around his neck. 'I
+can never pay you for all you have done for me, never. I can
+only love you, which I do so dearly, as the kindest and best of
+men.'</p>
+
+<p>She was stooping over him now; and putting up his hands
+Arthur drew her close to him, so that the two faces were again
+plainly reflected, side by side in the mirror opposite&mdash;the man's
+gentle and tender as a woman's, the girl's flushed, and eager,
+and excited as she caught a second time the likeness which had
+made her cold and faint when she first saw it, and which made
+her faint again as she clasped her hands tightly together, and
+leaning a little forward, looked earnestly at the faces in the
+mirror, while she listened to what Arthur was saying.</p>
+
+<p>'You owe me nothing, Cherry; the indebtedness is all on my
+side, and has been since the day when a little white sun-bonnet
+showed itself at my window, and a clear, ringing voice, which
+I can hear yet, said to me, &quot;Mr. Crazyman, don't you want
+some cherries?&quot; You don't know how much of life and sunshine
+you brought me with the cherries. My sky was very
+black those days, and but for you I am certain that I should
+long ere this have been what you called me&mdash;a crazy man for
+sure, locked up behind bars and bolts. My little Cherry has
+been all the world to me; and though she is very grand, and
+tall, and stately now, I love to remember her as the child in the
+sun-bonnet, clinging to the ladder, and talking to the lunatic
+inside. That would make a fine picture, and it I were an artist
+I would paint it some day. Perhaps Maude will. Poor
+little Maude! Did I tell you that while she was absent she dabbled
+in water-colors? and now she has what she calls a studio,
+where she perpetrates the most atrocious daubs you ever saw.
+Poor Maude! She is weak in the upper story, but is, on the
+whole, a nice girl, and very pretty, too, with her black eyes,
+and brilliant color, and kittenish ways. I did not care for her
+once, but we are great friends now, and she is a comfort to me
+in your absence. I am afraid, though, that she is not long for
+this world. Everything tires her, and she has grown so thin
+that a breath might blow her away. I think it would kill
+Frank to lose her. His life is bound up in hers; and he once
+said to me, either that he had sold, or would sell, his soul for her.
+What do you suppose he meant?'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie did not reply. The likeness in the mirror had disappeared
+as Arthur grew more in earnest, and she listened more
+intently to what he was saying of Maude, every word as he went
+on a blow from which she shrank as from some physical pain.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Arthur continued, 'Maude is weak, mentally and
+physically, though I believe she is trying hard to improve her
+wind, or rather, that young man, Harold, is trying to improve
+it for her. He is at the house nearly everyday, or she is at the
+cottage. But, hold on! I wasn't to tell, and I haven't told&mdash;only
+he reads to her, sometimes outside when the weather will
+admit, but oftener in her <i>studio</i>, where she talks to him of art,
+and where I once saw him giving her a sitting while she tried
+to sketch his face. A caricature, I called it, ridiculing it so
+much that she put it away unfinished, and is now at work on
+some water-lilies he brought her, and which are really very
+good. Mrs. Tracy is not pleased with Harold's visits, and I
+once overheard her saying to Maude, &quot;Why do you encourage
+the attentions of that young man? why do you run after him
+so, down there every day?&quot; Hold on, again! What a tattler I
+am! Why don't I stick to Dolly, who said, &quot;You certainly do
+not care for him. He hasn't a cent to his name, nor any family
+and has even worked in Peterkin's furnace.&quot; What Maude replied
+I do not know, I only heard Dolly bang the door hard
+as she left the room, so I suppose the answer was not a pleasing
+one. Dolly is a grand lady and would not like her daughter to
+marry an ordinary man like Harold.'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' Jerrie said, slowly, as if speaking were an effort.
+'N-no; and you think Harold likes Maude very much?'</p>
+
+<p>'Likes her? Yes. Why shouldn't he like a girl as pretty as
+she is, especially when she meets him more than half way?'
+Arthur replied, and Jerrie continued in the same measured
+tone:</p>
+
+<p>'Ye-es, and you think he would marry her if her mother
+would permit it?'</p>
+
+<p>'He is not at all likely to do that,' Arthur answered, quickly,
+'A man seldom marries a woman who throws herself at his
+head and lets him see how much she cares for him, and Maude
+is doing just that. She cannot conceal anything. I tell you,
+Cherry, if the time ever comes when you love somebody better
+than all the world beside, don't let him know until he speaks
+for himself. Don't be lightly won. Better be shy and cold,
+than demonstrative and gushing, like Maude. Gretchen was
+shy as a fawn, and after I told her I loved her she would not
+believe it possible. But, child, you look fagged and tired. It
+is time you were in bed. I have talked you nearly to death.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am not tired,' Jerrie said, 'and I want to know what it is
+about Maude's going to the cottage, which you must not tell
+me. Is she there very, very often, and does Harold like to have
+her come, and is that throwing herself at his head, as you call
+it?'</p>
+
+<p>She had her arm around his neck in a coaxing kind of way,
+and Arthur smoothed the soft white hand resting on his coat-collar,
+as he answered, laughingly:</p>
+
+<p>'Mother Eve herself. You would have eaten the apple, too,
+had you been Mrs. Adam. No, no, I shall not tell any secrets.
+You must wait and see for yourself. And now you must go,
+for I am tired myself.'</p>
+
+<p>She said good-night, and went to her room, but not to sleep
+at once, because of the tumult of emotions which had been
+roused by what Arthur had told her of Maude and Harold.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't believe now that I really meant him to make love to
+her when I asked him to amuse her,' she whispered to herself,
+as she dashed away two great tear-drops from her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after a moment, she continued:</p>
+
+<p>'But they shall never know. No one shall ever know that
+I care, for I don't, or I am not going to. Harold is my brother,
+and I shall love Maude as my sister, and I will do all I can to
+make her more like what Harold's wife should be. She is beautiful,
+and good, and sweet, and true, and with money and position
+can do far more for him than I could&mdash;I, the daughter of a peasant
+woman, the child of the carpet bag; and yet&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Here Jerrie's hands beat the air excitedly as she recalled
+the wild fancy which had twice taken possession of her that
+night, and which had been born of that likeness seen in the
+mirror. Many times since she had passed from childhood to
+womanhood had she speculated upon the mystery which enshrouded
+her, while one recollection after another of past
+events flitted through her brain, only to bewilder her awhile and
+then to disappear into oblivion. But never before had she been
+affected as she was that night when the possibility of what
+might be nearly drove her wild.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, if that were so,' she said, 'I could help Harold, and I'd
+give everything to him and make him my king, as he is worthy
+to be. There is something far back,' she continued 'something
+different from the woman who died at my side. That face which
+haunts me so often was a reality somewhere. It has kissed me
+and called me darling, and I saw the life fade out of it&mdash;saw it
+cold and dead. I know I did, and sometime, when I have paid
+that debt to Mr. Frank Tracy, and have helped Harold, and
+made grandmother comfortable, I'll go to Germany, to Wiesbaden
+and everywhere, and clear the mystery, if possible; and if
+mother was a peasant girl, with hands coarse and hard, and
+black from labor in the field, then, I, too, will be a peasant girl,
+and marry a peasant lad, and draw his potatoes home in a cart,
+while he trudges at my side.'</p>
+
+<p>At this picture of herself Jerrie laughed out loud, and while
+trying to think how it would seem to draw potatoes in a cart,
+after having dug them, she fell asleep and dreamed of Maude and
+Harold, and studios and lilies, and a face which was a caricature,
+as Arthur had said, and which, when at a late hour she awoke,
+proved to be that of the chambermaid, whom Arthur had sent
+to rouse her, as he was waiting for his breakfast.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI" ></a>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+<h2>MAUDE'S LETTER.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>TRACY PARK, June &mdash;&mdash;, 18&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p>'My darling Jerrie:&mdash;I wish I could send you a whiff
+of the delicious air I am breathing this morning from the
+roses under my window and the pond-lilies which Harold
+brought me about an hour ago. Don't you think he was up before
+the sun, and went out upon the river to get them for me because he
+knows how fond I am of them, and I told him yesterday that they
+always made me think of you, they are an sweet, and pure, and fair.
+I wish you could have seen him, or, rather, have heard his voice
+and seen the look in his eyes, as he said: &quot;Yes; Jerrie is the lily
+and you are the rose; you set each other off admirably. I am glad
+you are so good friends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Harold thinks the world of you, Jerrie, and were you his own
+sister, I am sure he could not love you better than he does. How
+handsome he has grown since I went away. I always thought him
+splendid-looking, but he is more than that now; so tall and straight,
+with his head set on his shoulders in such an aristocratic kind of
+way, and then his eyes, which look at you so&mdash;well, I don't know
+how they do look at you, but they are eyes you would trust and
+never be afraid of anything bad behind them. Uncle Arthur says
+his mother was lovely, and that his father was one of the handsomest
+men of his time, but I am certain that Harold looks better than
+either of them, and has inherited the good qualities of both, without
+a single bad one. He is so nice and gentlemanly, and has such
+a kind, courteous way of saying and doing things. Fred Raymond&mdash;who,
+you know, is so sweet on Nina St. Clair&mdash;says that if
+Harold had all the blood of a hundred kings in his veins he could
+not be more courtly or dignified in his manner than he is, and that
+is a great deal for a Kentuckian to say. Fred is now at Grassy
+Spring, visiting Dick St. Claire, and will stay until Nina comes
+home. I wish Harold was rich, and if I had money of my own, I
+believe I'd give it to him, only he wouldn't take it, he is so awfully
+proud, and afraid somebody will help him; and yet I respect him
+for the pride, which has made him teach school, and do everything
+he could find to do in order to go through college the last two years
+and pay his own way. But I did not like it a bit when I heard he
+had accepted a situation in Peterkin's furnace. I know he had
+good wages, but it is dreadful to think of Harold under such a man,
+even if Billy is there. When I told Uncle Arthur he laughed, and
+said: &quot;Honor and shame from no condition rise.&quot; I wonder what
+he meant? I asked Tom, and he said I was a fool.</p>
+
+<p>'Weren't you proud of Harold, though, the day he graduated?
+What an oration that was! and how the building shook with applause
+when he came on and when he went off! And do you remember
+the expression of his face when he picked up the bouquet of roses I
+threw him, and looked over where we sat? I thought he touched
+his lips to them, but was not sure. Do you remember? He is
+studying law now all the time he can get in Judge St. Claire's office,
+but he comes to read to me for an hour or more nearly every day.
+He came of his own accord, too. I did not ask him, or even hint,
+as Tom says I do, when I want anything; and sometimes I half
+think he is trying to drive something into my head, or was, when
+he began to read to me about those old Greeks, Hesiod, or Herod, I
+don't know which, and Theogony&mdash;that's rather a pretty name,
+don't you think so? But I could not stand the Greeks. My mind
+is too weak to be impressed by anything Grecian, unless it is the
+Grecian bend. You tried it until you were discouraged and gave it
+up, telling me I was the stupidest idiot you ever saw! That was
+the time we had the a spelling-school in the Tramp House, and you
+were the teacher, and Harold chose me first, and I spelled biscuit
+&quot;bisket!&quot; Do you remember how I cried? and when you told me
+nobody would ever like me unless I knew something, Harold said.
+&quot;Don't talk like that, Jerrie; those who know the least are frequently
+liked the best.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'What a comfort those words have been to me; and especially at
+the time when I failed so utterly in examination at Vassar and had
+to give it up. Oh, Jerrie, you do not know how mortified I was
+over that failure, to think I knew so little; and the worst of it is I
+can't learn, or understand; or remember, and it makes my head
+ache so to try. I am sorry most on father's account, he is so proud
+of me and would like to see me take the lead in everything. Poor
+father! he is growing old so fast. Why, his hair is white as snow,
+and he sometimes talks to himself just as Uncle Arthur does. I
+wonder what ails him that he never smiles or seems interested in
+anything except when I am smoothing his hair or sitting on his
+knee; then he brightens up and calls me his pet and darling, and
+talks queer kind of talk, I think. He asks me if I am glad I live at
+Tracy Park&mdash;if I like the pretty things he buys me, and if I should
+be as happy if I were poor&mdash;not real poor, you know, but as we
+were at Langley before I was born. I went there with him a few
+weeks ago for the first time; and oh, my goodness gracious! such
+a poky little house, with the stairs going right up in the room, and
+such a tiny, stuffy bedroom! I tried to fancy mamma's scent
+bottles, and brushes, and combs, and the box for polishing her
+nails, transported to that room, and her in there with Rosalie dressing
+her hair. It made me laugh till I cried, and I think papa did
+actually cry, for he sat down upon the stairs and turned his head
+away, and when he looked up his eyes were all wet and red, with
+such a sorry look in them that I went straight up and kissed him,
+and asked him playfully if he was crying for the old days when he
+lived in that house and sold codfish in the store.</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Yes, Maude,&quot; he said. &quot;I believe I'd give the remainder of
+my life if I could be put back right here as I was when your uncle
+Arthur's letter came and turned my head. Oh, if the years and
+everything could be blotted out!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'What do you suppose he meant? I was frightened, and did not
+say a word until he asked me those questions I told you about; did
+I like pretty things? did I like to live at Tracy Park, and could I
+bear to be poor and live in the Langley house? I just told him,
+'No, I should not like to live in Langley, that I did like living at
+Tracy Park, and did like the pretty things which money bought.'</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Then I ought to be content, if my beautiful Maude is so,&quot; he
+said, and the tired look on his face lifted a little.</p>
+
+<p>'He calls me beautiful so often. But I don't see it, do you? Of
+course you don't. You think me too black, and small, and thin,
+and so I am. Harold never told me I was pretty, and&mdash;I tell this
+in confidence, and you must never breathe it to any one&mdash;I have
+tried to wring a compliment from him so many times, but it's no
+use, I can't do it, he never understands anything, though he does
+sometimes say, when he brings me a bright rose: &quot;Wear it, Maude;
+it will become your style.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'He never says you are pretty, either, and that is strange, for I
+think you have the loveliest and sweetest face I ever saw, except
+Gretchen's in the picture, you look like her; I saw it so plainly two
+years ago, when you were here one evening, and I spoke of it to father.
+Who was she, I wonder? Uncle Arthur does not talk much of her now,
+though I believe he kisses her every night and morning. How much
+he thinks of you, and how much he has talked of <i>Cherry</i> since his
+visit to you in May. I am so glad you liked the dress, he was so
+anxious about it. Did he say any thing to you of a trip to California?
+He took us quite by surprise two weeks ago by telling us he
+was going. He wanted to see the Yosemite Valley before he died,
+he said, and June was the time to see it. So he started off with
+Charles about ten days ago, and the house seems like a tomb without
+him.</p>
+
+<p>'If I can, I shall come and see you graduate with the other
+Vassars, though I shall be ashamed to be seen where I failed so utterly.
+I might have known I should, for I haven't about me a
+single quality which would entitle me to be a Vassar, unless it is my
+fondness for <i>gum</i>. Do you really chew an awful lot there, or is it a
+fib? How learned you and Nina will be, and how you will cast me
+in the shade, making me seem stupider than ever. I did try very
+hard to learn to speak German when I was abroad with mamma, for
+father wished it particularly; but I could not do it, and gave it up.
+I have not a capacity for anything, except to love and suffer and
+sacrifice for those I love. Do you know, it sometimes frightens me
+to think how devotedly I could love some one. Not a girl, but a
+man&mdash;a lover&mdash;a husband, who loved me. Why, I would give my
+life for him, and bear any kind of torture if it would add to his happiness.
+But why write this nonsense to you, who never acted as if
+you cared an atom for any boy, not even Dick St. Claire, who used
+to give you sugar hearts and call you his little wife. <i>Entre nous</i>
+(who says I do not know two French words?) mamma would like to
+make a match between Dick and me, but she never will&mdash;never!
+Dick is nice, and I like him, but not that way. Poor mamma! How
+much she thinks of money and position! I tell her she ought to
+have a photograph of the old Langley House hung up in her room
+to keep her in mind of her former condition. Just now she has the
+craze to hammer brass and paint in water-colors, and goes over to
+Mrs. Atherton's to take lessons. Don't you think that Mrs. Peterkin&mdash;<i>May
+Jane</i>&mdash;had like aspirations with mamma, and wanted to
+join the class; but the teacher found that she had as many pupils
+as she could attend to, and so May Jane is left out in the cold. But
+Mr. Peterkin says, 'By George, my wife shall have 'complishments
+if money can buy em!' And so, I suppose, she will. What strides
+those Peterkins have taken, to be sure, and what a big house he has
+built with such a funny name.&mdash;&quot;<i>Le Batteau</i>&quot;, which, as he pronounces
+it, sounds like <i>Lubber-too</i>! It is just finished, and they have
+moved into it. I have not been there, but Tom has, and he says it
+fairly glitters, it is so gorgeous, and looks inside like those chariots
+which come with circuses.</p>
+
+<p>'You ought to hear Peterkin talk about his '<i>Ann Lizy</i>, who, he
+says, &quot;is to Vassar, gettin schoolin' with the big bugs, and when
+she comes <i>hum</i> he is goin' to get her a hoss and cart for her own,
+and a maid, and a vally, too, if she wants one.&quot; Well, there are
+some bigger fools in the world than I am, and that's a comfort. As
+for Billy, he stammers worse, if possible, than he used to when he
+told us we were &quot;pl-p-plaguey mean to pl-pl-plague Ann Lizy so;&quot;
+but I guess I will let him burst upon you in all the magnificence of
+his summer attire&mdash;his almost white clothes, short coat, tight pants,
+pointed shoes, and stove-pipe hat to make him look taller. He
+comes here occasionally to see Tom, and always talks of you. I do
+believe you might be Mrs. Billy Peterkin and live at <i>Lubber-too</i>, if
+you wanted; but, really, Billy is very kind to Harold, who gets
+twice as much wages in the office, when he writes there, as he would
+if it were not for Billy.</p>
+
+<p>'Tom is home, doing nothing, but taking his ease and aping an
+English swell. You know he was with mamma and me in England,
+and since his return has effected everything English, and looks quite
+like the <i>dude</i> of the period. He, too, seems interested in your
+return; and I don't know but you might be mistress of Tracy Park,
+if you could fancy the incumbrance. Dick St. Claire is going to
+Vassar to see you and Nina graduate; and Harold, too, if he possibly
+can. He is very busy just now with something he must finish,
+and perhaps he cannot be there. Tom is going, and Fred Raymond,
+and Billy Peterkin&mdash;quite a turn-out from Shannondale.</p>
+
+<p>'I can hardly wait to see you. Only think, it is almost two years
+since I said good-bye; for we went to Europe just after Harold was
+graduated, and your last Christmas holidays were over before we
+came home.</p>
+
+<p>'What a long letter I have written you, and have not told you a
+word of my health, about which you inquired so particularly. Did
+Uncle Arthur tell you anything? I wish he had not, for it worries
+me to have people look, and act, and talk as if I were sick, when I
+am not. If I had not a pain in my side, and a tickling cough, which
+keeps me awake nights and makes me sweat until my hair is wet, I
+should be perfectly strong; and but for the pain and the weariness,
+I feel as well as I ever did; and I go out nearly every day, and I
+don't want to die and leave my beautiful home, and father, and
+mother, and you, and&mdash;everybody I love. I am too young to die.
+I cannot die.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Jerrie, I am glad you are coming home! You will do me
+good, just as Harold does. He is so strong every way, and so kind
+I can't begin to tell you what he has been to me since I came home
+in March&mdash;more than a friend&mdash;more than a brother. I do not see
+why you never fell in love with him, thought I suppose it is living
+with him always, as you have, and looking upon him as a brother.</p>
+
+<p>'And now I must say good-bye, for I am getting tired and must
+rest. I was at the cottage this morning, and Harold is coming here
+this afternoon to read Tennyson's &quot;May Queen&quot; to me. He has
+read it a dozen times, but I am never tired of it, although it makes
+me cry to think of that grave in the long grass, with little Alice in
+it, cold and dead, listening for those she loved to come and weep
+over her. You know, she says to her mother:</p></div>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'&quot;I shall hear you when you pass,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With your feet above me, in the long and pleasant grass.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Oh, Jerrie, if it should be&mdash;you know what I mean; if there
+should come a time when people say to each other, &quot;Maude Tracy
+is dead!&quot; you'll come often, won't you, and think of me always as
+the friend, who, weak and stupid as she was, loved you dearly&mdash;dearly.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, good-bye again. Harold has just come in, and says,
+&quot;Remember me to Jerrie, and tell her I shall hope to see her graduated,
+but do not know, I am so busy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Truly and lovingly,</p>
+
+<p>'MAUDE TRACY.'</p>
+
+<p>'P.S.&mdash;Tom has come in, and says, &quot;Give my love to Jerrie.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'P.S. No. 2.&mdash;Dick St. Claire and Fred Raymond are here, and
+both send their regards.</p>
+
+<p>'P.S. No. 3.&mdash;If you will believe me, Billy Peterkin is here, nibbling
+his little cane, and says, &quot;Present my compliments to Miss
+Crawford.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Just think of it. Five, or, rather, four young men&mdash;for Tom
+don't count&mdash;for me to entertain. But I can do it, and rather like
+it, too, though they all tire me, except Harold.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Jerrie read this letter, which was received a few days before
+commencement, two or three times, and each time she read it,
+the little ache in her heart kept growing larger, until at last it
+was actual pain, and covering her face with her hands, she cried
+like a child.</p>
+
+<p>'It is Maude I am crying for,' she kept saying to herself. 'I
+know she is worse than they have told me. She is going to
+die, and I am mean to grudge her Harold's love, if that will
+make her happier. Why does she go to the cottage so often, I
+wonder? Is it to see him? He would not like me to do that.
+He was chagrined when I kissed him at Harvard. But, then,
+he does not love me, and he does Maude; but he <i>must</i> see me
+graduate. I'll write and tell him so. That, surely, will not be
+&quot;throwing myself at his head;&quot;' and seizing her pen, Jerrie
+wrote, rapidly and excitedly:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'DEAR HAROLD: I have just heard from Maude, who says there
+is a possibility that you will not come to Vassar; but I shall be so
+disappointed if you do not. I would rather have you here than all
+the wise old heads in the State. So come without fail, no matter
+what you are doing. I can't imagine anything which should keep
+you. Tell grandma I am longing to be home, and keep thinking
+just how cool and nice the kitchen looks, with the hop-vine over the
+door; but she will I have to raise the roof soon, for I do believe I've
+grown an inch since last winter and am in danger of knocking my
+brains out in those low rooms.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-bye till I see you.</p>
+
+<p>'JERRIE.'</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII" ></a> CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+
+<h2>'HE COMETH NOT,' SHE SAID.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The <i>she</i> was Jerrie, who, the night before commencement,
+was shaking hands with Dick St. Claire, Fred Raymond,
+Tom Tracy, and Billy Peterkin, all of whom had
+arrived on the evening train, and after dinner had come to pay
+their respects to the young ladies from Shannondale. The <i>he</i>
+way Harold, for whom Jerrie asked at once.</p>
+
+<p>'Where is Harold? Is he coming in the morning?' she said,
+as she stood, tall, and straight, and queen-like, before the four
+young men, who glanced at each other with a significance in
+their looks, which she did not understand.</p>
+
+<p>It was Dick St. Claire who took it upon himself to explain.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Hal is not coming,' he said, 'and he is awfully cut up
+about it. He thought he might manage it until yesterday when
+he found it impossible to do so. You see, he has taken a job
+which must be done at a certain time.'</p>
+
+<p>'Taken a job!' Jerrie repeated. 'What job? What do you
+mean?' and her blue eyes flashed upon each of the young men,
+falling last upon Tom Tracy, as if she expected him to answer,
+which he did in the half sneering, half satirical tone which made
+her hate him and long to box his ears.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, it's a sort of carpenter's job,' he said; 'and I heard his
+hammer going this morning before sunrise, for I was up early
+for once and out in the park. Sounded as if he were shingling
+a roof, and that's work, you know, which must be done in fair
+weather. It might rain and spoil the plastering.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you,' Jerrie answered, curtly. 'Harold is shingling
+a roof, and cannot come. But where is Maude? Is she shingling
+a roof, too?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, b-b-by Jove. You've h-hit it. Maude's sh-shingling
+a roof, too: the b-best joke out,' Billy Peterkin chimed in, glad
+of an opportunity to join in the conversation, and so get some
+attention from Jerrie.</p>
+
+<p>He was a little man, only four feet five with heels, and he
+wore the light clothes of which Maude had written, and a stove-pipe
+hat, and dove colored gloves, and carried a little cane,
+which he constantly nibbled at, when he was not beating his
+little boot with it. But he was good-natured and inoffensive
+and kind-hearted, with nothing low or mean in his nature; and
+Jerrie, who looked as if she could have picked him up and
+thrown him over the house, liked him far better than she did
+the 'elegant Tom,' as she had nicknamed him, who stood six
+feet without heels, and who knew exactly what shade of color
+to choose, from his neck-tie to his hose, which were always silk
+of the finest quality. Tom was faultlessly gotten up, and he
+knew it, and carried himself as if he knew it, and knew, too,
+that he was Tom Tracy, the future heir of Tracy Park, if he
+were fortunate enough to outlive both his uncle and his father.
+Jerrie had disliked him when he was a boy and she disliked him
+now, and turning her back upon him pretended to be interested
+in 'little Billy,' as she was in the habit of calling him; he was
+so short and she was so tall.</p>
+
+<p>He was speaking of Harold, and he said:</p>
+
+<p>'It's a dused shame he co-couldn't come, b-but he sent some
+money by Dick to buy you a b-basket in New York, and
+by George, we've got you a st-stunner down to the h-hotel;
+only I'm a-a-fraid it'll be w-wilted some b-before to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Dick said, coming forward, 'I should not have told
+you now, if Billy had not let it out; Hal did give me some
+money to buy a basket of flowers for you; the very best I
+could find, he said, and I got a big one; but I'm afraid it was
+not very fresh, for it begins to look wilted now. You must
+blame Tom, though; he pretends to be up in flowers, and advised
+my getting this one in New York, because it was so
+handsome and cheap.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it is all right,' Tom drawled, in that affected voice he
+had adopted since his return from Europe. 'It was the best,
+any way, we could get for the money. Hal, you know, isn't
+very flush in the pocket.'</p>
+
+<p>It was a mean speech to make, and all Tom's audience felt it
+to be so, while Jerry crimsoned with resentment and answered
+hotly:</p>
+
+<p>'Faded or not, I shall care more for Harold's flowers than for
+all the rest which may be given me.'</p>
+
+<p>This was not very encouraging to three at least of the young
+men who were intending to make the finest floral offering they
+could find, to the girl whom in their secret hearts they admired
+more than any girl they had ever seen, and who, had she made
+the slightest sign, might have been installed at Grassy Spring,
+or Tracy Park, or Le Bateau, within less than a month. But
+Jerry had never made a sign, and had laughed and chatted and
+flirted with them all, not excepting Tom, who had long ago
+dropped his supercilious air of superiority and patronage when
+talking with her, and treated her with a gentleness and consideration
+almost lover-like. Horribly jealous of Harold, whom he
+still felt infinitely above, although he did not now often openly
+show it, he had encouraged the visits of the latter to Tracy
+Park, and by jokes and hints and innuendoes had fed the flame
+which he knew was burning in his sister's heart.</p>
+
+<p>'There will be a jolly row when mother finds it out,' he said
+to Maude one day; 'for you know she holds her head a great
+deal higher than Hal Hastings, who isn't the chap I'd choose
+for a brother-in-law. But if you like him, all right. Stick to
+him, and I'll stand by you to the death.'</p>
+
+<p>This was to Maude; while to his mother, when, she complained
+that Harold came there quite too often, and that Maude
+was running after him too much, he said:</p>
+
+<p>'Nonsense, mother! let Maude alone. She knows what she
+is about, and would not wipe her shoes on Hal Hastings, much
+less marry him. She is lonely without Nina and Jerry, and
+not strong enough to read much herself, and Hal amuses
+her; that's all. I know. I have talked with her. I am keeping
+watch, and the moment I see any indications of love-making
+on either side I will give you warning, and together we will
+put my fine chap in his proper place in a jiffy.'</p>
+
+<p>Tom was a young man now of twenty-seven, tall, and finely-formed,
+with all his mother's good looks, and his Uncle
+Arthur's courtliness of manner when he felt that his companions
+were worthy of his notice, but proud, and arrogant, and self-asserting
+with his inferiors, or those whom he thought such.
+He had never overcome his unwarrantable dislike of Harold,
+whom he considered far beneath him; but Harold was too
+popular to be openly treated with contempt, and so there was
+a show of friendship and civility between them, without any
+real liking on either side. Tom could not tell just when he
+began to look upon Jerrie as the loveliest girl he had ever seen,
+and to contemplate the feasibility of making her Mrs. Tom
+Tracy. His admiration for her had been of slow growth, for
+she was worse than a nobody&mdash;a child of the Tramp House, of
+whose antecedents nothing was known, while he was a Tracy,
+of Tracy Park, whom a duchess might be proud to wed. But
+he had succumbed at last to Jerrie's beauty, and sprightliness,
+and originality, and now his love for her had become the
+absorbing passion of his life, and he would have made her his
+wife at any moment, in the face of all his mother's opposition.
+By some subtle intuition, he felt that Harold was his rival,
+though he could not fathom the nature of Harold's feeling for
+Jerrie, so carefully did the latter conceal it.</p>
+
+<p>'He must regard her as something more than a sister,' he
+thought; 'he cannot see her every day without loving her, and
+by-and-by he will tell her so, and then my cake is dough. If
+I can only get him committed to Maude while Jerrie is away,
+my way is clear, for I am quite sure she does not care for Dick,
+and she would be a fool not to take Tracy Park if she could get
+it. And why shouldn't Hal love Maude? She is pretty, and
+sweet, and winning, and will some day be an heiress. Hal
+may thank his stars to get her, though I hate him as I do poison.'</p>
+
+<p>It was Tom who had insisted that Harold's basket should
+be bought in New York, where there was a better chance, he
+said, and he had himself selected flowers which he knew were
+not fresh, and would be still worse twenty-four hours later.</p>
+
+<p>'Why don't you get yours here, if it is the be-best place?'
+Will Peterkin had asked him, and he replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, we can't be bothered with more than one basket in the
+train. I can find something there.'</p>
+
+<p>He did not say what he intended to find, or that baskets
+were quite too common for him. But after leaving the young
+ladies in the evening, he went to a florist's and ordered for
+Jerrie a book of white daisies, with a rack of purple pansies
+for it to rest upon.</p>
+
+<p>'That will certainly be unique, and show her that I have
+taste,' he thought.</p>
+
+<p>For Nina a bouquet was sufficient, while for Ann Eliza
+Peterkin he ordered nothing. Tom could be lavish of his money
+where his own interest was concerned, but where he had no
+interest he was stingy and even mean, and so poor little red-haired
+Ann Eliza, who would have prized a leaf from him more
+than all the florist's garden from another, was to get nothing
+from him.</p>
+
+<p>'What business has old Peterkin's daughter to graduate
+with ladies, any way?' he thought, and he looked on with a
+sneer, while Billy ordered five baskets, one of which was to be
+of white roses, with a heart of blue forget-me-nots in the centre.</p>
+
+<p>'What, under heaven, are you going to do with five baskets?'
+he asked; but Billy was non committal, for he would not own
+that three were intended for Jerrie, whom he wished to carry
+off the palm so far as flowers were concerned.</p>
+
+<p>And she did; for of all the young ladies who the next day
+passed in review before the multitude, no one attracted so much
+attention or received so much praise as Jerrie. For clearness
+of reasoning, depth of thought, and purity of language, her
+essay, though a little too metaphysical, perhaps, was accounted
+the best, and listened to with rapt attention. And when the
+musical voice ceased, and the young girl, who had never looked
+more beautiful than she did then, with the sparkle in her eyes
+and the flush on her cheeks, bowed to the audience, bouquets of
+flowers fell around her like hailstones, while basket after basket
+was handed up to her, Tom Tracy's book showing conspicuously
+from the rest and attracting unusual admiration.</p>
+
+<p>But, alas for poor Harold's gift! Dick had watered it the last
+thing before going to bed and the first thing in the morning,
+but the flowers were limp and faded, and gave forth a sickly
+odor, while the leaves of the roses were dropping off, and only
+the size, which was immense, remained to tell what it once had
+been. But Jerrie singled it out from all the rest, and held it
+in her hands until the exercises were over; and that night, at a
+reception given to the graduates, she wore in her bosom two
+faded pink roses, the only ones she could make hold together,
+and which Nina told her smelled a little old. But Jerrie did
+not care. They were Harold's roses, which he had sent to her,
+and she prized them more than all the rest she had received.
+At little Billy's <i>heart</i> she had laughed till she cried, and then
+had given it to a young girl, not a graduate, who admired it exceedingly.
+Tom's book she knew was exquisite, and placed it
+with others, and thanked him for it, and told him it was lovely,
+and then gave it to Ann Eliza, whose offerings had been so
+few. A bouquet from Dick St. Claire and Fred Raymond, a
+basket from her brother, and one more from <i>herself</i>, were all,
+and the little red-haired girl, who, with her heavy gold chain
+and locket, and diamond ear-rings, and three bracelets, and five
+finger-rings, had looked like a jeweller's shop, felt aggrieved and
+neglected, and Jerrie found her sobbing in her room as if her
+heart was broken.</p>
+
+<p>'Only four snipping things,' she said, 'and you had twenty-five,
+and mother will be so disappointed, and father too, when
+he knows just how few I got. I wish I was popular like you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind,' Jerrie said, cheerfully. 'It was only a happen
+so&mdash;my getting so many. You are just as nice as I am,
+and I'll give you part of mine to take home to your mother.
+I can never carry them all. I should have to charter a car,'
+and in a few moments six of Jerrie's baskets were transferred
+to Ann Eliza's room, including Tom Tracy's book.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I can't take that, Ann Eliza said; he didn't mean it for
+me; he didn't give me anything, and I&mdash;I&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Here she began to sob again, and laying her hand pityingly
+upon the bowed head, Jerrie said:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I know; I understand. Something from Tom Tracy
+would have pleased you more than from anyone; but listen to
+me, Annie. Tom is not worth your tears.'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't you care for him?' the girl asked, lifting her head
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>'Not a particle, as you mean. You have nothing to fear
+from me,' Jerrie replied.</p>
+
+<p>This was a grain of comfort to the girl who had been weak
+enough to waste her affections upon Tom Tracy, and who, fearing
+Jerrie was a rival, was weak enough to hope that with her
+out of the way she might eventually succeed in bringing him to
+her feet, for she knew his fondness for money, and knew, too,
+that she should in all probability be one day the heiress to a
+million. So great was her infatuation for the man who had
+never shown her the slightest attention, that even his flowers,
+though second-hand, and not intended for her, were everything
+to her, and when she packed her trunk that night she put them
+carefully away in many wrappings of paper, to be brought out
+at home in the privacy of her own room, and kept as long as
+the least beauty or perfume remained.</p>
+
+<p>It was a merry party which the New York train carried to
+Shannondale the next day, and Jerrie was the merriest and
+gayest of them all, bandying jokes and jests, and coquetting
+pretty equally with the young men, until neither Tom, nor
+Dick, nor Billy quite knew what he was doing or saying. But
+always in her gayest moods, when her eyes were brightest and her
+wit the keenest, there was in Jerrie's heart a thought of Harold,
+who had so disappointed her, and a wonder as to the nature of
+the <i>job</i> which had been of sufficient importance to keep him
+from Vassar.</p>
+
+<p>'Shingling a roof, and Maude is helping him,' Billy said, 'I
+wonder what he meant?' she was thinking, when she heard
+Ann Eliza cry out, that the towers of 'Le Bateau' were visible.</p>
+
+<p>As she had not seen that wonderful structure since its completion,
+she arose from her seat, and going to the window,
+looked out upon the massive pile in the distance, looking, with
+its turrets, and towers, and round projections, like some old
+castle rather than a home where people could live and be
+happy.</p>
+
+<p>'It is very grand,' she said to Ann Eliza; and Billy, who was
+leaning toward her, replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, too grand for a Pe-Peterkin. It wants you, there,
+Jerrie, as its m-m-master-p-p-piece, and, by Jove, you can b-be
+there, too, if you will!'</p>
+
+<p>No one heard this attempt at an offer but Jerrie, who, with
+a saucy toss of the head, replied, laughingly:</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you, Billy. I'll think of it, and let you know when
+I make up my mind to come. Just now I prefer the cottage
+in the lane to any spot on earth. Oh, here, we are at the station,'
+she cried, as the train shot round a curve and Shannondale
+was reached.</p>
+
+<p>There was a scrambling for bundles, and flowers, and wraps.
+Fred Raymond gathering up Nina's, while Dick, and Tom, and
+Billy, almost fought over Jerrie's, and poor little Ann Eliza
+would have carried hers alone if Jerrie had not helped her.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII" ></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h2>IN SHANNONDALE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Nine years of change in Shannondale, and the green
+hill-side, which stretched from the common down to
+the river where, when our story opened, sheep and
+cows were feeding in the pasture land, is thickly covered with
+houses of every kind of architecture, from the Mansard roof to
+the Queen Anne style, just coming into fashion, while the
+meadow lands are dotted over with the small houses of the men
+who work in the large furnace, or manufactory, which Peterkin
+had bought and enlarged, as a monument, he said, and where
+he sometimes employed as many as four hundred men, and had
+set up a whistle which could be heard for miles and miles, and
+nearly blew off the chimney-tops when it sounded in the morning
+at six o'clock, it was so loud and shrill. A screecher,
+Peterkin called it, and he always listened with a smile of pride
+and satisfaction on his face when he heard the first indications
+of its blowing, and knew that four hundred men were quickening
+their stops on account of it, lest they should be a few
+minutes late and have their wages docked.</p>
+
+<p>Peterkin counted two millions now, and boasted the finest,
+or at least, the most expensive house in the county, not even
+excepting Tracy Park, which still held its own for solidity and
+old-fashioned dignity, and was the show place to the strangers
+visiting in Shannondale.</p>
+
+<p>When Peterkin made $20,000 in one day from some speculation
+in stocks, he said to Mr. St. Claire, who was now a judge,
+and with whom he pretended to be on terms of great familiarity:</p>
+
+<p>'I say, judge, I'm goin' to build a buster, and whip the
+crowd. I've lived about long enough in that little nine-by-ten
+hole, and I'll be dumbed if I don't show 'em what I can
+do. I'll have towers, and bay-windows, and piazzers, with
+checkered work all 'round 'em, and a preservatory, and all
+kinds of new fangled doin's. May Jane and Ann 'Liza want
+that Queen Anny style, but I tell 'em no such squatty things
+for me. They can have all the little winder panes and stained
+glass, cart loads on't, if they want; but I'll have the rooms
+big and high, so a feller won't bump his head. Yes, <i>sir</i>! I'm
+in for a smasher!'</p>
+
+<p>And he built 'a smasher' on the site of the old house, behind
+which the 'Liza Ann,' or what there was left of it, was
+lying; and when the house was done, and furnished with the
+most gaudy and expensive furniture he could find in Boston
+and New York, he said it had just as good a right to a name
+as any body. There was Tracy Park, and Grassy Springs,
+and Brier Hill, and Collingwood, and he'd be dumbed if he'd
+be outdone by any of 'em.</p>
+
+<p>'He'd like to call it 'Liza Ann,' he said to Arthur, whom he
+met one day in the park, and to whom he began to talk of his
+new house. 'He'd like to call it 'Liza Ann, after the old boat,
+for that craft was the beginnin' of his bein' any body; but
+May Jane and Ann 'Liza wouldn't hear to it. They wanted
+some new-frangled foreign name; could Mr. Tracy suggest
+something?'</p>
+
+<p>'How would &quot;<i>Le Bateau</i>&quot; do? It is the French for &quot;the
+boat,&quot; and might cover your difficulty,' Arthur said, without
+a thought that his suggestion would be adopted.</p>
+
+<p>But it was, immediately.</p>
+
+<p>'That's jest the checker. 'Liza Ann with a new name, <i>Lub&mdash;lub</i>&mdash;what
+d'ye call her?' Peterkin said, and Arthur replied:</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Le Bateau</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes&mdash;<i>Lubber-toe</i>; that'll suit May Jane tip-top. Beats
+all what high notions she's got! Why, I don't s'pose she any
+more remembers that she used to wash Miss Atherton's stun
+steps than you remember somethin' that never happened. Do
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur thought very likely that she did not, and Peterkin
+went on:</p>
+
+<p>'You say it means a boat in French; <i>canal</i>, do you s'pose?'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur did not think it mattered what boat, and Peterkin
+continued:</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Lubber-toe</i>! Sounds droll, but I like it, I'll see an engraver
+to-day but how do you spell the plaguy thing!'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur wrote it on a slip of paper, which he handed Peterkin,
+who began slowly:</p>
+
+<p><i>L-e le, b-a-t-bat; le-bat</i>. Why, what in thunder! That ain't
+<i>Lubbertoe</i>. 'Tain't nothin'!'</p>
+
+<p>With an amused smile Arthur explained that the pronunciation
+of French words had very little to do with the way they
+were spelled; then, very carefully pronouncing the name several
+times, and making Peterkin repeat it after him, he said
+good-bye, and walked away, thinking to himself:</p>
+
+<p>'There are bigger lunatics outside the asylum than I am,
+but it is not possible the fool will adopt that name.'</p>
+
+<p>But the fool did. May Jane approved, and Billy did not
+care, provided his father would pronounce it right, and so in
+less than a week, '<i>Le Bateau</i>' was on Peterkin's door-plate,
+and on the two gate-posts of the entrance to his grounds, and
+May Jane's visiting cards bore the words:</p>
+
+<p>'Mrs. Peterkin. Le Bateau. Fridays.'</p>
+
+<p>She had her <i>days</i> now, like Mrs. Atherton, and Mrs. St.
+Claire, and Mrs. Tracy, and had her butler, too, and her maid,
+and her carriage; and after the house was furnished, and furnished
+in style which reminded one of a theatre, it was so
+gorgeous and gay, Peterkin concluded to have a <i>coat of arms</i>
+for his carriage; and remembering how Arthur had helped
+him in a former dilemma he sought him again and told him
+his trouble.</p>
+
+<p>'That <i>Lubber-too</i> (he called it <i>too</i> now) 'went down like
+hot cakes, and was just the thing,' he said, 'and now I want
+some picter for my carriage door to kinder mark me, and show
+who I am. You know what I mean.'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur thought a <i>puff-ball</i> would represent Peterkin better
+than anything else, but he replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I know. You want a coat of arms, which shall suggest
+your early days&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'When I was a flounderin' to get up&mdash;jess so,' Peterkin interrupted
+him. 'You've hit it, square. Now I'd like a picter
+of the Lizy Ann, as she was, but May Jane won't hear to't.
+What do you say, square?'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur tingled to his finger tips at this familiarity from a
+man whom he detested, and whom he would like to turn from
+his door, but the man was in his house and in his private room,
+tilting back in a delicate Swiss chair, which Arthur expected
+every moment to see broken to pieces, and which finally did go
+down with a crash as the burly figure settled itself a little
+more firmly upon the frail thing.</p>
+
+<p>'I'll be dumbed if I hain't, broke it all to shivers!' the terrified
+Peterkin exclaimed, as he struggled to his feet, and looked
+with dismay upon the <i>d&eacute;bris</i>. 'What's the damage?' he
+continued, taking out his pocket-book and ostentatiously showing
+a fifty-dollar bill.</p>
+
+<p>'Money cannot replace the chair, which once adorned the
+<i>salon</i> of Madame De Stael,' Arthur said, 'Put up your purse,
+but for Heaven's sake, never again tip back in your chair. It
+is a vulgar trick, of which no gentleman would be guilty.'</p>
+
+<p>Ordinarily, Peterkin would have resented language like this,
+but he was just now too anxious to curry favor with Arthur to
+show any anger, and he answered, meekly:</p>
+
+<p>'That's so, square. 'Tain't good manners, and I know it, as
+well as the next one. I'm awful sorry about the chair, and
+think mebby I could get it mended. I'd like to try.'</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind the chair,' Arthur said, with an impatient
+gesture. 'Try another and a stronger one, and let's go back
+to business. You want a painted panel for your carriage.
+How will this do?' and he rapidly sketched a green, pleasant
+meadow, with a canal running through it, and on the canal a
+boat, drawn by one horse, which a barefoot, elfish-looking boy
+was driving.</p>
+
+<p>'I swow, square, you're a trump, you be,' Peterkin exclaimed,
+slapping him on the back, 'You've hit it to a dot. That's
+the 'Lizy Ann, and that there boy is Bije Jones, drivin the old
+spavin hoss. You or'to hev <i>me</i> somewhere in sight, cussin' the
+hands as I generally was, and May Jane on deck, hangin' her
+clothes to dry. Could you manage that?'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur thought he could, but suggested that Mrs. Peterkin
+might not like to be made so conspicuous.</p>
+
+<p>'Possibly she will not like this drawing at all. She may
+think it too suggestive of other days.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's so,' Peterkin assented, a little sadly; 'and if she
+don't take to it, the old Harry can't make her. She used to
+be the meekest of wives them days she dried her clothes on
+the 'Lizy Ann, but she don't knock under wuth a cent sense
+we riz in the world, and Ann Lizy is wus than her mother.
+But I'll show this to the old woman and let you know.'</p>
+
+<p>May Jane did not approve, neither did Billy. No use, they
+said, to flaunt the canal, horse, driver, and all in people's faces;
+and so the discomfited Peterkin went to Arthur again and told
+him, 'the fat was all in the fire, and May Jane on a rampage.'</p>
+
+<p>'Try again, squire; but give us some kind of water and
+craft.'</p>
+
+<p>So Arthur good-humoredly changed the canal into a gracefully
+flowing river, in a bend of which, in the distance, there
+was just visible a boat, which was a cross between a gondola and
+one of those little dangerous things so common on the lakes of
+Wisconsin. Standing in the bow of the boat, with folded arms,
+as if calmly contemplating the scenery, was the figure of a
+man&mdash;suppositively
+Peterkin&mdash;who swore 'he'd keep this picter in
+spite of 'em;' and as his wife did not seriously object, the
+sketch was transferred in oil to a pannel and inserted in
+the carriage, which, when drawn by two shining bays and
+driven by a colored man in long coat and tall hat, with Peterkin
+sitting back in it with all the pride and pompousness of a
+two-millionaire, and May Jane at his side, covered with diamonds,
+attracted general attention and comment. Billy seldom
+patronized the carriage, but frequently rode beside it, talking to
+his mother, of whom he was very fond, and taking off his hat
+to every person he met, whether old or young, rich or poor.</p>
+
+<p>'Billy is an idiot, but very kind-hearted,' people said of him,
+and in truth he was popular with everybody, especially with the
+men in his father's employ, who all went to him for favors, or
+for an increase of wages; for if Billy had any business it was
+in his father's office, where he pretended to look after matters
+and keep the books straight. Such had been the growth of
+Peterkin during the past nine years. 'He had got clean to the
+front,' he said, 'and was hob-nobbin' with Squire Harrenton,
+and Judge St. Claire, and the Tracys,' all of whom shrugged
+their shoulders and laughed at him in secret, but treated him
+civilly to his face, for, deny it as we may, money has a mighty
+power, and will open many a door which nothing else could
+move.</p>
+
+<p>'Coarse and ignorant as a horse, but not so bad after all' was
+what people said of him now; and in fact Peterkin had improved
+and softened a good deal with the accession of wealth.
+Nobody gave so largely, or lavishly either, to everything, as he
+did, while to his employees he was always generous and considerate.
+Once he thought to join the church, thinking that
+would add to his respectability; but when talked with by his
+clergyman he showed himself so lamentably deficient in every
+necessary qualification that he was advised to wait a while, which
+he did; but he rented the most expensive pew he could find,
+and carried the largest prayer-book of any one, and read the
+loudest, stumbling over the words frightfully, and kept his
+head down the longest, so long, indeed, that he once went to
+sleep, and had quite a little nap before his wife nudged him and
+told him to get up.</p>
+
+<p>'Good Lord deliver us!' Was his ejaculation, as he sprang
+to his feet, and, adjusting his glasses, looked fiercely round at
+the amused congregation.</p>
+
+<p>So far as money and display were concerned, the St. Claires
+and Mrs. Atherton had not kept up with Peterkin. On the
+contrary, as he grew into society they gradually withdrew, until
+at last Dolly Tracy had it all her own way and looked upon
+herself as the lady <i>par excellence</i> of the town. She had been to
+Europe. She had seen the queen; she had had some dresses
+made at Worth's; she had picked up a few French words which
+she used on all occasions, with but little regard to their appropriateness.
+She had decorated a tea set, and was as unlike the Dolly
+Tracy, who once did her own work and ate griddle cakes from
+her own kitchen stove, as a person well could be. Everything
+had gone well with her, and scarcely a sorrow had touched her,
+for though poor, stupid Jack had slept for five years in the
+Tracy lot with only the woman of the Tramp House for company,
+he was so near an imbecile when he died that his death
+was a blessing rather than otherwise. Tom, with his fine figure,
+his fastidious tastes, and aristocratic notions, was the apple of
+her eye, and <i>tout &agrave; fait au fait</i>, she said, when her French fever
+was at its height and she wished to impress her hearers with
+her knowledge of the language; while, except for her ill-health,
+and the bad taste she manifested in her liking for Harold's society,
+Maude was <i>tout &agrave; fait au fait</i>, too. She had no dread of
+Gretchen, now; even Arthur had ceased to talk of her, and
+was as a rule very quiet and contented.</p>
+
+<p>Only her husband troubled her, for with the passing years
+his silence and abstraction had increased, until now it was
+nothing remarkable for him to go days without speaking to any
+one unless he were first spoken to. His hair was white as
+snow, and made him look years older than he really was; while
+the habit he had of always walking with his head down, and a
+stoop in his shoulders, added to his apparent years.</p>
+
+<p>During the time Maude was in Europe he grew old very fast,
+for Maude was all that made life endurable. To see her in her
+young beauty, flitting about the house and grounds like a
+bright bird, whose nest is high up in some sheltered spot where
+the storms never come, was some compensation for what he had
+done; but when she was gone there came over him such a sense
+of loneliness and desolation that at times he feared lest he
+should become crazier than his brother, who really appeared to
+be improving, although the strange forgetfulness of past events
+still clung to and increased upon him. He did not now remember
+ever to have said that Gretchen was with him in the
+ship or on the train, or that he had sent the carriage so many
+times to meet her; and when be spoke of her, which he seldom
+did to any one except to Jerrie, it was as of one who had died
+years ago. Occasionally, in the winter, when a wild storm was
+raging like that which had shaken the house and bent the evergreens
+the night Jerrie came, he would tie a knot of crape upon
+the picture, but would give no reason for it when questioned
+except to say, 'Can't you see it is a badge of mourning?'</p>
+
+<p>For a week or more it would remain there, and then he
+would put it carefully away, to be again brought out when the
+night was wild and stormy.</p>
+
+<p>It was during Maude's absence that the two brothers became
+more intimate than they had been before since Arthur first
+came home, and it happened in this wise. Every day, for
+months after Maude and his wife went away, Frank spent
+hours alone in his private room, sometimes doing nothing, but
+oftener looking at the photograph of Gretchen, and the Bible
+with the marked passages and the handwriting around it. Then
+he would take out the letter about which Jerrie had been so
+anxious, and examine it carefully, studying the address, which
+he knew by heart, and beginning at last to arrange the letters
+in alphabetical order as far as he could, and try to imitate them.
+It was a difficult process, but little by little, with the assistance
+of a German text book of Maude's which he found, he learned
+the alphabet, and began to form words, then to put them together,
+and then to read. Gradually the work began to have a
+great fascination for him, and he went to Arthur one day and
+asked for some assistance.</p>
+
+<p>'Never too old to learn,' he said, 'and as the house is like a
+tomb without Maude, I have actually taken up German, but
+find it up-hill business without a teacher. Will you help me?'</p>
+
+<p>'To be sure, to be sure,' Arthur cried, brightening up at once,
+and bringing out on the instant such a pile of books as appalled
+Frank and made him wish to withdraw his proposition.</p>
+
+<p>But Arthur was eager, and persistent, and patient, and had
+never respected his brother one half as much as when he was
+stammering over the German pronunciation, which he could not
+well master. But he learned to read with a tolerable degree of
+fluency, and to speak a little, too, while he could understand
+nearly all Arthur said to him.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think I could get along in Germany?' he asked his
+brother, one day.</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly you could,' Arthur replied. Do you think of
+going there? If you do, go to Wiesbaden, and inquire for
+Gretchen&mdash;how she died, and where she was buried. I should
+have gone long ago only I dreaded the ocean voyage so confoundedly,
+and then I forget so badly. When are you going?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I don't know&mdash;I don't know as ever,' Frank answered
+quickly; and yet in his heart there was the firm resolve to go
+to Wiesbaden and hunt up Marguerite Heinrich's friends, if
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>'And if I find them, and find my suspicions correct, what
+shall I do then?' he asked himself over and over again; and
+once made answer to his question: 'I will either make restitution,
+or drown myself in the Rhine.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie was a constant source of misery to Frank, and yet
+when she was at home he was always managing to have her at
+the park house, where he could see her, and watch her, as she
+moved like a young queen though the handsome rooms, or frolicked
+with Maude upon the lawn.</p>
+
+<p>'She is surely Gretchen's daughter, and Arthur's, too,' he
+would say to himself, as he, too, detected in her face the likeness
+to his brother, which had so startled Jerrie in the mirror.</p>
+
+<p>He was always exceedingly kind to her, and almost as proud
+of her success at Vassar as Arthur himself; and on the day
+when she was expected home he went two or three times to the
+cottage in the lane, carrying fruit and flowers, and even offering
+things more substantial, which, however, were promptly
+declined by Mrs. Crawford, who had signified her intention to
+take nothing more for Jerrie's board.</p>
+
+<p>'The girl pays for herself, or will,' she said, 'and it is Harold's
+wish and mine to be independent.'</p>
+
+<p>But she accepted the fruit and the flowers and wondered a
+little to see Frank so excited, and nervous, and anxious that
+every thing should be done to make Jerrie's final home-coming
+as pleasant as possible.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely July afternoon when the young ladies from
+Vassar were expected, but the train was half an hour late, and
+the carriage from Grassy Spring and the carriage from Le
+Bateau had waited so long that both coachmen were asleep upon
+their respective boxes, when at last the whistle was heard
+among the hills telling that the cars were coming. The Tracy
+carriage was not there, though twenty minutes before train time
+Maude had come down in the victoria, and on learning of the
+delay had been driven rapidly to the cottage in the lane, from
+which she had not returned when at last the cars stopped before
+the station and the young people alighted upon the platform,
+which, with their luggage, seemed at once to be full.</p>
+
+<p>'Your checks, miss,' the coachman from Grassy Spring said
+to Nina, as he touched his hat regretfully to her, and his words
+were repeated to Ann Eliza by the servant from Le Bateau.</p>
+
+<p>But Jerrie held hers in her hand with a rueful look of disappointment
+on her face as she looked in vain for Harold or
+Maude to greet her. For a single moment the difference between
+her position and that of Nina and Ann Eliza struck her
+like a blow, and she thought to herself:</p>
+
+<p>'For them everything, for me nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she rallied, and passing her checks to the baggage master,
+said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'If there is a boy here with a cart or a wheelbarrow, let
+him take my trunks, otherwise send them by express. I see
+there is no one to meet me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes'm, but they's comin',' the man replied, with a significant
+nod in the direction where a cloud of dust was visible, as
+the Tracy victoria came rapidly up to the station, with Maude
+and Harold in it.</p>
+
+<p>The former was standing up and waving her parasol to the
+party upon the platform, while, almost before the carriage
+stopped, Harold sprang out, and had both of Jerrie's hands in
+his, and held them, as he told her how glad he was to welcome
+her home again. He looked tired and flurried, and did not
+seem quite himself, but there could be no doubt that he was
+glad, for the gladness shone in his eyes and in his face, and
+Jerrie felt it in the warm clasp of his hands, which she noticed
+with a pang were brown, and calloused, and bruised in some
+places as if they had of late been used to harder toil than usual.
+But she had not much time for thought before Maude's arms
+were around her neck and Maude was standing on tiptoe and
+drawing down her face which she covered with kisses; and, between
+laughing and crying, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>'You darling old Jerrie, how glad I am to see you again!
+and how tall and grand you have grown! Why, I don't much
+more than come to your shoulder. See, Harold, how Jerrie
+outshines me,' and she lifted her sparkling face to Harold, who
+looked down at her as a brother might have looked at an only
+sister of whom he was very fond.</p>
+
+<p>How pretty and piquant she was with her brilliant complexion
+and her black eyes, and how stylish she looked in the
+Paris gown of embroidered linen, which fitted her perfectly,
+and the big hat, which turned up just enough on the side to
+give her a saucy, coquettish air, as she flitted from one to another,
+kissing Nina twice, Ann Eliza once, and shaking hands
+with all the young men except Tom, who put his in his pockets
+out of her way.</p>
+
+<p>He could not stand Maude's gush, he said, and he watched
+her with a half-sneering smile as she tiptoed around, for it always
+seemed as if she walked upon her toes, courtesying as she
+walked.</p>
+
+<p>'I meant to have been here before the train,' she said to
+Jerrie, 'and I was here about an hour ago; but when I found
+the cars were late I drove over to tell Harold, as time with him
+was everything. How we did drive, though, when we heard
+the whistle. Come, jump in,' she continued, as she herself
+stepped into the victoria. 'Jump in, and I will take you
+home in a jiffy. It won't hurt Hal to walk, although he is
+awful tired.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I would rather walk; take Harold, if he is so tired,'
+Jerrie said, in a tone she did not quite intend.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Jerrie,' Harold exclaimed, in a low, pained voice, 'I
+am not tired, let us both walk,' and going to Maude he said
+something to her which Jerrie could not hear, except the words,
+'Don't you think it better so?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I do; it was stupid in me not to see it before,'
+was Maude's reply, as she laid her hand on Harold's arm
+where it rested a moment, while she said her good-byes.</p>
+
+<p>And Jerrie saw the little, ungloved hand touching Harold
+so familiarly, and thought how small, and white and thin it
+was, with the full, blue veins showing so distinctly upon it,
+and then she looked more closely at Maude herself, and saw
+with a pang how tired and sick she looked in spite of the
+bright color in her cheeks which came and went so fast. There
+was a pallor about her lips and about her nose, while her ears
+were almost transparent, and her neck was so small that Jerrie
+felt she could have clasped it with one hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Maude,' she cried, pressing close to the young girl, as
+Harold stepped aside, 'Maude, are you sick? You are so
+pale everywhere except your cheeks, which are like roses.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no,' Maude answered quickly, as if she did not like the
+question. 'Not sick a bit, only a little tired. We have been at
+work real hard, Hal and I; but he will tell you about it, and
+now good-bye again, for I must go, I shall be round in the
+morning. Good-bye. Oh, Tom, I forgot! We have company
+to dinner to-night&mdash;a Mr. and Mrs. Hart, who are friends of
+Mrs. Atherton, and have just returned from Germany, bringing
+Fred's sister, Marian, with them. She has been abroad at
+school for years, and is very nice. I ought to have told Fred
+and Nina. How stupid in me! But they will find their invitations
+when they get home. Now hop in, quick, and don't
+tear my flounces. You are so awkward.'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose Hal never tears your flounces,' Tom said, as he
+took his seat beside his sister, and gave Jerrie a look which
+sent the blood in great waves to her face and neck, for it seemed
+to imply that he understood the case and supposed she did
+too.</p>
+
+<p>The St. Claire carriage had driven away with Nina and
+Dick, and Fred, and the carriage from Le Bateau had gone,
+too, when at last Jerrie and Harold started down the road and
+along the highway to the gate through which the strange
+woman had once passed with the baby Jerrie in her arms. The
+baby was a young woman now, tall and erect, with her head
+set high as she walked silently by Harold's side, until the gate
+was reached and they passed into the shaded lane, where they
+were hidden from the sight of anyone upon the main road leading
+to the park house. Then stopping suddenly, she faced
+squarely toward her companion, and said:</p>
+
+<p>'Why didn't you come to commencement? Tom Tracy said
+you were shingling a roof, and Billy Peterkin said Maude was
+helping you.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX" ></a>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2>
+
+<h2>WHY HAROLD DID NOT GO TO VASSAR.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The cottage in the lane, as its name implied, was not
+very pretentious, and all its rooms were small and low,
+and mostly upon the ground floor, except the one which
+Jerrie had occupied since she had grown too large for the crib
+by Mrs. Crawford's bed. In this room, in which there was
+but one window, and where the roof slanted down on both
+sides, Jerrie kept all her possessions&mdash;her playthings and her
+books, and the trunk and carpet-bag which had been found
+when she was found. Here she had cut off her hair and slept
+on the floor, to see how it would seem, and here she had enacted
+many a play, in which the scenes and characters were all of
+the past. For the cold in winter she did not care at all, and
+when in summer the nights were close and hot, she drew her
+little bed to the open window and fell asleep while thinking
+how warm she was. That she ought to have a better room had
+never occurred to her, and never had she found a word of fault
+or repined at her humble surroundings, so different from those
+of her girl friends. Only, as she grew taller, she had sometimes
+laughingly said that if the kept on she should not much
+longer be able to stand upright in her den, as she called it.</p>
+
+<p>'I hit my head now everywhere except in the middle,' she
+once said. 'I wonder if we can't some time manage to raise
+the roof.'</p>
+
+<p>The words were spoken thoughtlessly, and almost immediately
+forgotten by Jerrie: but Harold treasured them up, and began
+at once to devise ways and means to raise the roof and give
+Jerrie a room more worthy of her. This was just after he had
+left college, and there was hanging over him his debt to Arthur
+and the support of his grandmother. The first did not particularly
+disturb him, for he knew that Arthur would wait any
+length of time, while the latter seemed but a trifle to a strong,
+robust young man. Mrs. Crawford was naturally very economical,
+and could make one dollar go further than most people
+could two; so that very little sufficed for their daily wants
+when Jerrie was away.</p>
+
+<p>'I must earn money somehow,' Harold thought, 'and must
+seek work where I can do the best, even if it is from Peterkin.'</p>
+
+<p>So, swallowing his pride, he went to Peterkin's office and
+asked for work. Once before, when a boy of eighteen, and
+sorely pressed, he had done the same thing, and met with a
+rebuff from the foreman, who said to him gruffly:</p>
+
+<p>'No, sir; we don't want no more boys; leastwise, gentlemen
+boys. We've had enough of 'em. Try t'other furnace.
+Mr. Warner is allus takin' all kinds of trash, out of pity, and
+if he says &quot;No,&quot; go to his wife; she'll get you in.'</p>
+
+<p>But the Warner factory, where Harold had once worked,
+was full of boys, whom the kind-hearted employer, or his wife,
+or both, had taken in, and there was no place for Harold. So
+he waited awhile until Jerrie needed a new dress and his grandmother
+a bonnet, and then he tried Peterkin again, and this
+time with success.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, take him,' Peterkin said to his foreman, 'take him, and
+put him to the emery wheel; that's the place for such upstarts;
+that'll take the starch out of him double quick. He's a bad
+egg, he is, and proud as Lucifer. I don't suppose he'd touch
+my Bill or my Ann'Lizy with a ten-foot pole. Put him to the
+wheel. Bad egg! bad egg!'</p>
+
+<p>For some moat unaccountable reason, old Peterkin had a
+bitter prejudice against the boy, on whose account he had once
+been turned from the Tracy house; and though he had forgiven
+the Tracys, and would now have voted for Frank for
+Congressman if he had the chance, he still cherished his animosity
+against Harold, designating him as an upstart and a bad
+egg, who was to be put to the wheel. So Harold was 'put to
+the wheel' until he got a bit of steel in his eye, and his hands
+were blistered. But he did not mind the latter so much, because
+Jerrie cried over them at night and kissed them in the
+morning, and bathed them in cosmoline, and called Peterkin a
+mean old thing, and offered to go herself to the wheel.</p>
+
+<p>But to this Harold only laughed. He could stand it, he said,
+and a dollar a day was not to be sneezed at. He could wear
+gloves and save his hands.</p>
+
+<p>But the appearance of gloves was the signal for a general
+hooting and jeering from the boys of his own age who were
+employed there, and who had from the first looked askance at
+Harold because they knew how greatly he was their superior,
+and fancied an affront in everything he did and every word he
+said, it was spoken so differently from their own dialect.</p>
+
+<p>'I can't stand it,' Harold said to Jerrie, after a week's trial
+with the gloves. 'I'd rather sweep the streets than be jeered
+at as I am. I don't mind the work. I am getting used to it,
+but the boys are awful. Why, they call me 'sissy,' and 'Miss
+Hastings,' and all that.'</p>
+
+<p>So Harold left the employ of Peterkin, greatly to the chagrin
+of that functionary, who had found him the most faithful boy
+he had ever had. But this was years ago, and matters had
+changed somewhat since then. Harold was a man now&mdash;a
+graduate from Harvard, with an air and dignity about him which
+commanded respect even from Peterkin, who was sitting upon
+his high stool when Harold came in with his application. Billy,
+who was Harold's fast friend, was now in the business with his
+father, and as he chanced to be present, the thing was soon
+arranged, and Harold received into the office at a salary of
+twelve dollars per week, which was soon increased to fifteen
+and twenty, and at last, as the autumn advanced and Harold
+began to talk of taking the same school in town which he had
+once before taught, he was offered $1,500 a year, if he would
+remain, as foreman of the office, where his services were invaluable.
+But Harold had chosen the law for his profession, and as
+teaching school was more congenial to him than writing in the
+office, and would give him more time for reading law, he declined
+the salary and took the school, which he kept for two
+successive winters, going between times into the office whenever
+his services were needed, which was very often, as they
+knew his worth, and Billy was always glad to have him there.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>to raise the roof</i>. 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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'That's splendid. We'll have a bee, and get a lot done,'
+Maude said; and she pressed into the <i>bee</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>'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?'</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?&mdash;he,
+who never dreamed it possible that she, of all other girls,
+could fall in love with him&mdash;'that Hastings chap, poor as
+poverty,' as he knew Tom sometimes called him.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>'Not if I can help it,' was his reply, although, as the reader
+knows, he came near letting it out twice, but <i>held on in time</i>,
+so that the raised roof was still a secret from Jerrie when she
+reached the station and was met by Maude and Harold.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>would</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>'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:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'MY DEAR CHILD:&mdash;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!</p>
+
+<p>'ARTHUR TRACY.'</p></div>
+
+<p>'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, &quot;Gretchen, Gretchen, Jerrie will be
+here by-and-by, to keep you company while I am gone&mdash;little
+Jerrie, when I first knew her, but a great tall Jerrie now, with
+the air of a duchess. Yes, Jerrie is coming, Gretchen.&quot; How
+he loves her&mdash;Jerrie, I mean; and I do not wonder, do you?'</p>
+
+<p>Harold's mouth was full of tacks and he did not reply, but
+went steadily on with his work until everything was done.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>Harold <i>was</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX" ></a>CHAPTER XXX.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE WALK HOME.</h2>
+
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'Why didn't you come to Vassar? Tom Tracy said you
+were shingling a roof, and Billy Peterkin said Maude was helping
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'I did not suppose you saw me,' Jerry exclaimed, her voice
+very different in its tone from what it had been at first.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I didn't know that. I am so glad you told me.'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'Let's go in a moment; it looks so cool in there.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose you had peals of applause and flowers by the
+bushel,' Harold said.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Jerry replied, 'applause enough, and flowers enough&mdash;twenty
+bouquets and baskets in all, including yours. It was
+kind in you to send it.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'But he is one of the best-hearted fellows in the world;'
+Harold said, 'he has been very kind to me.'</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;your
+being obliged to work for such a man as Peterkin. I wish
+I were rich! Maybe I shall be some day. Who knows?'</p>
+
+<p>The great tears were shining in her eyes as she talked,
+and brushing them away she suddenly changed the conversation,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'What do you remember, Jerrie? What do you see?'</p>
+
+<p>She did not move her head or eyes, but answered him.</p>
+
+<p>'I see always a sweet pale face, to which I can almost give a
+name&mdash;a face which smiles upon me; and a thin, white hand
+which is laid upon my hair&mdash;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?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, often,' Harold said.</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;Germany, I think.
+Harold, I must have been older when you found me than you
+supposed I was.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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,'&mdash;she spoke the name
+very low&mdash;'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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;two voices&mdash;the dark woman's and mine; then, a
+river, or the sea, or both, and noisy streets, and a storm, and
+cold; and <i>you</i> taking me into the sunshine.'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'Do you&mdash;did you&mdash;ever think&mdash;did anybody ever think it
+possible, that the woman found dead in here, was not my
+mother?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not your mother!' Harold exclaimed, dropping her hand in
+his surprise. 'Not your mother! What do you mean?'</p>
+
+<p>'No disrespect to her,' Jerrie replied&mdash;'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&mdash;here, and at the park house. Think&mdash;am I like her&mdash;in
+any thing?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' Harold answered. 'You are like her in nothing; but
+you may resemble your father.'</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;Mr. Arthur, I mean. He was expecting somebody;
+Nina told me a little once, but not much. Do you know?
+Was it <i>Gretchen</i> he expected?'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, she is dead,' Jerry said, decidedly; 'but tell me all you
+know of the time I came.'</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a
+German mind his grandmother said, and he accepted her
+theory as the correct one.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;'Oh,
+Jerrie, you are like Arthur Tracy, or you were when you
+looked at me so earnestly; but it is gone now. Do you&mdash;have
+you thought that Gretchen was your mother?'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;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&mdash;'
+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.'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'If I make your life happier, <i>I</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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'A funny name for a cow,' Harold had said, and she had
+replied:</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI" ></a>CHAPTER XXXI.</h2>
+
+<h2>AT HOME.</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>With a cry of joy, Jerrie took the old lady in her arms, and
+kissed and cried over her.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the high walls, the carpet, the furniture, the curtains,
+and the flowers&mdash;and knew why Harold did not come to
+Vassar.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Maude's gift&mdash;began to sob aloud, while
+Harold stood looking at her, wishing she had not cried, and
+wondering what he ought to do.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't you like it, Jerrie?' he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>'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?'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;herself, she believed&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>'I <i>will</i> know some time. <i>I</i> will find it out myself,' she said,
+as she withdrew from the window and commenced her preparations
+for bed.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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 <i>was</i> 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.'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>Her own clothes came next&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII" ></a>CHAPTER XXXII.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE NEXT DAY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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 <i>tout ensemble</i> of
+the figure reflected in the glass.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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?'</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>But here Harold again interfered.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie&mdash;Jerrie, that is for your breakfast and grandma's.
+You must not take that.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>He was astonished at his own boldness, and not at all surprised
+at Jerrie's reply, as she stepped back from him.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.'</p>
+
+<p>'I <i>must</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;could not be Gretchen's daughter, and was undoubtedly
+the child of the woman found in the Tramp House&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Jerrie had watched him out of sight, whistling
+merrily:</p>
+
+<p>
+'Gin a body meet a body,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Comin' through the rye,</span><br />
+Gin a body kiss a body,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Need a body cry?'</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'Why, Jerrie, what made you get up till I called you?
+Why didn't you lie and rest?'</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie, Jerrie, do wipe your hands and come quick! Here's
+Tom Tracy hitching his horse at the gate.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie's first impulse was to do as her grandmother bade her,
+and her second to stay where she was.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'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?'</p>
+
+<p>She pointed to a wooden chair near the door, where Tom
+sat down, wholly nonplussed, and not knowing at all what to say
+first.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>He held them toward her, and with a bright smile she came
+forward to receive them.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>She buried her face in them two or three times, and then,
+putting them in some water, resumed her position by the wash-tub.</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;can't
+your grandmother do it for you?'</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'But she will not die; that is nonsense,' Tom began when
+he was interrupted by Mrs. Crawford, who called out:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Jerry, here is Billy Peterkin, with his hands full.
+What shall I do with him?'</p>
+
+<p>Dashing away her tears, Jerry replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Send him in here, of course.'</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;then, with a wind of forced laugh, he said:</p>
+
+<p>'Be-beg pardon, if I in-tr-trude. Looks dusedly like l-love
+in a t-t-tub.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment Billy stuttered out:</p>
+
+<p>'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:</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>penchant</i> for himself he suspected,
+and whom he despised accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie, Jerrie! you <i>must</i> come now, for here is Dick St.
+Claire.'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'If Tom and Billy can he admitted to my boudoir, Dick can.
+Send him in.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>'How is Nina?' Jerrie asked, ignoring the compliment.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;for half-past five.'</p>
+
+<p>'Th-thanks,' Billy began; 'b-but am I left out?'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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?'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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 &mdash;&mdash; wedding in Springfield, and
+groomsman at another big affair in Boston, and had scores of
+invitations everywhere. Taken altogether, he was a most
+desirable <i>parti</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII" ></a>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h2>
+
+<h2>AT THE PARK HOUSE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'You are so good to me,' she said, 'you and Mr. Arthur.
+How lonely the house seems without him.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'Would you like to go in?' he asked. 'I have the keys,'
+and he proceeded to unlock the door.</p>
+
+<p>But Jerrie held back.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' she said, as she glanced in at the silent, deserted rooms.
+'It is like a grave. The ruling spirit is gone.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I can almost remember,' she whispered, just as Frank's
+voice broke the spell by saying:</p>
+
+<p>'Good-morning, Gretchen. Arthur is in California, but he
+is surely coming back; he bade me tell you so.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>'I have kept my promise to Arthur; and now for Maude,'
+Frank said, and Jerry was conscious of a new and strange sensation&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>Dolly had given her a little stab and was satisfied, so she said
+in a softer tone:</p>
+
+<p>'Maude may recover&mdash;I think she will; but everything must
+be done to please her, and she cannot talk to you this morning&mdash;remember
+that. You must do the talking, but must not stay
+too long.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mamma&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;to-morrow, maybe.
+Would you like to have him?'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'I have been to Mr. Arthur's room,' she said, 'but it seems
+so desolate without him. Do you hear from him often?'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;her own flesh and blood.</p>
+
+<p>'Maude,' she said suddenly, with a strong desire to fold the
+frail little body in her arms and tell her what she had thought.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Terrified beyond measure, Jerrie put her hand over Maude's
+mouth and said, almost sharply:</p>
+
+<p>'If you want to live you must not talk. Be careful and you
+will get well; the doctor says so.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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:</p>
+
+<p>'Send Harold soon.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV" ></a>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h2>
+
+<h2>UNDER THE PINES WITH TOM.</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'How did you find Maude!' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;well, what can a
+young man do when a pretty girl&mdash;and Mamie is pretty&mdash;when
+she gushes at him all the time? It is a regular flirtation,
+and everybody knows about it except mother and the Gov.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who is the Gov.?' Jerry asked, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>'Why don't you go back then? Why are you walking here
+in the hot sun?' Jerrie asked.</p>
+
+<p>'I am going home with you,' he replied. 'Do you think
+I'd let you go alone?'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>There was a ring in her voice which Tom did not quite like,
+but he answered, promptly:</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have plenty of money of your own?' Jerrie said, with
+another upward toss of her golden head.</p>
+
+<p>The question was full of sarcasm, but Tom did not see it,
+and answered at once:</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have taken counsel, then?'</p>
+
+<p>The parasol dug a great hole in the soft pines and was in
+danger of being broken, as Tom replied:</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>'Suppose Mr. Arthur has a wife somewhere?' Jerrie asked.</p>
+
+<p>'A wife!' Tom exclaimed. 'That is impossible. We should
+have heard of that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who was Gretchen?' was the next query.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, some sweetheart, I suppose&mdash;some little German girl
+with whom he amused himself a while and then cast off, as men
+usually do such incumbrances.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;I think she is; but she was his wife&mdash;his true and
+lawful wife; and&mdash;I&mdash;sometimes&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;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.'</p>
+
+<p>'She may have left a child. What then?' Jerrie asked,
+with as steady a voice as she could command.</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;say
+a young lady&mdash;walking in upon us some day and claiming
+to be Arthur Tracy's daughter!'</p>
+
+<p>'What would you do?' Jerrie asked, in a tone of smothered
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>'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?'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.</p>
+
+<p>'I do mean it, Tom,' she said, softened a little by the pain
+she saw in his face. 'I can never be your wife.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>It was very hard for Tom to believe that Jerrie really meant
+to refuse him, Tom Tracy, who with all his love for her&mdash;and
+he did love her as well as he was capable of loving any one&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment she went on:</p>
+
+<p>'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&mdash;suppose he
+is a painter and a carpenter, and has been what you started to
+call him&mdash;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.'</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>'By George! did that girl know what she was about when
+she refused to marry me?'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV" ></a>CHAPTER XXXV.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE GARDEN PARTY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'And I'll do it now,' she said, at last, to herself. 'I'll fight it
+down, this something which makes me hate myself. If Harold
+loves Maude he shall never know from me of that horrible pain
+which cuts me like a knife and makes me forget to be indignant
+at Tom for talking so much of his money and his position, as
+if they could buy me! Poor Tom! I said some sharp things
+to him, but he deserved them, the prig! Let him marry that
+governor's daughter if he can. I am sure I wish him success.'</p>
+
+<p>She had reached home by this time, and found their simple
+dinner waiting for her.
+'Oh, grandma, why did you do it? Why didn't you wait
+for me?' she said, as she took her seat at the table where the
+dishes were all so plain, and the cloth, though white and clean,
+so coarse and cheap.</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie was as fond of luxury and elegance as any one, and
+Tracy Park, with its appurtenances, would have suited her taste
+better than the cottage.</p>
+
+<p>'But not with Tom, not with Tom,' she kept on repeating
+to herself, as she cleared the table and washed the dishes, and
+then brought in and folded the clothes for the morrow's ironing.</p>
+
+<p>By this time she was very tired, and going to her cool, pretty
+room, she threw herself upon the lounge and slept soundly for
+three hours or more. Sleep is a wonderful tonic, and Jerrie
+rose refreshed and quite herself again. Not even a thought of
+Maude and Harold disturbed her as she went whistling and
+singing around her room, hanging up her dresses one by one,
+and wondering which she should wear at the garden party.
+Deciding at last upon a simple white muslin, which, although
+two years old, was still in fashion, and very becoming, she arranged
+her wavy hair in a fluffy mass at the back of her head,
+brushed her bangs into short, soft curls upon her forehead,
+pinned a cluster of roses on the bosom of her dress, and was
+ready for the party.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell Harold, if he is not too tired, I want him very much to
+come for me,' she said, to Mrs. Crawford, and then about five
+o'clock started for Grassy Spring, where she found the guests
+all assembled in the pleasant, shady grounds, which surrounded
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>Tom was there in his character of a fine city dandy, and the
+moment he saw Jerry, he hastened to meet her, greeting her
+with perfect self-possession, as if nothing had happened.</p>
+
+<p>'You are late,' he said, going up to her. 'We are waiting for
+you to complete our eight hand croquet, and I claim you as my
+partner.'</p>
+
+<p>'I c-c call that mean, T-t-tom. I was g-g-going to ask J-jerrie
+to pl-play with m-me,' little Billy said, hopping around them,
+while Dick's face showed that he, too, would like the pleasure
+of playing with Jerrie, who was known to be an expert and
+seldom missed a ball.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, however, Marian Raymond, as a stranger, would
+fall to him, and they were soon paired off, Dick and Marian,
+Tom and Jerrie, Nina and Billy, Fred Raymond and Ann Eliza,
+who wore diamonds enough for a full dress party, and whose
+red hair was piled on the top of her head so loosely that the
+ends of it stuck out here and there like the streamers on a boat
+on gala days. This careless style of dressing her hair, Ann
+Eliza affected, thinking it gave individuality to her appearance;
+and it certainly did attract general observation, her hair was so
+red and bushy. Dick had stumbled and stammered dreadfully
+when confessing to his sister that he had invited the Peterkins,
+while Nina had drawn a long breath of dismay as she thought
+of presenting Ann Eliza and Billy to Marian Raymond, with
+her culture and aristocratic ideas. Then she burst into a laugh
+and said, with her usual sweetness:</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind, Dickie. You could not do otherwise. I'll prepare
+Marian, and the Peterkins will really enjoy it.'</p>
+
+<p>So Marian, who, with all her accomplishments and foreign
+air, was a kind-hearted, sensible girl, was prepared, and received
+the Peterkins very graciously, and seemed really pleased with
+Billy, whose big, kind heart shone through his diminutive body
+and always won him friends. He was very happy to be there,
+because he liked society, and because he knew Jerrie was coming;
+and Ann Eliza was very glad because she felt it an honor
+to be at Grassy Spring, and because she knew Tom was coming,
+and when he came she fastened upon him with a tenacity which
+he could not well shake off; and when croquet was proposed
+she was the first to respond.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, that will be nice, and I know our side will beat,'
+and she looked at Tom as it were a settled thing that she
+should play with him.</p>
+
+<p>But Tom was not in a mood to be gracious. He had come
+to the entertainment, which he mentally called a bore, partly
+because he would not let Jerrie think he was taking her refusal
+to heart, and partly because he must see her again, even if she
+never could be his wife. All the better nature of Tom was
+concentrated in his love for Jerrie, and had she married him
+he would probably have made her as happy as a wholly selfish
+man can make happy the woman he loves. But she had declined
+his offer, and wounded him deeper than she supposed.</p>
+
+<p>A hundred times he had said to himself that afternoon, as
+he sat alone in the lovely park&mdash;of which he had once said to
+Harold, he was to be the <i>hare</i>, and of whose possession in the
+future he had boasted to Jerrie&mdash;that he did not care a <i>sou</i>, that
+he was glad she had refused him, for after all it was only an
+infatuation on his part; that the girl of the carpet-bag was not
+the wife for a Tracy; but the twinge of pain in his heart belied
+his words, and he knew he did love Jerrie Crawford better than
+he should ever again love any girl, whether the daughter of a
+governor or of the president.</p>
+
+<p>'And I go to the party, too, just to show her that I don't
+care, and for the sake of looking at her,' he said. 'She can't
+help that, and it is a pleasure to look at a woman so grandly
+developed and perfectly formed as she is. By Jove! Hal Hastings
+is a lucky dog; but I shall hate him forever.'</p>
+
+<p>So Tom pulled himself together, and went to Grassy Spring
+in a frame of mind not the most amiable; and when croquet
+was proposed, he sneered at it as something quite too <i>pass&eacute;</i>,
+citing lawn tennis as the only decent outdoor amusement.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, then, don't you set it up on your grounds, where you
+have plenty of room, and ask us all over there?' Dick asked,
+good-humoredly, as he began to get out the mallets and balls.</p>
+
+<p>To this Tom did not reply, but said, instead:</p>
+
+<p>'Count me out. I don't like the game, and there are enough
+without me.'</p>
+
+<p>Just then Jerry appeared at the gate, and he added quickly:</p>
+
+<p>'Still, I don't wish to be ungracious; and now Jerrie has
+come, we can have an eight hand.'</p>
+
+<p>Hastening toward her, he met her as we have recorded, and
+claimed her for his partner.</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you, Tom,' Jerrie said, with a bright smile on her
+face, which made the young man's heart beat fast with both
+pleasure and pain, as he gave her the mallet and told her she
+was to play first.</p>
+
+<p>Tom was making himself master of ceremonies, and Dick
+kept quiet and let him, and watched Jerrie admiringly as she
+made the two arches, and the third, and fourth, and then sent
+her ball out of harm's way. It was a long and closely contested
+game, for all were skilful players, except poor Ann Eliza, who
+was always behind and required a great deal of attention from
+her partner especially when it came to croqueting a ball. She
+did not know exactly what to do, and kept her foot so long
+upon the ball that less amiable girls than Nina and Jerrie
+would have said she did it on purpose, to show how small and
+pretty it looked in her closely fitting French boot. But Jerrie's
+side beat, as it usually did. She had become a 'rover' the
+second round, had rescued Tom from many a difficulty, and
+taken Ann Eliza through four or five wickets, besides doing
+good service to her other friends.</p>
+
+<p>'I p-p-propose three ch-cheers for Jerrie,' Billy said, standing
+on his tiptoes and nearly splitting his throat with his own
+hurrah.</p>
+
+<p>After the game was over they repaired to the piazza, where
+the little tables were laid for tea, and where Jerrie found herself
+<i>vis-&agrave;-vis</i> with Marian Raymond, of whom she had thought
+she might stand a little in awe, she had heard so much of her.
+But the mesmeric power which Jerrie possessed drew the Kentucky
+girl to her at once, and they were soon in a most animated
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p>'You do not seem like a stranger to me,' Marian said, 'and
+I should almost say I had seen you before, you are so like a
+picture in Germany.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Jerrie answered, with a gasp, and a feeling such as she
+always experienced when the spell was upon her and she saw
+things as in a dream.</p>
+
+<p>'Was it in a gallery?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no; it was in a house we rented in Wiesbaden. You
+know, perhaps, that I was there at school for a long time.
+Then, when mamma came out, and I was through school, we
+stayed there for months, it was so lovely, and we rented a house
+which an Englishman had bought and made over. Such a
+pretty house it was, too, with so many flowers and vines around
+it.'</p>
+
+<p>'And the picture&mdash;did it belong to the Englishman?' Jerrie
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no,' Marian replied: 'it did not seem to belong to anybody.
+Mr. Carter&mdash;that was the name of our landlord&mdash;said
+it was there in the wall when he took the house, which was
+then very small and low, with only two or three rooms. He
+bought it because of the situation, which, though very quiet
+and pleasant, was so near the Kursaal that we could always
+hear the music without going to the garden.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Jerrie said again, with her head on one side, and her
+ear turned up, as if she were listening to some far-off, forgotten
+strains. 'Yes; and the picture was like me, you say&mdash;how
+like me?'</p>
+
+<p>'Every way like you,' Marian replied; 'except that the original
+must have been younger when it was taken&mdash;sixteen,
+perhaps&mdash;and she was smaller than you, and wore a peasant's
+dress, and was knitting on a bench under a tree, with the sunshine
+falling around her, and at a little distance a gentleman
+stood watching her. But what is the matter, Miss Crawford?
+Are you sick?' Marian asked, suddenly, as she saw the bright
+color fade for an instant from Jerrie's face, leaving it deathly
+white, while Tom and Dick knocked their heads together in
+their efforts to get her a glass of water, which they succeeded
+in spilling into her lap.</p>
+
+<p>'It is nothing,' Jerrie said, recovering herself quickly. 'I
+have been in the hot sun a good deal to-day, and perhaps that
+affected me and made me a little faint. 'It has passed now;'
+and she looked up as brightly as ever.</p>
+
+<p>'It's that confounded washing!' Tom thought; but Jerrie
+could have told him differently.</p>
+
+<p>As Marian had talked to her of the house in Wiesbaden and
+the picture on the wall&mdash;of the peasant girl knitting in the sunshine&mdash;she
+had seen, as by revelation, through a rift in the
+clouds which separated her from the past&mdash;the picture on the
+wall, in its pretty Florentine frame, and knew that it resembled
+the pale, sweet face which came to her so often and was so real
+to her. Was it her old home Marian was describing? Had
+she lived there once, when the house consisted of only two or
+three rooms? and was that a picture of her mother, left there
+she knew not how or why? These were the thoughts crowding
+each other so fast in her brain when the faintness and pallor
+crept over her and the objects about her began to seem unreal.
+But the cold water revived her, and she was soon herself again,
+listening while Marian talked of heat and sun-strokes, with an
+evident forgetfulness of the peasant girl knitting in the sunshine;
+but Jerrie soon recurred to the subject and asked,
+rather abruptly:
+'Was there a stove in that house&mdash;a tall, white stove, in a
+corner of one of the old rooms&mdash;say the kitchen&mdash;and a high-backed
+settee?'</p>
+
+<p>Marian stared at her a moment in surprise, and then replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I know what you mean&mdash;those unwieldy things in which
+they sometimes put the wood from the hall. No; there was
+nothing of that kind, though there was an old settee by the
+kitchen fire-place, but not a tall stove. Mr. Carter had modernized
+the house, and set up a real Yankee stove&mdash;Stewart's, I
+think they called it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Was the picture in the kitchen?' Jerrie asked next.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' Marian replied, 'it was in a little, low apartment
+which must once have been the best room.'</p>
+
+<p>'And was there no theory with regard to it! It seems strange
+that any one should leave it there if he cared for it,' Jerrie
+said.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, it does,' Marian replied; 'but all Mr. Carter knew was
+that the people of whom he bought the house said the portrait
+was there when they took possession, and that it had been left
+to apply on the back rent; also that the original was dead. He
+(Mr. Carter) had bought the picture with the house, and offered
+to take it down, but I would not let him. It was such a sweet,
+sunny, happy face that it did me good to look at it, and wonder
+who the young girl was, and if her life were ever linked with
+that of the stranger watching her.'</p>
+
+<p>Again the faintness came upon Jerrie, for she could see so
+plainly on the sombre wall the picture of the sweet-faced girl,
+with the long stocking in her lap&mdash;a very long stocking she felt
+sure it was, but dared not ask, lest they should think her question
+a strange one. Of the stranger in the back yard watching
+the young girl she had no recollection, but her heart beat wildly
+as she thought:</p>
+
+<p>'Was that Mr. Arthur, and was the young girl Gretchen?'</p>
+
+<p>How fast the lines touching her past had widened about her
+since she first saw the likeness in the mirror, and her confused
+memories of the past began to take shape and assume a tangible
+form.</p>
+
+<p>'I will find that house, and that picture, and that Mr. Carter,
+and the people who lived there before him,' she said to
+herself; and then again, addressing Marian, she asked:</p>
+
+<p>'What was the street, and the number of that house?'</p>
+
+<p>Marian told her the street, but could not remember the
+number, while Tom said, laughingly:</p>
+
+<p>'Why, Jerrie, what makes you so much interested in an old
+German house? Do you expect to go there and live in it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Jerrie replied, in the same light tone. 'I am going
+to Germany sometime&mdash;going to Wiesbaden, and I mean to find
+that house and the picture which Miss Raymond says I am so
+much like; then I shall know how I look to others. You
+remember the couplet:</p>
+
+<p>
+'&quot;Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">To see ourselfs as others see us!&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>'Look in the glass there, the best one you can find, and you'll
+see yourself as others see you,' Dick said, gallantly.</p>
+
+<p>Before Jerrie could reply, a servant appeared on the piazza,
+saying there was some one at the telephone asking for Mr.
+Peterkin.</p>
+
+<p>It proved to be Billy's father, who was in the village, and
+had received a telegram from Springfield concerning a lawsuit
+which was pending between himself and a rival firm, which
+claimed that he had infringed upon their patents. Before
+replying to the telegram he wished to confer with his son, who
+was to come at once to the hotel, and, if necessary, go to Springfield
+that night.</p>
+
+<p>'B-by Jove,' Billy said, as he returned to the piazza and
+explained the matter, 'it's t-t-too bad that I must g-go, when
+I'm enjoying m-myself t-t-tip-top. I wish that lawsuit was in
+Gu-Guinea.'</p>
+
+<p>Then turning to Ann Eliza he asked how she would get home
+if he did nut return.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, don't trouble about me. I can take care of myself,'
+Ann Eliza said, with a bounce up in her chair, which set every
+loose hair of her frowzy head to flying.</p>
+
+<p>'M-m-maybe they'll send the ca-carriage,' Billy went on,
+'and if they do-don't, m-may be you can g-go with T-Tom as
+far as his house, and then you wo-wont be afraid.'</p>
+
+<p>Tom could have killed the little man for having thus made it
+impossible for him not to see his sister safely home. He had
+fully intended to forestall Dick, and go with Jerrie if Harold
+did not come, for though she had refused him, he wished to
+keep her as a friend, hoping that in time she might be led to
+reconsider. He liked to hear her voice&mdash;to look into her face&mdash;to
+be near her, and the walk in the moonlight, with her upon
+his arm, had been something very pleasant to contemplate, and
+now it was snatched from him by Billy's ill-advised speech, and
+old Peterkin's red-haired daughter thrust upon him. It was
+rather hard, and Tom's face was very gloomy and dark for the
+remainder of the evening, while they sat upon the piazza and
+laughed, and talked, and said the little nothings so pleasant to
+the young and so meaningless to the old who have forgotten
+their youth.</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie was the first to speak of going. She had hoped that
+Harold might possibly come for her, but as the time passed on,
+and he did not appear, she knew he was not coming, and at last
+arose to say good-night to Nina, while Dick hastened forward
+and announced his intention to accompany her.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Dick, no; please don't,' she said. 'I am not a bit
+afraid, and I would rather you did not go.'</p>
+
+<p>But Dick was persistent.</p>
+
+<p>'You know you accepted my services this morning,' he said,
+and his face, as he went down the steps with Jerrie on his arm,
+wore a very different expression from that of poor Tom, who,
+with Ann Eliza coming about to his elbow, stalked moodily
+along the road, scarcely hearing and not always replying to the
+commonplace remarks of his companion, who had never been
+so happy in her life, because never before had she been out alone
+in the evening with Tom Tracy as her escort.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI" ></a>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h2>
+
+<h2>OUT IN THE STORM.</h2>
+
+
+<p>For half an hour or more before the young people left the
+house a dark mass of clouds had been rolling up from
+the west, and by the time that they were out of the
+grounds and on the highway, the moonlight was wholly obscured
+and the sky was overcast as with a pall, while frequent groans
+of thunder and flashes of lightning in the distance told of the
+fast coming storm.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I am so afraid of thunder! Aren't you?' Ann Eliza
+cried, in terror, as she clung closer to Tom, who, beside her,
+seemed a very giant, and who did not reply until there came
+a gleam of lightning which showed him the white face and the
+loose hair blowing out from under his companion's hat.</p>
+
+<p>There was a little shriek of fear and a smothered cry. 'Oh,
+Tom, aren't you a bit afraid?'</p>
+
+<p>And then the giant answered the trembling little girl whom
+he would like to have shaken off, she clung so closely to him
+'Thunder and lightning, no!' I'm not afraid of anything except
+getting wet; and if you are, you'd better run before the
+whole thing is upon us; the sky is blacker than midnight now.
+I never saw a storm come on so fast. Can you run?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;some,' Ann Eliza gasped out; 'only my boots are so
+tight and new, and the heels are so high. Do you think we
+shall be struck?'</p>
+
+<p>This as a peal of thunder louder than any which had preceded
+it rolled over their heads, making Ann Eliza clutch Tom's
+arm in nervous terror which was not feigned.</p>
+
+<p>'Struck? No. But don't screech and hang on to me so.
+We can never get along if you do,' Tom growled; and, taking
+her by the wrist, he dragged rather than led her through the
+woods where the great rain-drops were beginning to fall so fast
+as the two showers&mdash;one from the west and one from the south&mdash;approached
+each other, until at last they met overhead, and
+then commenced a wild and fierce battle of the elements, the
+southern storm and the western storm each seemingly trying
+to outdo the other and come off conqueror.</p>
+
+<p>As the thunder and lightning and rain increased, Tom went
+on faster and faster, forgetting that the slip of a girl, who
+scarcely came to his shoulders, could not take so long strides as
+a great, hulking fellow like himself.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Tom, Tom&mdash;please not so fast. I can't keep up, my
+heart beats so fast and my boots hurt me so,' came in a faint,
+sobbing protest more than once from the panting girl at his
+side; but he only answered:</p>
+
+<p>'You <i>must</i> keep up, or we shall be soaked through and
+through. I never knew it rain so fast. Take off your boots,
+if they hurt you. You've no business to wear such small ones.'</p>
+
+<p>He had heard from Maude that Ann Eliza was very proud
+of her feet, and always wore boots too small for them, and he
+experienced a savage satisfaction in knowing that she was paying
+for her foolishness. This was not very kind in Tom, but
+he was not a kind-hearted man, and he held the whole Peterkin
+tribe, as he called them, in such contempt that he would scarcely
+have cared if the tired little feet, boots and all, had dropped
+off, provided it did not add to his discomfort. They were out
+of the woods and park by this time, and had struck into a field
+as a shorter route to Le Bateau. But the way was rough and
+stony, and Tom had stumbled himself two or three times and
+almost fallen, when a sharp, loud cry from Ann Eliza smote his
+ear, and he felt that she was sinking to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>His first impulse was to drag her on, but that would have
+been too brutal, and stopping short he asked what was the
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I don't know. I guess I've sprained my ankle. It
+turned right over on a big stone, you went so fast, and hurts
+me awfully. I can't walk another step. Oh, what shall we do,
+and am I going to die?'</p>
+
+<p>'Die? No!' Tom answered, gloomily. 'But we are in an
+awful muss, and I don't know what to do. Here it is raining
+great guns, and I am wet to my skin, and you can't walk, you
+say. What in thunder shall we do?'</p>
+
+<p>Ann Eliza was sobbing piteously, and when a glare of lightning
+lighted up the whole heavens, Tom caught a glimpse of
+her face which was white as marble, and distorted with pain,
+and this decided him. He had thought to leave her in the
+darkness and rain, while he went for assistance either to the
+Park House or Le Bateau; but the sight of her utter helplessness
+awoke in him a spark of pity, and bending over her he
+said, very gently for him:</p>
+
+<p>'Annie,'&mdash;this was the name by which he used to call her
+when they were children together, and he thought Ann Eliza
+too long&mdash;'Annie, I shall have to carry you in my arms; there
+is no other way. It is not very far to your home. Come!' and
+stooping low over the prostrate form he lifted her very carefully
+and holding her in a position the least painful for her, began
+again to battle with the storm, walking more carefully now and
+groping his way through the stony field lest he should stumble
+and fall and sprain him own ankle, perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>'This is a jolly go,' he said to himself, as he went on; and
+then he thought of Dick and Jerrie, and wondered how they
+were getting through the storm, and if she had sprained her
+ankle and Dick was carrying her in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>'He will sweat some, if he is, for Jerrie is twice as heavy as
+Peterkin's daughter;' and at the very idea Tom laughed out
+loud, thinking that he should greatly prefer to have Jerrie's
+strength and weight in his arms to his light, slim, little girl,
+who neither spoke nor moved until he laughed, and then there
+came in smothered tones from the region of his vest:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Tom, how can you laugh? Do you think it such fun?'</p>
+
+<p>'Fun! Thunder! Anything but fun!' was his gruff reply,
+as he went on more rapidly now, for they were in the grounds
+of Le Bateau, and the lights from the house were distinctly
+visible at no great distance away. 'We are here at last. Thank
+the Lord.' he said, as he went up the steps and pulled sharply
+at the bell.</p>
+
+<p>'Let me down. I can stand on one foot,' Ann Eliza said;
+and nothing loth Tom put her down, a most forlorn and dilapidated
+piece of humanity as she stood leaning against him with
+the light of the piazza lamp falling full upon her.</p>
+
+<p>Her little French boots, which had partly done the mischief,
+were spoiled, and the heel of one of them had been nearly
+wrenched off when she stumbled over the stone. Her India
+muslin, with its sash, and ribbons, and streamers, was torn in
+places and bedraggled with mud. She had lost her hat in the
+woods, and the wind and the rain had held high carnival in her
+loosely-arranged hair, whose color Tom so detested, and which
+streamed down her back in many little wet tags, giving her the
+look of a drowned rat after it has been tortured in a trap.</p>
+
+<p>Old Peterkin was reading his evening paper when Tom's
+sharp summons sounded through the house, making him jump
+from the chair, as he exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>'Jiminy hoe-cakes! Who can that be in this storm?'</p>
+
+<p>He had seen Billy off in the train, and had returned home
+just as the rain began to fall. Naturally both he and his wife
+had felt some anxiety on Ann Eliza's account, but had concluded
+that if the storm continued she would remain at Grassy
+Spring, and if it cleared in time they would send the carriage
+for her. So neither thought of her when the loud ring came,
+startling them both so much. It was Peterkin himself who
+went to the door, gorgeous in a crimson satin dressing gown
+which came to his feet, but which no amount of pulling would
+make meet together over his ponderous stomach. An oriental
+smoking cap was on his head, the big tassel hanging almost in
+his eyes, and a half-burned cigar between his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>'Good George of Uxbridge!' he exclaimed, as his eye fell
+upon Tom, from whose soaked hat the water was dripping, and
+upon Ann Eliza leaning against him, her pale face quivering
+with pain, and her eyes full of tears. 'George of Uxbridge!
+What's up? What ails the girl!'</p>
+
+<p>At sight of her father Ann Eliza began to cry, while Tom
+said:</p>
+
+<p>'She has sprained her ankle and I had to bring her home.
+She cannot step.'</p>
+
+<p>'Jerusalem hoe-cakes! Spraint her ankle! Can't step!
+You bring her home! Heavens and earth! Here, May Jane,
+come lively! Here's a nice how-dy-do! Ann Liza's broke her
+laig, and Tom Tracy's brung her home!'</p>
+
+<p>As Peterkin talked, he was taking his daughter in his arms
+and bringing her into the hall, hitting her lame foot against the
+door, and eliciting from her a cry of pain.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, father; Oh-h!&mdash;it does hurt so. Put me somewhere
+quick, and take off my boot. I believe I am going to die!'</p>
+
+<p>She was dripping wet, and little puddles of water trailed
+along the carpet as Peterkin carried her into the sitting room,
+where he was about to lay her down upon the delicate satin
+couch, when his wife's housewifely instincts were roused, and
+she exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>'No, father. No, not there, when she's so wet, and water
+spots that satin so dreadfully.'</p>
+
+<p>'What in thunder shall I do with her? Hold her all night?'
+Peterkin demanded, while Tom deliberately picked up the
+costly Turkey hearth rug, and throwing it across the couch,
+said:</p>
+
+<p>'Put her on that.'
+So Peterkin deposited her upon the rug, hitting her foot
+again, and sending her off in a dead faint.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, she's dead! she's dead! What shall we do?' Mrs.
+Peterkin cried, wringing her hands, and walking about excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>'Do?' Peterkin yelled. 'Hold your yawp, and stop floppin'
+round like a hen with her head cut off! She ain't dead. She's
+fainted. Bring some camfire, or alcohol, or hartshorn, or Pond's
+Extract, or something for her to smell.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes; but where are they?' Mrs. Peterkin moaned,
+still flopping around, as her husband had expressed it, while
+Tom rang the bell and summoned the maid, to whom he gave
+directions.</p>
+
+<p>'Bring some camphor or hartshorn,' he said. 'Miss Peterkin
+has fainted, and get off the boot as soon as possible. Don't
+you see how her foot is swelling?'</p>
+
+<p>This to Peterkin, who made a dive at the boot, which resisted
+all his efforts, even after it was unbuttoned. The leather,
+which was soaked through, had shrunk so that it was impossible
+to remove the boot without cutting it away, and this they
+commenced to do.</p>
+
+<p>Ann Eliza had recovered her consciousness by this time,
+and although the pain was terrible she bore it heroically, as
+piece after piece of the boot was removed, together with the
+silk stocking which left her poor little swollen foot exposed
+and bare.</p>
+
+<p>'By Jove, she's plucky!' Tom thought, as he watched the
+operation and saw the great drops of sweat on Ann Eliza's forehead
+and her efforts to quiet her mother, pretending that it
+did not hurt so very much. 'Yes, she's plucky,' and for the
+first time in his life Tom was conscious of a feeling of something
+like respect for Peterkin's red-haired daughter. 'She
+<i>has</i> a small foot, too; the smallest I ever saw on a woman. I
+do believe she wears twos,' he thought, while something about
+the little white foot made him think of poor Jack's dead feet,
+laid under the grass years ago.</p>
+
+<p>In this softened frame of mind he at last said good-night,
+although pressed by Peterkin to stay and dry himself, or at
+least take a drink as a preventive against cold, but Tom declined
+both, saying a hot bath would set him all right.
+'Good-bye, Annie. I'm awful sorry for the sprain,' he said,
+offering her his hand; and as she took it in hers, noticing about
+the wrist prints of his fingers which had grasped it so tightly
+and held it so firmly as he dragged her along over stumps, and
+bogs, and stones, until she sank at his feet, 'I guess I was a
+brute to race her like that,' he said to himself, as he went out
+into the darkness and started for home. 'But I didn't want to
+go with her. I wanted to be with Jerrie, who, I have no doubt,
+went straight along, without ever thinking of spraining her
+ankle, as Ann Eliza did. Poor little foot! How swollen,
+though, it was when they got that boot off; but she bore it
+like a major! Pity she has such all-fired red hair, and piles it
+up like a haystack on the top of her head, with every hair looking
+six ways for Sunday.'</p>
+
+<p>At this point in his soliloquy Tom reached home, and was
+soon luxuriating in a hot bath, which removed all traces of the
+soaking he had received. That night he dreamed of Ann Eliza,
+and how light she was in his arms, and how patient through it
+all, and that the magnificent rooms at Le Bateau were all frescoed
+with diamonds and the floors inlaid with gold. Then the
+nature of his dream changed, and it was Jerry he was carrying
+in his arms, bending under her weight until his back was nearly
+broken. But he did not heed it in the least, and when he bent to
+kiss the face lying upon his bosom, where Ann Eliza had lain,
+he awoke suddenly to find that it was morning and that the sun
+was shining brightly into his room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII" ></a>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h2>
+
+<h2>UNDER THE PINES WITH DICK.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Jerrie was soaked through, but she did not sprain her
+ankle as Ann Eliza had done. And yet, had she been
+given her choice, rather than inflict the pain she did
+inflict upon poor Dick, she would have chosen the former
+unhesitatingly, and felt herself happy in doing it. Like Tom and
+Ann Eliza, she and Dick had run when they saw how fast the
+storm was coming, but it was of no use, for by the time they
+entered the park, the shortest route to the cottage, the rain
+came down in torrents, and drenched them to the skin in a few
+moments. Jerrie's hat was wrenched off, as Ann Eliza's had been
+by the wind, which tossed her long golden hair in a most fantastic
+fashion. But Dick put his hat upon her head, and would
+have given her his coat had she allowed it.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Dick,' she said, laughingly, as she saw him about to
+divest himself of it. 'Keep your coat. I am wet enough without
+that. But what an awful storm, and how dark it grows. We
+shall break our necks stumbling along at this rate.'</p>
+
+<p>Just then a broad glare of lightning illuminated the darkness,
+and showed Dick the four pines close at hand. He knew the
+place well, for, with the Tracy children, he had often played
+there when a boy, and knew that the thick bushes would afford
+them some protection from the storm.</p>
+
+<p>'By Jove, we are in luck!' he said. 'Here's the pine room,
+as we used to call it when you played you were Marie Antoinette,
+and had your head cut off. I can remember just how I
+felt when your white sun-bonnet, with Mrs. Crawford's false
+hair pinned it in, dropped into the basket, and how awful it
+seemed when you played dead so long that we almost thought
+you were; and when you came to light, the way you imitated
+the cries of a French mob, I would have sworn there were a
+hundred voices instead of one yelling: &quot;Down with the nobility!&quot;
+You were a wonderful actress, Jerrie; and it is a marvel
+you have not gone upon the stage.'</p>
+
+<p>While he talked he was groping for the bench under the
+pines, where they sat down, Dick seating himself upon the
+parasol, which Jerrie had left there that morning after her interview
+with Tom.</p>
+
+<p>'Hallo! what's this?' he said, drawing the parasol from
+under him. 'An umbrella, as I live! We are in luck. What
+good fairy do you suppose left it here for us?'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie could not tell him that she had left it there, and she
+said nothing; while he opened and held it so that every drop
+of rain which slipped from it fell upon her neck and trickled
+down her back.
+'Great C&aelig;sar! that was a roarer!' Dick said, as the peal of
+thunder which had so frightened Ann Eliza burst over their
+heads, and, echoing through the woods, went bellowing off in
+the direction of the river, 'That's a stunner! but I rather like
+it, and like being here, too, with you, if you don't mind it. I've
+wanted a chance to speak to you alone, ever since&mdash;well, ever
+since this morning, when I saw you in that bewildering costume
+that showed your feet and your arms so&mdash;you know, with that
+thing like a napkin pinned up in front, and that jimcrack on
+your head, and the red stockings&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Dick was getting bewildered and did not quite know what he
+was saying, so he stopped and waited for Jerrie to reply. But
+Jerrie did not speak, because of the sudden alarm which possessed
+her. She could not see Dick's face, but in his voice she
+had recognized a tone heard in Tom's that morning when she
+sat with him under pines as she was sitting now with Dick
+and he had asked her to be his wife. Something told her that
+Dick was feeling for her hands, which she resolutely put behind
+her out of his way, and as he could not find them, he wound his
+arm around her and held her fast, while he told her how much
+he loved her and wanted her for his wife.</p>
+
+<p>'I believe I have loved you,' he said, 'ever since the day I
+first saw you at the inquest, and you flew so like a little cat at
+Peterkin when he attacked Harold. I used to be awfully jealous
+of Hal, for fear he would find in you more than a sister,
+but that was before he and Maude got so thick together. I
+guess that's a sure thing, and it makes me bold to tell you what
+I have. Why are you so silent Jerrie? Don't you love me a
+little? That is all I ask at first, for I know I can make you
+love me a great deal in time. I will be so kind and true to you.
+Jerrie, and father, and mother, and Nina will be so glad. Speak
+to me, Jerrie, and say you will try to love me, if you do not
+now.'</p>
+
+<p>As he talked he had drawn the girl closer to him, where she
+sat rigid as a stone, wholly unmindful of the little puddles of
+water&mdash;and they were puddles now&mdash;running down her back,
+for Dick had tilted the parasol in such a manner that one of the
+points rested upon the nape of her neck. But she did not
+know it, or think of any thing except the pain she must inflict
+upon the young man wooing her so differently from what Tom
+Tracy had done. No hint had Dick given of the honor he was
+conferring upon her, or of his own and his family's superiority
+to her family and herself. All the honor and favor to be conferred
+were on her side; all the love and humility on his, and
+for one brief moment the wild wish flashed upon her:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, if I could love him as a wife ought, I might he so happy,
+for he is all that is noble and good and true.'</p>
+
+<p>But this was while she was smarting under the few words he
+had said of Harold and Maude. He, too, believed it a settled
+thing between the two&mdash;everybody believed it&mdash;and why
+should she waste her love upon one who did not care for her as
+she did for him? Why not encourage a love for Dick, who
+stood next in her heart to Harold? Questioning herself thus
+until there flushed upon her the recollection of Harold's voice as
+it had spoken to her that morning, and the look in his eyes when
+they rested upon her, as he said good-bye, lingering a moment
+as if loth to leave her, and then Dick's chance, if he had ever
+had any, was gone!</p>
+
+<p>'I do not believe it,' she said to herself, and then, turning
+her face to Dick she cried: 'Oh, Dick, I am so sorry you have
+said this to me; sorry that you love me&mdash;in this way&mdash;for I
+can't&mdash;I can't&mdash;. I do love you as a friend, a brother, next
+to Harold, but I cannot be your wife. I cannot.'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment there was perfect silence in the darkness, and
+then a lurid flame of lightning showed the two faces&mdash;that of
+the man pale as ashes, with a look of bitter pain upon it, and
+that of the woman, whiter than the man's and bathed in upon
+which fell almost as fast as the rain drops were falling tears,
+the pines.</p>
+
+<p>Then Dick spoke, but his voice sounded strange and unnatural
+and a great ways off:</p>
+
+<p>'If I wait a long, long time&mdash;say a year, or two, or three&mdash;do
+you think you could learn to love me just a little? I will
+not ask for much; only, Jerrie, I do hunger so for you that
+without you life would seem a blank.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, Dick; not if you waited twenty years. I must still
+answer no. I cannot love you as your wife should love you,
+and as some good, sweet girl will one day love you when you
+have forgotten me.'</p>
+
+<p>This is what Jerrie said to him, with much more, until he
+knew she was in earnest and felt as if his heart were breaking.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall never forget you, Jerrie,' he said, 'or cease to hope
+that you will change your mind, unless&mdash;' and here he started
+so suddenly that the wet parasol, down which streams of water
+were still coursing their way to Jerrie's back, dropped from
+his hand and rolled off upon the bed of fine needles at his feet,
+just where it had been in the morning when Tom was there
+instead of himself&mdash;'unless there is some one between us, some
+other man whom you love. I will not ask you the question, but
+I believe I could bear it better if I knew it was because your
+love was already given to another, and not because of anything
+in me.'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Jerrie was silent; then suddenly facing Dick,
+she laid her hand on his and said:</p>
+
+<p>'I can trust you, I am sure of that; there is some one between
+us&mdash;some one whom I love. If I had never seen him,
+Dick, never known that he lived&mdash;and if I had known you just
+as I do, I might not have answered just as I have. I am very
+sorry.'</p>
+
+<p>Dick did not ask her who his rival was, nor did Harold come
+to his mind, so sure was he that an engagement existed between
+him and Maude. Probably it was some one whom she had met
+while away at school; and if so, Nina would know, and he
+would sound her cautiously, but never let her know, if he could
+help it, the heart-wound he had received.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Dick! every nerve was quivering with pain and disappointment
+when at last, as the rain began to cease, he rose at
+Jerrie's suggestion, and offering her his arm, walked silently
+and sadly with her to the door of the cottage. Here for a
+moment they stood side by side and hand in hand, until Jerrie
+said:</p>
+
+<p>'Dick, your friendship has been very dear to me. I do not
+want to lose it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nor shall you,' he answered; and winding his arms around
+her, he kissed her lips, saying as he did so:</p>
+
+<p>'That is the seal of our eternal friendship. The man you
+love would not grudge me that one kiss, but perhaps you'd
+better tell him. Good-bye, and God bless you. When I see you
+again I shall try to be the same Dick you have always known.'</p>
+
+<p>For a few moments Jerrie stood listening to the sound of his
+footsteps as he went splashing through the wet grass and
+puddles of water; then, kissing her hands to him, she whispered:</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Dick! it would not be difficult to love you if I had
+never known Harold.'</p>
+
+<p>Opening the door softly, she found, as she had expected,
+that both her grandmother and Harold had retired; and taking
+the lamp from the table where it had been left for her, she
+stole quietly up to her room and crept shivering into bed, more
+wretched than she had ever been before in her life.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" ></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h2>AT LE BATEAU.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Harold got his own breakfast the next morning, and
+was off for his work just as the sun looked into the
+windows of the room where Jerrie lay in a deep slumber.
+She had been awake a long time the previous night,
+thinking over the incidents of a day which had been the most
+eventful one of her life, but had fallen asleep at last, and
+dreamed that she had found the low room far away in Wiesbaden,
+with the wall adorned with the picture of a young girl
+knitting in the sunshine, and the stranger watching her from a
+distance.</p>
+
+<p>It was late when she awoke, and Peterkin's clock was striking
+eight when she went down to the kitchen, where she found
+Mrs. Crawford sewing, and a most dainty breakfast waiting
+for her on a little round table near an open window shaded
+with the hop-vines. There was a fresh egg for her, with
+English buns, and strawberries and cream, and chocolate served
+in a pretty cup which she had never seen before, while near
+her plate was lying a bunch of roses, and on them a strip of
+paper, on which Harold had written:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The top of the mornin' to ye, Jerrie. I'd like to stay and see
+you, but if I work very hard to-day, I hope to finish the job on
+Monday and get my fifteen dollars. That's a pile of money to earn
+in three days, isn't it? I hope you enjoyed the garden-party. If
+I had not been so awfully tired I should have gone for you.
+Grandma will tell you that I went to bed and to sleep before that
+shower came up, so I knew nothing of it. I wonder you got home;
+but of course Dick came with you, or Billy, or possibly Tom. I
+hear you entertained all three of them at the washtub! Pretty good
+for the first day home! Good-bye till to-night. I only live till
+then, as they say in novels.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;HAROLD.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>This note, every line of which was full of affection and
+thoughtfulness for her, was worth more to Jerrie than the
+chocolate, or the bun, or the pretty cup and saucer which
+Harold had bought for her the night before, going to the
+village, a mile out of his way, on purpose to get them and
+surprise her. This, Mrs. Crawford told her, as she eat eating
+her breakfast, which she had to force down because of the
+lump in her throat and the tears which came so fast as she
+listened.</p>
+
+<p>'You see,' Mrs. Crawford began, 'Mr. Allen paid Harold
+two or three dollars, and so he came home through the village,
+and bought the eggs, and the buns, and the chocolate, which
+he knew you liked, and the cup and saucer at Grady's. He
+has had it on his mind a long time to get it for you, but there
+were so many other things to pay for. Don't you think it is
+pretty?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, lovely!' Jerrie replied, taking up the delicate bit of
+china, through which the light shone so clearly. 'It is very
+pretty; but I wish he had not bought it for me,' and Jerrie
+wiped the hot tears from both her eyes, as Mrs. Crawford continued:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, he wanted to. He is never happier than when doing
+something which he thinks pleases you or me. Harold is the most
+unselfish boy I ever knew; and I never saw him give way, or
+heard him complain that his lot was hard but once, and that
+was this summer, when he was building the room, and had to
+dismiss the man because he had no money to pay him. That
+left it all for him to do, and he was already so tired and overworked;
+and then Tom Tracy was always making fun of the
+addition, and saying it made the cottage look like a pig-sty
+with a steeple to it, and that you would think so too; and if it
+were his he'd tear the old hut down and start anew. Peterkin,
+too, made remarks about its being out of proportion to the rest
+of the house, and wondered where Harold got the money, and
+why he didn't do this and that, but supposed he couldn't
+afford it, adding that &quot;beggars couldn't be choosers.&quot; When
+Harold heard all that, he was tired, and nervous, and sick, and
+discouraged, and his hands were blistered and bruised with
+hard work. His head was aching, and he just put it on that
+table, where you are sitting, and cried like a baby. When I
+tried to comfort him, he said, &quot;It isn't the hard work, grandmother;
+I don't mind that in the least; neither do I care for
+what they say, or should not, if there was not some truth in it;
+things are out of proportion, and the new room makes the rest
+of the cottage look lower than ever, and I'd like so much to
+have everything right for Jerrie, who would not shame the
+Queen's palace. I wish, for her sake, that I had money, and
+could make her home what it ought to be. I do not want her
+to feel homesick, or long for something better, when she comes
+back to us.&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie was crying outright now; but Mrs. Crawford, who
+was a little deaf and did not hear her, went on:</p>
+
+<p>'If you were a hundred times his sister he could not love
+you more than he does, or wish to make you happier. He
+would have gone for you last night, only he was so tired, and I
+persuaded him to go to bed. I knew somebody would come
+home with you, Dick, wasn't it? I thought I heard his
+voice.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, it was Dick,' Jerrie answered, very low, returning
+again to her breakfast, while her grandmother rambled on:</p>
+
+<p>'Harold slept so soundly that he never heard the storm or
+knew there was one till this morning. Lucky you didn't start
+home till it was over. You'd have been wet to the skin.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie made no answer, for she could not tell of that interview
+under the pines, or that she had been wet to the skin,
+and felt chilly even now from the effects of it. It seemed that
+Mrs. Crawford would never tire talking of Harold, for she continued:</p>
+
+<p>'He was up this morning about daylight, I do believe, and
+had his own breakfast eaten and that table laid for you when I
+came down. He wanted to see you before he went, and know
+if you were pleased; but I told him you were probably asleep,
+as it was late when you came in, and so he wrote something
+for you, and went whistling off as merrily as if he had been in
+his carriage, instead of on foot in his working-dress.'</p>
+
+<p>'And he shall have his carriage, too, some day, and a pair
+of the finest horses the country affords, and you shall ride beside
+him, in a satin gown and India shawl. You'll see!' Jerrie
+said, impetuously, as she arose from the table and began to
+clear away the dishes.</p>
+
+<p>The spell was upon her strongly now, and as her grandmother
+talked, the objects around her gradually faded away;
+the cottage, so out of proportion, and so humble in all its surroundings,
+was gone, and in its place a house, fair to look upon,
+fair as Tracy Park and much like it, and Harold was the master,
+looking a very prince, instead of the tired, shabbily dressed
+man he was now.</p>
+
+<p>'And I shall be there, too,' Jerrie whispered, or rather
+nodded to herself. 'I know I shall, and I do not believe one
+word of the Maude affair, and never will until he tells me himself,
+or she; and then&mdash;well, then, I will be glad for them,
+until I come to be really glad myself.'</p>
+
+<p>She was moving rapidly around the kitchen, for there was a
+great deal to be done&mdash;the Saturday's work and all the clothes
+to be ironed, and then she meant to get up some little surprise
+for Harold, to show him that she appreciated his thoughtfulness
+for her.</p>
+
+<p>About half-past ten a servant from Le Bateau brought her a
+note from Ann Eliza, who wrote as follows.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Dear Jerrie:&mdash;Have pity on a poor cripple, and come as soon
+as you can and see her. I sprained my ankle last night in that
+awful storm, and Tom had to bring me home in his arms. Think
+of it, and what my feelings must have been. I am hardly over it
+yet&mdash;the queer feelings I mean&mdash;for, of course, my ankle is dreadful,
+and so swollen, and pains me so that I cannot step, but must
+stay in my room all day. So come as soon as possible. You have
+never seen the inside of our house, or my rooms. Come to lunch,
+please. We will have it up here. Good-bye.</p>
+
+<p>'From your loving friend,</p>
+
+<p>'ANN ELIZA.</p>
+
+<p>'P.S.&mdash;I wonder if Tom will inquire for me.'</p></div>
+
+<p>'Tell her I will be there by lunch time,' Jerrie said to the
+man, while to her grandmother she continued: 'The baking
+and cleaning are all done, and I can finish the ironing when I
+get back; it will be cooler then, and I do want to see the inside
+of that show-house which Harold says cost a hundred thousand
+dollars. Pity somebody besides the Peterkins did not live
+there.'</p>
+
+<p>And so, about twelve o'clock Jerrie walked up to the grand
+house of gray stone, which, with its turrets, and towers, and
+immense arch over the carriage drive in front of a side door,
+looked like some old feudal castle, and flaunted upon its walls
+the money it had cost. Even the loud bell which echoed
+through the hall like a town clock told of wealth and show, as
+did the colored man who answered the summons, and bowing
+low to Jerrie, held out a silver tray for her card.</p>
+
+<p>'Nonsense, Leo!' Jerrie said, laughingly, for she had
+known the negro all her life and played with him, too, at times,
+when they both went to the district school. 'I have no card
+with me. Miss Ann Eliza has invited me to lunch, and I have
+come. Tell her I am here.'</p>
+
+<p>With another profound bow, Leo waved Jerrie into the
+reception-room, and then started to deliver her message.</p>
+
+<p>Seated upon one of the carved chairs, Jerrie looked about
+her curiously, with a feeling that the half had not been told
+her, everything was so much more gorgeous and magnificent
+than she had supposed. But what impressed and at the same
+time oppressed her most was the height of the walls from the
+richly inlaid floor to the gayly decorated ceiling overhead. It
+made her neck ache staring up fourteen feet and a half to the
+costly center ornament from which the heavy chandelier depended.
+All the rooms of the old house had been low, and when
+Peterkin built the new one, he made ample amends.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I mean to lick the crowd,&quot; he said; and a man was sent
+to Collingwood, and Grassy Spring, and Brier Hill, and lastly
+to Tracy Park, to take the height of the lower rooms. Those
+at Tracy Park were found to be the highest, and measured just
+twelve feet, so Peterkin's orders were to &quot;run 'em up&mdash;run
+'em up fourteen feet, for I swan I'll get ahead of 'em.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So they were run up fourteen feet, and by some mistake,
+half a foot higher, looking when finished so cold and cheerless
+and bare that the ambitious man ransacked New York and
+Boston and even sent to London for ornaments for his walls.
+Books were bought by the square yard, pictures by the wholesale,
+mirrors by the dozen, with bronzes and brackets and
+sconces and tapestry and banners and screens and clocks and
+cabinets and statuary, with every kind of furniture imaginable,
+from the costliest rugs and carpets to the most exquisite inlaid
+tables to be found in Florence or Venice. For Peterkin sent
+there for them by a gentleman to whom he said:</p>
+
+<p>'Git the best there is if it costs a fortune. I'm bound to lick
+the crowd.'</p>
+
+<p>This was his favorite expression; and when his house was
+done, and he stood, his broad, white shirt-front studded with
+diamonds and his coat thrown back to show them, surveying
+his possessions, he felt that he 'had licked the crowd.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie felt so, too, as she followed the elegant Leo up the
+stairs and through the upper hall&mdash;handsomer, if possible than
+the lower one&mdash;to the pretty room where Ann Eliza lay, or
+rather reclined, with her lame foot on a cushion and her well
+one incased in a white embroidered silk stocking and blue satin
+slipper. She was dressed in a delicate blue satin wrapper,
+trimmed with swan's-down, and there were diamonds in her
+ears and on the little white hands which she stretched toward
+Jerrie as she came in.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Jerrie,' she said, 'I am so glad to see you, for it is awfully
+lonesome here; and if one can be homesick at home, I
+am. I miss the girls and the lessons and the rules at Vassar;
+much as I hated them when I was there; and just before you
+came in I wanted to cry. I guess my rooms are too big and
+have too much in them; any way, I have the feeling that I
+am visiting, and everything is strange and new. I do believe
+I liked the old room better, with its matting on the floor
+and the little mirror with the peacock feathers ornamenting
+the top, and that painted plaster image of Samuel on the mantel.
+It is very ungrateful in me, I know, when father has
+done it mostly to please me. Do you believe&mdash;he has hunted me
+up a maid; Doris is her name; and what I am ever to do with
+her, or she with me, I am sure I don't know. Do you?'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie did not know either, but suggested that she might
+read to her while she was confined to her room.
+'Yes, she might, perhaps, do that, if she can read,' Ann
+Eliza said. 'She certainly has pretentions enough about her
+to have written several treatises on scientific subjects. She
+was a year with Lady Augusta Hardy, in Ireland. Don't you
+remember the grand wedding father and mother attended in
+Allington two or three years ago, when Augusta Browne was
+married to an Irish lord, who had been bought by her money?&mdash;for
+of course he did not care much for her. Well, Doris
+went out with her as maid, and acts as if she, too, had married
+a peer. She came last night, and mamma and I are already
+as afraid of her as we can be, she is so fine and airy. She insisted
+upon dressing me this morning, and I felt all the while
+as if she were thinking how red and ugly my hair is, or counting
+the freckles on my face, and contrasting me with 'my Lady
+Augusta,' as she calls her. I wonder if she ever saw my lady's
+mother, Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, who told me once that I had a
+very <i>petty figger</i>, but she presumed it would <i>envelope</i> as I
+grew
+older. But then people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw
+stones,' and Ann Eliza colored a little as she made this reference
+to her own father and mother, whose language was not
+much more correct than Mrs. Rossiter-Browne's.</p>
+
+<p>For one brought up as she had been, Ann Eliza was a rather
+sensible girl, and although she attached a great deal of importance
+to money, she knew it was not everything, and that with
+her father's millions there was still a wide difference between
+him and the men to whose society he aspired; and knew, too,
+that although Jerrie had not a penny in the world, she was
+greatly her superior, and so considered by the world at large.
+She was very fond of Jerrie, who had often helped her with
+her lessons, and stood between her and the ridicule of her
+companions, and was never happier than when in her society.
+So now she made her bring an ottoman close beside her, and
+held her hand while she narrated in detail the events of the
+previous night, dwelling at length upon the fact that Tom had
+carried her in his arms, and wondering if he would call to inquire
+after her. Jerrie thought he would; and, as if in answer
+to the thought, Doris almost immediately appeared with his
+card. She <i>was</i> very fine and very smart, and Jerrie herself
+felt awed by her dignity and manner as she delivered her
+message.
+'The gentleman sends his compliments, and would like to
+know how you are this morning.'</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie, it's Tom! he has come!' Ann Eliza said, with joy
+in her voice. 'Surely I can receive him here, for this is my
+parlor.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie thought she might, but the toss of the fine maid's head
+showed that she thought differently, as she left the room with
+her mistress' message.</p>
+
+<p>'Thunderation! I didn't want to see her. It's enough to
+have to call,' was Tom's mental comment, when Doris told him
+he was to walk up stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, he would not have come at all if Maude, to whom
+he related his adventure, had not insisted that he must.</p>
+
+<p>'You needn't see her, of course; but you must go and inquire
+how she is. According to your own statement you are
+to blame for her mishap; you dragged her along too fast.</p>
+
+<p>Tom knew there was some truth in this, and so he went the
+more willingly; and, sending up his card, stood near the open
+door, ready to leave the moment Leo came down with the message
+he had received from Doris.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall be cheek by jowl with these Peterkins, if I don't
+look out,' he thought, as he ascended the stairs to the hall,
+where Doris stood waiting to show him her mistress' room.</p>
+
+<p>'What! Jerry! You here?' he exclaimed, his face clearing,
+and the whole aspect of matters changing at once, as she arose
+to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>With Jerrie there the place seemed different, and he did not
+feel as if he were lowering himself, as he sat in the luxuriously
+furnished room, and joined in the dainty lunch which was
+brought up and served from Dresden china, and linen and cut
+glass, and was as delicate and dainty in its way as anything he
+had ever found at the Brunswick or Delmonico's. Mrs. Peterkin
+prided herself upon her <i>cuisine</i>, which she always superintended,
+and as Peterkin was something of an epicure and gourmand,
+the table was always supplied with every possible delicacy.</p>
+
+<p>Tom enjoyed it all, and praised the chocolate, and the broiled
+chicken, and the jellies, and thought Ann Eliza not so very
+bad-looking in her blue satin wrapper, with the swan's-down
+trimmings, and made himself generally agreeable. Maude was
+better, he said, and could talk a little, and he asked Jerrie to
+go home with him and see her. But Jerrie declined.</p>
+
+<p>'I have a great deal of work to do yet,' she said, 'I must
+iron all those clothes you saw upon the line yesterday, and so I
+must be going.'</p>
+
+<p>Tom frowned at the mention of the clothes which Jerrie had
+washed; while Ann Eliza insisted that she should stay until
+the dog-cart, which had been sent to the station for Billy, came
+back, when Lewis would take her home, as it was too warm to
+walk. Jerrie did not mind the walk, but she felt morally sure
+that Tom meant to accompany her, and greatly preferred the
+dog-cart and Lewis to another <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> with him, for he did
+not act at all like a discarded lover, but rather as one who still
+hoped he had a chance. So she signified her intention to wait
+for the dog-cart, which soon came, with Billy in it, anxious
+when he heard of his sister's accident, delighted when he found
+Jerrie there, and persistent in saying that he and not Lewis
+would take her home.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, if you will, you will,' she said, laughingly; and bidding
+Ann Eliza good-bye, and telling Tom to give her love to
+Maude and say to her that she did not believe she should be at the
+park that day, she had so much to do, she was soon in the dog-cart
+with Billy, whose face was radiant as he gathered up the
+reins and started down the turnpike, driving at what Jerrie
+thought a very slow pace, as she was anxious to get home.</p>
+
+<p>Something of Billy's thoughts must have communicated itself
+to Jerrie, for she became nervous and ill at ease and talked
+rapidly of things in which she had not the slightest interest.</p>
+
+<p>'What of the lawsuit?' she asked. 'Are you likely to settle
+it?'</p>
+
+<p>'N-no,' Billy answered, hurriedly. 'It will h-have to co-come
+into co-court in a f-few days, and I am aw-awful sorry. I
+wa-wanted father to p-pay what they demanded, but he won't.
+Hal is subpoenaed on the other side, as he was in our office,
+and is supposed to know something about it; b-but I ho-hope
+he won't da-damage us m-much, as father would n-never forgive
+him if he went against us.'</p>
+
+<p>'But he must tell the truth, no matter who is damaged,'
+Jerrie said.
+'Ye-yes' Billy replied, 'of co-course he must, b-but he
+needn't volunteer information.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerry began to think that Billy had insisted upon coming
+with her for the sake of persuading her to caution Harold
+against saying too much when he was called to testify in the
+great lawsuit between Peterkin &amp; Co., manufacturers in Shannondale,
+and Wilson &amp; Co., manufacturers in Truesdale, an adjoining
+town; but she was undeceived when her companion
+turned suddenly off upon the river road, which would take them
+at least two miles out of their way.</p>
+
+<p>'Why are you coming here!' Jerrie said, in real distress.
+'It is ever so much farther, and I must get home. I have
+piles of work to do.'</p>
+
+<p>'Co-confound the work,' Billy replied, very energetically for
+him, and reining his horse up under a wide spreading butternut
+tree, which grew upon the river bank, he sprang out and
+pretended to be busy with some part of the harness, while he
+astonished Jerrie by bursting out, without the least stammer,
+he was so earnest and so excited: 'I've something to say to
+you, Jerrie, and I may as well say it now as any time, and
+know the worst, or the best. I can't bear the suspense any
+longer, and I got out of the cart so as to stand where I could
+look you square in the face while I say it.'</p>
+
+<p>And he was looking her square in the face while she grew
+hot and cold and experienced a sensation quite different from
+what she had when Tom and Dick made love to her. She had
+felt no fear of them, but she was afraid of this little man, who
+stood up so resolutely, with his tongue loosened, and asked her
+to be his wife, for that was what he did, making his wishes
+known in a very few words, and then waiting for her answer
+with his eyes fixed upon her face and a firm, set look about his
+mouth which puzzled and troubled her and made her uncertain
+as to how she was to deal with this third aspirant for her hand
+within twenty-four hours.</p>
+
+<p>Billy had long had it in his mind that Jerry Crawford was
+the only girl in the world for him, but he might not have spoken
+quite; so soon had it not been for a conversation held with
+his father the previous night, when they were alone in a private
+room at the hotel in Shannondale, waiting for the train which
+Billy was to take, and which was half an hour late. Peterkin
+had exhausted himself in oaths and epithets with regard to the
+lawsuit and those who had brought it against him, and was regaling
+himself with a cigar and a glass of brandy and water,
+while Billy sat by the window watching for the train and wishing
+himself at Grassy Spring with Jerrie. Peterkin seldom
+drank to excess, but on this occasion he had taken a little too
+much. When under the influence of stimulants, he was either
+aggressive and quarrelsome, or jocose and talkative. The latter
+mood was on him now, and as he drank his brandy and
+water he held forth upon the subject of matrimony, wondering
+why his son did not marry, and saying it was quite time he did
+so and settled down.</p>
+
+<p>'You can have the south wing,' he said, 'and if the rooms
+ain't up to snuff now, why, I'll make 'em so. The fact is, Bill,
+I've got money enough&mdash;three millions and better; but somehow
+it doesn't seem to do the thing. It doesn't fetch us to the
+quality and make us fust-cut. We need better blood than the
+Peterkins or the Moshers&mdash;need boostin', and you must get a
+wife to boost us. Have you ever thought on't?'</p>
+
+<p>'Billy never had thought of it in that light,' he said, although
+he had thought of marrying, providing the girl would
+have him.</p>
+
+<p>'Have you! Thunderation! A girl would be a fool who
+wouldn't marry three millions, with Lubber-too thrown in! Who
+is she?' Peterkin asked.</p>
+
+<p>After a little hesitancy Billy replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie Crawford.'</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie Crawford! I'll be dammed! Jerrie Crawford!' and
+Peterkin's big feet came down from the back of the chair on
+which they were resting, upsetting the chair and his brandy at
+the same time. 'Jerrie Crawford! I swow! A gal without
+a cent, or name either, though I used to have a sneakin' notion
+that I knew who she was, but I guess I didn't. 'Twould have
+come out afore now. What under heavens put her into your
+noddle? She can't <i>boost</i>! and then she's head and shoulders
+taller than you be! How you would look trottin' beside her!
+Jerrie Crawford! Wal, I swan!' and Peterkin laughed until
+his big stomach shook like a bowl of jelly.</p>
+
+<p>Billy was angry, and replied that he did not know what
+height had to do with it, or name either; and as for <i>boosting</i>,
+he wouldn't marry a king's daughter, if he did not love her;
+and for that matter Jerrie could boost, for she stood quite as
+high in town as any young lady.</p>
+
+<p>Both Nina St. Claire and Maude Tracy worshipped her,
+while Mrs. Atherton paid her a great deal of attention; and so
+did the Mungers and Crosbys&mdash;enough sight more than they
+did to Ann Eliza with all her money.</p>
+
+<p>'Mo-money isn't ev-everything.' Billy stammered, 'and
+Je-Jerrie would make a ve-very different pl-place of Le Bateau.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mebby she would&mdash;mebby she would; but I'd never
+thought of her for you,' Peterkin said. 'I'd picked out some;
+big bug, who perhaps wouldn't wipe her shoes on you. Jerrie
+is handsome as blazes and no mistake, with a kinder up and
+comin' way about her which takes the folks. Yes, it keeps
+growin' on me, and I presume Arthur Tracy would give her
+away, which would be a feather in your cap; but lord! you'll
+have to git a pair of the highest heels you ever seen to come
+within ten foot on her.'</p>
+
+<p>'She's only two inches t-taller than I am,' Billy said, and
+his father continued:</p>
+
+<p>'Wall, if your heart's set on her go it, and quick, too, I'm
+goin' to have a smasher of a party in the fall, and Jerrie'll be
+just the one to draw, I can see her now, standin' there with
+the diamonds we'll give her sparklin' on her neck, and she
+lookin' like a queen, and the <i>sinecure</i> of all eyes. But for
+thunder's sake don't marry the old woman and all. Leave her
+to Harold, the sneak! I never did like him, and I'll be mad
+enough to kill him if he goes agin me in the suit, and I b'lieve
+he will.'</p>
+
+<p>At this point Peterkin wandered off to the suit entirely and
+forgot Jerrie, who was to boost the house of Peterkin and make
+it 'fust-cut.' But not so Billy, and all the way from Shannondale
+to Springfield he was thinking of Jerrie, and wondering
+if it were possible that she could ever look upon him with
+favor. Like Tom and Dick, he could scarcely remember the
+time when he did not think Jerrie the loveliest girl in the
+world, and ever since he had grown to manhood he had meditated
+making her his wife, but had feared what his father might
+say, as he knew how much importance he attached to money.
+Now however, his father had signified his assent, and, resolving
+to lose no time, Billy, on his return next day to Le Bateau,
+seized the opportunity to take Jerrie home, as the occasion for
+declaring his love, which he did in a manly, straightforward
+manner, never hinting at any advantage it would be to her to
+be the wife of a millionaire, or offering any inducement in any
+way except to say that he loved her and would devote his life
+to making her happy. Tom Tracy Jerrie had scorned, Dick St.
+Claire she had pitied, but this little man she felt like ridiculing.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Billy,' she said, laughing merrily. 'You can't be in
+earnest. Why I'm head and shoulders taller than you are. I
+do believe I could pick you up and throw you into the river.
+Only think how we should look together; people would think
+you my little boy, and that I should not like. So, I can never
+be your wife.'</p>
+
+<p>Nothing cuts a man like ridicule, and sensitive as he was
+with regard to his size, Billy felt it to his heart's core; and as
+he stood nervously playing with the reins and looking at Jerrie
+sitting there so tall and erect in all the brightness of her wonderful
+beauty, it flashed upon him how impossible it was for
+that glorious creature ever to be his wife, and what a fool he
+had made of himself.</p>
+
+<p>'For-gi-give me, Jerrie,' he said, his chin beginning to quiver,
+and the great tears rolling down his face, 'I know you
+ca-can't, and I ou-oughtn't to have ask-asked it, bu-but I d-did
+love you so much, that I f-forgot how impossible it was f-for
+one like you to lo-love one li-like me. I am so small and
+insig-insignificant, and st-stutter so. I wish I was dead,' and
+laying his head upon the horse's neck, he sobbed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant Jerrie was out of the dog-cart and at his side,
+talking to and trying to soothe him as she would a child.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Billy, Billy,' she said. 'I am so sorry for you, and
+sorry I said those cruel words about your size. It was only in
+fun. Your size has nothing to do with my refusal. I know you
+have a big, kind heart, and next to Harold and Dick, and Mr.
+Arthur, I like you better than any man I ever knew; but I
+cannot be your wife. Don't cry, Billy; it hurts me so to see
+you and know that I have done it. Please stop, and take me
+home as quickly as possible.'</p>
+
+<p>With a great gulp, and a long sigh like a grieved child, Billy
+dried his tears, of which he was much ashamed, and helping
+Jerrie into the cart drove her rapidly to the door of the cottage.</p>
+
+<p>'I should not like Tom, nor Dick, nor Harold to know this,'
+he said to her, as he stood a moment with her at the gate.</p>
+
+<p>'Billy!' she exclaimed, 'do you know me so little as to
+think I would tell them, or anybody? I have more honor
+than that,' and she gave him her hand, which he held tightly
+in his while he looked earnestly into the sweet young face
+which could never be his, every muscle of his own quivering
+with emotion, and telling of the pain he was enduring.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-bye. I shall be more like a ma-man, and less a ba-baby
+when I see you again,' and springing into his cart he
+drove rapidly away.</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie found her grandmother seated at a table and trying
+to iron.</p>
+
+<p>'Grandma,' she said, 'this is too bad. I did not mean to
+stay so long. Put down that flat-iron this minute. I am coming
+there as soon as I lay off my hat.'</p>
+
+<p>Running up the stairs to her room, Jerrie put away her hat,
+and then, throwing herself upon the bed, cried for a moment as
+hard as she could cry. The look on Billy's face haunted her,
+and she pitied him now more than she had pitied Dick St.
+Claire.</p>
+
+<p>'Dick will get over it, and marry somebody else, but Billy
+never,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>Then, rising up, she bathed her eyes, and pushing back her
+tangled hair, stood for a moment before the mirror, contemplating
+the reflection of herself in it.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie Crawford,' she said, 'you must be a mean, heartless,
+good-for-nothing girl, for it certainly is not your Dutch face,
+nor yellow hair, nor great staring eyes, which make men think
+that you will marry them; so it must be your flirting, coquettish
+manners. I hate a flirt. I hate you, Jerrie Crawford.'</p>
+
+<p>Once when a little girl, Jerrie had said to Harold, 'Why do
+all the boys want to kiss me so much?' and now she might
+have asked, 'Why do these same boys wish to marry me?' It
+was a curious fact that she should have had three offers within
+twenty-four hours; and she didn't like it, and her face wore a
+troubled look all that hot afternoon as she stood at the ironing
+table, perspiring at every pore, and occasionally smiling to herself
+as she thought, 'Grassy Spring, Le Bateau, Tracy Park, I
+might take my choice, if I would, but I prefer the cottage,' and
+then at the thought of Tracy Park her thoughts went off across
+the sea to Germany, and the low room with the picture upon
+the wall, and her resolve to find it some day.</p>
+
+<p>'Far in the future it may be, but find it I will, and find, too,
+who I am,' she said to herself, little dreaming that the finding
+was close at hand, and that she had that day lighted the train
+which was so soon to bear her on to the end.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXXIX" ></a>CHAPTER XXXIX.</h2>
+
+<h2>MAUDE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Harold did not finish his work at the Allen farm-house
+until Tuesday, so it was not until Wednesday
+afternoon that he started to pay his promised visit to
+Maude. Jerrie had seen her twice, and reported her as much
+better, although still very weak.</p>
+
+<p>'She is so anxious to see you. Don't you think you can go
+this afternoon?' she said to Harold, in the morning, as she
+helped him weed the garden and pick the few strawberries left
+upon the vines.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye-es, I guess I can&mdash;if you'll go with me,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>He was so loth to be away from Jerrie when it was not absolutely
+necessary, that even a call upon Maude without her
+did not seem very tempting. But Jerrie could not go now,
+for Nina and Marian Raymond came down to the cottage to
+spend the afternoon, and Harold went alone to the park house,
+where he found Maude in the room she called her studio trying
+to finish a little water-color which she had sketched of the
+cottage as it was before the roof was raised.</p>
+
+<p>'I mean it for Jerrie,' she had said to Harold, who stood by
+her when she sketched it, 'and I am going to put her under
+the tree, with her sun bonnet hanging down her back, as she
+used to wear it when she was a little girl, and you are to be
+over there by the fence, looking at me coming up the lane.'</p>
+
+<p>It was the best thing Maude had ever done, for the likeness
+to Jerrie and to herself was perfect, while the cottage, embowered
+in trees and flowers, made it a most attractive picture.
+Harold had praised it a great deal, and told her that it would
+make her famous. But when the carpenter work came in
+Maude put it aside until now, when she brought it out again,
+and was just beginning to retouch it in places, as Harold was
+announced.</p>
+
+<p>She was looking very tired, and it seemed to Harold that
+she had lost many pounds of flesh since he saw her last. Her
+face was pale, and pinched, and wan, but it flushed brightly as
+Harold came in, and she went eagerly forward to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>'Hally, you naughty boy!' she began, as she gave him her
+little, thin hand. 'Why didn't you come before? You don't
+know how I have missed you. You must not forget me now
+that Jerrie is at home.'</p>
+
+<p>She had led him to a seat, and then herself sank into a large
+cushioned easy chair, against which she leaned her head wearily,
+while she looked at him with eyes which ought to have told
+Harold how much he was to her, and so put him on his guard,
+and saved the misunderstanding which followed.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Maude, I couldn't forget you,' he said; and without
+really knowing that he was doing it, he put his hand upon the
+little soft white one lying on the arm of the chair.</p>
+
+<p>Every nerve in Maude's body thrilled to the touch of that
+hand upon which she involuntarily laid her other one, noticing
+as she did so the signs of toil upon it, and feeling sorry for him.
+One would have thought them lovers, sitting there thus together,
+but nothing could have been farther from Harold's mind.
+He was thinking only of Jerrie, and his resolve to confide in
+Maude, and get her opinion with regard to his chance.</p>
+
+<p>'Now is as good a time as any,' he thought, wondering how
+he should begin, and finding it harder than he had imagined it
+would he.</p>
+
+<p>At last after a few commonplaces, Maude told him again
+that he must not neglect her now that Jerrie was at home.</p>
+
+<p>'Neglect you? How can I do that?' he said, 'when I look
+upon you as one of my best friends, and in proof of it, I am
+going to tell you something, or, rather, ask you something, and
+I hope you will answer me truly. Better that I know the
+worst at first than learn it afterward.'</p>
+
+<p>Maude's face was aflame now with a great and sudden joy,
+and her soft eyes drooped beneath Harold's as he went on
+stammeringly, for he began to feel the awkwardness of telling
+one girl that he loved another, even though that other were her
+dearest friend.</p>
+
+<p>'I hardly know how to begin,' he said, 'it is such a delicate
+matter, and perhaps I'd better say nothing at all.'</p>
+
+<p>'Was he going to stop? Had he changed his mind&mdash;and
+would he not after all, say the words she had so longed to
+hear?' Maude asked herself, as she turned her eyes appealingly
+to him, while he sat silent and unmoved, his thoughts
+very, very far from her to whom he was all in all.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Maude! She was weak and sick, and impulsive and
+mistaken in the nature of Harold's feelings for her; so judge
+her not too harshly, my prudish reader, if she at last did what
+Arthur would have called 'throwing herself at his head.'</p>
+
+<p>'I can guess what you mean,' she said, after a long pause,
+during which he did not speak. 'I have long suspected that
+you cared for me just as I care for you, and have wondered
+you did not tell me so, but supposed that you refrained because
+I was rich and you were poor; but what has that to do with
+those who love each other? I am glad you have spoken; and
+you have made me very happy; and even if we can never be
+more to each other than we are now, because I may die, as I
+sometimes fear I shall&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Maude, Maude, you are mistaken. I&mdash;,' came from
+Harold like a cry of horror as he wrenched away his hand lying
+between hers, and to which her slender fingers hung caressingly.</p>
+
+<p>What could she mean? How had she understood him? he
+asked himself, while great drops of sweat gathered upon his
+forehead and in the palms of his hands, as like lightning the
+past came back to him, and he could see as in a printed page
+that what he had thought mere friendship for himself was a far
+different and deeper feeling, while he unwittingly had fanned
+the flame; and was now reaping the result.</p>
+
+<p>'What can I do?' he said aloud, unconsciously, while from
+the depths of the chair on which Maude was leaning back so
+wearily came a plaintive voice like that of a child:</p>
+
+<p>'Ring the bell, and give me my handkerchief.'</p>
+
+<p>He was at her side in a moment, bending over her, and looking
+anxiously into the pallid face from which the bright color
+had faded, leaving it gray, and pinched, and drawn, it seemed
+to him. Had he killed her by blurting out so roughly that
+she was mistaken; and thus filling her with mortification and
+shame? No, that could not be, for as he brought her handkerchief
+and bent still closer to her, she whispered to him:</p>
+
+<p>'I am not mistaken, Hally. I am going to die, but you
+have made the last days of my life very, very happy.'</p>
+
+<p>She thought he was referring to herself and her situation
+when he told her she was mistaken, and with a smothered
+groan he was starting for the camphor, as she bade him do,
+when the door opened, and Mrs. Tracy herself appeared.</p>
+
+<p>'What is it?' she asked, sharply; then, as she saw Maude's
+face she knew what it was, and going swiftly to her, said to
+Harold:</p>
+
+<p>'Why did you allow her to talk and get excited? What
+were you saying to her?'</p>
+
+<p>Instantly Maude's eyes went up to Harold's with an appealing
+look, as if asking him not to tell her mother then&mdash;a precaution
+which was needless, as he had no intention to tell Mrs.
+Tracy, or any one, of the terrible blunder he had made; and
+with a hope that the reality might dawn upon Maude, he answered,
+truthfully:</p>
+
+<p>'I was talking to her of Jerrie. I am very sorry.'</p>
+
+<p>If Maude heard she did not understand, for drops of pinkish
+blood were oozing from her lips, and she looked as if she were
+already dead, as in obedience to Mrs. Tracy's command, Harold
+took her in his arms and carried her to the couch near the
+open window, where he laid her down as tenderly as if she
+were indeed his affianced wife.</p>
+
+<p>'Thanks,' she sighed, softly, and her bright, beautiful eyes
+looked up at him with an expression which half tempted him
+to kiss the quivering lips from which he was wiping the stains
+so carefully, while Mrs. Tracy, at the door, gave some orders
+to a servant.</p>
+
+<p>'You can go now,' she said, returning to the couch, and dismissing
+him with her usual hauteur of manner; while Maude
+put up her hand and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>'Come soon&mdash;and Jerrie.'</p>
+
+<p>Had Harold been convicted of theft or murder he could
+scarcely have felt worse than he did as he walked slowly
+through the park, reviewing the situation and wondering what
+he ought to do.</p>
+
+<p>'If it almost killed her when she thought I loved her, it
+would surely kill her to know that I do not,' he thought. 'I
+cannot undeceive her now, while she is so weak; but when she
+is better and able to bear it, I will tell her the truth.'</p>
+
+<p>'And if she dies?' came to him like the stab of a knife, as
+he remembered how white she looked as he held her in his
+arms. 'If she does,' he said, 'no one shall ever know of the
+mistake she made. In this I will be true to Maude, even
+should the world believe I loved her and had told her so. But,
+oh, Heaven! spare me that, and spare Maude's life for many
+years. She is too young, too sweet, too good to die.'</p>
+
+<p>This was Harold's prayer as he rested for a moment in the
+pine-room, where he had often played with the little girl, and
+where he could now see her so plainly picking up the cones, or
+sitting on the soft bed of needles, with the bloom on her cheeks
+and the brightness in her soft black eyes which had looked so
+lovingly at him an hour ago. 'Spare Maude; do not let her
+die!' was his prayer, and that of many others during the
+week which followed, when Maude's life hung on a thread, and
+every bell at the park house was muffled, and the servants
+spoke only in whispers; while Frank Tracy sat day and night
+in the room where his daughter lay, perfectly quiet, except
+as she sometimes put up her hand to stroke his white hair or
+wipe away the tears constantly rolling down his cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>In Frank's heart there was a feeling worse than death itself,
+for keen remorse and bitter regret were torturing his soul as he
+sat beside the wreck of all his hopes and felt that he had sinned
+for naught. He knew Maude would die, and then what mattered
+it to him if he had all the money of the Rothschilds at
+his command?</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Gretchen, you are avenged, and Jerrie, too! Oh,
+Jerrie!' he said, one day, unconsciously, as he sat by his
+daughter, who, he thought, was sleeping.
+But at the mention of Jerrie's name her eyes unclosed and
+fixed themselves upon her father with a look in which he read
+an earnest desires for something.</p>
+
+<p>'What is it, pet?' he asked. 'Do you want anything?'</p>
+
+<p>They had made her understand that, she must not speak, for
+the slightest effort to do so always brought on a fit of coughing
+which threatened a hemorrhage, of which she could not
+endure many more. But they had brought her a little slate,
+on which she sometimes wrote her requests, though that, too,
+was an effort. Pointing now to the slate, she wrote, while
+her father held it:</p>
+
+<p>'I want Jerrie.'</p>
+
+<p>'I thought so; and you shall have her for just as long as
+she will stay,' Frank said; and a servant was dispatched to
+the cottage with the message that Jerrie must come at once,
+and come prepared to pass the night, if possible.</p>
+
+<p>It had been very dreary for Maude during the time she had
+been shut up in her room, to which no one was admitted except
+her father and mother, the doctor, and the nurse. Many
+messages of enquiry and sympathy, however, had come to her
+from the cottage, and Grassy Spring, and Le Bateau, where
+Ann Eliza was still kept a prisoner with her sprained ankle;
+and once Jerrie had written to Maude a note full of love and
+solicitude and a desire to see her. As a postscript she added:</p>
+
+<p>'Harold sends his love, and hopes you will soon be better.
+You don't know how anxious he is about you. Why, I believe
+he has lost ten pounds since your attack, for which he
+seems to blame himself, thinking he excited you too much by
+talking to you.'</p>
+
+<p>Maude listened to this note, which her father read to her,
+with a smile on her face and tears on her long eyelashes; but
+when he came to the postscript she laughed aloud, as a little
+child laughs at the return of its mother, for whom it has been
+hungering. This was the first word she had had from him,
+except that he had called to enquire for her, and she had so
+longed for something which should assure her that he remembered
+her even as she did him. She had no distrust of him,
+and would as soon have doubted that the sun would rise again
+as to have doubted his sincerity; but she wanted to hear again
+that he loved her, and now she had heard it, and, folding her
+hands upon her breast, she fell into the most, refreshing sleep
+she had had since her illness. Could Maude have talked and
+seen people, or if she had been less anxious to live, she would
+probably have told Jerrie and Nina, and possibly Ann Eliza
+Peterkin, of what had passed between herself and Harold, but
+she had not seen them; while life, with Harold to love her,
+looked so bright and sweet, that if by keeping silence she
+could prolong it, she would do so for months, if necessary. To
+live for Harold was all she wished or thought about; and
+often when they hoped she was sleeping, she lay so still, with
+her eyes closed and her arms folded upon her breast, just as if
+she were praying in her dreams, her father thought. She <i>was</i>
+praying for life and length of days, with strength to make
+Harold as happy as he ought to be, and was thinking of and
+planning all she meant to do for him when once they were
+married. First to Europe, where she would be so proud to
+show him the places she had seen, and where Jerrie would be
+with them, for in all her plans Jerrie had almost as prominent
+a place as herself.</p>
+
+<p>'I am nothing without Jerrie,' she thought 'She keeps me
+up, and Jerrie will live with us, and Mrs. Crawford; that
+makes four, just enough for a nice game of whist in long
+winter evenings, when it is so cold outside but warm and bright
+within&mdash;always bright for Harold, whose life has been so full
+of care and toil. Poor boy! how I pitied his great warm
+hand when it was holding mine so lovingly, and how I could
+have kissed every seam and scar upon it. But by and by his
+hands shall be white like Tom's, though not so soft. I hate a
+hand which feels like a fluff of cotton. He shall not live here,
+for Harold could never get along with mother and Tom; but
+we will build a house together, Hally and I, with Jerrie to
+help and plan&mdash;build one where the cottage stands, or near it,
+so Jerrie can still see the old Tramp House she is so fond of.
+Not a house like this, with such big rooms, but a pretty,
+modern Queen Ann house, with every room a corner room, and
+a bay-window in it. And Harold will have an office in town,
+and I shall drive down for him every afternoon and take him
+home to dinner and to Jerrie.'</p>
+
+<p>Such was the nature of Maude's thoughts, as she lay day
+after day upon the couch, too weak to do more thin lift her
+hands or rise her head when the dreadful paroxysms of coughing
+seized her and racked her fragile frame. Still she was
+very happy, and the happiness showed itself upon her, where
+there rested a look of perfect content and peace, which her
+father and mother had noticed and commented upon, and
+which Jerrie saw the moment she entered the room and stood
+by Maude's side.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Maude,' she said, as she took the hot hands in hers
+and kissed them tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>Then she sat down beside her, and smoothed her hair, and
+told her how lovely she looked in her pretty rose-colored
+wrapper, and how sorry every one was for her, and that both
+she and Nina would have been there every day, only they
+knew they could not see her. Then, as the great black eyes
+fixed themselves steadily upon her, with a look of enquiry in
+them, she set her teeth hard, and began:</p>
+
+<p>'I don't think anyone has been more sorry than Harold.
+Why, for the first few days after you were taken so ill he just
+walked the floor all the time he was in the house, and when
+grandma asked what ailed him, he said, &quot;I am thinking of
+Maude, and am afraid my call upon her was the cause of the
+attack.&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>'N&mdash;n&mdash;,' Maude began, but checked herself in time, and taking
+up her slate, wrote, 'Tell him it was not his call. I am
+glad he came.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes I will,' Jerrie replied, scarcely able to keep back her
+tears, when she saw how cramped and irregular the handwriting
+was, so unlike Maude's, and realized more and more how
+weak and sick was the little girl whose eyes followed her
+everywhere and always grew brighter and softer when she
+was talking to her of Harold.</p>
+
+<p>All day and all night Jerrie sat by her, sometimes talking
+to her and answering the questions she wrote upon the slate,
+but oftener in perfect silence, when Maude seemed to be asleep.
+Then Jerrie's tears fell like rain, the face upon the pillow
+looked so much like death, and she kept repeating to herself
+the lines:</p>
+
+<p>
+'We thought her dying when she slept.<br />
+And sleeping when she died.'<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>When the warm July morning looked in at the windows of
+the sick-room, bringing with it the perfume of hundreds of
+flowers blooming on the lawn, and the scent of the hay cut the
+previous day, it found Jerrie still watching by Maude, her
+own face tired and pale, with dark rings about her eyes, which
+were heavy with tears and wakefulness. She had not slept at
+all, and her head was beginning to ache frightfully when the
+nurse came in and relieved her, telling her breakfast was ready.
+Maude was awake, and wrote eagerly upon the slate:</p>
+
+<p>'You'll come back? You'll stay all day? You do me so
+much good, and I am a great deal better for your being here.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie hesitated a moment; her head was aching so hard
+that she longed to get away. But selfishness was not one of
+Jerrie's faults, and putting her own wishes aside, she said:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I will stay until afternoon, and then I must go home.
+I did not tell you that Harold was going away to-night, did I?'</p>
+
+<p>Maude shook her head, and Jerry went on:</p>
+
+<p>'You know, perhaps, that some time ago a Mr. Wilson, of
+Truesdale, sued Peterkin for some infringement on a patent,
+or something of that sort.'</p>
+
+<p>Maude nodded, and Jerrie continued:</p>
+
+<p>'The suit comes off to-morrow, and Harold is subpoenaed as
+a witness, as he was in Peterkin's office a while and knows
+something about the arrangement between them. I am sorry
+he has got to swear against Peterkin; it will make him so
+angry, and he hates Harold now. The suit is to be called in
+the morning and Judge St. Claire and Harold are going to-night
+on the five o'clock train; and as he may be gone a day
+or two I must be home to see to packing his bag. But I will
+stay with you just as long as I can.'</p>
+
+<p>She said nothing of her head which throbbed in a most peculiar
+way, making her dizzy and half blind as she went down
+to breakfast, which she took alone with Mrs. Tracy. Frank
+had eaten his long before, and was now pacing up and down
+the long piazza with his head bent forward and his hands
+locked together behind him.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall never have rest or peace again until it is known.
+Oh, if it would only come out without my telling,' he said to
+himself, little dreaming how near it was to coming out and
+that before that day's sun had set Jerrie would know!</p>
+
+<p>Tom seldom appeared until after ten, and when Jerrie went
+for a few moments into the grounds, to see if the fresh air
+would do her good, she found him seated in an arm-chair under
+a horse chestnut tree, stretching himself and yawning as if he
+were just out of bed.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie, you here? Did you stay all night? If I'd known
+that, I'd have made an effort to come down to breakfast,
+though I think getting up in the morning a bore. Why, what's
+the matter? You look as if you were going to faint. Sit down
+here,' he continued, as he saw Jerrie reel forward as if she
+were about to fall.</p>
+
+<p>He put her into the chair and stood over her, fanning her
+with his hat and wondering what he should do, while for a
+moment she lost consciousness of the things about her, and
+her mind went floating off after the picture on the wall in
+Wiesbaden, which was haunting her that morning.</p>
+
+<p>When she came to herself, Tom and Dick and Billy were
+all three hovering around, and so close to her that without
+opening her eyes she could have told exactly where each one
+was standing, Tom by the smell of tobacco, with which his
+clothes were saturated, Billy by the powerful scent of white
+rose with which he always perfumed his handkerchief, and
+Dick, because, as she had once said to Nina when a child, he
+was so clean and looked as if he had just been scrubbed. The
+two young men had come to enquire for Maude, and had found
+Jerrie half swooning under the tree, with Tom fanning her
+frantically and acting like a wild man.</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie had seen Dick twice since her refusal of him, and
+both times her manner, exactly like what it had always been
+to him, had put him at his ease, so that a looker-on would
+never have dreamed of that episode under the pines when she
+nearly broke his heart. Billy, however, was more conscious.
+He had not seen Jerrie since he took her home in his dog-cart,
+and his face was scarlet and his manner nervous and constrained
+as he stood before her, longing and yet not daring to fan her
+with his hat just as Tom was doing.</p>
+
+<p>Of the three young men who had sought her hand, Billy's
+wound was the deepest, and Billy would remember it the
+longest; for, mingled with his defeat, was a sense of mortification
+and hatred of his own personal appearance, which he could
+not help thinking had influenced Jerrie's decision.
+'And I don't blame her, by Jove!' he said to himself a
+hundred times. 'She could not marry a pigmy, and I was a
+fool to hope it; but I shall love her just the same as long as I
+live, and if I can ever help her I will.'</p>
+
+<p>And when at last Jerrie was better, and assured him so with
+her own sweet graciousness of manner, and put her hand upon
+his shoulder to steady herself as she stood up, he felt that paradise
+was opening to him again, and that although he had lost
+Jerrie as a wife, he still had her as a friend, which was more
+than he had dared expect.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you better now? Can you walk to the house?' Tom
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes; I can walk. The giddiness is gone,' Jerrie replied.
+'I don't quite know what ails me this morning.'</p>
+
+<p>Never before could she remember having felt as she did
+now, with that sharp pain in her head, that buzzing in her
+ears, and more than all, that peculiar state of mind which
+she called &quot;spells,&quot; and which seemed to hold her now, body
+and soul. Even when she returned to Maude's room, and
+sat down beside her couch, her thoughts were far away,
+and everything which had ever come to her concerning her
+babyhood came to her now, crowding upon her so fast that
+once it seemed to her that the top of her head was lifting, and
+she put up her hand to hold it in its place. And still she
+staid on with Maude, although two or three times she arose to
+go, but something kept her there&mdash;chance, if one chooses to
+call by that name the something which at times moulds us to its
+will and influences our whole lives. Something kept her there
+until the morning was merged into noon and the noon into the
+middle of the afternoon, and then she could stay no longer.
+The hour had come when she must go, for the other force
+which was to be the instrument in changing all her future was
+astir, and she must go to keep her unconscious appointment
+with it.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XL" id="CHAPTER_XL" ></a>CHAPTER XL.</h2>
+
+<h2>'DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?'</h2>
+
+
+<p>Judging from the result, this question might far better
+have been put to rather than by Peterkin, as he stood
+puffing, and hot, and indignant in the Tramp House,
+looking down upon Jerrie, who was sitting upon the wooden
+bench, with her aching head resting upon a corner of the old
+table standing against the wall just where it stood that stormy
+night fifteen years ago, when death claimed the woman beside
+her, but left her unharmed.</p>
+
+<p>After saying good-bye to Maude, Jerrie had walked very
+slowly through the park, stopping more than once to rest upon
+the seats scattered here and there, and wondering more and
+more at the feeling which oppressed her and the terrible pain
+in her head, which grew constantly worse as she went on.</p>
+
+<p>'I'm afraid I'm going to be sick,' she said to herself. 'I
+never felt this way before; and no wonder, with all I have
+gone through the last few weeks. The getting ready for the
+commencement, the coming home, and all the excitement
+which followed, with three men, one after another, offering
+themselves to me, and the drenching that night in the rain,
+and then watching by Maude without a wink of sleep, it is
+enough to make a behemoth sick, and I am so dizzy and
+hot&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She had reached the Tramp House by this time, and, feeling
+that she could go no farther without resting herself, she went
+in, and seating herself upon the bench, laid her tired, aching
+head upon the table, and felt again for a few moments that
+strange sensation as if the top of her head were rising up and
+up until she could not reach it with her hand, for she tried,
+and thought of Ann Eliza, with her hair piled so high on her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>'The loss of an inch or two might improve me,' she said,
+though I'd rather keep my scalp.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she seemed to be drifting away into the realms of
+sleep, and all around her were confusion and bewilderment.
+The window, across which the woodbine was growing,
+changed places with the door; the floor rose up and bowed to
+her, while the room was full of faces, beckoning to and smiling
+upon her. Faces like the one she knew so well, the pale face
+in the chair; faces like her own, as she remembered it when a
+child; faces like the dark woman dead so long ago and buried
+in the Tracy lot, and faces like Arthur's as she had seen him
+oftenest, when he spoke so lovingly, and called her little
+Cherry. Then the scene changed, and the old Tramp House
+was full of wondrous music, which came floating in at every
+crevice and through the open door and windows, while she
+listened intently in her dreams as the grand chorus went on.
+It as was if Arthur, from the top of the highest peak beyond
+the Rocky Mountains, and Gretchen, from her lonely grave in
+far-off Germany, were calling to each other across two continents,
+their voices meeting and mingling together in the
+Tramp House in a jubilistic strain, now wild and weird like
+the cry of the dying woman looking out into the stormy night,
+now soft and low as the lullaby a fond mother sings to her
+sleeping child, and now swelling louder and louder, and higher
+and higher, until the rafters rang with the joyous music, and
+the whole world outside was filled with the song of gladness.</p>
+
+<p>Wake up, Jerrie! Wake from the dream of rapture to a
+reality far more rapturous, for the time is at hand, the hour has
+come, heralded by the shadow which falls over the floor as
+Peterkin's burly figure crosses the threshold and enters the
+silent room.</p>
+
+<p>After Peterkin's conversation with his son concerning his
+future wife, Jerrie had grown rapidly in the old man's favor.
+It is true she had neither name nor money, the latter of which
+was scarcely necessary in this case, but he was not insensible
+to the fact that she possessed other qualities and advantages
+which would be a help to the house of Peterkin in its efforts to
+rise. No girl in the neighborhood was more popular or more
+sought after than Jerrie, or more intimate with the big-bugs,
+as he styled the St. Claires, and Athertons, and Tracys. Jerrie
+would <i>draw</i>; Jerry would <i>boost</i>; and he found himself forming
+many plans for the young couple, who were to occupy the
+south wing; and in fancy he saw Arthur at Le Bateau half the
+time at least, while the rest of the time the carriages from
+Grassy Spring, and Brier Hill, and Tracy Park, were standing
+under the stone arch in front of the door. How, then, was he
+disappointed, and enraged, too, when told by his son that Jerrie
+had refused him?</p>
+
+<p>Peterkin had been in Springfield nearly a week, and after
+his return home had waited a little before broaching the subject
+to his son; so that it was not until the morning before the day
+of the lawsuit that he learned the truth by closely questioning
+Billy, who shielded and defended Jerrie as far as possible.</p>
+
+<p>'Not have you! Refused you! Don't love you! Don't
+care for money! Thunderation! What does the girl mean?
+Is she crazy? Is she a fool? Is she in love with some other
+idiot?'</p>
+
+<p>'I th-think so, yes; th-though it did not occur to me then,'
+Billy answered, very meekly; 'and if so she ca-can't care for
+me any mo-more that I ca-can care for any other girl.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you are a fool, too,' was the affectionate rejoinder.
+'I'll be dummed if you ain't a pair! Who is the lucky man?
+Not that dog Harold, who is goin' to swear agin' us to-morrow?
+If it is, I b'lieve I'll shoot him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Father,' Billy cried in alarm, 'be quiet; if I can st-stand
+it, you can.'</p>
+
+<p>But Peterkin swore he wouldn't stand it. He'd do something,
+he didn't know what; and all the morning he went
+about the house like a madman, swearing at his wife, because
+she wasn't <i>up to snuff</i>, and couldn't hoe her own with the
+'ristocrats; swearing at Billy because he was a fool, and so
+small that 'twas no wonder a bean-pole like Jerrie wouldn't
+look at him, and swearing at Ann Eliza because her hair was
+so red, and because she had sprained her ankle for the sake of
+having Tom Tracy bring her home, hoping he would keep
+calling to see her, and thus give her a chance to rope him in,
+which she never could as long as the world stood.</p>
+
+<p>'Neither you nor Bill will ever marry, with all your money,
+unless you take up with a cobbler, and he with a washwoman,'
+was his farewell remark, as he finally left the house about three
+o'clock and started for the village, where he had some of his
+own witnesses to see before taking the train for Springfield at
+five.</p>
+
+<p>His wife had ventured to suggest that he go in a carriage, as
+it was so warm, but he had answered, savagely:</p>
+
+<p>'Go to thunder with your carriage and coat-of-arms! What
+good have they ever done us only to make folks laugh at us for
+a pack of fools? Nothing under heaven gives us a h'ist, and
+I'm just goin' to quit the folderol and pad it on foot, as I used
+to when I was cap'n of the 'Liza Ann&mdash;durn it!'</p>
+
+<p>And so, with his bag in his hand, he started rapidly down
+the road in the direction of Shannondale. But the sun was
+hot, and he was hot, and his bag was heavy, and, cursing himself
+for a fool that he had not taken the carriage, he finally
+struck into the park as a cooler, if a longer, route to the
+station.</p>
+
+<p>As he came near the Tramp House, which gave no sign of
+its sleeping occupant, something impelled him to look in at the
+door. And this he did with a thought of Jerrie in his heart,
+though with no suspicion that she was there; and when he saw
+her he started suddenly, and uttered an exclamation of surprise,
+which roused her from her heavy slumber.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh!' she exclaimed, shedding back her golden hair from
+her flushed face and lifting her eyes to him; but whatever else
+she might have said was prevented by his outburst of passion,
+which began with the question:</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know what you have done?'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie looked at him wonderingly, but made no reply, and he
+went on:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, do you know what you have done?&mdash;you, a poor,
+unknown girl, who, but for the Tracys, would have gone to the
+poor-house sure as guns, where you orter have gone! Yes,
+you orter. You refuse my Bill! you, who hain't a cent to
+your name; and all for that sneak of a Harold, who will
+swear agin me to-morrer. I know he's at the root on't, though
+Bill didn't say so, and I hate him wuss than pizen; he, who
+has been at the wheel in my shop and begged swill for a livin'!
+he to be settin' up for a gentleman and a cuttin' out my Bill,
+who will be wuth more'n a million,&mdash;yes, two millions, probably,
+and you have refused him! Do you hear me, gal?'</p>
+
+<p>He yelled this last, for something in Jerry's attitude made
+him think Jerrie was not giving him her undivided attention,
+for she was still listening to the music, which seemed to
+swell higher and higher, louder and clearer, until it almost
+drowned the voice of the man demanding a second time so
+fiercely:</p>
+
+<p>'Do you hear me, gal?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I hear you,' she said. 'You are talking of Harold,
+and saying things you shall not repeat in my presence.'</p>
+
+<p>'Hoity-toity, miss! What's to hinder me repeatin' in your
+presence that Harold Hastings is a sneak and a snob, a hewer
+of wood, a drawer of water, and a&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie had risen to her feet, and stood up so tall and straight
+that, it seemed to Peterkin as if she towered even above himself,
+while something in the flash of her blue eyes made him
+think of Arthur when he turned him from the house for accusing
+Harold of theft, and also of the little child who had attacked
+him so fiercely on that wintry morning when the dead woman
+lay stretched upon the table at the Park House, with her dark
+face upturned to the ceiling above.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall hinder you,' she said, her voice ringing clear and
+distinct; 'and if you breathe another word against Harold, I'll
+turn you from this room. The Tramp House is mine; Mr. Arthur
+gave it to me, and you cannot stay in it with me.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Heavens and earth! hear the girl! One would s'pose she
+was the Queen of Sheby to hear her go on, instead of a beggar,
+whose father was the Lord only knows who, and whose mother
+was found in rags on this 'ere table. Drat the dum thing!&quot;
+Peterkin roared, bringing his fist down with such force upon
+the poor old rickety table that it fell to pieces under the blow
+and went crashing to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie's face was a face to fear then, and Peterkin was afraid,
+and backed himself out of the room, with Jerrie close to him,
+never speaking a word, but motioning him to the door, through
+which he passed swiftly, and picking up his bag, walked rapidly
+away, growling to himself:</p>
+
+<p>'There's the very Old Harry in that gal's eye. Bill did
+well to get shet of her; and yit, if she'd married him, how she
+would have rid over all their heads! Well, to be sure, what
+a dum fool she is!'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLI" id="CHAPTER_XLI" ></a>CHAPTER XLI.</h2>
+
+<h2>WHAT JERRIE FOUND UNDER THE FLOOR.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Meantime Jerrie had gone back to the wreck of the
+table, which she tried to straighten up, handling it as
+carefully and as reverently as if it had been her mother's
+coffin she was touching. One of the legs had been broken
+off before, and she and Harold has fastened it on and turned
+it to the side of the house where it would be more out of the
+way of harm, and it was this leg which had succumbed first to
+the force of Peterkin's fist, and as the entire pressure of the
+table was brought to bear upon it in falling, it had been precipitated
+through a hole in the base board, which had been
+there as long as she could remember the place, not so large at
+first, but growing larger each year, as the decaying boards
+crumbled or were eaten away by rats.</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie called it a rat-hole, and had several times put a trap
+there to catch the marauders, who sometimes scampered across
+her very feet, so accustomed were they to her presence. But
+the rats would not go into the trap, and then she pasted a
+newspaper over the hole, but this had been torn, and hung in
+shreds, while the hole grew gradually larger.</p>
+
+<p>Taking up the top of the table, Jerrie dragged it to the centre
+of the room, and, putting three of the legs upon it, went to
+search for the fourth, one end of which was just visible at the
+aperture in the wall. As she stooped to take it out, a bit of
+the floor under her feet gave way, making the opening so large
+that the table leg disappeared from view entirely. Then Jerrie
+went down upon her knees, and, thrusting her hand under the
+floor, felt for the missing leg, striking against stones, and brushes,
+and bits of mortar, and finally touching something from
+which she recoiled for an instant, it was so cold and slimy.</p>
+
+<p>But she struck it again in her search, this time more squarely,
+and, grasping it hard in her hand, brought it out to the
+light, while an undefinable thrill, half of terror, half of joy, ran
+through her frame, as she held it up and examined it carefully.</p>
+
+<p>It was a small hand-bag of Russian leather, covered with
+mold and stained with the damp of its long hiding-place, while
+a corner of it showed that the rats had tested its properties, but,
+disliking either the taste or the smell had left it in quiet. And
+there under the floor, not two feet from where Jerrie had often
+played, it had lain ever since the wintry night years before
+when on the table a strange woman had struggled with death,
+and in her struggle the bag, which held so much that was important
+to the child beside her, had probably fallen from her
+rude bed into the hole just behind it, and which was then large
+enough to receive it. Then the rats, attracted by this novel
+appearance in their midst, had investigated and dragged it so far
+from the opening that it could not been seen unless one went
+down upon the floor to look for it.</p>
+
+<p>This was the conviction that flashed upon Jerrie as she
+stood, with widely dilated eyes and quivering nostrils, staring
+at the bag, without the power at first to speak or move.</p>
+
+<p>The music was gone now&mdash;Gretchen's voice and Arthur's&mdash;and
+there was only in her ears a roaring sound like the rushing
+of distant waters falling heavily, while the objects in the
+room swam around her, and she experienced again that ringing
+sensation as if the top of her head were leaving her. She
+was so sure that here at last was a message from the dead&mdash;that
+she had the mystery of her babyhood in her grasp&mdash;and
+yet, for full two minutes she hesitated and held back, until at
+last the sweet, pale face which had haunted her so often
+seemed about to touch her own with a caress which brought
+the hot tears to her eyes, and the spell which had bound her
+hands and feet was broken.</p>
+
+<p>The bag was clasped, but not locked, although there was a
+lock, and Jerrie thought involuntarily of the little key lying
+with the other articles on the dead woman's person. To unclasp
+the bag required a little strength, for the steel was
+covered with rust; but it yielded at last to Jerrie's strong
+fingers; and the bag came open, disclosing first some square
+object carefully wrapped in a silk handkerchief which had
+been white in its day, but which now was yellow and soiled by
+time. At this, however, Jerrie scarcely looked, for her eye had
+fallen upon a package of papers lying beneath it&mdash;papers folded
+with care, and securely tied with a bit of faded blue ribbon.</p>
+
+<p>Seating herself upon the bench where she had been sleeping
+when Peterkin's voice aroused her, Jerrie untied the package,
+and then began to read, first slowly, as if weighing every word
+and sentence, then faster and faster, until at last it seemed that
+her burning eyes, from which the hot tears were streaming like
+rain, fairly leaped from page to page, taking in the contents at
+a glance, and comprehending everything.</p>
+
+<p>When she had finished, she sat for a moment rigid as a
+corpse, and then, with a loud, glad cry, which made the very
+rafters ring, and went floating out upon the summer air,
+&quot;Thank Heaven, I have found my mother!&quot; she fell upon her
+face, insensible to everything.</p>
+
+<p>How long she lay thus she did not know, but when she
+came back to consciousness the sunlight had changed its position
+in the room, and she felt it was growing late.</p>
+
+<p>Starting suddenly up, and wiping from her face a drop of
+blood which has oozed from a cut in her forehead caused by
+her striking it against some hard substance when she fell, she
+looked about her for a moment in a bewildered kind of way,
+not realizing at first what had happened; and even when she
+remembered, she was too much stunned and astonished to take
+it all in as she would afterward when she was calmer and could
+think more clearer.</p>
+
+<p>Taking up the papers one by one, in the order in which she
+had found them, she tied them again with the blue ribbon, and
+put them into the bag.</p>
+
+<p>'There was something more,' she whispered, trying to think
+what it was.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as her eye fell upon the first package she had taken
+out, and which was wrapped in a silk handkerchief, she
+took it up, and removing the covering, started as suddenly as
+if a blow had been dealt her, for there was the tortoise-shell
+box, with its blue satin lining, and its diamonds, which seemed
+to her like so many sparks of fire flashing in her eyes and dazzling
+her with their brilliancy.</p>
+
+<p>Just such a box as this, and just such diamonds as these,
+Mrs. Frank Tracy had lost years ago, and as Jerrie held them
+in her hand and turned them to the light, till they showed all
+the hues of the rainbow, she experienced a feeling of terror as
+if she were a thief and had been convicted of the theft. Then,
+as she remembered what she had read, she burst into a hysterical
+fit of laughing and crying together, and whispered to herself:</p>
+
+<p>'I believe I am going mad like him.'</p>
+
+<p>After a time she arose, and with the bag on her arm and the
+diamonds in her hand, she started for home, with only one
+thought in her mind:</p>
+
+<p>'I must tell Harold, and ask him what to do.'</p>
+
+<p>She had forgotten that he was to leave that afternoon on the
+train&mdash;forgotten everything, except the one subject which
+affected her so strongly, so that in one sense she might be said
+to be thinking of nothing, when, as she was walking with her
+head bent down, she came suddenly face to face with Harold,
+who, with his satchel in his hand, was starting for the train due
+now in a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie,' he exclaimed, 'how late you are! I waited until
+the last minute to say good-bye. Why, what ails you, and
+where have you been?' he continued, as she raised her head
+and he saw the bruise on her forehead and the strange pallor
+of her face.</p>
+
+<p>'In the Tramp House,' the answered, in a voice which was
+not hers at all, and made Harold look more curiously at her.</p>
+
+<p>As he did so he saw peeping from a fold of the silk handkerchief
+the corner of the tortoise-shell box which he remembered
+so well, and the sight of which brought back all the shame and
+humiliation and pain of that memorable morning when he had
+been suspected of taking it.</p>
+
+<p>'What is it? What have you in your hand?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Then Jerrie's face, so pale before, flushed scarlet, and her
+eyes had in them a wild look which Harold construed into fear,
+as, without a word, she laid the box in his hand, and then
+stood watching him is he opened it.</p>
+
+<p>Harold's face was whiter than Jerrie's had been, and his
+voice trembled as he said, in a whisper:</p>
+
+<p>'Mrs. Tracy's diamonds!'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Mrs. Tracy's diamonds,' Jerrie replied, with a marked
+emphasis on the <i>Mrs. Tracy</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'How came you by them, and where did you find them,'
+Harold asked next, shrinking a little from the glittering stones
+which seemed like fiery eyes confronting him.</p>
+
+<p>'I can't tell you now. Put them up quick. Don't let any
+one see them. Somebody is coming,' Jerrie said, hurriedly, as
+her ear caught a sound and her eye an object which Harold
+neither saw nor heard as he mechanically thrust the box into
+his side pocket and then turned just as Tom Tracy came up on
+horseback.</p>
+
+<p>'Hallo, Jerrie! hallo, Hal!' he cried, dismounting quickly
+and throwing the bridle-rein over his arm. 'And so you are
+off to that suit?' he continued, addressing himself to Harold.
+'By George, I wish I were a witness. I'd swear the old man's
+head off; for, upon my soul, I believe he is an old liar?' Then
+turning to Jerrie, he continued: 'Are you better than you
+were this morning? Upon my word, you look worse. It's
+that infernal watching last night that ails you. I told mother
+you ought not to do it.'</p>
+
+<p>Just then a whistle was heard in the distance; the train was
+at Truesdale, four miles away.</p>
+
+<p>'You will never catch it,' Tom said, as Harold snatched up
+his bag and started to run, 'Here, jump on to Beaver, and
+leave him at the station. I can go there for him.'</p>
+
+<p>Harold knew it was impossible for him to make time against
+the train, and, accepting Tom's offer, he vaulted into the saddle
+and galloped rapidly away, reaching the station just in time to
+give his horse to the care of a boy and to leap upon the train as
+it was moving away.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Tom walked on with Jerrie to the cottage, where
+he would have stopped if she had not said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'I would ask you to come in, but my head is aching so badly
+that I must go straight to bed. Good-bye, Tom,' and she
+offered him her hand, a most unusual thing for her to do on an
+ordinary occasion like this.</p>
+
+<p>What ailed her, Tom wondered, that she spoke so kindly to
+him and looked at him so curiously? Was she sorry for her
+decision, and did she wish to revoke it?</p>
+
+<p>'Then, by Jove, I'll give her a chance, for every time I see
+her I find myself more and more in love,' Tom thought, as he
+left her and started for the station after Beaver, whom he found
+hitched to a post and pawing the ground impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Crawford was in the garden when Jerrie entered the
+house, and thus there was no one to see her as she hurried up
+stairs and hid the leather bag away upon a shelf in her dressing-room.
+First, however, she took out two of the papers and
+read them again, as if to make assurance doubly sure; then she
+tried the little key to the lock, which it fitted perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>'There is no mistake,' she whispered; 'but I can't think
+about it now, for this terrible pain in my head. I must wait
+till Harold comes home; he will tell me what to do, and be so
+glad for me. Dear Harold; his days of labor are over, and
+grandmother's, too. Those diamonds are a fortune in themselves,
+and they are <i>mine</i>! my own! she said so! Oh, mother,
+I have found you at last, but I can't make it real; my head is
+so strange. What if I should be crazy?' and she started suddenly.
+'What if that dreadful taint should be in my blood, or
+what if I should die just as I have found my mother! Oh,
+Heaven, don't let me die; don't let me lose my reason, and I
+will try to do right; only show me what right is.'</p>
+
+<p>She was praying now upon her knees with her throbbing
+head upon the side of the bed, into which she finally crept with
+her clothes on, even to her boots, for Jerrie was herself no
+longer. The fever with which for days she had been threatened,
+and which had been induced by over-study at Vassar, and
+the excitement which had followed her return home, could be
+kept at bay no longer, and when Mrs. Crawford, who had seen
+her enter the house, went up after a while to see why she did
+not come down to tea, she found her sleeping heavily, with
+spots of crimson upon her cheeks, while her hands, which
+moved incessantly, were burning with fever. Occasionally she
+moaned and talked in her sleep of the Tramp House, and rats,
+and Peterkin, who had struck the blow and knocked something
+or somebody down, Mrs. Crawford could not tell what, unless
+it were Jerrie herself, on whose forehead there was a bunch the
+size now of a walnut.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie, Jerrie,' Mrs. Crawford cried in alarm, as she tried to
+remove the girl's clothes. 'What is it, Jerrie? What has
+happened? Who hurt you? Who struck the blow?'</p>
+
+<p>'Peterkin,' was the faint response, as for an instant Jerrie
+opened her eyelids only to close them again and sink away into
+a heavier sleep or stupefaction.
+It seemed the latter, and as Mrs. Crawford could not herself
+go for a physician, and as no one came down the lane that evening,
+she sat all night, by Jerrie's bed, bathing the feverish hands
+and trying to lessen the lump on the forehead, which, in spite of
+all her efforts, continued to swell until it seemed to her it was
+as large as a hen's egg.</p>
+
+<p>'Did Peterkin strike you, and what for?' she kept asking;
+but Jerrie only moaned and muttered something she could not
+understand, except once when she said, distinctly:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Peterkin. Such a blow; it was like a blacksmith's
+hammer, and knocked the table to pieces. I am glad he did it.'</p>
+
+<p>What did she mean? Mrs. Crawford asked herself in vain,
+and when at last the early summer morning broke, she was
+almost as crazy as Jerrie, who was steadily growing worse, and
+who was saying the strangest things about arrests and blows,
+and Peterkin, and Harold, and Mr. Arthur, whose name she
+always mentioned with a sob and stretching out of her hands,
+as to some invisible presence. Help must be had from some
+quarter; and for two hours, which seemed to her years, Mrs.
+Crawford watched for the coming of someone, until at last she
+saw Tom Tracy galloping up on Beaver.</p>
+
+<p>'Tom, Tom,' she screamed from the window, as she saw him
+dismounting at the gate, 'don't get off, but ride for your life
+and fetch the doctor, quick. Jerrie is very sick; has been
+crazy all night, and has a bunch on her head as big as a bowl,
+where she says Peterkin struck her.</p>
+
+<p>'Peterkin struck Jerrie! I'll kill him!' Tom said as he
+tore down the lane and out upon the highway in quest of the
+physician, who was soon found and at Jerrie's side, where Tom
+stood with him, gazing awe struck upon the fever stricken girl,
+who was tossing and talking all the time, and whose bright eyes
+unclosed once and fixed themselves on him, as he spoke her
+name and laid his hand on one of hers.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Tom, Tom,' she said, 'you told me you'd kill her. Will
+you kill her? Will you kill her?' And a wild, hysterical laugh
+echoed through the room, as she kept repeating the words,
+'Will you kill her? Will you kill her?' which conveyed no
+meaning to Tom, who had forgotten what he had said he would
+do if a claimant to Tracy Park should appear in the shape of a
+young lady.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever Jerrie took up she repeated rapidly until something
+else came into her mind, and when Mrs. Crawford, referring
+to the bunch on her head, said to the physician, 'Peterkin
+struck the blow, she says,' she began at once like a parrot.
+'Peterkin struck the blow! Peterkin struck the blow!' until
+another idea suggested itself, and she began to ring changes on
+the sentence. 'In the rat-hole; in the Tramp House; in the
+Tramp House; in the rat-hole,' talking so fast that sometimes
+it was impossible to follow her.</p>
+
+<p>The blow on her head alone could not have produced this
+state of things; it was rather over-excitement, added to some
+great mental shock, the nature of which he could not divine,
+the doctor said to Tom, who in his wrath at Peterkin was
+ready to flay him alive, or at least to ride him on a rail the
+instant he entered town.</p>
+
+<p>It was a puzzling case, though not a dangerous one as yet,
+the physician said. Jerrie's strong constitution could stand an
+attack much more severe than this one; and prescribing perfect
+quiet, with strict orders that she should see no more people
+than was necessary, he left, promising to return in the afternoon,
+when he hoped to find her better. Tom lingered a while
+after the doctor had left, and showed himself so thoughtful and
+kind that Mrs. Crawford forgave him much which she had
+harbored against him for his treatment of Harold.</p>
+
+<p>All night Tom's dreams had been haunted with Jerrie's
+voice and Jerrie's look as she gave him her hand and said,
+'Good-bye, Tom,' and he had ridden over early to see if the
+look and tone were still there, and if they were, and he had a
+chance, he meant to renew his offer. But words of love would
+have been sadly out of place to this restless, feverish girl,
+whose incoherent babblings puzzled and bewildered him.</p>
+
+<p>One fact, however, was distinct in his mind&mdash;Peterkin had
+struck her a terrible blow in the Tramp House. Of that he
+was sure, though why he should have done so he could not
+guess; and vowing vengeance upon the man, he left the cottage
+at last and rode down to the Tramp House, where he
+found the table in a state of ruin upon the door, three of the
+legs upon it and the other one nowhere to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>'He struck her with it and then threw it away, I'll bet,' he
+said to himself, as he hunted for the missing leg; 'and it was
+some quarrel he picked with her about Hal, who is going to
+swear against him. Jerrie would never hear Hal abused, and
+I've no doubt she aggravated the wretch until he forgot himself
+and dealt her that blow. I'll have him arrested for assault and
+battery, as sure as I am born.'</p>
+
+<p>Hurrying home, he told the story to his mother, who smiled
+incredulously and said she did not believe it, bidding him say
+nothing of it to Maude, who was not as well as usual that day.
+Then he told his father, who started at once for the cottage,
+where Mrs. Crawford refused to let him see Jerrie, saying that
+the doctor's orders were that she should be kept perfectly quiet.
+But as they stood talking together near the open door, Jerrie's
+voice was heard calling:</p>
+
+<p>'Let Mr. Frank come up.'</p>
+
+<p>So Frank went up, and, notwithstanding all he had heard
+from Tom, he was surprised at Jerrie's flushed face and the unnatural
+expression of her eyes, which turned so eagerly
+toward him as he came in.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Mr. Tracy,' she said, as he sat down beside her and
+took one of her burning hands in his, 'you have always been
+kind to me, haven't you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' he replied, with a keen pang of remorse, and wondering
+if she would call it kindness if she knew all that he did.</p>
+
+<p>'And I think you like me some,' she continued: 'don't
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Like you!' he repeated; 'yes, more than you can ever
+know. Why, sometimes I think I like you almost as much as
+I do Maude.'</p>
+
+<p>As if the mention of Maude had sent her thoughts backward
+in a very different channel, she said abruptly, while she held his
+gaze steadily with her bright eyes:</p>
+
+<p>'You posted that letter?'</p>
+
+<p>Frank knew perfectly well that she meant the letter which,
+together with the photograph, and the Bible, and the lock of
+the baby's golden hair, had lain for years in his private drawer&mdash;the
+letter whose superscription he had studied so many times,
+and which had seldom been absent from his thoughts an hour
+since that night when, from her perch on the gate-post, Jerrie
+had startled him with the question she was asking him now.
+But be affected ignorance and said, as indifferently as he could,
+with those blue eyes upon him seeming to read his inmost
+thoughts:</p>
+
+<p>'What letter do you mean?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, the one Mr. Arthur wrote to Gretchen, or her friends,
+in Wiesbaden, and gave me to post. You took it for me to the
+office, and I sat on the gate so long in the darkness waiting for
+you to come and tell me you had posted it sure.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, I remember it perfectly, and how you frightened
+me sitting up there so high like a goblin,' Frank answered,
+falteringly, his face as crimson now as Jerrie's, and his eyes
+dropping beneath her gaze.</p>
+
+<p>'Gretchen's friends never got that letter,' Jerrie continued.</p>
+
+<p>'No, they never got it,' Frank answered, mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>'If they had,' Jerrie went on, 'they would have answered it,
+for she had friends there.'</p>
+
+<p>Frank looked up quickly and curiously at the girl talking so
+strangely to him. What had she heard? What did she know?
+or was this only an outburst of insanity? She certainly looked
+crazy as she lay there talking to him. He was sure of it a
+moment after when, as if the nature of her thoughts had
+changed suddenly, she said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, you have been very kind to me, you and Maude&mdash;you
+and Maude&mdash;and I shan't forget it. Tell her I shan't forget it.&mdash;I
+shan't forget it.'</p>
+
+<p>She repeated this rapidly, and was growing so wild and
+excited that Frank thought it advisable to leave her. As he
+arose to go she looked up pleadingly at him, and said:</p>
+
+<p>'Kiss me, Mr. Tracy, please.'</p>
+
+<p>Had he been struck by lightning, Frank could hardly have
+been more astonished than he was at this singular request, and
+for a moment he stared blankly at the girl who had made it, not
+because he was at all averse to granting it, but because he doubted
+the propriety of the act, even if she were crazy. But something in
+Jerrie's face, like Arthur's, mastered him, and, stooping down,
+he kissed the parched lips through which the breath came so
+hotly, wondering as he did so what Dolly would say if she
+could see him, a white-haired man of forty-five, kissing a young
+girl of nineteen, and that girl Jerrie Crawford.</p>
+
+<p>'Thanks,' Jerrie said, wiping her mouth with the back of her
+hand. 'I think you have been chewing tobacco, haven't you?
+But I sha'nt forget it; I sha'nt forget it. I shall do right.
+I shall do right. Tell Maude so; tell Maude so.'</p>
+
+<p>She was certainly growing worse, Frank thought, as he went
+down to confer with Mrs. Crawford as to what ought to be
+done, and to offer his services. He would remain there that
+afternoon, he said, and send a servant over to be in the house
+during the night.</p>
+
+<p>'She is very sick,' he said; 'but it does not seem as if her
+sickness could be caused wholly by that bruise on her head. Do
+you think Peterkin struck her?'</p>
+
+<p>'She says so,' was Mrs. Crawford's reply, 'though why he
+should do it, I cannot guess.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she added that a servant would not be necessary, as
+Harold would be home by seven.</p>
+
+<p>'But he may not,' Frank replied. 'Squire Harrington came
+at two, and reported that the suit was not called until so late
+that they would not probably get through with the witnesses
+to-day, so Hal may not be here, and I will send Rob anyway.'</p>
+
+<p>On his way home Frank, too, looked in at the Tramp House,
+and saw the broken-down table, and hunted for the missing
+leg, and with Tom concluded that something unusual had taken
+place there, though he could not guess what.</p>
+
+<p>That evening, as Jerrie grew more and more restless and
+talkative, Mrs. Crawford listened anxiously for the train, and
+when it came, waited and watched for Harold, but watched in
+vain, for Harold did not come. Several of her neighbors,
+however, did come; those who had gone to the city out of
+curiosity to attend the lawsuit, and 'see old Peterkin squirm
+and hear him swear;' and could she have looked into the
+houses in the village that night, she would have heard some
+startling news, for almost before the train rolled away from
+the platform, everybody at or near the station had been told
+that Mrs. Tracy's diamonds, lost nine or ten years ago, had
+been found in Harold Hastings' pocket, and that he was under
+arrest.</p>
+
+<p>Such news travels fast, and it reached the Park House just
+as the family were finishing their late dinner.</p>
+
+<p>'I told you so! I always thought he was guilty, or knew
+something about them,' Mrs. Frank exclaimed, with a look of
+exultation on her face as she turned to her husband. 'What
+do you think now of your fine young man, who has been hanging
+around here after your daughter until she is half-betwaddled
+after him?'</p>
+
+<p>Frank's face was very grave as he answered, decidedly:</p>
+
+<p>'I do not believe it. Harold Hastings never took your diamonds.'</p>
+
+<p>'How came he by them, then?' she asked, in a loud, angry
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know,' her husband replied; 'there is some mistake;
+it will be cleared in time. But keep it from Maude; I think
+the news would kill her.'</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Tom had sat with his brows knit together, as if
+intently thinking; and when at last he spoke he said to his
+father:</p>
+
+<p>'I shall go to Springfield on the ten o'clock train, and you'd
+better go with me.'</p>
+
+<p>To this Frank made no objections. If his wife's diamonds
+were really found, he ought to be there to receive them; and,
+besides, he might say a word in Harold's defence, if necessary.
+So ten o'clock found him and Tom at the station, where also
+was Dick St. Claire, with several other young men, pacing up
+and down the platform and excitedly discussing the news, of
+which they did not believe a word.</p>
+
+<p>'I almost feel as if they were hurting me when they touch
+Hal, he's such a noble fellow,' Dick said to Mr. Tracy and Tom.
+'We are all as mad as can be, and so a lot of us fellows, who
+have always known him, are going over to speak a good word
+for him, and go his bail if necessary. I don't believe, though,
+they can do anything after all these years; but father will
+know. He is there with him.'</p>
+
+<p>And so the night train to Springfield carried fourteen men
+from Shannondale, thirteen of whom were going to stand by
+Harold, while the fourteenth hardly knew why he was going
+or what he believed. Arrived in the city, their first inquiry
+was for Harold, who, instead of being in the charge of an officer
+as they had feared, was quietly sleeping in his room at the
+hotel, while Judge St. Claire had the diamonds in his possession.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLII" id="CHAPTER_XLII" ></a>CHAPTER XLII.</h2>
+
+<h2>HAROLD AND THE DIAMONDS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Harold sprang upon the train as it was moving
+from the station and entered the rear car, he found
+old Peterkin near the door, button-holing Judge St.
+Claire, to whom he was talking loudly and angrily of that infernal
+cheat, Wilson, who had brought the suit against him.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, I see; I know; but all that will come out on the
+trial,' the judge said, trying to silence him.</p>
+
+<p>But Peterkin held on, until his eye caught Harold, when he
+let the judge go, and seating himself beside the young man
+began in a soft, coaxing tone for him:</p>
+
+<p>'I don't see why in thunder you are goin' agin me, who
+have allus been your friend, and gin you work when you
+couldn't git it any where else; and I can't imagine what you're
+goin' to say, or what you know.'</p>
+
+<p>Harold's face was very red, but his manner was respectful as
+he replied:</p>
+
+<p>'You cannot be more sorry than I am that I am subpoenaed
+as a witness against you. I did not seek it. I could not help
+it: but, being a witness, I must answer the questions truthfully.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thunder and lightning, man! Of course you must! Don't
+I know that?' the irascible Peterkin growled, getting angry at
+once. 'Of course you must answer questions, but you needn't
+blab out stuff they don't ask you, so as to lead 'em on. I know
+'em, the blood-hounds; they'll squeeze you dry, once let 'em
+git an inklin' you know sunthin' more. Now, if this goes agin
+me, I'm out at least thirty thousand dollars; and between you
+and I, I don't mind givin' a cool two thousand, or three, or
+mebby five, right out of pocket, cash down, to anybody whose
+testimony, without bein' a lie&mdash;I don't want nobody to swear false,
+remember&mdash;but, heaven and earth, can't a body furgit a little,
+and keep back a lot if they want to?'
+'What are you trying to say to me?' Harold asked, his face
+pale with resentment, as he suspected the man's motive.</p>
+
+<p>'Say to you? Nothin', only that I'll give five thousand dollars
+down to the chap whose testimony gits me off and flings old
+Wilson.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Peterkin,' Harold said, looking the old wretch full in
+the face, 'if you are trying to bribe me, let me tell you at once
+that I am not to be bought. I shall not volunteer information,
+but shall answer truthfully whatever is asked me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Go to thunder, then! I always knew you were a bad
+aig,' Peterkin roared; and as there was nothing to be made
+from Harold, he changed his seat to try his tactics elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Left to himself, Harold had time to think of the diamonds,
+which, indeed, had not been absent from his thoughts a moment,
+since Jerrie gave them to him. They were closely buttoned
+in his coat pocket, where they burned like fire, as he
+wondered where and how Jerrie had found them.</p>
+
+<p>'In the Tramp House it must have been,' he said to himself;
+'but who put them there, and how did she chance to find them,
+and why did she look so wild and excited, so like a crazy person,
+when she gave them to me, bidding me let no one see
+them?'</p>
+
+<p>These questions he could not answer, and his brain was all in
+a whirl when the train reached Springfield, and, with the
+others, he registered himself at the hotel. Suddenly, like a
+gleam of lightning seen through a rift of clouds, there came
+back to him, with a horrible distinctness, the words the child
+Jerry had spoken to him that day years ago, when he had
+walked homeward with her through the leafy woods from the
+Park House, where he had been questioned so closely by Mrs.
+Tracy with regard to her diamonds and what he had been doing
+in the house on the morning of their disappearance.</p>
+
+<p>'I know where those diamonds are, but I shan't tell while
+there is such a fuss,' she had said, and in his abstraction he had
+scarcely noticed it then, but it came back to him now with
+fearful significance, making him sick, and faint, and cold, although
+the great drops of sweat stood thickly upon his lips and
+under his hair, as, after the gas was lighted, he sat alone in a
+little reception-room opening from one of the parlors. Did
+Jerrie know where they were, and had she known all the time
+and not spoken? And, if so, was she not guilty as an accessory,
+at least in trying to shield another? For that she took
+them herself he never for a moment dreamed. It was some
+one else, and she knew and did not tell. He was certain of it
+now, as every incident connected with her strange sickness
+came back to him, when she seemed to be doing penance for another's
+fault. She had called herself an accessory, and that
+was what she was, or rather what the world would call her, if
+it knew. To him she was Jerrie, the girl he loved, and he
+would defend her to the bitter end, no matter how culpable she
+had been in keeping silence so long.</p>
+
+<p>But who took them! That was the question puzzling him
+so much as he sat thinking with his head bent down, and so
+absorbed that he did not hear a step in the adjoining room, or
+know that Peterkin had seated himself just where a large mirror
+showed him distinctly the young man in the next room,
+whom he recognized at once, though Harold never moved for
+a few moments or lifted his head.</p>
+
+<p>At last, however, he unbuttoned his coat and after glancing
+cautiously around to make sure no one was near, he took the
+box from his pocket, and holding the stones to the light examined
+them carefully, taking in his hand first the ear-rings
+and then the pin, and holding them in such a way that two or
+three times they flashed directly in the eyes of the cruel man
+watching him.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, they are Mrs. Tracy's diamonds; there can be no mistake,'
+he whispered, just as he became conscious that there was
+some one in the door looking at him.</p>
+
+<p>Quick as thought he put the box out of sight just as Peterkin's
+voice, exultant and hateful, cried out:</p>
+
+<p>'Hallo, Mr. Prayer-book! your piety won't let you keep back
+a darned thing you know agin me, but it lets you have in your
+possession diamonds which I'd eenamost sware was them stones
+Miss Tracy lost years ago and suspected you of takin. I know
+the box anyway, I heard it described so often, and I b'lieve I
+know them diamonds. I seen 'em in the lookin'-glass, settin'
+in t'other room, and seen you look all round like a thief afore
+you opened 'em. So, fork over, and mebby you can give me
+back May Jane's pin you stole at the party the night Mr.
+Arthur came home. Fork over, I say!'</p>
+
+<p>Too much astonished at first to speak, Harold stood staring
+at the man who had attacked him so brutally, while his hand
+closed tightly over the diamonds in his pocket, as if fearing
+they might be wrenched from him by force.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you fork over, or shall I call the perlice?' Peterkin
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Call the police as soon as you like,' Harold replied, 'but I
+shall not give you the diamonds.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you own that you've got 'em! That's half the battle!'
+Peterkin said, coming up close to him, and looking at him with
+a meaning smile more detestable than any menace could have
+been. 'I know you've got 'em, and I can run you if I try, and
+then what will your doxie think of you! Will she refuse my
+Bill for a thief, and treat me as if I was dirt?'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean, sir?' Harold demanded, feeling intuitively
+that by his <i>doxie</i> Jerrie was meant, and feeling a great
+horror, too, lest by some means Jerrie's name should be mixed
+up with the affair before she had a chance to explain.</p>
+
+<p>The reference to Billy was a puzzle, but Peterkin did not
+leave him in doubt.</p>
+
+<p>'I mean that you think yourself very fine, and always have,
+and that are girl of the carpet-bag thinks herself fine, too, and
+refused my Bill for you, who hain't a cent in the world. I
+seen it in her face when I twitted her on it, and she riz up agin
+me like a catamount. But I'll be even with you both yit. I've
+got you in my power, young man, but&mdash;' and here he came
+a step or two nearer to Harold, and dropping his voice to a
+whisper said: 'I sha'n't do nothin', nor say nothin' till you've
+gin your evidence, and if you hold your tongue I will. You
+tickle me, and I'll tickle you! see!'</p>
+
+<p>Harold was too indignant to reply, and feeling that he was degrading
+himself every moment he spent in the presence of that
+man, he left the room without a word, and went to his own
+apartment, but not to sleep, for never had he spent so wretched
+a night as that which followed his interview with Peterkin. Of
+what the man could do to him, he had no fear. His anxiety
+was all for Jerrie. Where did she find the diamonds, and for
+whom did she keep silence so long? and what would be said of
+the act when it was known, as it might be, though not from him?</p>
+
+<p>Two or three times he arose and lighted the gas, examined
+the diamonds carefully to see if there were not some mistake.
+But there could be none. He had seen them on the lady's
+person and had heard them described so accurately that he could
+not be mistaken; and then the box was the same he had once
+seen when Jack took him to his mother's room to show him
+what Uncle Arthur had brought. That was a tortoise shell, of
+an oval shape, lined with blue satin, and this was a tortoise
+shell, oval shaped, and lined with blue satin. Harold felt,
+when at last the daylight shone into his room, that if it had
+tarried a moment longer he must have gone mad. He was
+very white and haggard, and there were dark rings under his
+eyes, when he went down to the office, where the first person
+he met was Billy, who also looked pale and worn, with a different
+expression upon his face from anything Harold had ever
+seen before. It was as if all life and hope had gone, leaving him
+nothing now to care for. In his anxiety and worry about the
+diamonds Harold had scarcely given a thought to what Peterkin
+had said of Jerrie's refusal of Billy, for it seemed so improbable
+that the latter would presume to offer himself to her;
+but at sight of Billy's face it came back to him with a throb of
+pity for the man, and a thrill of joy for himself for whom
+Peterkin had said his son was rejected.</p>
+
+<p>'Does Billy know of the diamonds, I wonder?' he thought.</p>
+
+<p>As if to answer the question in the negative, Billy came
+quickly forward, and offering his hand, bade Harold good-morning,
+and then motioning him to a seat, took one beside
+him, and began:</p>
+
+<p>'I'm awful sorry, Hal, th-that you are mix-mixed up in th-this
+but I sup suppose you m-must t-tell the truth.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I must tell the truth, Harold said.'</p>
+
+<p>'Fa-father will be so m-mad,' Billy continued. 'I wi-wish I
+could t-t-testify f-for you, bu-but I can't. You were th-there,
+I wa-wan't, and all I know fa-father told me; bu-but d don't
+volunteer information.'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' Harold said, slowly, wishing that the ocean were rolling
+between him and this detestable suit.</p>
+
+<p>Once he resolved to go to Judge St. Claire, deliver up the
+diamonds, and tell him all he knew about them, but this would
+be bringing Jerrie into the matter, and so he changed his mind
+and wondered aimlessly about the town until it was time for
+him to appear at the court-house, where a crowd was gathering.
+It was late before the suit known as <i>Wilson vs. Peterkin</i> was
+called, and later still when Harold took the stand.</p>
+
+<p>White and trembling, so that both his hands and his knees
+were shaking visibly, he seemed more like a criminal than a
+witness, he was so agitated and pre-occupied, too, it would
+seem, for at first his answers were given at random, as if he
+hardly knew what he was saying; nor did he, for over and
+beyond the sea of long faces confronting him, Judge St. Claire's
+wondering and curious&mdash;Billy's wondering, too&mdash;Wilson's disappointed
+and surprised, and Peterkin's threatening and exultant
+by turns&mdash;he saw only Jerrie coming to him in the lane
+and asking him to keep the diamonds for her&mdash;saw her, too,
+away back years ago up in the little low room, with her fever-stained
+cheeks and shorn head, talking the strangest things of
+prisons, and substitutes, and accessories, and assuring some one
+that she would never tell, and was going for him, if necessary.</p>
+
+<p>Who was that man? Where was he now? and why had he
+imposed this terrible secret upon Jerrie?</p>
+
+<p>These were the thoughts crowding through his brain while
+he was being questioned as to what he knew of the agreement
+between the plaintiff and defendant while in the office of the
+latter. Once a thought of Maude crossed his mind with a
+keen pang of regret, as he remembered the lovely face which
+had smiled so fondly upon him, mistaking his meaning utterly,
+and appropriating to herself the love he was trying to tell her
+was another's. And with thoughts of Maude there came a
+thought of Arthur, the very first which Harold had given him,
+Arthur, the crazy man, who himself had hidden the diamonds
+and for whom Jerrie was ready to sacrifice so much. It was
+clear as daylight to him now, the anxiety and stain were over,
+and those who were watching him so intently as he gave his
+answers at random, with the sweat pouring like rain down his
+face, were electrified at the start he gave as he came to himself
+and realized for the first time where he was, and why he was
+there. Arthur would never see Jerrie wronged. <i>She</i> was safe,
+and with this load lifted from him, he gave his whole attention
+to the business on hand, answering the questions now
+clearly and distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>When at last the lawyer said to him, 'Repeat what you can
+remember of the conversation which took place between the
+plaintiff and the defendant on the morning of &mdash;&mdash;, 18&mdash;,' he
+gave one sorry look at poor Billy, who was the picture of
+shame and confusion, and then, in a clear, distinct voice,
+which filled every corner of the room, told what he had heard
+said in his presence, and what he knew of the transaction,
+proving conclusively that the plaintiff was right and Peterkin
+a rascal, and this in the face of the man who had asked him
+not to <i>blab</i> and who shook his fist at him threateningly as the
+narrative went on.</p>
+
+<p>'Would you believe the defendant under oath?' was asked
+at the close, and Harold answered, promptly:</p>
+
+<p>'Under oath&mdash;yes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Would you, if not under oath?'</p>
+
+<p>'If an untruth would be to his advantage, no,' and then
+Harold was through.</p>
+
+<p>As he stepped down from the witness stand old Peterkin
+arose, so angry that at first he could scarcely articulate his
+words.</p>
+
+<p>'You dog! you liar! you thief! he screamed; 'to stand
+there and lie so about me! I'll teach you&mdash;I'll show 'em what
+you are. If there's a perlice here, I call on 'em to arrest this
+feller for them diamonds of Miss Tracy's! They are in his
+pocket&mdash;or was last night. I seen 'em myself, and he dassent
+deny it.'</p>
+
+<p>By this time the court-house was in wild confusion, as the
+spectators arose from their seats and pressed forward to where
+Peterkin stood denouncing Harold, who was white as ashes,
+and looked as if he were going to faint, as Billy hastened to
+his side, whispering:</p>
+
+<p>'Lean on me, and I will get you out of this. Father is
+mad.'</p>
+
+<p>But order was soon restored, though not until Peterkin had
+yelled again, as Harold was leaving the room:</p>
+
+<p>'Search him, I tell you! Don't let him escape! He's got 'em
+in his pocket&mdash;Miss Tracy's diamonds! Lord of heavens! don't
+you remember the row there was about 'em years ago?'</p>
+
+<p>Of what followed during the next hour Harold knew very
+little. There was a crowd around him, and cries of 'He is
+going to faint!' while Billy's stammering voice called pleadingly,
+'St-stand back, ca-can't you, and gi-give him air.'</p>
+
+<p>Then, a deluge of water in his face; then a great darkness
+and the voices sounded a long way off, and he felt so tired and
+sleepy, and thought of Jerry, and Maude, and lived over again
+the scene in the Tramp-House, when he found the former in
+the bag, and felt her little fat arms around his neck as he staggered
+with her through the snow, wondering why she was so
+heavy, and why her feet were dragging on the ground. When
+he came more fully to himself, he was in a little room in the
+court-house, and Billy's arm was lying protectingly across his
+shoulder, while Billy's father was bellowing like a bull:</p>
+
+<p>'Be you goin' to let him go! Ain't you goin' to git a writ
+and arrest him! Why don't you handcuff him, somebody? And
+you, Bill, be you a fool to stan' there a huggin' him as if he
+was a gal! What do you mean?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ha-Hal is my fr-friend, father. He never to-took the diamonds,'
+Billy answered, sadly, while Judge St. Claire, who
+had the box of jewels in his hand and was looking very anxious,
+turned to the angry man clamoring so loudly for a <i>writ</i> and
+said, sternly:</p>
+
+<p>'Even if Harold took the diamonds&mdash;which he did not, I am
+certain of that&mdash;there is some mistake which he will explain;
+but if he took them, it is too late to arrest him. A theft commited
+ten years ago cannot be punished now.'</p>
+
+<p>'May the Lord give you sense,' Peterkin rejoined, with a
+derisive laugh. 'Don't tell me that a body can't be punished
+for stealin' diamonds ef 'twas done a hundred years ago,'</p>
+
+<p>'But it is true, nevertheless,' the judge replied.</p>
+
+<p>Turning to another lawyer who was standing near, Peterkin
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>'Is that so, square? Is it so writ? Is that the law?'</p>
+
+<p>'That is the law,' was the response.</p>
+
+<p>'Wall, I'll be condumbed, if that don't beat all!' Peterkin
+exclaimed. 'Can't be sent to prison! I swow! There ain't no
+law or justice for nobody but <i>me</i>, and I must be kicked to the
+wall! I'll give up, and won't try to be nobody, I vurm!' And
+as he talked he walked away to ruminate upon the injustice of
+the law which could not touch Harold Hastings, but could
+throw its broad arms tightly around himself.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the Judge had ordered a carriage and taken
+Harold with him to his private room in the hotel, where the
+hardest part for Hal was yet to come.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, my boy,' the judge said, after he had made Harold
+lie down upon the couch and had locked the door, 'now, tell
+me all about it. How came you by the diamond?'</p>
+
+<p>It was such a pitiful, pleading, agonized face which lifted
+itself from the cushion and looked at Judge St. Claire, as Harold
+began:</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot tell you now&mdash;I must not? but by and by perhaps
+I can. They were handed to me to keep by some one,
+just for a little while. I cannot tell you who it was. I think
+I would die sooner than do it. Certainly I would rather go to
+prison, as Peterkin wishes me to.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a thoughtful, perplexed look on the judge's face as
+he said:</p>
+
+<p>'This is very strange, Harold, that you cannot tell who gave
+them to you, and with some people will be construed against
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I know it; but I would rather bear it than have that
+person's name brought in question,' was Harold's reply.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think that person took them?' the judge asked.</p>
+
+<p>'No, a thousand times, no!' and Harold leaped to his feet
+and began to pace the floor hurriedly. 'They never took them,
+never; I'd swear to that with my life. Don't talk any more
+about it, please; I can't bear it. I have gone through so much
+to-day, and last night I never slept a wink. Oh, I am so
+tired!' and with a groan he threw himself again upon the
+couch, and, closing his eyes, dropped almost instantly into a
+heavy slumber, from which the judge did not rouse him until
+after dinner, when he ordered some refreshments sent to his
+room, and himself awoke the young man, whose face looked
+pinched, and white, and haggard, and who could only swallow
+a cup of coffee and a part of a biscuit.</p>
+
+<p>'I am so tired,' he kept repeating; 'but I shall be better in
+the morning;' and long before the night train had come he
+was in bed sleeping off the effects of the day's excitement.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning when he went down to the office he was
+surprised and bewildered at the crowd which gathered around
+him&mdash;the friends who had came on the train to stand by and
+defend him, if necessary; and as the home faces he had known
+all his life looked kindly into his, and the familiar voices of his
+boyhood told him of sympathy for and faith in him, while hand
+after hand took his in a friendly clasp, that of Dick St. Claire
+clinging to his with a grasp which said plainer than words could
+have done: 'I believe in you, Hal, and am so sorry for you,'
+the tension of his nerves gave way entirely, and, sinking down
+in their midst, he cried like a child when freed from some
+terrible danger.</p>
+
+<p>He had not thought before that he cared for himself what
+people said, but he knew now that he did, and this assurance
+of confidence from his friends unnerved him for a time;
+then, dashing away his tears and lifting up his face, on which
+his old winning smile was breaking, he said:</p>
+
+<p>'Excuse me for this weakness; only girls should cry, but I
+have borne so much, and your coming was such a surprise.
+Thank you all. I cannot say what I feel. I should cry again
+if I did.'</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind, old boy,' Dick's cheery voice called out. 'We
+know what you would say. We came to help you, just a few
+of us; but if anything had really happened to you, why, all
+Shannondale would have turned out to the rescue.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you, Dick,' Harold said, the tears starting again;
+then, as his eye fell for the first time upon Tom, he exclaimed,
+with a glad ring in his voice, 'and you, too, Tom!'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I thought I'd come with the crowd and see the fun,'
+Tom answered, indifferently, as he walked away by himself.</p>
+
+<p>Tom had said very little, on the train, or after they had
+reached the hotel, but no one had listened with more eagerness
+to every detail of the matter than he had done, and all that
+morning he was busy gathering up every item of information,
+and listening to the guesses as to who the person could be who
+gave the diamonds to Harold.</p>
+
+<p>The jewels had been identified by his father and by himself,
+although an identification was scarcely necessary as Harold had
+distinctly said:</p>
+
+<p>'They are the Tracy diamonds, and the person who gave
+them, to me said so.'</p>
+
+<p>But who was the person? That was the question puzzling
+the heads of all the Shannondale people as the morning wore
+on, and each went where he liked. At last, toward noon, Tom
+found himself near Harold in front of the court-house, and
+going up to him, said:</p>
+
+<p>'Hal, I wan't to talk to you a little while.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Hal said, assentingly, and selecting out a retired
+corner, Tom began:</p>
+
+<p>'Hal, I've never shown any great liking for you, and I don't
+s'pose I have any, but I don't like to see a man kicked for
+nothing, and so I came over with the rest.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you, Tom,' Harold replied, 'I don't think you ever
+did like me, and I don't think I cared if you didn't, but I'm
+glad you came. Is that all you wished to say to me?'</p>
+
+<p>'So,' Tom answered. 'Jerrie is very sick&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie! Jerrie sick! Oh, Tom!'</p>
+
+<p>It was a cry of almost despair as Harold thought, 'What if
+she should die and the people never know.'</p>
+
+<p>'She had an awful headache when you left her in the lane,
+and I walked home with her, and the next morning she was
+raving mad&mdash;kind of a brain fever, I guess.'</p>
+
+<p>Harold was stupefied, but he managed to ask:</p>
+
+<p>'Does she talk much? What does she say?'</p>
+
+<p>There was alarm in his voice, which the sagacious Tom
+detected at once, and, strengthened in his suspicion, he replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing about the diamonds, and the Lord knows I hope
+she won't.'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean!' Harold asked, in a frightened tone.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't you worry,' Tom replied. 'I wouldn't harm Jerrie
+any more than you would, but&mdash;Well, Hal, you are a
+trump! Yes, you are, to hold your tongue and let some think
+you are the culprit. Hal, Jerrie gave you the diamonds. I
+saw her do it in the lane as I came up to you. I did not think
+of it at the time, but afterward it came to me that you took
+something from her and slipped it into your pocket, and that
+you both looked scared when you saw me. Jerrie was abstracted
+and queer all the way to the house, and had a bruise
+on her head, and she keeps talking of the Tramp House and
+Peterkin, who, she says, dealt the blow. I went to the Tramp
+House, and found the old table on the floor, with three of the
+legs on it; the fourth I couldn't find. I thought at first that
+the old wretch had quarreled with her about you on account of
+the suit, and she had squared up to him, and he had struck
+her; but now I believe <i>he</i> had the diamonds, and she got them
+from him in some way, and he struck her with the missing
+table-leg. If you say so, I'll have him arrested.'</p>
+
+<p>Tom had told his story rapidly, while Harold listened breathlessly,
+until he suggested the arrest of Peterkin, when he
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, Tom. No; don't you see that would mix Jerrie's
+name up with the diamonds, and that must not be. She must
+not be mentioned in connection with them until she speaks for
+herself; and, besides, I do not believe it was Peterkin who
+took them. It might have been your Uncle Arthur.'</p>
+
+<p>'Uncle Arthur?' Tom said, indignantly. 'Why, he gave
+them to mother.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know he did,' Harold continued; 'but in a crazy fit he
+might have taken them away and secreted them and then forgotten
+it, and Jerrie might have known it, and not been able
+to find them till now. Many things go to prove that;' and
+very briefly Harold repeated some incidents connected with
+Jerrie's illness when she was a child.</p>
+
+<p>'That looks like it, certainly,' Tom said; 'but I am awfully
+loth to give up arresting the brute, and believe I shall do it yet
+for assault and battery. He certainly struck her. You will
+see for yourself the lump on her head.'</p>
+
+<p>So saying Tom arose to go away, but before he went made a
+remark quite characteristic of him and his feeling for Harold,
+to whom he said, with a laugh:</p>
+
+<p>'Don't for thunder's sake, think us a kind of a Damon and
+Pythias twins, because I've joined hands with you against
+Peterkin and for Jerrie. Herod and Pilate, you know, became
+friends, but I guess at heart they were Pilate and Herod still.'</p>
+
+<p>'No danger of my presuming at all upon your friendship for
+myself, though I thank you for your interest in Jerrie,' Harold
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>Then the two separated, Tom going his way and Harold his,
+until it was time for the afternoon train which was to take them
+home.</p>
+
+<p>The suit had gone against Peterkin, and it was in a towering
+rage that he stood in the long depot, denouncing everybody,
+and swearing he would sell out Lubbertoo and every dumbed
+thing he owned in Shannondale and take his money away, 'and
+then see how they'd git along without his capital to boost 'em.'
+At Harold he would not even look, for his testimony had been
+the most damaging of all, and he frowned savagely when on
+entering the car he saw his son in the same seat with him, talking
+in low, earnest tones, while Harold was evidently listening
+to him with interest. Small as he was and mean in personal
+appearance, there was more of true manhood in Billy's finger
+than in his father's whole body. The suit had been a pain and
+trouble to Billy, from beginning to end, for he knew his father
+was in the wrong, and he bore no malice toward Harold for his
+part in it, and when the diamonds came up, and his father was
+clamoring for a writ, he was the first to declare Harold's innocence
+and to say he would go his bail. Now, there was in his
+mind another plan by which to benefit his friend, and rival, too&mdash;for
+Billy knew he was that; and the heart of the little man
+ached with a bitter pain and sense of loss whenever he thought
+of Jerrie, and lived over again the scene under the butternut
+tree by the river, when her blue eyes had smiled so kindly upon
+him and her hands had touched his, even while she was breaking
+his heart. When Billy reached his majority his father had
+given him $100,000, and thus he had business of his own to
+transact, and a part of this was just now centered in Washington
+Territory, where, in Tacoma, on Puget Sound, he owned
+real estate and had dealings with several parties. To attend to
+this an agent was needed for a while, and he said to himself;</p>
+
+<p>'I'll offer it to Hal, with such a salary that he cannot refuse
+it; that will get him out of the way until this thing blows
+over.'</p>
+
+<p>Billy knew perfectly well that although everybody said
+Harold was innocent and that nine-tenths believed it, there
+would still be a few in Shannondale&mdash;the scum whose opinions
+his father's money controlled&mdash;who, without exactly saying
+they doubted him, would make it unpleasant for him in many
+ways; and from this he would save him by sending him to
+Tacoma at once, and thus getting him out of the way of any
+unpleasantness which might arise from his father's persecutions
+or those of his clan. It was this which he was proposing to
+Harold, who at once thought favorably of it&mdash;not because he
+wished to escape from the public, he said, but because of the
+pay offered, and which seemed to him far more than his services
+would be worth.</p>
+
+<p>'You are a noble fellow, Billy,' he said. 'I'll think of the
+plan, and let you know after I've seen Jerrie and Judge St.
+Claire.'</p>
+
+<p>'A-all ri-right; he'll a-advise you to go,' Billy said, as they
+arose to leave the car, followed by Peterkin, who had been
+engaged in a fierce altercation with Tom, who had accused him
+of having struck Jerrie, and threatened to have him arrested
+for assault and battery the moment they reached Shannondale.</p>
+
+<p>'Thunder and lightning and guns' old Peterkin exclaimed,
+while the spittle flew from his mouth like the spray from Niagara.
+'I assault and batter Jerry Crawford!&mdash;a gal! What
+do you take me for, young man? I'm a gentleman, I be, if I
+ain't a Tracy; and I never salted nor battered nobody, and
+she'll tell you so herself. Heavens and earth! this is the way
+'twas,' and Peterkin shook from his head to his feet&mdash;for, like
+most men who clamor so loudly for the law, he had a mortal
+terror of it for himself, and Tom's threatening looks and words
+made him afraid. 'This is how 'twas. I found her in the
+Tramp-House, and I was all-fired mad at her about somethin'&mdash;I
+shan't tell what, for Bill would kill me; but I pitched into
+her right and left; and, by gum, she pitched into me, so that
+for a spell it was nip-and-tuck betwixt us; and, by George, if she
+didn't order me out of the Tramp-House, and said it was her'n;
+and I'll be dumbed if I don't believe she'd av put me out, too,
+body and bones, if I hadn't gone. She was just like a tiger;
+and, I swan, I was kinder feared on her, and backed out with
+a kinder flourish of my fist on that darned old rotten table,
+which went all to smash; and that's all I know. You don't
+call that 'sault and batter, do you?'</p>
+
+<p>Tom could not say that he did, but he replied:</p>
+
+<p>'That's your version of it. Jerrie may have another, and
+her friends ain't going to have her abused by a chap like you;
+and my advice is that you hold your tongue, both about her
+and Harold. It will he better for you. Do you understand?'</p>
+
+<p>'You bet!' Peterkin said, with a meaning nod, breathing a
+little more freely as he caught sight of the highest tower of
+<i>Lubbertoo</i>, and more freely still when he arrived at the station,
+where he was met by his coat-of-arms carriage, instead of a
+writ, and was suffered to go peaceably home, a disappointed, if
+not a better man.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIII" id="CHAPTER_XLIII" ></a>CHAPTER XLIII.</h2>
+
+<h2>HAROLD AND JERRIE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The news which so electrified all Shannondale was slow in
+reaching Mrs. Crawford, but it did reach her at last,
+crushing and overwhelming her with a sense of shame
+and anguish, until as the day wore on, Grace Atherton, and
+Mrs. St. Claire, and Nina, and many others came to reassure
+her, and to say that it was all a mistake, which would be soon
+cleared up.</p>
+
+<p>Thus comforted and consoled, she tried to be calm, and wait
+patiently for the train. But there was a great pity for her boy
+in her heart as she sat by Jerrie's bedside and watched her in
+all her varying moods, now perfectly quiet, with her wide open
+eyes staring up at the ceiling as if she were seeing something
+there, now talking of Peterkin, and the Tramp House, and the
+table, and the blow, and again of the bag, which she said was
+lost, and which her grandmother must find.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking she meant the carpet bag, Mrs. Crawford brought
+that to her, but she tossed it aside impatiently saying:</p>
+
+<p>'No, no; the other one, which tells it all. Where is it! I
+must have lost it. Find it, find it. To be so near, and yet so
+far. What did it say? Why can't I think? Am I like Mr.
+Arthur&mdash;crazy, like him?'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Crawford thought her crazier than Arthur, and waited
+still more impatiently for Harold, until she heard his step outside,
+and knew that he had come.</p>
+
+<p>'Harold!'</p>
+
+<p>'Grandma!' was all they said for a moment while the poor
+old lady was sobbing on his neck, and then he comforted her as
+best he could, telling her that it was all over now&mdash;that no one
+but Peterkin had accused him&mdash;that everybody was ready to
+defend him, and that after a little he could explain everything.</p>
+
+<p>'And now I must see Jerrie,' he continued, starting for the
+stairs, and glad that his grandmother did not attempt to follow
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie had heard his voice, and had raised herself in bed, and
+as he came in, met him with the question:</p>
+
+<p>'Have you brought them? Has any one seen them?'</p>
+
+<p>The strange light in her eyes should have told Harold how
+utterly incapable she was of giving any rational answers to his
+questions, but he did not think of that, and instead of trying
+to quiet her, he plunged at once into the subject she had
+broached:</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean the diamonds?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' she replied, 'the diamonds! the diamonds! Where
+are they?'</p>
+
+<p>'Mrs. Tracy has them by this time,' Harold replied.</p>
+
+<p>'Mrs. Tracy!' Jerrie exclaimed. 'What has she to do with
+them? They are not hers. They are mine&mdash;they are mine!
+Bring them to me&mdash;bring them to me.'</p>
+
+<p>She was terribly excited, and for a time Harold bent all his
+energies to soothe her, and at last when from sheer exhaustion
+she became quiet he said to her:</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie, where did you find the diamonds?'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him curiously, but made no reply, and he continued:</p>
+
+<p>'You must tell me where you found them: it is necessary I
+should know.'</p>
+
+<p>Still she did not reply, but stared at him, as if not fully comprehending
+what he meant.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie,' he said again, 'do you love me?'</p>
+
+<p>Quickly her eyes filled with tears, and she replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Love you, Harold! Yes, more than you ever dreamed of;
+more than you love me.'</p>
+
+<p>Instantly Harold had his arms around her, for she had risen
+to a sitting posture, and pillowing her head upon his breast, he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>'No, darling, that is impossible, for I love you better than
+my life,' and his lips pressed hers passionately.
+He felt that this was their betrothal, for he did not take into
+consideration the state of her mind; but she undeceived him
+quickly, for although she kissed him back, she said, with a
+tinge of sarcasm in her voice:</p>
+
+<p>'Aren't you afraid they will see you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Who are they?' he asked, and she replied</p>
+
+<p>'The people, and the Harvard boys and Maude.'</p>
+
+<p>He did not know at all what she meant, but at the mention
+of Maude he groaned involuntarily, as the white face came up
+before him again and the eyes looked into his, fuller far of love
+and tenderness than those confronting him so steadily, with no
+consciousness of his real meaning in them.</p>
+
+<p>'Those diamonds have caused me a great deal of trouble,' he
+began again, 'and will cause me more unless you tell me where
+you found them. Try and think. Was it in the Tramp
+House?'</p>
+
+<p>That started her at once, and she began to rave of the Tramp
+House, and the rat-hole, and the table, and Peterkin, who dealt
+the blow. The bruise on her head had not proved so serious
+as was at first feared, and with her tangled hair falling over her
+face Harold had not noticed it. But he looked at it now and
+questioned her of it, and asking if Peterkin had struck her
+there.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' she said, and began the senseless babbling of rat-holes,
+and table-legs and bags, and diamonds until Harold became alarmed
+and went for his grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing to be learned from Jerrie in her present
+condition, and so Harold started for the Tramp House to see
+what that would tell him. The table was still upon the floor,
+with the three legs piled upon it, while the fourth one was
+missing. But Harold found it at last; for, remembering
+what Jerrie had said of the rat-hole, he investigated that spot,
+and from its enlarged appearance drew his own conclusion.
+Jerrie had found the diamonds there; he had no doubt of it,
+and he told Tom Tracy so; for, as if there was a fascination
+about the place for him, Tom appeared in the door-way just as
+Harold was leaving it. Sitting down upon the bench where
+Jerrie had sat that day when Peterkin attacked her, the two
+young men who had been enemies all their lives, but who were
+now drawn together by a common sympathy and love for the
+same girl, talked the matter over again, each arriving at the
+same theory as the most probable one they could accept.</p>
+
+<p>'Arthur, in a crazy fit, had secreted the diamonds, and Jerrie
+knew it, but possibly not where he had put them. This accounted
+for her strange sickness when a child, while her finding them
+later on, added to other causes, would account for her sickness
+now. Peterkin owns that he was blowing her up for something,
+and that he knocked the table down with his fist, but he
+swears he didn't touch her,' Tom said, repeating in substance all
+Peterkin had said to him in the train when shaking with fear
+of a <i>writ</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'And do you still mean to keep silent with regard to Jerrie?'
+Tom asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Harold replied; 'her name must not be mentioned
+in connection with the diamonds. I can't have the slightest
+breath of suspicion touching Jerrie, <i>my sister</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sister be hanged!' Tom began savagely, then checked himself,
+and added with a sneering laugh: 'Don't try to deceive
+me, Hal, with your sister business. You love Jerrie, and she
+loves you, and that is one reason why I hate you, or shall,
+when this miserable business is cleared up. Just now we must
+pull together and find out where she found the diamonds,
+and who put them there. To write to Uncle Arthur would do
+no good, though seeing him might; the last we heard he was
+thinking of taking the coast voyage from San Francisco to
+Tacoma.'</p>
+
+<p>'Tom,' Harold exclaimed, with great energy, as he sprang
+to his feet, 'that decides me;' and then he told of the offer
+Billy had made him on the car. 'When I saw how sick Jerrie
+was, I made up my mind not to accept it, although I need the
+money badly. But now, if Jerrie gets no worse, I shall start
+for Tacoma in a few days and shall find your uncle Arthur, if
+he is to be found.'</p>
+
+<p>It was growing dark when the two young men finally
+emerged from the house and stood for a moment outside, while
+Harold inquired for Maude.</p>
+
+<p>'She is not very well, that's a fact,' Tom said, gloomily;
+'and no wonder, when mother keeps her cooped up in one
+room, without enough fresh air, and lets nobody see her except
+the family and the doctor, for fear they will excite her. She
+knows nothing about the diamonds, nor that Jerrie is sick. I
+did tell her, though, that you had come home; and, by Jove!
+I pretty near forgot it. She wants to see you bad; but, Lord!
+mother won't let you in. No use to try. She's like a she-wolf
+guarding its cub. Good-night.'</p>
+
+<p>And Tom walked away, while Harold went back to the cottage,
+where he found Jerrie sleeping very quietly, with a look
+on her face so like that it had worn in her babyhood, when he
+called her his little girl, that he involuntarily stooped down and
+kissed it as one would kiss a beautiful baby.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Jerrie was very restless, and talked wildly
+of the Tramp House and the diamonds, insisting that they were
+hers and must be brought to her.</p>
+
+<p>'Why did you tell her about them?' Mrs. Crawford asked,
+reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>But Harold did not reply, his mind was so torn with distracting
+doubts as to whether he ought to take the western
+trip or not.</p>
+
+<p>If he went, he must go at once, and to leave Jerrie in her
+present state seemed impossible. He would consult the physician
+first, and Judge St. Claire next. The doctor gave it as
+his opinion that Jerrie was in no danger, if she were only kept
+quiet. She had taken a severe cold and overtaxed her strength,
+while most likely she had inherited from some one a tendency
+to be flighty when anything was the matter, and he thought
+Harold might venture to leave her.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I'd go if I were you,' he added, looking intently at the
+young man; for, like Billy, he too thought it might be pleasanter
+for him to be out of the way for a time, although he did
+not say so.</p>
+
+<p>And this was the view the judge took of it, after a few moments'
+conversation. His first question had been:</p>
+
+<p>'Well, my boy, can you tell me now who gave them to you?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I can't,' was Harold's reply; and then, acting upon a
+sudden impulse, he burst out impetuously: 'Yes, I will tell
+you, for I can trust you, and I want your advice so badly.'</p>
+
+<p>So he repeated rapidly all he knew, and his theory with
+regard to Arthur, whom he wished so much to find, and of
+Billy's proposition that he should go on his business to Tacoma.
+For a few moments the judge seemed perplexed and undecided,
+for he was balancing in his mind the pros and cons for going
+from the people, or staying to face them. If he stayed he might
+have some unpleasant things to bear and hear, for there were
+those who would talk, in spite of their protestations of the
+young man's innocence; while to go might look like running
+away from the storm, with the matter unexplained. On the
+whole, however, he decided that it was better to go.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie's interests are safe with me,' he said, 'and by the
+time you return everything will be explained; but find Mr.
+Tracy as soon as possible. I am inclined to think your theory
+with regard to him correct.'</p>
+
+<p>So it was decided that Harold should go, and the next night
+was appointed for him to start. Had he known that Peterkin,
+and even Mrs. Tracy, were each in his or her own way insinuating
+that he was running from public opinion, nothing could
+have induced him to leave. But he did not know it, and
+went about his preparations with as brave a heart as he could
+command under the circumstances. Jerrie was more quiet
+now, though every effort on his part to learn anything from her
+concerning the diamonds brought on a fit of raving, when she
+would insist that the jewels were hers, and must be brought to
+her at once.</p>
+
+<p>'But you told me they were Mrs. Tracy's,' he said to her
+once.</p>
+
+<p>With a cunning gleam in her eyes, she replied:</p>
+
+<p>'So they are, or were; but oh, how little you know!'</p>
+
+<p>And this was all he could get from her.</p>
+
+<p>He told her he was going away, but that did not seem to
+affect her, and she only began to talk of Maude, who, she said,
+must not be harmed.</p>
+
+<p>'Have you seen her? have you seen her?' she kept saying.</p>
+
+<p>'Not yet,' he replied, 'but I am going to say good-bye;' and
+on the day of his departure he went to the Park House and
+asked if he could see Maude.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course not,' was Mrs. Tracy's prompt reply, when the
+request was taken to her. 'No one sees her, and I certainly
+shall not allow him to enter her room.'</p>
+
+<p>'But, Dolly,' Frank began, protestingly, but was cut short
+by the lady, who said:</p>
+
+<p>'You needn't &quot;Dolly&quot; me, or try to take his part, either. I
+have my opinion, and always shall. He cannot see Maude,
+and you may tell him so,' turning now to the servant who had
+brought Harold's message, and who softened it as much as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Harold had half expected a refusal, and was prepared for it.
+Taking a card from his pocket, he wrote upon it:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'DEAR MAUDE,&mdash;I am going away for a few weeks, and am very
+sorry that I cannot see you; but your mother knows best, of course,
+and I must not do anything to make you worse. I shall think of
+you very often, and hope to find you much better when I return.</p>
+
+<p>'HAROLD.'</p></div>
+
+<p>'Will you give this to her?' he said to the girl, who answered
+that she would, and who, of course, read every word before she
+took it to her young mistress, late in the afternoon, while the
+family were at dinner, and she was left in charge of the invalid.</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Hastings sent you this,' she said, handing the card to
+Maude, into whose face the bright color rushed, but left it
+instantly as she read the few hurried lines.</p>
+
+<p>'Going away! Gone! and I didn't see him!' she exclaimed,
+regardless of consequences. 'And mother did it. I know she
+did. I <i>will</i> talk till I spit blood; then see what she'll say!'
+she continued, as the frightened girl tried to stop her, and as
+she could not, ran for Mrs. Tracy, who came in much alarm,
+asking what was the matter.</p>
+
+<p>'You sent Harold away. You didn't let him see me, and
+he is&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Maude gasped, but could get no farther, for the paroxysm of
+coughing which came on, together with a hemorrhage which
+made her so weak that they thought her dying all night, she
+lay so white, and still, and insensible, save at times when her
+lips moved, and her mother, bending over her, heard her whisper:</p>
+
+<p>'Send for Harold.'</p>
+
+<p>But it was too late now; the train had come and gone, and
+taken Harold with it, away from the girl <i>he</i> loved and from, the
+girls who loved him so devotedly, and both of whom, for a few
+days after his departure, went down very near to the gates of
+death, and whose first enquiry, when they at last came back to
+life and consciousness, was for Harold and why he stayed away.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIV" id="CHAPTER_XLIV" ></a>CHAPTER XLIV.</h2>
+
+<h2>JERRIE CLEARS HAROLD.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The next day two items of news went like wildfire
+through the little town of Shannondale&mdash;the first, set
+afloat by Peterkin and helped on by Mrs. Tracy, that
+Harold had run away from public opinion, which was fast
+turning against him since he could not explain where he found
+the diamonds; and the second, that both Maude Tracy and
+Jerrie Crawford were at the point of death, which made
+Harold's sudden departure all the more heinous in the eyes of
+his enemies; for what but conscious guilt could have prompted
+him to leave his sister, who, it was said, was calling for him
+with every breath, and charging him with having taken the
+diamonds? Now, this was false; for although Jerrie's fever
+had increased rapidly during the night, and her babbling was
+something terrible to hear, there was in it no accusation of
+Harold, although she was constantly talking to him, and asking
+for the diamonds and the bag.</p>
+
+<p>'It is a pity he ever told her about them,' the doctor said, as
+twice each day, morning and night, for four successive days,
+he came and looked upon her fever-stained cheeks, and counted
+her rapid pulse, and took her temperature, and listened to her
+strange talk; and then, with a shake of his head, drove over
+to Tracy Park and stood by poor little Maude's couch, and
+looked into her death-white face, and counted her faint heartbeats,
+and tried in vain to find some word of encouragement
+for the stricken man, who looked about as much like death as
+the young girl so dear to him. And every morning, on his
+way from the cottage to Tracy Park, the doctor saw under the
+pines two young men, Tom and Dick, seated upon the iron
+bench each whittling a bit of pine, which one was unconsciously
+fashioning into a cross and the other into a grave-stone.</p>
+
+<p>Tom had found Dick there working at his cross, and, after a
+simple good-morning, had sat down beside him and whittled in
+silence upon another bit of wood until the doctor appeared on
+his way to Tracy Park. Then the whittling ceased, and both
+young men arose, and, going forward, asked how Jerrie was.</p>
+
+<p>'Pretty bad. Hal oughtn't to have gone, though I told him
+there was no danger. We must telegraph if she gets worse,'
+was the reply, as the doctor rode on.</p>
+
+<p>Tom and Dick separated, and saw no more of each other until
+the next morning, when they went again, and whittled in
+silence under the pines until the doctor came in sight, when
+the same questions were asked and answered as on the previous
+day.</p>
+
+<p>Billy never joined them, but sat under the butternut tree
+where Jerrie had refused him, for hours and hours watching
+the sluggish river, and wondering what the world would be to
+him if Jerrie were not in it. Had Billy been with Tom and
+Dick, he could not have whittled as they did, for all the nerve
+power had left his hands, which lay helplessly in his lap, and
+when he walked he looked more like a withered old man than
+a young one of twenty-seven.</p>
+
+<p>Maude was the first to rally&mdash;her first question for Harold,
+her second for Jerrie&mdash;and her father, who was with her,
+answered truthfully that Harold had not returned, and that
+Jerrie was sick and could not come to her. He did not say
+how sick, and Maude felt no alarm, but waited patiently until
+Jerrie should appear. For Maude, on her brass bedstead with
+its silken hangings, and every possible luxury around her,
+there were hired nurses and a mother's care, with many kind
+inquiries, while it would seem as if every hand in town was
+stretched out to Jerrie, who was a general favorite. Flowers
+and fruit and delicacies of every kind were sent to the cottage,
+carriage after carriage stopped before the door, offer after offer
+of assistance was made to Mrs. Crawford, while Nina and
+Marian Raymond were there constantly; and Billy went to
+Springfield for a chair in which to wheel his sister to the cottage,
+for she could not yet mount into the dog-cart; and Tom
+and Dick whittled on until the cross and the grave-stone were
+finished, and, with a sickly smile, Tom said to Dick:</p>
+
+<p>'Would you cut Jerrie's name upon it?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; oh, no!' Dick answered, with a gasp. 'She may be
+better to-morrow.'</p>
+
+<p>When, after a few days, the crisis was past, and Jerrie's
+strong constitution triumphed over the disease which had grappled
+with it, the whole town wore a holiday air as the people
+said to each other gladly: 'Jerrie is better; Jerrie will live!'</p>
+
+<p>Her recovery was rapid, and within a week after the fever
+left her and she awoke to perfect consciousness, she was able to
+sit up a part of every day, and had walked across the floor and
+read a letter from Harold to his grandmother, full of solicitude
+for herself and enthusiasm for his trip over the wild mountains
+and across the vast plains to the lovely little city of Tacoma,
+built upon a cliff and looking seaward over the sound.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Harold,' Jerrie whispered. 'I shall be so glad when
+he comes home. Nothing can be done till then, and I am so
+bewildered when I try to think.'</p>
+
+<p>In her weak state, everything seemed unreal to Jerrie, except
+the fact that she had found her mother&mdash;and such a mother!&mdash;and
+many times each day she thanked her God who had
+brought her this unspeakable joy, and asked that she might do
+right when the time came to act. She knew the bag was safe,
+for she had climbed to the top shelf and found it just where
+she had put it. But where were the diamonds? Had Harold
+taken them with him? Had he told any one? Did his grandmother
+know anything about them? she wondered. She tried
+in many ways to draw Mrs. Crawford out, but was unsuccessful,
+for there were now too much pain and bitterness connected
+with the diamonds for Mrs. Crawford to speak to her of them.
+The poisonous breath of gossip had been at work ever since
+Harold went away, quietly aided and abetted by Mrs. Tracy,
+who never failed to roll her eyes and shrug her shoulders when
+Harold's name was mentioned, and openly pushed on by Peterkin,
+until Tom Tracy went to him one day and threatened to
+have him tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail, if he ever
+breathed Harold's name again in connection with the diamonds.</p>
+
+<p>'Wall, I swow!' was all Peterkin said, as he put an enormous
+quid of tobacco in his mouth, and walked away, thinking
+to himself, 'Twould take an all-fired while to scrape them tar
+and feathers off of me, I'm so big, and I b'lieve the feller
+meant it. Them high bucks wouldn't like no better fun than
+to make a spectacle of me; so I guess I'll dry up a spell.'</p>
+
+<p>But the trouble did not stop with Peterkin's talk, for a
+neighboring Sunday paper, which fed its readers with all the
+choicest bits of gossip, came out with an article headed 'The
+Tracy Diamonds,' and after narrating the story in the most
+garbled and sensational manner, went on to comment upon
+the young man's having run away, rather than face public
+opinion, and to comment upon the law which could not touch
+him because the offence was committed so long ago.</p>
+
+<p>One after another, and without either knowing that the
+other had done so, Tom, and Dick, and Billy, waited upon the
+editor of the Sunday <i>News</i>, threatening to sue him for libel if
+he did not retract every word of the offensive article in his
+next issue, which he did. But the mischief was done, and the
+paper found its way at last to Jerrie, sent unwittingly by Ann
+Eliza, who covered it over a basket of fruit and flowers which
+was carried one afternoon to the cottage.</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie had been down stairs several times, but was in her
+room when the basket was brought to her. Raising the paper,
+she was about to throw it on the floor, when her eye caught
+the words, 'The Tracy Diamonds,' and with bloodless lips and
+wildly beating heart she read the article through, understanding
+the situation perfectly, and resolving at once how to act.
+It seemed to her that she was lifted above and out of herself,
+she felt so strong, and light, and well, as she threw on her
+bonnet and shawl, and taking the leather bag in her hand,
+hurried down stairs in quest of Mrs. Crawford.</p>
+
+<p>'Grandma!' she exclaimed, 'why haven't you told me about
+Harold, and the suspicion resting on him, and why did you let
+him go until I was better, and what are the people saying?
+Tell me everything.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie would not be put off, and Mrs. Crawford told her
+everything she knew, and that she herself had added to the
+mystery by the strange things she had said in her delirium
+about the diamonds, which she insisted were hers.</p>
+
+<p>'And they are mine!' Jerrie said, while Mrs. Crawford
+looked at her in alarm, for her madness had returned.</p>
+
+<p>'Where are you going?' she gasped, as Jerrie turned toward
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>'To Tracy Park, to claim my own and clear Harold!' was
+the reply. 'When I come back I will tell you all, but now I
+cannot wait.'</p>
+
+<p>'But, Jerrie, you are not strong enough to walk there, and
+besides they have company this afternoon, some kind of a new-fangled
+card party, and you must not go,' Mrs. Crawford said.</p>
+
+<p>'I have the strength of twenty horses,' Jerrie said, 'and if
+they have company, so much the better, for there will be more
+to hear my story. Good-bye.'</p>
+
+<p>She was off like an arrow, and went almost upon a run
+through the leafy woods until the house was reached, and then
+she stopped a moment to take breath and look about her.
+How very fair and beautiful it was, that home of the Tracys,
+and Jerrie's heart beat so hard that she felt for a moment
+as if she were choking to death as she sat under a maple
+tree and tried to think it all over, to make sure there was no
+mistake. Opening the box she took out two documents, and
+read them again as she had the night she was taken sick. One
+was a certificate of marriage, the other of a birth and baptism;
+there was no mistake.</p>
+
+<p>Holding the papers in one hand and the bag in the other,
+she went on to the house, from which shouts of laughter were
+issuing, Nina's voice, and Marian's, and Tom's, and Dick's,
+and Mrs. Tracy's. Jerrie shuddered a little when she heard
+that, for it brought back to her mind all the slights she had
+received from that woman who was so cruel to Harold, and the
+pity which had been springing up in her heart ever since she
+looked up at the windows of Maude's room and thought of the
+white-faced girl lying there, died out, and it was more a Nemesis
+than a gentle, forgiving woman who walked boldly into the
+hall and entered unbidden at the drawing-room door.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Tracy was having a progressive euchre party that
+afternoon. A friend in Boston had written her about it, and,
+proud to be the first to introduce it in Shannondale, she stood,
+flushed and triumphant, with the restored diamonds in her
+ears and at her throat, laughing merrily with the others at
+Judge St. Claire, who had won the booby prize&mdash;a little drum,
+as something he could beat&mdash;and who, with a perplexed look
+in his face, was staring at the thing as if he did not quite get
+the joke.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the rest, Frank Tracy sat looking on, though
+with no apparent interest in the matter. He had joined in the
+game because his wife told him he must, and had borne meekly
+her sarcastic remarks when he trumped her ace and ordered up
+on nothing. His thoughts were not with the cards, but up
+stairs with Maude, who seemed to be much better, and for
+whom there was constantly a prayer in his heart.</p>
+
+<p>'Spare her, and I will make reparation; I will tell the
+truth.'</p>
+
+<p>He was trying to bribe the Lord to hear him, and there was
+some such thought in his mind when he saw Jerrie in the door&mdash;tall,
+thin, and white from her recent sickness, with eyes
+which rolled, and shone, and flashed as Arthur's did sometimes,
+and falling at last upon Mrs. Tracy, where they rested with an
+intensity which must have drawn that lady's notice to her, if
+Frank had not exclaimed, as he rose to his feet:</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie! How did you get here?'</p>
+
+<p>Then all turned and looked at her, and crowded around her
+with exclamations of surprise and inquiries as to how she got
+there.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Jerrie stood like one in a catalepsy, with no
+power to move or speak, but when Mrs. Tracy came forward,
+and in her iciest tones said to her: 'Good-afternoon, Miss
+Crawford. To what am I indebted for this unexpected pleasure?'
+her faculties came back, her tongue was loosened, and
+she replied in a clear voice, which rang through the room like
+a bell, and was, indeed, the knell to all the lady's greatness:</p>
+
+<p>'I am here to claim my own, and to clear Harold from the
+foul suspicion heaped upon him&mdash;by whom, at first, I do not
+know, but it was helped on by you. I have seen the paper,
+have heard the whole from grandma, and am here to defend
+him. It was I who gave him the diamonds! It was for me
+he kept silent, and let you think what you would.'</p>
+
+<p>'You gave him the diamonds?' Mrs. Tracy repeated, as one
+by one all the members of the party, even the judge and Tom,
+gathered close to her in their astonishment. 'You gave him
+the diamonds! You! and have come to confess yourself
+a&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She never finished the sentence, for something in Jerrie's
+face frightened her, while her husband, who had come forward,
+laid his hand warningly upon her arm.</p>
+
+<p>So absorbed were they all that no one saw the little white-robed
+girl, who, they supposed, was lying up stairs in her room,
+but who at the sound of Jerrie's voice had, in her eagerness to
+see her, crept down the stairs, and now stood in the door-way
+opposite to Jerrie, her large, bright eyes looking in wonder
+upon the scene, and her ears listening intently to what was as
+new to her as it had been to Jerrie an hour ago.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't give me the name you have more than once given to
+Harold,' Jerrie said, as with a gesture she silenced Mrs. Tracy.
+'The diamonds are mine, not yours. Can one steal his own?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yours! Your diamonds! What do you mean?' Mrs.
+Tracy asked.</p>
+
+<p>'They were my mother's,' Jerrie replied, 'and she sent them
+to me.'</p>
+
+<p>They all thought her crazy except Frank, to whom there had
+come a horrid presentiment of the truth, and who had clutched
+hard his wife's arm as she said questioningly, in a mocking,
+aggravating tone:</p>
+
+<p>'And your mother was&mdash;?'</p>
+
+<p>Then Jerrie stepped into the room, and stood in their midst
+like a queen among her subjects as she answered:</p>
+
+<p>'My mother was Marguerite Heinrich, of Wiesbaden, better
+known to you as Gretchen; and my father is Arthur Tracy,
+and I am their lawful child. It is so written here,' and she
+held up the papers and the bag; 'I am Jerrie Tracy!'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLV" id="CHAPTER_XLV" ></a>CHAPTER XLV.</h2>
+
+<h2>WHAT FOLLOWED.</h2>
+
+
+<p>'Thank God that it is out! I couldn't have borne it
+much longer,' leaped involuntarily from Frank's lips.</p>
+
+<p>No one heard it save Jerrie, and she scarcely heeded
+it then; for with one bound, as it seemed to the petrified spectators,
+who divided right and left to let her pass, she reached
+the opposite door-way, and stooping over the little figure lying
+there so still, lifted it tenderly, and carrying it up stairs, laid
+it down in the room it would never leave again until other
+hands than hers carried it out and laid it away in the Tracy
+lot, where only Jack and the dark woman were lying now.</p>
+
+<p>Maude had heard all Jerrie was saying, and understood it,
+too; and at the words, 'I am Jerrie Tracy,' she felt an electric
+thrill pass over her, like what she had experienced when watching
+the acting in some great tragedy; then all was darkness,
+and she knew no more until Jerrie was bending over her and
+she heard her mother saying:</p>
+
+<p>'Leave her to me, Miss Crawford. You have done harm
+enough for one day. You have killed my daughter!'</p>
+
+<p>'No!' Maude cried, exerting all her strength. 'She has
+not hurt me. She must not go, I want her; for if what she
+said is true, she is my own cousin. Oh, Jerrie, I am so glad!'
+and throwing her arms around Jerrie's neck, Maude sobbed
+convulsively.</p>
+
+<p>As yet Maude saw only the good which had come to her, if
+the news were true; the evil had not yet been presented to her,
+and she clung tightly to Jerrie, who, nearly distraught herself,
+did not know what to do. She knew that Mrs. Tracy looked
+upon her as an intruder, and possibly a liar; but she cared little
+for that lady's opinion. She only thought of Frank and
+what he would say.</p>
+
+<p>Lifting up her head at last from the pillow where she had
+lain it for a moment, while Maude's thin little hands caressed
+the golden hair, she saw him standing at the foot of the bed,
+taller, straighter than she had seen him in years, with a look
+on his face which she knew was not adverse to herself.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie,' he said, slowly and thickly, for something choked
+his speech, 'I can't tell you now all I feel, only I am glad for
+you and Arthur, but gladder for myself.'</p>
+
+<p>What did he mean? Jerrie wondered; while Maude's eyes
+sought his questioningly, and his wife said, sharply:</p>
+
+<p>'You are talking like a lunatic! Do you propose to give up
+so easily to a girl's bare word! Let Jerrie prove it, before she
+is mistress here.'</p>
+
+<p>Then into Maude's eyes there crept a look of terror and pain,
+and she whispered:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Jerrie, prove it. There were papers in your hand,
+and a bag, and you said, &quot;It is so written here.&quot; Bring the
+papers and read them to us&mdash;here in this room. I can bear it.
+I must hear them. I must know.'
+'Better let her have her way,' Frank said; and Dolly could
+have knocked him down, he spoke so cheerfully; while Jerrie
+answered:</p>
+
+<p>'I can't read them myself aloud. They are written in German.'</p>
+
+<p>'But Marian can. I saw her there. Let them all come up;
+they will have to know,' Maude persisted.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment, during which a powerful tonic had been
+given to his daughter, Frank went down to his guests, who
+were eagerly discussing the strange story, which not one of
+them doubted in the least.</p>
+
+<p>In her haste to reach Maude, Jerrie had dropped the bag
+and the two papers, which Judge St. Claire picked up and held
+for a moment in his hand; then passing the papers to Marian,
+he said:</p>
+
+<p>'It can be no secret now, and Jerrie will not care. What
+do the papers contain?'</p>
+
+<p>Running her eyes rapidly over them, Marian said:</p>
+
+<p>'The first is a certificate of marriage between Arthur Tracy
+and Marguerite Heinrich, who were married October 20th,
+18&mdash;, in the English church at Wiesbaden, by the Rev. Mr.
+Eaton, then the officiating clergyman. The second is a certificate
+of the birth and baptism of Jerrine, daughter of Arthur
+and Marguerite Tracy, who was born at Wiesbaden, January
+1st, 18&mdash;, and christened January 8th, 18&mdash;, by the Rev. Mr.
+Eaton.'</p>
+
+<p>Then a deep silence fell upon the group, while Tom stood
+like one paralyzed. He understood the situation perfectly, and
+knew that if Jerrie was mistress there, he could never hope to
+be master.</p>
+
+<p>'May as well evacuate at once,' he said at last, with an
+attempt to smile as he walked slowly out of the house, which
+he felt was his inheritance no longer.</p>
+
+<p>Just then Frank came down, saying that Maude insisted
+upon knowing what was in the papers which Marian was to
+read, while the others were to come up and listen. He did
+not seem at all like a man who had lost anything, but bustled
+about cheerily; and when the judge said to him apologetically,
+'We know the contents of two of the papers. They are certificates
+of the marriage of Arthur with Gretchen, and of Jerrie's
+birth. I hope you don't mind if we read them,' he
+answered, briskly.</p>
+
+<p>'Not at all&mdash;not in the least. Arthur and Gretchen! I
+thought so. Where is Tom? He must hear the papers.'</p>
+
+<p>He found his son under the true where he had been sitting
+the morning when Jerrie came near fainting there, and in his
+hand was a curious bit of pine finished like a grave-stone&mdash;the
+same he had whittled under the pines, and on which he was
+now carving, 'Euchred, August &mdash;, 18&mdash;.'</p>
+
+<p>'This is the monument to our downfall,' he said, as his father
+came up to him with something so pitiful in his face and voice
+that Frank gave way suddenly, and, sitting down beside him,
+laid his hand upon his tall son's head and cried for a moment
+like a child, while Tom's chin quivered, and he was mortally
+afraid there was something like tears in his own eyes, and he
+meant to be so brave and not show that he was hurt.</p>
+
+<p>'I am sorry for you, my boy,' Frank said at last, 'but glad
+for Jerrie&mdash;so glad&mdash;and she will not be hard on us.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall ask no favors of her. I can stand it if you can,
+though money is a good thing to have.'</p>
+
+<p>And then, without in the least knowing why, he thought of
+Ann Eliza, and wondered how her ankle was getting along, and
+if he ought not to have called upon her again.</p>
+
+<p>'Marian is going to read the papers in Maude's room, and I
+have come for you,' Frank said.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't care to hear them,' Tom replied. 'I am satisfied
+that we are beggars, and Jerrie the heiress.'</p>
+
+<p>But Frank insisted, and Tom went with him to his sister's
+room, followed by their friends, for whom the dinner was waiting
+and spoiling in the kitchen, where as yet no hint of what
+was transpiring had reached, save the fact that Maude had
+been down stairs and fainted. She was propped upon pillows
+scarcely whiter than her face save where two crimson spots
+burned brightly, and her eyes were fixed constantly upon
+Jerrie, who sat beside her, holding her cold, clammy hands,
+which she occasionally patted, and kissed and caressed.</p>
+
+<p>'Where did you find the bag?' the judge asked; and then
+Jerrie narrated the particulars of her interview with Peterkin,
+whose destruction of the table had resulted in her finding the
+bag with the diamonds in it.
+'They were mother's,' she said, the last words almost a sob,
+as she turned her eyes upon Mrs. Tracy, who stood like a block
+of stone, with no sympathy or credulity upon her face.
+'Father bought them for her at the same time with Mrs.
+Tracy's, which they are exactly like. It is so written in her
+letter. And she sent them for me. They are mine and I gave
+them to Harold to keep untill I could think what to do. The
+diamonds are mine.'</p>
+
+<p>She was still looking at Mrs. Tracy, on whom all eyes were
+now resting as the precious stones flashed, and glittered, and
+shone in the sunlight in the hall in all the colors of the rainbow.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant the proud woman hesitated, then, quickly unclasping
+the ear-rings and the pin, she laid them in Jerrie's lap.</p>
+
+<p>'You are welcome to your property, if it is yours, I am sure,'
+she said, and was about to leave the room.</p>
+
+<p>But her husband kept her back.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Dolly,' he said. 'You must stay, and hear, and know.
+It concerns us all.'</p>
+
+<p>As he had closed the door and stood against it she had no
+alternative except to stay, but she walked to the window and
+stood with her back to them all, while Marian put into English
+and read, in a clear, distinct voice, and without the least hesitation,
+that message from the dead.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVI" id="CHAPTER_XLVI" ></a>CHAPTER XLVI.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE LETTERS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>There were four of them&mdash;two in Arthur's handwriting:
+one directed to Mrs. Arthur Tracy, Wiesbaden, postmarked
+Liverpool; one to Margaret Heinrich, Wiesbaden,
+postmarked Shannondale; one in a strange handwriting
+to Arthur Tracy, if living; and one to Arthur Tracy's friends
+if he were dead, or incapable of understanding it.
+And it was this last which Marian read; for as Arthur was
+living, she felt that with his letters strangers had nothing to do.
+The letter to the friends, which had evidently been written at
+intervals, as the writer's strength would permit, was as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'WIESBADEN, December &mdash;, 18&mdash;,</p>
+
+<p>'To the friends of Mr. Arthur Tracy, if he is dead, or incapable
+of understanding this letter, from his wife, who was Marguerite
+Heinrich, and whom he always called Gretchen.</p>
+
+<p>'I want to tell you about it for the sake of my little Jerrie,
+whom, if her father is dead, I give to your care, praying God to
+deal with you as you are good and just to her. I was seventeen
+when I first saw Mr. Tracy. My father was dead. I was an only
+child, and my mother kept a little fancy shop in Wiesbaden. I
+went to school and learned what other girls like me learned&mdash;to
+read and write, and knit and sew, and fear God and keep His commandments.
+People called me pretty. I don't know that I was,
+but he told me so when he came to me one day as I was knitting
+under a tree in the park. He had a picture made of me as I was
+then, and it is on the wall, but I have pawned it for the rent, as I
+have almost everything.'</p></div>
+
+<p>'Oh, Jerrie!' Marian exclaimed at this point.</p>
+
+<p>But Jerrie's face was buried in Maude's pillow and she made
+no response. So Marian read on:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'He came many times, for I was always there waiting for him, I
+am afraid; but when he said he loved me, and wanted me for his
+wife I could not believe it, he was so grand, so like nobility,
+and I so poor and plain. Then mother died suddenly&mdash;oh, so suddenly&mdash;well
+to-day&mdash;dead to-morrow&mdash;with cholera, and I was left
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Gretchen we must he married now,&quot; he said to me, the night
+after the funeral; and I answered him, &quot;yes, we must be married;&quot;
+and we were, the next day, in the little English Church, by Mr.
+Eaton, the pastor. You will find the certificate with the other
+papers. Do you ever remember a beautiful moonlight night, when
+the air was soft, and warm, and sweet with many summer flowers,
+and there was music in the distance, and heaven seemed so near
+that you could almost touch the blue lining which separates it from
+us? Well, just like that was my life with Arthur for a few months.
+Oh, how I loved him, and how he loved me! It frightened me
+sometimes, he was so fierce and&mdash;I don't know what the word is&mdash;so
+something in his love. He never left me a moment. He couldn't,
+he said, for I was his balance-wheel, and without me he was lost.
+I think now he was crazy then. I know he was afterward when he
+did such queer things and forgot so often&mdash;sometimes the house we
+lived in, sometimes his own name, and at last, me, his Gretchen!
+That was so sad, when he went away, and stayed away for weeks,
+and said he had forgotten. But he was sorry, too, and made it up,
+and for ten day heaven came down again so I could touch it; then
+he went away and I have never seen him since.</p>
+
+<p>'You must excuse me, his friends&mdash;if I stop a little while to cry;
+it makes me no lonesome to think of the long years&mdash;four and more&mdash;which
+have been buried with the yesterdays, under the flowers,
+and under the snow, since Arthur went away and left me all alone.
+If I had told him, he might have come back, he was so fond of
+children; but I was not sure, and would not tell a lie, and let him
+go without a hint. I wrote him once I had something to tell him
+when he came which would make him glad, as it did me, and he
+never replied to it, though he wrote two or three times more, and
+sent me money, but did not tell me where he was, only he was being
+cured, he said&mdash;that was all. In January my baby was born, and I
+had her christened Jerrine, by Mr. Eaton. You will find it among
+the papers. Then, how I longed for him, and waited, and watched;
+but he never came, and I knew he had forgotten; but I did not
+doubt his love, or that he would one day come back; and I tried to
+improve myself and learn what was in books, so I could mate with
+him better when he came home, which he never did; and the years
+went on, and my little Jerrine grew more lovely every day. She is
+standing by me now, and says, &quot;Are you writing to him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Darling Jerrie, you will be kind to her, won't you, for his sake,
+and for me, too, who will be dead when you yet this?'</p></div>
+
+<p>Jerrie was sobbing now, and Maude's arm was around her
+neck, while Frank had walked to a window, and, like his wife,
+was looking out upon the lawn, which he did not see for the
+tears which filled his eyes.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'When the money stopped,' the letter went on, 'we grew so poor,
+Jerrie and I and Nannine&mdash;that is the French woman who lives
+with me and whom Jerrie calls Mah-nee. She will bring my child
+to you when I am dead; and oh, be kind to her, for a truer, more
+faithful woman never lived. She is such a comfort to me, except
+when she scolds about Arthur and calls him a <i>b&ecirc;te noire</i>, which he is
+not, as you will see. He was shut up, I don't know where, but think
+it was where they put people with bad heads, and he forget everything
+till he was out, and as far as Paris on his way to America.
+Then he remembered and wrote me from Liverpool such a letter&mdash;full
+of love and sorrow for the past, and sent me such lovely diamonds,
+just like those he had bought for his sister in America, he
+said&mdash;and he was going home at such a date on the Scotia, and he
+wished me to join him in Liverpool. I send the letter with this to
+prove that I write true. But it was too late, for I was too weak to
+travel; neither could I write to him, for he gave me no address.
+'That was last September, and I have been dying ever since, for
+my heart broke when I thought of what was and what might
+have been could I have found him. The money he sent me then I
+am saving for Nannine and Jerrie to take them to America when I
+am dead. All the days and nights I prayed that Arthur might remember
+and write me again, and God heard, and he did; and
+five days ago I received his letter. So crazy it was, but just as full
+of love and tenderness and a desire to see me. He told me of his
+lovely home and the Gretchen room, where my picture is in the
+window; and in case there should be no one to meet me at the station
+when I arrived he sent me directions how to find Tracy Park,
+and told me just what to do when I reached New York. He would
+come for me himself, he said, only the sea made him so sick and he
+was afraid he should forget everything if he did. But you will see
+in his letter what he wrote and how fond he was of me; and if he
+is alive and too crazy to understand now, tell him, when he is better,
+how I loved him and prayed for him every hour that God
+would bring him, at last, where I am going so soon. Nannine will
+take him my Bible, with passages marked by me, and a photograph
+which I had taken a year ago, and which will tell you how I looked
+then. Now I am so thin and pale that Arthur would hardly
+know me. I send, too, a lock of Jerrie's hair, cut when she was
+three weeks old. Darling Jerrie! She is such a comfort to me,
+and so old and womanly for her years! She will remember much
+of our life here, for she notices everything and understands it, too,
+and goes over, as in a play, what she sees and hears.</p>
+
+<p>'We have been cold and hungry sometimes; but not often; the
+neighbors are so kind; and when I am dead they will see that
+Nannine is made ready for America, with Jerrie; and the papers,
+and the diamonds, which I might have pawned when our need was
+greatest, but I could not. I must save them for Jerrie, and may
+she wear them some day, and many days in the years to come, when
+her mother is dust and ashes in the ground, but a glorified spirit in
+Paradise, where I shall watch over her, and, if I can, be with her
+often, and keep myself in her mind, so that she will never forget
+my face or the old home in Germany.</p>
+
+<p>'God bless my little daughter, and make her a true, noble woman;
+and God bless you, Arthur's friends, who read this, and incline you
+to be kind and just to Jerrie, and see that she has her own; for
+there must be money at Tracy Park; and if you are poor and
+Jerrie comes rich, tell her from her mother to be kind to you, and
+give as you have given to her. Now I must stop, I am so tired,
+and it is growing dark, and Nannie has opened the stove door to
+let the light fall on the paper in my lap, and Jerrie is standing by
+me and says, &quot;Are you going to God pretty soon?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, darling, very soon&mdash;to-night, perhaps, or to-morrow, or
+when He will. The air grows cold, the night is coming on, my
+eyes grow dim, my head is tired. I think, yes, I think it will be
+to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-bye.</p>
+
+<p>'GRETCHEN TRACY.'</p></div>
+
+<p>As she finished reading Marian arose, and going up to Jerrie
+kissed her lovingly and said to her in German:</p>
+
+<p>'That was your mother's picture in our old home in Wiesbaden.
+I am so glad for you.'</p>
+
+<p>A low sob was Jerrie's reply, and then Judge St. Claire
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>'Is that all?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Marian said; 'All except Mr. Tracy's letters to Gretchen.
+Oh, no,' she added; 'there is something more;' and
+feeling in the bag, she drew out two small papers, one crumpled
+and worn, as if it had been often referred to, the other
+folded neatly and tied with a white ribbon.</p>
+
+<p>This Marian opened first, and found it to be a certificate,
+written in English, to the effect that Mrs. Arthur Tracy, <i>n&eacute;e</i>
+Marguerite Heinrich, died at such a date and was buried by
+the Rev. Mr. Bellows, the resident rector of the English church;
+the other was in Arthur's handwriting, and the directions he
+had written to his wife, as to what she was to do and how to
+find Tracy Park.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Judge St. Claire said, coming forward and taking the
+paper from her hand, 'this is what the station-master saw the
+poor woman examining that night in the storm. She probably
+dropped it into the bag without stopping to fold it. There can
+be no doubt.'</p>
+
+<p>Then a deep silence reigned for a moment in the room, until
+Mrs. Tracy, who, all through the reading had stood like a block
+of granite by the window, turned and walking swiftly up to
+Jerrie, said, in a bitter tone:</p>
+
+<p>'Of course there is no mistake. I do not doubt that you
+are mistress here, and am ready to leave at once. Shall we
+pack up and quit to-night?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dolly!' 'Mother!' came angrily and sternly from both
+Tom and Frank, and 'Oh, mamma, please,' came faintly from
+Maude, while Jerrie lifted up her head, and looking steadily at
+the cruel woman, said:</p>
+
+<p>'Why are you so hard with me? I cannot help it. I am
+not to blame. I mean to do right; only wait&mdash;a little. I am
+so sick now&mdash;so dizzy and blind. Oh, somebody lead me out
+where I can breathe. I am choking here.'</p>
+
+<p>It was Tom who reached her first, and passing his arm around
+her, took her into the open air and to a seat under the tree
+where once before she had almost fainted, as she did now, with
+her head upon his shoulder, for he put it there, and then
+pushed her hair back from her face as he said lightly:</p>
+
+<p>'Don't take it so hard; if we can stand it, you can!'</p>
+
+<p>Then Jerrie straightened up and said:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Tom, do you want to kill me now?'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean?' he asked, and she replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Don't you know you said under the pines that you would kill
+any claimant to Tracy Park who might appear against you?'</p>
+
+<p>'I remember it,' Tom said, 'but I didn't think then that the
+claimant would be Jerrie, my cousin,' and he put his arm
+around her as he continued: 'I can't say that I am not awfully
+cut up to be turned neck and heels out of what I believed
+would be my own, but if it must be, I am glad it is you who do
+it, for I know you'll not be hard upon us, or let Uncle Arthur
+be, even if mother is so mean. Remember, Jerrie, that I loved
+you and asked you to be my wife when I believed you poor and
+unknown.'</p>
+
+<p>Tom was very politic and was speaking good words for himself,
+but all the good there was in him seemed now to be on the
+surface and while inwardly rebelling at his misfortune, he felt a
+thrill of joy in knowing that Jerrie was his cousin, and would
+not be hard upon him.</p>
+
+<p>'Shall we go back to the house?' he said at last, and they
+went back, meeting the people upon the piazza, where they
+stopped for a moment while Jerrie's hands were shaken, and
+she was kissed and congratulated that at last the mystery was
+cleared, and her rights restored to her.</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Arthur Tracy ought to be here,' Judge St. Claire said.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I'd thought of that,' Tom replied, first, 'and shall
+telegraph him to-morrow,'</p>
+
+<p>Then they said good night, and without going in to see either
+Mr. or Mrs. Tracy again, Tom and Jerry walked slowly toward
+the cottage, through the leafy woods, where the trees met in
+graceful arches overhead, and the moonlight fell in silver flecks
+upon the grass, and the summer air was odorous and sweet
+with the smell of the pines and the balm of Gilead trees scattered
+here and there. It was a lovely place, and Tom thought
+so with a keen sense of pain, as, after leaving Jerrie at her
+gate, he walked slowly back until he reached the four pines,
+where he sat down to think and wonder what he should do as
+a poor man, with neither business nor prospects.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't suppose the governor has laid up much,' he said,
+'for since Uncle Arthur came home he has done very little
+business, and has spent what really was his own recklessly and
+without a thought of saving, he was so sure to have enough at
+last, and Uncle Arthur was so free to give us what we asked
+for. But that will end when he knows he has a daughter, and
+as he never fancied me much, I shall either have to beg, or
+work, or starve, or marry a rich wife, which is not so easy for
+a poor dog to do. I don't suppose that Governor's daughter
+would look at me now, nor anyone else who is anybody. By
+George, I ought to have called on Ann Eliza before this time.
+I wonder if it's too late to go there now. I believe I'll walk
+round there anyway, and if I see a light, I'll go in, and if old
+<i>paterfamilias</i>&mdash;how I'd like to kick him&mdash;is there, I'll tell him
+the news, and that I know now he did not strike Jerrie with
+the table-leg, and perhaps I'll apologize for what I said when
+in the car. Tom Tracy, you are a scoundrel, and no mistake,'
+he added, with energy, as he arose, and struck into the field,
+through which he had dragged Ann Eliza the night of the
+storm.</p>
+
+<p>There were lights at Le Bateau, and Tom was soon shaking
+hands with old <i>paterfamilias</i>, who was at home, and with Ann
+Eliza, who was now able to come down stairs.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVII" id="CHAPTER_XLVII" ></a>CHAPTER XLVII.</h2>
+
+<h2>ARTHUR.</h2>
+
+
+<p>He had enjoyed himself immensely, from the moment
+he first caught sight of grand old Pike's Peak on the
+distant plains until he entered the city of the Golden
+Gate, and, standing on the terrace of the Cliff House, looked
+out upon the blue Pacific, with the sea lions disporting on the
+rocks below. For he went there first, and then to China-town,
+and explored every nook and corner, and opium den in it, and
+drank tea at twenty dollars a pound in a high-toned restaurant,
+and visited the theatre and the Joss House, and patronized the
+push-cars, as he called them, every day, and experienced a
+wonderful exhilaration of spirits, as he sat upon the front seat,
+with the fresh air blowing in his face, and only the broad, steep
+street, lined with palaces, before him.</p>
+
+<p>'This is heaven! this clears the cobwebs!' he would say to
+Charles, who sat beside him with chattering teeth and his coat-collar
+pulled high about his ears, for the winds of San Francisco
+are cold even in the summer.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur's first trip was to the Yosemite, taking the Milton
+route, and meeting with the adventure he so much desired; for
+in the early morning, between Chinese Camp and Priest's, the
+stage was suddenly stopped by two masked marauders, one of
+whom stood at the horses' heads, while the other confronted the
+terrified passengers with the blood-curling words:</p>
+
+<p>'Hands up, every soul of you!'</p>
+
+<p>And the hands went up from timid women and strong men,
+until click-dick came in rapid succession from the driver's box,
+where Arthur sat, and shot after shot followed each other, one
+bullet grazing the ear of the highwayman at the horses' head,
+and another cutting through the slouched hat of his comrade
+near the stage.</p>
+
+<p>'Leave, or I'll shoot you dead! I've five more shots in
+this one, and two more revolvers in my pockets, and I'm not
+afraid!' Arthur yelled, jumping about like a maniac, as for the
+time being he was, and so startling the robbers that they fled
+precipitately, followed for a little distance by Arthur, who
+leaped from the stage and started in pursuit, with a revolver
+in each hand, and ball after ball flying ahead of him as he
+ran.</p>
+
+<p>When at last he came back, the passengers flocked around
+him, grasping his hands and blessing him as the preserver of
+their money, if not of their lives. After that Arthur was a
+lion, whom all people in the valley wished to see and talk with,
+and with whom the landlord bore as he had never borne with
+a guest before, for Arthur found fault with the rooms, which
+he likened to bath-tubs, and fault with the smells which came
+from the river, and fault with the smoke in the parlour, but
+made ample amends by the money he spent so lavishly, the
+scores of photographs he bought, and the puffs he wrote for the
+San Francisco papers, extolling the valley as the very gate of
+heaven, and the hotel as second only to the Palace, and signing
+himself &quot;Bumble Bees.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He went on every trail, and started for the highest possible
+peak, and when he stood on the top of old Capitan and looked
+down upon the world below, he capered and shouted like
+a madman, singing at the top of his voice, &quot;Mine eye have
+seen the coming of the glory of the Lord, glory, glory, hallelujah!&quot;
+until the rocky gorges rang with the wild echoes which
+went floating down the valley below, where the sun was shining
+so brightly and the grass was growing so green.</p>
+
+<p>On his return to San Francisco after an absence of several
+weeks, he took up his abode at the Palace Hotel, which he
+turned topsy-turvy with his vagaries; but as in the valley, so
+here in the city, the landlord could afford to bear much from
+one who spent his money so freely and paid so lavishly; and
+so he was allowed to change rooms every day if he liked, and
+half the plumbers in the city were called in to see what caused
+the smells which he declared worse than anything he had ever
+met in his life, and which were caused in part by the disinfectants
+which he bought by the wholesale and kept in his bath
+room, his wash-room, and under his bed, until the chambermaid
+tied her nose in camphor when she went in to do her
+work.</p>
+
+<p>But his career was brought to a close suddenly one morning
+in August, when, just as he was taking his coffee and rolls in
+his room, Charles brought him the following telegram:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Come immediately. There's the devil to pay.</p>
+
+<p>'TOM TRACY.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Arthur read the message two or three times, not at all disturbed
+by it, but vastly amused at its wording; then, putting
+it down, he went on with his breakfast until it was finished,
+when he took a card from his pocket and wrote upon it:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Pay him then, for I sha'n't come. ARTHUR TRACY.'</p></div>
+
+<p>This was handed to Charles with instructions to forward it
+to Tracy Park. This done, he gave no further thought to the
+message so full of such import to himself, but began to talk of
+and plan his contemplated trip to Tacoma by the next steamer
+which sailed. It was six o'clock when he had his dinner in his
+own private parlour, where he was served by both Charles and
+a waiter, and where a second telegram was brought him.</p>
+
+<p>'Confound it,' he said, 'have they nothing to do at home
+but to torment me with telegrams? Didn't I tell them to pay
+the old Harry and have done with it? What do they mean?'
+and putting the envelope down by his plate he went quietly on
+with his dinner until he was through, when he took it up,
+and, breaking the seal, read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Come at once. I need you. JERRIE.'</p></div>
+
+<p>That changed everything, and with a bound he was in the
+next room, gesticulating fiercely, and ordering Charles to step
+lively and get everything in readiness to start home on the first
+eastward bound train which left San Francisco.</p>
+
+<p>'That rascally Tom is a liar,' he said. 'It's not the old
+Harry to pay. It's Jerrie. Do you hear, it's Jerrie. Bring
+me some paper, quick, and don't stand staring at me as if I
+were a lunatic. It's Jerrie who needs me.'</p>
+
+<p>Charles brought the paper, on which his master wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Coming on the wings of the wind, Yours respectfully,</p>
+
+<p>'ARTHUR TRACY.'</p></div>
+
+<p>In less than half an hour this singular message was flying
+along the wires across the continent, and within a few hours
+Arthur was following it as fast as the steam horse could take
+him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVIII" id="CHAPTER_XLVIII" ></a>CHAPTER XLVIII.</h2>
+
+<h2>WHAT THEY WERE DOING AND HAD DONE IN SHANNONDALE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>If the earth had opened suddenly and swallowed up half
+the inhabitants of Shannondale the other half could not
+have been more astonished than they were at the news
+which Peterkin was the first to tell them, and which he had
+risen very early to do, before some one else should be before
+him. Irascible and quick-tempered as he was, he was easily
+appeased, and the fact that Jerrie was Arthur Tracy's daughter
+changed his opinion of her at once.</p>
+
+<p>'The biggest heiress in the county except my Ann 'Liza,
+and, by gum, I'm glad on't for her and Arthur. I allus said
+she was hisen, and by George, to think that I helped her into
+her fortin, for if I hadn't of knocked that rotten old table
+down she'd of never found them memoirs,' he said to the first
+person to whom he communicated the news, and then hurried
+off to buttonhole and enlighten others, until everybody knew
+and was discussing the strange story.</p>
+
+<p>Before noon scores of people had found it in their way to
+walk past the cottage, hoping to catch sight of Jerrie, while
+several went in and told her how glad they were for her and
+Mr. Arthur, and looked at her with wondering eyes as if she
+were not quite the same girl they had known as Jerrie Crawford.</p>
+
+<p>When, the previous night, Mrs. Crawford had listened to the
+story Jerrie told her after her return from the Park House,
+she had been for a few moments stupefied with amazement,
+and had sat motionless on her chair until she felt Jerrie's soft
+hands upon her head smoothing her silvery hair, and Jerrie's
+voice said to her:</p>
+
+<p>'Dear grandma, I told you your working days were over,
+and they are, for what is mine is yours and Harold's, and my
+home is your home always, so long as you live.'</p>
+
+<p>The poor old lady put her head upon Jerrie's arm and cried
+hysterically for a moment; then she rallied, and brushing
+away her tears, kissed the young girl who had been so much to
+her, and whom for a brief moment she feared she might have
+lost. Far into the night they sat, talking of the past and the
+future, and of Harold, who was in Tacoma, where he might
+have to remain for three or four weeks longer. He had written
+several times to his grandmother and once to Jerrie, but
+had made no mention of the diamonds, while in her letters to
+him Mrs. Crawford had refrained from telling him what some
+of the people were saying, and the construction they were putting
+upon his absence. Jerrie had not yet written to him, but,
+'I shall to-morrow,' she said, 'and tell him to hurry home, for
+I need him now, if ever.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie was very tired when she went at last to bed, but the
+dreamless sleep which came upon her, and which lasted until a
+late hour in the morning, did her good, and probably saved
+her from a relapse, which might have proved fatal. Still she
+was very pale and weak when she went down stairs about nine
+o'clock and found Tom waiting for her. He had been up since
+sunrise, strolling through the park, with a troubled, sorry look
+on his face for he was extremely sorry for himself, though very
+glad for Jerrie, whose sworn ally he was and would be to the
+end. In a way he had tried to comfort his mother by telling
+her that neither his uncle nor Jerrie would be unjust to her, if
+she'd only behave herself, and treat the latter as she ought,
+and not keep up such a high and mighty and injured air, as if
+Jerrie had done something wrong in finding out who she was.</p>
+
+<p>But Dolly would not be comforted, and her face wore a sullen,
+defiant expression, as she moved about the handsome house
+where she had queened it so long that she really looked upon
+it as her own, resenting bitterly the thought that another was
+to be mistress there. She had talked with her husband, and
+made him tell her exactly how much he was worth in his own
+right, and when he told her how little it was, she had exclaimed,
+angrily:</p>
+
+<p>'We are beggars, and may as well go back to Langley and
+sell codfish again.'</p>
+
+<p>She had seen Tom that morning, and when to her question,
+'Why are you up so early?' he replied, 'To attend to Jerrie's
+affairs,' she tossed her head scornfully, and said:
+'Before I'd crawl after any girl, much less Jerrie Crawford!
+You'd better be attending to your own sister. She's worse this
+morning, and looks as if she might die any minute.'</p>
+
+<p>Then Tom went to Maude, who, since the shock of the night
+before, had lain as if she were dead, except for her eyes, in
+which there was a new and wondrous light, and which looked
+up lovingly at Tom as he came in and kissed her, a most unusual
+thing for him to do.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Tom,' she whispered, 'come closer to me,' and as he
+bent down to her, she continued, 'is every thing Jerrie's?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, or will be. She is Uncle Arthur's daughter.'</p>
+
+<p>'Shall we be very poor?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, poor as a church mouse.'</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a pause, and when Maude spoke again she
+said slowly:</p>
+
+<p>'For me, no matter&mdash;sorry for you, and father and mother;
+but glad for Jerrie. Stand by her, Tom; tell mother not to
+be so bitter&mdash;it hurts me. Tell Harold, when he comes, I
+meant to do so much for him, but Jerrie will do it instead.
+Tell her I must see her, and send for Uncle Arthur.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a lump in Tom's throat as he left his sister's
+room, and going to the village, telegraphed to his uncle's head-quarters
+at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, that he was to
+come at once.</p>
+
+<p>At least a hundred people stopped him on his way to the
+office, asking if what they had heard was true, and to all he
+replied:</p>
+
+<p>'True as the gospel; we are floored, as Peterkin would say.'</p>
+
+<p>And then he hurried to the cottage to see Jerrie, and tell her
+of the message sent to Arthur, though not how it was worded
+After a moment he continued, hesitatingly, as if half ashamed
+of it:</p>
+
+<p>'I called at <i>Lubbertoo</i> last night to enquire after Ann Eliza's
+foot, and you ought to have seen Peterkin when I told him the
+news. At first he could not find any word in his vocabulary
+big enough to swear by, but after a little one came to him, and
+what do you think it was?'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie could not guess, and Tom continued.</p>
+
+<p>He said, &quot;by the great Peterkin!&quot; and then he swowed,
+and vowed, and snummed, and vummed, and dummed, and
+finally said he was glad of it, and had always known you were
+a Tracy. Ann Eliza was so glad she cried, and I think Billy
+cried, too, for he left the room suddenly, with very suspicious-looking
+eyes. Why, everybody is glad for you, Jerrie, and nobody
+seems to think how mean it is for us; but I'm not going
+to whine. I'm glad it's you, and so is Maude, and she wants
+to see you. I believe she's going to die, and&mdash;and&mdash;Jerrie&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Something choked Tom for a moment, then he went on:</p>
+
+<p>'If Uncle Arthur should get high, and order us out at once,
+as father seems to think he will, you'll&mdash;you'll&mdash;let us stay
+while Maude lives, won't you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Tom,' Jerrie said, reproachfully, 'What do you take me
+for, and why does your father think his brother will order him
+out?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know,' Tom replied, 'but he seems awfully afraid
+to meet him. Mother says he was up all night walking the
+floor and talking to himself, and yet he says he is glad, and he
+is coming this morning to see you and talk it over. I believe
+I hear him now speaking to Mrs. Crawford. Yes, 'tis he; so
+I guess I'll go; and when I hear from my telegram I'll let you
+know. Good-bye.'</p>
+
+<p>A moment after Tom left the room his father entered it,
+looking haggard and old, and frightened, too, it seemed to
+Jerrie, as she went forward to meet him with a cheery 'good-morning,
+Uncle Frank.'</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time she had addressed him by that name,
+and her smile was so bright and her manner so cordial that
+for an instant the cloud lifted from his face, but soon came
+back darker than ever as he declined the seat she offered him
+and stood tremblingly before her.</p>
+
+<p>Frank had not slept a wink the previous night, nor had he
+been in bed, but had walked his room until his wife said to him
+angrily:</p>
+
+<p>'I thought you were glad; seems to me you don't act like
+it; but for pity's sake stop walking, or go somewhere else
+do it and not keep me awake.'</p>
+
+<p>Then he went into the hall outside, and there he walked the
+livelong night, trying to think what he should say to Jerrie,
+and wondering what she would say to him, for he meant to tell
+her everything. Nothing could prevent his doing that; and as
+soon as he thought she would see him he started for the cottage,
+taking with him the Bible, the photograph and the letter
+he had secreted so long. All the way there, he was repeating
+to himself the form of speech with which he should commence,
+but when Jerrie said to him, so graciously, 'Good morning,
+Uncle Frank,' the words left him, and he began, impetuously;</p>
+
+<p>'Don't call me uncle. Don't speak to me, Jerrie, until you have
+heard what I have come to confess on my knees, with my white
+head upon the floor, if you will it so, and that would not half
+express the shame and remorse with which I stand before you
+and tell you I am a cheat, a liar, a villain, and have been since
+that day when I first saw you and that dead woman we thought
+your mother.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie was dumb with surprise, and did not speak or move
+as he went on rapidly, telling her the whole, with no attempt
+at an excuse for himself, except so far as to report what he had
+done in a business point of view, making provision for her in
+case of his death and enjoining it upon his children to see that
+his wishes were carried out.</p>
+
+<p>'Here is the Bible,' he said, laying the book in her lap.
+'Here is the photograph, and here the letter which you gave
+me to post, and which, had it been sent, might have cleared the
+mystery sooner.'</p>
+
+<p>He had made his confession, and he stood before her with
+clasped hands and an expression upon his face such as a criminal
+might wear when awaiting the jury's decision. But Jerrie neither
+looked at him nor spoke, for through a rain of tears she was
+gazing upon the sweet face, sadder and thinner than the face
+of Gretchen in the window, but so like it that there could be
+no mistaking it, and so like to the face which had haunted her
+so often, and seemed so near to her.</p>
+
+<p>'Mother, mother! I remember you as you are here, sick and
+sorry, but oh, so lovely!' she said, as she pressed her lips again
+and again to the picture, with no thought or care for the
+wretched man who had come a step nearer to her, and who said
+at last:</p>
+
+<p>'Will you never speak to me, Jerrie? Never tell me how
+much you despise me?'</p>
+
+<p>'Then she looked up at the face quivering with anguish and
+entreaty, and the sight melted her at once. Indeed, as he had
+talked she had scarcely felt any resentment toward him, for
+she was sure that though his error had been great, his contrition
+and remorse had been greater, and she thought of him
+only as Maude's father and the man who had always been kind
+to her. And she made him believe at last that she forgave him
+for Maude's sake, if not for his own.</p>
+
+<p>'Had my life been a wretched one because of your conduct,'
+she said, 'I might have found it harder to forgive you, but it
+has not. I have not been the daughter of Tracy Park, it is
+true, but I have been the petted child of the cottage, and I
+would rather have lived with Harold in poverty all these years
+than to have been rich without him. And do you know, I
+think it was noble in you to tell me, when you might have kept
+it to yourself.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no. I couldn't have done that much longer,' he exclaimed,
+energetically, as he began to walk up and down the
+room. 'I could not bear it. And the shadow which for years
+has been with me night and day, counselling me for bad, was
+growing so black, and huge, and unendurable that I must have
+confessed or died. But it is gone now, or will be when I have
+told my brother.'</p>
+
+<p>'Told your brother! Mr. Tracy&mdash;Uncle Frank&mdash;you cannot
+mean to do that?' Jerrie exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'But I do mean to do it,' Frank replied, 'as a part of my
+punishment, and he will not forgive as you have done. He
+will turn me out at once, as he ought to do.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie thought this very likely, and with all her powers she
+strove to dissuade Frank from making a confession which could
+do no possible good, and might result in untold harm.</p>
+
+<p>'Remember Maude,' she said, 'and the effect this thing
+would have upon her if your brother should resort to immediate
+and violent means, as he might in his first frenzy.'</p>
+
+<p>'But, I mean to tell Maude, too,' Frank replied.</p>
+
+<p>Then Jerrie looked upon him as madder than Arthur himself,
+and talked so rapidly and argued so well that he consented
+at last to keep his own counsel, for the present at least, unless
+the shadow still haunted him, in which case he must tell as an
+act of contrition or penance.</p>
+
+<p>'He will think the photograph came with the other papers
+in the bag,' Jerrie said, as she kissed the sweet face, which
+looked so much like life that it was hard to think there was
+not real love and tenderness in the eyes which looked into hers
+so steadfastly.</p>
+
+<p>It was the hardest to forgive the letter hidden so long, and
+Jerrie did feel a pang of resentment, or something like it, as
+she took it in her hand and thought of the day when Arthur
+had confided it to her, saying he could trust her when he could
+not another. And she had trusted Frank, who had not been
+true to the trust, and here, after the lapse of years, was the letter,
+in her hands, with its singular superscription, covering its
+whole side, and its seal unbroken. But she would break it
+now. Surely she might do that, if Arthur was never to see it;
+and after a moment's hesitancy, she opened it, and read, first,
+wild, crazy sentences, full of love and tenderness for the little
+Gretchen to whom they were addressed, and whom the writer
+sometimes spoke to as living, and again as dead. There was
+the expression of a strong desire to see her, a wish for her to
+come where her husband was waiting for her, and her diamonds
+too. Here Jerrie started with an exclamation of surprise, and
+involuntarily read aloud:</p>
+
+<p>'The most exquisite diamonds you ever saw, and I long to
+see them on you. They are safe, too&mdash;safe from her&mdash;Mrs.
+Frank Tracy&mdash;who had the boldness to flaunt them in my face
+at a party the other night. How she came by them I can't
+guess; but I know how she lost them, I found them on her
+dressing-table, where she left them when she went to breakfast,
+and took possession at once. That was no theft, for they are
+mine, or rather yours, and are waiting for you in my private
+drawer, where no one has ever looked, except a young girl
+called Jerrie, who interests me greatly, she is so much like
+what you must have been when a child. There has been
+some trouble about the diamonds&mdash;I hardly know what, my
+head is in such a buzzing most of the time that everything goes
+from me but you. Oh, if I had remembered you years ago as I
+do now&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie could read no further, for the letter dropped from her
+hands, as she cried joyfully:</p>
+
+<p>'I knew he had them. I was sure of it, though I did not
+know where they were.'</p>
+
+<p>Then very briefly she explained to Frank that on the morning
+when the diamonds were missed, Arthur was so excited
+because Harold had been in a way accused, and had rambled
+off into German, and said many things which made her know
+that he had taken them himself and secreted them.</p>
+
+<p>'You remember my sickness,' she said, and how strangely I
+talked of going to prison as an accessory or a substitute? Well,
+it was for your brother I was ready to go; and when he told
+me, as he did one day, that he knew nothing of the diamonds,
+I was never more astonished in my life; but afterward, as I
+grew older, I came to believe that he had forgotten them, as he
+did other things, and that some time he would remember and
+make restitution, I am glad we know where they are, but we
+cannot get them until he returns. When do you think that will
+be?'</p>
+
+<p>Frank did not know. It would depend, he said, upon whether
+he was in San Francisco when Tom's telegram was received. If
+he were and started at once, travelling day and night, he would
+be home in a week.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed a long time to wait in Jerrie's state of mind, and
+very, very short to the repentant man, who shrank from his
+brother's return as from an impending evil, although it was a
+relief to think that he need not tell him what a hypocrite he had
+been.</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you, Jerrie,' he said at last, as he rose to go, 'Thank
+you for being so kind to me. I did not deserve it. I did not
+expect it. Heaven bless you. I am glad for you, and so is
+Maude. Oh, Jerrie, heaven is dealing hard with me to take
+her from me, and yet it is just. I sinned for her; sinned to see
+her in the place I was sure was yours, although the shadow
+was always telling me that I did not and never could know for
+sure that you were Arthur's child; but I did, and I meant to go
+to Germany some day, when I had the language a little better,
+and clear it up, and then I had promised myself to tell you.
+Will you lay again that you forgive me before I go back to
+Maude?'</p>
+
+<p>He was standing before her with his white head dropped upon
+his hat, the very picture of misery and remorse, and Jerrie
+laid her hand upon his head, and said:</p>
+
+<p>'I do forgive you, Uncle Frank, fully and freely, for Maude's
+sake if no other; and if she lives what is mine shall be hers.
+Tell her so, and tell her I am coming to see her as soon as I
+am able, I am so tired to-day, and everything is so strange.
+Oh, if Harold were here.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie was indeed so tired and exhausted that for the remainder
+of the day she lay upon the couch in her room, seeing no
+one but Judge St. Claire and Tom, both of whom came up together,
+the latter bringing the answer to his telegram, and asking
+what to do next.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, Tom,' Jerrie said, as she read Arthur's reply, 'pay
+him then, for I shan't come,' what does he mean? What did
+you say to him, and whom are you to pay?'</p>
+
+<p>With a half comical smile Tom replied, 'I told him the Old
+Nick was to pay, though I am afraid I used a stronger name
+for his Satanic majesty than that. I guess you'll have to try
+what you can do.'</p>
+
+<p>And so Jerrie's message, 'I need you,' went across the continent,
+and brought the ready response, 'coming on the wings
+of the wind.' It was Judge St. Claire who wrote to Harold,
+for Jerrie's nerveless fingers could not grasp the pen, and she
+could only dictate what she wished the judge to say.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell him everything,' she said, 'and how much I want him
+here; and tell him, too, of Maude, whose life hangs on a thread.
+That may bring him sooner.'</p>
+
+<p>It was three days before Jerrie went again to the Park House,
+and then Tom came for her, saying Maude was failing very fast.
+The shock which had come upon her so suddenly with regard
+to Jerrie's birth and the suspicions resting upon Harold had
+shortened the life nearing its close, and the moment Jerrie
+entered the room she knew the worst, and with a storm of sobs
+and tears knelt by the sick girl's couch and cried:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Maude, Maude, I can't bear it. I'd give up everything
+to save you. Oh, Maude, Maude, you don't know how much
+I love you!'</p>
+
+<p>Maude was very calm, though her lips quivered a little and
+the tears filled her eyes as she put her hand caressingly upon
+Jerrie's golden hair. A great change had come over Maude
+since the night when she heard Jerrie's strange story&mdash;a change
+for the better some might have thought, although the physician
+who attended her gave no hope. She neither coughed nor
+suffered pain, and could talk all she liked, although often in a
+whisper, she was so very weak.
+'Yes, Jerrie,' she said, 'I know you love me, and it makes
+me very glad, and dying seems easier for it; for, Jerrie, oh,
+Jerrie! once before I knew about you, and when I feared I
+might die, I wrote something on paper for father to see when
+I was dead, and it was that he should take you in my place, you
+and Harold.'</p>
+
+<p>Maude's voice shook a little here, but she soon steadied it and
+went on:</p>
+
+<p>'I wanted him to give you what I thought would be mine
+had I lived, and what all the time was yours. Oh, Jerrie, how
+can you help hating me, who have stood so long where you
+ought to have stood, and enjoyed what you ought to have enjoyed?'</p>
+
+<p>'Maude,' Jerrie cried, as she kissed the little wan face,
+'don't talk like that; as if I, or any one, could ever have hated
+you. Why, I worshiped you as some little empress when I
+used to see you in your bright sashes and yellow kid boots,
+with the amber beads around your neck; and if the contrast
+between your finery and my high-necked gingham apron and
+white sun-bonnet sometimes struck me painfully, I had no wish
+to take the boots and sashes from you, whom they fitted so admirably;
+and as we grew older and you did not shrink from
+or slight Jerrie Crawford, I cannot tell you how great was the
+love which grew in my heart for you, the dearest girl friend I
+ever had, and a thousand times dearer now that I know you are
+my cousin.'</p>
+
+<p>Maude was silent for a moment, and then she asked
+abruptly:</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie, why did you never fall in love with Harold?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Maude!' and Jerrie started as if Maude had struck
+her, while the tell-tale blood rushed to her face, and into her
+eyes there came a look which even Maude could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>'Jerrie,' she exclaimed, 'forgive me. I didn't know, I never
+guessed, I was go stupid; but I have been thinking so much
+since Harold went away. Does he know about you? who you
+are? and how long before he will come home?'</p>
+
+<p>'Judge St. Claire wrote him everything three days ago,'
+Jerrie replied, 'and told him how sick you were. That will
+surely bring him at once, if it is possible for him to leave; but
+it will he three or four days now before the letter will reach him,
+and take a week for him to come. Would you like to see him
+very much?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Maude answered with a sob, 'very much, but I never
+shall. Jerrie, did Harold ever&mdash;did he&mdash;does he&mdash;love you?'</p>
+
+<p>'He never told me so,' Jerrie answered, frankly; 'but I have
+thought that he loved you'</p>
+
+<p>'N&mdash;no,' Maude answered, piteously, with the great tears in
+her eyes. 'It is all a mistake, and when I am dead and
+Harold comes, promise to tell him something from me, will
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Jerrie answered, and Maude continued:</p>
+
+<p>'Tell him the very first time you and he are alone together,
+and speak of me, that I have been thinking and thinking until
+it came to me clear as day that it was all a mistake, a stupid
+blunder on my part. I was always stupid, you know; but I
+believe my brain is a little clearer now. Will you tell him,
+Jerrie?'</p>
+
+<p>'Mistake about what?' Jerrie asked with a vague apprehension
+that the task imposed upon her might not be a pleasant
+one if she know all it involved.</p>
+
+<p>'Harold will tell you what,' Maude answered 'He will
+understand what I mean, and you must tell him, for I shall not
+be here when he comes, I am sure of it. I hope to live till
+Uncle Arthur comes, for I must see him and ask him not to be
+hard on poor father, and tell him that I am sorry that I have
+been so long in your place where you should have been. You
+will stay here when he comes, and be with me to the last. I
+want you with me&mdash;want you to hold my hand when I say
+good-bye for ever. You are so strong that I shall not be afraid
+with you to see and hear as long as I hear and see anything.'</p>
+
+<p>'And are you afraid?' Jerrie asked, and Maude replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Of the death struggle, yes; but not what lies beyond where
+He is, the Saviour, for I know I am going to Heaven; and when
+you think me asleep I am often praying silently for more faith
+and love, and for you all, that you may one day come where I
+soon shall be. Heaven is very, very beautiful, for I have seen
+it in my dreams&mdash;a material heaven some would say, for there
+are trees and flowers, and grass; and on a golden bench, beneath
+a tree whose leaves are like emeralds, and whose blossoms
+are like pearls, I am sitting, on the bank of a shining river,
+resting, resting, and waiting, as little Pilgrim waited for the
+coming of the Master, and for you all.'</p>
+
+<p>Maude was very tired now, and her voice was so low that
+Jerrie could scarcely hear it, while the eyelids drooped heavily,
+and in a few moments she fell asleep, with a rapt look on her
+as if she were already resting on the golden seat beneath the
+tree whose leaves were emeralds and whose blossoms were like
+pearls.</p>
+
+<p>That night Jerrie wrote as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Dear Harold, come home as soon as you can, for Maude is very
+low, and, unless you come soon, you will never see her again. The
+judge has written you of me, but I must tell you myself that
+nothing can ever change me from the Jerrie of old; and the fact
+which makes me the happiest is that now I can help you who have
+been so kind to me. How I long to see you and talk it all over.
+We expect Mr. Arthur in a few days. I cannot call him father yet,
+until he has given me the right to do so by calling me daughter
+first; but to myself I am calling Gretchen mother all the time&mdash;dear,
+sweet, darling little mother! Oh, Harold, you must come
+home and share my happiness. Truly Harold, you ought to see
+how stiffly Mrs. Tracy carries herself toward me&mdash;stiffer, if possible,
+than she did when I came up the front steps in my muddy
+shoes and she bade me go round to the back door. Poor Mrs.
+Tracy!'</p></div>
+
+<p>During the next few days Jerrie stayed with Maude, who
+constantly grew weaker and weaker, and who asked about every
+hour if anything had been heard from her uncle since his message
+that he was coming.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall never see Harold,' she said to Jerrie; but I must
+live till uncle Arthur comes, and you are put in your right
+place.'</p>
+
+<p>And at last, one lovely September morning, a telegram was
+brought to Frank from Charles, which said the travellers would
+be home that afternoon, and that the carriage must be sent to
+meet them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIX" id="CHAPTER_XLIX" ></a>CHAPTER XLIX.</h2>
+
+<h2>TELLING ARTHUR.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Who should do the telling was the question which for
+some time was discussed by Frank and Judge St.
+Claire and Jerrie. Naturally the task fell upon the
+latter, who for three or four days prior to Arthur's arrival remained
+altogether at the Park House, watching by Maude, and
+going over and over again in her mind what she should say
+and how she should commence.</p>
+
+<p>At last the announcement came that Arthur was in Albany,
+and then it seemed to Jerrie that she had suddenly turned into
+stone, for every thought and feeling had left her, and she had
+no plan or action or speech as she moved mechanically about
+Arthur's rooms, making them bright with flowers, especially
+the Gretchen room, which seemed a bower of beauty when her
+skilful hands had finished it. Once, as she was passing through
+the hall with her arms full of flowers she met Mrs. Tracy,
+whose face wore a most forbidding expression as she said:</p>
+
+<p>'I hope you will leave a few flowers for Maude. You know
+she likes them so much.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie made no reply, but by the pang of resentment which
+shot through her heart at the smallness of the woman, she knew
+she was not past all feeling, and that there was still something
+human in the stone, as she had styled herself.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the day wore on, every minute seeming an hour, and
+every hour a day, until at last Jerrie heard the carriage driving
+down the avenue, and not long after the whistle of the engine
+in the distance. Then, bending over Maude and kissing
+her fondly, she said:</p>
+
+<p>'Pray for me, darling, I am going to meet my father.'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur had been very quiet during the first part of the
+journey from San Francisco, and it was with difficulty that
+Charles could get a word from him.</p>
+
+<p>'Let me alone,' he said once, when spoken to. 'I am with
+Gretchen. She is on the train with me, and I'm trying to make
+out what it is she is telling me.'</p>
+
+<p>But after Chicago was left behind his mood changed, and he
+became as wild and excitable as he had before been abstracted
+and silent. Sometimes he was on the top of old Capitan, looking
+down into the valley below, and singing 'glory, hallelujah,'
+at the top of his voice, while the startled passengers kept aloof
+from him as from a lunatic. Again he was out upon the platform
+urging the conductor to greater speed; and when at last Shannondale
+was reached, he bounded from the car upon the platform
+before the train stopped, and was collaring Rob, the coachman,
+and demanding of him to know what was the matter with
+Jerrie, and why he had been sent for. Rob, who had received
+his instructions to be wholly non-committal answered stolidly
+that nothing was the matter with Jerrie, but that Miss Maude
+was very sick and probably would not live many days.</p>
+
+<p>'Is that all?' Arthur said, gloomily, as he entered the carriage.
+'I do not see what the old Harry has to do with
+Maude's dying, and certainly Tom's telegram said something
+about that chap. I have it in my pocket. Yes, here it is.
+&quot;Come immediately. The devil is to pay.&quot; That doesn't mean
+Maude. There is something else Rob has not told me. 'Here,
+you rascal, you are keeping something from me! What is it?
+Out with it!' he shouted to the driver, as he thrust his head
+from the carriage window, where he kept it, and in this way
+was driven to the door of the Park House, where Frank was
+waiting for him outside, and where, inside, Jerrie stood, holding
+fast to the banisters of the stairs, her heart throbbing wildly
+one moment, and the next seeming to lie pulseless as a piece of
+lead.</p>
+
+<p>She heard Arthur's voice as he came up the steps, speaking
+to Frank, and asking why he had been sent for; and the next
+moment she saw him entering the hall, tall and erect, but with
+the wild look in his eyes which she knew so well, but which
+changed at once to a softer expression as they fell upon her.</p>
+
+<p>'Cherry, you here!' he cried, with a joyful ring in his voice
+as he sprang to her side and kissed her forehead and lips.</p>
+
+<p>Then Jerrie grew calm instantly, although she could scarcely
+restrain herself from falling on his neck and sobbing out, 'Oh,
+my father! I am your daughter Jerrie!' But the time for
+this had not come, and when he questioned her eagerly as to
+why she had sent for him, she only replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Maude is very sick. But come with me to your rooms, and
+I will tell you everything.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then there is the deuce to pay; I thought so,' he said, as he
+followed her upstairs into the Gretchen room, where he stood
+for a moment, amazed at the effect produced by the flowers and
+vines which Jerrie had arranged so skilfully, 'It is like Eden,'
+he said, 'and Gretchen is here with me. Darling Gretchen!'
+he continued, as he walked up to the picture and kissed the
+lovely face which, it seemed to Jerrie, smiled in benediction
+upon them both, the husband and the daughter, as they stood
+there side by side, Jerrie's hands resting on his shoulder, which
+she pressed hard, as if to steady herself, while he talked to the
+inanimate face before him.</p>
+
+<p>'Have you been lonesome, Gretchen, and are you glad to
+have me back again! Poor little Gretchen!' And now he
+turned to Jerrie, who was pale to the lips, and said: 'It all
+came to me on the top of those mountains about Gretchen&mdash;who
+she was, and how I forgot her so long&mdash;that is the strangest
+of all; and, Cherry,' here his voice dropped to a whisper,
+'I know for sure that Gretchen is dead&mdash;that came to me, too.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Gretchen is dead,' Jerrie answered him, with the sound
+of a sob in her own voice, while her hands tightened their grasp
+on his shoulder, as she went on; 'I have had a message from
+Gretchen, and that is why we sent for you.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie's hands were not strong enough to hold him then, and,
+wrenching himself from her, he stood confronting her with a
+look more like that of a maniac than any she had ever seen in
+him before, and which might have frightened one with nerves
+less strong than Jerrie's. But she was not afraid, and a strange
+calmness fell upon her, now that she had actually reached a
+point where she must act, and her eyes, which looked so steadily
+into Arthur's, held them fast, even while he interrogated her
+rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>'A message from Gretchen! How, when, and where is it?
+Give it to me quick, or tell me about it? Where is she, and
+when is she coming?'</p>
+
+<p>'Never!' answered Jerrie sadly. 'I told you she was dead.
+But sit here,' and she motioned him to a large cushioned chair.
+'Sit here and let me tell you what I know of Gretchen.'</p>
+
+<p>Something in the girl's manner mastered him and made him
+a child in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Sinking into the chair, pale and panting with excitement, he
+leaned his head back wearily, and closing his eyes, said to her:</p>
+
+<p>'Begin. What did Gretchen write?'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie felt that she could not stand all through the interview,
+and bringing a low ottoman to Arthur's side, seated herself
+upon it just where she could look into his face and detect
+every change in it.</p>
+
+<p>'Let me tell you of Gretchen as she was when you first knew
+her,' she said, 'and then you will be better able to judge of the
+truth of all I know.'</p>
+
+<p>He did not reply, and she went on:</p>
+
+<p>'Gretchen was very young&mdash;sixteen or seventeen&mdash;when
+you first saw her knitting in the sunshine under the trees in
+Wiesbaden, and very beautiful, too&mdash;so beautiful that you went
+again and again to look at her and talk to her, until you came
+to love her very much, and told her so at last; but you seemed
+so much above her that she could not believe you at first. At
+last, however, you made her understand, and when her mother
+died suddenly&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Her mother was Mrs. Heinrich, and kept a kind of fancy
+store,' Arthur interposed, as if anxious that nothing should be
+omitted.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, she kept a fancy store,' Jerrie rejoined; 'and when
+she died suddenly and left Gretchen alone, you said to her,
+&quot;We must be married at once,&quot; and you were, in the little
+English chapel, by the Rev. Mr. Eaton, who was then rector.'
+Here Arthur's eyes opened wide and fixed themselves wonderingly
+upon Jerrie, as he said:</p>
+
+<p>'Are you the old Harry that you know all this? But go
+on; don't stop; it all comes back to me so plain when I hear
+you tell it. She wore a straw bonnet trimmed with blue, and
+a white dress, but took it off directly for a black one because
+her mother was dead. Did she tell you that?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' Jerrie replied. 'She told me nothing of the dress,
+only how happy she was with you, whom she loved so much,
+and who loved her and made her so happy for a time that earth
+seemed like heaven to her, and then&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Here Jerrie faltered a little, but Arthur's sharp 'What then?'
+kept her up, and she continued:</p>
+
+<p>'Then something came to you, and you began to forget
+everything, even poor little Gretchen, and went away for weeks
+and left her very sad and lonely, not knowing where you were;
+and then, after some months, you went away and never came
+back again to the little wife who waited, and watched, and
+prayed, and wanted you so badly.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Cherry! oh, Gretchen! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean
+to do it; I surely didn't. May God forgive me for forgetting
+the little wife! Was it long? Was it months, or was it years?
+I can't remember, only that there was a Gretchen, and I left
+her,' Arthur said.</p>
+
+<p>'It was years, four or five, and&mdash;and'&mdash;Jerrie's breath came
+heavily now and her words slowly, for she was nearing the
+point relating to herself and wondering what the effect would
+be upon him. 'After a while there came into Gretchen's life
+the dawning of a great hope, a great joy, which she felt would
+make you glad, and wishing to keep it a secret till you came
+home, she only gave you a hint of it. She wrote: &quot;I have
+something to tell you which will make you as happy as it does
+me&mdash;&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>'Stop!' and Arthur put out both his hands as if groping for
+something which he could not find; then he said, 'Go on,' and
+Jerrie went on, slowly now, for every word was an effort, and
+spoken so low that Arthur bent forward to listen to her.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know just where Gretchen's home was when she
+lived alone waiting for you. I only know that after a while
+there came to it a little baby&mdash;a girl baby&mdash;Gretchen's and
+yours&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She did not get any further, for with a bound Arthur was
+on his feet, every faculty alert, every nerve strung to its utmost
+pitch, and every muscle of his face quivering with wild excitement,
+as he exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>'A baby! Gretchen's baby and mine! A little girl! Oh,
+Cherry, if you are deceiving me now!'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie, too, had risen, and was standing before him with her
+hands upon his arm and her eyes, so like Gretchen's, looking
+into his, as she said:</p>
+
+<p>'I am not deceiving you. There was a baby born to you
+and Gretchen sometime in January, 18&mdash;, and it was christened
+in the little church where you were married by the Rev. Mr.
+Eaton. Oh, Mr. Arthur, how can I tell you; she, the baby,
+is living yet&mdash;grown to womanhood now, for this happened
+about twenty years ago, and the girl is almost twenty&mdash;and is
+waiting and longing so much for her father to recognize and
+claim her. Oh, don't you understand me? Look at <i>me</i> and
+then at Gretchen's picture!'</p>
+
+<p>For an instant Arthur stood like one stricken with catalepsy,
+his eyes leaping from Jerry's face to Gretchen's, and from
+Gretchen's back to Jerrie's, and then, with a motion of his
+hands as if fanning the air furiously, he gasped:</p>
+
+<p>'Twenty years ago&mdash;twenty years ago? How old are you,
+Cherry?'</p>
+
+<p>'About twenty,' she answered, but her voice was a whisper,
+and her head fell forward a little, though she kept her eyes
+upon Arthur, who went on:</p>
+
+<p>'And they christened my baby and Gretchen's you say?
+What name did they give her? Speak quick, for I believe I
+am dying.'</p>
+
+<p>'They called her Jerrine, but you know her as Jerrie, for&mdash;for
+I am Gretchen's daughter,' fell from Jerrie's lips.</p>
+
+<p>With a wild, glad cry, 'My daughter! oh, my daughter!
+Thank God! thank God!' Arthur sank back into the chair,
+from which he had risen, fainting and insensible.</p>
+
+<p>For hours he lay in a state so nearly resembling death that
+but for the physician's reassurance that there was no danger,
+Jerrie would have believed the great joy given her was to be
+taken from her at once. But just as the twilight shadows
+began to gather in the room he came to himself, waking as
+from some quiet dream, and looking around him until his eyes
+fell upon Jerrie sitting by his side; then into his white face
+there flashed a look of ineffable joy and tenderness and love,
+as he said, with a smile the most willing and sweet Jerrie had
+ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>'My daughter, my little Cherry, who came to me up the
+ladder, with Gretchen's eyes and Gretchen's voice, and I did
+not know her&mdash;have not known her all these years, although
+she has so puzzled and bewildered me at times. My daughter!
+oh, my daughter!'</p>
+
+<p>He accepted her unquestioningly, and with a glad cry Jerrie
+threw herself into the arms he stretched toward her, and on
+her father's bosom gave free vent to the feelings she had restrained
+so long, sobbing passionately as she felt Arthur's
+kisses upon her face, and his caressing hands upon her hair,
+as he kept repeating:</p>
+
+<p>'My daughter! Gretchen's baby and mine!'</p>
+
+<p>'There is more to tell. I have not heard it all, or how you
+came by the information,' he said, when Jerrie was little
+composed and could look at and speak to him without a burst
+of tears.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, there is much more. There is a letter for you, with
+those you wrote to her,' Jerrie said, 'but you must not have
+them to-night. To-morrow you will be stronger, now you must
+rest.'</p>
+
+<p>She spoke like one with authority, and he did just what she
+bade him do&mdash;took the food she brought him, went to bed
+when she said he must, and, with her hand locked in his, fell
+into a heavy slumber, which lasted all through the night, and
+late into the next morning. It almost seemed as if he would
+never waken, the sleep was so like death; but the doctor who
+watched him carefully quieted Jerrie's fears and told her it
+would do her father good, and that in all probability he would
+awake with a clearer mind than he had had in years, for as a
+great and sudden shock sometimes produces insanity, so, contrarywise,
+it sometimes restored a shattered mind to its equilibrium.</p>
+
+<p>And the doctor was partially correct, for when at last Arthur
+awoke he seemed natural and bright, with a recollection of all
+which had happened the day before, and an earnest desire for
+the letters and the rest of the story which Jerrie told him,
+with her arm across his neck, and her cheek laid occasionally
+against his, as she read him the letter directed to his friends,
+and then showed him the certificate of her birth and her
+mother's death.</p>
+
+<p>'Born January 1st, 18&mdash;, to Arthur Tracy and Marguerite,
+his wife, a daughter,' Arthur repeated, again and again, and as
+often as he did so he kissed the bright face which smiled at
+him through tears, for there was almost as much sadness as
+joy mingled with the reading of those messages from the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Just what Gretchen's letter to Arthur contained, Jerrie never
+knew, except that it was full of love and tenderness, with no
+word of complaint for the neglect and forgetfulness which must
+have hastened her death.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Gretchen, I can't bear it, I can't,' Arthur moaned, as
+he laid his hand upon Jerrie's shoulder and sobbed like a child.
+'To think I could forget her, and she so sweet and good.'</p>
+
+<p>Everything came back to him for a time, and he repeated
+to Jerrie much which was of interest to her concerning her
+mother, but with which the reader has nothing to do; while
+Jerrie, in turn, told him all she could remember of her life in
+the old house where Gretchen had died. Idle fancies she had
+sometimes thought these memories of the past, but now she
+knew they were real. And Arthur hung upon her words with
+breathless interest, moaning occasionally when she told of the
+sweet-faced woman who cried so much and prayed so much,
+and whose death scene she had once enacted for him when a
+little child. At his own letters addressed to Gretchen he barely
+glanced, muttering, as he did so, 'how could I have written
+such crazy bosh as that?' and then suddenly recollecting himself,
+he asked for the photograph mentioned in Gretchen's letter
+to his friends, and which he seemed to think had come with
+the other papers, just as Jerrie meant he should. Taking it
+from the bag she handed it to him, while his tears fell like
+rain as he gazed upon the face which was far too young to wear
+the sad, wan look it did.</p>
+
+<p>'That is as I remember her,' Jerrie said, referring again to the
+strange ideas which had filled her brain and made her sure
+that not the dark woman found dead at her side was her
+mother, but another and far different person, whose face
+haunted her so continually and whose voice she sometimes
+seemed to hear speaking to her from the dim shadows of the far-off
+past when they lived in the little house in Wiesbaden,
+where the picture hung on the wall.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur remembered the picture well and when it was taken,
+though that, too, had faded from his mind, until Jerrie told
+him of it.</p>
+
+<p>'We will go there together, Cherry,' he said, 'you and I,
+and find the house and the picture, and Gretchen's grave, and
+bring them home with us. There is room for them at Tracy
+Park.</p>
+
+<p>He was beginning to talk wildly now, but Jerrie quieted
+him, and taking up the box of diamonds opened it suddenly
+and held it before his eyes. In reading the letters he had not
+seemed to pay any attention to the diamonds, but when Jerrie
+said to him; 'These were mother's. You sent them to her
+from England,' he replied, 'Yes, I remember. I bought them
+in Paris with other things&mdash;dresses, I think&mdash;for her,' while
+into his face there came a troubled look as if he were trying to
+think of something.</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie, who could read him so well, saw the look, and, guessing
+at once its cause, hastened to say:</p>
+
+<p>'Father, do you remember that you gave Mrs. Tracy some
+diamonds like these, and that some one took them from her?
+Try and think,' she continued, as she saw the troubled look
+deepen on his face, and the fire beginning to kindle in his eyes.
+'It was years ago, just after a party Mrs. Tracy gave, and at
+which she wore them. You were there and thought they were
+Gretchen's, did you not?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ye-es,' he answered slowly. 'I believe I did. What did I
+do with them? Do you know?'</p>
+
+<p>'I think you put them in your private drawer. Suppose you
+look and see.'</p>
+
+<p>Obedient to her as a child, Arthur opened his private drawer,
+bringing out one thing after another, all mementoes of the old
+Gretchen days, and finally the diamonds, at which be looked
+with wonder and fear, as he said to Jerrie:</p>
+
+<p>'Did I take them? Will they call it a steal? I thought
+they were Gretchen's. I remember now.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie did not tell him then of the trouble the secreting of
+the diamonds had brought to her and Harold, but she said:</p>
+
+<p>'No one will think it a steal, and Mrs. Tracy will be glad to
+get her jewels back. May I take them to her now?'</p>
+
+<p>'Take them to her?&mdash;no,' Arthur said, decidedly. 'She has
+another set&mdash;I bought them for her, and she wears them all day
+long. Ha, ha! diamonds in the morning, with a cotton gown;'
+and he laughed immoderately at what be thought Dolly's bad
+taste. 'Take them to her? No! They are yours.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I have mother's,' Jerrie pleaded; 'and I cannot wear
+two sets.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, you can&mdash;one to-day, one to-morrow. I mean you
+shall have seven&mdash;one for everyday in the week. What has
+Dolly to do with diamonds. They are for ladies, and she is
+only a whitewashed one.'</p>
+
+<p>He was very much excited, and it took all Jerrie's tact to
+soothe and quiet him.</p>
+
+<p>'Father,' she began and then he stopped short, for the sound
+of that name spoken by Jerrie had a mighty power over him&mdash;'Father,
+listen to me a moment.'</p>
+
+<p>And then she told him of the suspicions cast upon Harold,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>'You do not wish him to suffer any more?'</p>
+
+<p>'Harold? The boy who found you in the carpet-bag&mdash;Amy's
+boy! No, never! Where is he that I have not seen him yet?
+Does he know you are my daughter?'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie had not mentioned Harold before, but she told her
+father now where he was, and why he had gone, and that she
+had written him to come home, on Maude's account, if on no
+other.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;Maude&mdash;I remember; but Harold did not care for
+Maude. Still, he had better come. I want him here with you
+and me; and you must stay here now, day and night. Select
+any room or rooms you please; all is yours, my daughter.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I cannot leave grandma,' Jerrie said.</p>
+
+<p>'Let her come, too,' Arthur replied. 'There is room for
+her.'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' Jerrie persisted; 'that would not be best. Grandma
+could not live with Mrs. Tracy.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then let Dolly go at once, I'll give the order now;' and
+Arthur put out his hand to the bell-cord.</p>
+
+<p>But Jerrie stopped him instantly, saying to him:</p>
+
+<p>'Remember Maude. While she lives she must stay here.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I forgot Maude. Poor little Maude, I have not seen
+her yet,' Arthur replied, subdued at once, and willing now
+that Jerrie should take the jewels to Dolly, who deserved but
+little forbearance from Jerrie's hand.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the very last Mrs. Tracy had, unconsciously perhaps,
+clung to a shadowy hope that Arthur might repudiate his
+daughter and call it a trumped-up affair; but when she heard
+how joyfully he had acknowledged and claimed her, she lost all
+hope, and her face wore a sullen, defiant expression as she
+walked about the house and through the handsome rooms, the
+very furniture of which had nearly all been bought with
+Arthur's money, and consequently was not her own. Since the
+coming of Jerrie, when the dark shadow settled upon Frank,
+and remorse was always torturing him, he had had no heart for
+business, and had, to all intents and purposes, lived upon his
+brother's generosity, which had never failed.</p>
+
+<p>'Get what you like; there is money enough,' was always
+Arthur's reply, when a request for anything was made to him,
+and thus they had literally been sponges, taking everything and
+giving nothing, until now, when all was lost&mdash;the luxury, the
+elegance, the ease, and the prestige of Tracy Park, which they
+had enjoyed so much. It was hard, and Dolly felt that she
+could not bear it, and that she hated the girl through whom
+this change had come, and in every possible way she meant to
+wound and annoy her; so when the cook came to her that day
+for orders for dinner, she answered, curtly:</p>
+
+<p>'Go to the heiress. She is mistress now.'</p>
+
+<p>In the hall, coming to seek her, Jerrie met the cook, who,
+with a comical look on her face, asked what she would have
+for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know what you mean,' Jerrie said, and when the
+cook explained, her cheeks flushed for an instant and her eyes
+blazed with resentment But she controlled herself quickly and
+said, 'Tell Mrs. Tracy&mdash;but, no, I am going to her room and
+will tell her myself.'</p>
+
+<p>Knocking at Mrs. Tracy's door, she was admitted to the
+presence of the lady, who simply stared at her as if asking why
+she were there. Jerrie told her in a few words that her
+own diamonds had been found, and where they had been secreted,
+and that she had come to return them.</p>
+
+<p>'Then your father was the thief,' Dolly said, with that rasping,
+aggravating tone so hard to hear unmoved.</p>
+
+<p>'Call him what you please. A crazy man is not responsible
+for his acts,' Jerrie answered, calmly; then, more proudly and
+decidedly, went on, 'By the way, Mrs. Tracy, I was met by the
+cook with a singular request, and I wish to say that as there
+can be but one mistress in a house, it is my wish that so long
+as you remain here you are that mistress in your own department;
+of course I shall take charge of my father's, and see that
+his wishes are carried out. Good afternoon,' and with a proud,
+lofty bearing, Jerrie walked from the room, leaving Dolly to
+her own morbid and angry thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>Not even the restored diamonds had power to conciliate her,
+and they were so beautiful as she held them up, admiring their
+brilliancy and their size.</p>
+
+<p>'I'll never wear them, never, because she has some like them,'
+she said to herself; and then the thought flashed upon her that
+she could sell them, and thus add to the sum which her husband
+had invested in his own name.</p>
+
+<p>Ten thousand dollars, that was all, he had told her, and she
+had calculated the income, only six hundred dollars a year to
+live on&mdash;less than she now wasted yearly upon bric-a-brac and
+things of which she tired so soon.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sombre outlook, and it is not strange that her tears
+fell fast upon the costly stones, whose value she could not guess,
+although she knew it must be great, they were so superior in
+size and quality to any she had ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I will sell them,' she said, 'and invest the proceeds in
+my own name; but even that will hardly keep the wolf from
+the door, for Frank is growing more and more imbecile every
+day, and Tom is good for nothing. He'll have to scratch for
+himself, though, I can tell him.'</p>
+
+<p>Here her ladylike, but very characteristic, soliloquy was
+brought to an end by a faint call, which had the power to
+drive every other thought from her heart, for the mother-love
+was strong even with her, and going to Maude, she asked what
+she wanted.</p>
+
+<p>'Uncle Arthur,' Maude replied; 'I have not seen him yet.
+And Jerrie, too, she has scarcely been here to-day.'</p>
+
+<p>Maude's request was made known to Arthur, who, two or
+three hours later, went to her room, and kissing her lips, told
+her how sorry he was to see her so sick, and that he hoped she
+would soon be better.</p>
+
+<p>Frank had been alone with Maude for a long time that day,
+and he was with her now, sitting upon the side of her bed,
+near the head, with his arm across her pillow, and his eyes
+fixed anxiously upon her as she held her conference with his
+brother.</p>
+
+<p>'No, uncle,' she said; 'I shall never be any better in this
+world; but by-and-by, pretty soon, I shall be well in the other
+And I want to tell you how glad I am for you and Jerrie, and
+to thank you for your kindness to us all these years, when
+Jerrie should have been here in our place.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes,' Arthur said, with a wave of his hand. 'Only I
+didn't know. If I had&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'It would have been so different,' Maude interrupted him.
+'I know that, but I want you to be kind to poor father still,
+and forgive him, he is sorry, and&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Maude, Maude,' came like a groan from Frank, as he
+laid his hand on Maude's lips, while Arthur replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Forgive him! For what? He couldn't help being here.
+I sent for him. He did not keep Jerrie from her rightful position
+as my daughter. If he had I could never forgive him.
+Why, I believe I'd kill him, or any other one who, knowing
+that Jerrie was my daughter, kept it from me.'</p>
+
+<p>He was gesticulating now with both hands, and Jerrie, who
+had listened wonderingly to the conversation, took hold of them
+as they were swaying in the air, and said to him softly:</p>
+
+<p>'Father!'</p>
+
+<p>The word quieted him, and with a gasp his mind seemed to
+change at once.</p>
+
+<p>'Maude is very tired,' Jerrie went on; 'perhaps we'd better
+go now and come again to-morrow.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, that's best, child. I'm not fond of sick rooms,
+though I must say this is very free from smells,' Arthur replied;
+then stooping down he kissed Maude again, saying to her as he
+rose to go:</p>
+
+<p>'Don't worry about your father; he is my brother, and he
+was kind to Jerry. I shan't forget that. Come, my daughter.'</p>
+
+<p>And putting his arm fondly around Jerrie he left the room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_L" id="CHAPTER_L" ></a>CHAPTER L.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE FLOWER FADETH.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It took some days after Arthur's return for the household to
+settle down into anything like order and quiet, Arthur
+was so restless and so happy, and so anxious for everyone
+to recognise Jerrie as his daughter&mdash;Miss Tracy, as he called
+her when presenting her to the people who had known her all
+her life&mdash;the St. Claires, and Athertons, and Crosbys, and
+Warners&mdash;who came to call upon and congratulate him. Even
+Peterkin came in his coat-of-arms carriage, with a card as big
+as the back of Webster's spelling book, and himself gotten up
+in a dress coat, with lavender kids on his burly hands, which
+nearly crushed Arthur's in their grasp as he expressed himself
+'tickleder than he ever was before in his life.'</p>
+
+<p>'And to think I was the means on't,' he said, 'for if I
+hadn't of kicked that darned old table into slivers when I was
+givin' on't to Jerrie, she'd never of know'd what was in that
+dumbed rat-hole. I was a leetle too upstrupulous, I s'spose,
+but I'll be darned if she didn't square up to me like a catamount,
+till my hair riz right up, and I concluded the Tramp
+House was no place for me. But I respect her for it; yes, I
+do, and by George, old chap, I congratulate you with my whole
+soul, and so does May Jane, and so does Ann 'Lizy, and so does
+Bill, and so does the whole caboodle on us.'</p>
+
+<p>This was Peterkin's speech, which Arthur received more graciously
+than Jerrie, who, remembering Harold, could not be
+very polite to the man who had injured him so deeply. As if
+divining her thoughts, Peterkin turned to her and said:</p>
+
+<p>'Now, one word, Miss Tracy, about Hal. I hain't one to go
+halves in any thing, and I was meaner to him than pussly;
+but you'll see what I'll do. I've met with a change, I swow,
+I have,' and he laid his lavender kid on his stomach. 'He
+never took them diamonds, nor May Jane's pin, nor nothin',
+and I've blasted it all over town that he didn't, and I've got a
+kerridge hired, and some chaps, and a brass band, and a percession,
+and when Hal comes, there's to be an oblation to the
+depot, with the bugle a playin' &quot;Hail to the Chief,&quot; and them
+hired chips a histen' him inter the kerridge, with the star-spangled
+banner a floatin' over it, and a drawin' him home
+without horses! What do you think of that for high?' and
+he chuckled merrily as he represented the programme he had
+prepared for Harold's reception.</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie shuddered, mentally hoping that Harold's coming
+might be at night, and unheralded, so as to save him from
+what she knew would fill him with disgust.</p>
+
+<p>That call of Peterkin's was the last of a congratulatory nature
+made at Tracy Park for weeks, for the shadow of death had
+entered the grand old house, the doors and windows of which
+stood wide open, one lovely September morning, about a week
+after Arthur's return. But there was no stir or sign of life,
+except in the upper hall, near the door, and in the room where
+Maude Tracy was dying. Jerrie had been with her constantly
+for two or three days, and the converse the two had held together
+would never be forgotten, Maude was so peaceful and
+happy, so sure of the home beyond, where she was going, and
+so lovely and sweet to those around her, thinking of everything
+and planning everything, even whose hands were to
+lower her into the grave.</p>
+
+<p>'Dick, and Fred, and Billy, and Harold,' she said to Jerrie,
+one day, 'Something tells me Harold will be here in time for
+that; and if he is, I want those four to put me in the grave.
+They can lift me, for I shall not be very heavy,' and, with a
+smile, she held up her wasted arms and hands, not as large now
+as a child's. 'And, Jerrie,' she went on, 'I want the grave
+lined with boughs from our old playing place&mdash;the four pines,
+you know&mdash;and many, many flowers, for I shudder at the
+thought of the cold earth which would chill me in my coffin.
+So, heap the grave with flowers, and come often to it, and
+think lovingly of me, lying there alone. I am thinking so
+much of that poem Harold read me long ago of poor little
+Alice, the May queen, who said she should hear them as they
+passed, with their feet above her in the long and silent grass.
+Maybe the dead can't do that. I don't know, but if they can,
+I shall listen for you, and be glad when you are near me, and
+I know I shall wait on the golden seat by the river. Remember
+your promise to tell Harold that it was all a mistake. My
+mind gets clearer toward the end, and I see things differently
+from what I did once, and I know how I blundered. You will
+tell him?'</p>
+
+<p>Again Jerrie made the promise, with a sinking heart, not
+knowing to what it bound her; and as Maude was becoming
+tired, she bade her try to rest while she sat by and watched
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, at the same hour, when the balmy September
+air was everywhere, and the mid-afternoon sun was filling the
+house with golden light, and the crickets' chirp was heard in
+the long grass, and the robins were singing in the tree-tops,
+another scene was presented in the sick room, where Frank
+Tracy knelt at his dying daughter's side, with his face bowed
+on his hands, while her fingers played feebly with his white
+hair as she spoke to Arthur, who had just come in. They had
+told him she was dying and had asked for him, and with his
+nervous horror of everything painful and exciting, he had
+shrunk from the ordeal; but Jerrie's will prevailed, and he
+went with her to the room, where Frank, and his wife, and
+Tom were waiting&mdash;Tom standing, with folded arms, at the
+foot of the bed, and looking, with hot, dry eyes, into the face
+on the pillow, where death was setting his seal; the mother,
+half-fainting upon the lounge, with the nurse beside her; and
+Frank, oblivious of everything except the fact that Maude was
+dying.</p>
+
+<p>'Kiss me good-bye, Uncle Arthur,' she said, when he came
+in, 'and come this side where father is.' Then, as he went
+round and stood by Frank, she reached her hand for his, and,
+putting it on her father's head, said to him: 'Forgive him,
+Uncle Arthur; he is so sorry, poor father&mdash;the dearest, the
+best man in the world. It was for me; say that you forgive
+him.'</p>
+
+<p>Only Frank and one other knew just what she meant,
+although a sudden suspicion darted through Jerrie's mind,
+and, when Arthur looked helplessly at her, she whispered to
+him:</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind what she means&mdash;her mind may be wandering;
+but say that you forgive him, no matter what it is.'</p>
+
+<p>Thus adjured, Arthur said to the grief-stricken man, who
+shook like an aspen:</p>
+
+<p>'I know of nothing to forgive except your old disbelief in
+Gretchen, and deceiving me about sending the carriage the
+night Jerrie came; but if there is anything else, no matter
+what it is, I do forgive you freely.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thanks,' came faintly from Maude, who whispered:</p>
+
+<p>'It is a vow, remember, made at my death-bed.'</p>
+
+<p>She had done all she could, this little girl, whose life had
+been so short, and who, as she once said, had been capable of
+nothing but loving and being loved; and now, turning her dim
+eyes upon Jerrie, who was parting the damp hair upon her
+brow, she went on:</p>
+
+<p>'Remember the promise, and the flowers, and the golden
+seat where you will find me resting by the flowing river whose
+shores I am now looking upon, for I am almost there, almost
+to the golden seat, and the tree whose leaves are like emeralds,
+and where the grass and flowers are like the flowers and grass
+of summer just after a rain. I am glad for you, Jerrie. Good-bye;
+and you, father dear, good-bye.'</p>
+
+<p>That was the last, for Maude was dead; and the servants,
+who had been standing about the door, stole noiselessly back
+to their work, with wet eyes and a sense of pain and loss in
+their hearts, for not one of them but had loved the gentle girl
+now gone forever from their midst.</p>
+
+<p>If was Jerrie who led Frank from the room to his own,
+where she left him by himself, knowing it would be better so,
+and it was Arthur who took Dolly out, for Tom had disappeared,
+and no one saw him again until the next day, when he
+came down to breakfast, with a worn, haggard look upon his
+face, which told that he did care, though his mother thought
+he did not, and taunted him with his indifference. Poor Tom!
+He had gone directly to his room and locked the door, and
+smoked and smoked, and thought and thought, and then, when
+it was dark, he had stolen out into the park as far as the four
+pines, and smoked, and looked up at the stars and wondered if
+Maude were there with Jack, sitting on the golden seat by the
+river. Then going back to the house where no one saw him,
+he went into the silent room where Maude was lying, and
+looked long and earnestly upon her white, still face, and wondered
+in a vague kind of way if she knew he was there, and
+why he had never thought before what a nice kind of girl she
+was, and why he had not made more of her as her brother.</p>
+
+<p>'Maude,' he whispered, with a lump in his throat, 'if you
+can hear me, I'd like to tell you I am sorry that I was ever
+mean to you, and I guess I did like you more than I supposed.'</p>
+
+<p>Then he kissed her pale forehead and went to his room,
+where he smoked the night through, and in the morning felt
+as if he had lived a hundred years since the previous night,
+and wondered how he should get through the day. It occurred
+to him that it might be the proper thing to see his mother;
+and after his breakfast he went to her room, and was received
+by her with a burst of tears and reproaches for his indifference
+and lack of feeling in keeping himself away from everybody,
+as if it were nothing to him that Maude was dead, or that
+there was nothing for him to do.</p>
+
+<p>'Thunderation, mother!' Tom exclaimed, 'would you have
+me yell and scream, and make a fool of myself? I sat up all
+night long, which was more than you did, and I've been meditating
+in the woods, and have seen Maude and made it square
+with her. What more can I do?'</p>
+
+<p>'You can see to things,' Mrs. Tracy replied. 'Your father
+is all broken up and has gone to bed, and it is not becoming in
+me to be around. Somebody must take the helm.'</p>
+
+<p>'And somebody has,' Tom answered her. 'Uncle Arthur is
+master of the ceremonies now. He is running the ranch, and
+running it well, to.'</p>
+
+<p>And Tom was right, for Arthur had taken the helm, and
+aided and abetted by Jerrie, was quietly attending to matters
+and arranging for the funeral, which Dolly said must be in the
+house, as she would not go to the church, with a gaping
+crowd to stare at her. So it was to take place at the house on
+Friday afternoon, and Arthur ordered a costly coffin from New
+York, with silver mountings and panels, and almost a car-load
+of flowers and floral designs, for Jerrie had explained to him
+Maude's wishes with regard to her grave, which they lined first
+with the freshest of the boughs from the four pines, filling these
+again with flowers up to the very top, so that the grave when
+finished seemed like one mass of flowers, in which it would not
+be hard to lie.</p>
+
+<p>Dolly had objected to Billy as one of the pall-bearers. He was
+too short and inferior looking, she said, and not at all in harmony
+with Dick, and Fred, and Paul Crosby, the young man
+who, in Harold's absence, had been asked to take his place.
+But Arthur overruled her with the words 'It was Maude's
+wish,' and Billy kept his post.</p>
+
+<p>The day arrived, and the hour, and the people came in greater
+crowds than they had done when poor Jack was buried, or the
+dark woman, Nannine, with only Jerrie as chief mourner, and
+the procession was the longest ever seen in Shannondale; and
+Dolly, even while her heart was aching with bitter pain, felt a
+thrill of pride that so many were following her daughter to the
+grave.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the cemetery, there was a halt for the mourners
+to alight and the bearers to take the coffins from the hearse and
+carry it to the grave&mdash;a halt longer than necessary, it seemed to
+Jerrie, who under the folds of her veil did not see the tall
+young man making his way through the ranks of the people
+crowding the road, straining every nerve to reach the hearse,
+which he did just as the four young men were taking the coffin
+from it.</p>
+
+<p>With a quick movement he put Paul Crosby aside, saying,
+apologetically:</p>
+
+<p>'Excuse me, Paul. I must carry Maude to her grave. She
+wished it so.'</p>
+
+<p>Then, taking the young man's place, he went slowly on to
+the open grave near which piles and piles of flowers were lying
+ready to cover the young girl who it was hard for him to believe
+was there beneath his hand, cold and dead, with no word
+of welcome for him who had tried so hard to see her, and was
+only in time for this, to help lay her in the grave and to listen
+to the solemn words 'ashes to ashes,' and hear the dreadful
+sound of earth to earth falling upon the box which held the
+beautiful coffin and the lovely girl within it.</p>
+
+<p>Even then Jerrie did not see him, but when she took a step
+or two forward to look into the grave before it was filled up, and
+someone put a hand upon her shoulder and said, 'Not too near,
+Jerrie,' she started suddenly, with a suppressed cry, and turning,
+saw Harold standing by her, tall, and erect, and self-possessed,
+as he faced the multitude, some of whom had suspected
+him of a crime, but all of whom were ready now to do him
+justice and bid him welcome home.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Harold,' Jerrie said, as she grasped his arm, 'I am so
+glad you are here. I wish you had come before.'</p>
+
+<p>Harold could not reply, for they were now leaving the spot,
+and many gathered around him; first and foremost, Peterkin,
+who came tramping through the grass, puffing like an engine,
+and, unmindful of the time or place, slapping him upon the
+shoulder, as he said:
+'Well, my boy, glad to see you back, 'pon my soul, I be;
+but you flustrated all my plans. I was meanin' to give you an
+oblation; got it, all arranged, and you spiled it by takin' us onawares,
+like a thief in the night. I beg your pardon,' he continued,
+as he met a curious look in Harold's eyes, 'I'm a
+blunderin' cuss, I be. I didn't mean nothin', I've ever meant
+nothin', and if I hev' I'm sorry for it.'</p>
+
+<p>Harold did not hear the last, for he was handing Jerrie into
+the carriage with her father, who bade him enter, too; saying
+they would leave him at the cottage where he wished to go as
+soon as possible. There was no time for much conversation
+before the cottage was reached, and Harold alighted at the gate,
+and no allusion whatever had been made to Jerrie's changed
+relations until Harold stood looking at her as she kept her seat
+by her father and made no sign of an intention to stop. Then
+he said, as calmly as he could:</p>
+
+<p>'Do you stay at the Park House altogether now?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no,' she answered quickly. 'I have been there a great
+deal with Maude, but am coming home to-night. I could not
+leave grandma alone, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>She acknowledged the home and the relationship still, and
+Harold's face flushed with a look of pleasure, which deepened
+in intensity when Arthur, with a wave of the hand habitual to
+him, said:</p>
+
+<p>'I must keep her now that you are here to see to the grandmother,
+but will let you have her to-night. Come up later, if
+you like, and walk home with her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall be most happy to do so,' Harold said, and then the
+carriage drove away, while he went in to his grandmother, who
+had not attended the funeral, but who knew that he had returned
+and was waiting for him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LI" id="CHAPTER_LI" ></a>CHAPTER LI.</h2>
+
+<h2>UNDER THE PINES WITH HAROLD.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It seemed to Harold that it had been a thousand years since
+he had left Shannondale, so much had come into and so
+much had gone out of his life since he said good-bye to
+the girl he loved and to the girl who loved him. One was dead,
+and he had only come in time to help lay her in her grave;
+while the other, the girl he loved, was, some might think,
+farther removed from him than death itself could have removed
+her.</p>
+
+<p>But Harold did not feel so. He had faith in Jerrie&mdash;that
+she would not change, though there had been a time during
+the first homesick weeks in Tacoma, when, knowing from
+his grandmother of her convalescence, and still hearing from
+her no explanation with regard to the diamonds, which
+he knew a few still suspected him of having taken, in his impatience
+and humiliation he had cried out, 'Jerrie has forgotten.
+She is not standing by me, forever and ever, amen, as she
+once promised to do.' But this feeling quickly passed, and
+there came a day when he read the judge's letter in the privacy
+of his room at the Tacoma, and rejoiced with an exceeding
+great joy for Jerrie, whose house and birthright had been so
+strangely restored. He never doubted the story for a moment,
+but felt rather as if he had known it always, and wondered
+how any one could have imagined for a moment that blue-eyed,
+golden-haired Jerrie was the child of the dark, coarse looking
+woman found dead beside her. 'I am so glad for Jerrie,' he
+said, without a thought that her relations to himself would in
+any way be changed.</p>
+
+<p>Once, when she had told him of the fancies which haunted
+her so often, he had put them from him with a fear that,
+were they true, Jerrie would be lost to him forever. But he
+had no such misgivings now; and when Jerrie's letter came,
+urging his return, both for her own sake and Maude's, he wrote
+a few hurried lines to her, telling her how glad he was for her,
+and of his intention to start for the East as soon as possible.
+'To-morrow, perhaps,' he wrote, 'in which case I may be there
+before this letter reaches you, for the mails are sometimes
+slow, and the judge's communication was overdue three or four
+days.'</p>
+
+<p>Starting the second day after his letter, Harold travelled
+day and night, while something seemed beckoning him on&mdash;Maude's
+thin, white face, and Jerrie's, too; and when, between
+St. Paul and Chicago, there came a detention from a freight
+car off the track, he felt that he must fly, so sure was he that
+he was wanted and anxiously looked for at Tracy Park, where
+at that very time Maude was dying. The next afternoon he left
+Chicago, and with no further accident reached Shannondale
+just as the long procession was winding its way to the cemetery.</p>
+
+<p>He had heard from an acquaintance in Springfield that
+Maude was dead, and of her request that he should be one of
+the pall-bearers, together with Dick, and Fred, and Billy. 'And
+I will do it yet,' he said, with a throb of pain, as he thought of
+the little girl who had died believing that he loved her. Once
+or twice he had resolved to write and tell her as carefully as
+possible of her mistake, but as often had changed his mind,
+thinking to wait until she was better; and now she was dead,
+and the chance for explanation gone forever; but he would, if
+possible, carry out the wish she had expressed with regard to
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Striking into the fields from the station, he reached the
+cemetery in time to take his place by Billy and carry poor little
+Maude to her last resting place; and then he looked for Jerrie,
+and felt an indefinable thrill when he saw her on her father's
+arm, and began to realize that she was Jerrie Tracy. But all
+that was over now; he had talked with her face to face, and
+had found her the Jerrie he had always known, and he
+was going to see her in her own home, at Tracy Park&mdash;the
+daughter of the house, the heiress of Arthur Tracy, and of more
+than two millions, it was said&mdash;for, despite Frank's extravagance,
+all of which Arthur had met without a protest, his money
+had accumulated rapidly, so that he was a much richer man
+now, than when he first came home from Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Harold found the family at dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Tracy and
+Tom in the dining-room, and Arthur and Jerrie in the Gretchen
+room, to which he was taken at once.</p>
+
+<p>'Come in&mdash;come in, my boy. You are just in time for dessert,'
+Arthur said, rising with alacrity and going forward to
+meet him; while Jerrie, too, arose and took his hand, and made
+him sit by her, and questioned him on his journey, and helped
+him to the fairest peach and the finest bunch of grapes, and,
+without seeming to do so, examined him from head to foot, and
+thought how handsome and grand he was, and felt sure that
+her father thought so too.</p>
+
+<p>With a part of the first money Billy had paid him, or rather
+had told him to draw in Tacoma, Harold had bought himself the
+clothes which he needed sadly; and though it was only a business
+suit, and had travelled thousands of miles, it fitted him
+well, and it was not at all a shabby Harold sitting at Arthur's
+table, but a young man of whom anyone might have been
+proud. And Jerrie was proud of him and of her father, too, as
+they talked together; and Harold showed no sign of any inequality,
+even if he felt it, which he did not.</p>
+
+<p>'A fine young man, with the best of manners, and carries
+himself as he were the lord high chancellor,' Arthur said, when,
+after dinner, Harold left there to pay his respects to the other
+inmates of the family, whom he found just leaving the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>Dolly bowed to him coldly at first, and was about to pass on,
+when, with a burst of tears, she offered him her hand, and
+sobbed:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Harold, why didn't you come before? Maude wanted
+to see you so badly.'</p>
+
+<p>This was a great deal for Dolly, and Tom stared at her in
+amazement, while Harold explained that he had come as soon
+as he possibly could, and tried to say something of Maude, but
+could not, for the tears which choked him. Frank was unfeignedly
+glad to see him, and told him so.</p>
+
+<p>'Our dear little girl was fond of you, Hal. I am sure she
+was, and I shall always like you for that. Heaven bless you,
+my boy,' he said, as he wrung Harold's hand and then hurried
+away after his wife, leaving Harold alone with Tom, who, awfully
+afraid he should break down, said, indifferently:</p>
+
+<p>'Glad to see you, Hal. Wish you had come before Maude
+died. She was in a tearin' way to see you. Have a cigar?
+Got a prime lot in my room. Will you go there?</p>
+
+<p>Harold was in no mood for cigars, and, declining Tom's offer,
+sauntered awhile around the grounds, where he found himself
+constantly expecting to find the dead girl sitting under a tree
+wailing for him with the light whose meaning he now knew
+kindling in her beautiful eyes as she bade him welcome and
+told him how glad she was to see him. He was glad now that
+he had not written and told her of her mistake, and he felt in
+his heart a greater tenderness for the Maude dead than he ever
+could have felt for the Maude living.</p>
+
+<p>It was beginning to grow dark when he returned to the
+house where he found Jerrie in the hall ready to go home.
+Arthur was at her side, with his arm thrown lovingly around
+her, and as he passed her over to Harold, he said:</p>
+
+<p>'Make the most of her to-night, my boy, for to-morrow she
+comes home to stay. Heaven bless you, my daughter!'</p>
+
+<p>His words sent a thrill through both Harold and Jerrie, who
+walked on in silence until they reached the four pines, where
+Jerrie halted suddenly and said:</p>
+
+<p>'Let us sit down, Harold. I have a message from Maude,
+which I promised to deliver the first time we were alone
+together after you came home.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie's voice trembled a little, and after they were seated
+she was silent until Harold said to her:</p>
+
+<p>'You were going to tell me of Maude;' then she started and
+replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; she wanted so much to see you and tell you herself.
+I don't know what she meant, but she said she had made a
+mistake, and I must tell you so, and that you would understand
+it. She had been thinking and thinking, she said, and
+knew it was a stupid blunder of hers; that was what she
+called it&mdash;a stupid blunder; and she was sorry for you that
+she had made it, and bade me say so, and tell you no one knew
+but herself and you. Dear little Maude! I wish she had not
+died.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie was crying now, and perhaps that was the reason she
+did not mind when Harold put his arm around her and drew
+her closer to him, so close that his brown hair touched her
+golden curls, for the night was warm and she had brought her
+bonnet in her hand all the way, while he had taken off his hat
+when they sat down under the pines, which moaned and sighed
+above them for a moment, and then grew still, as if listening
+for what Harold would say.</p>
+
+<p>'Yea,' he began slowly, 'I think I know what Maude
+meant by the mistake. Did she say I must tell you what it
+was?'</p>
+
+<p>'She said you would tell me, but perhaps you'd better not,'
+Jerrie replied,</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I must tell you,' he continued, 'as a preliminary to
+what I have to say to you afterward, and what I did not mean
+to say quite so soon; but this decides me,' and Harold drew
+Jerrie a little closer to him as he went on: 'Did you ever
+think that I loved poor little Maude?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I have thought so,' was Jerrie's answer.</p>
+
+<p>'She thought so, too,' Harold continued, 'and it was all
+my fault; my blunder, not hers. I loved her as I would a sister;
+as I did you in the olden days, Jerrie. She was so sweet
+and good, and so interested in you and all I wanted to do for
+you, that I regarded her as a very dear friend, nothing more.
+And because I looked upon her this way, I foolishly went to
+her once to confess my love for another; her dearest and most
+intimate friend, and ask if she thought I had a chance for success.
+I must have bungled strangely, for she mistook my
+meaning and thought I was speaking of herself and in a way
+she accepted me; and before I had time to explain, her mother
+came in and I have never seen her since; but I shall never
+forget the eyes which looked at me so gladly, smiting me
+so cruelly for the delusion in which I had to leave her. That
+is what Maude meant. She saw the mistake, and wished to
+rectify it by giving me the chance to tell you myself what I
+wanted to tell you then and dared not.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie trembled violently, but made no answer, and Harold
+went on:</p>
+
+<p>'It may seem strange that I, who used to be so much afraid
+of Jerrie Crawford that I dared not tell her of my love, have
+the courage to do it now that she is Jerrie Tracy, and I do not
+understand it myself. Once when you told me your fancies
+concerning your birth, a great fear took possession of me, lest
+I should lose you, if they were true; but when I heard that
+they were true, I felt so sure of you that I could scarcely wait
+for the time when I could ask you, as I now do, to be my wife,
+poor as I am, with nothing but love to give you. Will you,
+Jerrie?'</p>
+
+<p>His face was so close to hers now that her hot cheeks touched
+his as she bent her head lower and lower, but she made no reply
+for a moment, and then she cried:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Harold, it seems so soon, with Maude only buried to-day.
+What shall I say? What ought I to say?'</p>
+
+<p>'Shall I tell you?' he answered, taking her hand in his.
+'Say the first English word you ever spoke, and which I taught
+you. Do you remember it?'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Iss</i>' came involuntarily from Jerrie, in the quick, lisping
+accent of her babyhood, when that was all the English she
+could master; and almost before it had escaped her, Harold
+smothered it with the kisses he pressed upon her lips as he
+claimed her for his own.</p>
+
+<p>'But, Harold,' she tried to explain between his kisses, 'I
+meant that I <i>did</i> remember. You must not&mdash;you must not
+kiss me so fast. You take my breath away. There! I won't
+stand it any longer. I'm going straight home to tell grandma
+how you act!'</p>
+
+<p>'And so am I,' Harold said, rising as she did, but keeping
+his arm around her as they went slowly along in the soft September
+night, with the stars, which were shining for the first
+time on Maude's grave, looking down upon then, and a
+thought of Maude in their hearts, and her dear name often
+upon their lips, as they talked of the past as lovers will, trying
+to recall just when it was that friendship ceased and love began,
+and deciding finally that neither knew nor cared when it
+was, so great was their present joy and anticipation of the
+future.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LII" id="CHAPTER_LII" ></a>CHAPTER LII.</h2>
+
+<h2>'FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE.'</h2>
+
+
+<p>'Grandma, Jerrie has promised to be my wife!' Harold
+said to his grandmother that night when he took
+Jerrie in to her about ten o'clock, during which time
+they had walked to the Tramp House, and sitting down upon
+the chair which would hold but one, had talked the whole matter
+over, from the morning Harold first saw the sweet little
+face in the carpet-bag to the present moment when the same
+sweet face was pressed lovingly against his, and the same arms
+which had clung to him in the snow were around his neck in
+the darkness, as they went over with the old, old story, newest
+always and best to the last one who listens to it and believes
+that it is true.</p>
+
+<p>'Father, I have promised to marry Harold,' Jerrie said to
+Arthur the next morning as she stood before him in the Gretchen
+room, with Harold's hand in hers, and a look in her face
+something like what Gretchen's had worn when Arthur first
+called her his wife.</p>
+
+<p>'Lord bless you, I knew it was coming, but did not think it
+would be quite so soon. You shock my nerves dreadfully,'
+Arthur exclaimed, springing up and walking two or three times
+across the room. Then, confronting the young couple, he said,
+'Going to marry Harold? I knew you would all this time.
+Well, he will do as well as any one to look after the business.
+Frank is no good, and Colvin is too old. So, get married at
+once, within a week if you like. I'm off for Germany next
+month, to find Gretchen's grave, and the house, and the picture,
+and everything, and as I shall take you with me I shall
+need some one with brains to look after things while I am
+gone.'</p>
+
+<p>'But father,' Jerrie began, 'if I go to Germany, Harold
+will go, too, and if he stops here, I shall stay.'</p>
+
+<p>Arthur looked at her inquiringly a moment, and then, as he
+begun to understand, replied:
+'Ah, yes, I see; &quot;where thou goest, I go, and where thou&mdash;&quot;
+and so forth, and so forth. Well, all right; only you
+must come here directly; it will never do to stay there, now
+you are engaged; and you must be married in this room, with
+Gretchen looking on, and soon, too. No wedding, of course,
+Maude's death is too recent for that; but soon, very soon, so
+we can get off. I'll engage passage at once in the Germanic,
+which sails the 15th of October, and you shall be married the
+10th. That's three weeks from to-day, and will give you a few
+days in New York. I'll leave Frank here till we return, and
+then he must go, of course, and the new mistress step in with
+Mrs. Crawford to superintend. We will get some nice man
+and woman to stay with her while we are gone.'</p>
+
+<p>He had settled everything rapidly, but Jerrie had something
+to say upon the subject. She did not wish to come to Tracy
+Park altogether while Mrs. Tracy was there; she would rather
+enjoy the lovely room which Harold had built for her, she
+said, and preferred to be married in the cottage, the only home
+she had ever known.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall stay with you all day,' she continued, 'but go home
+at night.'</p>
+
+<p>'And so have a long walk with Harold. Yes, I see,' Arthur
+said, laughingly, but assenting finally to her proposal.</p>
+
+<p>It was Jerrie now who planned everything, with Harold's
+assistance, and who broached the subject of Frank's future to
+her father, asking what provision he intended to make for him
+when he left Tracy Park.</p>
+
+<p>'What provision?' Arthur said. 'I guess he has made
+provision for himself all these years, when my purse has been
+as free to him as myself. Colvin tells me there has been an
+awful lot of money spent somewhere.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Jerrie replied, 'but you gave him permission to
+spend it, and it would hardly be fair now to leave him with
+little or nothing, and he so broken down. When Maude
+feared she was going to die, and before she knew who I was,
+she wrote a letter for her father and you, asking him to give
+me what he would have given her, and you to do the same.
+So now, I want you to give Maude's father what you would
+have given me for Maude's sake.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bless my soul, Jerrie!' Arthur said. 'What a beggar you
+are! I don't know what I should have given you; all I am
+worth, perhaps. How much will satisfy you for Frank? Tell
+me, and it is done.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie thought one hundred thousand dollars would not be
+any too much, nor did it seem so to Arthur, who placed but
+little value upon his money, and Jerrie was deputed to tell her
+uncle what provision was to be made for him, and that, if he
+wished, he was to remain at the park until his brother's return
+from Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Frank was not in his own room, but Mrs. Tracy was, and to
+her Jerrie first communicated the intelligence that she was to
+be married and go with her father to Germany. The look
+which the highly scandalized lady gave her was wonderful, as
+she said:</p>
+
+<p>'Married! almost before the crape is off the door, or the
+flowers wilted on Maude's grave! Well, that shows how little
+we are missed; and I am not surprised, though I think Maude
+would be, at Harold, certainly. I suppose you know there was
+something between them; but a man will do any thing for
+money. I wish you joy of your husband.'</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie was too indignant to explain any thing, and hurried
+off in quest of her uncle, whom she found in Maude's room,
+where he spent the most of his time, walking up and down and
+examining the different articles which had belonged to his
+daughter, and which, at his request, remained untouched as she
+had left them. Her brushes, her comb, her bottled perfumery,
+her work-box, her Bible, a little half-finished sketch, and her
+soft bed-slippers she had worn when she died, and one of which
+he held in his hand when Jerrie went in to him.</p>
+
+<p>'It is so like Maude,' he said, with quivering lips, as she went
+to his side, 'and when I hold it in my hand I can almost hear
+the dear little feet, which I know are cold and dead, coming
+along the hall as she used to come, and will never come again.
+I think I should like to die here in this room and go where
+Maude has gone, and I believe I should go there. I am sure
+God has forgiven me, and Maude forgave me, too, for I told
+her.'</p>
+
+<p>'You did! I thought so,' Jerrie said.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I had to tell her,' he continued, 'and I am glad I did,
+and she loved me just the same. You saw her die. You heard
+what she said to me. She must have believed in me, and that
+keeps me from going mad. I told Dolly, too; the shadow was
+so black I had to; and she said she'd never speak to me again
+as long as she lived, and she didn't either until last night, when
+I was alone in here, crying on Maude's bed; then she came to
+me and called me Frank, and said she was sorry she had been
+so hard, and asked me what we were going to do, and where we
+were going. I'm sure I don't know; do you?'</p>
+
+<p>He was so broken, so like a child in his appeal to her, that
+Jerrie's tears came fast as she told him of her approaching marriage
+and what her father intended doing for him. Then Frank
+broke down entirely, and cried like a child.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't deserve it, and I know I owe it to you, whom I
+have injured so much,' he said, while Jerrie tried to comfort
+him.</p>
+
+<p>'I must go back now to father,' she said at last; and, with a
+kiss upon his worn face, she went out into the hall, where she
+encountered Tom just coming from his mother's room.</p>
+
+<p>'Hallo!' Tom cried, with an attempt at a smile, 'and so
+you are going to marry Harold?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Tom; I'm going to marry Harold,' Jerrie replied, unhesitatingly,
+as she laid her hand on Tom's arm and walked
+with him down the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to her the most natural thing in the world that
+she should marry Harold, and she was not at all abashed in
+speaking of it to Tom; but when outside they saw Harold
+coming up the walk, the color rushed to her cheeks, and her
+eyes grew wondrously bright with the love-light which shown
+in them, as she dropped Tom's arm and hurried to Harold's
+side.</p>
+
+<p>'By George, I b'lieve I'll go and hang myself!' Tom said,
+under his breath, as he stalked moodily away; but instead of
+that he went across the fields to Le Bateau, where he sat for an
+hour, talking with old Peterkin and waiting for Ann Eliza,
+who had gone to Springfield, her father said, after a new gown,
+for which he was to pay two hundred dollars.</p>
+
+<p>'Think on't!' he continued. 'When we was fust married
+and run the 'Liza Ann, the best gown May Jane had to her
+back was a mereener or balzarine&mdash;dummed if I know what
+you call it&mdash;at one and ninepence a yard; but now, lord land,
+what's two hundred dollar gownd to me! Ann Eliza can have
+forty on 'em, if she wants to. There she is; there's the kerridge!
+By gosh, though, ain't she a neat little filly!' and the
+father's face glowed with pride as he watched his daughter
+alighting from the carriage, to which Tom had hastened in
+order to assist her, for she was still a little lame and limped as
+she walked.</p>
+
+<p>He saw the two hundred dollar gown, for Peterkin would
+have it displayed, and admired it, of course, and wished thut
+he had half the sum it cost in his own right, and wondered if
+he could stand it, as he walked slowly home, where he heard
+from his mother that they were still to remain at Tracy Park
+for a while, and that his father was to have one hundred thousand
+dollars settled upon him.</p>
+
+<p>'I guess now I'll wait a spell, and let old Peterkin go to
+thunder,' he decided, and for two weeks and more Ann Eliza
+watched in vain for his coming, while Peterkin remarked to his
+wife that if Tom Tracy was goin' to play fast and loose with his
+gal, he'd find himself brought up standin' mighty lively.</p>
+
+<p>The news that Harold and Jerrie were soon to be married,
+and go with Arthur to Germany, created some surprise, and
+some talk, too, in town, where many of the people had believed
+that there had been an understanding, if not an engagement,
+between Harold and Maude. But Tom put that right with a
+few decided words. There had never been an engagement, he
+said. Maude had liked Harold very much, and he had liked
+her, but had always preferred Jerrie; in short, matters had been
+as good as settled between them, long ago.</p>
+
+<p>This last was a little fiction of Tom's brain, but the people
+accepted it as true, and began to look eagerly forward to the
+approaching marriage, wondering, as people will, who would be
+invited, and who would not. It took place the 10th of October,
+in Mrs. Crawford's little parlor, with only a few intimate friends
+present&mdash;Grace Atherton, the St. Claires, Ann Eliza Peterkin,
+and the Tracys, with the exception of Dolly, who could not do
+so great violence to her feeling, as to attend a wedding. Billy
+was not there, but he sent a magnificent emerald ring to Jerrie,
+with the following note:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>DEAR JERRIE,&mdash;I can't see you married, although I am glad for
+you, and glad for Hal. God bless you both. I shall never forget
+you as long as I live; and when you come back, maybe I can bear to
+see you as Hal's wife, but now it would kill me. Good-bye.</p></div>
+
+<p>Jerrie read this note with wet eyes up in her room, and then
+passed it to Harold, to whom she told of that episode under
+the butternut tree, when Billy asked her to be his wife.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Billy! I am awful sorry for him, but I can't let him
+have you, Jerrie,' Harold said, passing the note back to her, and
+kissing her tenderly, as he added: 'That is my last kiss for
+Jerrie Tracy, my little girl of the carpet-bag. When I kiss you
+again, you will be my wife.'</p>
+
+<p>'Come, children, we are waiting,' came with startling distinctness
+from Arthur at the foot of the stairs, and then Harold
+and Jerrie went down to the parlor, where they were soon made
+one, Arthur giving the bride away, and behaving pretty well
+under the circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>He had been very flighty the day before, insisting that Jerrie
+should be married in white, with a blue ribbon on her bonnet,
+just as Gretchen had been, and when she reminded him of
+Maude's recent death, he replied:</p>
+
+<p>'Well, Gretchen will wear colors if you do not.'</p>
+
+<p>And again he brought out and laid upon his bed the dress
+bought in Paris years before, and which had been waiting for
+Gretchen on that stormy night when he heard the wild cry of the
+dying woman above the wintery gale. She was with him again
+in fancy, and when he went out to the carriage which was to
+carry him to the cottage, he stepped back and stood a moment
+by the door as if to let some one enter before him, and all during
+the ceremony those nearest to him heard him whispering to
+himself, 'I, Arthur, take thee, Gretchen,' and so forth; but
+when it was over he came to himself and seemed perfectly rational,
+as he kissed his daughter and shook hands with his son-in-law,
+to whom he gave a check for ten thousand dollars, saying
+as he did so, that young men must have a little spending
+money.</p>
+
+<p>It was a very pleasant wedding, and every one seemed happy,
+even to Dick, whose spirits, however, were rather too gay to be
+quite natural, and whose voice shook just a little as he called
+Jerrie Mrs. Hasting, and told her he hoped to see her in Paris
+in the spring as he thought of going over there with Nina to
+join the Raymonds.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I hope you will! Nothing could make me so happy
+as to meet you there,' Jerrie said, looking at him with an expression
+which told him she was thinking of the pines and was
+sorry for him.</p>
+
+<p>The newly married pair were going directly to New York,
+where Arthur was to join them on the 4th, as the <i>Germanic</i>
+sailed the 15th.</p>
+
+<p>All the wedding guests accompanied them to the station,
+Tom accepting a seat in the coup&eacute; with Ann Eliza, who wore
+her two hundred dollar gown, and was, of course, overdressed.
+But Tom did not think much about that. He was ill at ease
+that morning, though trying to seem natural; and when the
+train which took Jerrie away disappeared from view, he felt as
+if everything which had made life desirable had left him forever,
+and he cared but little now what he did, or with whom his
+lot was cast.</p>
+
+<p>So when Ann Eliza, who had cried at parting with Jerrie,
+dried her eyes and said to him, 'It is such a fine day; suppose
+we drive along the river; it may dispel the blues,' he assented,
+and soon found himself bowling along the smooth turnpike with
+Ann Eliza, whom he thought rather interesting, with the tears
+shed for Jerrie on her long, light eyelashes.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall miss her so much, and be so lonely without her. I
+hope you'll call often,' she said to him, when at last the drive
+was over, and Tom promised that he would, and kept his promise,
+too; for after Arthur left, he found Tracy Park so insupportably
+dull, with his father always in Maude's room and his
+mother always in tears, that it was a relief to go to Le Bateau
+and be made much of as if he were a prince and treated to nice
+little lunches and suppers, even if old Peterkin did make one of
+the party and disgust him so at times that he felt as if he must
+snatch up his hat and fly.</p>
+
+<p>And one night, when the old man had been more than usually
+disagreeable and pompous, he did start up abruptly and leave
+the house, mentally vowing never to enter it again.</p>
+
+<p>'I'd rather saw wood and gather swill, as Hal used to, than
+listen to that infernal old brag,' he was saying to himself, when
+he heard a wheezy sound behind him, and looking round saw
+the old brag in full pursuit and beckoning him to stop.</p>
+
+<p>'I'm goin' to walk a spell with you,' he said, locking his arm
+in Tom's as he came up. 'I want to have a little talk.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Tom faltered, with a dreadful sinking of the heart,
+while Peterkin went on:</p>
+
+<p>'You see you've been a comin' to Lubbertoo off and on for
+mighty nigh a month, and as the parents of a family it's time I
+as't your intentions.'</p>
+
+<p>'Intentions!' Tom stammered, trying to draw his arm from
+Peterkin's.</p>
+
+<p>But he might as well have tried to wrench it from a vise, for
+Peterkin held it fast and went on:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, intentions! Thunderation, hain't a chap 'sposed to
+have intentions when he hangs round a gal who has money
+like my Ann 'Liza! I tell you what, Thomas,' and his manner
+became very insinuating and frank, 'as nigh as I can kalkerlate
+I'm worth three millions, fair and square, and there's
+three on 'em to divide it amongst&mdash;May Jane, Bill, and Ann
+'Liza. Now, s'posin' we say three into three million, don't it
+leave a million?'</p>
+
+<p>Tom acknowledged that it did, and Peterkin continued:</p>
+
+<p>'Jess so. Now I ain't one of them mean skunks that wants
+his folks to wait till he's dead afore they enjoys themselves;
+and the day my Ann 'Liza is married, I plank down a million
+in hard cash for her and her husband to do what they darned
+please with; cut a dash in Europe as Hal is doin', if they like,
+or cut a splurge to hum, it's all one to me. I call that square,
+don't you?'</p>
+
+<p>Tom admitted that he did, and Peterkin went on:</p>
+
+<p>'Now, then, I ain't goin't to have Ann 'Liza's affections
+trifled with, and if I catch a feller a doin' on't, d'ye know what
+I'll do?'</p>
+
+<p>Tom could not guess, and Peterkin continued:</p>
+
+<p>'I'll lick him within an inch of his life, and then set the
+dogs on him, and heave him inter the river! See?'</p>
+
+<p>It was not a warm day, but Tom was perspiring at every
+pore as he saw presented to him the choice between a million
+or to be 'licked within an inch of his life and then dogged
+into the river.' Naturally he chose the first as the lesser evil
+of the two, and began to lie as he had never lied in his life
+before. He was very glad, he said, that Peterkin had broached
+the subject, as it made matters easier for him by showing him
+that his suit might not be rejected, as he had feared it might
+be.</p>
+
+<p>'You know, of course, Mr. Peterkin,' he said, 'that I am a
+poor young man, with no expectations whatever, for though
+Uncle Arthur has settled something upon father, I cannot depend
+upon that, and how could I dare to look as high as your
+daughter without some encouragement?'</p>
+
+<p>'Encouragement, boy? Great Scott!' and releasing Tom's
+arm, Peterkin hit him a friendly slap, which nearly knocked
+him down. 'Great Scott! What do you call encouragement?
+When a gal is so flustified at seeing you, and so tickled that
+she tetters right up and down, while her mother hunts heaven
+and earth for tit-bits to tickle your palate with&mdash;quail on toast,
+mushrooms, sweet-breads, and the Lord knows what&mdash;ain't
+that a sign they are willin'? Thunder and guns! what would
+you have? Ann 'Liza can't up and say &quot;Marry me, Tom;&quot;
+nor I can't up and say, &quot;Thomas, marry my daughter,&quot; can I?
+But if you want to marry her, say so like a man, and I swan
+I'll meet you like a man, and a father!'</p>
+
+<p>Alas for Tom! he had nothing left him to do except to say
+that he wished to marry Ann Eliza, and that he would come
+the next evening and tell her so.</p>
+
+<p>It was Peterkin who answered his ring when he presented
+himself at the door of Le Bateau, Peterkin more inflated and
+pompous than ever as he shook the young man's hand, calling
+him Thomas&mdash;a name which aggravated him beyond all description&mdash;and
+telling him to go right into the parlor, where he
+would find Ann 'Liza waitin' for him, and where they could
+bill and coo as much as they liked, for he and May Jane would
+keep out of the way and give 'em a chance.</p>
+
+<p>Even then Tom cast one despairing glance toward the door,
+with a half resolve to bolt; but Peterkin was behind him,
+pushing him on to his fate, which, after all, was not so very
+bad when he came to face it. There was nothing low, or mean,
+or coarse about Ann Eliza, who, but for her very bright red
+hair, would have been called pretty by some, and who was by
+no means ill-looking, even with her red hair, as she stood up
+to receive her lover, with a droop in her eyes, and a flush on
+her cheeks; for she knew the object of his visit, into which he
+plunged at once. He did not say that he loved her, but he
+asked her in a straightforward way to be his wife, and then
+waited for her answer, which was not long in coming, for
+Ann Eliza was no dissembler. She loved Tom Tracy with her
+whole soul, and felt herself honored in being sought by him.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Tom!' she said, while the tears shone in her eyes,
+which Tom noticed for the first time were large and clear and
+very blue. 'It does not seem possible for you to love me, but,
+if you really do, I will be your wife and try to make you happy,
+and&mdash;and&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated a moment and then went on:</p>
+
+<p>'Save you as much as possible from father. We cannot live
+here; you and he would not get on; he means well and is the
+kindest of fathers to me, but he is not like you, and we must
+go away.'</p>
+
+<p>She was really a very sensible girl, Tom thought, and in his
+joy at finding her so sensible he stooped and kissed her forehead
+as the proper thing for him to do, while she, the poor
+little mistaken girl, threw herself into his arms and began to
+cry, she was so glad and happy.</p>
+
+<p>Tom did not know exactly what he ought to do. It was a
+novel situation for him to be in, with a girl sobbing on his
+bosom, and his first impulse was to push her off; but when he
+remembered that she represented a million of dollars, he did
+what half the men in the world would have done in his place:
+he held her close and tried to quiet her, and told her he was
+not half good enough for her, and knew in his heart he was
+telling the truth, and felt within him that stirring of a resolve
+that she should never know he did not love her, and that he
+would make her happy, if he could.</p>
+
+<p>And so they were betrothed without much billing and cooing,
+and Peterkin came in with Mary Jane and made a speech half-an-hour
+long to his future son-in-law, and settled just when
+they were to be married and what they were to do.</p>
+
+<p>Christmas week was the time, and he vowed he'd give 'em a
+wedding which should take the starch entirely out of Gusty
+Browne, whose mother, Mrs. Rossiter Browne, would think
+Gusty was never married at all when she saw what he could
+do. Greatly he lamented that Harold and Jerry could not be
+present. 'But they'll see it in the papers,' he said, 'for I'll
+have a four column notice, if I write it myself, and pay for it
+too! And when you meet 'em in Europe you can tell 'em
+what they missed.'</p>
+
+<p>To all this Tom listened, with great drops of cold sweat running
+down his back as he thought of the ridicule he should
+incur if Peterkin should carry out his intentions to 'take the
+rag off the bush,' as he expressed it. The trip to Europe
+pleased him, but the party filled him with a horror from which
+he saw no escape, until he consulted his mother, to whom he
+at once announced his engagement, but did not tell her of the
+check on a Springfield bank for $2,000 which Peterkin had
+slipped into his hand at parting with him, saying, when he
+protested against taking it:</p>
+
+<p>'Don't be a fool, Thomas. I'm to be your dad, so take it;
+you'll need it. I know your circumstances; they ain't what
+they was, and I don't s'pose you've got enough to buy the engagement
+ring, I want a big one. A solitary&mdash;no cluster for
+me. I know what 'tis to be poor. Take it, Thomas.'</p>
+
+<p>So Tom took it with a sense of shame which prompted him
+several times to tear it in shreds and throw them to the winds.
+But this he did not do, for he knew he should need money, as
+he had none of his own; and when, a few days before, he had
+asked Colvin for some, that worthy man, who had never taken
+kindly to him, had bidden him go to a very warm place for
+money, as he had no orders to give him any.</p>
+
+<p>'Your uncle,' he said, 'settled one hundred thousand dollars
+on your father&mdash;the more fool he&mdash;and expects him to live on
+it. So my advice to you is that you go to work.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, Tom couldn't work, and after a little Peterkin's gift
+did not seem so very humiliating to him, although he could
+not bring himself to tell his mother of it when he announced
+his engagement to her, which he did bluntly and with nothing
+apologetic in his manner or speech.</p>
+
+<p>'I am going to marry Ann Eliza Peterkin some time during
+the holidays, and start at once for Europe,' he said, and then
+brought some water and dashed it in her face, for she immediately
+went into hysterics and declared herself dying.</p>
+
+<p>When she grew calm, Tom swore a little, and talked a good
+deal, and told her about the million, which he said was not to
+be sneezed at, and told her what Colvin had said to him, and
+asked what the old Harry he was to do if he didn't marry Ann
+Eliza, and told her of the proposed party, asking her to save
+him from it if she could.</p>
+
+<p>When she found she could not help herself, Dolly rose to the
+situation, and said she would see her daughter-in-law elect,
+whom Tom was to bring to her, as she could not think of calling
+at Le Bateau in her present state of affliction. So Ann
+Eliza came over in the coat-of-arms carriage, and her mother
+came with her. But her Dolly declined to see. She could not
+endure everything, she said to Tom, and was only equal to
+Ann Eliza, whom she met with a bow and the tips of her
+fingers, without rising from her chair. Still, as the representative
+of a million, Ann Eliza was entitled to some consideration,
+and Dolly motioned her to a seat beside her, and, with
+her black-bordered handkerchief to her eyes, said to her:</p>
+
+<p>'Tom tells me you are going to marry him, and I trust you
+will try to make him happy. He is a most estimable young
+man now, and if he should develop any bad habits, I shall
+think it owing to some new and bad influence brought to
+bear upon him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes'm,' Ann Eliza answered, timidly; and the great lady
+went on to talk of family, and blood, and position, as something
+for which money could not make amends, and to impress
+upon her a sense of the great honor it was to be a member of
+the Tracy family.</p>
+
+<p>Then she spoke of the wedding party, which she trusted Ann
+Eliza would prevent, as nothing could be in worse taste when
+they were in such affliction, adding that neither herself nor
+Mr. Tracy could think of being present.</p>
+
+<p>'Be married quietly, without any display, if you wish to
+please me,' she said; and with a wave of her cobweb handkerchief
+she signified that the conference was ended.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, Annie, how did you and my lady hit it?' Tom asked,
+meeting Ann Eliza in the hall as she came out, flushed and hot
+from the interview.</p>
+
+<p>'We didn't hit it at all,' Ann Eliza replied, with a sound of
+tears in her voice, and a gleam in her eye which Tom had
+never seen before. 'She just talked as if I were dirt, and that
+you were only marrying me for money. She don't like me and
+I don't like her, there!' and the indignant little girl began to
+cry.</p>
+
+<p>Tom laughed immoderately, and, passing his arm around her
+as they went down the stairs, he said:</p>
+
+<p>'Of course you don't like her. Who ever did like her
+mother-in-law? But you are marrying me, not my mother, so
+don't cry, <i>petite</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>Tom was making an effort to be very kind, and even lover-like
+to his <i>fianc&eacute;e</i>, who was easily comforted, and who, on her
+return to Le Bateau told her father plainly that the party must
+be given up, as it would be sadly out of place and deeply offend
+the Tracys. Very unwillingly Peterkin gave it up, and sent
+word to that effect to Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, who had already
+been apprised of the coming event and was having a wonderful
+gown made for the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>'I find,' he wrote, 'that it wouldn't be at all <i>rachelshay</i> to
+have a blow out whilst the family is in deep black; but when
+they git into lavender, and the young folks is home from their
+tower, I'll have a tearer.'</p>
+
+<p>Peterkin tried two or three times to see Mrs. Tracy, but
+she put him off with one excuse after another, until Tom took
+the matter in hand and told her she was acting like a fool and
+putting on quite too many airs. Then she appointed an interview,
+and, bracing herself with a tonic, went down to the
+darkened, cheerless room, and by her manner so managed to
+impress him with her superiority over him and his that he forgot
+entirely the speech he had prepared with infinite pains, and
+which had in it a good deal about family <i>bonds</i>, and family
+<i>units</i>, and <i>Aaron's beard</i>, and brotherly love. This he had
+rehearsed
+many times to May Jane, with wonderful gestures and
+flourishes; 'but, I'll be bumped' he said to her on his return
+from the Park House, 'if I didn't forget every blessed word,
+she was so high and mighty. Lord! as if I didn't know what
+she sprung from; but that's the way with them as was born
+to nothin'. May Jane, if I ever catch you puttin' on airs 'cause
+you're a Peterkin, I b'lieve I'll kill you!'</p>
+
+<p>After this, anything like familiar intercourse ceased between
+the heads of the two families until the morning after Christmas
+day, when Frank and Dolly drove over to Le Bateau,
+where were assembled the same people who had been present
+at Jerrie's wedding, and where Peterkin insisted upon darkening
+the rooms and lighting the gas, as something a little out of
+the usual order of things in Shannondale. Peterkin was very
+happy, and very proud of this alliance with the Tracy, and his
+pride and happiness shone in his face all through the ceremony;
+and when the clergyman asked, 'Who giveth this woman
+to be married to this man?' his manner was something
+grand to see as he stepped forward and responded, 'I do, sir,'
+in a voice so loud and full of importance that Dolly involuntarily
+groaned, while Tom found it hard to refrain from
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p>Tom behaved very well, and kissed his bride before any one
+else had a chance to do so, and called May Jane mother and
+Peterkin father, after he saw the papers which made Ann Eliza
+own in her own right a million dollars; and when, an hour
+later, she handed over to him as his own, a deed of property
+valued at one hundred thousand dollars, he took her in his
+arms and kissed her again, telling her what was very true, that
+she was worth her weight in gold. Tom had felt his poverty
+keenly, and all the more so that Ann Eliza's engagement-ring,
+a superb solitaire, had actually been bought with her father's
+gift, as had their passage tickets to Europe. But now he was
+a rich man, made so by his wife's thoughtful generosity, and
+he was conscious of a new set of feelings and emotions with
+regard to her, and inwardly vowed that, so far as in him lay,
+he would make her happy.</p>
+
+<p>They took the train for New York that afternoon, accompanied
+by Peterkin, who, when the ship sailed away next day,
+stood upon the wharf waving his hands and calling out as long
+as they could hear him, 'God bless you, my children! God
+bless you, my children!' Then he went back to Shannondale
+and called at Tracy Park, and reported to Frank, the only
+one he saw, that the youngsters had gone, and that Mrs.
+Thomas Tracy looked as well as the best on 'em in the ship,
+and a darned sight better than some!</p>
+
+<p>After this the great houses of Le Bateau and Tracy Park
+settled down into perfect quiet, especially that of Tracy Park,
+where Dolly shut herself up in her mourning and crape, and
+Frank spent most of his time in Maude's room, with her photograph
+in his hand, and his thoughts busy with memories of
+the dear little girl lying in her grave of flowers under the
+winter snow.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIII" id="CHAPTER_LIII" ></a>CHAPTER LIII.</h2>
+
+<h2>AFTER TWO YEARS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Two years since Harold and Jerrie went away, and it was
+October again, and the doors and windows of the Park
+House were all open to the warm sunshine which filled
+the rooms, where the servants were flitting in and out with an
+air of importance and pleased expectancy, for that afternoon
+the master was coming home, with Harold and Jerrie; and
+what was more wonderful and exciting still, there was in the
+party a little boy, born in Wiesbaden six months before, and
+christened Frank Tracy. They had gone directly to Germany&mdash;Arthur,
+Harold, and Jerrie&mdash;for the former would not stop
+a day until Wiesbaden was reached; and there, overcome with
+fatigue and the recollections of the past which crowded upon him
+so fast, Arthur fell sick and was confined to his room in the
+hotel for a week, during which time Jerrie explored the city
+with Harold and a guide, finding every spot connected with
+Gretchen and her life, even to the shop were Frau Heinrich
+had sold her small wares.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as her father was able, she took him to them one
+by one. Hand in hand, for he seemed weak as a little child,
+they went to the bench under the trees where he had first seen
+Gretchen knitting in the sunshine, with the halo on her hair,
+and here Arthur took off his hat as if on consecrated ground,
+and whispered, 'May God forgive me!' then to the little shop
+once kept by Frau Heinrich, where Arthur astonished the
+woman by buying out half her stock, which he ordered sent
+to his hotel, and afterward gave away; then to the English
+church, where he knelt before the altar and seemed to be praying,
+though the words he said were spoken more to Gretchen
+than to God; then to the house where he had lived with his
+bride, when heaven came down so close that she could touch it,
+or rather, to the site of the house, for fire had done its work there
+and they could only stand before the ruins, while Arthur said
+again and again, 'May God forgive me!' then to the house
+where Jerrie had lived and Gretchen had died, and where the
+picture still hung upon the wall, a wonder and delight to all
+who had rented the place since Marian's parents parents lived
+there. Jerrie recognized it in a moment, and so did Arthur,
+but he could only wring his hands before it and sob, 'Oh,
+Gretchen, my darling, my darling!' Changed as the house was,
+Jerrie found the room she remembered so well, where she had
+played and her mother had died.</p>
+
+<p>'The big stove stood here,' she said, indicating the spot, 'and
+mother sat there writing to you, when Nannine opened the
+door and let the firelight shine upon the paper. I can see it
+all so distinctly, and over there in the corner was the bed
+where she died.'</p>
+
+<p>Then Arthur knelt down upon the spot, and as if the oft-repeated
+ejaculation, 'May God forgive me!' were wholly inadequate
+now, he said the Lord's Prayer, with folded hands and
+streaming eyes, while Jerrie stood over him, with her arm
+around his neck.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Gretchen,' he cried; 'do you know I am here after so
+many years?&mdash;Arthur, your husband, who loved you through
+all? Come back to me, Gretchen, and I'll be so tender and
+true&mdash;tender and true! My heart is breaking, Gretchen, and
+only for Cherry, our dear little girl baby, I should wish I were
+dead, like you. Oh, Gretchen! Gretchen! sweetest wife a
+man ever called his! and yet I forgot you, darling&mdash;forgot that
+you had ever lived! May heaven forgive me for I could not
+help it; I forgot everything. Where are you, Cherry? It's
+getting so dark and cold, and Gretchen is not here&mdash;I think
+you must take me home.</p>
+
+<p>Jerrie took him back to the hotel, where he kept his room
+for three days, and then they went to Gretchen's grave beside
+her mother, which Jerrie had found after some little search and
+enquiry. Here Arthur stood like a statue, holding fast to
+Jerrie, and gazing down upon the neglected grave, on which
+clumps of withered grass were growing and blowing in the November
+wind.</p>
+
+<p>'Gretchen is not here in this place,' he said mournfully, with
+a shake of his head. 'She couldn't rest there a moment, for
+she liked everything beautiful and bright, and this is like the
+Potter's field. But we'll put up a monument for her, and
+make the place attractive; and by and by, when she is tired of
+wandering about, she may come back and rest when she
+sees what we have done, and knows that we have been here.
+We will buy that house too, he said, as he walked away from
+the lonely grave; and the next day Harold found the owner of
+the place and commenced negotiations for the house, which
+soon changed hands and became the property of Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>Just what he meant to do with it he did not know, until Jerrie
+suggested that he should make it an asylum for homeless children,
+who should receive the kindest and tenderest care from
+competent and trustworthy nurses, hired for the purpose.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I'll do it,' Arthur said, 'and will call it &quot;The Gretchen
+Home.&quot; Maybe she will come there some time, and know what
+I have done.'</p>
+
+<p>This idea once in his mind, Arthur never let go of it until
+the house was fitted up with school-rooms and dormitories, with
+the little white beds and chairs suggestive of the little ones
+rescued from want and misery and placed in the Gretchen home
+until it would hold no more. The general supervision of this
+home was placed in the hands of the English rector, the Rev.
+James Dennis, whose many acts of kindness and humanity
+among the poor had won for him the sobriquet of St. James,
+and with whom the interests of the children were safe as with
+a loving father.</p>
+
+<p>'There is money enough&mdash;money enough,' said Arthur, when
+giving his instructions to the matron, a good-natured woman,
+who, he knew, would never abuse a child. 'Money enough;
+to give them something besides bread and water for breakfast,
+and mush and molasses for supper. Children like cookies and
+custard pie, and if there comes a circus to town let them go
+once in a while; it won't hurt them to see a little of the
+world.'</p>
+
+<p>Frau Hirch looked at him in some surprise, but promised
+compliance with his wishes; and when in the middle of December
+he left Wiesbaden for Italy he had the satisfaction of
+knowing that the inmates of the Gretchen home were enjoying
+a bill of fare not common in institutions of the kind.</p>
+
+<p>Another odd fancy had entered his brain, upon which he
+acted with his usual promptness. Every child not known to
+have been baptized, was to be christened with a new name,
+either Gretchen, or Jerrie, or Maude or Arthur, or Harold, or
+Frank.</p>
+
+<p>'Suppose you have Tom, and Ann Eliza, and Hilly,' Jerrie
+suggested, and after a little demur Arthur consented, and the
+names of Tom, and Ann Eliza, and Billy were added to the
+list, which, in the course of time, created some little confusion
+in the Gretchen home, where Jerries, and Maudes, and Harolds,
+and Arthurs abounded in great profusion, these being the
+favorites of the children, who in most instances were allowed
+to choose for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>It was not difficult to find in Wiesbaden people who had remembered
+Gretchen and the grand marriage she had made
+with the rich American, who afterward abandoned her. That
+was the way they worded it, and they remembered too, the
+little girl, Jerrine, whom, after her mother's death, the nurse,
+Nannine, took to her father's friends, since which nothing had
+been heard from her. Thus, had there been in Arthur's mind
+any doubt as to Jerrie's identity, it would have been swept
+away; but there was none. He had accepted her from the
+first as his daughter, and he always looked up to her as a child
+to its mother whom it fears to lose sight of.</p>
+
+<p>The winter was mostly spent in Rome, where Harold and
+Jerrie explored every part of the city, while Arthur staid in
+his room talking to an unseen Gretchen, who afforded him
+almost as much satisfaction as the real one might have done.
+In May they visited the lakes and in June drifted to Paris,
+where Jerrie was overjoyed to meet Nina and Dick, who were
+staying with the Raymonds at a charming chateau just outside
+the city. Here she and Harold passed a most enjoyable week,
+and before she left she was made happy by something which
+she saw and which told her that Dick was forgetting that
+night under the pines, and that some day not far in the future
+he would find in Marian all he had once hoped to find in her.
+In Paris, too, she came one day upon Ann Eliza at the Bon
+March&eacute;, with silks and satins piled high around her, and two
+or three obsequious clerks in attendance, for La Petite Am&eacute;ricaine,
+who bought so lavishly everything she saw and fancied,
+was well known to the tradespeople, who eagerly sought her
+patronage and that of my lord monsieur, who inspired them
+greatly with his air of importance and dignity. Tom was enjoying
+himself immensely, and was really a good deal improved
+and a good deal in love with his little wife, whom he always
+addressed as Petite or Madame, and who was quite a belle and a
+general favorite in the American colony. Following a fashion,
+which Tom was sure had been made for his benefit, she had cut off
+her obnoxious red hair and substituted in its place a wig of reddish
+brown, which for naturalness and beauty was a marvel of art
+and skill, and became her so well that Tom really thought her
+handsome, or at least very stylish and stunning, which was
+better than mere beauty. They had a suite of rooms at the
+Continental, and there Harold and Jerrie dined with them in
+their private parlor, for Tom was quite too fine a gentleman to
+go to <i>table d'h&ocirc;te</i> with the common herd. Ann Eliza's grand
+maid, Doris, was with her still, and had come to look upon
+her young mistress as quite as great a personage as the Lady
+Augusta Hardy, whom she had ceased to quote, and who, with
+her mother, Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, was now in the city, attended,
+it was said, by a Polish count, who had an eye upon her
+money. Once, when they were alone, Jerrie asked Tom when
+he was going home, and, with a comical twinkle in his eye, he
+replied, 'When I hear that my respected father-in-law has gone
+off with apoplexy, and not before.' Jerrie thought this a
+shocking speech, but she was glad to see him so happy, and, as
+she told Harold, 'so much more of a man than she had ever
+supposed he could be.'</p>
+
+<p>That summer Harold and Jerrie spent in Switzerland, with
+the Raymonds and St. Claires and Tracys, while Arthur went
+to Wiesbaden to see to the Gretchen Home, which he found so
+much to his taste that he remained there until Harold and
+Jerrie, after a trip through Austria and Germany, joined him
+in November, when they went again for the winter to Italy,
+coming back in the spring to Wiesbaden, and because Arthur
+would have it so, taking up their abode for a while in the
+Gretchen Home, which had been greatly enlarged and improved,
+and now held thirty deserted and homeless children. Here, in
+April, Jerrie's little boy was born, in the same room and corner
+where Gretchen had died, and where Arthur again went down
+upon his knees and said the Lord's Prayer, to which he added a
+fervent thanksgiving for Jerrie spared and a baby given to him.</p>
+
+<p>'I hoped it would be a girl,' he said, 'for then we should
+have called it Gretchen; but as it is a boy, suppose we name it
+Heinrich?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, father,' Jerrie said decidedly, 'Baby is not to be
+Heinrich, or Arthur, or Harold, although I think the last the
+dearest name in the world,' and she put up her hand caressingly
+to the brown beard of the tall young man bending over
+to kiss her pale face and look at his son. 'We will call the
+baby Frank Tracy.'</p>
+
+<p>And so Frank Tracy was the name given to the child, who
+was more like its father than its mother, and whom Arthur
+called Tracy, which he liked better, he said, than he did Frank.</p>
+
+<p>They remained in Wiesbaden until June, then went to Switzerland
+and Paris, and in October sailed for home, where the
+Park House was ready for them, with no mistress to dispute
+Jerrie's rights and no master except the lawful one. Just out
+of town on a grassy ridge overlooking the river, a gentleman
+from New York had built a pretty little cottage, which, as his
+wife died suddenly, he never occupied, but offered for sale, with
+all its furniture and appointments.</p>
+
+<p>'Let's buy it,' Dolly said to her husband. 'We must go
+somewhere before Arthur comes home, and we can live there
+very respectably and economically, too.'</p>
+
+<p>She was beginning to count the cost of everything now, and
+was almost penurious in her efforts to make their income go as
+far as possible. So they bought the pretty place, which she
+called Ridge Cottage, but Frank did not live to occupy it. After
+Tom went away and left him alone with his wife, who was not the
+most agreeable of companions, he failed rapidly, both in body
+and mind, and those who saw him walking about the house,
+with his white hair and bent form, would have said he was
+seventy rather than fifty years old. Every day, when the
+weather permitted, he visited Maude's grave, where he sometime
+stayed for hours looking down upon the mound talking to
+the insensible clay beneath.</p>
+
+<p>'I am coming soon, Maude, very soon, to be here beside
+you,' he would say. 'Everybody has gone, even to Tom, and
+your mother is sometimes hard upon me because of what I did.
+And I am tired, and cold, and old, and the world is dark and
+dreary, and I am coming very soon.'</p>
+
+<p>Then he would walk slowly back, taking the post office on
+his way, to inquire for letters from the folks, as he designated
+the absent ones. These letters were a great comfort to him,
+especially those from Jerrie, who wrote him very often and
+told him all they were doing and seeing, and tried to make
+him understand how much she loved and sympathised with
+him. Not a hint had been given him of the baby; and when,
+in June, he received a letter from her containing a photograph
+of the little boy named for him, he seemed childish in his joy,
+and started with the picture at once for Maude's grave. Kneeling
+down, with his face in the long grass, he whispered:</p>
+
+<p>'Look, Maude!&mdash;Jerrie's baby boy, named for me&mdash;Frank
+Tracy! Do you hear me, Maude? Frank Tracy, for me&mdash;who
+wronged her so. God bless Jerrie, and give her many
+years of happiness when I am dead and gone, which will not now
+be long. I am coming very soon, Maude; sooner than you
+think, and shall never see Jerrie's little boy, God bless him!'</p>
+
+<p>That night Frank seemed brighter than usual, and talked a
+great deal with his wife, who, to the last day of her life, was
+glad that she was kind to him and humored all his fancies; and
+once, when he lay upon the couch, with the baby's picture in
+his hand, she went and sat by him and ran her fingers caressingly
+through his white hair, and asked if he were not better.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Dolly,' he said, taking her fingers in his hand and
+holding them fast. 'A great deal better. Jerrie's baby has
+done me good, and you, too, Dolly. You don't knew how nice
+it seems to have you smooth my hair; it is like the old days at
+Langley, when we sang in the choir together, and you were fond
+of me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am fond of you now, Frank,' Dolly replied, as she stooped to
+kiss the face in which there was a look she had never seen before,
+and which haunted her long after he had said good-night and
+gone to Maude's room, where he said he would sleep, as he was
+likely to be restless and might keep her awake.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Dolly took her breakfast alone, for Frank
+did not join her.</p>
+
+<p>'Let him sleep,' she said to the servant, who suggested calling
+him; but when some time later, he did not appear, she
+went herself to Maude's room, into which the noonday sun
+was shining, for every blind and window was open and the
+light was so dazzling that for a moment she did not see the
+still figure stretched upon the bed, where with Maude's picture
+in one hand and Jerrie's baby's in the other, her husband lay,
+calmly sleeping the sleep which knows no waking.</p>
+
+<p>On his face there was a look of rapturous joy, and on his
+lips a smile as if they were framing the loved name of Maude
+when death came and sealed them forever. Around him was
+no sign of struggle or pain, for the covering was not disturbed;
+and the physician when he came said he must have died quietly
+and possibly instantly without a note of warning. They
+buried him beside his daughter and then Dolly was alone in
+the great house, which became so intolerable to her that she
+left it early in August and took possession of the cottage on
+the Ridge, which, though scarcely less lovely, was not as large
+as the Park House and did not seem haunted with the ghosts
+of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>And so it happened that Mrs. Crawford alone stood in the
+door-way to welcome the travellers when, late in the bright
+October afternoon they came, tired and dusty, but oh, so glad
+to be home once more and to feel that now it really was home
+to all intents and purposes.</p>
+
+<p>'I never was so glad in my life, and if Uncle Frank were
+here I should be perfectly happy,' Jerrie cried, as she threw
+herself upon Mrs. Crawford's neck, hugging and kissing her
+awhile, and then taking her baby from the nurse she put it into
+the old lady's arms, saying as she did so:</p>
+
+<p>'Another grandson for you&mdash;Harold's baby. Isn't he a
+beauty?'</p>
+
+<p>And little Tracy was a most beautiful child, with his father's
+features and complexion, but Jerrie's expression and ways, and
+Mrs. Crawford felt, as she folded him to her bosom and cried
+over him, that he would be the crowning joy of her old age.
+At first Harold puzzled and perplexed her, he was so changed
+from the Harold who had shingled roofs and painted barns
+and worked in Peterkin's furnace. Foreign travel and prosperity
+set well upon him, and one could scarcely have found
+a more refined or polished young man than Harold as he moved
+about the premises, every inch a gentleman and every inch the
+master, with a bright smile and pleasant word for everyone,
+whether of high or low degree. He had known what poverty
+meant, with slights on account of it, and had risen above it all,
+and remembering the days when he worked in the Tracy fields
+and envied his companions their leisure and freedom from toil,
+he had resolved that, if possible, some portion of mankind
+should be happier because of him. He knew he was very fine-looking,
+for his tailor told him so, and his mirror told him so,
+and Jerrie told him so twenty times a day as she kissed his
+handsome face, and his grandmother frequently took off her
+spectacles to wipe away her glad tears as she looked at her boy
+and felt so proud of him.</p>
+
+<p>All Shannondale hastened to call upon the travellers, and
+no one was louder or more demonstrative in his welcome than
+Peterkin, who called himself their <i>kin</i>, and was very proud of
+the connection and of his son <i>Thomas</i>, for whom he made many
+inquiries. It did not take long for the family to settle down
+into every-day quiet, Jerrie proving herself a competent and
+thorough housekeeper, while Harold was to all intents and purposes
+the head to whom everyone deferred and went for directions.
+Arthur, who had half died from seasickness, had at once taken
+to his rooms and his old mode of life, telling Harold and Jerrie
+to do what they liked and not bother him. One change, however,
+he made; he put Harold into the office in the place of
+Colvin, who had done his business for so many years, and who
+was glad to give it up, while Harold was glad to take it, as it
+gave him something to do and did not greatly interfere with
+his law studies, which he immediately resumed, applying himself
+so closely that he was admitted to practice within the
+year, and in time became one of the ablest lawyers in the State.</p>
+
+<p>And now there remains but little to do except to gather up the
+few tangled threads of our story and bring it to a close. For
+another year the Raymonds and St. Claires remained abroad,
+and then, just before they sailed for home, there was a double
+wedding one morning in London, when Fred and Dick were the
+bridegrooms, and Marian and Nina were the brides. Dick
+had not forgotten the night under the pines, but he had ceased
+to remember it with pain; and when he asked Marian to be
+his wife he told her of it, and of his old love for Jerrie, while
+she in turn told him of a grave among the Alps by which she
+had stood with an aching heart, while strangers buried from her
+sight forever a young artist from Boston, who, had he lived,
+would have made it impossible for her to be the wife of Dick
+St. Claire. But Allan was dead, and Jerrie was a wife and
+mother, and so across the graves of a living and a dead love the
+two grasped hands, and, forgetting the past as far as possible,
+were content with the new happiness offered to them.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It is five years now since Harold and Jerrie came home, and
+toddling about the house is a little girl two years old, whom they
+call Gretchen, and who has all the soft beauty of the Gretchen in
+the picture, together with Jerrie's stronger and more marked features.
+This little girl is Arthur's idol, and has succeeded in luring
+him from his den, in which, until she came, he was staying
+closer than ever. Now, however, he is with her constantly,
+either in the house or in the grounds, or sitting under a tree
+holding her in his lap, while he talks his strange talk to the
+other Gretchen, and the child listens wonderingly, with her
+great blue eyes fixed upon him.</p>
+
+<p>'This is our grandchild,' he will say, nodding to the space
+beside him, while little Gretchen nods too, as if she also saw a
+figure sitting there. 'Our grandchild and Jerrie's baby, and
+you are its grandmother. Grandma Gretchen! That's funny;'
+and then he laughs, and baby laughs, and says after him, lispingly,
+'Danma Detchen, that's funny.'</p>
+
+<p>Then Tracy comes up with his whip and his cart, and his
+straw hat hanging down his back, and Arthur points him out
+to the spirit Gretchen as her grandson, who, he says, is all
+Hastings, with a very little Tracy and not a grain of German in
+him, 'but very nice, very nice; and you are his grandmother,
+too, and I am his grandfather, whom he once called an old
+crazy man because I wouldn't let him play in my room with a
+little alligator which his Aunt Dolly sent him from Florida.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, you be crazy, ain't you?' the boy says, seating himself
+upon the bench and nestling his brown head against the arm of
+the man, who replies:</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know whether I am or not, but if to be very happy
+in the companionship of the living and of the dead, and to have
+one as real as the other is craziness, then I am crazy.'</p>
+
+<p>And then, for the hundredth time, he tells to the boy, and
+to the baby, too, who seems to understand the story of the
+carpet-bag and the little girl, their mother, whom the boy, their
+father, found in the Tramp House one wintry morning years
+ago, and carried through the snow. And Tracy starts to his
+feet with dilating eyes, and says:</p>
+
+<p>'I just wish I'd been there. I'd carried mamma, and
+wouldn't let her drop in the snow as papa did. Where was
+I then, grandpa?'</p>
+
+<p>But grandpa does not answer, and begins the story of the
+cherries and the ladder, which Tracy likes even better than that
+of the carpet bag, particularly the part where the white sun-bonnet
+appears in the window, and the shrill voice calls out:
+'Mr. Crazyman, Mr. Crazyman, don't you want some cherries?'</p>
+
+<p>This Arthur makes very dramatic and real, and Tracy holds
+his breath; and sometimes when the question is more real than
+usual, little Gretchen puts out her hand, and says:</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Iss</i>, div me some.'</p>
+
+<p>Then the boy and the old man laugh, and Tracy runs off
+after a passing butterfly, and Arthur goes on with talk to the
+baby and the other Gretchen beside him, until the former falls
+asleep, and he takes her to the crib he has had put in the bay
+window under the picture which smiles down upon the sleeping
+infant, whose guardian angel it seems to be.</p>
+
+<p>The Tramp House has been repaired and renovated, the table
+mended, and the rat hole stopped up; and the trio frequently
+go there together, for it is the children's play-house, where
+Arthur is sometimes a horse, sometimes a bear, and sometimes
+a whole menagerie of animals. Once or twice he has been the
+dead woman on the table, with little Gretchen beside him in the
+carpet-bag, and Tracy tugging with all his might to lift her out;
+but after the day when he let her fall, and gave her a big bump
+upon the forehead, that kind of play ceased, and the boy was
+compelled to try some other make believe than that of the
+tragedy on the wintry night many years before.</p>
+
+<p>Billy Peterkin has never married, and never will. His
+heart-wound was too deep to heal without a scar to tell where
+it had been; but he and Jerrie are the best of friends, and he
+is very fond of her children.</p>
+
+<p>Tom is still abroad, waiting for that fit of apoplexy which is to
+be the signal for his return; but the probabilities are that he
+will wait a long time, for Peterkin, who is himself afraid of
+apoplexy, has gone through the Banting process, which has
+reduced his weight from fifty to seventy-five pounds, and as he
+is very careful in his diet Tom may stay abroad longer than he
+cares to do, unless Ann Eliza's persuasions bring him home to
+his dreaded father-in-law. There was a little girl born to them
+in Rome, whom they called Maude, but she only lived a few
+weeks, and then they buried her under the daisies in the
+Protestant burying ground, where so many English and Americans
+are lying. Ann Eliza sent a lock of the little one's hair
+to her father, who had it framed and hung in his bedroom, and
+wore on his hat a band of crape which nearly covered it.</p>
+
+<p>Dolly still calls the Ridge Cottage her home, but she is not
+often there, for a mania for travelling has seized her, and she
+is always upon the move, searching for some new place, where
+she hopes to find rest and quiet. She still dresses in black,
+relieved at times with something white, but she has laid aside
+crape and sports her diamonds, which she did not find it necessary
+to sell, and which attract a great deal of attention, they
+are so clear and large. One year she spent in Europe with
+Tom and Ann Eliza, the latter of whom she made so uncomfortable
+with her constant dictation and assumption of superiority
+that Tom at last came to the rescue, and told her either
+to mind her business and let his wife alone or go home. As
+she could not do the former she came home, and joined a Raymond
+party to California, but soon separated herself from it, as
+the members were not to her taste. Every summer she
+goes either to Saratoga or the sea-side or the mountains, and
+every winter she drifts southward to Florida, where, at
+certain hotels, she is as well known as the oldest <i>habitu&eacute;e</i>.
+We saw her recently at Winter Park, where, at the Seminole,
+she has a maid and a suit of rooms, and as far as possible
+keeps herself aloof from the common herd, consorting only with
+the noted ones of the place, those she knows who have money
+and position at home. Poor foolish Dolly, who has forgotten
+Langley and its humble surroundings. There are many like her
+in real life, but only one in our story, to which we now write</p>
+
+<p>THE END.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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diff --git a/15321.txt b/15321.txt
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+++ b/15321.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Tracy Park, by Mary Jane Holmes
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Tracy Park
+
+Author: Mary Jane Holmes
+
+Release Date: March 10, 2005  [eBook #15321]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRACY PARK***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team from page images generously
+made available by the Kentuckiana Digital Library
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages of the printed work can be seen at
+      the Electonic Text Collection of the Kentuckiana Digital Library
+      http://kdl.kyvl.org/
+
+
+
+
+TRACY PARK
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+MRS. MARY J. HOLMES,
+
+Author of Bessie's Fortune, Queenie Hetherton, Edith Lysle's Secret,
+Homestead on the Hillside, etc., etc., etc.
+
+Toronto:
+Rose Publishing Company
+Hunter Rose & Co.
+Printers & Book Binders
+Toronto
+25 Wellington St
+
+1886
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Don't stand and cry; press forward and remove the
+difficulty."--Dickens.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE TELEGRAM.
+
+
+'BREVOORT HOUSE, NEW YORK, Oct. 6th, 18--.
+
+'_To Mr. Frank Tracy, Tracy Park, Shannondale_.
+
+'I arrived in the Scotia this morning, and shall take the train for
+Shannondale at 3 p.m. Send someone to the station to meet us.
+
+'ARTHUR TRACEY.'
+
+This was the telegram which the clerk in the Shannonville office wrote
+out one October morning, and despatched to the Hon. Frank Tracy, of
+Tracy Park, in the quiet town of Shannondale, where our story opens.
+
+Mr. Frank Tracy, who, since his election to the State Legislature for
+two successive terms, had done nothing except to attend political
+meetings and make speeches on all public occasions, had an office in
+town, where he usually spent his mornings, smoking, reading the papers
+and talking to Mr. Colvin, his business agent and lawyer, for, though
+born in one of the humblest of New England houses, where the slanting
+roof almost touched the ground in the rear, and he could scarcely stand
+upright in the chamber where he slept, Mr. Frank Tracy was a great man
+now, and as he dashed along the turnpike behind his blooded bays, with
+his driver beside him, people looked admiringly after him, and pointed
+him out to strangers as the Hon. Mr. Tracy, of Tracy Park, one of the
+finest places in the county. It is true it did not belong to him, but he
+had lived there so long that he had come to look upon it as his, while
+his neighbors, too, seemed to have forgotten that there was across the
+ocean a Mr. Arthur Tracy, who might at any time come home to claim his
+own, and demand an account of his brother's stewardship. And it was
+this very Arthur Tracy, whose telegram announcing his return from Europe
+was read by his brother with mingled feelings of surprise and
+consternation.
+
+'Not that everything isn't fair and above-board, and he is welcome to
+look into matters as much as he likes,' Frank said over and over to
+himself, as he sat stating blankly at the telegram, while the cold
+chills ran up and down his back and arms. 'Yes, he can examine all
+Colvin's books and he will find them straight as a string, for didn't he
+tell me to use what I needed as remuneration for looking after his
+property while he was gallivanting over the world; and if he objects
+that I have paid myself too much, why, I can at once transfer those
+investments in my name to him. No, it is not that which affects me so,
+it is the suddenness of the thing, coming without warning and to-night
+of all nights, when the house will be full of carousing and champagne.
+What will Dolly say! Hysterics of course, if not a sick headache. I
+don't believe I can face her till she has had a little time to get over
+it. Here, boy, I want, you!' and he rapped at the window at a young lad
+who happened to be passing with a basket on his arm. 'I want you to do
+an errand for me,' he continued, as the boy entered the office, and,
+removing his cap, stood respectfully before him 'Take this telegram to
+Mrs. Tracy, and here is a dime for you.'
+
+'Thank you, but I don't care for the money,' the boy said 'I was going
+to the park anyway to tell Mrs. Tracy that grandma is sick and can't go
+there to-night.'
+
+'Cannot go! Sick! What is the matter?' Mr. Tracy asked, in some dismay,
+feeling that here was a fresh cause of trouble and worry for Dolly, as
+he designated his wife when off his guard and not on show before his
+fashionable friends, to whom she was Dora, or Mrs. Tracy.
+
+'She catched cold yesterday fixing up mother's grave,' the boy replied;
+and, as if the mention of that grave had sent Mr. Tracy's thoughts
+straying backward to the past, he looked thoughtfully at the child a
+moment, and then said:
+
+'How old are you, Harold?'
+
+'Ten, last August,' was the reply; and Mr. Tracy continued:
+
+'You do not remember your mother?'
+
+'No, sir, only a great crowd, and grandma crying so hard,' was Harold's
+reply.
+
+'You look like her,' Mr. Tracy said.
+
+'Yes, sir,' Harold answered, while into his frank, open face there came
+an expression of regret for the mother who had died when he was three
+years old, and whose life had been so short and sad.
+
+'Now, hurry off with the telegram, and mind you don't lose it. It is
+from my brother. He is coming to-night.'
+
+'Mr. Arthur Tracy, who sent the monument for my mother--is he coming
+home? Oh, I am so glad!' Harold exclaimed, and his handsome face lighted
+up with childish joy, as he put the telegram in his pocket and started
+For Tracy Park, wondering if he should encounter Tom, and thinking that
+if he did, and Tom gave him any chaff, he should lick him, or try to.
+
+'Darn him!' he said to himself, as he recalled the many times when Tom
+Tracy, a boy of his own age, had laughed at him for his poverty and
+coarse clothes. 'Darn him! he ain't any better than I am, if he does
+wear velvet trousers and live in a big house. 'Taint his'n; it's Mr.
+Arthur's, and I'm glad he is coming home. I wonder if he will bring
+grandma anything. I wish he'd I bring me a pyramid. He's seen 'em, they
+say.'
+
+Meantime, Mr. Frank Tracy had resumed his seat, and, with his hands
+clasped together over his head, was wondering what effect his brother's
+return would have upon him. Would he be obliged to leave the park, and
+the luxury he had enjoyed so long, and go back to the old life which he
+hated so much.
+
+'No; Arthur will never be so mean,' he said. 'He has always shown
+himself generous, and will continue to do so. Besides that, he will want
+somebody to keep his house for him, unless--' and here the perspiration
+started from every pore, as Frank Tracy thought: 'What if he is married,
+and the _us_ in his telegram means a wife, instead of a friend or
+servant, as I imagined!'
+
+This would indeed be a calamity, for then his own and Dolly's reign was
+over at Tracy Park, and the party they were to give that night to at
+least three hundred people would be their last grand blow-out.
+
+'Confound the party!' he thought, as he arose from his chair and began
+to pace the room. 'Arthur won't like that as a greeting after eleven
+years' absence. He never fancied being cheek by jowl with Tom, Dick and
+Harry; and that is just what the smash is to-night. Dolly wants to
+please everybody, thinking to get me votes for Congress, and so she has
+invited all creation and his wife. There's old Peterkin, the roughest
+kind of a canal bummer when Arthur went away. Think of my fastidious
+brother shaking hands with him and Widow Shipley, who kept a low tavern
+on the tow-path! She'll be there; in her silks and long gold chain, for
+she has four boys, all voters, who call me _Frank_ and slap me on the
+shoulder. Ugh! even I hate it all; and in a most perturbed state of
+mind, the Hon. Frank and would-be Congressman continued to walk the room
+lamenting the party which must be, and wondering what his aristocratic
+brother would say to such a crowd in his house on the night of his
+return.
+
+And if there should be a Mrs. Arthur Tracy, with possibly some little
+Tracys! But that idea was too horrible to contemplate, and so he tried
+to put it from his mind, and to be as calm and quiet as possible until
+lunch-time, when, with no very great amount of alacrity and
+cheerfulness, he started for home, where, as he had been warned by his
+wife when he left her in the morning, 'he was to lunch standing up or
+anyhow, as she had no time for parade that day.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ARTHUR TRACY.
+
+
+Although it was a morning in October, the grass in the park was as green
+as in early June, while the flowers in the beds and borders, the
+geraniums, the phlox, the stocks, and verbenas were handsomer, if
+possible, than they had been in the summer-time: for the rain, which had
+fallen almost continually during the month of September, had kept them
+fresh and bright. Here and there the scarlet and golden tints of autumn
+were beginning to show on the trees; but this only added a new charm to
+a place which was noted for its beauty, and was the pride and admiration
+of the town.
+
+And yet Mrs. Frank Tracy, who stood on the wide piazza, looking after a
+carriage which was moving down the avenue which led through the park to
+the highway, did not seem as happy as the mistress of that house ought
+to have been, standing there in the clear, crisp morning, with a silken
+wrapper trailing behind her, a coquettish French cap on her head, and
+costly jewels on her short, fat hands, which once were not as white and
+soft as they were now. For Mrs. Frank Tracy, as Dorothy Smith, had known
+what hard labor and poverty meant, and slights, too, because of the
+poverty and labor. Her mother was a widow, sickly and lame, and Dorothy
+in her girlhood had worked in the cotton mills at Langley, and bound
+shoes for the firm of Newell & Brothers, and had taught a district
+school, 'by way of elevating herself,' but the elevation did not pay,
+and she went back to the mills in the day-time and her shoes at night,
+and rebelled at the fate which had made her so poor and seemed likely to
+keep her so.
+
+But there was something better in store for her than binding shoes, or
+even teaching a district school, and, from the time when young Frank
+Tracy came to Langley as clerk in the Newell firm, Dorothy's life was
+changed and her star began to rise. They both sang in the choir,
+standing side by side, and sometimes using the same book, and once or
+twice their hands met as both tried to turn the leaves together.
+Dorothy's were red and rough, and not nearly as delicate as those of
+Frank, who had been in a store all his life: and still there was a
+magnetism in their touch which sent a thrill through the young man's
+veins, and made him for the first time look critically at his companion.
+
+She was very pretty, he thought, with bright black eyes, a healthful
+bloom, and a smile and blush which went straight to his heart and made
+him her slave at once. In three months' time they were married and
+commenced housekeeping in a very unostentatious way, for Frank had
+nothing but his salary to depend upon. But he was well connected, and
+boasted some blue blood, which, in Dorothy's estimation, made amends for
+lack of money. The Tracys of Boston were his distant relatives, and he
+had a rich bachelor uncle who spent his winters in New Orleans and his
+summers in Shannondale, at Tracy Park, on which he had lavished fabulous
+sums of money. From this uncle Frank had expectations, though naturally
+the greater part of his fortune would go to his god-son and name-sake,
+Arthur Tracy, who was Frank's elder brother, and as unlike him as one
+brother could well be unlike another.
+
+Arthur was scholarly in his tastes, quiet and gentlemanly in his
+manners, with a musical voice which won him friends at once, while in
+his soft black eyes there was a peculiar look of sadness, as if he were
+brooding over something which filled him with regret. Frank was very
+proud of his brother, and with Dorothy felt that he was honored when,
+six months after their marriage, he came for a day or so to visit them,
+and with him his intimate friend Harold Hastings, an Englishman by
+birth, but so thoroughly Americanized as to pass unchallenged for a
+native. There was a band of crape on Arthur's hat, and his manner was
+like one trying to be sorry, while conscious of a great inward feeling
+of resignation, if not content. The rich uncle was dead. He had died
+suddenly in Paris, where he had gone on business, and the whole of his
+vast fortune was left to his nephew Arthur--not a farthing to Frank, not
+even the mention of his name in the will: and when Dorothy heard it she
+put her white apron over her face, and cried as if her heart would
+break. They were so poor, she and Frank, and they wanted so many things,
+and the man who could have helped them was dead and had left them
+nothing. It was hard, and she might not have made the young heir very
+welcome if he had not ensured her that he should do something for her
+husband. And he kept his word, and in course of time bought out a
+grocery in Langley and put Frank in it, and paid the mortgage on his
+house, and gave him a thousand dollars, and invited them for a few days
+to visit him; and then it would seem as if he forgot them entirely; for
+with his friend Harold he settled himself at Tracy Park, and played the
+role of the grand gentleman to perfection.
+
+Dinner parties and card parties, where it was said the play was for
+money, and where Arthur always allowed himself to lose and his friends
+to win; races and hunts were of frequent occurrence at Tracy Park,
+where matters generally were managed on a magnificent scale, and created
+a great deal of talk among the plain folks of Shannondale, whose only
+dissipation then was going to church twice on Sunday and to the cattle
+show once each year.
+
+Few ladies ever graced these festivities, for Arthur was very
+aristocratic in his feelings, and with two or three exceptions, held
+himself aloof from the people of Shannondale. It was said, however, that
+sometimes, when he and his friend were alone, there was the sweep of a
+white dress and the gleam of golden hair in the parlor, where sweet Amy
+Crawford, daughter of the housekeeper, played and sang her simple
+ballads to the two gentlemen, who always treated her with as much
+deference as if she had been a queen, instead of a poor young girl
+dependent for her bread upon her own and her mother's exertions. But
+beyond the singing in the twilight Amy never advanced, and so far as her
+mother knew she had never for a single instant been alone with either of
+the gentlemen. How, then, was the household electrified one morning when
+it was found that Amy had fled, and that Harold Hastings was the
+companion of her flight?
+
+    'I wanted to tell you,' Amy wrote to her mother in the note left on
+    her dressing table. 'I wanted to tell you and be married at home,
+    but Mr. Hastings would not allow it. It would create trouble, he
+    said, between himself and Mr. Tracy, who I may confess to you in
+    confidence, asked me twice to be his wife, and when I refused,
+    without giving him a reason, for I dared not tell him of my love for
+    his friend, he was so angry and behaved so strangely, and there was
+    such a look in his eyes, that I was afraid of him, and it was this
+    fear, I think, which made me willing to go away secretly with Harold
+    and be married in New York. We are going to Europe; shall sail
+    to-morrow morning at nine o'clock in the Scotia. The marriage
+    ceremony will be performed before we go on board. I shall write as
+    soon as we reach Liverpool. You must forgive me, mother, and I am
+    sure you would not blame me, if you knew how much I love Mr.
+    Hastings. I know he is poor, and that I might be mistress of Tracy
+    Park, but I love Harold best. It is ten o'clock, and the train, you
+    know, passes at eleven; so I must say good-bye.
+
+    'Yours lovingly,
+
+    'Amy Crawford, now, but when you read this,
+
+    'Amy Hastings.'
+
+This was Amy's letter which her mother found upon entering her room
+after waiting more than an hour for her daughter's appearance at the
+breakfast, which they always took by themselves. To say that she was
+shocked and astonished would but faintly portray the state of her mind
+as she read that her beautiful young daughter had gone with Harold
+Hastings, whom she had never liked, for though he was handsome, and
+agreeable, and gentlemanly as a rule, she knew him to be thoroughly
+selfish and indolent, and she trembled for her daughter's happiness when
+a little time had quenched the ardor of his passion. Added to this was
+another thought which made her brain reel for a moment an she thought
+what might have been. Arthur Tracy had wished to make Amy his wife, and
+mistress of Tracy Park, which she would have graced so well, for in all
+the town there was not a fairer, sweeter girl than Amy Crawford, or one
+better beloved.
+
+It did not matter that she was poor, and her mother was only a
+housekeeper. She had never felt a slight on that account, and had been
+reared as carefully and tenderly as the daughters of the rich, and if
+away down, in her mother's heart there had been a half defined hope that
+some time the master of Tracy Park might turn his attention to her, it
+had been hidden so closely that Mrs. Crawford scarcely knew of it
+herself until she learned what her daughter was and what she might have
+been. But it was too late now. There was no turning back the wheels of
+fate.
+
+Forcing herself to be as calm as possible, she took the note to Arthur,
+who had breakfasted alone, and was waiting impatiently in the library
+for the appearance of his friend.
+
+'Lazy dog!' Mrs. Crawford heard him say, as she approached the open
+door. 'Does he think he has nothing to do but to sleep? We were to start
+by this time, and he in bed yet!'
+
+'Are you speaking of Mr. Hastings?' Mrs. Crawford asked, as she stepped
+into the room.
+
+'Yes,' was his crisp and haughty reply, as if he resented the question,
+and her presence there.
+
+He could be very proud and stern when he felt like it, and one of these
+moods was on him now, but Mrs. Crawford did not heed it, and sinking
+into a chair, for she felt that she could not stand and face him, she
+began:
+
+'I came to tell you of Mr. Hastings and--Amy. She did not come to
+breakfast, and I found this note in her room. She has gone to New York
+with him. They took the eleven o'clock train last night. They are to be
+married this morning, and sail in the Scotia for Europe.'
+
+She had told her story, and paused for the result, which was worse than
+she had expected.
+
+For a moment Arthur Tracy stood staring at her, while his face grew
+white as ashes, and into his dark eyes, usually so soft and mild, there
+came a fiery gleam like that of a madman, as he seemed for a time to be.
+
+'Amy gone with Harold, my friend!' he said at last. 'Gone to New York!
+Gone to be married! Traitors! Vipers! Both of them. Curse them! If he
+were here I'd shoot him like a dog; and she--I believe I would kill
+her.'
+
+He was walking the floor rapidly, and to Mrs. Crawford it seemed as if
+he really were unsettled in his mind, he talked so incoherently and
+acted so strangely.
+
+'What else did she say?' he asked, suddenly, stopping and confronting
+her. 'You have not told me all. Did she speak of me? Let me see the
+note,' and he held his hand for it.
+
+For a moment Mrs. Crawford hesitated, but as he grew more and more
+persistent she suffered him to take it, and then watched him as he read
+it, white the veins on his forehead began to swell until they stood out
+like a dark blue net-work against his otherwise pallid face.
+
+'Yes,' he snapped between his white teeth. 'I did ask her to be my wife,
+and she refused, and with her soft, kittenish ways made me more in love
+with her than ever, and more her dupe. I never suspected Harold, and
+when I told him of my disappointment, for I never kept a thing from
+him--traitor that he was--he laughed at me for losing my heart to my
+housekeeper's daughter! I, who, he said, might marry the greatest lady
+in the land. I could have knocked him down for his sneer at Amy, and I
+wish now I had, the wretch! He will not marry your daughter, madam; and
+if he does not I will kill him!'
+
+He was certainly mad, and Mrs. Crawford shrank away from him an from
+something dangerous, and going to her room took her bed in a fit of
+frightful hysterics. This was followed by a state of nervous
+prostration, and for a few days she neither saw, nor heard of, nor
+inquired for Mr. Tracy. At the end of the fourth day, however, she was
+told by the house-maid that he had that morning packed his valise and,
+without a word to any one, had taken the train for New York. A week went
+by, and then there came a letter from him, which ran as follows:
+
+    'New York, May ----, 18--.
+
+    'Mrs. Crawford:--I am off for Europe to-morrow, and when I shall
+    return is a matter of uncertainty. They are married; or at least I
+    suppose so, for I found a list of the passengers who sailed in the
+    Scotia, and the names, Mr. and Mrs. Hastings, were in it. So that
+    saves me from breaking the sixth commandment, as I should have done
+    if he hid played Amy false. I may not make myself known to them, but
+    I shall follow them, and if he harms a hair of her head I shall
+    shoot him yet. My brother Frank is to live at Tracy Park. That will
+    suit his wife, and as you will not care to stay with her, I send you
+    a deed of that cottage in the lane by the wood where the gardener
+    now lives. It is a pretty little place, and Amy liked it well. We
+    used to meet there sometimes, and more than once I have sat with her
+    on that seat under the elm tree, and it was there I asked her to be
+    my wife. Alas! I loved her so much, and I love her still as I can
+    never love another woman, and I could have made her so happy; but
+    that is past, and I can only watch her at a distance. When I have
+    anything to communicate, I will write again.
+
+    'Yours truly, 'Arthur Tracy.'
+
+    'P.S.--Take all the furniture in your room and Amy's, and whatever
+    else is needful for your house. I shall tell Colvin to give you a
+    thousand dollars, and when you want more let him know, I shall never
+    forget that you are Amy's mother.
+
+This was Arthur's letter to Mrs. Crawford, while to his brother he
+wrote:
+
+    'Dear Frank:--I am going to Europe for an indefinite length of time.
+    Why I go it matters not to you or any one. I go to suit myself, and
+    I want you to sell out your business at Langley and live at Tracy
+    Park, where you can see to things as if they were your own. You will
+    find everything straight and square, for Colvin is honest and
+    methodical. He knows all about the bonds, and mortgages, and stocks,
+    so you cannot do better than to retain him in your service,
+    overseeing matters yourself, of course, and drawing for your salary
+    what you think right and necessary for your support and for keeping
+    up the place as it ought to be kept up. I enclose a power of
+    attorney. When I want money I shall call upon Colvin. I may be gone
+    for years and perhaps forever.
+
+    'I shall never marry, and when I die, what I have will naturally go
+    to you. We have not been to each other much like brothers for the
+    past few years, but I do not forget the old home in the mountains
+    where we were boys together, and played, and quarreled, and slept up
+    under the roof, where the blankets were hung to keep the snow from
+    sifting through the rafters upon our bed.
+
+    'And, Frank, do you remember the bitter mornings, when the
+    thermometer was below zero, and we performed our ablutions in the
+    wood-shed, and the black-eye you gave me once for telling mother
+    that you had not washed yourself at all, it was so cold? She sent
+    you from the table, and made you go without your breakfast, and we
+    had ham and johnny-cake toast that morning, too. That was long ago,
+    and our lives are different now. There are marble basins, with
+    silver chains and stoppers, at Tracy Pack, and you can have a hot
+    bath every day if you like, in a room which would not shame
+    Caracalla himself. And I know you will like it all, and Dolly, too;
+    but don't make fools of yourselves. Nothing stamps a person as a
+    _come-up_ from the scum so soon as airs and ostentation. Be quiet
+    and modest, as if you had always lived at Tracy Park. Imitate Squire
+    Harrington and Mr. St. Claire. They are the true gentlemen, and were
+    to the manner born. Be kind to Mrs. Crawford. She is a lady in every
+    sense of the word, for she comes of good New England stock.
+
+    'And now, good-bye. I shall write sometimes, but not often.
+
+    'Your brother,
+
+    'Arthur Tracy.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MR. AND MRS. FRANK TRACY.
+
+
+Mr. Frank, in his small grocery store at Langley, was weighing out a
+pound of butter for the Widow Simpson, who was haggling with him about
+the price, when his brother's letter was brought to him by the boy who
+swept his store and did errands for him. But Frank was too busy just
+then to read it. There was a circus in the village that day, and it
+brought the country people into the town in larger numbers than usual.
+Naturally, many of them paid Frank a visit in the course of the morning,
+so that it was not until he went home to his dinner that be even thought
+of the letter, which was finally brought to his mind by his wife's
+asking if there was any news.
+
+Mrs. Frank was always inquiring for and expecting news, but she was not
+prepared for what this day brought her. Neither was her husband, and
+when he read his brother's letter, which he did twice to assure himself
+that he was not mistaken, he sat for a moment perfectly bewildered, and
+staring at his wife, who was putting his dinner upon the table.
+
+'Dolly,' he gasped at last, when he could speak at all--'Dolly, what do
+you think? Just listen. Arthur is going to Europe, to stay forever,
+perhaps, and has left us Tracy Park. We are going there to live, and you
+will be as grand a lady as Mrs. Atherton, of Brier Hill; or that young
+girl at Collingwood.'
+
+Dolly had a platter of ham and eggs in her hand, and she never could
+tell, though she often tried to do so, what prevented her from dropping
+the whole upon the floor. She did spill some of the fat upon her clean
+tablecloth, she put the dish down so suddenly, and sinking into a chair,
+demanded what her husband meant. Was he crazy, or what?
+
+'Not a bit of it,' he replied, recovering himself and beginning to
+realize the good fortune which had come to him. 'We are rich people,
+Dolly. Read for yourself;' and he passed her the letter, which she
+seemed to understand better than he had done.
+
+'Why, yes,' she said. 'We are going to Tracy Park to live; but that
+doesn't make us rich. It is not ours.'
+
+'I know that,' her husband replied. 'But we shall enjoy it all the same,
+and hold our heads with the best of them. Besides, don't you see, Arthur
+gives me _carte blanche_ as to pay for my services, and, though I shall
+do right, it is not in human nature that I should not feather my nest
+when I have a chance. Some of that money ought to have been mine. I
+shall sell out at once if I can find a purchaser, and if I cannot, I
+shall rent the grocery and move out of this hole double quick.'
+
+His ideas were growing faster than those of his wife, who was attached
+to Langley and its people, and shrank a little from the grander opening
+before her. She had once spent a few days at Tracy Park, as Arthur's
+guest, and had felt great restraint even in the presence of Mrs.
+Crawford and Amy, whom she recognized as ladies notwithstanding their
+position in the house. On that occasion she had, with her
+brother-in-law, been invited to dine at Brier Hill, the country-seat of
+Mrs. Grace Atherton, a gay widow, whose dash and style had completely
+overawed the plain, matter-of-fact Dolly, who did not know what half the
+dishes were, or what she was expected to do. But, by watching Arthur,
+and declining some things which she felt sure were beyond her
+comprehension, she managed tolerably well, though when the dinner was
+over, and she could breathe freely again, she found that the back of her
+new silk gown was wet with perspiration, which had oozed from every pore
+during the hour and a half she had sat at the table. And even then her
+troubles were not ended, for coffee was served in the drawing-room, and
+as Arthur took his clear, she did not know whether she was expected to
+do the same or not, but finally ventured to say she would have hers with
+'trimmin's.' There was a mischievous twinkle in Mrs. Atherton's eyes
+which disconcerted her so much that she spilled her coffee in her lap,
+and felt, as she afterward told a friend to whom she was describing the
+dinner, as if she could have been knocked down with a feather.
+
+'Such folderol!' she said. 'Changing your plates all the time--eating
+peas in the winter greener than grass, with nothing under the sun with
+them, and drinking coffee out of a cup about as big as a thimble. Give
+me the good old-fashioned way, I say, with peas and potatoes, and meat,
+and things, and cups that will hold half a pint and have some thickness
+that you can feel in your mouth.'
+
+And now she was to exchange the good, old-fashioned way for what she
+termed 'folderol,' and for a time she did not like it. But her husband
+was so delighted and eager that he succeeded in impressing her with some
+of his enthusiasm, and after he had returned to his grocery, and her
+dishes were washed, she removed her large kitchen apron, and pulling
+down the sleeves of her dress, went and stood before the mirror, where
+she examined herself critically and not without some degree of
+complacency.
+
+Her hair was black and glossy, or would be if she had time to care for
+it as it ought to be cared for; her eyes were bright, and perhaps in
+time she might learn to use them as Mrs. Atherton used hers.
+
+Mrs. Atherton stood as the criterion for everything elegant and
+fashionable, and naturally it was with her that she compared herself.
+
+'She is older than I am,' she said to herself; 'there are crow-tracks
+around her eyes, and her complexion is not a bit better than mine was
+before I spoiled it with soap-suds, and stove heat, and everything
+else.'
+
+Then she looked at her hands, but they were red and rough, and the nails
+were broken and not at all like the nails which an expert has polished
+for an hour or more. Mrs. Atherton's diamond rings would be sadly out of
+place on Dolly's fingers, but time and abstinence from work would do
+much for them, she reflected, and after all it would be nice to live in
+a grand house, ride in a handsome carriage, and keep a hired girl to do
+the heavy work. So, on the whole, she began to feel quite reconciled to
+her change of situation, and to wonder how she ought to conduct herself
+in view of her future position. She had intended going to the circus
+that night, but she gave that up, telling her husband that it was a
+second-class amusement any way, and she did not believe that either Mrs.
+Atherton or the young lady at Collingwood patronized such places. So
+they staid at home and talked together of what they should do at Tracy
+Park, and wondered if it was their duty to ask all their Langley friends
+to visit them. Mrs. Frank, as the more democratic of the two, decided
+that it was. She was not going to begin by being _stuck up_, she said,
+and when at last she left Langley four weeks later, every man, woman,
+and child of her familiar acquaintance in town had been heartily invited
+to call upon her at Tracy Park if ever they came that way.
+
+Frank had disposed of his business at a reasonable price, and had rented
+his house with all the furniture, except such articles as his wife
+insisted upon taking with her. The bureau, and bedstead, and chairs
+which she and Frank had bought together in Springfield just before their
+marriage, the Boston rocker her mother had given her, and in which the
+old mother had sat until the day she died, the cradle in which she had
+rocked her first baby boy who was lying in the Langley grave-yard, were
+dear to the wife and mother, and though her husband told her she could
+have no use for them at Tracy Park, where the furniture was of the
+costliest kind, and that she would probably put them in the servants'
+rooms or attic, there was enough of sentiment in her nature to make her
+cling to them as something of the past, and so they were boxed up and
+forwarded by freight to Tracy Park, whither Mr. and Mrs. Tracy followed
+them a week later.
+
+The best dressmaker in Langley had been employed upon the wardrobe of
+Mrs. Frank, who, in her travelling dress of some stuff goods of a
+plaided pattern, too large and too bright to be quite in good taste,
+felt herself perfectly _au fait_ as the mistress of Tracy Park, until
+she reached Springfield, where Mrs. Grace Atherton, accompanied by a
+tall, elegant looking young lady, entered the car and took a seat in
+front of her. Neither of the ladies noticed her, but she recognized Mrs.
+Atherton at once and guessed that her companion was the young lady from
+Collingwood, who, rumor said, was soon to marry her guardian, Mr.
+Richard Harrington, although he was old enough to be her father.
+
+Dolly scanned both the ladies very closely, noting every article of
+their costumes from their plain linen collars and cuffs to their quiet
+dresses of gray, which seemed so much more in keeping with the dusty
+cars than her buff and purple plaid.
+
+'I ain't like them, and never shall be,' she said to herself, with a
+bitter sense of her inferiority pressing upon her. 'I ain't like them,
+and never shall be, if I live to be a hundred. I wish we were not going
+to be grand. I shall never get used to it,' and the hot tears sprang to
+her eyes as she longed to be back in the kitchen where she had worked so
+hard.
+
+But Dolly did not know then how readily people can forget the life of
+toil behind them and adapt themselves to one of luxury and ease; and
+with her the adaptability commenced in some degree the moment
+Shannondale station was reached, and she saw the handsome carriage
+waiting for them. A carriage finer far and more modern than the one from
+Collingwood, in which Mrs. Atherton and the young lady took their seats,
+laughing and chatting so gayly that they did not see the woman in the
+big plaid who stood watching them with a rising feeling of jealousy and
+resentment as she thought of Mrs. Atherton, 'She does not even notice
+me.'
+
+But when the Tracy carriage drew up, Grace Atherton saw and recognized
+her, and whispered, in an aside to her companion:
+
+'For goodness' sake, Edith, look! There are the Tracys, our new
+neighbors.' Then she bowed to Mrs. Tracy, and said: 'Ah, I did not know
+you were on the train.'
+
+'I sat right behind you,' was Mrs. Tracy's rather ungracious reply: and
+then, not knowing whether she ought to do it or not, she introduced her
+husband.
+
+'Yes, Mr. Tracy--how do you do?' was Mrs. Atherton's response; but she
+did not in return introduce the young girl, whose dark eyes were
+scanning the strangers so curiously, and this Dolly took as a slight and
+inwardly resented it.
+
+But Mrs. Atherton had spoken to her and that was something, and helped
+to keep her spirits up as she was driven along the turnpike to the
+entrance of the park.
+
+On the occasion of Mrs. Frank's first and only visit to her
+brother-in-law it was winter, and everything was covered with snow. But
+it was summer now, the month of roses, and fragrance, and beauty, and as
+the carriage passed up the broad, smooth avenue which led to the house,
+Dolly's eyes wandered over the well-kept lawn, sweet with the scent of
+newly-mown grass, the parteries of flowers and shrubs, the winding walks
+and clumps of evergreens here and there formed into fancy rooms, with
+rustic seats and tables under the over-hanging boughs; and when she
+reflected that all this was hers to enjoy for many years, and perhaps
+for her life-time, she felt the first stirring of that pride, and
+satisfaction, and self-assertion which was to grow upon her so rapidly
+and transform her from the plain, unpretentious woman who had washed,
+and ironed, and baked, and mended in the small house in Langley into the
+arrogant, haughty lady of fashion, who courted only the rich and looked
+down upon her less fortunate neighbors. Now, however, she was very meek
+and humble, and trembled as she alighted from the carriage before the
+great stone house which was to be her home.
+
+'Isn't this grand, Dolly?' her husband said, rubbing his hands together
+and looking about him complacently.
+
+'Yes, very grand,' Dolly answered him; but somehow it makes me feel
+weaker than water. I suppose, though, I shall get accustomed to it.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+GETTING ACCUSTOMED TO IT.
+
+
+In the absence of Mrs. Crawford, who for a week or more had been
+domesticated in the cottage in the lane, as the house was designated
+which Arthur had given her, there was no one to receive the strangers
+except the cook and the house-maid, and as Mrs. Tracy entered the hall
+the two came forward, bristling with criticism, and ready to resent
+anything like interference in the new-comers.
+
+The servants at the park had not been pleased with the change of
+administration. That Mr. Arthur was a gentleman whom it was an honor to
+serve, they all conceded; but with regard to the new master and
+mistress, they had grave doubts. Although none of them had been at the
+park on the occasion of Mrs. Tracy's first visit there, many rumors
+concerning her had reached them, and she would scarcely have recognized
+herself could she have heard the remarks of which she was the subject.
+That she had worked in a factory--which was true--was her least offence,
+for it was whispered that once, when the winter was unusually severe,
+and work scarce, she had gone to a soup-house, and even asked and
+procured coal from the poor-master for herself and her mother.
+
+This was not true, and would have argued nothing against her as a woman
+if it had been, but the cook and the house-maid believed it, and passed
+sundry jokes together while preparing to meet 'the pauper,' as they
+designated her.
+
+In this state of things their welcome could not be very cordial, but
+Mrs. Tracy was too tired and too much excited, to observe their demeanor
+particularly. They were civil, and the house was in perfect order, and
+so much larger and handsomer than she had thought it to be, that she
+felt bewildered and embarrassed, and said 'Yes 'em,' and 'No, ma'am,' to
+Martha, the cook, and told Sarah, who was waiting at dinner, that she
+'might as well sit down in a chair as to stand all the time; she
+presumed she was tired with so many extra steps to take.'
+
+But Sarah knew her business, and persisted in standing, and inflicting
+upon the poor woman as much ceremony as possible, and then, in the
+kitchen, she repeated to the cook and the coachman, with sundry
+embellishments of her own, the particulars of the dinner, amid peals of
+laughter at the expense of the would-be lady, who had said 'she could
+just as soon have her salad with her other things, and save washing go
+many dishes.'
+
+It was hardly possible that mistress and maids would stay together long,
+especially as Mrs. Tracy, when a little more assured, and a little less
+in awe of her servants, began to show a disposition to know by personal
+observation what was going on in the kitchen, and to hint broadly that
+there was too much waste here and expenditure there, and quite too much
+company at all hours of the day.
+
+'She didn't propose to keep a boarding-house,' she said, 'or to support
+families outside, and the old woman who came so often to the basement
+door with a big basket under her cloak must discontinue her calls.'
+
+Then there occurred one of those Hibernian cyclones which sweep
+everything before them, and which in this instance swept Mrs. Tracy out
+of the kitchen for the time being, and the cook out of the house. Her
+self-respect, she said, would not allow her to stay with a woman who
+knew just how much coal was burned, how much butter was used, and how
+much bread was thrown away, and who objected to giving a bite now and
+then to a poor old woman, who, poor as she was, had never yet been
+helped by the poor-master, or gone to a soup-house like my lady!
+
+Martha's departure was followed by that of Sarah, and then Mrs. Tracy
+was alone, and for a few days enjoyed herself immensely, doing her own
+work, cooking her own dinner, and eating it when and where she liked--in
+the kitchen mostly, as that kept the flies from the dining-room, and
+saved her many steps, for Dolly was beginning to find that there was a
+vast difference between keeping a house with six rooms and one with
+twenty or more.
+
+Her husband urged her to try a new servant, saying there was no
+necessity for her to make a slave of herself: but she refused to listen.
+Economy was a part of her nature, and besides that she meant to show
+them that she was perfectly independent of the whole tribe; the _tribe_
+and _them_ referring to the hired girls alone, for she knew no one else
+in town.
+
+Nobody had called except the clergyman, not even Mrs. Crawford, whose
+friendship and possible advice Mrs. Tracy had counted upon, and with
+whom she knew she should feel more at ease than with Mrs. Atherton from
+Brier Hill, or Miss Hastings from Collingwood. She had seen both the
+last named ladies at church and had a nod from Mrs. Atherton, and that
+was all the recognition she had received from her neighbors up to the
+hot July morning, a week or more after the house-maid's departure, when
+she was busy in the kitchen canning black raspberries, of which the
+garden was full.
+
+Like many housekeepers who do their own work, Dolly was not very
+particular with regard to her dress in the morning, and on this occasion
+her hair was drawn from her rather high forehead, and twisted into a
+hard knot at the back of her head; her calico dress hung straight dawn,
+for she was minus hoops, which in those days were worn quite large; her
+sleeves were rolled above her elbows, and, as a protection against the
+juice of the berries, she wore a huge apron made of sacking. In this
+garb, and with no thought of being interrupted, she kept on with her
+work until the last kettle of fruit, was boiling and bubbling on the
+stove, and she was just glancing at the clock to see if it were time to
+put over the peas for dinner, when there came a quick, decisive ring at
+the front door.
+
+'Who can that be?' she said to herself, as she wiped her hands upon her
+apron. 'Some peddler or agent, I dare say. Why couldn't he come round to
+the kitchen, door, I'd like to know?'
+
+She had been frequently troubled with peddlers and agents of all kinds,
+and feeling certain that this was one--ringing the bell a second time,
+as if in a hurry--she started for' the door in no very amiable frame of
+mind, for peddlers were her abomination. Something ailed the lock or
+key, which resisted all her efforts to turn it; and at last, putting her
+mouth to the keyhole, she called out, rather sharply:
+
+'Go to the back door: I cannot open this,'
+
+Then, as she caught a whiff of burnt syrup, she hurried to the kitchen,
+where she found that her berries had boiled over, and were hissing and
+sputtering on the hot stove, raising a cloud of smoke so dense that she
+did not see the person who stood on the threshold of the door until a
+voice wholly unlike that of any peddler or agent said to her;
+
+'Good morning, Mrs. Tracy. I hope I am not intruding.'
+
+Then she turned, and to her horror and surprise, saw Grace Atherton,
+attired in the coolest and daintiest of morning costumes, with a jaunty
+French bonnet set coquettishly upon her head, and a silver card-case in
+her hand.
+
+For the moment Dolly's wits forsook her and she stood staring at her
+visitor, who, perfectly at her ease, advanced into the room and said:
+
+'I hope you will excuse me, Mrs. Tracy, for this morning call I came--'
+
+But she did not finish the sentence, for by this time Dolly had
+recovered herself a little, and throwing off her apron, she replied,
+nervously:
+
+'Not at all--not at all, I supposed you were some peddler or agent when
+I sent you to this door. They are the plague of my life, and think I'll
+buy everything and give to everything because Arthur did. I am doing my
+own work, you see. Come into the parlor;' and she led the way into the
+dark drawing-room, and where the chairs and sofas were surrounded in
+white linen, looking like so many ghosts in the dim, uncertain light.
+
+But Dolly opened one of the windows, and pushing back the blinds, let in
+a flood of sunshine, so strong and bright that she at once closed the
+shutters, saying, apologetically, that she did not believe in fading the
+carpets, if they were not her own. Then she sat down upon an ottoman and
+faced her visitor, who was regarding her with a mixture of amusement and
+wonder.
+
+Grace Atherton was an aristocrat to her very finger-tips, and shrank
+from contact with anything vulgar and unsightly, and, to her mind, Mrs.
+Tracy represented both, and seemed sadly out of place in that handsome
+room, with her sleeves rolled up and the berry stains on her hands and
+face. Grace knew nothing by actual experience of canning berries, or of
+aprons made of sacking, or of bare arms, except it were of an evening
+when they showed white and fair against her satin gown, with bands of
+gold and precious stones upon them, and she felt that there was an
+immeasurable distance between herself and this woman, whom she had come
+to see partly on business and partly because she thought she must call
+upon her for the sake of Arthur Tracy, the former occupant of the park.
+
+Grace and Arthur had been fast friends, and Brier Hill was almost the
+only place where he had visited on anything like terms of intimacy.
+Indeed, it was rumored by the busy knowing ones of Shannondale that, had
+the pretty widow been six years his junior instead of his senior, she
+would have left no art untried to win him. But here the wise ones were
+in fault, for though Grace Atherton's heart was not buried in her
+husband's grave, and, in fact, had never been her husband's at all, it
+was given to one who, though he cared for it once, did not prize it now,
+for, with all the intensity of his noble nature, Richard Harrington, of
+Collingwood; loved the beautiful girl whom, years ago, he had taken to
+his home as his child, and whom, it was said, he was to marry. But if
+the belief that the love she once refused and which she would fain
+recover was lost to her forever rankled in her breast, Grace never made
+a sign, and laughed as gayly and looked almost as young and handsome as
+in the days when Richard was wooing her in the pleasant old English town
+across the sea. She had loved Richard then, but, alas! loved money more,
+and she chose a richer man, old enough to be her father, who had died
+when she was twenty-one and left her the possessor of nearly half a
+million, every dollar of which she would have given to have recalled the
+days which were gone forever.
+
+Grace had been intending to call upon Mrs. Tracy ever since she came to
+the park. 'Not,' as she said to her friend, Edith Hastings, 'for the
+woman's sake, for she knew her to be vulgar: but because she was a
+neighbor and the sister-in-law of Arthur Tracy,' And so at last she
+came, partly out of compliment and partly on business, into which last
+she plunged at once. She was going to the mountains with Mr. Harrington
+and Miss Hastings: her cook, who had been with her seven years, had gone
+to attend a sick mother, and had recommended as a fit person to take her
+place the woman who had just left Tracy Park.
+
+'I do not like to take a servant without first knowing something of her
+from her last employer,' she said: 'and, if you do not mind, I should
+like to ask if Martha left for anything very bad.'
+
+Mrs. Tracy colored scarlet, and for a moment was silent. She could not
+tell that fine lady in the white muslin dress, with seas of lace and
+embroidery, that Martha had called her _second classy_, and _stingy_ and
+_strooping_, and _mean_, because she objected to the amount of coal
+burned, and bread thrown away, and time consumed at the table, besides
+turning down the gas in the kitchen when she thought it too light, to
+say nothing of turning it off at the meter at ten o'clock, just when the
+servants were beginning to enjoy themselves. All this she felt would
+scarcely interest a person like Mrs. Atherton, who might sympathize with
+Martha more than with herself, so she finally said:
+
+'Martha was saucy to me, and on the whole it was better for them all to
+go; and so I am doing my own work.'
+
+'Doing your own work!' and Grace gave a little cry of surprise, while
+her shoulders shrugged meaningly, and made Mrs. Tracy almost as angry as
+she had been with Martha when she called her mean and second-class. 'It
+cannot be possible that you cook, and wash, and iron, and do
+everything,' Mrs. Atherton continued. 'My dear Mrs. Tracy, you can never
+stand it in a house like this, and Mr. Arthur would not like it if he
+knew. Why he kept as many as six servants, and sometimes more. Pray let
+me advise you, and commend to you a good girl; who lived with me three
+years, and can do everything, from dressing my hair to making a
+blanc-mange. I only parted with her because she was sick, and now that
+she is well, her place is filled. Try her, and do not make a servant of
+yourself. It is not fitting that you should.'
+
+Grace was fond of giving advice, and had said more than she intended
+saying when she began, but Mrs. Tracy, though annoyed, was not angry,
+and consented to receive the girl who had lived at Brier Hill three
+years, and who, she reflected, could be of use to her in many ways.
+
+While sitting there in her soiled working dress talking to the elegant
+Mrs. Atherton she had felt her inferiority more keenly than she had ever
+done before, while at the same time she was conscious that a new set of
+ideas and thoughts had taken possession of her, reawaking in her the
+germ of that ambition to be somebody which she had felt so often when a
+girl, and which now was to bud and blossom, and bear fruit a hundred
+fold. She would take the girl, and from her learn the ways of the world
+as presented at Brier Hill. She would no longer wear sacking aprons, and
+open the door herself. She would be more like Grace Atherton, whom she
+watched admiringly as she went down the walk to the handsome carriage
+waiting for her, with driver and footman in tall hats and long coats on
+the box.
+
+This was the beginning of the fine lady into which Dolly finally
+blossomed, and when that day Frank went home to his dinner he noticed
+something in her manner which he could not understand until she told him
+of Mrs. Atherton's call, and the plight in which that lady had found
+her.
+
+'Served you right, Dolly,' Frank said, laughing till the tears ran. 'You
+have no business to be digging round like a slave when we are able to
+have what we like. Arthur said we were to keep up the place us he had
+done, and that does not mean that you should be a scullion. No, Dolly;
+have all the girls you want, and hold up your head with the best of
+them. Get a new silk gown, and return Mrs. Atherton's call at once, and
+take a card and turn down one corner or the other, I don't know which,
+but this girl of hers can tell you. Pump her dry as a powder horn; find
+out what the quality do, and then do it, and not bother about the
+expense. I am going in for a good time, and don't mean to work either. I
+told Colvin this morning that I thought I ought to draw a salary of
+about four thousand a year, besides our living expenses, and though he
+looked at me pretty sharp over his spectacles he said nothing. Arthur is
+worth half a million, if he is worth a cent. So, go it, Dolly, while you
+are young,' and in the exuberance of his joy Frank kissed his wife on
+both cheeks, and then hurried back to his office, where he spent most of
+his time trying to be a gentleman.
+
+That day they dined in the kitchen with a leaf of the table turned up as
+they had done in Langley, but the next day they had dinner in the
+dining-room, and were waited upon by the new girl as well as it was
+possible for her to do with her mistress' interference.
+
+'Never mind; Mr. Tracy's in a hurry. Give him his pie at once,' she
+said, as Susan was about to clear the table preparatory to the dessert,
+but she repented the speech when she saw the look of surprise which the
+girl gave her and which expressed more than words could have done.
+
+'Better let her run herself,' Frank said, when Susan had left the room,
+'and if she wants to take every darned thing off the table and tip it
+over to boot, let her do it. If she has lived three years with Mrs.
+Atherton, she knows what is what better than we do.'
+
+'But it takes so long, and I have much to see to in this great house,'
+Dolly objected, and her husband replied:
+
+'Get another girl, then; three of them if you like. What matter how many
+girls we have so long as Arthur pays for them, and he is bound to do
+that. He said so in his letter. You are altogether too economical. I've
+told you so a hundred times, and now there is no need of saving. I want
+to see you a lady of silks and satins like Mrs. Atherton. Pump that
+girl. I tell you, and find out what ladies do!'
+
+This was Frank's advice to his wife, and as far as in her lay she acted
+upon it, and whatever Susan told her was done by Mrs. Atherton at Brier
+Hill, she tried to do at Tracy Park: all except staying out of the
+kitchen. That, from her nature, she could not and would not do.
+Consequently she was constantly changing cooks, and frequently took the
+helm herself, to the great disgust of her husband, who managed at last
+to imbue her with his own ideas of things.
+
+In course of time most of the neighbors who had any claim to society
+called at the park, and among them Mrs. Crawford. But Mrs. Tracy had
+then reached a point from which she looked down upon one who had been
+housekeeper where she was now mistress, and whose daughter's good name
+was under a cloud, as there were some who did not believe that Harold
+Hastings had ever made her his wife. When told that Mrs. Crawford had
+asked for her Mrs. Tracy sent word that she was engaged, and that if
+Mrs. Crawford pleased she would give her errand to the girl.
+
+'I have no errand. I came to call,' was Mrs. Crawford's reply, and she
+never crossed the threshold of her old home again until the March winds
+were blowing and there was a little boy in the nursery at the park.
+
+At the last moment the expected nurse had fallen sick, and in his
+perplexity Mr. Tracy went to the cottage in the lane and begged of Mrs.
+Crawford to come and care for his wife. Mrs. Crawford was very proud,
+but she was poor, too, and as the price per week which Frank offered her
+was four times as much as she could earn by sewing, she consented at
+last and went as nurse to the sick-room, and the baby, Tom, on whose
+little red face she imprinted many a kiss for the sake of her daughter
+who was coming home in June, and over whom the shadow of hope and fear
+was hanging.
+
+Dolly Tracy's growth after it fairly commenced, was very rapid, and when
+Mrs. Crawford went to her as nurse she had three servants in her employ,
+besides the coachman, and was imitating Mrs. Atherton to the best of her
+ability; and when, early in the summer, she received the wedding cards
+of Edith Hastings, the young lady from Collingwood, who had married a
+Mr. St. Claire instead of her guardian, she felt that her position was
+assured, and from that time her progress was onward and upward until the
+October morning, ten years later, when our story proper opens, and we
+see her standing upon the piazza of her handsome house, with every sign
+of wealth and luxury about her person, from the silken robe to the
+jewels upon her soft, white hands, which once had washed her own dishes,
+and canned berries in her own kitchen, where she had received Grace
+Atherton, with her sleeves above her elbows.
+
+There were five servants in the house now, and they ran over and against
+each other, and quarrelled, and gossipped, and worried her life nearly
+out of her, until she was sometimes tempted to send them away and do the
+work herself. But she was far too great a lady for that. She dressed in
+silk and satin every day, and drove in her handsome carriage, with her
+driver and footman in tall hats and long coats. She was thoroughly up in
+etiquette, and did not need Susan to tell her what to do. She knew all
+about visiting cards, and dinner cards, and cards of acceptance, and
+regret, and condolence, and she read much oftener than she did her Bible
+a book entitled 'Habits of Good Society.'
+
+Three children played in the nursery now, Tom, and Jack, and baby Maude,
+and she kept a nurse constantly for them, and strove with all her might
+to instil into their infant minds that they were the Tracys of Tracy
+Park, and entitled to due respect from their inferiors; and Tom, the boy
+of ten and a half, had profited by her teaching, and was the veriest
+little braggart in all Shannondale, boasting of his father's house, and
+his father's money, without a word of the Uncle Arthur wandering no one
+knew where, or cared particularly for that matter.
+
+Arthur had never been home since the day he quitted it to look after Amy
+Crawford, now lying in the grave-yard of Shannondale, under the shadow
+of the tall monument which Arthur's money had bought. At first he had
+written frequently to Mrs. Crawford, and occasionally to his brother,
+and his agent, Mr. Colvin; then his letters came very irregularly, and
+sometimes a year would intervene between them. Then he would write every
+week, and he once told them not to be anxious if they did not hear from
+him in a long time, as in case of his death he had arranged to have the
+news communicated to his friends at once. After this letter nothing had
+been heard from him for more than two years, until the morning when his
+telegram came and so greatly disturbed the mental equilibrium of Mr.
+Frank Tracy that for an hour or more he sat staring into the street in a
+bewildered kind of way, wondering what would be the result of his
+brother's return, and if he should be required to give up the
+investments he had made from the exorbitant sum he had charged for
+looking after the place. Once he thought he would ask Colvin's opinion;
+but he was a little afraid of the old man, who had sometimes hinted that
+his salary was far greater than the services rendered, but as Mr.
+Arthur, to whom he made reports of the expenditures, had never objected,
+it was not for him to do so, he said. And still Frank distrusted him,
+and decided that, on the whole, his better plan was to wait, or at least
+to consult no one but his wife, and he was glad when lunch-time came,
+and he started home, where preparations were going forward for the first
+large party they had ever given.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+AT THE PARK.
+
+
+Frank Tracy had at first grown faster than his wife, and the change in
+his manner had been more perceptible; for with all her foolishness Dolly
+had a kind heart, and a keen sense of right, and wrong, and justice than
+her husband. She had opposed him stoutly when he raised his own salary
+from $4,000 to $6,000 a year, on the plea that his services were worth
+it, and that two thousand more or less was nothing to Arthur; and when
+he was a candidate for the Legislature she had protested loudly against
+his inviting to the house and giving beer and cider to the men whose
+votes he wanted, and for whom as men he did not care a farthing; but
+when he came up for Congress she forgot all her scruples, and was as
+anxious as himself to please those who could help him secure the
+nomination and afterward the election. It was she who had proposed the
+party, to which nearly everybody was to be invited, from old Peterkin,
+with his powerful influence among a certain class, and Widow Shipleigh
+with her four sons, to Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire, from Grassy Spring,
+Squire Harrington, from Collingwood, and Grace Atherton, from Brier
+Hill. Very few who could in any way help Frank to a seat in Congress
+were omitted from the list, whether Republican or Democrat, for Frank
+was popular with both parties and expected help from both. Over three
+hundred cards had been issued for the party, which was the absorbing
+topic of conversation in the whole town, and which brought white kids
+and white muslins into great requisition, while swallow-tails and non
+swallow-tails were discussed in the privacy of households, and discarded
+or decided upon according to the length of the masculine purse or the
+strength of the masculine resistance, for dress coats were not then the
+rule in Shannondale. It was said that Mr. St. Claire and Squire
+Harrington always wore them to dinner, but they were the nobility _par
+excellence_ of the town, and were expected to do things differently from
+the middle class, who had their bread to earn. Old Peterkin, however,
+whom Frank in his soliloquy, had designated a _canal bummer_, had become
+a rich man, and was resolved to show that he knew what was _au fait_ for
+the occasion; a new suit throughout, in the very latest style, was in
+progress of making for him, and he had been heard to say that 'Tracy
+should have his vote and that of fifty more of the boys to pay for his
+ticket to the doin's'. This speech, which was reported to Mrs. Tracy,
+reconciled her to the prospect of receiving as a guest the coarsest,
+roughest man in town, whose only recommendation was his money and the
+brute influence he exercised over a certain class.
+
+Dolly has scarcely slept for excitement since the party had been decided
+upon, and everything seemed to be moving on very smoothly and in order.
+They were to have music, and flowers, and a caterer from Springfield,
+where a lovely party-dress for herself of peach-blow satin was making,
+and nothing occurred of any importance to disturb her until the morning
+of the day appointed for the party, when it seemed as if every evil
+culminated at once. First, the colored boy who was to wait in the upper
+hall came down with measles. Then Grace Atherton drove round in her
+carriage to say that it would be impossible for her to be present, as
+she had received news from New York which made it necessary for her to
+go there by the next train. She was exceedingly sorry, she said, and for
+once in her life Grace was sincere. She _was_ anxious to attend the
+party, for, as she said to Edith St. Claire in confidence, she wanted to
+see old Peterkin in his swallow-tail and white vest, with a shirt-front
+as big as a platter. There was a great deal of sarcasm and ridicule in
+Grace Atherton's nature, but at heart she was kind and meant to be just,
+and after a fashion really liked Mrs. Tracy, to whom she had been of
+service in various ways, helping her to fill her new position more
+gracefully than she could otherwise have done, and enlightening her
+without seeming to do so on many points which puzzled her sorely; on the
+whole they were good friends, and, after expressing her regret that she
+could not be present in the evening, Grace stood a few moments chatting
+familiarly and offering to send over flowers from her greenhouse, and
+her own maid to arrange Mrs. Tracy's hair and assist her in dressing.
+Then she took her leave, and it was her carriage Mrs. Tracy was watching
+as it went down the avenue, when little Harold Hastings appeared around
+the corner of the house, and, coming up the steps, took off his cap
+respectfully as he said:
+
+'Grandma sends you her compliments, and is very sorry that she has
+rheumatism this morning and cannot come to-night to help you. She
+thinks, perhaps, you can get Mrs. Mosher.'
+
+'Your grandmother can't come, when I depended so much upon her, and she
+thinks I can get Mrs. Mosher, that termagant, who would raise a mutiny
+in the kitchen in an hour!' Mrs. Tracy said this so sharply that a flush
+mounted to the handsome face of the boy, who felt as if he were in some
+way a culprit and being reprimanded. 'She _must_ come, if she does
+nothing but sit in the kitchen and keep order,' was Mrs. Tracy's next
+remark.
+
+'She can't,' Harold replied; 'her foot and ankle is all swelled and
+aches so she almost cries. She is awful sorry, and so am I, for I was
+coming with her to see the show.'
+
+This speech put a new idea into Mrs. Tracy's mind, and she said to the
+boy:
+
+'How would you like to come anyway, and stay in the upper hall, and tell
+the people where to go? The boy I engaged has disappointed me. You are
+rather small for the place, but I guess you'll do, and I will give you
+fifty cents.'
+
+'I'd like it first-rate,' Harold said, his face brightening at the
+thought of earning fifty cents and seeing the show at the same time.
+
+Half-dollars were not very plentiful with Harold, and he was trying to
+save enough to buy his grandmother a pair of spectacles, for he had
+heard her say that she could not thread her needle as readily as she
+once did, and must have glasses as soon as she had the money to spare.
+Harold had seen a pair at the drug-store for one dollar, and, without
+knowing at all whether they would fit his grandmother's eyes or not, had
+asked the druggist to keep them until he had the required amount. Fifty
+cents would just make it, and he promised at once that he would come;
+but in an instant there fell a shadow upon his face as he thought of
+_Tom_, his tormentor, who worried him so much.
+
+'What is it?' Mrs. Tracy asked, as she detected in him a disposition to
+reconsider.
+
+'Will Tom be up in the hall?' Harold asked.
+
+'Of course not,' Mrs. Tracy replied. 'He will be in the parlors until
+ten o'clock, and then he will go to bed. Why do you ask?'
+
+'Because,' Harold answered fearlessly, 'if he was to be there I could
+not come; he chaffs me so and twits me with being poor and living in a
+house his uncle gave us.'
+
+'That is very naughty in him, and I will see that he behaves better in
+future,' said Mrs. Tracy, rather amused than other wise at the boy's
+frankness.
+
+As the mention of the uncle reminded Harold of the telegram, he took it
+from his pocket and handed it to her.
+
+'Mr. Tracy said I was to bring you this. It's from Mr. Arthur, and he's
+coming to-night. I'm so glad, and grandma will be, too!'
+
+If Mrs. Tracy heard the last of Harold's speech she did not heed it, for
+she had caught the words that Arthur was coming that night, and, for a
+moment, she felt giddy and faint, and her hand shook so she could
+scarcely open the telegram.
+
+Arthur had been gone so long and left them in undisputed possession of
+the park, that she had come to feel as if it belonged to them by right,
+and she had grown so into a life of ease and luxury, that to give it up
+now and go back to Langley seemed impossible to her. She could see it
+all so plainly--the old life of obscurity and toil in the little kitchen
+where she had eaten her breakfast on winter mornings so near the stove
+that she could cook her buckwheats on the griddle and transfer them to
+her own and her husband's plates without leaving her seat. She had been
+happy, or comparatively so there, she said to herself, because she knew
+no better. But now she did know better, and she ate her breakfast in an
+oak-paneled dining-room, with a waitress at her elbow, and her
+buckwheats hot from a silver dish instead of the smoking griddle. She
+had a governess for her two boys, Tom and Jack, and a nurse for her
+little Maude, who, in her ambitious heart, she hoped would one day marry
+Dick St. Clair, the young heir of Grassy Spring.
+
+It never occurred to Dolly that they might possibly remain at the park
+if Arthur did come home. She felt sure they could not, for Arthur would
+hardly approve of his brother's stewardship when he came to realize how
+much it had cost him. They would have to leave, and this party she was
+giving would be her first and last at Tracy Park. How she wished she had
+never thought of it, or, having thought of it, that she had omitted from
+the list those who, she knew, would be obnoxious to the foreign brother,
+and who had only been invited for the sake of their political influence,
+which would now be useless, for Frank Tracy as a nobody, with very
+little money to spend, would not run as well, even in his own party, as
+Frank Tracy of Tracy Park, with thousands at his command if he chose to
+take them.
+
+'It is too bad, and I wish we could give up the party,' she said aloud,
+forgetting in her excitement that Harold was still standing there,
+gazing curiously at her. 'You here yet? I thought you had gone!' she
+said, half angrily, as she recovered herself a little and met the boy's
+wondering eyes.
+
+'Yes'm; but you ain't going to give the party up?' he said, afraid of
+losing his half-dollar.
+
+'Of course not. How can I, with all the people invited?' she asked,
+questioningly, and a little less sharply.
+
+'I don't know, unless I get a pony and go round and tell 'em not to
+come,' Harold suggested, thinking he might earn his fifty cents as
+easily that way as any other.
+
+But, much as Mrs. Tracy wished the party had never been thought of, she
+could not now abandon it, and declining the services of Harold and his
+pony, she again bade him go home, with a charge that he should be on
+time in the evening, adding, as she surveyed him critically:
+
+'If you have no clothes suitable, you can wear some of Tom's. You are
+about his size.'
+
+'Thank you; I have my meetin' clothes, and do not want Tom's,' was
+Harold's reply, as he walked away, thinking he would go in rags before
+he would wear anything which belonged to his enemy, Tom Tracy.
+
+The rest of the morning was passed by Mrs. Frank in a most unhappy frame
+of mind, and she was glad when, at an hour earlier than she had reason
+to expect him, her husband came home.
+
+'Well, Dolly,' he said, the moment they were alone, 'this is awfully
+unlucky, the whole business. If Arthur must come home, why couldn't he
+have written in advance, and not take us by surprise? Looks as if he
+meant to spring a trap on us, don't it? And if he did, by Jove, he has
+caught us nicely. It will be somewhat like the prodigal son, who heard
+the sound of music and dancing, only I don't suppose Arthur has spent
+his substance in riotous living, with not over nice people; but there is
+no telling what he has been up to all these years that he has not
+written to us. Perhaps he is married. He said in his telegram, "Send to
+meet _us_." What does that mean, if not a wife?'
+
+'A wife! Oh, Frank!' and with a great gasp Dolly sank down upon the
+lounge near where she was standing, and actually went into the hysterics
+her husband had prophesied.
+
+In reading the telegram she had not noticed the little monosyllable
+'_us_,' which was now affecting her so powerfully. Of course it meant a
+wife and possibly children, and her day was surely over at Tracy Park.
+It was in vain that her husband tried to comfort her, saying that they
+knew nothing positively, except that Arthur was coming home and somebody
+was coming with him; it might be a friend, or, what was more likely, it
+might be a valet; and at all events he was not going to cross Fox River
+till he reached it, when he might find a bridge across it.
+
+But Frank's reasoning did not console his wife, whose hysterical fit was
+succeeded by a racking headache, which by night was almost unbearable.
+Strong coffee, aconite, brandy, and belladonna, were all tried without
+effect. Nothing helped her until she commenced her toilet, when in the
+excitement of dressing she partly forgot her disquietude, and the pain
+in her head grew leas. Still she was conscious of a feeling of
+wretchedness and regret as she sat in her handsome boudoir and felt that
+it might be for the last time--that on the morrow another would be
+mistress where she had reigned so long.
+
+It was known in the house that Arthur was expected, and some one with
+him, but no hint had been given of a wife, and Mrs. Tracy had ordered
+separate rooms prepared for the strangers, who were to arrive on the
+half-past ten train. How she should manage to keep up and appear natural
+until that time Mrs. Tracy did not know, and her face and eyes wore an
+anxious, frightened look, which all her finery could not hide. And still
+she was really very handsome and striking in her dress of peach blow
+satin, and the bare arms which had once been more familiar with
+soap-suds and dishwater than lace and gold bracelets, looked very fair
+and girlish when at last she descended to the drawing-room and stood
+waiting for the first ring which would open the party.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE COTTAGE IN THE LANE.
+
+
+It was called thus because it stood at the end of a broad, grassy avenue
+or lane, which led from the park to the entrance of the grounds of
+Collingwood, whose chimneys and gables were distinctly visible in the
+winter when the trees were stripped of their foliage. At the time when
+Mrs. Crawford took possession of it its color was red, but the storms
+and rains of eleven summers and winters had washed nearly all the red
+away; and as Mrs. Crawford had never had the money to spare for its
+repainting, it would have presented a brown and dingy appearance
+outwardly, but for the luxurious woodbine, which she had trained with so
+much care and skill that it covered nearly three sides of the cottage,
+and made a gorgeous display in the autumn, when the leaves had turned a
+bright scarlet.
+
+Thanks to the thoughtfulness of Arthur Tracy, the cottage was furnished
+comfortably and even prettily when Mrs. Crawford entered it, and it was
+from the same kind friend that her resources mostly had come up to the
+day when, three years after her marriage, Amy Hastings came home to die,
+bringing with her a little two-year-old boy, whom, she called Harold,
+for his father. Just where the father was, if indeed he were living, she
+did not know. He had left her in London six months before, saying he was
+going over to Paris for a few days, and should be back almost before she
+had time to miss him. Just before he left her he said to her, playfully:
+
+'Cheer up, _petite_. I have not been quite as regular in my habits as I
+ought to have been, but London is not the place for a man of my
+tastes--too many temptations for a fellow like me. When I come back we
+will go into the country, where you can have a garden, with flowers and
+chickens, and grow fat and pretty again. You are not much like the girl
+I married. Good-bye.'
+
+He kissed her and the baby, and went whistling down the stairs. She
+never saw him again, and only heard from him once. Then he was in Paris,
+and had decided to go for a week to Pau, where he said they were having
+such fine fox hunts. Weeks went by and he never wrote nor came, and Amy
+would have been utterly destitute and friendless but for Arthur Tracy,
+who, when her need was greatest, went to her, telling her that he had
+never been far from her, but had watched over her vigilantly to see that
+no harm came to her. When her husband went to Paris he knew it through a
+detective, and from the same source knew when he went to Pau, where all
+trace of him had been lost.
+
+'But we are sure to find him again,' he said, encouragingly; 'and
+meantime I shall see that you do not suffer. As an old friend of your
+husband, you will allow me to care for you until he is found.'
+
+And Amy, who had no alternative, accepted his care, and tried to seem
+cheerful and brave while waiting for the husband who never came back.
+
+At last when all hope of seeing him again was gone, Arthur sent her home
+to the cottage in the lane, where her mother received her gladly,
+thanking Heaven that she had her daughter back again. But not for long.
+Poor Amy's heart was broken. She loved her husband devotedly, and his
+cruel desertion of her--for she knew now it was that--hurt her more than
+years of suffering with him could have done. Occasionally she heard from
+Arthur, who was still busy in search of the delinquent, and who always
+sent in his letter a substantial proof of his friendship and generosity.
+
+And so the weeks and months went by; and then, one day, there came a
+letter in the well-known handwriting. But it was Mrs. Crawford who
+opened it and read that Harold Hastings was dead: that Amy was free, and
+that Arthur Tracy, who through all had loved her just as well as when he
+first asked her to be his wife, now put the question again, offering to
+make her the mistress of Tracy Park and surround her with every possible
+comfort.
+
+'Say yes, darling Amy,' he wrote, 'and we may yet be very happy. I will
+be a good husband to you and a father to your child, who shall share my
+fortune as if he were my own. Answer at once, telling me to come, and,
+before you know it I shall be there to claim you for my wife.'
+
+With a low moan, Mrs. Crawford hid her face in her hands and sobbed
+aloud, for the Amy who might have been the honored wife of Arthur Tracy
+lay dead in her coffin; and that day they buried her under the November
+snow, which was falling in great sheets upon the frozen ground. What
+Arthur felt when he heard the news no one ever knew, for he made no sign
+to any one, but at once gave orders to Colvin that a costly monument
+should be placed at her grave, with only this inscription upon it:
+
+  AMY
+
+  _Aged_ 23.
+
+Of course the low-minded people talked, and Mrs. Crawford knew they did;
+but her heart was too full of sorrow to care what was said. Her
+beautiful daughter was dead, and she was alone with the little boy, the
+child Harold, who had inherited his mother's beauty, with all her lovely
+traits of character. Had Mrs. Crawford consented, Arthur would have
+supported him entirely; but she was too proud for that. She would take
+care of him herself as long as possible, she wrote him, but if, when
+Harold was older, he chose to educate him, she would offer no objection.
+
+And there the matter dropped, and Mrs. Crawford struggled on as best she
+could, sometimes going out to do plain sewing, sometimes taking it home,
+sometimes going to people's houses to superintend when they had company,
+and sometimes selling fruit and flowers from the garden attached to the
+cottage. But whatever she did, she was always the same quiet, lady-like
+woman, who commanded the respect of all, and who, poor as she was, was
+held in high esteem by the better class in Shannondale. Grace Atherton's
+carriage and that of Edith St. Claire stood oftener before her door
+than that at Tracy Park; and though the ladies came mostly on business,
+they found themselves lingering after the business was over to talk with
+one who, in everything save money, was their equal.
+
+Harold was his grandmother's idol. For him she toiled and worked,
+feeling more than repaid for all she did by his love and devotion to
+her. And Harold was a noble little fellow, full of manly instincts, and
+always ready to deny himself for the sake of others. That he and his
+grandmother were poor he knew, but he had never felt the effects of
+their poverty, save when Tom Tracy had jeered at him for it, and called
+him a pauper. There had been one square fight between the two boys, in
+which Harold had been the victor, with only a torn jacket, while Tom's
+eye had been black for a week, and Mrs. Tracy had gone to the cottage to
+complain and insist that Harold should be punished. But when she heard
+that Dick St. Claire had assisted in the fray, taking Harold's part, and
+himself dealing Tom the blow which blackened his eye, she changed her
+tactics, for she did not care to quarrel with Mrs. Arthur St. Claire, of
+Grassy Spring.
+
+Harold and Richard St. Claire, or Dick, as he was familiarly called,
+were great friends, and if the latter knew there was a difference
+between himself and the child of poverty he never manifested it, and
+played far oftener with Harold than with Tom, whose domineering
+disposition and rough manners were distasteful to him. That Harold would
+one day be obliged to earn his living, Mrs. Crawford knew, but he was
+still too young for anything of that kind; and when Grace Atherton, or
+Mrs. St. Claire offered him money for the errands he sometimes did for
+them, she steadily refused to let him take it. Had she known of Mrs.
+Tracy's proposition that he should be present at the party as hall-boy,
+she would have declined, for though she could go there herself as an
+employee, she shrank from suffering Harold to do so. That Mrs. Tracy was
+not a lady, she knew, and in her heart there was always a feeling of
+superiority to the woman even while she served her, and she was not as
+sorry, perhaps, as she ought to have been, for the attack of rheumatism
+which would prevent her from going to the park to take charge of the
+kitchen during the evening.
+
+'I am sorry to disappoint her, but I am glad not to be there,' she was
+thinking to herself as she sat in her bright, cheerful kitchen, waiting
+for Harold, when he burst in upon her, exclaiming:
+
+'Oh, grandma, only think! I am invited to the party, and I told her I'd
+go, and I am to be there at half-past seven sharp, and to wear my
+meetin' clothes.'
+
+'Invited to the party! What do you mean? Only grown up people are to be
+there,' Mrs. Crawford said.
+
+'Yes, I know;' replied Harold, 'but I'm not to be with the _grown-ups_.
+I'm to stay in the upper hall and tell 'em where to go.'
+
+'Oh, you are to be a _waiter_,' was Mrs. Crawford's rather contemptuous
+remark, which Harold did not heed in his excitement.
+
+'Yes, I'm to be at the head of the stairs, and somebody else at the
+bottom; and they are to have fiddlin and dancin'; I've never seen
+anybody dance; and ice-cream and cake, with something like plaster all
+over it, and oranges and grapes, and, oh, everything! Dick St. Claire
+told me; he knows; his mother has had parties, and she's going to-night,
+and her gown is crimson velvet, with black and white fur in it like our
+cat, only they don't call it that; and--oh, I forgot--they have had a
+telegraph, and I took it to Mrs. Tracy, who looked mad and almost cried
+when she read it, Mr. Arthur Tracy is coming home to-night.'
+
+Harold had talked so fast that his grandmother could hardly follow him,
+but she understood what he said last, and started as if he had struck
+her a blow.
+
+'Arthur Tracy! Coming home to-night!' she exclaimed. 'Oh, I am so glad,
+so glad.'
+
+'But Mrs. Tracy did not seem to be, and I guess she wanted to stop the
+party,' Harold said, repeating as nearly as he could what had passed
+between him and the lady.
+
+Harold was full of the party to which he believed he had been invited,
+and when in the afternoon Dick St. Claire came to the cottage to play
+with him, he felt a kind of patronizing pity for his friend who was not
+to share his honor.
+
+'Perhaps mother will let me come over and help you,' Dick said, 'I know
+how they do it. You mustn't talk to the people as they come up the
+stairs, nor even say good-evening, only;
+
+'"Ladies will please walk this way, and gentlemen that!"
+
+And Dick went through with a pantomime performance for the benefit of
+Harold, who, when the drill was over, felt himself competent to receive
+the Queen's guests at the head of the great staircase in Windsor Castle.
+
+'Yes, I know,' he said, '"Ladies this way, and gentlemen that;" but when
+am I to go down and see the dancing and get some ice-cream?'
+
+On this point Dick was doubtful. He did not believe, he said, that
+waiters ever went down to see the dancing, or to get ice cream, until
+the party was over, and then they ate it in the kitchen, if there was
+any left.
+
+This was not a cheerful outlook for Harold, whose thoughts were more
+intent upon cream and dancing than upon showing the people where to go,
+and it was also the second time the word waiter had been used in
+connection with what he was expected to do. But Harold was too young to
+understand that he was not of the party itself. Later on it would come
+to him fast enough, that he was only a part of the machinery which moved
+the social engine. Now, he felt like the engine itself, and long before
+six o'clock he was dressed, and waiting anxiously for his grandmother's
+permission to start.'
+
+'I'll tell you all about it,' he said to her. 'What they do, and what
+they say, and what they wear, and if I can, I'll speak to Mr. Arthur
+Tracy and thank him for mother's grave-stone.'
+
+By seven o'clock he was on his way to the park, walking rapidly, and
+occasionally saying aloud with a gesture of his hand to the right and
+the left, and a bow almost to the ground.
+
+'Ladies this way,' and 'gentlemen that.'
+
+When he reached the house the gas-jets had just been turned up, and
+every window was ablaze with light from the attic to the basement.
+
+'My eye! ain't it swell!' Harold said to himself, as he stood a moment,
+looking at the brilliantly lighted rooms. 'Don't I wish I was rich and
+could burn all that gas, and maybe I shall be. Grandma says Mr. Arthur
+Tracy was once a poor boy like me; only he had an uncle and I haven't.
+I've got do earn my money, and I mean to, and sometimes, maybe, I'll
+have a house us big as this, and just such a party, with a boy up stairs
+to tell 'em where to go. I wonder now if I'm expected to go into the
+kitchen door. Of course not, I've got on my Sunday clothes, and am
+invited to the party. I shall ring,'
+
+And he did ring--a sharp, loud ring, which made Mrs. Tracy, who had not
+yet left her room, start nervously as she wondered who had come so
+early.
+
+'Old Peterkin, of course. Those whom you care for least always come
+first.'
+
+Peering over the banister Tom Tracy saw Harold when the door was opened,
+and screaming to his mother at the top of his voice, 'It ain't old
+Peterkin, mother; it's Hall Hastings, come to the front door,' he ran
+down the stairs, and confronting the intruder just as he was crossing
+the threshold, exclaimed:
+
+'Go 'long; go back. You hain't no business ringin' the bell as if you
+was a gentleman. Go to the kitchen door with the other servants!'
+
+With a thrust of the hand he pushed Harold back and was about to shut
+the door upon him when, with a quick, dextrous movement, Harold darted
+past him into the hall, saying, as he did so:
+
+'Darn you, Tom Tracy, I won't go to the back kitchen door, and I'm not a
+servant, and if you call me so again I'll lick you!'
+
+How the matter would have ended is doubtful, if Mrs. Tracy had not
+called from the head of the stairs:
+
+'Thomas! Thomas Tracy! I am ashamed of you! Come to me this minute! And
+you, boy, go to the kitchen; or, no--now you are here, come up stairs,
+and I'll tell you what you are to do.'
+
+Her directions were much like those of Dick St. Claire, except that she
+laid more stress upon the fact that he was not to speak to any one
+familiarly, but was to be in all respects a machine. Just what she meant
+by that Harold did not know; but he hung his cap on a bracket, and
+taking his place where she told him to stand, watched her admiringly as
+she went down the staircase, with her peach-blow satin trailing behind
+her, and followed, by her husband, who looked and felt anxious and ill
+at ease.
+
+Tom had disappeared, but his younger brother, Jack, who was wholly
+unlike him, came to Harold's side, and began telling him what quantities
+of good things there were in the dining-room and pantry, and that his
+Uncle Arthur was coming home that night, and his mother was so glad, she
+cried; then, with a spring he mounted upon the banister of the long
+staircase and slipped swiftly to the bottom. Ascending the stairs almost
+as quickly as he had gone down, he bade Harold try it with him.
+
+'It's such fun! and mother won't care. I've done it forty times,' he
+said, as Harold demurred; and then, as the temptation became too strong
+to be resisted, two boys instead of one rode down the banister and
+landed in the lower hall, and two pairs of little legs ran nimbly up the
+stairs just as the door opened and admitted the first arrival.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE PARTY.
+
+
+The invitations had been for half-past seven, and precisely at that hour
+Peterkin arrived, magnificent in his swallow-tail and white shirt front,
+where an enormous diamond shone conspicuously. With him came the second
+Mrs. Peterkin, whose name was Mary Jane, but whom her husband always
+called _May_ Jane. She was a frail, pale faced little woman, and had
+once been Grace Atherton's maid, but had married Peterkin for his money.
+This was her first appearance at a grand party, and in her excitement
+and timidity she did not hear Harold's thrice repeated words, 'Ladies go
+that way,' but followed her husband into the gentlemen's dressing-room,
+where she deposited her wraps, and then, shaking in every limb,
+descended to the drawing-room, where Peterkin's boisterous laugh was
+soon heard, as he slapped his host on the shoulder, and said:
+
+'You see, we are here on time, though May Jane said it was too early.
+But I s'posed half-past seven meant half-past seven and then I wanted a
+little time to talk up the ropes with you. We are going to run you in,
+you bet!' and again his coarse laugh thrilled every nerve in Mrs.
+Tracy's body, and she longed for fresh arrivals to help quiet this
+vulgar man.
+
+Soon they began to come by twos, and threes, and sixes, and Harold was
+kept busy with his 'Ladies this way, and gentlemen that.'
+
+After Mrs. Peterkin had gone down stairs, leaving her wraps in the
+gentlemen's rooms, Harold, who knew they did not belong there, had
+carried them to the ladies' room and deposited them upon the bed, just
+as the girl who was to be in attendance appeared at her post, asked him
+sharply why he was in there rummaging the ladies' things.
+
+'I'm not rummaging. They are Mrs. Peterkin's. She left them in the other
+room, and I brought them here,' Harold said, as he returned to the hall,
+never dreaming that this little circumstance, trivial as it seemed,
+would be one of the links in the chain of evidence which must for a time
+overshadow him so darkly.
+
+Now, he was eager and excited, and interested in watching the people as
+they came up the stairs and went down again. With the quick instinct of
+a bright, intelligent boy, he decided who was accustomed to society and
+who was not, and leaning over the banister when not on duty, watched
+them when they entered the drawing-room and were received by Mr. and
+Mrs. Tracy. Unconsciously he began to imitate them, bowing when they
+bowed, and saying softly to himself:
+
+'Oh, how do you do? Good evening. Happy to see you. Pleasant to-night.
+Walk in. Ye-as!'
+
+This was the monosyllable with which he finished every sentence, and was
+the affirmation to the thought in his mind that he, too, would some day
+go down those stairs and into those parlors as a guest, while some other
+boy in the upper hall bade the ladies go this way and the gentlemen
+that.
+
+It was after nine when Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire arrived, with Squire
+Harrington, from Collingwood. Harold had been looking for them, anxious
+to see the crimson satin trimmed with ermine, of which Dick had told
+him. Many of the guests he had mentally criticised unsparingly, but Mrs.
+St. Claire, he knew, was genuine, and his face beamed, when in passing
+him, she smiled upon him with her sweet, gracious manner, and said,
+pleasantly:
+
+'Good evening, Harold. I knew you were to be here. Dick told me, and he
+wanted to come and assist you, but I thought he'd better stay home with
+Nina.'
+
+Up to this time no one had spoken to Harold, and he had spoken to no one
+except to tell them where to go, but had, as far as possible, followed
+Mrs. Tracy's injunction to be a machine. But the machine was getting a
+little tired. It was hard work to stand for two hours or more, and Mrs.
+Tracy had impressed it upon him that he was not to sit down. But when
+Mrs. St. Claire came from the dressing-room and stood before him a
+moment in her crimson satin and pearls, he forgot his weariness and
+forgot that he was not to talk, and said to her, involuntarily:
+
+'Oh, Mrs. St. Claire, how handsome you look! Handsomer than anybody yet,
+and different, too, somehow.'
+
+Edith knew the compliment was genuine, and she replied:
+
+'Thank you, Harold,' then, laying her hand on the boy's head and parting
+his soft, brown hair, she said, as she noticed a look of fatigue in his
+eyes, 'are you not tired, standing so long? Why don't you bring a chair
+from one of the rooms and sit when you can?'
+
+'She told me to stand,' Harold replied, nodding toward the parlors, from
+which a strain of music then issued.
+
+The dancing had commenced, and Harold's feet and hands beat time to the
+lively strains of the piano and violin, until he could contain himself
+no longer. The dancing he must see at all hazards and know what it was
+like, and when the last guests came up the stairs there was no hall boy
+there to tell them, 'Ladies this way, gentlemen that,' for Harold was in
+the thickest of the crowd, standing on a chair so as to look over the
+heads of those in front of him and see the dancers. But, alas, for poor
+Harold! He was soon discovered by Mrs. Tracy, who, asking him if he did
+not know his place better than that, ordered him back to his post, where
+he was told to stay until the party was over.
+
+Wholly unconscious of the nature of his offence, but very sorry that he
+had offended, Harold went up the stairs, wondering why he could not see
+the dancing, and how long the party would last. His head was beginning
+to ache with the glare and gas; his little legs were tired, and he was
+growing sleepy. Surely he might sit down now, particularly as Mrs. St.
+Claire had suggested it, and bringing himself a chair from one of the
+rooms he sat down in a corner of the hall and was soon in a sound sleep,
+from which, however, he was roused by the sound of Mr. Tracy's voice, as
+he came up the stairs, followed by a tall, distinguished-looking man,
+who wore a Spanish cloak wrapped gracefully around him, and a large,
+broad-brimmed hat drawn down so closely, as to hide his features from
+view.
+
+As he reached the upper landing he raised his head, and Harold, who was
+now wide awake and standing up, caught a glimpse of a thin, pale face
+and a pair of keen, black eyes, which seemed for an instant to take
+everything in; than the head was dropped, and the two men disappeared in
+a room at the far end of the hall.
+
+'I'll bet that's Mr. Arthur. How grand he is! looks just like a pirate
+in that cloak and hat,' was Harold's mental comment.
+
+Before he had time for further thought, Frank Tracy came from the room
+and hurried down the stairs to rejoin his guests.
+
+Five minutes later and the door at the end of the long hall which
+communicated with the back staircase and the rear of the house, opened,
+and a man whom Harold recognized as the expressman from the station
+appeared with a huge trunk on his shoulder and a large valise in his
+hand. These he deposited in the stranger's room and then went back for
+more, until four had been carried in. But when he came with the fifth
+and largest of all, a hand, white and delicate as a woman's, was thrust
+from the door-way with an imperative gesture, and a voice with a decided
+foreign accent exclaimed:
+
+'For heaven's sake, don't bring any more boxes in here. Why, I am
+positively stumbling over them now. Surely there must be some place in
+the house for my luggage besides my private apartment.'
+
+Then the door was shut with a bang, and Harold heard the sliding of the
+bolt as Arthur Tracy fastened himself in his room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ARTHUR.
+
+
+All the time that Frank Tracy had been receiving his guests and trying
+to seem happy and at his ease, his thoughts had been dwelling upon his
+brother's telegram and the ominous words, 'Send some one to meet us.'
+How slowly the minutes dragged until it was ten o'clock, and he knew
+that John had started for the station to meet the dreaded '_us_.' He had
+told everybody that he was expecting his long-absent brother, and had
+tried to seem glad on account of it.
+
+'You and he were great friends, I believe,' he said to Squire
+Harrington.
+
+'Yes, we were friends,' the latter replied; 'but when he lived here my
+health was such that I did not mingle much in society. I met him,
+however, in Paris four years ago, and found him very companionable and
+quite Europeanized in his manner and tastes. He spoke French or German
+altogether, and might easily have passed for a foreigner. I shall be
+glad to see him.'
+
+'And so shall I,' chimed in Peterkin, whose voice was like a trumpet and
+could be heard everywhere. 'A first-rate chap, though we didn't use to
+hitch very well together. He was all-fired big feelin', and them days
+Peterkin was nowhere; but circumstances alter cases. He'll be glad to
+see me now, no doubt;' and with the most satisfied air the half
+millionaire put his hand as if by accident to his immense diamond pin,
+and pulling down his swallow-tail, walked away.
+
+Frank saw the faint smile of contempt which showed itself in Squire
+Harrington's face, and his own grew red with shame, but paled almost
+instantly as the outer door was opened by some one who did not seem to
+think it necessary to ring; and a stranger, in Spanish cloak and
+broad-brimmed hat, stepped into the hall.
+
+Arthur had come, and was _alone_. The train had been on time, and at
+just half-past ten the long line of cars stopped before the Shannondale
+station, where John, the coachman from Tracy Park, was waiting. The
+night was dark, but by the light from the engine and the office John saw
+the foreign-looking stranger, who stepped upon the platform, and felt
+sure it was his man. But there was no one with him, though it seemed as
+if he were expecting some one to follow him from the car as he stood for
+a moment waiting. Then, as the train moved on, he turned with a puzzled
+look upon his face to meet John, who said to him, respectfully:
+
+'Are you Mr. Arthur Tracy?'
+
+'Yes; who are you?' was the not very cordial response.
+
+'Mr. Frank Tracy sent me from the park to fetch you,' John replied. 'I
+think he expected some one with you. Are you alone?'
+
+'Yes--no, no!' and Arthur's voice indicated growing alarm and uneasiness
+as he looked rapidly around him, 'Where is she? Didn't you see her? She
+was with me all the way. Surely she got off when I did. Where can she
+have gone?'
+
+He was greatly excited, and kept peering through the darkness as he
+talked; while John, a good deal puzzled, looked curiously at him, as if
+uncertain whether he were in his right mind or not.
+
+'Was there some one with you in the car?' he asked.
+
+'Yes, in the car, and in New York, and on the ship. She was with me all
+the way,' Mr. Tracy replied. 'It is strange where she is now. Did no one
+alight from the train when I did?'
+
+'No one,' John answered, more puzzled than ever.... 'I was looking for
+you, and there was no one else. She may have fallen asleep and been
+carried by.'
+
+'Yes, probably that is it,' Mr. Tracy said, more cheerfully, 'she was
+asleep and carried by. She will come back to-morrow.'
+
+He seemed quite content with this solution of the mystery, and began to
+talk of his luggage, which lay upon the platform--a pile so immense that
+John looked at it in some alarm, knowing that the carriage could never
+take it all.
+
+'Eight trunks, two portmanteaus, and a hat-box!' he said, aloud,
+counting the pieces.
+
+'Yes, and a nice sum those rascally agents in New York made me pay for
+having them come with me,' Arthur rejoined. 'They weighed them all, and
+charged me a little fortune. I might as well have sent them by express;
+but I wanted them with me, and here they are. What will you do with
+them? This is hers,' and he designated a black trunk or box, longer and
+larger than two ordinary trunks ought to be.
+
+'I can take one of them with the box and portmanteau, and the expressman
+will take the rest. He is here. Hallo, Brown,' John said, calling to a
+man in the distance, who came forward, and, on learning what was wanted,
+begun piling the trunks into his wagon, while Arthur followed John, to
+the carriage, which he entered, and, sinking into a seat, pulled his
+broad-brimmed hat over his face and eyes, and sat as motionless as if he
+had been a stone.
+
+For a moment John stood looking at him, wondering what manner of man he
+was, and thinking, too, of the woman who, he said, had been with him in
+the train, and who should have alighted with him. At last, remembering
+suddenly a message his master had given him, he began:
+
+'If you please, sir, Mr. Tracy told me to tell you he was very sorry
+that he could not come himself to meet you. If he had known that you
+were coming sooner, he would have done different; but he did not get
+your telegram till this morning, and then it was too late to stop it. We
+are having a great break-down to-night.'
+
+During the first of these remarks Arthur had given no sign that he
+heard, but when John spoke of a break-down, he lifted his head quickly,
+and the great black eyes, which Harold noticed later as peculiar,
+flashed a look of inquiry upon John, as he said:
+
+'Break-down? What is that!'
+
+'A party--a smasher! Mr. Tracy is running for Congress.' was John's
+reply.
+
+And then over the thin face there crept a ghost of a smile, which, faint
+as it was, changed the expression wonderfully.
+
+'Oh, a party!' he said. 'Well, I will be a guest, too. I have my
+dress-suit in some of those trunks. Frank is going to Congress, is he?
+That's a good joke! Drive on. What are you standing there for?'
+
+The carriage door was shut, and, mounting the box, John drove as rapidly
+toward Tracy Park as the darkness of the night would admit, while the
+passenger inside sat with his hat over his eyes, and his chin almost
+touching his breast, as if absorbed in thought, or else not thinking at
+all. Once, however, he spoke to himself, and said:
+
+'Poor little Gretchen! I wonder how I could have forgotten and left her
+in the train. What will she do alone in a strange place? But perhaps
+Heaven will take care of her. She always said so. I wish I had her faith
+and could believe as she does. Poor little Gretchen!'
+
+They had turned into the park by this time, and very soon draw up before
+the house, from every window of which lights were flashing, while the
+sounds of music and dancing could be distinctly heard.
+
+Something like Frank's idea came into Arthur's mind at the sight.
+
+'It makes me think of the return of the prodigal, only I have not wasted
+my substance and my father does not come to meet me,' he said, as he
+descended from the carriage and went up the broad steps to the piazza,
+on which a few young people were walking, unmindful of the chill night
+air.
+
+'I need not ring at my own house,' Arthur thought, as he opened the door
+and stepped into the hall; and thus it was that the first intimation
+which Frank had of his arrival was when he saw him standing in the midst
+of a crowd of people, who were gazing curiously at him.
+
+'Arthur!' he exclaimed, rushing forward and taking his brother's hand.
+'Welcome home again! I did not hear the carriage, though I was listening
+for it. I am so glad to see you! Come with me to your room;' and he led
+the way up stairs to the apartment prepared for the stranger.
+
+He had seen at a glance that Arthur was alone, unless, indeed, he had
+brought a servant who had gone to the side door; and thus relieved from
+a load of anxiety, he was very cordial in his manner, and began at once
+to make excuses for the party, repeating in substance what John had
+already said.
+
+'Yes, I know; that fellow who drove me here told me,' Arthur said,
+throwing off his coat and hat, and beginning to lave his face, and neck,
+and hands in the cold water which he turned into the bowl until it was
+full to the brim, and splashed over the sides as he dashed it upon
+himself.
+
+All this time Frank had not seen his face distinctly, nor did he have
+an opportunity to do so until the ablutions were ended and Arthur had
+rubbed himself with, not one towel, but two, until it seemed as if he
+must have taken off the skin in places. Then he turned, and running his
+fingers through his luxuriant hair, which had a habit of curling around
+his forehead as in his boyhood, looked full at his brother, who saw that
+he was very pale and thin, and that his eyes were unnaturally large and
+bright, while there was about him an indescribable something which
+puzzled Frank a little. It was not altogether the air of foreign travel
+and cultivation which was so perceptible, but a something else--a
+restlessness and nervousness of speech and manner as he moved about the
+room, walking rapidly and gesticulating as he walked.
+
+'You are looking thin and tired. Are you not well?' Frank asked.
+
+'Oh, yes, perfectly well,' Arthur replied: 'only this infernal heat in
+my blood, which keeps me up to fever pitch all the time. I shall have to
+bathe my face again,' and, turning a second time to the bowl, he began
+to throw water over his face and hands as he had done before.
+
+'I'd like a bath in ice water,' he said, as he began drying himself with
+a fresh towel. 'If I remember right, there is no bath-room on this
+floor, but I can soon have one built. I intend to throw down the wall
+between this room and the next, and perhaps the next, so as to have a
+suite.'
+
+He was asserting the ownership at once, and Frank had nothing to say,
+for his brother was master there, and had a right to tear the house down
+if he chose. The second washing must have cooled him, for there came a
+change in his manner, and he moved more slowly and spoke with greater
+deliberation, as he asked some questions about the people below.
+
+'Will you come down by-and-bye,' Frank said, after having made some
+explanations with regard to his guests.
+
+'No, you will have to excuse me,' Arthur replied. 'I am too tired to
+encounter old acquaintances or make new. I do not believe I could stand
+old Peterkin, who you say is a millionaire. I suppose you want his
+influence; your coachman told me you were running for Congress,' and
+Arthur laughed the old merry musical laugh which Frank remembered so
+well: then, suddenly changing his tune, he said: 'When does the next
+train from the East pass the station?'
+
+Frank told him at seven the next morning, and he continued:
+
+'Please send the carriage to meet it. Gretchen will probably be there.
+She was in the train with me, and should have gotten out when I did, but
+she must have been asleep and carried by.'
+
+'Gr-gr-gretchen! Who is she?' Frank stammered, while the cold sweat
+began to run down his back.
+
+The 'us' in the telegram did mean something, and mischief, too, to his
+interests, he felt intuitively.
+
+Instantly into Arthur's eyes there stole a look of cunning, and a
+peculiar smile played round his mouth as he replied:
+
+'She is Gretchen. See that the carriage goes for her, will you?'
+
+His voice and manner indicated that he wished the conference ended, and
+with a great sinking at his heart Frank left the room and returned to
+his guests and his wife, who had not seen the stranger when he entered
+the hall, and thus did not know of Arthur's arrival until her husband
+rejoined her.
+
+'He has come,' he whispered to her, while she whispered back:
+
+'Is he alone?'
+
+'Yes, but somebody is coming to-morrow; I do not know who; Gretchen, he
+calls her,' was Frank's reply.
+
+'Gretchen!' Mrs. Tracy repeated, in a trembling voice. 'Who is she?'
+
+'I don't know. He merely said she was Gretchen; his daughter, perhaps,'
+was Frank's answer, which sent the color from his wife's cheeks, and
+made her so faint and sick that she would have given much to be alone
+and think over this evil coming upon her the next day in the shape of
+the mysterious Gretchen.
+
+Meantime when left to himself, Arthur changed his mind with regard to
+going down into the parlors to see his brother's guests, and, unlocking
+the trunk which held his own wardrobe he took out an evening suit fresh
+from the hands of a London tailor, and, arraying himself in it, stood
+for a moment before the glass to see the effect. Everything was
+faultless, from his neck-tie to his boots; and, opening the door, he
+went out into the hall, which was empty, except for Harold, who was
+sitting near the stairs, half asleep again. Most of the guests were in
+the supper-room, but a few of the younger portion were dancing, and the
+strains of music were heard with great distinctness in the upper hall.
+
+'Ugh!' Arthur said, with a shiver, as he stopped a moment to listen,
+while his quick eye took in every detail of the furniture and its
+arrangement in the hall. 'That violinist ought to be hung--the pianist,
+too! Don't they know what horrid discord they are making? It brings that
+heat back. I believe, upon my soul, I shall have to bathe my face
+again.'
+
+Suiting the action to the word, he went back and washed his face for the
+third time; then returning to the hall, he advanced toward Harold, who
+was now wide awake and stood up to meet him. As Arthur met the
+clear-brown eyes fixed so curiously upon him, he stopped suddenly, and
+put his hand to his head as if trying to recall something; then going a
+step or two nearer to Harold, he said:
+
+'Well, my little boy, what are you doing up here?'
+
+'Telling the folks which way to go,' was Harold's answer.
+
+'Who are you?' Arthur continued. 'What is your name?'
+
+'Harold Hastings,' was the reply; and instantly there came over the
+white, thin face, and into the large, bright eyes, an expression which
+made the boy stand back a little as the tall man came up to him and,
+laying a hand on his shoulder, said, excitedly:
+
+'Harold Hastings! He was once my friend, or, I thought he was; but I
+hate him now. And he was your father, and Amy Crawford was your mother?
+_N'est ce pas?_ Answer me!'
+
+'Yes, sir--yes, sir; but I don't know what you mean by "_na-se par_,"'
+Harold said, in a frightened voice; and Arthur continued, as he
+tightened his grasp on his shoulder:
+
+'Don't you know you ought to have been my son, instead of his?'
+
+'Yes, sir--yes, sir; I'll never do so again,' Harold stammered, too much
+alarmed now to know what he was saying, or of what he was accused.
+
+'No, you never will do it again. I hated your father, and I hate you,
+and I am going to throw you over the stair railing!' Arthur said, and
+seizing Harold's coat-collar, he swung him over the banister as if he
+had been a feather, while the boy struggled and fought, and held onto
+the rails, until help appeared in the person of Frank Tracy, who came
+swiftly up the stairs, demanding the cause of what he saw.
+
+He had been standing near the drawing-room door, and had caught the
+sound of his brother's voice and Harold's as if in altercation. Excusing
+himself from those around him, he hastened to the scene of action in
+time to save Harold from a broken limb, if not a broken neck.
+
+'What is it? What have you been doing?' he asked the boy, who replied,
+amid his tears:
+
+'I hain't been doing anything, only minding my business, and he came and
+asked me who I was, and when I told him, he was going to chuck me over
+the railing--darn him! I wish I was big; I'd lick him!'
+
+Harold's cheeks were flushed, and the great tears glittered in his eyes,
+as he stood up, brave and defiant, and resentful of the injustice done
+him.
+
+'Are you mad, Arthur?' Frank said.
+
+And whether it was the tone of his voice, or the words he uttered,
+something produced a wonderful effect upon his brother, whose mood
+changed at once, and who advanced toward Harold with outstretched hand,
+saying to him:
+
+'Forgive me, my little man. I think I must have been mad for the
+instant; there is such a heat in my head, and the crash of that music
+almost drives me wild. Shall it be peace between us, my boy?'
+
+It was next to impossible to resist the influence of Arthur Tracy's
+smile, and Harold took the offered hand and said, between a sob and a
+laugh:
+
+'I don't know now why you wanted to throw me down stairs.'
+
+'Nor I, and I will make it up to you some time,' was Arthur's reply, as
+he took his brother's arm and said: 'Now introduce me to your guests.'
+
+The moment the gentlemen disappeared from view Harold's resolution was
+taken. He was of no use there any longer, as he could see. It was nearly
+midnight. He was very tired and sleepy, and his head was aching
+terribly. He could not see the dancing. He had had nothing to eat; he
+had stood until his legs were ready to drop off, and to crown all a
+lunatic had tried to throw him over the banister.
+
+'I won't stay here another minute,' he said.
+
+And leaving the hall by the rear entrance, and slipping down a back
+stairway, he was soon in the open air, and running swiftly through the
+park toward the cottage in the lane.
+
+Meanwhile the two brothers had descended to the drawing-room, where
+Arthur was soon surrounded by his friends and old acquaintances, whom he
+greeted with that cordiality and friendliness of manner which had made
+him so popular with those who knew him best. Every trace of excitement
+had disappeared, and had he been master of ceremonies himself, at whose
+bidding the guests were there, he could not have been more gracious or
+affable. Even old Peterkin, when he came into notice, was treated with a
+consideration which put that worthy man at ease, and set his tongue
+again in motion. At first he had felt a little overawed by Arthur's
+elegant appearance, and had whispered to his neighbor:
+
+'That's a swell, and no mistake. I s'pose that's what you call foreign
+get up. Well, me and ma is goin' to Europe some time, and hang me if I
+don't put on style when I come home. I'd kind of like to speak to the
+feller. I wonder if he remember that I was runnin' a boat when he went
+away?'
+
+If Arthur did remember it he showed no sign when Peterkin at last
+pressed up to him, claiming his attention, as Captain Peterkin, of the
+_'Liza Ann_, the fastest boat on the canal, and by George, the
+all-tiredest meanest, too, I guess, he said: 'but them days is past, and
+the old captain is past with them. I dabbled a little in ile, and if I
+do say it, I could about buy up the whole canal if I wanted to; but I
+ain't an atom proud, and I don't forget the old boatin' days, and I've
+got the old '_Liza Ann_ hauled up inter my back yard as a relict. The
+children use it for a play-house, but to me it is a--a--what do you call
+it? a--gol darn it, what is it?'
+
+'Souvenir,' suggested Arthur, vastly amused at this tirade, which had
+assumed the form of a speech, and drawn a crowd around him.
+
+'Wall, yes; I s'pose that's it, though 'taint exactly what I was trying
+to think of,' he said. It's a reminder, and keeps down my pride, for
+when I get to feelin' pretty big, after hearin' myself pointed out as
+Peterkin the millionaire, I go out to that old boat in the back yard,
+and says I, '_'Liza Ann_,' says I, 'you and me has took many a trip up
+and down the canal, with about the wust crew, and the wust hosses, and
+the wust boys that was ever created, and though you've got a new coat of
+paint onto you, and can set still all day and do nothing while I can
+wear the finest broadcloth and set still, too, it won't do for us to
+forget the pit from which we was dug, and I don't forget it neither, no
+more than I forgit favors shown when I was not fust cut. You, sir, rode
+on the _'Liza Ann_ with that crony of yours--Hastings was his name--and
+you paid me han'some, though I didn't ask nothin'; and ther's your
+brother--Frank, I call him. I don't forgit that he used to speak to me
+civil when I was nobody, and now, though I'm a Dimocrat, as everybody
+knows me knows, and everybody most does know me, for Shannondale allus
+was my native town, I'm goin' to run him into Congress, if it takes my
+bottom dollar, and anybody, Republican or Dimocrat; who don't vote him
+ain't my friend, and must expect to feel the full heft of my--my--'
+
+'Powerful disapprobation,' Arthur said, softly, and Peterkin continued:
+
+'Thank you, sir, that's the word--powerful, sir, powerful, powerful,'
+and he glowered threateningly at two or three young men in white kids
+and high shirt collars, who were known to prefer the opposing candidate.
+
+Peterkin had finished his harrangue, and was wiping his wet face with
+his handkerchief, when Arthur, who had listened to him with well-bred
+attention, said:
+
+'I thank you, Captain Peterkin, for your interest in my brother, who, if
+he succeeds, will, I am sure, owe his success to your influence, and be
+grateful in proportion. Perhaps you have a bill you would like him to
+bring before the House?'
+
+'No,' Peterkin said, with a shake of the head. 'My Bill is a little
+shaver, eight or nine years old; too young to go from home, but'--and he
+lowered his voice: a little--'I don't mind saying that if there should
+be a chance, I'd like the post-office fust-rate. It would be a kind of
+hist, you know, to see my name in print, Captain Joseph Peterkin, P.M.'
+
+Here the conversation ended, and the aspirant for the post-office, who
+had tired himself out, stepped aside and gave place to others who were
+anxious to renew their acquaintance with Arthur. It was between one and
+two o'clock in the morning when the party finally broke up, and, as the
+Peterkins had been the first to arrive, so they were the last to leave,
+and Mrs. Peterkin found herself again in the gentlemen's dressing-room,
+looking after her wraps. But they were not there, and after a vain and
+anxious search she said to her husband:
+
+'Joe, somebody has stole my things, and 'twas my Indian shawl, too, and
+gold-headed pin, with the little diamond.'
+
+Mrs. Tracy was at once summoned to the scene, and the missing wraps were
+found in the ladies' room, where Harold had carried them, but the
+gold-headed shawl-pin was gone and could not be found.
+
+Lucy, the girl in attendance, said, when questioned, that she knew
+nothing of the pin or Mrs. Peterkin's wraps either, except that on first
+going up to the room after the lady's arrival, she found Harold Hastings
+fumbling them over, and that she sent him out with a sharp reprimand.
+Harold was then looked for and could not be found, for he had been at
+home and in bed for a good two hours. Clearly, then, he knew something
+of the pin; and Peterkin and his wife said good-night, resolving to see
+the boy the first thing in the morning, and demand their property.
+
+When the Peterkins were gone, Arthur started at once for his room, but
+stopped at the foot of the stairs and said to his brother:
+
+'Don't forget to have the carriage at the station at seven o'clock.
+Gretchen is sure to be there.'
+
+'All right,' was Frank's reply.
+
+While Mrs. Tracy asked:
+
+'Who is Gretchen?'
+
+If Arthur heard her he made no reply, but kept on up the stairs to his
+room, where they heard him for a long time walking about, opening and
+shutting windows, locking and unlocking trunks, and occasionally
+splashing water over his face and hands.
+
+'Your brother is a very elegant-looking man,' Mrs. Tracy said to her
+husband as she was preparing to retire. 'Quite like a foreigner, but how
+bright his eyes are, and they look at you sometimes as if they would
+see through you and know what you were thinking. They almost make me
+afraid of him.'
+
+Frank made no direct reply. In his heart there was an undefined fear
+which he then could not put into words, and with the remark that he was
+very tired, he stepped into bed, and was just falling into a quiet sleep
+when there came a knock upon his door loud enough, it seemed to him, to
+waken the dead. Starting up he demanded who was there and what was
+wanted.
+
+'It is I,' Arthur said. 'I thought I smelled gas, and I have been
+hunting round for it. There is nothing worse to breathe than gas,
+whether from the furnace, the pipes, or the drain. I hope that is all
+right.'
+
+'Yes,' Frank answered, a little crossly. 'Had a new one put in two weeks
+ago.'
+
+'If there's gas in the main sewer it will come up just the same, and I
+am sure I smell it,' Arthur said. 'I think I shall have all the
+waste-pipes which connect with the drain cut off. Good-night. Am sorry I
+disturbed you.'
+
+They heard him as he went across the hall to his room, and Frank was
+settling down again to sleep when there came a second knock, and Arthur
+said, in a whisper:
+
+'I hope I do not trouble you, but I have decided to go myself to the
+station to meet Gretchen. She is very timid, and does not speak much
+English. Good-night once more, and pleasant dreams.'
+
+To sleep now was impossible, and both husband and wife turned restlessly
+on their pillows, Frank wondering what ailed his brother, and Dolly
+wondering who Gretchen was and how her coming would affect them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+WHO IS GRETCHEN?
+
+
+This was the question which Mr. and Mrs. Tracy asked of themselves and
+each other many times during the hours which intervened between their
+retiring and rising. But speculate as they might they could reach no
+satisfactory conclusion, and were obliged to wait for what the morning
+and the train might bring. The party had been a success, and Frank felt
+that his election to Congress was almost certain; but of what avail
+would all this be if he lost his foothold at Tracy Park, as he was sure
+to do if a woman appeared upon the scene. Both he and his wife had
+outgrown the life of eleven years ago, and could not go back to it
+without a struggle, and it is not strange if both wished that the
+troublesome brother had remained abroad instead of coming home so
+suddenly and disturbing all their plans. They heard him moving in his
+room before the clock struck six, and knew he was getting himself in
+readiness to meet the dreaded Gretchen. Then, long before the carriage
+came round they heard him in the hall opening the windows and admitting
+a gust of wind which blew their door open, and when Frank arose to shut
+it he saw the top of Arthur's broad-brimmed hat disappearing down the
+stairs.
+
+'I believe he is going to walk to the station; he certainly is crazy,'
+Frank said to his wife, as they dressed themselves and waited with
+feverish impatience for the return of the carriage.
+
+Arthur did walk to the station, which he reached just as the ticket
+agent was unlocking the door, and there, with his Spanish cloak wrapped
+around him, he stalked up and down the long platform for more than an
+hour, for the train was late, and it was nearer eight than seven when it
+finally came in sight.
+
+Standing side by side Arthur and John looked anxiously for some one to
+alight, but nobody appeared and the expression of Arthur's face was
+pitiable as he turned it to John, and said:
+
+'Gretchen did not come. Where do you suppose she is?'
+
+'I am sure I don't know. On the next train, may be,' was John's reply,
+at which Arthur caught eagerly.
+
+'Yes, the next train, most likely. We will come and meet it; and now
+drive home as fast as you can. This disappointment has brought that heat
+to my head, and I must have a bath. But, stop a bit; who is the best
+carpenter in town?'
+
+John told him that Belknap was the best, and Burchard the highest
+priced.
+
+'I'll see them both,' Arthur said. 'Take me to their houses;' and in the
+course of half an hour he had interviewed both Burchard and Belknap,
+and made an appointment with both for the afternoon.
+
+Then he was driven back to Tracy Park, where breakfast had been waiting
+until it was spoiled, and the cook's temper was spoiled, too, and when
+Frank and Dolly met him at the door, both asked in the same breath:
+
+'Where is she?'
+
+'She was not on this train. She will come on the next. We must go and
+meet her,' was Arthur's reply, as he passed up the stairs, while Frank
+and his wife looked wonderingly at each other.
+
+The spoiled breakfast was eaten by Mr. and Mrs. Tracy alone, for the
+children had had theirs and gone to their lessons, and Arthur had said
+that he never took anything in the morning except a cup of coffee and a
+roll, and these he wished sent to his room, together with a time-table.
+
+After breakfast Mrs. Tracy, who was suffering from a sick headache,
+declared her inability to sit up a moment longer and returned to her
+bed, leaving her husband and the servants to bring what order they could
+out of the confusion reigning everywhere, and nowhere to a greater
+extent than in Arthur's room, or rather the rooms which he had
+appropriated to himself, and into which he had had all his numerous
+boxes and trunks brought, so that he could open them at his leisure.
+There were more coming by express, he said, boxes which came through the
+custom-house, for he had brought many valuable things, such as pictures,
+and statuary, and rugs and inlaid tables and chinas, with which to adorn
+his home.
+
+The house, which was very large, had a wing on either side, while the
+main building was divided by a wide hall, with three rooms on each side,
+the middle one being a little smaller than the other two, with each of
+which it communicated by a door. And it was into this middle room on the
+second floor Arthur had been put, and which he found quite too small for
+his use. So he ordered both the doors to be opened and took possession
+of the suite, pacing them several times, and then measuring their
+length, and breadth, and height, and the distance between the windows.
+Then he inspected the wing on that side of the house, and, going into
+the yard, looked the building over from all points, occasionally
+marking a few lines on the paper he held in his hand. Before noon every
+room in the house, except the one where Dolly lay sick with a headache
+had been visited and examined minutely, while Frank watched him
+nervously, wondering if he would think they had greatly injured
+anything, or had expended too much money on furniture. But Arthur was
+thinking of none of these things, and found fault with nothing except
+the drain and the gas fixtures, all of which he declared bad, saying
+that the latter must be changed at once, and that ten pounds of copperas
+must be bought immediately and put down the drain, and that quantities
+of chloride of lime and carbolic acid must be placed where there was the
+least danger of vegetable decomposition.
+
+'I am very sensitive to smells, and afraid of them, too, for they breed
+malaria and disease of all kinds,' he said to the cook, whose nose and
+chin both were high in the air, not on account of any obnoxious odor,
+but because of this unreasonable meddling with what she considered her
+own affairs. If things were to go on in this way, she said to the
+house-maid, and if that man was going to poke his nose into drains, and
+gas-pipes, and kerosene lamps, and bowls of sour milk which she might
+have forgotten, she should give notice to quit.
+
+But when, half an hour later, some boxes and trunks which had come by
+express were deposited in the back hall, and Arthur, who was
+superintending them, said to her, as he pointed to a large black trunk,
+'I think this has the dress patterns and shawls I brought for you,
+girls; for though I did not know you personally, I knew that women were
+always pleased with anything from Paris' her feelings underwent a
+radical change, and Arthur was free to smell the drain and the gas
+fixtures as much as he liked.
+
+He was very busy, and though always pleasant, and even familiar at
+times, there was in all he said and did an air of ownership, as if he
+had assumed the mastership. And he had. Everything was his, and he knew
+it, and Frank knew it, too, and gave no sign of rebelling when the reins
+were taken from him by one who seemed to be driving at a break-neck
+speed.
+
+At lunch, while the brothers were together, Arthur announced his
+intentions in part, but not until Frank, who was anxious to get it off
+his mind, said to him:
+
+'By the way, I suppose you will be going to the office this afternoon,
+to see Colvin and look over the books. I believe you will find them
+straight, and hope you will not think I have spent too much, or drawn
+too large a salary. It you do, I will--'
+
+'Nonsense!' was Arthur's reply, with a graceful shrug of his shoulders.
+'Don't bother about that there is money enough for us both. What I
+invested in Europe has trebled itself, and more too, and would make me a
+rich man if I had nothing else. I am always lucky. I played but once at
+Monte Carlo, just before I came home, and won ten thousand dollars,
+which I invested in--But no matter; that is a surprise--something for
+your wife and Gretchen. I have come home to stay. I do not think I am
+quite what I used to be. I was sick all that time when you heard from me
+so seldom, and I am not strong yet. I need quite a rest. I have seen the
+world, and am tired of it, and now I want a house for Gretchen and
+myself, and you too. I expect you to stay with me as long as we pull
+together pleasantly and you do not interfere with my plans. I am going
+to take the three south rooms on the second floor for my own. I shall
+put folding-doors, or rather a wide arch between two of them, making
+them almost like one, and these I shall fit up to suit my own taste. In
+the smaller and middle room, where I slept last night, I shall have a
+large bow window, with shelves for books in the spaces between and
+beneath, and by the sides of the windows. I got the idea in a villa a
+little way out of Florence. Opposite this bow window, on the other side
+of the room, I shall have niches in the wall and corners for statuary,
+with shelves for books above and below. I have some beautiful pieces of
+marble from Florence and Rome. The Venus de Milo, Apollo Belvidere,
+Nydra and Psyche, and Ruth at the Well. But the crowning glory of this
+room will be the upper half of the middle window of the bow. This is to
+be of stained glass, bright but soft colors which harmonize perfectly,
+two rows on the four sides, and in the centre a lovely picture of
+Gretchen, also of cathedral glass, and so like her that it seems to
+speak to me in her soft German tongue. I had it made from a photograph I
+have of her, and it is very natural--the same sad, sweet smile around
+the lips which never said an unkind word to any one--the same bright,
+wavy hair, and eyes of blue, innocent as a child--and Gretchen is little
+more than that. She is only twenty-one--poor little Gretchen!' and,
+leaning back in his chair, Arthur seemed to be lost in recollections of
+the past.
+
+Not pleasant, all of them, it would seem, for there was a moisture in
+his eyes when he at last looked up in response to his brother's
+questioning.
+
+'Who did you say Gretchen was?'
+
+Instantly the expression of the eye changed to one of weariness and
+caution, as Arthur replied:
+
+'I did not say who she was, but you will soon know. I saw by the
+time-table that the train which passes here at eleven does not stop, but
+the three o'clock does, and you will please see that John goes with the
+carriage. I may be occupied with the carpenters, Burchard and Belknap,
+who were coming to talk with me about the changes I purpose to make, and
+which I wish commenced immediately. It is a rule of mine that when I am
+to do a thing, to do it at once. So I shall employ at least twenty men,
+and before Christmas everything will be finished, and I will show you
+rooms worthy of a palace. It is of Gretchen I am thinking, more than of
+myself. Poor little Gretchen!'
+
+Arthur's voice was inexpressibly sad and pitiful as he said 'Poor
+Gretchen,' while his eyes again grew soft and tender, with a far-away
+look in them, as if they were seeing things in the past rather than in
+the future.
+
+There was not a particle of sentiment in Frank's nature, and Gretchen
+was to him an object of dread rather than a romance. So far as he could
+judge, his brother had no intention of routing him; but a woman in the
+field would be different, and he should at once lose his vantage-ground.
+
+'You seem to be very fond of Gretchen,' he said, at last.
+
+'Fond!' Arthur replied, 'I should say I am, though the poor child has
+not much cause to think so. But I am going to atone, and this suite of
+rooms is for her. I mean to make her a very queen, and dress her in
+satin and diamonds every day. She has the diamonds. I sent them to her
+when I wrote to her to join me in Liverpool.'
+
+'And she did join you, I suppose?' Frank said, determined by adroit
+questioning to learn something of the mysterious Gretchen.
+
+'Yes, she joined me,' was the reply.
+
+'Was she very seasick?' Frank continued.
+
+'Not a minute. She sat by me all the time while I lay in my berth, but
+she would not let me hold her hand, and if I tried to touch even her
+hair, she always moved away to the other side of the state-room, where
+she sat looking at me reproachfully with those soft blue eyes of hers.'
+
+'And she was with you at the Brevoort in New York!' Frank said.
+
+'Yes, with me at Brevoort.'
+
+'And in the train?'
+
+'Yes, and in the train.'
+
+'And you left her there?'
+
+'No; she left herself. She did not follow me out. She went on by
+mistake, but is sure to come back this afternoon,' Arthur replied,
+rather excitedly, just as a sharp ring at the bell announced the arrival
+of Burchard and Belknap, the leading carpenters of the town, with whom
+he was closeted for the next two hours, and both of whom he finally
+hired in order to expedite the work he had in hand.
+
+At precisely three o'clock the carriage from Tracy Park drew up before
+the station, awaiting the arrival of the train and Gretchen, but though
+the former came, the latter did not, and John returned alone, mentally
+avowing to himself that he would not be sent on a fool's errand a third
+time; but five o'clock found him there again with the same result.
+Gretchen did not come, and Arthur's face wore a sad, troubled
+expression, and looked pale and worn, notwithstanding the many times he
+bathed it in the coldest water and rubbed it with the coarsest towels.
+
+He had unpacked several of his trunks and boxes, and made friends of all
+she servants by the presents, curious and rare, which he gave them,
+while Dolly's headache had been wholly cured at sight of the exquisite
+diamonds which her husband brought to her room and told her were hers,
+the gift of Arthur, who had bought them in Paris, and who begged her to
+accept them with his love.
+
+The box itself, which was of tortoise shell, lined with blue velvet, was
+a marvel of beauty, while the pin was a cluster of five diamonds with a
+larger one in the center, but the ear-rings were solitaires, large and
+brilliant, and Dolly's delight knew no bounds as she took the dazzling
+stones in her hands and examined them carefully. Diamond were the jewels
+of all others which she coveted, but which Frank never felt warranted in
+buying, and now they were hers, and for a time she forgot even Gretchen,
+whose arrival, or rather non-arrival, troubled her as much as it did her
+brother-in-law.
+
+Arthur had been very quiet and gentle all the afternoon, showing no sign
+of the temper he had exhibited the previous night at sight of Harold
+until about six o'clock, when Tom, his ten-year-old nephew, came rushing
+into the library, followed by Peterkin, very hot and very red in the
+face, which he mopped with his yellow silk handkerchief.
+
+'Oh, mother,' Tom began, 'what do you think Harold Hastings has done? He
+stole Mrs. Peterkin's gold pin last night. It was stuck in her shawl,
+and she couldn't find it, and Lucy saw him fumbling with the things, and
+he denies it up hill and down, and Mr. Peterkin is going to arrest him.
+I guess Dick St. Claire won't think him the nicest boy in town now. The
+thief! I'd like--
+
+But what he would like was never known, for with a spring Arthur bounded
+toward him, and seizing him by the coat collar, shook him vigorously,
+while he exclaimed:
+
+'Coward and liar! Harold Hastings is not a thief! No child of Amy
+Crawford could ever be a thief, and if you say that again, or even
+insinuate it to any living being, I'll break every bone in your body. Do
+you understand?'
+
+'Yes, sir; no sir, I won't; I won't,' Tom gasped, as well as he could,
+with his head bobbing forward and back so rapidly that his teeth cut
+into his under lip.
+
+'But _I_ shall,' Peterkin roared. 'I'll have the young dog arrested,
+too, if he don't own up and give up.'
+
+There was a wicked look in Arthur's black eyes, which he fastened upon
+Peterkin, as he said;
+
+'What does it all mean, sir? Will you please explain?'
+
+'Yes, in double quick time,' replied Peterkin, a little nettled by
+Arthur's manner, which he could not understand. 'You see, me and Mary
+Jane was early to the doin's; fust ones, in fact, for when your invite
+says half past seven it means it, I take it. Wall, we was here on time,
+and Mary Jane has been on a tear ever since, and says Miss St. Claire
+nor none of the big bugs didn't come till nine, which I take is
+imperlite, don't you?'
+
+'Never mind, we are not discussing etiquette. Go on with the pin and the
+boy,' Arthur said haughtily.
+
+'Mary Jane,' Peterkin continued, 'had a gold-headed shawl pin, with a
+small diamond in the head--real, too, for I don't b'lieve in shams, and
+haint sense the day I quit boatin' and hauled ther 'Liza Ann up inter my
+back yard. Well, she left this pin stickin' in her shawl, and no one up
+there but this boy of that Crawford gal's, and nobody knows who else.'
+
+Something in Arthur's face and manner made Frank think of a tiger about
+to pounce upon its prey, and he felt himself growing cold with suspense
+and dread as he watched his brother, while Peterkin continued:
+
+'When Mary Jane came to go home, her things wa'n't there, and the pin
+was missin'; and Lucy, the girl, said she found the boy pullin' them
+over by himself, when he had no call to be in there; and, sir, there
+ain't a lawyer in the United States that would refuse a writ on that
+evidence, and I'll get one of St. Claire afore to-morrow night. I told
+'em so, the widder and the boy, who was as brassy as you please, and
+faced me down and said he never seen the pin, nor knowed there was one;
+while she--wall, I swow, if she didn't start round lively for a woman
+with her leg bandaged up in vinegar and flannel. When I called the brat
+a thief and said I'd have him arrested, she made for the door and
+ordered me out--me, Joe Peterkin, of the 'Liza Ann! I'll make her smart,
+though, wus than the rheumatiz. I'll make her feel the heft--'
+
+He did not have time to finish the sentence, for the tiger in Arthur was
+fully roused, and with a bound toward Peterkin he opened the door, and,
+in a voice which seemed to fill the room, although it was only a
+whisper, he said:
+
+'Clown! loafer! puff-ball! Leave my house instantly, and never enter it
+again until you have apologized to Mrs. Crawford and her grandson for
+the insult offered them by your vile accusations. If it were not for
+soiling my hands, I would throw you down the steps,' he continued, as he
+stood holding the door open, and looking with his flashing eyes and
+dilated nostrils, as if he were fully equal to anything.
+
+Like most men of the boasting sort, Peterkin was a coward, and though he
+probably had twice the strength of Arthur, he went through the door-way
+out upon the piazza, where he stopped, and, with a flourish of his fist,
+denounced the whole Tracy tribe, declaring them but a race of upstarts,
+no better than he was, and saying he would yet be even with them, and
+make them feel the heft of his powerful disapprobation. Whatever else he
+said was not heard, for Arthur shut the door upon him, and returning to
+the library, where his brother stood, pale, trembling, and anxious for
+the votes he felt he had lost, he became on the instant as quiet and
+gentle as a child, and, consulting his watch, said in his natural tone:
+
+'Quarter of seven, and the train is due at half-past. Please tell John
+to have the carriage ready. I am going myself this time.'
+
+Frank opened his lips to protest against it, but something in his
+brother's manner kept him quiet and submissive. He was no longer master
+there--unless--unless--he scarcely dared whisper to himself what; but
+when the carriage went for the fourth time to the station after Gretchen
+and returned without her, he said to his wife:
+
+'I think Arthur is crazy, and possibly we shall have to shut him up.'
+
+'Yes, I wish you would,' was Dolly's reply, in a tone of relief, for,
+thus far, Arthur's presence in the house had not added to her comfort.
+'Of course he is crazy, and ought to be taken care of before he tears
+the house down over our heads, or does some dreadful thing.'
+
+'That's so, and I will see St. Claire to-morrow and find out the proper
+steps to be taken,' said Frank.
+
+That night he dreamed of windows with iron bars across them, and
+strait-jackets, into which he was thrusting his brother, while a face,
+the loveliest he had ever seen, looked reproachfully at him, with tears
+in the soft blue eyes, and a pleading pathos in the voice which said
+words he could not understand, for the language was a strange one to him
+who only knew his own.
+
+With a start Frank awoke, and found his wife sitting up in bed,
+listening intently to sounds which came from the hall, where some one
+was evidently moving around.
+
+'Hark!' she said, in a whisper. 'Do you hear that? There's a burglar in
+the house after my diamonds. What shall I do?'
+
+But Frank knew that no burglar ever made the noise this disturber of
+their rest was making and stepping out of bed he opened the door
+cautiously, and looking out, saw his brother, wrapped in a long
+dressing-gown, with a candle in his hand, opening one window after
+another until the hall was filled with the cold night wind, which swept
+down the long corridor banging a door at the farther end and setting all
+the rest to rattling.
+
+'Oh! Frank, is that you?' Arthur said. 'I am sorry I woke you, but I
+smelled an awful smell somewhere, and traced it to the hall, which you
+see I am airing; better shut the door or you will take cold. The house
+is full of malaria.'
+
+He was certainly crazy; there could be no doubt of it; and next morning,
+when Mr. St. Claire entered his office, he found Frank Tracy waiting
+there to consult him with regard to the legal steps necessary to procure
+his brother's incarceration in a lunatic asylum.
+
+Arthur St. Claire's face wore a grave, troubled look as he listened, for
+he remembered a time, years before, when he, too, had been interested in
+the lunatic asylum at Worcester, where a beautiful young girl, his wife,
+had been confined. She was dead now, and the Florida roses were growing
+over her grave, but there were many sad, regretful memories connected
+with her short life, and not the least sad of these were those connected
+with the asylum.
+
+'If it were to do over again I would not put her there, unless she
+became dangerous,' he had often said to himself, and he said much the
+same thing to Frank Tracy with regard to his brother.
+
+'Keep him at home, if possible. Do not place him with a lot of lunatics
+if you can help it. No proof he is crazy because he smells everything.
+My wife does the same. Her nose is over the registers half the time in
+winter to see if any gas is escaping from the furnace. And as to this
+Gretchen, it is possible there was some woman with him on the ship, or
+in New York, and he may be a little muddled there. You can inquire at
+the hotel where he stopped.'
+
+This was Mr. St. Claire's advice, and Frank acted upon it, and took
+immediate steps to ascertain if there had been a lady in company with
+his brother at the Brevoort House, where he had stopped, or if there had
+been any one in his company on the ship, which was still lying in the
+dock at New York. But there no one had been with him. Arthur Tracy alone
+was registered among the list of passengers, and only Arthur Tracy was
+on the books at the hotel. He had come alone, and been alone on the sea
+and at the hotel.
+
+Gretchen was a myth, or at least a mystery, though he still persisted
+that she would arrive with every train from Boston; and for nearly a
+week they humored him, and the carriage went to meet her, until at last
+there seemed to dawn upon his mind the possibility of a mistake, and
+when the carriage had made its twentieth trip for nothing, and Mr. St.
+Claire, who was standing by him on the platform when the train came up
+and brought no Gretchen, said to him:
+
+'She did not come.'
+
+'I am afraid she will never come,' he answered, sadly. 'No, she will
+never come. There has been some mistake. She will never come. Poor
+little Gretchen!' Then, after a moment he added, but there _is_ a
+Gretchen, and I wrote to her to join me in Liverpool, and I thought she
+did and was with me on the ship and in the train, but sometimes, when my
+head is so hot, I get things mixed, and am not sure but--' and he looked
+wistfully in his companion's face, while his voice trembled a little.
+'Don't let them shut me up; I have a suspicion that they will try it,
+but it will do no good. I was in an asylum nearly three years near
+Vienna; went of my own accord, because of that heat in my head.'
+
+'Been in an asylum?' Mr. St. Claire said, wonderingly.
+
+'Yes,' Arthur continued, 'I was only out three months ago. I wrote
+occasionally to Frank and Gretchen, but did not tell them where I was.
+They called it a _maison de sante_, and treated me well because I paid
+well, but the sight of so many crazy people made me worse, and if I had
+staid I should have been mad as the maddest of them. As it was, I forgot
+almost everything that ever happened, and fancied I was an Austrian. As
+soon as I came out I was better, though I was not quite myself till I
+got to Liverpool. Then things came back to me. Stand by me, St. Claire.
+I can see I am in the way, and Frank would like to be rid of me; but
+stand by me, and don't let them do it.'
+
+His manner was very pleading, and like one who was in fear of something,
+and remembering the past when a golden-haired girl had begged him to
+save her from iron bars and bolts, Mr. St. Claire assured him of his
+support against any steps which might be taken to prove him mad enough
+for the asylum.
+
+'But I would not come for Gretchen any more,' he said. 'I would give her
+a rest. Who is she?'
+
+Instantly the old look of cunning came into Arthur's eyes, as he
+replied:
+
+'She is Gretchen;' and then he walked toward the carriage, while Mr. St.
+Claire looked curiously after him, and said to himself:
+
+'That fellow is not right, but he is not a subject for a mad house, and
+I should oppose his being sent there. I do not believe, however, that
+they will try it on.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+ARTHUR SETTLES HIMSELF.
+
+
+They did try it on, but not until after the November election, at which
+Frank was defeated by a large majority, for Peterkin worked against him
+and brought all the 'heft of his powerful disapprobation' to bear upon
+him. Although Frank had had no part in turning him from the door that
+morning after the party, he had not tried to prevent it by a word, and
+this the low, brutal man resented, and swearing vengeance upon the whole
+Tracy tribe, declared his intention to defeat Frank if it cost him half
+his fortune to do so. And it did cost him at least two thousand dollars,
+for Frank Tracy was popular with both parties; many of the Democrats
+voted for him, but the rabble, the scum, those who could be bought on
+both sides, went against him, even to the Widow Shipley's four sons; and
+when all was over, Frank found himself defeated by just as many votes as
+old Peterkin had paid for, not only in Shannondale, but in the adjoining
+towns, where his money carried 'heft,' as he expressed it.
+
+It was a terrible disappointment to Frank and his wife, who had looked
+forward to enjoying a winter in Washington, where they intended to take
+a house and enjoy all society had to offer them in the national
+metropolis. Particularly were they anxious for the change now that
+Arthur had come home, for it was not altogether pleasant to be ruled
+where they had so long been rulers, and to see the house turned upside
+down without the right to protest.
+
+'I can't stand it, and I won't,' Frank said to his wife in the first
+flush of his bitter disappointment. 'Ever since he came home he has
+raised Cain generally, with his carpenters, and masons, and painters,
+and stewing about water-pipes, and sewer-gas, and smells. He's mad as a
+March hare, and if I can't get rid of him by going to Washington, I'll
+do it in some other way. You know he is crazy, and so do I, and I'll
+swear to it on a stack of Bibles as high as the house.'
+
+And Frank did swear to it, not on a stack of Bibles, but before two or
+three physicians and Mr. St. Claire, who, at his solicitation, came to
+Tracy Park, and were closeted with him for an hour or more, while he
+related his grievances, asserting finally that he considered his brother
+dangerous, and did not think his family safe with him, citing as proof
+that he had on one occasion threatened to kill his son Tom for accusing
+Harold Hastings of theft.
+
+How the matter would have terminated is doubtful, if Arthur himself had
+not appeared upon the scene, calm, dignified, and courtly in his manner,
+which insensibly won upon his hearers, as in a few well-chosen and
+eloquent words, he proceeded to prove that though he might be peculiar
+in some respects, he was not mad, and that a man might repair his own
+house, and cut off his own water-pipes, and take up his sewer, and
+detect a bad smell, and still not be a subject for a lunatic asylum.
+
+'And,' he continued, addressing his brother, 'it ill becomes you to
+take this course against me--you, who have enriched yourself at my
+expense, while I have held my peace. Suppose I require you to give an
+account of all the money which you have considered necessary for your
+support and salary--would you like to do it? Would the world consider
+you strictly honorable, or would they call you a lunatic on the subject
+of money and not responsible for your acts? But I have no wish to harm
+you. I have money enough, and cannot forget that you are my brother. But
+molest me, and I shall molest you. If I go to the asylum you will leave
+Tracy Park. If I am allowed to stay here in peace, you can do so,
+too--at least, until Gretchen comes, when it will, perhaps, be better
+for us to separate. Two masters may manage to scramble along in the same
+house, but two mistresses never can, and Dora and Gretchen would not be
+congenial. Good morning, gentlemen!' and he bowed himself from the room,
+leaving Frank covered with confusion and shame as he felt that he was
+beaten.
+
+The physicians did not think it a case in which they were warranted to
+interfere. Neither could conscientiously sign a certificate which should
+declare Arthur a lunatic, and their advice to Frank was that he should
+suffer his brother to have his own way in his own house, and when he
+felt that he could not bear with his idiosyncracies he could go
+elsewhere. But it was this going elsewhere which Frank did not fancy;
+and, after a consultation with his wife, he decided to let matters take
+their course for a time at least, or until Gretchen came, if she ever
+did.
+
+Arthur's allusion to the sums of money his brother had appropriated to
+his own use had warned Frank that he was not quite so indifferent or
+ignorant of his business affairs as he had seemed, and this of itself
+served to keep him quiet and patient during the confusion which ensued,
+as walls were torn down, and doors and windows cut, while the house was
+filled with workmen, and the sound of the hammer and saw was heard from
+morning till night.
+
+It was in the middle of October when Arthur fairly commenced his
+repairs, but so many men did he employ, and so rapidly was the work
+pushed on, that the first of January found everything finished and
+Arthur installed in his suite of rooms, which a prince might have
+envied, so richly and tastefully were they fitted up. Beautiful pictures
+and rich tapestry covered the walls in the first room, where the floor
+was inlaid with colored woods in lovely Mosaic designs, and the centre
+was covered with a costly Oriental rug, which Arthur had bought at a
+fabulous price in Paris, where it had once adorned a room in the
+Tuileries. But the gem of the whole was the library, where the statuary
+stood in the niches, and where, from the large bow-window at the south,
+a young girl's face looked upon the scene with an expression of shy
+surprise and half regret in the soft blue eyes, as if their owner
+wondered how she came there, and was always thinking of the fields and
+forests of far-away Germany. For it was decidedly a German face of the
+higher type, and such as is seldom found among the lower or even middle
+classes. And yet you instinctively felt that it belonged to the latter,
+notwithstanding the richness of the dress, from the pearl-embroidered
+cap set jauntily on the reddish golden hair to the velvet bodice and the
+satin peasant waist. The hands, small and dimpled like those of a child,
+were clasped around a prayer-book and a bunch of wild flowers which had
+evidently just been gathered. It was a marvelously beautiful face, pure
+and sweet as that of a Madonna, and the workmen involuntarily bowed
+their heads before it, calling it, not without some reason, a memorial
+window, for the name Gretchen was under the picture, and one
+unconsciously found himself looking for the date of birth and death. But
+only the one word 'Gretchen' was there, with no sign to tell who she
+was, or where, if living, she was now, or what relation she bore to the
+strange man who often stood before her whispering to himself:
+
+'Poor little Gretchen! Will you never come?'
+
+For a few days after the rooms were completed, they were thrown open to
+such of Arthur's friends as cared to see them, and the question 'Who is
+Gretchen?' was often asked, but the answer was always the same: 'She is
+Gretchen. I am expecting her every day.'
+
+But if he were expecting her, he no longer asked that the carriage be
+sent to meet her. That had been one of the proofs of his insanity as
+alleged by his brother, and Arthur was sane enough and cunning enough to
+avoid a repetition of that offence, but he often went himself to the
+station, when the New York trains were due, for it was from the west
+rather than the east that he was now looking for her.
+
+Frank, who watched him nervously, with all his senses sharpened, guessed
+what had caused the change and grew more nervous and morbid on the
+subject of Gretchen than ever. At first his brother, who was greatly
+averse to going out, had asked him to post his letters; business letters
+they seemed to be, for they were addressed to business firms in New
+York, London, and Paris, with all of which Arthur had relations. But one
+morning when Frank went as usual to his brother's room asking if there
+was any mail to be taken to the office, Arthur, who was just finishing a
+letter, replied:
+
+'No, thank you, I will post this myself. I have been writing to
+Gretchen.'
+
+'Yes, to Gretchen?' Frank said, quickly, as he advanced nearer to the
+writing desk, hoping to see the address on the envelope.
+
+But Arthur must have suspected his motive, for he at once turned over
+the envelope and kept his hand upon it, while Frank said to him:
+
+'Is she in London now?'
+
+'No; she was never in London,' was the curt reply, and then, turning
+suddenly, Arthur faced his brother and said: 'Why are you so curious
+about Gretchen? It is enough for you to know that the is the sweetest,
+truest little girl that ever lived. When she comes I shall tell you
+everything, but not before. You have tried to prove me crazy; have said
+I was full of cranks; perhaps I am, and Gretchen is one of them, but it
+does not harm you, so leave me in peace, if you wish for peace
+yourself.'
+
+There was a menacing look in Arthur's eyes which Frank did not like, and
+he retreated from the room, resolved to say no more to him of Gretchen,
+whose arrival he again began to look for and dread. But Gretchen did not
+come, or any tidings of her, and Christmas came and went, and the lovely
+bracelets which Arthur brought from the trunk he said was hers, and into
+which no one had ever looked but himself, remained unclaimed upon his
+table, as did the costly inlaid work-box, and the cut-glass bottles with
+the gold stoppers. All these were to have been Gretchen's Christmas
+presents; but when she did not come they disappeared from view and were
+not seen again, while Arthur seemed to be settling into a state of great
+depression, caring nothing for the outside world, but spending all his
+time in the lovely rooms he had prepared for himself and one who never
+came.
+
+As far as was possible he continued his foreign habits, having his
+coffee and rolls at eight in the morning, his breakfast, as he called
+it, at half-past twelve, and his dinner at half-past six. All these
+meals were served in his room as elaborately, and with as much ceremony,
+as if lords and ladies sat at the table instead of one lone man, who
+never let himself down a particle, but required the utmost subservience
+and care in the waiting. The finest of linen, and china, and glass, and
+silver adorned his table, with bits of fanciful crockery gathered here
+and there in his extended wanderings, and always flowers for a
+centre-piece--roses mostly, if he could get them--tea roses and Marshal
+Neils, for Gretchen, he said, was fond of these, and, as she might
+surprise him at any moment, he wished to be ready for her, and show that
+he was expecting her.
+
+Opposite him, at the end of the table, was always an empty plate with
+its surroundings, and the curiously-carved chair, which had seen the
+lion at Lucerne. But no one ever sat in it. No one ever used the
+decorated plate, or the glass mug at its side, with its twisted handle
+and the letter 'G.' on the silver cover. Just what this mug was for none
+of the household knew until Grace Atherton, who had travelled in Europe,
+and to whom Mrs. Tracy showed it one day when Arthur was out, said:
+
+'Why, it is a beer-mug, such as is used in Germany, though more
+particularly among the Bavarian Alps and in the Tyrol. This Gretchen is
+probably a tippler, with a red nose and a double chin. I wish to
+goodness she would come and satisfy our curiosity.'
+
+This wish of Grace's was not shared by Mrs. Tracy, who felt an uneasy
+sense of relief as the days went on, and the beer-drinking Gretchen did
+not appear, while Arthur became more and more depressed and remained
+altogether in his room, seeing no one and holding no intercourse with
+the outside world. He had returned no calls, and had been but once to
+the cottage in the lane to see Mrs. Crawford. That interview had been a
+long and sad one, and when they talked of Amy, whose grave Arthur had
+visited on his way to the cottage, both had cried together, and Gretchen
+seemed for the time forgotten. They talked of Amy's husband, who, Arthur
+said, had died at Monte Carlo; and then he spoke of Amy's son, who was
+not present, and whom he seemed to have forgotten entirely, for when
+Mrs. Crawford said to him, 'You saw him on the night of your return
+home,' he looked at her in a perplexed kind of way, and if trying to
+recall something which had gone almost entirely from his mind. It was
+this utter forgetfulness of people and events which was a marked feature
+of his insanity, if insane he were, and he knew it and struggled against
+it; and when Mrs. Crawford told him he had seen Harold he tried to
+recall him, and could not until the boy came in, flushed and excited
+from a race with Dick St. Claire through the crisp November wind, which
+had brought a bright color to his cheek and a sparkle to his eye. Then
+Arthur remembered everything, and something of his old prejudice came
+back to him, and his manner was a little constrained as he talked to the
+boy, whose only fault was that Harold Hastings had been his father and
+that he bore his name.
+
+Arthur did not stay long after Harold came in, but said good-morning to
+Mrs. Crawford and walked slowly away, going again to Amy's grave, and
+taking from it a few leaves of the ivy which was growing around the
+monument. And this was all the intercourse he held with Mrs. Crawford,
+except to send her at Christmas a hundred dollars, which he said was for
+the boy Harold, to whom he had done an injustice.
+
+After this he seldom went out, but gave himself heart and soul to the
+completion of his rooms, and when they were finished he settled down
+into the life of a recluse, seeing very few and talking but little,
+except occasionally to himself, when he seemed to be carrying on a
+conversation with some unseen visitant, who must have spoken in a
+foreign tongue or tongues, for sometimes it was French, sometimes
+Italian, and oftener German, in which he addressed his fancied guest,
+and neither Frank nor Dolly could understand a word of the strange
+jargon. On the whole, however, he was very quiet and undemonstrative,
+and but for the habit of talking to himself and smelling odors where
+there were none, he would not have seemed very different from many
+peculiar people who are never suspected of being crazy.
+
+If he were still expecting Gretchen, he gave no sign of it, except the
+place at his table always laid for her, and Frank was beginning to
+breathe freely, and to look upon his brother's presence in the house as
+not altogether unbearable, when an event occurred which excited all
+Shannondale, and for a time made Frank almost as crazy as his brother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE STORM.
+
+
+The winter since Christmas had been unusually severe, and the oldest
+inhabitant, of whom there are always many in every town, pronounced the
+days as they came and went the coldest they had ever known. Ten, twelve,
+and even fourteen degrees below zero the thermometers marked more than
+once, while old Peterkin's, which was hung inside the Lizy Ann and
+always took the lead, went down one morning to seventeen, and all the
+water-pipes and pumps in town either froze or burst, and Arthur Tracy,
+who, with his absorption of self, never forgot the poor, sent tons and
+tons of coal to them, and whispered to himself:
+
+'Poor Gretchen! It is hard for her if she is on the sea in such weather
+as this. Heaven protect her, poor little Gretchen!'
+
+That night when Frank went, as his custom was, to sit a few moments with
+his brother, he found him on his knees, with his face toward the
+picture, repeating the prayer for those upon the sea.
+
+The next day there was a change for the better, and the next, and the
+next, until when the last day of February dawned Peterkin's thermometer
+registered only two, and people began to show themselves in the
+streets, while the sun tried to break through the grey clouds which
+shrouded the wintry sky. But this was only temporary, for before noon
+the mercury fell again to eight below, the wind began to rise, and when
+the New York train came panting to the station at half-past six, clouds
+of snow so dense and dark were driving over the hills and along the line
+of track that nothing could be distinctly seen.
+
+It was not until the train had moved on that the station-master, who,
+half blinded with the sleet, was gathering up the mail-bag, which had
+been unceremoniously dropped, saw across the track at a little distance
+from him the figure of a woman who seemed to be trying to examine a
+paper she held in her hand, while clinging to her skirts and crying
+piteously was a little child, but whether boy or girl, he could not
+tell.
+
+'Can I do anything for you?' he said advancing toward the stranger, who,
+thrusting the paper from sight, caught up the child in her arms, and
+without word of answer, hurried away in the storm and rapidly-increasing
+darkness.
+
+'Curis! She must have got off t'other side of the cars. I wonder who she
+is and where she is goin'. Not fur, I hope, such a night as this. Ugh!
+the wind is like so many screech owls and almost takes a feller off his
+feet, the agent said to himself, as he looked after the stranger, and
+then went back to the light and warmth of his office, where he soon
+forgot the woman, who, with the child held closely in her arms, walked
+rapidly on, her eyes strained to their utmost tension as they peered
+through the darkness and the storm until she reached a gate opening into
+a grassy road which led through the fields in a straight line to Tracy
+Park and Collingwood beyond.
+
+Carriages seldom traversed this road, but in the summer time the people
+from Collingwood and Tracy Park frequently walked that way, as it was a
+much nearer route to town than the main highway. Here the woman stopped,
+and looking up at the tall arch over the gate, said aloud, as if
+repeating a lesson learned by heart, 'Leave the car on your right hand;
+take the road to the right, as I have drawn it on paper; go straight on
+for a quarter of a mile until you come to a wide iron gate with a tall
+arch over it. This gate is also at your right. You cannot mistake it.'
+
+'No,' she continued, 'I cannot mistake it. This is the place. We are
+almost there,' and putting down the child, she tugged with all her
+strength at the ponderous gate, which she at last succeeded in opening,
+and resuming her burden, passed through into the field where the snow
+lay on the ground in great white drifts, while the blinding flakes and
+cutting sleet from the leaden clouds above, beat pitilessly upon her as
+she struggled on the wearisome way.
+
+And while she toiled on, fighting bravely with the storm, and
+occasionally speaking a word of encouragement to the little child
+nestled in her bosom, Arthur Tracy stood at one of the windows in his
+library, with his white face pressed close against the pane, as he
+looked anxiously out into the gathering darkness, shuddering
+involuntarily as the wind came screaming round a corner of the house,
+bending the tall evergreens until their slender tops almost touched the
+ground, and then rushing on down the carriage-drive with a shriek like
+so many demons let loose from the ice-caves of the north, where the
+winds are supposed to hold high carnival.
+
+They were surely holding carnival to-night, and their king was out with
+all his legions, and as Arthur listened to the roar of the tempest he
+whispered to himself:
+
+'A wild, wild night for Gretchen to arrive, and her dear little feet and
+hands will be so cold; but there is warmth and comfort here, and love
+such as she never dreamed of, poor Gretchen! I will hold her in my arms
+and chafe her cold fingers and kiss her tired face until she feels that
+her home-coming is a happy one. It must be almost time,' and he glanced
+at a small cathedral clock which stood upon the mantel.
+
+In the adjoining room the dinner table was as usual laid for two, but
+one could see that more care than usual had been given to its
+arrangement, while the roses in the centre were the largest and finest
+of their kind. In the low, wide grate a bright fire was burning, and
+Arthur placed a large easy chair before it, and then brought from the
+library a covered footstool, with a delicate covering of blue and gold.
+No foot had ever yet profaned this stool with a touch, for it was one of
+Arthur's specialties, bought at a great price in Algiers; but he brought
+it now for Gretchen and saw in fancy resting upon it the cold little
+feet his hands were to rub and warm and caress until life came back to
+them, and Gretchen's blue eyes smiled upon him and Gretchen's sweet
+voice said:
+
+'Thank you, Arthur. It is pleasant coming home.'
+
+For the last two or three weeks, Arthur had been very quiet and
+taciturn, but on the morning of this day he had seemed restless and
+nervous, and his nervousness and excitability increased until a violent
+headache came on, and Charles, the servant, who attended him, reported
+to Mrs. Tracy that his midday meal had been untouched and that he really
+seemed quite ill. Then Frank went to him, and sitting down beside him as
+he lay upon a couch in the room with Gretchen's picture, said to him,
+not unkindly:
+
+'Are you sick to-day? What is the matter?'
+
+For a few moments Arthur made no reply, but lay with his eyes closed as
+if he had not heard. Then suddenly rousing himself, he burst out,
+vehemently:
+
+'Frank, you think me crazy, or you have thought so, and you have based
+that belief in part on the fact that I am always expecting Gretchen. And
+so for a long time I have suppressed all mention of her, though I have
+never ceased to look for her arrival, since--since--well, I may as well
+tell you the truth. I know now that she could not have been with me on
+the ship and in the train, although I thought she was. I wrote her to
+join me in Liverpool, and fancied she did. But my brain must have been a
+little mixed. She did not come with me, but I wrote to her weeks ago,
+telling her to come at once, and giving her directions how to find the
+park if she should arrive at the station and no one there to meet her.
+She has had more than time to get here, but I have said nothing about
+sending the carriage for her, as that seemed to annoy you. But to-day,
+Frank, to-day'--and Arthur's voice grew softer and pleading, and
+trembled as he went on. 'I dreamed of her last night, and to-day she
+seems so near to me that more than once I have put out my hand to touch
+her. Frank, it is not insanity, this presentiment of mine that she is
+near me, that she is coming to me, or tidings of her; it is mind acting
+upon mind; her thoughts of me reaching forward and fastening upon my
+thoughts of her, making a mental bridge on which to see her coming to
+me. And you will send for her. You will let John go again. Think if she
+should arrive in this terrible storm and no one there to meet her. You
+will send this once, and if she is not there I will not trouble you
+again.'
+
+There was something in Arthur's white face which Frank could not resist,
+and though he had no idea that anything would come of it, he promised
+that John should go.
+
+'Oh, Frank,' Arthur exclaimed, his face brightening at once, 'you have
+made me so happy! My headache is quite gone,' and then he began to plan
+for the dinner, which was to be more elaborate than usual, and served an
+hour later, so as to give plenty of time for Gretchen to rest and dress
+herself if she wished to do so.
+
+'And she will when she sees the lovely dress I have for her,' he thought
+to himself, and after his brother had gone he went to the large closet
+where he kept the long black trunk which he called Gretchen's, and into
+which Dolly's curious eyes had never looked, although she longed to know
+the contents.
+
+This Arthur now opened, and had Dolly been there she would have held
+her breath in wonder at the many beautiful things it contained.
+Folded in one of the trays, as only a French packer accustomed to
+the business could have arranged it, was an exquisite dinner-dress of
+salmon-colored satin, with a brocaded front and jacket of blue and gold,
+and here and there a knot of duchess lace, which gave it a more airy
+effect. This Arthur took out carefully and laid upon the bed in his
+sleeping-apartment, together with every article of the toilet necessary
+to such a dress, from a lace pocket handkerchief to a pair of pale-blue
+silk hose, which he kissed reverently as he whispered to himself:
+
+'Dear little feet, which, no doubt, are so cold now in the wretched car;
+but they will never be cold when once I have them here.'
+
+He was talking in German, as he always did when Gretchen was the subject
+of his thought, and so Dolly, who came to say that some things which he
+had ordered for dinner were impossible now, could not understand him,
+but she caught a glimpse of the dress upon the bed, and advanced quickly
+toward the open door, exclaiming:
+
+'Oh, Arthur, what a lovely gown! Whose--?'
+
+But before she completed her question Arthur was upon the threshold and
+had closed the door, saying as he did so:
+
+'It is Gretchen's. I had it made at Worth's. She is coming to-night, you
+know.'
+
+Dolly had heard from her husband of Arthur's fancy, and though she had
+no faith in it, she replied:
+
+'Yes, Frank told me you were expecting her again, and I came to say that
+we cannot get the fish you ordered, for no one can go to town in this
+storm, and I doubt if we could find it if we did. You will have to skip
+the fish.'
+
+'All right; all right. Gretchen will be too much excited to care,'
+Arthur replied, standing with his hand upon the door-knob until Dolly
+left the room and went to this kitchen, where Frank was interviewing the
+coachman.
+
+He had found that important personage before the fire, bending nearly
+double and complaining bitterly of a fall he had just had on his way
+from the stable to the house. According to his statement, the wind had
+taken him up bodily, and carrying him a dozen rods or so, had set him
+down heavily upon a stone flowerpot which was left outside in the
+winter, nearly breaking his back, as he declared. This did not look very
+promising for the drive to the station, and Frank opened the business
+hesitatingly, and asked John what he thought of it.
+
+'I think I would not go out in such a storm as this with my back if
+Queen Victoria was to be there,' John answered gruffly. 'And what would
+be the use?' he continued. 'I have been to meet that woman, if she is a
+woman, with the outlandish name, more than fifty times, I'll bet; he
+don't know what he is talking about when he gets on her track. And
+s'posin' she does come, she can find somebody to fetch her. She ain't
+going to walk.'
+
+This seemed reasonable; and as Frank's sympathies were with his coachman
+and horses rather than with Gretchen and his brother, he decided with
+John that he need not go, but added, laughingly, as he saw the man walk
+across the floor as well as he ever did on his way to the woodshed:
+
+'Seems to me your broken back has recovered its elasticity very soon.'
+
+To this John made no reply except an inaudible growl, and Frank returned
+to the library, resolving not to go near his brother until after train
+time, but to let him think that John had gone to the station.
+
+At half-past five, however, Arthur sent for him, and said:
+
+'Has he gone? It must be time.'
+
+'Not quite; it is only half-past five. The train does not come until
+half-past six, and is likely to be late,' was Frank's reply.
+
+'Yes, I know,' Arthur continued, 'but he should be there on time. Tell
+him to start at once, and take an extra robe with him, and say to
+Charles that I will have sherry to-night, and champagne, too, and
+Hamburg grapes, and--'
+
+The remainder of his speech was lost on Frank, who was hurrying down the
+stairs with a guilty feeling in his heart, although he felt that the end
+justified the means, and that under the circumstances he was justified
+in deceiving his half-crazy brother. Still he was ill at ease. He had no
+faith in Arthur's presentiments, and no idea that any one bound for
+Tracy Park would be on the train that night, but he could not shake off
+a feeling of anxiety, amounting almost to a dread of some impending
+calamity, which possibly the sending of John to the station might have
+averted, and going to a window in the library, he, too, stood looking
+out into the night, trying not to believe that he was watching for some
+possible arrival, when, above the storm, he heard the shrill scream of
+the locomotive as it stopped for a moment and then dashed on into the
+white snow clouds; trying to believe, too, that he was not glad, as the
+minutes became a quarter, the quarter a half, and the half
+three-quarters, until at last he heard the clock strike the half-hour
+past seven, and nobody had come.
+
+'I shall have to tell Arthur,' he thought, and, with something like
+hesitancy, he started for his brother's room.
+
+Arthur was standing before the fire, with his arm thrown caressingly
+across the chair where Gretchen was to sit, when Frank opened the door
+and advanced a step or two across the threshold.
+
+'Has she come? I did not see the carriage. Where is she?' Arthur cried,
+springing swiftly forward, while his bright, eager eyes darted past his
+brother to the open door-way and out into the hall.
+
+'No, she has not come. I knew she wouldn't; and it was nonsense to send
+the horses out such a night as this,' Frank said, sternly, with a
+mistaken notion that he must speak sharply to the unfortunate man, who,
+if rightly managed, was gentle as a child.
+
+'Not come! Gretchen not come! There must be some mistake!' Arthur said,
+all the brightness fading from his face, which seemed to grow pinched
+and pallid as he turned it piteously toward his brother and continued:
+'Not come! Oh, Frank! did John say so? Was no one there? Let me go and
+question him--there must be a mistake.'
+
+He was hurrying toward the door, when Frank caught his arm and detained
+him, while he said, decidedly:
+
+'No use to see John. Can't you believe me when I tell you no one was
+there--and I knew there would not be. It was folly to send.'
+
+For a moment a pale, haggard face, which looked still more haggard and
+pale with the firelight flickering over it, confronted Frank steadily;
+then the lips began to quiver, and the eyelids to twitch, while great
+tears gathered in Arthur's eyes, until at last, covering his face with
+his hands, he staggered to the couch, and throwing himself upon it,
+sobbed convulsively.
+
+'Oh, Gretchen, my darling!' he said. 'I was so sure, and now everything
+is swept away, and I am left so desolate.'
+
+Frank had never seen grief just like this, and, with his conscience
+pricking him a little for the deception he had practised, he found
+himself pitying his brother as he had never done before; and when at
+last the latter cried out loud, he went to him, and laying his hand
+gently upon his bowed head, said to him, soothingly:
+
+'Don't, Arthur; don't feel so badly. It is terrible to see a man cry as
+you are crying.'
+
+'No, no; let me cry,' Arthur replied. 'The tears do me good, and my
+brain would burst without them. It is all on fire, and my head is aching
+so hard again.'
+
+At this moment Charles appeared, asking if his master would have dinner
+served. But Arthur could not eat, and the table which had been arranged
+with so much care for Gretchen was cleared away, while Gretchen's chair
+was moved back from the fire and Gretchen's footstool put in its place,
+and nothing remained to show that she had been expected except the
+pretty dress, with its accessories, which lay upon Arthur's bed. These
+he took care of himself, folding them with trembling hands and tear-wet
+eyes, as a fond mother folds the clothes her dead child has worn,
+sorrowing most over the half-worn shoes, so like the dear little feet
+which will never wear them again. So Arthur sorrowed over the
+high-heeled slippers, with the blue rosettes and pointed toes,
+fashionable in Paris at that time. Gretchen had never worn them, it is
+true, but they seemed so much like her that his tears fell fast as he
+held them in his hands, and, dropping upon the pure white satin, left a
+stain upon it.
+
+When everything was put away and the long trunk locked again, Arthur
+went back to the couch and said to his brother, who was still in the
+room:
+
+'Don't leave me, Frank; at least not yet, till I am more composed. My
+nerves are dreadfully shaken to-night, and I feel afraid of something, I
+don't know what. How the wind howls and moans! I never heard it like
+that but once before, and that was years ago, among the Alps in
+Switzerland. Then it blew off the roof of the chalet where I was
+staying, and I heard afterward that Amy died that night. You remember
+Amy, the girl I loved so well, though not as I love Gretchen. If she had
+come, I should have told you all about her, but now it does not matter
+who she is, or where I saw her first, knitting in the sunshine, with the
+halo on her hair and the blue of the summer skies reflected in her eyes.
+Oh, Gretchen, my love, my love!'
+
+He was talking more to himself than to Frank, who sat beside him until
+far into the night, while the wild storm raged on and shook the solid
+house to its very foundations. A tall tree in the yard was uprooted, and
+a chimney-top came crushing down with a force which threatened to break
+through the roof. For a moment there was a lull in the tempest, and,
+raising himself upon his elbow, Arthur listened intently, while he said,
+in a whisper which made Frank's blood curdle in his veins:
+
+'Hark! there's more abroad to-night than the storm! Something is
+happening or has happened which affects me. I have heard voices in the
+wind--Gretchen calling me from far away. Frank, Frank, _did_ you hear
+that? It was a woman's cry; her voice--Gretchen's. Yes, Gretchen, I am
+coming!'
+
+And with a bound he was at the window, which he opened wide, and leaning
+far out of it, listened to hear repeated a sound which Frank, too, had
+heard--a cry like the voice of one in mortal peril calling for help.
+
+It might have been the wind, which on the instant swept round the corner
+in a great gust, driving the snow and sleet into Arthur's face, and
+making him draw in his body, nearly half of which was leaning from the
+window as he waited for the strange cry to be repeated. But it did not
+come again, though Frank, whose nerves were strung to almost as high a
+tension as his brother's, thought he heard it once above the roar of the
+tempest, and a vague feeling of disquiet took possession of him as he
+sat for an hour longer watching his brother and listening to the noise
+without.
+
+Gradually the storm subsided, and when the clock struck one the wind had
+gone down, the snow had ceased to fall, and the moon was struggling
+feebly through a rift of dark clouds in the west. After persuading his
+brother to go to bed, Frank retired to his own room and was soon asleep,
+unmindful of the tragedy which was being enacted not very far away,
+where a little child was smiling in its dreams, while the woman beside
+it was praying for life until her mission should be accomplished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE TRAMP HOUSE.
+
+
+About midway between the entrance to the park and the Collingwood
+grounds, and fifty rods or more from the cross-road which the strange
+woman had taken on the night of the storm, stood a small stone building,
+which had been used as a school-house until the Shannondale turnpike was
+built and the cross-road abandoned. After that it was occupied by one
+poor family after another, until the property of which it was a part
+came into the hands of the elder Mr. Tracy, who, with his English ideas,
+thought to make it a lodge and bring the gates of his park down to it.
+But this he did not do, and the house was left to the mercy of the
+winds, and the storms, and the boys, until Arthur became master there,
+and with his artistic taste thought to beautify it a little and turn it
+to some use.
+
+'I would tear it down,' he said to his neighbor, Mr. St. Claire, who
+stood with him one day looking at it, 'I would tear it down, and have
+once or twice given orders to that effect, but as often countermanded
+them. I do not know that I am exactly superstitious, but I am subject to
+fancies, or presentiments, or whatever you choose to call those moods
+which take possession of you and which you cannot shake off, and,
+singularly enough, one of these fancies is connected with this old hut,
+and as often as I decide to remove it something tells me not to; and
+once I actually dreamed that a dead woman's hand clutched me by the arm
+and bade me leave it alone. A case of "Woodman spare that tree," you
+see.'
+
+And Arthur laughed lightly at his own morbid fancies, but he left the
+house and planted around it quantities of woodbine, which soon crept up
+its sides to the chimney-top and made it look like the ivy-covered
+cottages so common in Ireland. It was the nicest kind of rendezvous for
+lovers, who frequently availed themselves of its seclusion to whisper
+their secrets to each other, and it was sometimes used as a dining-room
+by the people of Shannondale, where in summer they held picnics in the
+pretty pine grove not far away. But during Arthur's absence it had been
+suffered to go to decay, for Frank cared little for lovers or picnics,
+and less for the tramps who often slept there at night, and for whom it
+came at last to be called the Tramp House. So the winds, and the storms,
+and the boys did their work upon it unmolested, and when Arthur
+returned, the door hung upon one hinge, and there was scarcely a whole
+light of glass in the six windows.
+
+'Better tear the old rookery down. It is of no earthly use except to
+harbor rats and tramps. I've known two or three to spend the night in it
+at a time, and once a lot of gipsies quartered themselves here for a
+week and nearly scared Dolly to death,' Frank said to his brother as
+they were walking past it a few days after his return, and Arthur was
+commenting upon its dilapidated appearance.
+
+'Oh, the tramps sleep here, do they?' Arthur said. 'Well, let them. If
+any poor, homeless wretches want to stay here nights they are very
+welcome, I am sure, and I will see that the door is rehung and glass put
+in the windows. May as well make them comfortable.'
+
+'Do as you like,' Frank replied, and there, so far as he was concerned,
+the matter ended.
+
+But while the carpenters were at work at the Park Arthur sent one of
+them to the old stone house and had the door fixed and glass put in two
+of the windows, while rude but close shutters were nailed before the
+others, and then Arthur went himself into the room and pushed a long
+table which the picnic people had used for their refreshments and the
+tramps for a bed into a corner, where one sleeping upon it would be more
+sheltered from the draught. All this seemed nonsense to Frank, who
+laughingly suggested that Arthur should place in it a stove and a ton of
+coal for the benefit of his lodgers. But Arthur cared little for his
+brother's jokes. His natural kindness of heart, which was always seeking
+another's good, had prompted him to this care for the Tramp House, in
+which he felt a strange interest, never dreaming that what he was doing
+would reach forward to the future and influence not only his life but
+that of many others.
+
+The storm which had raged so fiercely around the house in the park had
+not spared the cottage in the lane, which rocked like a cradle as gust
+after gust of wind struck it with a force which made every timber
+quiver, and sent the boy Harold close to his grandmother's side as he
+asked, tremblingly:
+
+'Do you think we shall be blown away?'
+
+The rheumatism from which Mrs. Crawford had been suffering in the fall
+had troubled her more or less during the entire winter, and now,
+aggravated by a cold, it was worse than it had ever been before, and on
+the night of the storm she was suffering intense pain, which was only
+relieved by the hot poultices which Harold made under her direction and
+applied to the swollen limb. This kept him up later than usual, and the
+clock was striking eleven when his grandmother declared herself easier,
+and bade him go to bed.
+
+It was at this hour that Arthur Tracy had fancied he heard the cry for
+help, and the snow was sweeping past the cottage in great billows of
+white when Harold went to the window and looked out into the night. In
+the summer when the leaves were upon the trees the old stone house could
+not he seen from the cottage, from which it was distant a quarter of a
+mile or more, but in the winter when the trees were stripped of their
+foliage it was plainly discernible, and as Harold glanced that way a
+gleam of light appeared suddenly, as if the door had been opened and the
+flickering rays of a candle had for a moment shone out into the
+darkness. Then it disappeared, but not until Harold had cried out:
+
+'Oh, grandma, there's a light in the Tramp House; I saw it plain as day.
+Somebody is in there.'
+
+'God pity them.' was Mrs. Crawford's reply, though she did not quite
+credit Harold's statement, or think of it again that night.
+
+It was late next morning when Harold awoke to find the sun shining into
+the room, and without any sign of the terrible storm, except the snow,
+which lay in great piles everywhere and came almost to the window's
+edge. But Harold was not afraid of snow, and soon had the walks cleared
+around the cottage, and when, after breakfast, which he prepared
+himself, for his grandmother could not step, he was told that a doctor
+must be had and he must go for him, he did not demur at all, but
+commenced his preparations at once for the long and wearisome walk.
+
+'Better go through the park,' his grandmother said to him, as he was
+tying his warm comforter about his ears and putting on his mittens. 'It
+is a little farther that way, but somebody has broken a path by this
+time, and the cross-road, which is nearer, must be impassable.'
+
+Harold made no reply, but remembering the light he had seen in the Tramp
+House, resolved within himself to take the cross-road and investigate
+the mystery. Bidding his grandmother good-by, and telling her he should
+be back before she had time to miss him, he started on his journey, and
+was soon plunging through the snow, which, in some places, was up to his
+armpits, so that his progress was very slow, but by kicking with his
+feet and throwing out his arms like the paddles of a boat, he managed to
+get on until he was opposite the Tramp House, which looked like an
+immense snow-heap, so completely was it covered. Only the chimney and
+the slanting roof showed any semblance to a house as Harold made his way
+toward it, still beating the snow with his arms, and thinking it was not
+quite the fun he had fancied it might be.
+
+He was close to the house at last, and stood for a moment looking at it,
+while a faint thrill of fear stirred in his veins as he remembered to
+have heard that burglars and thieves sometimes made it their rendezvous
+after a night's marauding. What if they were there now, and should rush
+upon him if he ventured to disturb them!
+
+'I don't believe I will try it,' he thought, as he glanced nervously at
+the door, which was blockaded by a great bank of snow; and he was about
+to retrace his steps, when a sound met his ear which made him stand
+still and listen until it was repeated a second time.
+
+Then forgetting both burglar and thief, he started forward quickly, and
+was soon at the door, from which he dug away the snow with a desperate
+energy, as if working for his life. For the sound was the cry of a
+little child, frightened and pleading.
+
+'Mah-nee! mah-nee!' it seemed to say; and Harold, thinking it was mamma,
+answered, cheerily:
+
+'I am coming as fast I can.'
+
+Then the crying ceased, and all was still inside, while Harold worked on
+until enough snow was cleared away to allow of his opening the door
+about a foot, and through this narrow opening he forced his way into the
+cold, damp room, where for a moment he could see nothing distinctly, for
+the sunlight outside had blinded him, and there was but little light
+inside, owing to the barred and snow-bound windows.
+
+Gradually, however, as he became accustomed to the place, he saw upon
+the long table in the corner where Arthur Tracy had moved it months
+before, what looked like a human form stretched at full length and lying
+upon its back, with its white, stony face upturned to the rafters above,
+and no sound or motion to tell that it still lived.
+
+With an exclamation of surprise, Harold sprang forward and laid his hand
+upon the pale forehead of the woman, but started back as quickly with a
+cry of horror, for by the touch of the ice-cold flesh he knew the woman
+was dead.
+
+'Frozen to death!' he whispered, with ashen lips; and then, as something
+stirred under the gray cloak which partly covered the woman, he
+conquered his terror and went forward again to the table, over which he
+bent curiously.
+
+Again the cry, which was more like 'mah-nee' now than 'mamma,' met his
+ear, and, stooping lower, he saw a curly head nestle close to the bosom
+of the woman, while a little fat white hand was clasping the neck as if
+for warmth and protection.
+
+At this sight all Harold's fear vanished, and, bending down so that his
+lips almost touched the bright, wavy hair, he said:
+
+'Poor little girl!'--he felt instinctively that it was a girl--'poor
+little girl! come with me away from this dreadful place!' and he tried
+to lift up her head, but she drew it away from him, and repeated the
+piteous cry of 'Mah-nee, mah-nee!'
+
+At last, however, as Harold continued to talk to her, the cries ceased,
+and, cautiously lifting her head, she turned toward him a fat, chubby
+face and a pair of soft, blue eyes in which the great tears were
+standing. Then her lips began to quiver in a grieved kind of way, as if
+the horror of the previous night had stamped itself upon her tender mind
+and she were asking for sympathy.
+
+'Mah-nee!' she said again, placing one hand on the cold, dead face, and
+stretching the other toward Harold, who put out his arms to take her.
+
+But something resisted all his efforts, and a closer inspection showed
+him a long, old-fashioned carpet-bag, which enveloped her body from her
+neck to her feet, and into which she had evidently been put to protect
+her from the cold.
+
+'Not a bad idea either,' Harold said, as he comprehended the situation;
+'and your poor mother gave you the most of her cloak, too, and her
+shawl,' he continued, as he saw how carefully the child had been
+wrapped, while the mother, if it were her mother, had paid for her
+unselfishness with her life.
+
+'What is your name, little girl?' he asked.
+
+The child, who had been staring at him while he talked as if he were a
+lunatic, made no reply until he had her in his arms, when she, too,
+began to talk in a half-frightened way. Then he looked at her as if she
+were the lunatic, for never had he heard such speech as hers.
+
+'I do believe you are a Dutchman,' he said, as he wrapped both shawl and
+cloak around her and started for the door, which he kicked against some
+time in order to make an opening wide enough to allow of his egress with
+his burden.
+
+When at last they emerged from the cold, dark room into the bright
+sunshine, the child gave a great cry of delight, and the blue eyes
+fairly danced with joy as they fell upon the dazzling snow. Then she put
+both arms around Harold's neck, and nestling her face close to his,
+kissed him as fondly as if she had known him all her life, while the boy
+paid her back kiss after kiss as he proceeded slowly toward home.
+
+The child was heavy, and the bag and shawl made such an unwieldy bundle
+that his progress was very slow, and he stopped more than once to rest
+and take breath, and as often as he stopped the blue eyes would look up
+enquiringly at him with an expression which made his boyish heart beat
+faster as he thought what pretty eyes they were and wondered who she
+was. Once he fell down, and bag and baby rolled in the snow; but only
+the vigorous kicking of a pair of little legs inside the bag showed that
+the child disapproved of the proceeding, for she made no sound, and when
+he picked her up she brushed the snow from his hair, and laughed as if
+the thing had been done for fun.
+
+He reached the cottage at last, and bursting into the room where his
+grandmother was sitting with her foot in a chair, exclaimed, as he put
+down the child, who, as she was still enveloped in the bag, stood with
+difficulty:
+
+'Oh grandma, what do you think? I did see a light in the Tramp House,
+and there is somebody there--a woman--dead--frozen to death, with
+nothing over her, for she had given her cloak and shawl to her little
+girl. I went there. I found her, and brought the baby home in the
+carpet-bag, and now I must go back to the woman. Oh, it was dreadful to
+see her white face, and it is so cold there and dark;' and if the horror
+of what he had seen had just impressed itself upon him, the boy turned
+pale and faint, and, staggering to a chair, burst into tears.
+
+Too much astonished to utter a word, Mrs. Crawford stared at him a
+moment in a bewildered kind of way, and then when the child, seeing him
+cry, began also to cry for "Mah-nee," and struggle in the bag, she
+forgot her lame foot, on which she had not stepped for a week, and going
+to the little girl, released her from the bag, and taking her upon her
+lap, began to untie the soft woollen cloak and to chafe the cold
+fingers, while she questioned her grandson.
+
+Having recovered himself somewhat, Harold repeated his story, and asked
+with a shudder:
+
+'Must I go for her alone? I can't, I can't. I was not afraid with the
+baby there, but it is so awful, and I never saw any one dead before.'
+
+'Go back alone! Of course not!' his grandmother replied. 'But you must
+go to the park at once and tell them; go as fast as you can. She may not
+be dead.'
+
+'Yes, she is,' Harold answered, decidedly. 'I touched her face, and
+nothing alive could feel like that.'
+
+He was buttoning his overcoat preparatory to a fresh start, but before
+he went he kissed the little girl who was sitting on his grandmother's
+lap, and who, as she saw him leaving her, began to cry for him and to
+utter curious sounds unintelligible to them both. But Harold brought her
+a piece of bread, which she began to devour ravenously, and then he
+stepped quietly out and was soon breaking through the drifts which lay
+between the cottage and the park.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE WOMAN.
+
+
+They slept later than usual at the park house that morning, and Frank
+and his family were just sitting down to breakfast, and Arthur was
+taking his rolls and coffee in his own room, when John, with a white,
+scared face, looked in and said:
+
+'Excuse me, Mr. Tracy, but--but something dreadful has happened. There's
+a woman frozen to death in the Tramp House, with a baby, and Harold
+Hastings found them, and--but he is here, sir; he will tell you
+himself;' and he went for the boy, who soon entered the room, followed
+by every servant in the house.
+
+Harold had come upon John first in the stable, and sinking down
+exhausted upon the hay, had told his story, while the man, John,
+listened terror-stricken and open-mouthed. Then seeing how weak and
+tired Harold seemed, and how he sank back upon the hay when he attempted
+to rise, he took him in his arms, and carrying him to the kitchen, left
+him there while he went with the news to his master.
+
+'A woman dead in the Tramp House, and a baby!' Frank exclaimed, and for
+an instant he felt as if he were dying, for there flashed over him a
+conviction that the woman had come in the train the previous night, and
+that it was her cry for help which had been borne to him on the winds,
+and to which he had paid no heed.
+
+'Are you sick? Are you going to faint?' his wife said to him, as she saw
+how white he grew, and how heavily he leaned back in his chair as Harold
+related the particulars of his finding the woman and the child.
+
+'I am not going to faint; but it makes me sick and shaky to think of a
+woman freezing to death so near us that if she had cried for help we
+might perhaps have heard her,' Frank replied.
+
+Then turning to Harold, he continued:
+
+'How did she look? Was she young? Was she pretty? Was she dark or fair?'
+
+He almost gasped the last word, as if it choked him, and no one guessed
+how anxiously he waited for Harold's answer, which did not afford him
+much relief.
+
+'I don't know; it was so dark in there, and cold, and I was afraid some
+of the time, and in a hurry. I only know that her nose was long and
+large, for I touched it when I was trying to get at the little girl, and
+it was so cold--oh, oh!'
+
+And Harold shuddered as if he still felt the icy touch of the dead.
+
+'A long nose and a large one,' Frank said, involuntarily, while a sigh
+of relief escaped him as he remembered that the nose of the picture in
+his brother's room was neither long nor large.
+
+Still Harold might be mistaken, and though he had no good cause for
+believing that the woman lying dead in the Tramp House was Gretchen,
+there was a horrible feeling in his heart, while a lump came into his
+throat and affected his speech, which was thick and indistinct, as he
+rose from his chair at last and said to John:
+
+'We have no time to lose. Hitch up the horses to the long sleigh as
+quick as you can. We must go to the Tramp House after the woman, and
+send to the village for a doctor, and telegraph to Springfield for the
+coroner. I suppose there must be an inquest; and, Dolly, see that a room
+is prepared for the body.'
+
+'Oh, Frank, must it come here? Why not take it to the cottage? The child
+is there,' Mrs. Tracy said, not because she cared so much for the
+trouble, but because of her aversion to having the corpse of a stranger
+in the house, with all that it involved.
+
+'I tell you that woman must come here,' was Frank's decided reply, as he
+began to make himself ready for the ride.
+
+'Don't tell Arthur yet,' he said, as he left the house and took his seat
+in the sleigh, which was soon ploughing its way through the snow banks
+in the direction of the Tramp House.
+
+It was Harold who acted as master of ceremonies, for John was nervous
+and hung back from the half open door, while Frank was too much unstrung
+to know just what he was doing or saying, as he squeezed through the
+narrow space and then stood for a moment, snow-blind and dizzy, in the
+cheerless room.
+
+Harold was not afraid now. He had been there before alone, had seen and
+touched the white face of the corpse, and now, with companionship in its
+presence, he went fearlessly up to it, followed by Frank, who could
+scarcely stand, and who laid his hand for support on Harold's shoulder,
+and then turned curiously and eagerly toward the woman.
+
+John had lingered outside, shovelling the snow from the door which he
+succeeded in opening wide, so that the full, broad sunlight fell upon
+the face, which was neither young, nor pretty, nor fair, while the hair
+was black as night.
+
+Frank noted all these points at a glance, and could have shouted aloud
+for joy, so great was the revulsion of his feelings. It was not Gretchen
+lying there before him, and he was not a murderer, as he had accused
+himself of being, for she did not come by the train; she had no
+connection with Tracy Park; she was going somewhere else--to
+Collingwood, perhaps--when, overcome by the storm and the cold, she had
+sought shelter for the night in this wretched place.
+
+'I suppose the proper thing to do is to leave her here till the coroner
+can see her,' he said to John; 'but no train can get through from
+Springfield to-day, I am sure, and I shall have her taken to the park.
+Bring me the blankets from the sleigh.'
+
+He was very collected now, for a great load was lifted from his mind.
+
+'Had she nothing with her? nothing to cover her?' he asked, as they
+proceeded to wrap her in the warm blankets, which, had they sooner come,
+would have saved her life.
+
+Harold told him again of the carpet-bag and the cloak and the shawl,
+which had covered the child, and added, 'That's all; there don't seem to
+be anything else. Oh, what's this?' and stooping down, he picked up some
+hard substance which he had kicked against the table.
+
+It proved to be one of those olive wood candle sticks, so convenient in
+travelling, as when not in use, they can be made into a small round box
+or ball, and take but little room. It contained but the remains of a wax
+candle, which had burned down into the socket and then gone out. Near
+by, upon the floor, was a tiny box of matches, with two or three charred
+ones among them.
+
+'The poor woman must have had a light for at least a portion of the
+time,' Frank said, as he picked up the box.
+
+'She had, I know she had,' Harold cried, excitedly; 'for I saw it and
+told grandma so. It was like she had opened the door and let out a big
+blaze, and then everything was dark, as if the door was shut or the wind
+had blown the candle out.'
+
+'What time was that, do you think?' Frank asked.
+
+'It must have been about eleven,' Harold replied, 'for I remember
+hearing the clock strike and grandma's saying I must go to bed, it was
+so late. I was up with her because her foot was so bad, and I warmed the
+poultices.'
+
+Frank groaned aloud, unmindful of the boy looking so curiously at him,
+for that was the time when he had heard the sound like a human voice is
+distress. He had thought it a fancy then communicated to him by his
+brother's nervousness, but now he was certain it must have been the
+stranger calling through the storm, in the vain hope that somebody would
+hear and come. Somebody had heard, but no one had come; and so in the
+cold and the darkness, with the snow sifting through every crevice and
+blowing down the wide chimney to the hearth where it made a drift like a
+grave, she had battled for her own life and that of the child beside
+her, saving the latter but losing her own.
+
+'If I had only believed it was a cry,' Frank thought, and as he wrapped
+the body in the blankets and buffalo robe as tenderly and reverently as
+if the stiffened limbs had belonged to his mother, he saw distinctly
+before him as if painted upon canvas the driving gale, the inky sky, the
+half-opened door, through which the sleet was driving, the light behind,
+and the frantic, freezing woman, screaming for help, while only the
+winds made answer, and the pitiless storm raged on.
+
+This was the picture which Frank was destined to see in his dreams for
+many and many a night, until the mystery was solved concerning the woman
+whom they carried to the sleigh, which was driven back to the park
+house, where, within fifteen or twenty minutes a crowd of anxious,
+curious people gathered. The messenger sent to town had done his work
+rapidly and thoroughly, and half the villagers who heard of the tragedy
+enacted at their very door started at once for Tracy Park. The boy had
+stopped at the station and told his story there, making the
+baggage-master feel as if he, too, were a murderer, or at least an
+accessory.
+
+'If I had only gone after that woman,' he said, as he told of the
+stranger who had come on the train and gotten off on the side of the car
+farthest from the depot--'if I had gone after her and made her take a
+conveyance to where she was going, this would not have happened; but it
+was so all-fired cold, and the wind was yelling so, and she walked off
+so fast, as if she knew her own business. So I just minded mine, or
+rather I didn't, for I never even seen the box, or trunk, which was
+pitched out helter-skelter, and which I found this morning, all covered
+up with snow. It was hers, of course, and I shall send it right over
+there, as it may tell who the poor critter was.'
+
+This trunk, which was little more than a strong wooden box with two
+double locks upon it, was still further secured by a bit of rope wound
+twice around it and tied in a hard knot. There was no name upon it to
+tell whose it was, or whence it came, except the name of a German
+steamer, on which its owner had probably crossed the ocean, and the
+significant word 'Hold,' showing that it had not been used in the
+state-room. It had been checked at the Grand Central depot in New York
+for Shannondale, and the check was still attached to the iron handle
+when it was put down in the kitchen at Tracy Park, where the utmost
+excitement prevailed, the servants huddling together with scared faces,
+and talking in whispers of the terrible thing which had happened, while
+Mrs. Tracy and the housekeeper, scarcely less excited than the servants,
+gave their attention to the dead.
+
+At the end of the rear hall was a small room, where Frank sometimes
+received business calls when at home, and there they laid the body,
+after the physician, who had arrived, declared that life had been
+extinct for many hours.
+
+Seen in the full daylight, she seemed to be at least thirty-five years
+of age, and her features, though not unpleasing, were coarse and large,
+especially the nose. Her hair was black, her complexion dark, and the
+hands, which lay folded upon her bosom, showed marks of toil, for they
+were rough and unshapely, though smaller in proportion than the other
+members of her body. Her woollen dress of grayish blue was short and
+scant; her knit stockings were black and thick, and her leather shoes
+were designed fur use rather than ornament. A wide white apron was tied
+around her waist, and she wore a small black and white plaided shawl
+pinned about her neck.
+
+And there she lay, not a pleasant picture to contemplate, helpless and
+defenceless against the curious eyes bent upon her and the remarks
+concerning her, as one after another of the villagers came in to look at
+her and speculate as to who she was or how she came in the Tramp House.
+
+Among the crowd was Mr. St. Claire, who gave it as his opinion that she
+was a Frenchwoman of the lower class, and asked if nothing had been
+found with her except the clothes she wore. Harold told him of the
+shawl, and cloak, and carpet-bag which he had carried with the child to
+the cottage.
+
+'Yes, there is something more--her trunk,' chimed in the baggage-master,
+who had just entered the room, trembling and breathless.
+
+'Her trunk! Did she come in the cars?' Frank asked, his hands dropping
+helplessly at his side, and his lips growing pale, as the man replied:
+
+'Yes; last night, on the quarter-past-six from New York; and what is
+curi's, she got out on the side away from the depot, and I never seen
+her till the cars went on, when she was lookin' at a paper, and the
+child cryin' at her feet. I spoke to her, but she did not answer, and
+snatching up the child, she hurried off, almost on a run. It was
+storming so I did not see her trunk till this mornin', when I found it
+on the platform. I wish I had gone after her and made her take a sleigh.
+If I had she wouldn't now have been dead, and, I swow, I feel as if I
+had killed her. I wonder why under the sun she turned into the lots,
+unless she was goin' to Collingwood--'
+
+'Or Tracy Park,' Frank said, involuntarily.
+
+'Were you expecting any one?' Mr. St. Claire asked.
+
+Sinking into a chair, Frank replied:
+
+'No, I was not, but Arthur, who has been worse than usual for a few
+days, has again a fancy that Gretchen is coming. He says now that she
+was not in the ship with him, but that he has written her to join him
+here, and yesterday he took it into his head that she would be here last
+night, and insisted that the carriage be sent to meet her; but John had
+hurt his back, and as I had no faith in her coming, he did not go. I
+wish he had; it might have saved this woman's life, although she is not
+Gretchen.'
+
+Frank had made his confession, except so far as deceiving his brother
+was concerned, and he felt his mind eased a little, though there was
+still a lump in his throat, and a feeling of disquiet in his heart, with
+a wish that the dead woman had never crossed his path, and a conviction
+that he had not yet seen the worst of it.
+
+Mr. St. Claire looked at him thoughtfully a moment, and then said:
+
+'I should not accuse myself too much. You could not know that any one
+would be there, and this woman certainly is not the Gretchen of whom
+your brother talks so much, and whose picture is in his room. Has he
+seen her? Does he know of the accident?'
+
+'I have not told him yet. He is not feeling well to-day. Charles says he
+is still in bed,' was Frank's reply.
+
+'We may find something in her trunk,' Mr. St. Claire continued, 'which
+will give us a clue to her history. Where do you suppose she kept her
+key?'
+
+No one volunteered an answer, until Harold suggested that if she had a
+pocket it was probably there, when half a dozen hands or more at once
+felt for the pocket, which was found at last, and proved to be one of
+great capacity, and to contain a heterogeneous mass of contents: A
+purse, in which were two or three small German coins, an English
+sovereign, and a five dollar green-back; two handkerchiefs, one soiled
+and coarse, bearing in German text the initials 'N.B.' the other small
+and fine, bearing the initial 'J.,' also in German text: a pair of
+scissors, a thimble, a small needle-case, a child's toy, a worn
+picture-book, printed in Leipsic, a box of pills, some peanuts, some
+cloves, a piece of candy, a seed cake, a pocket comb, half a biscuit;
+and at the very bottom, the brass check whose number corresponded with
+that upon the trunk; also a ring to which were attached three keys, one
+belonging to the trunk, another evidently to the carpet-bag, while the
+third, which was very small and straight, must have been used for
+fastening some box or dressing-case.
+
+It was Mr. St. Claire who opened the trunk, from which one of the
+servants had removed the rope, while Frank sat near still trembling in
+every limb, and watching anxiously as article after article was taken
+out and examined, but afforded no satisfaction whatever, or gave any
+sign by which the stranger might be traced.
+
+There was a black alpaca dress and a few coarse garments which must have
+belonged to the woman. Some of them bore the initials 'N.B.,' some were
+without a mark, and all were cheap and plain, like the clothes of a
+servant before her head is turned and she apes her mistress' wardrobe.
+The child's dresses were of a better quality, and one embroidered
+petticoat bore the name 'Jerrine,' while the letter 'J.' was upon them
+all, except a towel of the finest linen, on one corner of which was the
+letter 'M.' worked with colored floss.
+
+'Jerrine!' Mr. St. Claire repeated, pronouncing it 'Jerreen.' 'That is a
+French name, and a pretty one. It is the child's, of course.'
+
+To this no one replied, and he continued his examination of the trunk
+until it was quite empty.
+
+'That is all,' he said in a tone of disappointment; and Frank, who had
+been sitting by and holding some of the things in his lap as they were
+taken from the trunk, answered, faintly:
+
+'No, here is a book. It was done up in a handkerchief,' and he held up
+what proved to be a German Bible; but he did not tell that he had found
+something else, which he had thrust into his pocket when no one was
+looking at him.
+
+What he had found was a photograph, which had slipped from the leaves of
+the Bible, and at sight of the face, of which he only had a glimpse,
+every drop of blood seemed to leave his heart and came surging to his
+brain, making him so giddy and wild that he did not realise what he was
+doing when he hid away the picture until he could examine it by himself.
+Once in his pocket he dared not take it out, although he raised his hand
+two or three times to do so, but was as often deterred by the thought
+that everybody would think that he had intended to hide it and suspect
+his motive. So he kept quiet and saw them examine the book, the blank
+page of which had been torn half off, leaving only the last three
+letters of what must have been the owner's name, '----ich'--that was
+all, and might as well not have been there, for any light it shed upon
+the matter.
+
+Opening the book by chance at 1st Corinthians, 2nd chapter, Mr. St.
+Claire, who could read German much better than he could speak it, saw
+pencil-marks around the ninth verse, and read aloud:
+
+    'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the
+    heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love
+    Him.'
+
+On the margin opposite this verse was written, in a girlish hand:
+
+    'Think of me as there when you read this, and do not be sorry.'
+
+A lock of soft, golden hair, which might have been cut from a baby's
+head, and a few faded flowers, which still gave forth a faint perfume
+like heliotrope, were tied with a bit of thread, and lying between the
+leaves. And except that the book was full of marked passages, chiefly
+comforting and conciliatory, there was nothing more to indicate the
+character of the owner.
+
+'If this Bible were hers, she was a good woman,' Mr. St. Claire said,
+laying his hand reverently upon the forehead of the dead, while Frank,
+who saw another meaning between the lines, shook like one in an ague
+fit, for he did not believe that those hands, so pulseless and cold, had
+ever traced the words, 'Think of me as there when you read this, and do
+not be sorry.' She who wrote them might be, and probably was dead, but
+her grave was far away, and the fact did not at all change the duty
+which he owed to her and him for whom the message was intended.
+
+'What shall I say to Arthur, and how shall I tell him,' he was wondering
+to himself, when Mr. St. Claire roused him by saying:
+
+'You seem greatly unstrung by what has happened. I never saw you look so
+ill.'
+
+'Yes, I feel as if I had murdered her by not sending John to the
+station,' Frank stammered, glad to offer this as an excuse for his
+manner, which he knew must seem strange and unnatural.
+
+'You are too sensitive altogether. John might not have seen her, she
+hurried off so fast, and you have no particular reason to think she was
+coming here,' Mr. St. Claire said, adding: 'We'd better leave her now.
+We can do nothing more until the coroner comes, which will hardly be
+to-day. I hear the roads are all blocked and impassable. Let everything
+remain in the trunk where he can see them.'
+
+Mechanically Mrs. Tracy, who was present, put the different articles
+into the trunk, leaving the Bible on the top, and then followed her
+husband from the room. She knew there was more affecting him than the
+fact that a dead woman was in the house, or that he had not sent John to
+the station. But what it was she could not guess, unless, and she, too,
+felt faint and giddy for a moment, as a new idea entered her mind.
+
+'Frank,' she said to him when they were alone for a few moments, 'Arthur
+had a fancy that Gretchen was coming last night. You do not think this
+woman is she?'
+
+'Gretchen? No. Don't be a fool, Dolly. Gretchen is fair and young, and
+the woman is old and black as the ace of spades. Gretchen! No, indeed!'
+
+He did not show her the picture he had secreted; he knew she would not
+approve of the act, and if she had no suspicion with regard to the woman
+and the child he did not care to share his with her, particularly as it
+was only a suspicion, and so far as he could judge in his perturbed
+state of mind, nothing he could do would ever make things sure. His wife
+seemed to have forgotten the child at the cottage, and he would not
+bring it to her mind until it was necessary to do so. Just then Charles
+came to the room and said that his master was very much excited and
+wished to know the reason for so much commotion in the house, and why so
+many people were coming and going down and up the avenue.
+
+'I thought it better that you should tell him,' Charles added, and with
+a sinking heart Frank started for his brother's room.
+
+He had not seen him before that day, and now as he looked at him it
+seemed to him that he had grown older since the previous night, for
+there were lines about his mouth, and his face was very thin and pale.
+But his eyes were unusually bright, and his voice rang out clear as a
+bell as he said:
+
+'What is it, Frank? What has happened that so many people are coming
+here, banging doors and talking so loud that I heard them here in my
+room, but I could not distinguish what they said. What's the matter? Any
+one hurt or dead?'
+
+He put the question direct, and Frank gave a direct reply.
+
+'Yes, a woman was found frozen to death in the Tramp House this morning,
+and was brought here. She is lying in the office at the end of the back
+hall.'
+
+'A women frozen to death in the Tramp House!' Arthur repeated. 'Then I
+did hear a cry. Oh, Frank, who is she? Where did she come from?'
+
+'We do not know who she is, or where she came from!' Frank replied, 'Mr.
+St. Claire thinks she is French. There is nothing about her person to
+identify her, but I would like you to see her, and--and--'
+
+'I see her! Why should I see her, and shock my nerves more than they are
+already shocked?' Arthur said, with a decided shake of his head.
+
+'But you must see her,' Frank continued. 'Perhaps you know her. She came
+last night. She--'
+
+Before he could utter another word Arthur was at his side, Frank seizing
+him by the shoulder with the grip of a giant, demanded, fiercely:
+
+'What do you mean by her coming last night? How did she come? Not by
+train, for John was there. Frank, there is something you are keeping
+back. I know it by your face. Tell me the truth. Is it Gretchen dead in
+this house?'
+
+'No,' Frank answered huskily. 'It is not Gretchen, if that picture is
+like her, for this woman is very dark and old, and, besides that, has
+Gretchen a child?'
+
+For an instant Arthur stood staring at him, or rather at the space
+beyond him, as if trying to recall something too distant or too shadowy
+to assume any tangible form; then bursting into a laugh he said:
+
+'Gretchen a child! That is the best joke I have heard. How should
+Gretchen have a child? She is little more than one herself, or was when
+I saw her last. No, Gretchen has no child. Why do you ask?'
+
+'Because,' Frank replied, 'there was a little girl found in the Tramp
+House with this woman, a girl three or four years old, I judge. She is
+at the cottage now, where Harold carried her. He found the woman this
+morning. Will you see her now?'
+
+Arthur answered 'no,' decidedly, and then Frank, who knew that he should
+never again know peace of mind if his brother did not see her, summoned
+all his courage and said:
+
+'Arthur, you must. I have not told you all. This woman did come by train
+from New York.'
+
+'Then why did not John see her?' interrupted Arthur.
+
+'He was not there,' Frank replied. 'Forgive me, Arthur, I did not send
+him as you thought. It was so cold and stormy, and I had no faith in
+your presentiments, and so--so--'
+
+'And so you lied to me, and I will never trust you again as long as I
+live, and if this had been Gretchen, I would kill you, where I stand!'
+Arthur hissed in a whisper, more terrible to hear than louder tones
+would have been, 'Yes, I will see this woman whose death lies at your
+door,' he continued, with a gesture that Frank should precede him.
+
+Arthur was very calm, and collected, and stern, as he followed to the
+office where the body lay, covered now from view, but showing terribly
+distinct through the linen sheet folded over it.
+
+'Remove the covering,' he said, in the tone of a master to his slave,
+and Frank obeyed.
+
+Then bending close to the stiffened form, Arthur examined the face
+minutely, while Frank looked on alternately between hope and dread, the
+former of which triumphed as his brother said, quietly:
+
+'Yes, she is French: but I do not know her. I never saw her before. Had
+she nothing with her to tell who she was?'
+
+His mood had passed, and Frank did not hear him now.
+
+'She had a trunk,' he replied. 'Here it is, with her clothes, and the
+child's, and--a Bible.'
+
+'He said the last slowly, and, taking up the book, opened it as far as
+possible from the writing on the margin, which might or might not be
+dangerous.
+
+'It is a German Bible,' he continued, and then Arthur took it quickly
+from him as if it had been a long-lost friend, turning the worn pages
+rapidly, but failing to discover the marked passage and the message for
+some one.
+
+The lock of baby hair and the faded flowers caught his attention, and
+his breath came hard and pantingly, as for a moment he held the little
+golden tress which seemed almost to twine itself lovingly around his
+fingers.
+
+'That must be her child's hair. You know I told you there was a little
+girl found with her. Would you like to see her?' Frank said.
+
+'No, no!' Arthur answered, hastily. 'Let her stay where she is, I don't
+like children as a rule. You know I can't abide the noise yours
+sometimes make.'
+
+He was leaving the room with the Bible in his hand, but Frank could not
+suffer that, and he said:
+
+'I suppose all these things must stay here till the coroner sees them;
+so I will put the Bible where I found it.
+
+Arthur gave it up readily enough, and then, as he reached the door,
+looked back, and said:
+
+'If forty coroners and undertakers come on this business, don't bother
+me any more. My head buzzes like a bee-hive. See that everything is done
+decently for the poor woman, and don't let the town bury her. Do it
+yourself, and send the bill to me. There is room enough on the Tracy
+lot; put her in a corner.'
+
+'Yes,' Frank answered, standing in the open door and watching him as he
+went slowly down the long hall and until he heard him going up stairs.
+
+Then locking the door, which shut him in with the dead, he took the
+photograph from his pocket and examined it minutely, feeling no shadow
+of doubt in his heart that it was Gretchen--if the picture in the window
+was like her. It was the same face, the same sweet mouth and sunny blue
+eyes, with curls of reddish-golden hair shading the low brow. The dress
+was different and more in accordance with that of a girl who belonged to
+the middle class, but this counted for nothing, and Frank felt himself a
+thief, and a liar, and a murderer as he stood looking at the lovely
+face; and debating what he should do.
+
+Turning it over he saw on the back a word traced in English letters, in
+a very uncertain scrawling hand, as if it were the writer's first
+attempt at English. Spelling it letter by letter he made out what he
+called 'Wiesbaden,' and knew it was some German town. Did Gretchen live
+there, he wondered, and how could he find out, and what should he do? He
+had not yet seen the child at the cottage, but from some things Harold
+said, he knew she was more like this picture than like the dead woman
+found with her, and in his heart he felt almost sure who she was, and
+that his course of duty was plain. He ought to show Arthur the
+photograph, and tell him his suspicions, and take every possible step to
+ascertain who the woman was and where she came from.
+
+Frank was not a bad man, nor a hard-hearted man, but he was ambitious
+and weak. He had enjoyed money, and ease, and position long enough to
+make him unwilling to part with them now, while for his children he was
+more ambitious than for himself. To see Tom master of Tracy Park was the
+great desire of his life, and this could not be, if what he feared were
+proved true. If Arthur had no wife, no child, no will adverse to him,
+why, then his interest was safe, for no will his brother could now make
+would be held as valid, and when he died everything would naturally go
+to him. Of all this Frank thought during the few minutes he staid in
+the silent room. Then he said to himself:
+
+'I will see the child first. After all I know nothing for certain--can
+never know anything for certain, and I should be a fool to give up all
+my children's interests for a fancy, an idea, which may have no
+foundation. Arthur does not know half the time what he is saying, and
+might not tell the truth about Gretchen. She may not have been his wife.
+On the whole, I do not believe she was. He would never have left her if
+she had been, and if so, this child, if she is Gretchen's, has no right
+to come between me and mine. No, I shall wait a little while and think,
+though in the end I mean to do right.'
+
+With these specious arguments Frank tried to quiet his conscience, but
+he could not help feeling that Satan had possession of him, and as he
+hurried through the hall he said aloud, as if speaking to something
+seen:
+
+'Go away--go away! I shall do right if I only know what right is.
+
+He did not see his brother again that day, or go to the cottage either,
+but as he was dressing himself next morning he said to his wife:
+
+'That little girl ought to see her mother before she is buried. I shall
+send for her to-day. The coroner will be here, too. Did I tell you I had
+a telegram last night? He is coming on the early train.'
+
+Mrs. Tracy passed the allusion to the coroner in silence, but of the
+little girl she said:
+
+'I suppose the child must come to the funeral, but you surely do not
+mean to keep her? We are not bound to do that because her mother froze
+to death on our premises.'
+
+'Would you let her go to the poor-house?' Frank asked, but Dolly did not
+reply.
+
+As the breakfast-bell just then rang, no more was said of the little
+waif until the sleigh was brought to the door, and Frank announced his
+intention of stopping for the child on his way back from the station,
+where he was going to meet the coroner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+LITTLE JERRY.
+
+
+It was nearly noon when Harold left Tracy Park the previous day and
+started for home, eager and anxious with regard to the child whom he
+claimed as his own. He had found her. She was his and he should keep
+her, he said to himself, and then he wondered how his grandmother had
+managed with her, and if she had cried for him or for her mother, and as
+he reached the house he stood still a moment, to listen. But the sounds
+which met his ear were peals of laughter, mingled with mild, and, as it
+would seem, unavailing expostulations from his grandmother.
+
+Opening the door suddenly he found the child seated at the table in the
+high chair he used to occupy, and which Mrs. Crawford had brought from
+the attic, where it was stored. Standing before the child was a dish of
+bread and milk, of which she had evidently eaten enough, for she was
+playing with it now, and amusing herself by striking the spoon into the
+milk, which was splashed over the table, while three or four drops of it
+were standing on the forehead and nose of the distressed woman, who was
+vainly trying to take the spoon from the little hand clenching it so
+firmly.
+
+Mrs. Crawford had had a busy and exciting day with her charge, who,
+active and restless, and playful, kept her on the alert and made her
+forget in part how lame she was. As she could not put her foot to the
+floor without great pain, and as she must move about, she adopted the
+expedient of placing her knee on a chair to the back of which she held,
+while she hobbled around the room, followed by the child, who, delighted
+with this novel method of locomotion, put her knee in a low chair, and
+holding to Mrs. Crawford's skirts, limped after her, imitating her
+perfectly, even to the groans she sometimes uttered when a twinge
+sharper than usual ran up her swollen limb. It was fun for the child,
+but almost death to the woman, who, when she could endure it no longer,
+sank into a chair, and tried by speaking sharply, to make the little
+girl understand that she must keep quiet. But when she scolded, baby
+scolded back, in a language wholly unintelligible, shaking her curly
+head, and sometimes stamping her foot by way of emphasizing her words.
+
+When Mrs. Crawford laughed the child laughed, and when once a pang
+severer than usual wrung the tears from her eyes, baby looked at her
+compassionately a moment, while her little face puckered itself into
+wrinkles as if she too were going to cry; then, putting up her soft hand
+she wiped the tears from Mrs. Crawford's cheeks, and, climbing into her
+lap, became as quiet as a kitten. But a touch sufficed to start her up,
+for she was full of fun and frolic, and her laughing blue eyes, which
+were of that wide-open kind which see everything, were brimming over
+with mischief. Once or twice she called out 'Mahnee,' and going to the
+window, stood on tip-toe looking out, to see if she were coming. But on
+the whole she seemed happy and content, exploring every nook and corner
+of the kitchen and examining curiously every article of furniture as if
+it were quite new to her.
+
+Once when Mrs. Crawford was talking earnestly to her, trying to make her
+understand, she stood for a moment watching and imitating the motion of
+the lady's lips and the expression of her face; then going up to her she
+began to examine her mouth and her teeth, as if she would know what
+manner of machinery it was which produced sounds so new and strange to
+her. She certainly was a remarkable child for her age, though Mrs.
+Crawford was puzzled to know just how old she was. She was very small,
+and, judging from her size, one would have said she was hardly three;
+but the expression of her face was so mature, and she saw things so
+quickly and understood so readily, that she must have been older. She
+was certainly very precocious, with a most inquiring turn of mind, and
+Mrs. Crawford felt herself greatly interested in her as she watched her
+active movements and listened to the musical prattle she could not
+understand.
+
+She had examined the carpet-bag, in which were found the articles
+necessary for an ocean voyage, and little else. Most of these were
+soiled from use, but there was among them a little clean, white apron,
+and this Mrs. Crawford put upon the child, after having washed her face
+and hands and brushed her wavy hair, which had a trick of coiling itself
+into soft, fluffy curls all over her head.
+
+The bread and milk had been given her about twelve o'clock, and the
+laugh she gave when she saw it showed her appreciation of it quite as
+much as the eagerness with which she ate it. Her appetite appeased,
+however, she began to play with it and throw the milk over the table and
+into Mrs. Crawford's face, just as Harold came in, full of what he had
+seen at the park, and anxious to see his baby, as he called her.
+
+Taking her on his lap and kissing her rosy cheeks, he began to narrate
+to his grandmother all that had been done, and told her that Mr. St.
+Claire had given it as his opinion that the woman was French.
+
+'And if so,' he continued, 'baby must be French, too, though she does
+not look a bit like her mother, who is very dark and not--well, not at
+all like you or Mrs. St. Claire.'
+
+Then he told of the trunk which the baggage-master had taken to the
+park, and of what it contained.
+
+'The woman's clothes were marked "N.B."' he said, 'and some of the
+baby's--such a funny name. Mr. St. Claire said it was French, and
+pronounced "Jerreen," though it is spelled "Jerrine."'
+
+'That is the name of the child's things in the bag,' Mrs. Crawford said.
+
+'Of course it is baby's, then,' Harold replied; 'but, I shall call her
+Jerry for short, even if it is a boy's name, and so my little lady, I
+christen you Jerry;' and kissing the forehead, the eyes, the nose, and
+the chin, he marked the shape of the cross upon the face upturned to
+his, and named his baby 'Jerry.'
+
+Later, when he knew more of the world, he would change the 'y' into
+'ie,' but now she was simply Jerry, and when he called her that she
+laughed and nodded as if the sound were not new to her. She was a
+beautiful child, with complexion as pure as wax, and eyes which might
+have borrowed their color from the blue lakes of Italy, or from the
+skies of England when they are at their brightest.
+
+'I wish she could talk to me. I suppose she must speak French,' he said,
+as he was trying in vain to make her understand him. 'Don't you know a
+word I say?' he asked her, and her reply was what sounded to him like
+'We, we.'
+
+'That's English,' he cried, delighted with her progress, but when he
+spoke to her again, her answer was, 'Yah, yah,' which seemed to him so
+nonsensical that after a few attempts to make her say 'yes,' and to
+teach her what it meant, he gave up his lesson for the remainder of the
+day and talked to her by signs and gestures which she seemed to
+understand.
+
+Whatever he did she did, and he saw her more than once imitating his
+grandmother's motions as well as his own, to the life.
+
+Late in the afternoon Mr. St. Claire came to the cottage, curious to see
+the child, who, at sight of him, retreated behind Harold, and then
+peered shyly up at him, with a look in her great blue eyes which puzzled
+him on the instant, as one is frequently puzzled with a likeness to
+something or somebody he tries in vain to recall. In this instance it
+was hardly the eyes themselves, but rather the way they looked at him,
+and the sweep of the long lashes, together with a firm shutting together
+of the lips, which struck Mr. St. Claire as familiar, and when with a
+swift movement of her little hand, she swept the mass of golden hair
+back from her forehead, he would have sworn that he had seen that trick
+a thousand times, and yet he could not place it. That she was the child
+of the dead woman he believed, and as the mother was French, so also was
+she. He had once passed two years in France, and was master of the
+language; so he spoke to the child in French, but though she seemed to
+understand him she made no reply, until he said to her:
+
+'Where is your mother, little one?'
+
+'Then she answered, promptly, 'Dead,' but the language was German, not
+French.
+
+'Ho-ho! You are a little Dutchman,' Mr. St. Claire said, with some
+surprise in his voice.
+
+Then as he noted the purity of her complexion, her fair hair and blue
+eyes, he said to himself:
+
+'Her father was a German, and probably they lived in Germany, but the
+mother was certainly French.'
+
+His own knowledge of German was very limited, but he could speak it a
+little, and turning again to the child he managed to say:
+
+'What is your name!'
+
+'Der-ree,' was the reply, and Harold exclaimed:
+
+'That's it; she means Jerry; that's short for the name on her clothes,
+which you said was pronounced Jereen. I have christened her Jerry, and
+she is my little girl, ain't you, Jerry!'
+
+'Yah--oui--'ess,' was the answer, and there was a gleam of triumph in
+the blue eyes which flashed up to Harold for approbation.
+
+She had not, of course, understood a word he said, except, indeed her
+name; but the tone of his voice was interrogatory, and seemed to expect
+an affirmative answer, which she gave in three languages, emphasizing
+the ''ess' with a nod of her head, as if greatly pleased with herself.
+
+'Bravo!' Harold shouted. 'She can say yes. I taught her, and I shall
+have her talking English in a few days as well as I do, shan't I,
+Jerry?'
+
+'Yah--'ess,' was the reply.
+
+Then Mr. St. Claire tried to question her further with regard to herself
+and her home, but his phraseology was probably at fault, for no
+satisfactory result was reached beyond the fact that her mother was
+dead, that her name was Jerry, or Derree, as she called it, and that she
+had been on a ship with Mah-nee, who did _so_--and she imitated
+perfectly the motions and contortions of one who is deathly sea-sick.
+
+'I suppose she means her mother by Mah-nee,' said Mr. St. Claire; and
+when he asked her if it were not so, she answered 'yah,' and ''ess,' as
+she did to everything, adopting finally the latter word altogether
+because she saw it pleased Harold.
+
+No matter what was the question put to her, her reply was ''ess,' which
+she repeated quickly, with a prolonged sound on the 's.'
+
+When at last Mr. St. Claire took his leave, it was with a strange
+feeling of interest for the child, whose antecedents must always be
+shrouded in mystery, and whose future he could not predict.
+
+It seemed impossible for Mrs. Crawford to keep her, poor as she was, and
+as he had no idea that the Tracys would take her, there was no
+alternative but the poor-house, unless he took her himself and brought
+her up with his own little five-year-old Nina. He would wait until after
+the funeral and see, he decided, as he went back to his home at Brier
+Hill, where his children, Dick and Nina, were eager to hear all he had
+to tell them of the poor little girl whose mother had been frozen to
+death.
+
+The next morning the sleigh from Tracy Park stopped before the cottage
+door, and Frank, who had been to meet the coroner, alighted from it. He
+was pale and haggard as he entered the room where Jerry was playing on
+the floor with Harold's Maltese kitten. As he came in she looked up at
+him, and, lifting her hand, swept the hair back from her forehead just
+as she had done the day before when Mr. St. Claire was there. The
+peculiar motion had struck the latter as something familiar, though he
+could not define it; but Frank did, or in his nervous condition he
+thought he did, and his knees shook so he could hardly stand as he
+talked with Mrs. Crawford and told her he had come for the child, who
+ought to be where her mother was until after the funeral.'
+
+'Then she will come back again. You will not keep her. She is mine,
+ain't you, Jerry?' Harold exclaimed, eagerly; while Jerry, who, with a
+child's instinct scented danger from Harold's manner and associated that
+danger with the strange man looking so curiously at her, sprang to her
+feet, which she stamped vigorously, while she cried, ''ess, 'ess, 'ess,'
+with her face all in wrinkles, and her blue eyes anything but soft and
+sunny, as they usually were.
+
+In this mood she was not much like Gretchen in the picture, but she was
+like some one else whom Frank had seen in excited moods, and he grew
+faint and sick as he watched her, and saw the varying expression of her
+face and eyes. The way she shook her head at him and flourished her
+hands was a way he had seen many times and remembered so well, and he
+felt as if his heart would leap from his throat as he tried to speak to
+her. A turn of the head, a gesture of the hands, a curve of the
+eyelashes, a tone in the voice, seemed slight actions on which to base a
+certainty; but Frank did feel certain, and his brain reeled for a second
+as his thoughts leaped forward years and years until he was an old man,
+and he wondered if he could bear it and make no sign.
+
+Then, just as he had decided that he could not, the tempter suggested a
+plan which seemed so feasible and fair that the future, with a secret to
+guard, did not look so formidable, and to himself he said:
+
+'It is not likely I can ever be positive; and so long as there is a
+doubt, however small, it would be preposterous to give up what otherwise
+must come to my children, if not to me; but I will not wrong her more
+than I can help.'
+
+'Come, little girl, go with me,' he said, in his kindest tones, as he
+advanced toward her, while Harold went for her cloak and hood.
+
+Jerry knew then that she was expected to go with the stranger, and
+without Harold, and resisted with all her might. Standing behind him, as
+if safe there, and clinging to his coat, she sobbed piteously,
+intermingling her sobs with 'Ess, 'ess, 'ess,' the only English word she
+knew, and which she seemed to think would avail in every emergency.
+
+And it did help her now, for Harold pleaded that he might go, too, and
+when Jerry saw him with his coat and hat, and understood that he was to
+be her escort, she ceased to sob, and allowing herself to be made ready,
+was soon in the sleigh, and on her way to Tracy Park.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+JERRY AT THE PARK.
+
+
+And so this is the poor little girl. We'll take her right to the
+kitchen, where she can get warm,' Mrs. Tracy said, as she met her
+husband in the hall, with Harold and the mite of a creature wrapped in
+the foreign looking cloak and hood.
+
+'No, Dolly!' and Frank spoke very decidedly, as Harold was turning in
+the direction of the kitchen. 'She is going to the nursery, with the
+other children, and when they have their dinner she shall have hers with
+them.'
+
+'Ess, 'ess, 'ess,' Jerry said, as if she comprehended that there was a
+difference of opinion between the man and woman, and that she was on the
+affirmative side.
+
+'Take her to the nursery! Oh, Frank! she may have something about her
+which the children will catch,' Mrs. Tracy said, blocking the way as she
+spoke.
+
+But Jerry, who through the half-open door had caught sight of the pretty
+sitting-room, with its warm carpet and curtains, and cheerful fire,
+shook her head defiantly at the lady, and brushing past her, went boldly
+into the room, whose brightness had attracted her.
+
+Marching up to the fire, she stood upon the rug and looked about her
+with evident satisfaction; then glancing at the three who were watching
+her, she nodded complacently, and said, ''ess, 'ess, 'ess,' while she
+held her little cold hands to the fire.
+
+'Acts as if she belonged here, doesn't she?' Frank said to his wife, who
+did not reply, so intent was she upon watching the strange child, who
+deliberately took off her cloak and hood and tossing them upon the
+floor, drew a small low chair to the fire, and climbing into it, sat
+down as composedly as if she were mistress there instead of an intruder.
+
+Once she swept the hair back from her forehead with the motion Frank
+knew so well, and then the lump came into his throat again, and he
+steadied himself against the mantel, while he looked curiously at the
+young girl, making herself so much at home and seeming so well pleased
+with her surroundings.
+
+'Take her to the nursery now. I must see to that coroner,' he said to
+his wife, adding: 'Harold must go too, or there will be the Old Harry to
+pay.'
+
+''Ess, 'ess,' came decidedly from the child, who went willingly with
+Harold, and was soon ushered into the large upper room, which was used
+as both nursery and school-room, for Mrs. Tracy could not allow her two
+sons, Tom and Jack, to come in contact with the boys at school; so she
+kept a governess, a middle-aged spinster, who, glad of a home, and the
+rather liberal compensation, sat all day in the nursery and bore
+patiently with Tom's freaks and Jack's dullness: to say nothing of the
+trouble it was to have the three-year-old Maude toddling about and
+interfering with everything.
+
+'Hallo!' Tom cried, as his mother came in, followed by Harold and Jerry.
+'Hallo, what's up?' And throwing aside the slate on which he had been
+trying to master the difficulties of a sum in long division, he went
+toward them, and said: 'Has the coroner come, and can't I go and see the
+inquest? You said maybe I could if I behaved, and I do, don't I, Miss
+Howard?'
+
+Just then he caught sight of Jerry, and stopping short, exclaimed:
+
+'By Jingo! ain't she pretty! I mean to kiss her.'
+
+And he made a movement toward the little face, which looked up so shyly
+at him. But his mother caught his arm and held him back, as she said,
+sharply:
+
+'Don't touch her, there is no tolling what you may catch. I wanted her
+to go to the kitchen, the proper place for her, but your father insisted
+that she should be brought here. I hope, Miss Howard, you will see that
+she does not go near the children.'
+
+'Yes, Madam,' Miss Howard replied, 'but I am sure there can be no
+danger. She looks as clean and sweet as a rose.'
+
+Miss Howard was fond of children, and she held out her hand to the
+little girl, who seemed to have a most wonderful faculty for
+discriminating between friends and enemies, and who went to her readily,
+and leaning against her arm, looked curiously at the group of
+children--at Tom, and Jack, and Maude, the latter of whom wished to go
+to her, but was restrained by the nurse. The moment the door closed on
+Mrs. Tracy, Tom walked up to the child, and said:
+
+'I shall kiss her now, anyhow.'
+
+But Jerry hid her face, and could not be induced to look up until he had
+moved away from her.
+
+'Catty as well as pretty,' Tom said. 'I wonder who she is anyway, and
+how she will like the poor-house?'
+
+'Who said she was going to the poor-house?' Harold exclaimed
+indignantly.
+
+'Mother said so,' Tom replied. 'I heard her talking to the cook. Where
+would she go if she did not go to the poor-house? Who would take care of
+her?'
+
+'I!' Harold answered, and to Miss Howard he seemed to grow older a dozen
+years, as he stood there with his arms folded and the light of a brave
+manhood in his brown eyes. 'I shall take care of her. She will live with
+grandmother and me. I found her, and she is mine.'
+
+''Ess, 'ess, 'ess,' came from Jerry, as she swung one little foot back
+and forth and looked confidingly at her champion.
+
+'_You_ take care of her!' Tom sneered, with that supercilious air he
+always assumed toward those he considered his inferiors. Why, you and
+your grandmother can't take care of yourselves, or you couldn't if it
+wasn't for Uncle Arthur. Mother says so. You wouldn't have any house to
+live in if he hadn't given it to you,'
+
+Harold's arms were unfolded now and the doubled fists were in his
+pockets clenching themselves tighter and tighter as he advanced to Tom,
+who, remembering his black eye, began to back towards the nurse for
+safety.
+
+'It's a lie, Tom Tracy,' Harold said. 'Mr. Arthur does not take care of
+us. We do it ourselves, and have for ever so long. He did give us the
+house, but it ain't for you to twit me of that. Whose house is this, I'd
+like to know? It isn't yours, nor your father's, and there isn't a thing
+in it yours. It is all Mr. Arthur's.'
+
+'Wall, we are to be his _hares_--Jack, and Maude, and me. Mother says
+so,' Tom stammered out, while Jerry, who had been looking intently,
+first at one boy, and then at the other, called out in her own language:
+
+'Nein, nein, nein,' and struck her hand toward Tom.
+
+'What does she mean by her "Nine, nine, nine,'" he asked of Miss Howard,
+who replied that she thought it was the German for 'No, no, no,' and
+that the child probably did not approve of him.
+
+Tom knew she did not, and though she was only a baby, be felt chagrined
+and irritable. Had he dared, he would have struck Harold, who asked him
+what he meant by being his uncle's _hare._ But he was afraid of Miss
+Howard, and remembering it must be time for the inquest, he slipped from
+the room, whispering fiercely to Harold as he passed him:
+
+'Darn you, Hal Hastings, I'll thrash you yet.'
+
+'Let me know when you are ready, and also when you get to be your
+uncle's _hare_,' was Harold's taunting reply, as the door closed upon
+the discomfited Tom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The inquest was a mere matter of form, for there was no doubt in any
+one's mind that the woman had been frozen to death, and she had no
+friends to complain that due attention had not been paid her. So after a
+few questions put to Mr. Tracy, and more to Harold, who was summoned
+from the nursery to tell what he knew, and a look at the cold rigid
+face, a verdict was rendered of 'Frozen to death.'
+
+Then came the question of burial, as to when, and where, and at whose
+expense. Quite a number of people had assembled and the little room was
+full. Conspicuous among them was Peterkin, who, having been elected to
+an office, which necessitated a care for the expenditures of the
+village, was swelled with importance, and dying for a chance to be
+heard.
+
+When Harold came into the room Jerry was with him. She had refused to
+let him leave her, and he led her by the hand into the midst of the men,
+who grew as silent and respectful the moment she appeared as if she had
+been a woman instead of a little child, who could speak no word of their
+language, or understand what was said to her. It was her mother lying
+there dead, and they made way for her as, catching sight of the white
+face, she uttered a cry of joy, and running up to the body, patted the
+cold cheeks, while she kept calling 'Mah-nee, Mah-nee,' and saying words
+unintelligible to all, but full of pathos and love, and child-like
+coaxing for the inanimate form to rouse itself, and speak to her again.
+
+'Poor little thing,' was said by more than one, and hands went up to
+eyes unused to tears, for the sight was a touching one--that lovely
+child bending over the dead face, and imprinting kisses upon it.
+
+Harold took her away from the body, and lifting her into a chair, kept
+by her, as with her arm around his neck, she stood listening to, and
+watching, and sometimes imitating the gestures of the men around her.
+
+It was Peterkin who spoke first; standing back so straight that his
+immense stomach, with the heavy gold watch-chain hanging across it,
+seemed to fill the room, he gave his opinion before any one had a chance
+to express theirs.
+
+It was the first time he had been in the house since the morning after
+the party, when Arthur had turned him from the door. He had vowed
+vengeance against the Tracys then, and kept his vow by spending two
+thousand dollars in order to defeat Frank as member of Congress and to
+get himself elected as one of the village trustees, and now he had come,
+partly out of curiosity to see the woman, and partly to oppose her being
+buried by the town, if such a thing were suggested.
+
+'Let them Tracys bury their own dead,' he said to his wife before he
+left home, and he said it again in substance now, as with a tremendous
+'ahem!' he commenced his speech standing close to little Jerry, who
+never took her eyes from him, but watched him with a face which varied
+in its expression with every variation in his voice and manner, and
+reached its climax when he said: 'I don't b'lieve in saddlin' the town
+with a debt we don't orto pay. Let the Tracys bury their own dead, I
+say!'
+
+''Ess, 'ess, 'ess,' Jerry chimed in with an emphatic shake of her head
+with each ''ess,' and a flourish of her hand more threatening than
+approving toward the speaker, who glanced at her and went on:
+
+'Do you see, gentlemen of the jury, who this cub looks like. I do! and
+so can you with half an eye. She looks like Arthur Tracy!'
+
+Just then Jerry swept back her golden hair, and, opening her eyes,
+flashed them around the room until they rested by accident upon Frank,
+who, pale, and faint, and terrified, was leaning against the door-way
+trying to seem only amused at the tirade which was concluded as follows:
+
+'Yes, Arthur Tracy! Not her skin, perhaps, nor hair, nor her eyes,
+leastwise not the color, but something I can't describe; and this woman,
+her mother, you say is a furriner; that may be, but I've seen her afore,
+or I'm mistaken. She took passage once on the 'Liza Ann, I'm sure on't,
+and Arthur look passage same day as far as Chester and was as chipper as
+you please with her. I don't say nothin', nor insinerate nothin', but I
+won't consent to have the town pay what belongs to the Tracys. Let 'em
+run their own canoes and funerals, too, I say; and as for this young one
+with the yaller hair--though where she got that the lord only knows;
+'tain't her's,' pointing to the corpse; 'nor 'tain't his'n,' pointing in
+the direction of Arthur's rooms; 'as for her, I'm opposed to sendin' to
+the poor-house another pauper.'
+
+'She is not a pauper, and she is not going to the poor-house either,'
+Harold exclaimed, while Jerry came in with her _nein, nein, nein_, which
+made the bystanders laugh, as Peterkin went on, addressing himself to
+Harold:
+
+'You are her champion, hey, and intend to take care of her. Mighty fine,
+I'm sure, but hadn't you better fetch back May Jane's pin that you took
+at the party.'
+
+'It is false,' Harold cried. 'I never saw the pin, never!' and the hot
+tears sprang to his eyes at this unmanly assault.
+
+By this time Peterkin, who felt that everybody was against him, was
+swelling with rage, and seizing Harold by the collar, roared out:
+
+'Do you tell me I lie! You rascal! I'll teach you what belongs to
+manners!' and he would have struck the boy but for Jerry, who had been
+watching him as a cat watches a mouse, and who, raising her war-cry of
+'_nein, nein, nein_,' sprang at him like a little tiger, and by the
+fierceness of her gestures and the volubility of her German jargon
+actually compelled him to retreat step by step until she had him outside
+the door, which she barred with her diminutive person. No one could help
+laughing at the discomfited giant and the mite of a child facing him so
+bravely, while she scolded at the top of her voice.
+
+Peterkin saw that he was beaten and left the house, vowing vengeance
+against both Harold and Jerry, if he should ever have it in his power to
+harm them.
+
+When he was gone, Frank, who had recovered his composure during the
+ludicrous scene, said to those present:
+
+'I would not explain to that brute, but it is not my intention to
+trouble the town. I have no more idea who this woman is than you have,
+and I'll swear that Peterkin's vile insinuations with regard to her are
+false. My brother says he never saw her in his life, and he speaks the
+truth. She may have been on Peterkin's boat, but I doubt it. She has
+every appearance of a foreigner, and her child'--here Frank's tongue
+felt a little thick, but he cleared his throat and went on--'her child
+speaks a foreign language--German, they tell me. This poor woman died on
+my--or rather my brother's premises. I have consulted with him, and he
+thinks as I do, that she should be cared for at our expense. He says,
+further, that there is room on the Tracy lot; she is to be buried there.
+I shall attend to it at once, and the funeral will take place to-morrow
+morning at ten o'clock from this house. What disposition will be made of
+the child I have not yet decided, but she will _not_ go to the
+poor-house.'
+
+'Oh, Mr. Tracy,' Harold burst out, 'she is mine. She is to live with
+grandma and me. You will not take her from me--say you will not?'
+
+'_Vill not_,' Jerry reiterated, imitating as well as she could Harold's
+last words.
+
+For a moment Mr. Tracy looked fixedly at the boy, pleading for a burden
+which would necessitate toil, and self-denial, and patience of no
+ordinary kind and never had he despised himself more than he did then,
+when, believing what he did believe, he said at last:
+
+'I will talk with your grandmother, and see what arrangements we can
+make. I rather think you have the best right to her. But she must stay
+here to-night and until after the funeral, when she can go with you, if
+you like.'
+
+To this Harold did not object, and as Jerry seemed very happy and
+content, he left her, while she was exploring the long drawing-room, and
+examining curiously the different articles of furniture. As she did not
+seem disposed to touch anything, she was allowed to go where she liked,
+although Mrs. Frank remonstrated against her roaming all over the house
+as if she belonged there, and suggested again that she be sent to the
+kitchen. But Frank said 'no,' decidedly, and Jerry was left to herself,
+except as the nurse-girl and Charles looked after her a little.
+
+And so it came about that towards evening she found herself in the upper
+hall, and after making a tour of the rooms, whose doors were open, she
+came to one whose door was shut--nor could she turn the knob, although
+she tried with all her might. Doubling her tiny fist, she knocked upon
+the door, and then, as no one came, kicked against it with her foot, but
+still with no result.
+
+Inside the room, with Gretchen's picture, Arthur sat in his
+dressing-gown, very nervous and a little inclined to be irritable and
+captious. He knew there had been an inquest, and that many people had
+come and gone that day, for he had seen them from his window, and had
+seen, too, the sleigh, with Frank, and the coroner, and Harold, and a
+blue hood, drive into the yard. But to the blue hood he never gave a
+thought, as he was only intent upon the dead woman, whose presence in
+the house made him so nervous and restless.
+
+'I shall be glad when she is buried. I have been so cold and shaky ever
+since they brought her here,' he said to Charles, as, with a shiver, he
+drew his chair nearer to the fire and leaning back wearily in it fixed
+his eyes upon Gretchen's picture smiling at him from the window, 'Dear
+little Gretchen,' he said in a whisper, 'you seem so near to me now that
+I can almost hear your feet at the door, and your voice asking to come
+in. Hush!' and he started suddenly, as Jerry's kicks made themselves
+heard even to the room where he sat. 'Hush! Charles, who is that banging
+at the door? Surely not Maude? They would not let her come up here. Go
+and see, and send her away.'
+
+He had forgotten that he was listening for Gretchen, and when Charles,
+who had opened the door cautiously and described the intruder, said to
+him. 'It is that woman's child. Shall I let her in? She is a pretty
+little thing,' he replied, 'Let her in? No; why should you and why is
+she allowed to prowl around the house? Tell her to go away.'
+
+So Jerry was sent away with a troubled disappointed look in her little
+face, and as the chill March night came on and the dark shades crept
+into the room and Gretchen's picture gradually faded from sight in the
+gathering gloom until it seemed only a confused mixture of lead and
+glass, Arthur felt colder, and drearier, and more wretched than he had
+ever felt before. It was a genuine case of homesickness, if one can be
+homesick who is in his own house, surrounded by every possible comfort
+and luxury. He was tired, and sick, and disappointed, and his head was
+aching terribly, while thoughts of the past were crowding his brain
+where the light of reason seemed struggling to reinstate itself. He was
+thinking of Gretchen, and longing for her so intensely that once he
+groaned aloud and whispered to himself:
+
+'Poor Gretchen! I am so sorry for it all. I can see it clearer now, how
+I left her and did not write, and I don't know where she is, or if she
+will ever come; and yet, I feel as if she had come, or tidings of her.
+Perhaps my letter reached her. Perhaps she is on her way. God grant it,
+and forgive me for all I have made her suffer.'
+
+It was very still in the room where Arthur sat, for Charles had gone
+out, and only the occasional crackling of the coal in the grate and
+ticking of the clock broke the silence which reigned around him; and at
+last, soothed into quiet, he fell asleep and dreamed that on his door he
+heard again the thud of baby feet, while Gretchen's voice was calling to
+him to let the baby in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE FUNERAL AND AFTER.
+
+
+Long before ten o'clock, the hour appointed for the funeral, the next
+morning, people began to gather at the Park House, and the avenue seemed
+full of them. The news that an unknown woman had been frozen to death in
+the Tramp House had spread far and wide, awakening in many a curiosity
+to see the stranger, and discover, if possible, a likeness to some one
+they might have known.
+
+It was strange how many reminiscences were brought to mind by this
+circumstance of girls who had disappeared years before and were supposed
+to be dead--or worse. And this woman might be one of them; indeed,
+Peterkin had said that she was, and they came in crowds to see her, and
+to see, as well, the inside of the handsome house, of which they had
+heard so much, especially since Mr. Arthur's return. But in this they
+were disappointed, for all the front rooms were locked against them, and
+only the large dining-room, the breakfast-room, the servants' hall, and
+the little back office were thrown open to the public. In the first of
+these the corpse was lying in a substantial, handsome coffin, for Frank,
+who ordered it, would have no other; and when the undertaker suggested a
+cheaper one would answer just as well, had said, decidedly:
+
+'I mean to bury her decently. Give me this one, and send the bill to me,
+not to Arthur.'
+
+It was _his_ funeral, and, judging from his face, he was burying all his
+friends, instead of a poor, unknown woman, whose large, coarse features
+and plain woollen dress looked out of place in that handsome black
+coffin, with its silver-plated trimmings. Frank had suggested that she
+should have a white merino shroud, but his wife had overruled him. It
+was _not_ her funeral, and she had no interest in it, except that it
+should be over as soon as possible, and the house cleansed from the
+atmosphere of death. So when her husband asked if the child ought not to
+have a mourning-dress, she scoffed at him for the suggestion saying she
+did not like to see children in black anyway, and even if she died
+herself she should not wish hers to wear it.
+
+'I cannot imagine,' she continued, 'why you have taken so unaccountable
+a fancy to and interest in these people, especially the child. One would
+think she belonged to royalty, the fuss you make over her. What are we
+to do with her to-night? Where is she to sleep?'
+
+'In the nursery,' was his reply; and he saw his wishes carried out and
+ordered in a crib, which used to be Jack's, and bade the nurse see that
+she was comfortable.
+
+So Jerry was put to bed in the nursery and slept very quietly until
+about, ten o'clock when she awoke and cried piteously for both 'Man-nee'
+and 'Ha-roll.' Frank, who was sitting alone in the library, heard the
+cry, and knew it was not Maude's. Had it been he would not have minded
+it, for he knew that she would be cared for without his interference.
+But something in the crying of this little foreign girl stirred him
+strangely, and after listening to it a few moments he arose, and going
+softly to the door of the nursery, stood listening until a sharp hush
+from the nurse girl decided him to enter, and going to the crib he bent
+over the sobbing child and tried to comfort her. She could not
+understand him, but the tone of his voice was kind, and when he put his
+hand on her hot head she took it in hers and held it fast, as if she
+recognized in him a friend. And Frank as he felt the clasp of the soft,
+warm fingers, and saw the confiding look in the wide-open eyes, grew
+faint and cold, and asked himself again, as he had many times that day,
+_if he could do it_.
+
+Jerry was asleep at last, but she sobbed occasionally in her sleep, and
+there were great tears on her eyelashes, while her fingers clutched
+Frank's hand tightly as if fearing to let it go. But he managed to
+disengage it and stealing cautiously from the room went back to the
+library where he sat late into the night, facing the future and
+wondering if he could meet it.
+
+He had Jerry at the table next morning and saw that she was helped to
+everything she wanted without any regard to its suitability for her, and
+when his wife said rather curtly that she never knew that he was so fond
+of children before, he answered her:
+
+'I am only doing as I would wish some one to do to Maude if she were
+like this poor little girl.'
+
+When, at last, the hour for the funeral arrived he placed her himself
+upon the high chair close to the coffin, where she sat through the short
+service, conspicuous in her gray cloak and blue hood, with her golden
+hair falling on her neck and piled in wavy masses on her forehead, while
+her bright eyes scanned the crowd curiously as if asking why they were
+there and why they were all looking so intently at her. More than one
+kind-hearted woman went up and kissed her, and when, at the close of the
+services, Mr. Tracy held her in his arms for a last look at her mother,
+their tears fell fast for the child, so unconscious of the meaning of
+what was passing around her.
+
+'Isn't she beautiful! Such lovely hair, and eyes, and dazzling
+complexion!' was said by more than one; and then they speculated as to
+her future.
+
+Would she go to the poor-house? Would Frank Tracy keep her with all his
+children, or was it true, as they had heard, that Mr. Arthur Tracy was
+to adopt her at his own? And where was Mr. Arthur? He might, at least,
+have shown enough respect for the dead woman to come into the room, and
+they wanted so much to see him, for there was a great deal of curiosity
+with regard to the lunatic of Tracy Park among the lower class of people
+who had come to Shannondale during the eleven years of his absence.
+
+But Arthur was sick in bed, suffering alternately from chills and a
+raging fever, which set his brain on fire and made him wilder than
+usual. He had not slept well during the night. Indeed, he said, he had
+not slept at all. But this was a common assertion of his, and one to
+which Charles now paid little heed.
+
+'A man can't snore and not sleep,' was the unanswerable argument with
+which he refuted the sleepless nights of his master.
+
+On this occasion, however, he had heard no snoring, and Arthur's face,
+seen by the morning light, was a sufficient proof of the wakeful hours
+he had passed. He, too, had heard the distant crying, and felt
+instinctively that it was not Maude's. Starting up in bed to listen, he
+said:
+
+'What's that? Is that child here yet?'
+
+'Yes sir: she is to stay till after the funeral,' was Charles' reply,
+and Arthur continued:
+
+'Bring me some cotton for my ears. I never can stand that noise. It is a
+peculiar cry.'
+
+The cotton was brought. A window in the hall which had a habit of
+rattling with every breath of wind was made fast with a bit of shingle
+whittled out for that purpose, and then Arthur became tolerably quiet
+until morning, when he began to talk to himself in the German language,
+which Charles could not understand. But he caught the name Gretchen, and
+knew she was the subject of the sick man's thoughts. Suddenly turning to
+his attendant, to whom he always spoke in English, Arthur said:
+
+'The funeral is to-day?'
+
+'Yes, sir, at ten o'clock.'
+
+'Well, lock every door leading up this way, and shut out the gossipping
+blockheads who will come by hundreds, and, if we would let them, swarm
+into my room as thick as the frogs were in the houses of the Egyptians.
+Shut the doors, Charles, and keep them out.'
+
+So the doors were shut and bolted, and then Arthur lay listening with
+that intensity which so quickens one's hearing, that the faintest sounds
+are distinct at great distances. He heard the trampling footsteps as the
+people came crowding in, and the tread of horses' feet as sleigh after
+sleigh drove up the avenue, and once, with a shudder, he said:
+
+'That is the hearse. I am sure of it.'
+
+Then all was still, and listen as he might he could not distinguish the
+faintest sound until the services were over and the people began to
+leave the house.
+
+'There,' he said, with a sigh of relief; 'it will soon be over. Bring me
+my clothes, Charles. I am going to get up and see the last of this poor
+woman. God help her, whoever she was.'
+
+He was beginning to feel a great pity for the woman whose coffin they
+were putting in the hearse, which moved off a few rods, and then stopped
+until the open sleigh came up, the sleigh in which Frank Tracy sat,
+muffled in his heavy overcoat, for the day, though bright and sunny, was
+cold, and a chill March wind was blowing. Dolly had taken refuge in a
+headache which had prevented her from being present at the funeral and
+kept her from going to the grave as her husband had wished her to do. So
+only Harold and Jerry occupied the sleigh with Frank, and these sat
+opposite him, with their backs to the horses, Jerry in her gray cloak
+and blue hood showing conspicuously as she came into full view of the
+window where Arthur stood looking at the procession with a feeling at
+his heart, as if in some way he were interested in the sad funeral,
+where there was no mourner, no one who had ever seen or known the
+deceased, save the little helpless girl, looking around her in perfect
+unconcern save as she rather liked the stir and all that was going on.
+
+They had tied a thin veil over her head to shield her from the cold, and
+thus her face was not visible to Arthur. But he saw the blue hood and
+the golden hair on the old gray cloak, and the sight of it moved him
+mightily, making him hold fast to the window-casing for support, while
+he stood watching it. Just as far as he could see it his eye followed
+that hood, and when it disappeared from view, he turned from the window,
+deathly sick, and tottering back to his bedroom, vomited from sheer
+nervous excitement.
+
+'Thank Heaven it is over and the rabble gone,' he said, when he became
+easier. 'Go now and open all the doors and windows to let in the fresh
+air and out the smell they are sure to have left. Ugh! I get a whiff of
+it now. Burn some of that aromatic paper; but open the hall windows
+first.'
+
+Charles did as he was ordered, and the wind was soon sweeping through
+the wide hall, while Arthur's rooms were filled with an odor like the
+sweet incense burned in the old cathedrals.
+
+'I am very giddy and faint,' Arthur said, when Charles came back to him
+after his ventilating operation. 'I have looked at the bright snow too
+long, and there are a thousand rings of fire dancing before my eyes, and
+in every ring I see a blue hood and veil, with waves of hair like
+Gretchen's, when she was a child. There is a redder tinge now on
+Gretchen's hair, because she is older. Wheel me out there, Charles,
+where I can see her.'
+
+Charles obeyed, and moved the light bed-lounge into the library, where
+his master could feast his eyes upon the sweet face which knew no
+change, but which always, night and day, smiled upon him the same. The
+picture had a soothing effect upon Arthur, and he gazed at it now until
+it began to fade away and lose itself in the blue hood and veil he had
+seen in the sleigh far down the avenue; and when, a few minutes later,
+Charles came in to look at him, he found him fast asleep.
+
+Meantime the funeral train had reached the cemetery, where the snow was
+piled in great drifts, and where, in a corner of the Tracy lot, they
+buried the stranger, with no tear to hallow her grave, and no pang of
+regret save that she had ever come there, with the mystery and the doubt
+which must always cling to her memory. Frank Tracy's face was very pale
+and stern as he held little Jerry in his arms during the committal of
+the body to the grave, and then bade her take one last look at the box
+which held her mother. But Jerry, who was growing cold and tired, began
+to cry, and so Frank took her back to the sleigh, which was driven to
+the cottage in the lane. Here she felt at home, and drawing to the fire
+the low rocking chair she had appropriated to herself, was soon
+supremely happy devouring the ginger cookie which Mrs. Crawford had
+given her, and in trying to pronounce English words under Harold's
+teaching.
+
+While the children were thus employed, Mr. Tracy was divulging to Mrs.
+Crawford the object of his visit. He could hardly explain, he said, why
+he was so deeply interested in the child, except it were that her mother
+had died on his premises and she seemed to be thrown upon his care.
+
+'I cannot see her go to the poor-house,' he continued, with a trembling
+in his voice which made Mrs. Crawford wonder a little, as she had never
+credited him with much sympathy for anything outside his own family. 'I
+cannot see her go to the poor-house, and I cannot well take her into my
+family, as we have three children of our own. But I have made up my mind
+to care for her, and I have come to ask if, for a compensation, you will
+keep her here?'
+
+'Yes, grandma--say yes!' Harold cried; while Jerry, with her mouth full
+of cookie, repeated, 'ay 'ess.'
+
+'You see, the children plead for me,' Mr. Tracy said, with a smile at
+the little girl, whose hand just then swept back the hair from her eyes,
+which looked steadily at him as he went on: 'While she is young--say,
+until she is ten years old--I will pay you three dollars a week, and
+after that more, if necessary. I know you will be kind to her, and that
+she will be happy here and well brought up. Is it a bargain?'
+
+Mrs. Crawford had never seen him so interested in anything and felt
+somewhat surprised and puzzled, but she expressed her willingness to
+take the child and do what she could for her.
+
+'It will be a good thing for Harold,' she said, 'as he is in danger of
+growing selfish here alone with me.'
+
+And so Jerry's future was settled, and counting out twelve dollars,
+Frank handed them to Mrs. Crawford, saying:
+
+'I will pay you for four weeks in advance, as you may need the money,
+and--and--perhaps--' His face grew very red as he stammered on, 'perhaps
+it may be as well not to tell how much I pay you. People--or
+rather--well, Mrs. Tracy might think it strange, and not understand why
+I feel such an interest in the child. I don't understand it myself.'
+
+But he did understand, and his knees were shaking under him as, when the
+transaction was over, and he was on his way to the Park, he felt that he
+had sold himself to Satan.
+
+'And yet I know nothing for sure,' he kept repeating to himself. 'Arthur
+is expecting Gretchen, whoever she may be. He says he has written to
+her, and he has one of his presentiments that she is coming on the night
+when this woman arrives, who is no more like the Gretchen he raves about
+than I am. This woman has a child. He says Gretchen has none, and that
+he never saw this woman. And yet I find among the things a photograph
+exactly like the picture in the window, and also like the child, who
+certainly bears a resemblance to my brother, though no one else,
+perhaps, would see it. Now, sir,' he appeared to be addressing himself
+to some person unseen, from whom he shrank, for he drew himself as far
+as was possible to his side of the sleigh and shivered as he went on:
+'Now, sir, is that sufficient proof to warrant me in turning everything
+topsy-turvy, and making Arthur crazier than he is?'
+
+'Certainly not,' he seemed to hear in reply, either from within or
+without, he hardly knew which, and he went on:
+
+'I shall try to find out who the woman was, and where she came from; but
+how am I to do it? how begin? Arthur will not tell me a word about
+Gretchen, who she is, or what she is to him. Still, I mean to be on the
+safe side, and do right by the child. Arthur cannot live many years. His
+nerves will wear him out, if nothing else, and when he does, his money
+will naturally come to me.'
+
+'Naturally,' his spectral companion replied, and he continued:
+
+'Well, what I intend doing is this: I shall make my will, in which Jerry
+will share equally with my children, and I shall further draw up a
+written request that in case I die before my brother, any money which
+may fall to my children from him shall be shared equally with her. I
+shall, out of my own private funds, provide for her support and
+education, until she comes of age, or marries, and if possible, I shall
+bring about a marriage between her and Tom, who will probably one day be
+master of Tracy Park. Can anything more be required of me?'
+
+'Nothing,' was the consoling reply; and as the sleigh just then drew up
+before his door, Frank alighted from it, and said to himself as he ran
+up the steps:
+
+'I believe I have been riding with the devil, and have made a league
+with him!'
+
+He found the house thoroughly aired and cleansed from all signs of the
+recent funeral; and when, at one o'clock, he sat down to lunch in the
+handsome dining-room, and sipped his favorite claret, and ate his
+foreign preserves, and thought how much comfort and luxury money could
+buy, he was sure he had done well for himself and his children after
+him. But, like Bishop Hatto, of Mouse-Tower memory, Frank Tracy never
+knew real peace of mind from the day he deliberately sold himself to the
+Evil One for filthy lucre, until the day, years after, when full
+restitution was made, and, with the sin confessed, he held his head up
+again, free from the shadow which he did not leave in the sleigh, but
+which followed him day and night, walking by him when he walked, sitting
+by him when he sat, and watching by him when he slept, so as to be ready
+when he woke with the specious argument that he was acting justly and
+even generously by the little waif, who was like a sunbeam in the
+cottage in the lane, whom many people went to see, marvelling at her
+beauty and wondering in vain whose likeness they sometimes saw in her as
+she frolicked around the house, full of life, and fun, and laughter.
+
+Frank made his will, as he promised his shadow he would, but he went to
+Springfield to have it drawn up, for he knew that Colvin, or any lawyer
+whom he might employ in Shannondale, would wonder at it. He also wrote
+out himself what he called his dying request to his children, in case he
+should die before his brother. In this he stated emphatically his wish
+that Jerry should have her share of whatever might come to them from the
+Tracy estate, the same as if she were his own child.
+
+'I have a good and sufficient reason for this,' he wrote in conclusion,
+'and I enjoin it upon you to carry out my wishes as readily as you would
+were I to speak to you from my grave,'
+
+This done, Frank felt a little better, and the shadow at his side was
+not quite as real as it had been before. He put his will and his dying
+request together in a private drawer with Gretchen's photograph, and the
+testament with the handwriting in it. He had kept this back when the
+stranger's trunk was sent to the cottage, thinking that if it were
+missed and inquired for, he could easily produce it as having been
+mislaid. At the suggestion of Mr. St. Claire he went to New York, to the
+office of the German line of steamers, and made inquiries with regard to
+the passengers who had come on a certain ship at such a time. But
+nothing could be learned of any woman with a child, and after inserting
+in several of the New York papers a description of the woman, with a
+request for any information concerning her which could be given, he
+returned home, with a feeling that he had done all that could be
+required of him, and that he might now enjoy himself.
+
+He was accordingly kind and even tender to his brother, who for several
+weeks suffered from low nervous depression, which kept him altogether in
+his room, to which he refused to admit any one except his attendant and
+Frank. He had ceased for the time being, to talk of Gretchen, or to
+expect her, and he never inquired for the child, whose blue hood had so
+affected him. Once Frank spoke of her to him and told him where she was,
+and that she was learning to speak English very rapidly, and growing
+prettier every day. But Arthur did not seem at all interested and only
+said:
+
+'How can Mrs. Crawford afford to keep the child?'
+
+Others than Arthur asked that question, and among them Dolly, who with a
+woman's quick wit, sharpened by something she accidentally saw, divined
+the truth, which she wrung at last from her husband. There was a fierce
+quarrel--almost their first--a sick headache which lasted three days,
+and a month or more of coldness between the married pair, and then,
+finding she could accomplish nothing, for Frank was as firm as a rock,
+Dolly gave up the contest, and tried by economizing in various ways, to
+save the money which she felt was taken from her children by the little
+girl, who had become so dear to Mrs. Crawford, that she would not have
+parted with her had nothing been paid for her keeping.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+"MR. CRAZYMAN, DO YOU WANT SOME CHERRIES?"
+
+
+More than two years had passed away since the terrible March night when
+the strange woman was frozen to death in the Tramp House, and her
+history was still shrouded in mystery. Not a word had been heard
+concerning her, and her story was gradually being forgotten by the
+people of Shannondale. Her grave, however, was tolerably well kept, and
+every Saturday afternoon, in summer time, a few flowers were put upon it
+by Harold. Not so much for the sake of the dead as for the beautiful
+child who always accompanied him, laughing, and frolicking, and
+sometimes dancing around the grave where he told her her mother was
+buried.
+
+As there had been no date on which to fix Jerry's birth, they had called
+the first day of March her birthday, so that when more than two years
+later we introduce her to our readers on a hot July morning, she was
+said to be six years and four months old. In some respects, however, she
+seemed much older, for there was about her a precocity only found in
+children who have always associated with people much older than
+themselves, or into whose lives strange experiences have come. In
+stature she was very short, though round and plump as a partridge.
+'Dutchy,' Mr. Tracy called her, for Mrs. Tracy did not like her, and
+took no pains to conceal her dislike, though it was based upon nothing
+except the money which she knew was paid regularly to Mrs. Crawford for
+the child's maintenance.
+
+There could be no reason, she said to her husband, why he should support
+the child of a tramp, and the woman had been little better, judging from
+appearances, unless, indeed--and then she told what old Peterkin had
+said more than once, to the effect that Jerry Crawford, as she was
+called, was growing to be the image of the Tracys, especially Arthur.
+
+'And if so,' she added, 'you'd better let Arthur take care of her, and
+save your money for your own children,'
+
+To this Frank never replied. He knew better than old Peterkin that Jerry
+was like the Tracys, or, rather, like his brother, and that it was not
+so much in the features as in the expression and certain movements of
+the head and hands, and tones of the voice when she was very much in
+earnest, and raised it to a higher pitch than usual. She could speak
+English very well now, and sometimes, when Frank, who was a frequent
+visitor at the cottage, sat watching her at her play, and listening to
+her as she talked to herself, as was her constant habit, he could have
+shut his eyes and sworn it was his brother's voice calling to him from
+the hay-loft or apple tree where they had played together when boys.
+
+Jerry's favorite amusement when alone was to make believe that either
+herself, or a figure she had made out of a shawl, was a sick woman,
+lying on a settee which she converted into a bed. Sometimes she was the
+nurse and took care of the sick woman to whom she always spoke in
+German, bending fondly over her, and occasionally holding up before her
+a doll which Mrs. St. Claire had given her, and which she played was the
+woman's baby. Then she would be the sick woman herself, and trying on
+the broad frilled cap which had been found in the trunk, would slip
+under the covering, and laying her head upon the pillow, go through with
+all the actions of some one very sick, occasionally hugging to her bosom
+and kissing the doll.
+
+Once she enacted the pantomime of dying. Folding her hands together and
+closing her eyes, her lips moved as if in prayer, for a moment, then
+stretching out her feet she lay perfectly motionless, with a set
+expression in the little face which looked so comical under the broad
+frilled cap. Then, as if it had occurred to her that action was
+necessary from some one, she exchanged places with the lay figure, and
+tying the cap upon its head, tucked it carefully in the bed, by which
+she knelt, and covering her face with her hands imitated perfectly the
+sobs and moans of a middle-aged person, mingled occasionally with the
+clearer, softer notes of a child's crying.
+
+The first time Frank witnessed this piece of acting was on a Saturday
+afternoon, when he had come to the cottage as usual to pay his weekly
+due. Both Mrs. Crawford and Harold were gone, but knowing they would
+soon return, as it was not their habit to leave Jerry long alone he sat
+down to wait, while she went back to the corner in the kitchen, which
+she used as her play-house.
+
+'Somebody is sick and I am taking care of her,' she said to Mr. Tracy,
+who watched her through the pantomime of the death scene with a feeling,
+when it was over, that he had seen Gretchen die.
+
+There was not a shadow of doubt in his mind that the sick woman was
+Gretchen, the nurse the stranger found in the Tramp House, and the doll
+baby the little girl upon whose memory that scene had been indelibly
+stamped, and who, with her wonderful powers of imitation, could rehearse
+it in every particular. To herself she always spoke in German, which no
+one could understand sufficiently to make out what she meant. Once Mr.
+St. Claire suggested to Frank that he take her to his brother, to whom
+German was as natural as English, and who might be able to learn
+something of her antecedents. And Frank had answered that he would do
+so, knowing the while that nothing could tempt him to bring her and his
+brother together until all the recollections of her babyhood, if she had
+any, were obliterated, and she had in part forgotten her own language.
+
+His first step in evil doing had to be followed by others until he was
+so far committed that he could not retrace his steps, and two shadows
+were with him constantly now, one always reproaching him for what he had
+done, and the other telling him it was now too late to turn back.
+
+He was very fond of Jerry, and on the Saturday afternoon when he sat
+watching her strange play, noticing how graceful was every movement, and
+how lovely the constantly varying expression of her face--from concern
+and anxiety when she was the nurse to distress and pain and then
+resignation and quietude in death when she took the role of the sick
+woman--he felt himself moved by some mighty influence to right her at
+once and put her in her proper place.
+
+'It is more than I can bear. I can't even look Dolly straight in the
+eye,' he said to his evil shadow, which answered back.
+
+'You know nothing sure. Will you give up your prospects for a photograph
+and a likeness which may be accidental?'
+
+So his conscience was smothered again; but he would question the child,
+and after her play was over he called her to him and taking her in his
+lap, kissed the little grave face upon which the shadow of the scene she
+had been enacting had left its impress.
+
+'Jerry,' he said, 'that lady who just died in the bed with the cap on
+was your mamma, was it not?'
+
+''Ess,' was Jerry's reply, for she still adhered to her first
+pronunciation of the word.
+
+'And the other was the nurse?'
+
+''Ess,' Jerry said again; 'Mah-nee.'
+
+This was puzzling, for he had always supposed that by 'mah-nee' the
+child meant 'mam-ma;' but he went on:
+
+'Try to understand me, Jerry; try to think away back before you came in
+the ship.'
+
+''Ess, I vill,' she said, with a very wise look on her face, while Mr.
+Tracy continued:
+
+'Had you a papa? Was he there with you?'
+
+'_Nein_,' was the prompt reply, and Mr. Tracy continued:
+
+'Where did your mamma live? Was it in Wiesbaden?'
+
+He knew he did not pronounce the word right, and was surprised at the
+sudden lighting up of the child's eyes as she tried to repeat the name.
+'Oo-oo-ee,' she began, with a tremendous effort, but the W mastered her,
+and she gave it up with a shake of her head.
+
+'I not say dat oo-oo-ee,' she said, and he put the question in another
+form:
+
+'Where did your mamma die?'
+
+'Tamp House; f'oze to deff,' was now the ready answer, a natural one,
+too, for she had been taught by Harold that such was the case, and had
+often gone with him to the house where he found her, and where the old
+table still stood against the wall.
+
+No one picnicked there now, for the place was said to be haunted, and
+the superstitious ones told each other that on stormy nights, when the
+wild winds were abroad, lights had been seen in the Tramp House, where a
+pale-faced woman, with her long, black hair streaming down her back,
+stood in the door-way, shrieking for help, while the cry of a child
+mingled with her call. But Harold shared none of these fancies. He was
+not afraid of the building, and often went there with Jerry, and sitting
+with her on the table, told her again and again how he had found her
+mother that wintry morning, and how funny she herself had looked in the
+old carpet-bag, and so it is not strange that when Mr. Tracy asked her
+where her mother died, she should answer, 'In the Tramp House,' although
+she had acted a pantomime whose reality must have taken place under very
+different circumstances.
+
+'Of course your mother died in the Tramp House, and I have nothing with
+which to reproach myself. I am altogether too morbid on the subject,'
+Frank said, and he had decided that he was a pretty good sort of fellow,
+after all, when at last Mrs. Crawford came in and he paid her for
+Jerry's board.
+
+It was a part of Frank's plan to save the money out of his own personal
+expenses, so he smoked two cigars less each day and went without claret
+for dinner, except on Sunday, and never touched champagne, and wore his
+hats and coats until his wife said they were shabby and insisted upon
+new ones. In this way he saved more than three dollars a week, but the
+overplus was laid aside for the time when Jerry must necessarily cost
+him more because she would be older. In some respects he was doing his
+duty by the child, who, next to Harold and Mrs. Crawford, whom she
+called grandma, loved him better than any one else. She always ran to
+meet him when he came, and sometimes, when he went away, accompanied him
+down the lane, holding his hand and asking him numberless questions
+about Tracy Park and about his little girl, and why she never came to
+see her.
+
+Frank could not tell Jerry of his wife's bitter prejudice against her,
+and that this was the reason why Maude had never been to the cottage or
+Jerry to the park. But if Jerry had not visited it in person, she was
+greatly interested in the handsome house and grounds, and the lovely
+rooms where the crazy man lived. This was Harold's designation of Mr.
+Arthur--the crazy man--and perhaps of all the things at Tracy Park,
+Jerry was most desirous to see him and his rooms. Harold, who, on one of
+the rare occasions when Arthur was out to dine, had been sent to the
+house on an errand, had gone with Jack into these rooms, which he
+described minutely to his grandmother and Jerry, dwelling longest upon
+the beautiful picture in the window. 'Gretchen, he calls it,' he said;
+and then Jerry, who was listening intently, gave a sudden upward and
+sidewise turn to her Lead, just as she had done when Mr. Tracy spoke to
+her of Wiesbaden.
+
+'Detchen,' she repeated, with a little hesitancy. 'Vat the name vas? Say
+again.'
+
+He said it again, and over the child's face there came a puzzled
+expression, as if she were trying to recall something which baffled all
+her efforts. But she did not forget the name, and that evening Mrs.
+Crawford heard her singing to herself,
+
+'Detchen, Detchen, who are you? Detchen, Detchen, where are you?' and
+she noticed that the doll baby with which Jerry played the most was ever
+after called 'Detchen,' instead of Maude, as it had been christened when
+first given to her.
+
+Jerry had seen Maude Tracy many times and had admired her greatly, with
+her pretty white dresses and costly embroideries; and once, at church,
+when Maude passed near where she was standing, she stood back as far as
+possible out of the way and held her plain gingham dress aside, as if
+neither it nor herself had any right to come in close contact with so
+superior a being. Of the house in the park she knew nothing, except what
+Harold had told her, and that it was a place to be admired and gazed at
+breathlessly at a respectful distance. She had never been there since
+the day of the funeral But she was going at last with Harold, who had
+permission to gather cherries for his grandmother from some of the many
+trees which grew upon the place.
+
+It was a hot morning in July, and the air seemed thunderous and heavy
+when she set off on what to her was as important an expedition as is a
+trip to Europe to an older person. She had wanted to wear her pink
+gingham dress, the one kept sacred for Sunday, and had even hoped that
+she might be allowed to display her best straw hat with the blue ribbons
+and cluster of apple blossoms. She had no doubt that she should go into
+the house and see the crazy man, and Mrs. Tracy, who she had heard wore
+silk stockings every day, and she wished to be suitably attired for such
+honor.
+
+But Mrs. Crawford dispelled her air castles by telling her that she was
+only to go into the side yard where the cherry trees were, and that she
+must be very quiet, so as not to disturb Mr. Arthur, whose windows
+looked that way. To wear her pink dress was impossible, as she would get
+it stained with the juice of the cherries, while the best hat was not
+for a moment to be thought of.
+
+So Jerry submitted to the dark calico frock and high-necked,
+long-sleeved apron which Mrs. Crawford thought safe and proper for her
+to wear on a cherry expedition. A clean, white sun-bonnet with a wide
+cape covered her head and concealed her face when she started from the
+cottage, with her quart tin pail on her arm; but no sooner was she on
+the path which led to the park that the obnoxious bonnet was removed and
+was swinging on her arm, while she was admiring the shadow which, her
+long, bright curls made in the sunshine as she shook her head from side
+to side.
+
+To tell the truth, our little Jerry was rather vain. Passionately fond
+of pictures and flowers, and quick to detect everything beautiful both
+in art and nature, she knew that the little face she sometimes saw in
+Mrs. Crawford's old-fashioned mirror was pretty, and after the day when
+Dick St. Claire told her that her hair was 'awful handsome,' she had
+felt a pride in it and in herself, which all Mrs. Crawford's
+asseverations that 'Handsome is that handsome does' could not destroy.
+Maude Tracy's hair was black and straight, and here she felt she had the
+advantage over her.
+
+'I do hope we shall see her,' she said to Harold, as she danced along,
+swaying her bonnet and shaking her hair. 'Do you think we shall?'
+
+Harold thought it doubtful, and, even if they did, it was not likely she
+would speak to them, he said.
+
+'Why not?' Jerry asked, and he replied:
+
+'Oh, I suppose they feel big because they are rich and we are poor.'
+
+'But why ain't I rich, too? Why don't I live at the park like Maude, and
+wear low-necked aprons instead of this old high one?' Jerry asked; but
+Harold could not tell, and only said:
+
+'Would you rather live at the park than with me?'
+
+'No,' Jerry answered, promptly, stopping short and digging her heel into
+the soft loam of the path. 'I would not stay anywhere without you; and
+when I live at the park you will live there, too, and have codfish and
+tatoe every day.'
+
+Strangely enough this was Harold's favorite dish, and, as it was not his
+grandmother's, his taste was not gratified in that respect as often as
+he would have liked, hence Jerry's promise of the luxury.
+
+Just here, at a sudden turn in the path, they came upon Jack and Maude
+Tracy playing on a bench under a tree, while the nurse was at a distance
+either reading or asleep. Harold would have passed them at once, as he
+knew his grandmother was in a hurry for the cherries, but Jerry had no
+such intention.
+
+Stopping short in front of Maude, she inspected her carefully, from her
+white dress and bright plaid sash to the string of amber beads around
+her neck; while, side by side with this picture, she saw herself in her
+dark calico frock and high-necked apron, with her sun-bonnet and tin
+pail on her arm. Jerry did not like the contrast, and a lump began to
+swell in her throat. Then, as a happy thought struck her, she said, with
+something like exultation in her tone:
+
+'My hair curls and yours don't.'
+
+'No,' Maude answered, slowly--'no it don't curl, but it's black, and
+yours is yaller.'
+
+This was a set back to Jerry, who hated everything yellow, and who had
+never dreamed of applying that color to her hair. She only knew that
+Dick St. Claire had called it pretty, but in this new light thrown upon
+it all her pride vanished, for she recognized like a flash that it might
+be 'yaller,' and stood there silent and vanquished, until Maude, who in
+turn had been regarding her attentively, said to her:
+
+'Ain't you Jerry Crawford?'
+
+That broke the ice of reserve, and the two little girls were soon
+talking together familiarly, and Jerry was asking Maude if she wore
+beads and her best clothes every day.
+
+'Phoo! These ain't my best clothes. I have one gown all brawdery and
+lace,' was Maude's reply, while Jack, who was standing near, chimed in:
+
+'My father's got lots of money, and so has Uncle Arthur, and when he
+dies we are going to have it; Tom says so.'
+
+Slowly the shadows gathered on Jerry's brow as she said, sadly;
+
+'I wish I had an Uncle Arthur, and could wear beads and a sash every
+day' Then, as she looked at Harold, her face brightened immediately and
+she exclaimed.
+
+'But I have Harold and a grandma, and you hain't,' and running up to
+Harold, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him lovingly, as
+if to make amends for the momentary repining.
+
+'We must go now,' Harold said, and taking her hand in his, he led her
+away toward the house, which impressed her with so much awe that as she
+drew near to it, she held her breath and walked on tiptoe, as if afraid
+that any sound from her would be sacrilege in that aristocratic
+atmosphere.
+
+'Oh, isn't it grand, Harold?' Isn't it grand!' she kept repeating, with
+her mouth full of cherries, after they had reached the trees on which
+the ripe, red fruit hung so thickly. 'Do you s'pose we shall see the
+crazy man?' she asked, and Harold replied:
+
+'I don't know. I guess not, unless he comes to the window. Those are his
+rooms, and that window which looks so ugly outside, is the one with the
+picture in it,' and he pointed to the south wing, most of the windows of
+which were open, while against one a long ladder was standing.
+
+It had been left there by a workman who had been up on it to fix the
+hinge of a blind, and who had gone to the village in quest of something
+he needed, Jerry saw the ladder and its close proximity to the open
+window, and she thought to herself.
+
+'I mean to fill my pail with cherries, and go up that ladder and take
+them to him, I wonder if he would bite me?'
+
+Suiting the action to the word she stopped eating; and began to pick
+from the lower limbs as rapidly as possible until her pail was full.
+
+'Pour them into the basket,' Harold called to her from the top of the
+tree, but Jerry did not heed him. She had seen the tall figure of a man
+pass before the window, and a pale, thin face had for a moment, looked
+out, apparently to discover whence the talking came.
+
+'I'm going to take the crazyman some cherries,' she tried, and almost
+before Harold could protest, she was half way up the ladder, which she
+climbed with the agility of a little cat.
+
+'Jerry, Jerry! What are you doing!' Harold exclaimed, 'Come back this
+minute. He doesn't like children; he tried to throw me over the banister
+once; he will knock you off the ladder; oh, Jerry!' and Harold's voice
+was almost a sob as he watched the girl going up round after round until
+the top was reached, and she stood with her flushed, eager face, just on
+a level with the window so that by standing on tiptoe, she could look
+into the room.
+
+It was Arthur's bedroom, and there was no one in it, but she heard the
+sound of footsteps in the adjoining apartment, and raising herself as
+far as possible, and holding up her pail, she called out in a clear,
+shrill voice;
+
+'Mr. Crazyman, Mr. Crazyman, don't you want some cherries?'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+ARTHUR AND JERRY.
+
+
+Arthur had passed a restless night. Indeed all his nights were restless,
+but this one had been especially so. Thoughts of Gretchen had troubled
+him in his dreams, and two or three times he had started up to listen,
+thinking that he heard her calling to him from a distance. He had
+dreamed also of the blue hood seen that day of the funereal, now more
+than two years ago, and of the child who had come knocking at his door,
+first with her hands and then with her feet, but whom he had refused to
+admit. He had never seen her since, and had never inquired for her of
+his own accord. Two or three times his brother had spoken of her in a
+casual way, telling him once that she was with Mrs. Crawford. Arthur had
+then asked how she could afford to keep her, and Frank had made no
+reply. But the second time when he spoke of Jerry, and Arthur, more
+interested in Mrs. Crawford than in her, had asked the same question,
+Frank had said:
+
+'She cannot afford it, I pay her three dollars a week.'
+
+For a moment Arthur looked inquiringly at him; then he said:
+
+'You are a good fellow after all, even if you did deceive me about
+sending John for Gretchen. Tell Colvin, when Christmas comes, to give
+Mrs. Crawford a hundred dollars for me.'
+
+After this Mrs. Crawford and her affairs passed completely out of
+Arthur's mind. He never went to the cottage, or near it. He never went
+anywhere, in fact, but lived the life of a recluse, growing thinner, and
+paler, and more reticent every day, talking now but seldom of Gretchen,
+though he never arose in the morning or retired at night without kissing
+her picture and murmuring to it some words of tenderness in German.
+
+He had measured the length of his three rooms and dressing-room, and
+found them to be nearly one hundred feet, or six rods do that by passing
+back and forth twenty-five times he would walk almost a mile.
+
+Regularly each morning, when it was not too cold or stormy, he would
+throw open his windows and take his daily exercise, which was but a poor
+substitute for what might be had in the fresh air outside, but was
+nevertheless much better than nothing.
+
+On this particular morning, when Harold and Jerry were at the park, he
+was taking his walk as usual, though very slowly, for he felt weak and
+sick, and, oh, so inexpressibly lonely and desolate that it seemed to
+him he would gladly lie down and die.
+
+'If I thought Gretchen were dead, nothing would seem so desirable to me
+as the grave, for then there would be nothing to live for,' he was
+saying to himself, when the sound of voices outside attracted his
+attention, and going to the window, he saw the children, Harold in the
+top of the tree, and Jerry at the foot, with her white sun-bonnet
+shading her face.
+
+Recognizing Harold, he guessed who the little girl was, and a strange
+feeling of interest stirred in his heart for her, as he said:
+
+'Poor little waif! I wonder where she came from, or what will become of
+her?'
+
+'Then resuming his walk, he forgot all about the little waif, until
+startled by a voice which rang, clear and bell-like, through the rooms:
+
+'Mr. Crazyman! Mr. Crazyman! don't you want some cherries?'
+
+It was not so much the words as something in the tone, the foreign
+accent, the ring like a voice he never could forget, and which the
+previous night had called to him in his dreams. And now it was calling
+again--not in his sleep, but in reality, for he knew he was
+awake--calling from the adjoining room, which no one could enter without
+his knowledge.
+
+Mentally weak as he was, and apt to be superstitious, his limbs shook,
+and his heart beat faster than its wont, as he went toward his
+sleeping-apartment, from which the voice came again a little louder and
+more peremptory:
+
+'Mr. Crazyman! where are you? I've brought you some cherries!'
+
+He had reached the door by this time, and saw the pail on the broad
+window-ledge where Jerry had put it, and to which she was clinging, with
+her white sun-bonnet just in view.
+
+'Oh, Gretchen! how did you get here?' he said, bounding across the
+floor, with no thought of Jerry in his mind, no thought of any one but
+Gretchen, whom he was constantly expecting to come, though not exactly
+in this way.
+
+'I climbed the ladder to fetch you some cherries, and I'm standing on
+the toppest stick,' Jerry said, craning her neck until her bonnet fell
+back, disclosing to view her beautiful face flushed with excitement, and
+her bright, wavy hair, which, moist with perspiration, clung in masses
+of round curls to her head and forehead.
+
+'Great Heaven!' Arthur exclaimed, as he stood staring at the wide-open
+blue eyes confronting him so steadily. 'Who are you, and where did you
+come from?'
+
+'I'm Jerry, and I comed from the carpet-bag in the Tramp House. Take me
+in, won't you?' Jerry said; and, mechanically leaning from the window,
+Arthur took her in, while Harold from below looked on, horror-struck
+with fear as to what the result might be if Jerry were left any time
+alone with a madman who did not like children.
+
+'He may kill her; I must tell the folks,' he said; and, going round to
+the side door, he entered, without knocking, and asked for Mrs. Tracy.
+
+But she was not at home, and so he told the servants of Jerry's danger,
+and begged them to go to her rescue.
+
+'Pshaw, he won't hurt her. Charles will come pretty soon, and I'll send
+him up. Don't look so scared; he is harmless,' the cook said to Harold,
+who, in a wild state of nervous fear, went back to the cherry trees,
+where he could listen and hear the first scream which should proclaim
+Jerry's danger.
+
+But none came, and could he have looked into the room, where Jerry sat,
+or rather stood, he would have been amazed.
+
+As Arthur lifted Jerry through the window, and put her down upon the
+floor, he said to her:
+
+'Take off that bonnet and let me look at you.'
+
+She obeyed and stood before him with all her wealth of hair tumbling
+about her glowing face, and an eager, questioning expression in her blue
+eyes, which looked at him so fearlessly. Arthur knew perfectly well who
+she was, but something about her so dazed and bewildered him that for a
+moment he could not speak, but stared at her with the hungry, wistful
+look of one longing for something just within his reach, but still
+unattainable.
+
+'Do you like me?' Jerry asked at last.
+
+'Like you?' he replied. 'Yes. Why did you not come to me sooner?'
+
+And, stooping, he kissed the cherry-stained mouth as he had never kissed
+a child before.
+
+Sitting down upon the lounge, he took her in his lap and said to her
+again:
+
+'Who are you, and where did you come from? I know your name is Jerry,
+which is a strange one for a girl, and I know you live with Mrs.
+Crawford, but before that night where did you live? Where did you come
+from?'
+
+'Out of the carpet-bag in the Tramp House. I told you that once,' Jerry
+said. 'Harold found me. I am his little girl. He is out in the cherry
+tree, and said I must not come up, because you were crazy and would hurt
+me. You won't hurt me, will you? And be you crazy?'
+
+'Hurt you? No,' he answered, as he parted the rings of her hair from her
+low brow. 'I don't know whether I am crazy or not They say so, and
+perhaps I am, when my head is full of bumble-bees.'
+
+'Oh--h!' Jerry gasped, drawing back from him. 'Can they get out? And
+will they sting?'
+
+Arthur burst into a merry laugh, the first he had known since he came
+back to Shannondale. Jerry was doing him good. There was something very
+soothing in the touch of the little warm hands he held in his, and
+something puzzling and fascinating, too, in the face of the child. He
+did not think of a likeness to any one; he only knew that he felt drawn
+toward her in a most unaccountable manner, and found himself wondering
+greatly who she was.
+
+'Harold told me there were pictures and marble people up here with
+nothing on, and everything, and that's why I comed--that and to bring
+you some cherries. I like pictures. Can I see them?' Jerry said.
+
+'Yes, you shall see them,' Arthur replied; and he led her into the room
+where Gretchen's picture looked at them from the window.
+
+'Oh, my!' Jerry exclaimed, with bated breath, 'Ain't she lovely! Is she
+God's sister?' and folding her hands together, she stood before the
+picture as reverently as a devout Catholic stands before a Madonna.
+
+It was some time since Jerry had spoken a word of German, but as she
+stood before Gretchen's picture old memories seemed to revive, and with
+them the German word for _pretty_, which she involuntarily spoke aloud.
+
+Low as was the utterance, it caught Arthur's ear, and grasping her
+shoulder, he said:
+
+'What was that? What did you say, and where did you learn it?'
+
+His manner frightened her; perhaps the bumble-bees were coming out, and
+she drew back from him, forgetting entirely what she had said.
+
+'It was a German word,' he continued, 'and the accent is German, too;
+can you speak it.'
+
+Unconsciously as he talked, he dropped into that language, and Jerry
+listened intently, with a strained look on her face, as if trying to
+recall something which came and went, but went more than it came, if
+that could be.
+
+'I talked that once,' she said, 'when I lived with mamma; but she is
+dead. Harold found her, and I put flowers on her grave.'
+
+Half the time she was speaking in German, or trying to, and Arthur
+listened in amazement, while his interest in her deepened every moment,
+as he took her through the rooms and showed her 'the marble people with
+nothing on them,' and the beautiful pictures which adorned his walls.
+
+'How would you like to come and be my little girl?' he asked her at
+last, when, remembering Harold and the cherries, she told him she must
+go, and started toward the window as if she would make her egress as she
+had come in.
+
+'Can Harold come, too? I can't leave Harold,' she said Then, as she
+caught sight of him still standing at a distance, gazing curiously up at
+the window through which she had disappeared, she called out, 'Yes
+Harold; I'm coming. I have seen him and everything, and he did not hurt
+me. Good-bye!' and she turned toward Arthur with a little nod.
+
+Then, before he could stop her, she sprang out upon the ladder, and went
+down faster than she had come up, leaving the pail of cherries upon the
+window-sill, and leaving, too, in Arthur's breast a tumult of emotions
+which he could not define.
+
+That night, when Frank, who had heard in much alarm of Jerry's visit to
+his brother, went up to see him, he found him more cheerful and natural
+than he had seen him in weeks. As Frank expected, his first words were
+of the little girl who had come to him through the window and left him
+the cherries, of which he said he had eaten so many that he feared they
+might make him sick. What did Frank know of the child? What had he
+learned of her history? Of course he had made enquiries everywhere?
+
+It was just in the twilight, before the gas was lighted, and so Arthur
+did not see how his brother's face flamed at first and then grew white
+as he recapitulated what the reader already knows, dwelling at length
+upon the enquiries he had made in New York, all of which had been
+fruitless. There was the name Jerrine on the child's clothing, he said
+and the initials 'N.B.' on that of her mother, who was evidently French,
+although she must have come from Germany.'
+
+'Yes,' Arthur replied, 'the child is a German, and interests me greatly.
+Her face and something in her voice has haunted me all the afternoon.
+Was there nothing in that trunk or the carpet-bag which would be a
+clue?'
+
+'Nothing,' Frank replied, although it seemed to him it was the shadow
+speaking for him, or at least putting the lie into his mouth. There were
+articles of clothing, all very plain, and a picture book printed at
+Leipsic, I can get that for you if you like, though it tells nothing
+unless it he that the mother lived in Leipsic.'
+
+Frank talked very rapidly, and laid so much stress on Leipsic, that
+Arthur got an idea that Jerry had actually come from there, just as his
+brother meant he should, and he began to speak of the town and recall
+all he knew of it.
+
+'I was never there but once,' he said, 'for although I spent a great
+deal of time in Germany, it was mostly in Heidleberg and Wiesbaden. Oh,
+that is lovely,--Wiesbaden--and nights now, when I cannot sleep, I fancy
+that I am there again, in the lovely park, and hear the music of the
+band, and see the crowds of people strolling through the grounds, and I
+am there with them, though apart from the rest, just where a narrow
+path turns off from a bridge, and a seat is half hidden from view
+behind the thick shrubberies. There I sit again with Gretchen, and feel
+her hand in mine and her dear head on my arm. Oh, Gretchen--'
+
+There was a sob now in his voice, and he seemed to be talking to himself
+rather than to his brother, who said to him:
+
+'Gretchen lived in Wiesbaden, then?'
+
+'Yes; but for heaven's sake pronounce it with a V, and not a W, and in
+two syllables instead of three,' Arthur answered, pettishly, his ear
+offended as it always was with a discordant sound or mispronounciation.
+
+'Veesbaden, then,' Frank repeated, understanding now why Jerry had
+stumbled over the name when he once spoke it to her.
+
+Clearly she had come from Wiesbaden, where Gretchen had lived, and where
+he believed she had died, though he did not tell Arthur so; he merely
+said:
+
+'Gretchen was your sweetheart, I suppose?'
+
+But Arthur did not reply; he never replied to direct questions as to who
+Gretchen was, but after a moment's silence, he said:
+
+'You speak of her as something past. Do you believe she is dead?'
+
+'Yes, I do,' was Frank's decided answer. You have never told me who she
+was, though I have my own opinion on the subject, and I know that you
+loved her very much, and if she loved you so much--'
+
+'She did--she did; she loved me more--far more than I deserved,' was
+Arthur's vehement interruption.
+
+'Well, then,' Frank continued, 'if she did, and were living, she would
+have come to you, or answered your letters, or sent you some messenger.'
+
+Frank's voice trembled here, and be seemed to see again the cold, still
+face of the dead woman, whose lips, could they have spoken, might have
+unlocked the mystery and brought a message from Gretchen'
+
+'True, true,' Arthur replied. 'She would have come or written. How long
+is it since I came home?'
+
+'Four years next October,' Frank said.
+
+'Four years;' Arthur went on, 'is it so long as that? And it, was then
+more than three years since I had seen her. Everything was blotted out
+from my mind from the time that I entered that accursed _maison de
+sante_ until I found myself in Paris. I am afraid she _is_ dead.'
+
+Just then Charles came in with lights and the chocolate his master
+always took before retiring, and so Frank said good-night, and went out
+upon the broad piazza, hoping the night air would cool his heated brow,
+or that the laughter and prattle of Jack and Maude, who were frolicking
+on the gravel walk, would drown the voice of the shadow which said to
+him:
+
+'But for the number of years he says it is since he saw Gretchen, there
+could be no doubt, and you would be the biggest rascal living. As it is,
+you need not distress yourself--Jerry is nothing to him; and if she
+were, you have gone too far now to go back. People would never respect
+you again. And then there is Maude. You cannot disgrace her.'
+
+No, he could not disgrace his darling Maude, who, as if guessing that he
+was thinking of her, came up the steps to his side, and seating herself
+upon his lap, pushed the hair from his forehead with her soft fingers,
+and kissed him lovingly as she was wont to do.
+
+'My beautiful Maude,' he thought, for he knew she would be beautiful,
+with her black hair, and starry eyes, and brilliant complexion, and he
+loved her with all the strength of his nature. To see her grow into
+womanhood, admired and sought after by everyone, was the desire of his
+heart, and as he believed that money was necessary to the perfect
+fulfilment of his desire, for her sake he would carry his secret to the
+grave.
+
+'Are you sick, papa?' Maude asked, looking into his pale face, on which
+the moon shone brightly.
+
+'No, pet,' he answered, 'only tired. I am thinking of little Jerry
+Crawford. She was here this afternoon,'
+
+'Yes, I saw her in the park with Harold. Isn't he handsome, papa? and
+such a nice boy! so different from Tom,' said Maude, and then she went
+on: 'Jerry is pretty too; prettier than I am; her hair curls and mine
+doesn't, but her dress is so ugly--that old high apron and calico gown.
+What makes her so poor and me so rich?'
+
+Mr. Tracy groaned inwardly, as he replied:
+
+'You are not rich, my child.'
+
+'Oh, yes, I am,' Maude said, 'I heard mamma tell Mrs. Brinsmade so. She
+said Uncle Arthur was worth a million, and when he died we should have
+it all, because he could not make a will if he wanted to, and he had no
+children of his own,'
+
+Although little more than seven years old, Maude Tracy was very knowing
+and precocious in some respects, and, like her brother Tom, had heard so
+much from her mother and others of their prospective wealth, that she
+understood the situation far better than she ought, and was already
+counting on the thousands waiting for her when her uncle died. And yet
+Maude Tracy had in her nature qualities which were to ripen into a noble
+womanhood. Truthful and generous, her instincts of right and wrong were
+very keen, and young as she was she had no respect for anything like
+deception or trickery. This her father knew, and his bitterest pang of
+remorse came from this thought, 'What would Maude say if she knew?' And
+it was more for her sake he was sinning than for his own or that of any
+other. She was so pretty, or would be when grown to young ladyhood, and
+the adornments which money could bring would so well become her.
+
+'Maude,' he said at last, 'how would you like to change places with
+Jerry? That is, let her come here and live, while we go away and be
+poor; not quite as she is, but like many people.'
+
+'And not wear a sash, and beads, and buttoned boots every day?' Maude
+interrupted him quickly. 'I should not like it at all. Why, Jerry
+dresses herself, and wipes the dishes, and wears those big aprons all
+the time. No, I don't want to be poor;' and as if something in her
+father's mind had communicated itself to her, she raised her head from
+his shoulder and looked beseechingly at him.
+
+'Nor shall you be poor, if I can help it,' he said; 'but you must be
+very kind to Jerry, and never let her feel that you are richer than she.
+Do you understand?'
+
+'I think I do,' Maude answered, adding as she kissed him fondly: 'And
+now I s'pose I must go, for there is Hetty come for me; so, good-night,
+you dearest, best papa in the world.'
+
+He knew that she believed in him fully; that should he confess his
+fault she would understand it, and lose faith in him. He would bear the
+burden, he said to himself. There should be no more repining or looking
+back, Maude must never know; and so Jerry's chance was lost.
+
+The next morning Arthur awoke with a racking headache. He was accustomed
+to it, it is true; but this one was particularly severe.
+
+'It's the cherries; no wonder; a quart of those sour things would turn
+upside down any stomach,' Charles said, as he glanced at the empty tin
+pail which was adorning an inlaid table, and then suggested a dose of
+ipecac as a means of dislodging the offending cherries.
+
+But Arthur declined the medicine. His stomach was well enough, he said.
+It was his head which ached, and nothing would help that like the touch
+of the cool little hands he had held in his the previous day. Charles
+must go for Jerry--go at once, for he wanted her, and as when Arthur
+wanted a thing he wanted it immediately, Charles was soon on his way to
+the cottage in the lane, where he found the little girl under a tall
+lilac bush, busy with the mud pies she was making, and talking to
+herself, partly in English and partly in broken German, which she had
+resumed since visiting the park.
+
+'Seemed like something I had dreamed, when he talked like that, and I
+could almost do it myself,' she said to Harold when describing the
+particulars of her interview with Mr. Tracy, and her tongue fell
+naturally into the language of her babyhood.
+
+On hearing Charles' errand, her delight was unbounded.
+
+'Iss. You'll let me go,' she cried, as she stood before Mrs. Crawford,
+with the mud-spots on her hands and face; 'and you'll let me wear my
+best gown now, and my white apron with the shoulder-straps, and my
+morocco shoes, because this visiting.'
+
+As Mrs. Crawford could see no objection to the plan, Jerry was soon
+dressed, and on her way to the Park House, which seemed to her to be a
+very palace, and until the day before a place to be looked upon with
+awe, and admired breathlessly at a distance. Indeed, she had sometimes,
+when passing near the house, walked on tiptoe, as if on sacred ground,
+and held back her humble dress lest it should harm a shrub or vine by
+contact. But matters now were changed. She had been there, and was
+going there again by special invitation from the master, and she tripped
+along airily with a sense of dignity and importance unusual in one so
+young.
+
+Mrs. Tracy, who seldom troubled herself with her brother-in-law's
+affairs, knew nothing of his having sent for Jerry, and was surprised
+when she saw her coming up the walk with Charles, whose manner indicated
+that he knew perfectly what he was about. She had heard of Jerry's visit
+on the previous day, and had wondered what Arthur could find in that
+child to interest him, when he would never allow Maude in his room. She
+knew nothing of the shadow which night and day was nearer to her husband
+than she was herself, but she did not fancy Jerry, because of the three
+dollars a week, which she felt was so much taken from herself. Why they
+should be burdened with the support of the child, just because her
+mother happened to be found dead upon their premises, she could not
+understand.
+
+Had Jerry been older, she might, she said, have taken her into the
+kitchen as maid of all work, for Dolly had reached a point where she
+liked a great many servants in the household, and prided herself upon
+employing more help than either Grace Atherton or Edith St. Claire. Only
+that morning she had spoken to her husband of Jerry, and asked him how
+long he proposed to support her.
+
+'Just as long as I have a dollar of my own, and she needs it,' was his
+reply, as he left the room, slamming the door behind him and leaving her
+to think him almost as crazy as his brother.
+
+Thus it was not in a very quiet frame of mind that she went out upon the
+cool, broad piazza, and, taking one of the large willow chairs standing
+there, began to rock back and forth and wonder what had so changed her
+husband, making him silent and absent-minded, and even irritable at
+times, as he had been that morning. Was there insanity in his veins as
+well as in his brother's, and would her children inherit--her darling
+Maude, of whom she was so proud, and who, she hoped, would some day be
+the richest heiress in the county and marry Dick St. Claire, if, indeed,
+she did not look even higher?
+
+It was at this point in her soliloquy that she saw Jerry coming up the
+walk, her face glowing with excitement and her manner one of freedom and
+assurance.
+
+Ascending the steps, Jerry nodded and smiled at the lady, whose
+expression was not very inviting, and who, to the child's remark, 'I've
+comed again,' answered, icily:
+
+'I see you have. Seems to me you come pretty often.' Turning to Charles,
+Mrs. Tracy continued:
+
+'Why is she here again so soon? What does she want?'
+
+Quick to detect and interpret the meaning of the tones of a voice, and
+hearing disapprobation in Mrs. Tracy's, Jerry's face was shadowed at
+once, and she looked up entreatingly at Charles, who said:
+
+'Mr. Tracy sent me for her. She was with him yesterday, and he will have
+her again to-day.'
+
+Then Jerry's face brightened, and she chimed in:
+
+'Iss, I'm visiting, I'm invited, and I'm going to stay to eat.'
+
+Mrs. Tracy dared not interfere with Arthur, even if he took Jerry to
+live there altogether, and, with a bend of her head, she signified to
+Charles that the conference was ended.
+
+'Come, Jerry,' Charles said; but Jerry held back a moment, and asked:
+
+'Where's Maude?'
+
+If Mrs. Tracy heard, she did not reply, and Jerry followed on after
+Charles through the hall and up the broad staircase to the darkened room
+where Arthur lay, suffering intense pain in the head, and moaning
+occasionally. But he heard the patter of the little feet, for he was
+listening for it, and when Jerry entered his room he raised himself upon
+his elbow, and reaching the other hand toward her, said:
+
+'So you have come again, little Jerry; or, perhaps I should call you
+little _Cherry_, considering how you first came to me. Would you like
+that name?'
+
+'Iss,' was Jerry's reply, in the quick, half-lisping way which made the
+monosyllable so attractive.
+
+'Well, then, Cherry,' Arthur continued, 'take off that bonnet, and open
+the blind behind me so I can see your face. Then bring that stool and
+sit where I can look at you while you rub my head with your hands. It
+aches enough to split, and I believe the bumble bees are swarming; but
+they can't get out, and if they could, they are the white-faced kind,
+which never sting.'
+
+Jerry knew all about white-faced bumble-bees, for Harold had caught them
+for her, and with this fear removed, she did as Arthur bade her, and was
+soon seated at his side, rubbing his forehead, where the blue veins were
+standing out full and round, and smoothing his hair caressingly with her
+fingers, which seemed to have in them a healing power, for the pain and
+heat grew less under their touch, and, after a while Arthur fell into a
+quiet sleep.
+
+When he awoke, after half an hour or so, it was with a delicious sense
+of rest and freedom from pain. Jerry had dropped the shades to shut out
+the sunlight, and was walking on tiptoe round the room, arranging the
+furniture and talking to herself in whispers, as she usually did when
+playing alone.
+
+'Jerry,' Arthur said to her, and she was at his side in a moment, 'you
+are an enchantress. The ache is all gone from my head, charmed away by
+your hands. Now, come and sit by me again, and tell me all you know of
+yourself before Harold found you. Where did you live? What was your
+mother's name? Try and recall all you can.'
+
+Jerry, however, could tell him very little besides the Tramp House, and
+the carpet-bag, and Harold letting her fall in the snow. Of the cold and
+the suffering she could recall nothing, or of the journey from New York
+in the cars. She did remember something about the ship, and her mother's
+seasickness, but where she lived before she went to the ship she could
+not tell. It was a big town, she thought, and there was music there, and
+a garden, and somebody sick. That was all. Everything else was gone
+entirely, except now and then when vague glimpses of something in the
+past bewildered and perplexed her. Her pantomime of the dying woman and
+the child had not been repeated for more than a year, for now her acting
+always took the form of the tragedy in the Tramp House, with herself in
+the carpet-bag and a lay figure dead beside her. But gradually, as
+Arthur questioned her, the old memories began to come back and shape
+themselves in her mind, and he said at last:
+
+'It was like this--playin' you was a sick lady and I was your nurse. I
+can't think of her name, I guess I'll call her Manny. And there must be
+a baby; that's me, only I can't think of my name.'
+
+'Call it Jerry, then,' Arthur suggested, both interested and amused,
+though he did not quite understand what she meant.
+
+But he was passive in her hands, and submitted to have a big
+handkerchief put over his head for a cap, to hold on his arm the baby
+she improvised from a sofa-cushion of costly plush, around which she
+arranged as a dress an expensive tablespread, tied with the rich cord
+and tassel of his dressing-gown.
+
+'You must cry a great deal,' she said, 'and pray a great deal, and kiss
+the baby a great deal, and I must scold you some for crying so much, and
+shake the baby some in the kitchen for making a noise, because, you
+know, the baby can walk and talk, and is me, only I can't be both at a
+time.'
+
+She was not very clear in her explanations, but Arthur began to have a
+dim perception of her meaning, and did what she bade him do, and rather
+enjoyed having his face and hands washed with a wet rag, and his hair
+brushed and _turled_, as she called it, even though the fingers which
+_turled_ it sometimes made suspicious journeyings to her mouth. He cried
+when she told him to cry; he coughed when she told him to cough; he
+kissed the baby when she told him to kiss it; he took medicine from the
+tin pail in the form of the cherry juice left there, and did not have to
+make believe that it sickened him, as she said he must, for that was a
+reality. But when she told him he must die, but pray first, he demurred,
+and asked what he should say. Jerry hesitated a little. She knew that
+her prayers were 'Our Father,' and 'Now I lay me,' but it seemed to her
+that a person dying should say something else, and at last she replied:
+
+'I can't think what she did say, only a lot about _him_. There was a
+_him_ somewhere, and I guess he was naughty, so pray for _him_, and the
+baby--that's me--and tell Manny she must take me to Mecky,'
+
+'To whom?' Arthur asked, and she replied:
+
+'To Mecky, where he was, don't you know?'
+
+Arthur did not know, but he prayed for _him_, saying what she bade him
+say--a mixture half English, half German.
+
+'There now, you are dead,' she said at last, as she closed his eyes and
+folded his hand upon his chest, 'You are dead, and mustn't stir nor
+breathe, no matter how awful we cry, Man-nee and I.'
+
+Kneeling down beside him, she began to cry so like that of two persons
+that if Arthur had not known to the contrary, he would have sworn there
+were two beside him, a woman and a child, the voice of the one shrill
+and clear, and young, and frightened, the other older, and harsher, and
+stronger, and both blending together in a most astonishing manner.
+
+'With a little practice she would make a wonderful ventriloquist,'
+Arthur thought, as he watched her flitting about the room, talking to
+unseen people and giving orders with regard to himself.
+
+Once Frank had witnessed a pantomine very similar to this, only then the
+play had ended with the death, while now there was the burial, and when
+Arthur moved a little and asked if he might get up, she laid her hand
+quickly on his mouth, with a peremptory 'hush! you are dead and we must
+bury you.'
+
+But here Jerry's memory failed her, and the funeral which followed was
+an imitation of the one which had left the Park House three years
+before, and which Arthur had watched from his window. Frank was there,
+and his wife, and Peterkin, and Jerry imitated the voices of them all,
+and when someone bade her kiss her mother she stooped and kissed
+Arthur's forehead, and said:
+
+'Good-bye, mamma,' then throwing a thin tidy over his face, she
+continued, 'Now, I am going to shut the coffin,' and as she worked at
+the corners, as if driving down the screws, Arthur felt as if he were
+actually being shut out from life, and light, and the world.
+
+To one of his superstitious tendencies the whole was terribly real, and
+when at last she told him he was buried, and the folks had come back,
+and he could get up, the sweat was standing upon his face and hands in
+great drops, and he felt that he had in very truth been present at the
+obsequies of some one, whose death had made an impression so strong upon
+Jerry's mind that time had not erased it. There was in his heart no
+thought of Gretchen, as there had been in Frank's when he was a
+spectator at the play. He had no cause for suspicion, and thought only
+of the child whose restlessness and activity were something appalling to
+him.
+
+'Now, what shall we play next?' she asked, as he sat white and trembling
+in his chair.
+
+'Oh, nothing, nothing,' he groaned, 'I cannot stand any more now.'
+
+'Well, then, you sit still, and I'll clean house; it needs it badly.
+Such mud as that boy brings in I never saw, and I'm so lame, too!' Jerry
+responded, and Arthur recognized Mrs. Crawford, whose tidiness and
+cleanliness were proverbial, and for the next half hour he watched the
+little actress as she limped around the room exactly as Mrs. Crawford
+limped with her rheumatism, sweeping, dusting, and scolding a little,
+both to Harold and Jerry, the latter of whom once retorted:
+
+'I would not be so cross as that if I had forty rheumatisses in my
+laigs, would you, Harold?'
+
+But Harold only answered, softly:
+
+'Hush, Jerry I you should not speak so to grandmamma, and she so good to
+us both, when we haven't any mother.'
+
+Arthur would have laughed, so perfect was the imitation of voice and
+gesture, but at the mention of Harold's mother there came into his mind
+a vision of sweet Amy Crawford, who had been his first love, and for
+whose son he had really done so little.
+
+'Jerry,' he said, 'I guess you have cleaned house long enough. Wash your
+hands and come to me.'
+
+She obeyed him, and looking into his face, said:
+
+'Now, what? can you play cat's cradle or casino?'
+
+'No; I want to talk to you of Harold. You love him very much?'
+
+'Oh, a hundred bushels--him and grandma, too.'
+
+'And he is very kind to you?'
+
+'Yes, I guess he is. He never talks back, and I am awful sometimes, and
+once I spit at him, and struck him; but I was so sorry and cried all
+night, and offered to give him my best doll 'cause it was the plaything
+I loved most, and I went without my piece of pie so he could have two
+pieces if he wanted,' Jerry said, her voice trembling as she made this
+confession, which gave Arthur a better insight into her real character
+than he had had before.
+
+Hasty, impulsive, repentant, generous, and very affectionate, he felt
+sure she was, and he continued;
+
+'Does Harold go to school?'
+
+'Yes; and I too--to the district; but I hate it!' Jerry replied.
+
+'Why hate it?' Arthur asked. 'What is the matter with the district
+school?'
+
+'Oh, it smells awful there sometimes when it is hot,' Jerry replied with
+an upward turn to her nose. 'And the boys are so mean, some of them.
+Bill Peterkin goes there and I can't bear him, he plagues me so. Wants
+to kiss me. A-a-h, and says I am to be his wife, and he has got warts on
+his thumb!'
+
+Jerry's face was sufficiently indicative of the disgust she felt for
+Bill Peterkin with his warts, and leaning back in his chair, Arthur
+laughed heartily, as he said:
+
+'And you do not like Bill Peterkin? Well, what boys do you like?'
+
+'Harold and Dick St. Claire,' was the prompt response, and Arthur
+continued:
+
+'What would you have in place of the district school?'
+
+'A governess,' was Jerry's answer. 'Nina St. Claire has one, and Ann
+Eliza Peterkin has one, and Maude Tracy has one.'
+
+Here Jerry stopped suddenly, as if struck with a new idea.
+
+'Why, Maude is your little girl, isn't she? You are her rich uncle, and
+she is to have all your money when you die. I wish I was your little
+girl.'
+
+She spoke the last very sadly, and something in the expression of her
+face brought Gretchen to Arthur's mind, and his voice was choked as he
+said to her:
+
+'I'd give half my fortune if you were my little girl.'
+
+Then laying his hand on her bright hair, he questioned her adroitly of
+her life at the cottage, finding that it was a very happy one, and that
+she had never known want, although Mrs. Crawford was unable to work as
+she once had done, and was largely dependent upon the price for Jerry's
+board, which Frank paid regularly. Of this, however, Jerry did not
+speak. She only said:
+
+'Harold works in the furnace, and in folks' gardens, and does lots of
+things for everybody, and once Bill Peterkin twitted him because he goes
+to Mrs. Baker's sometimes after stuff for the pig, and Harold cried, and
+I got up early the next morning and went after it myself and drew the
+cart home. After that grandma wouldn't let Harold go for any more, so I
+s'pose the pig will not weigh as much, I'm sorry, for I like sausage,
+don't you?'
+
+Arthur hated it, but he did not tell her so, and she went on.
+
+'Harold studies awful hard, and wants to go to college. He is trying to
+learn Latin and recites to Dick St. Claire; but grandma says it is
+up-hill business. Oh, if I's only rich I'd give it all to Harold, and he
+should get learning like Dick. Maybe I can work some time and earn some
+money. I wish I could.'
+
+Arthur did not speak for a long time, but sat looking at the child whose
+face now wore an old and troubled look. In his mind he was revolving a
+plan which, with, his usual precipitancy, he resolved to carry into
+effect at once. But he said nothing of it to Jerry, whose attention was
+diverted by the entrance of Charles and the preparations for luncheon,
+which on the little girl's account, was served with more care than
+usual.
+
+Jerry, who had a great liking for everything luxurious, had taken tea
+once or twice at Grassy Spring with Nina St. Claire, and had been
+greatly impressed with the appointments of the table, prizing them more
+even than the dainties for her to eat. But what she had seen there
+seemed as nothing compared to this round Swiss table, with its colored
+glass and rare china, no two pieces of which were alike.
+
+'Oh, it is just like a dream!' she cried, as she watched Charles'
+movement and saw that there were two places laid.
+
+'Am I to sit down with you?' she said in an awe-struck voice, 'and in
+that lovely chair? I am glad I wore my best gown. It won't dirty the
+chair a bit.'
+
+But she took her pocket handkerchief and covered over the satin cushion
+before she dared seat herself in the chair, which had once been brought
+out for Gretchen, and in which she now sat down, dropping her head and
+shutting her eyes a moment Then, as she heard no sound, she looked up
+wonderingly, and asked:
+
+'Ain't you going to say "for Christ's Sake?" grandma does.'
+
+Arthur's face was a study with its mixed expression of surprise,
+amusement, and self-reproach. He never prayed except it were in some
+ejaculatory sentences wrung from him in his sore need, and the thought
+of asking a blessing on his food had never occurred to him. But Jerry
+was persistent.
+
+'You must say "for Christ's sake,"' she continued, and, with his weak
+brain all in a muddle, Arthur began what he meant to be a brief
+thanksgiving, but which stretched itself into a lengthy prayer, fall of
+the past and of Gretchen, whom he seemed to be addressing rather than
+his Maker.
+
+For a while Jerry listened reverently; then she looked up and moved
+uneasily in the chair, and at last when the prayer had continued for at
+least five minutes, she burst out impulsively:
+
+'Oh, dear, do say "amen." I am so hungry!'
+
+That broke the spell, and with a start Arthur came to himself, and said:
+
+'Think you, Jerry, praying is a new business for me, and I do believe I
+should have gone on forever if you had not stopped me. Now, what will
+you have?'
+
+He helped her to whatever she liked best, but could eat scarcely
+anything himself. It was sufficient for him to watch Jerry sitting there
+in Gretchen's chair and using Gretchen's plate, which every day for so
+many years had been laid for her. Gretchen had not come. She would never
+come, he feared, but with Jerry he did not feel half as desolate as when
+alone, with only his morbid fancies for company. And he must have her
+there, at least a portion of the time. His mind was made up on that
+point, and when about four o'clock, Jerry said to him:
+
+'I want to go now. Grandma said I was to be home by five,' she replied:
+
+'Yes, I am going with you. I wish to see your grandmother. I am going to
+drive you in the phaeton. How would you like that?'
+
+Her dancing eyes told him how she would like it, and Charles was sent to
+the stable with an order to have the little pony phaeton brought round
+as soon as possible as he was going for a drive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+ARTHUR'S PLAN
+
+
+'Why, the madam is going to drive, too, and I've come to harness;
+there'll be a row somewhere,' John said.
+
+'Can't help it,' Charles replied, 'Mr. Arthur wants the phaeton, and
+will have it for all of Madam.'
+
+'Yes, I s'p'o' so. Wall, I'll go and tell her,' was John's rejoinder, as
+he started for the house, where Mrs. Tracy was just drawing on her long
+driving gloves, and admiring her new hat and feather before the glass.
+
+Dolly looked almost as young, and far prettier, than when the came to
+the park, eleven years before. A life of luxury suited her. She had
+learned to take things easily, and the old woman with the basket might
+now come every day to her kitchen door without her knowing it. She aped
+Mrs. Atherton of Brier Hill, in everything, and had the satisfaction of
+knowing that she was on all occasions quite as stylish-looking and
+well-dressed as that aristocratic lady whom she called her intimate
+friend. She had also grown very proud and very exclusive in her ideas,
+and when poor Mrs. Peterkin, who was growing, too, with _her_ million,
+ventured to call at the park, the call was returned with a card which
+Doily's coachman left at the door. Since the night of her party, and the
+election which followed when Frank was defeated, she had ignored the
+Peterkins, and laughed at what she called their vulgar imitation of
+people above them, and when she heard that Mary Jane hail hired a
+governess for her two children, Bill and Ann Eliza, she scoffed at the
+airs assumed by _come-up_ people, and wondered if Mrs. Peterkin had
+forgotten that she was one of Grace Atherton's hired girls. Dolly had
+certainly forgotten the Langley life, and was to all intents and
+purposes the great lady of the park, who held herself aloof from the
+common herd, and taught her children to do the same.
+
+She had seen Jerry enter the house that morning with a feeling of
+disapprobation, which had not diminished as the day wore on and still
+the child staid, and what was worse, Maude was not sent for to join her.
+
+'Not that I would have allowed it, if she had been,' she said to
+herself, for she did not wish her daughter intimate with one of whose
+antecedents nothing was known, but Arthur might at least have invited
+her. He had never noticed her children much, and this she deeply
+resented. Maude, who knew of Jerry's presence in the house had cried to
+go in and play with her, but Mrs. Tracy had refused, and promised as an
+equivalent a drive in the phaeton around the town. And it was for this
+drive Dolly was preparing herself, when John came with the message that
+she could not have the phaeton, as Mr. Arthur was going to take Jerry
+home in it.
+
+Usually Arthur's slightest wish was a law in the household, for that was
+Frank's order; but on this occasion Dolly felt herself justified in
+rebelling.
+
+'Not have the phaeton! That's smart, I must say,' she exclaimed. 'Can't
+that child walk home, I'd like to know? Tell Mr. Tracy Maude has had the
+promise of a drive all day, and I am ready, with my things on. Ask him
+to take the Victoria; he never drives.'
+
+All this in substance was repeated to Arthur, who answered, quietly:
+
+'Let Mrs. Tracy take the victoria. I prefer the phaeton myself.'
+
+That settled it, and in few moments Jerry was seated at Arthur's side,
+and skimming along through the park, and out upon the highway which
+skirted the river for miles.
+
+'This is not going home, and grandma will scold,' Jerry said.
+
+'Never mind the grandma--I will make it right with her. I am going to
+show you the country,' Arthur replied, as he chirruped to the fleet pony
+who seemed to fly along the smooth road.
+
+No one who saw the tall, elegant-looking man, who sat so erect, and
+handled the reins so skilfully, would ever have suspected him of
+insanity, and more than one stopped to gaze after him and the little
+girl whose face, with the golden hair blowing about it, looked out from
+the white sun bonnet with so joyous an expression. On the homeward route
+they met the victoria, with John upon the box, and Mrs. Tracy and Maude
+inside.
+
+'There's Maude! Hallo, Maude--see me! I'm riding!' Jerry called out,
+cheerily, while Maude answered back:
+
+'Hallo, Jerry!'
+
+But Mrs. Tracy gave no sign of recognition, and only rebuked her
+daughter for her vulgarity in saying 'Hallo,' which was second class and
+low.
+
+'Then Nina St. Claire is second class and low, for she says "Hallo,"'
+was Maude's reply, to which her mother had no answer.
+
+Meanwhile the phaeton was going swiftly on toward the cottage, which it
+reached a few minutes after the furnace whistle blew for six, and
+Harold, who had been working there, came up the lane. There were soiled
+spots on his hands and on his face, and his clothes showed marks of
+toil, all of which Arthur noted, while he was explaining to Mrs.
+Crawford that he had taken Jerry for a drive, and kept her beyond the
+prescribed hour. Then, turning to Harold, he said:
+
+'And so you work in the furnace?'
+
+'Yes, sir, during vacation, when I can get a job there,' Harold
+answered, and Mr. Tracy continued:
+
+'How much do you get a day?'
+
+'Fifty cents in dull times,' was the reply, and Arthur went on:
+
+'Fifty cents from seven in the morning to six at night, and board
+yourself. A magnificent sum truly. Pray, how do you manage to spend so
+much? You must be getting rich.'
+
+The words were sarcastic, but the tone belied the words, and Harold was
+about to speak, when his grandmother interrupted him, and said,
+
+'What he does not spend for us he puts aside. He is trying to save
+enough to go to the High School, but it's slow work. I can do but little
+myself, and it all falls upon Harold.'
+
+'But I like it, grandma. I like to work for you and Jerry, and I have
+almost twenty dollars saved,' Harold said, 'and in a year or two I can
+go away to school, and work somewhere for my board. Lots of boys do
+that.'
+
+Arthur was hitching his pony to the fence, while a new idea was dawning
+in his mind.
+
+'Fifty cents a day,' he said to himself, 'and he has twenty dollars
+saved, and thinks himself rich. Why, I've spent more than that on one
+bottle of wine, and here is this boy, Amy's son, wanting an education,
+and working to support his grandmother like a common laborer. I believe
+I _am_ crazy.'
+
+He was in the cottage by this time--in the clean, cool kitchen where the
+supper table was laid with its plain fair, most unlike the costly viands
+which daily loaded his board.
+
+'Don't wait for me, Harold must be hungry,' he said, adding quickly: 'Or
+stay, if you will permit me, I will take a cup of tea with you. The
+drive has given me an appetite, and your tea smells very inviting.'
+
+It was a great honor to have Arthur Tracy at her table, and Mrs.
+Crawford felt it as such, and was very sorry, too, that she had nothing
+better to offer him than bread and butter and radishes, with milk, and a
+dish of cold beans, and chopped beets, and a piece of apple pie saved
+for Harold from dinner. But she made him welcome, and Jerry, delighted
+to return the hospitality she had received, brought him a clean plate
+and cup and saucer, and asked if she might get the best sugar-bowl and
+the white sugar. Then, remembering the beautiful flowers which had
+adorned the table at Tracy Park, she ran out and gathering a bunch of
+June pinks, put them in a little glass by his plate.
+
+When all was ready and they had taken their seats at the table, Mrs.
+Crawford closed her eyes reverently and asked the accustomed blessing
+which in that house preceded every meal. Jerry's amen was a good deal
+louder and more emphatic than usual, while she nodded her head to
+Arthur, with an expression which he understood to mean, 'You know now
+what you ought to say, instead of that long prayer,' and he nodded back
+that he did so understand it.
+
+Arthur enjoyed the supper immensely, or pretended that he did. He ate
+three slices of bread and butter; he drank three cups of tea; he even
+tried the beans and the beets, but declined the radishes, which, he
+said, would give him the nightmare.
+
+When supper was over and the table cleared away, he still showed no
+signs of going, but asking Mrs. Crawford to take a seat near him, he
+plunged at once into the business which had brought him there, and
+which, since he had seen Harold in his working-dress and heard what he
+was trying to do, had grown to be of a two-fold nature. He was very
+lonely, he said, and all the elegance and luxuriousness of his handsome
+house failed to give him pleasure or to make him forget the past. He
+wanted some one to love who would love him in return, and the little
+taste he had had of Jerry's society had made him wish for more, and he
+must have her with him a part at least of every day.
+
+'In short,' he said, 'I should like to undertake her education myself
+until she is older, when I shall see that she has the proper finishing.
+She tells me she hates the district school, with Bill Peterkin and his
+warts--'
+
+'Trying to kiss me,' Jerry interrupted, as open-eyed and open-mouthed,
+she stood, with her hand on his shoulder, listening to him.
+
+'Yes, trying to kiss you, though I do not blame him much for that,'
+Arthur said, with a smile, and then continued: 'She is ambitious enough
+to want a governess like Ann Eliza Peterkin and my brother's daughter,
+but I am better than a dozen governesses. I can teach her all the
+rudiments of an English education, with French and German, and Latin,
+too, if she likes; and my plan is, that she come to me every day except
+Saturdays and Sundays--come at ten in the morning, get her lessons and
+her lunch with me, and return home at four in the afternoon. Would you
+like it, Cherry?'
+
+'Oh-h-oh!' was all the answer Jerry could make for a moment, but her
+cheeks were scarlet, and tears of joy stood in her eyes, until she
+glanced at Harold; then all the brightness faded from her face, for how
+could she accept this great good and leave him to drudge and toil alone?
+
+'What is it, Cherry?' Mr. Tracy asked; and, with a half sob, she
+replied:
+
+'I can't go without Harold. If I get learning, he must get learning,
+too,' and leaving Arthur, the crossed over to the boy, and putting her
+arm around him, looked up at him with a look which in after years he
+would have given half his life to win.
+
+She was a little girl now and did not care if he did know how much she
+loved him, and that for him she would sacrifice everything. But in this
+case the sacrifice was not required, for Arthur hastened to say:
+
+'I shall not forget Harold. I have something better in store for him
+than reciting his lessons to me. When the High School opens in
+September, he is going there, and if he does well he shall go to
+Andover in time, and perhaps to Harvard. It will all depend upon
+himself, and how he improves his opportunities. What! crying? Don't you
+like it?' Arthur asked, as he saw the great tears gathering in Harold's
+eyes and rolling down his cheeks.
+
+'Yes, oh, yes; but it don't seem real, and--and--I guess it makes me
+kind of sick,' Harold gasped, as, freeing himself from Jerry's
+encircling arm, he hurried from the room, to think over this great and
+unexpected joy which had come so suddenly to him.
+
+With his naturally refined tastes and instincts the dirty furnace work
+had not been pleasant to him, and he had shrunk with inexpressible
+loathing from the swill cart and the other menial duties he had been
+obliged to perform for the sake of those he loved. How to get an
+education was the problem he was earnestly trying to solve, and lo! it
+was now solved for him. For a moment the suddenness of the thing
+overcame him, and he sat down upon a table in the yard, faint and
+bewildered, while Arthur made his plan clear to Mrs. Crawford, saying
+that what he meant to do was partly for Jerry's sake and partly for the
+sake of the young girl who had been his early love.
+
+'I always intended to take care of you,' he said; 'but things go from my
+mind, and I forget the past as completely as if it had never been. But
+this will stay by me, for I shall have Cherry as a reminder, and if I am
+in danger of forgetting she will jog my memory.'
+
+Fur a moment Mrs. Crawford could not speak, so great was her surprise
+and joy that the good she had thought unattainable was to be Harold's at
+last. And yet something in her proud, sensitive nature rebelled against
+receiving so much from a stranger, even if that stranger were Arthur
+Tracy. It seemed like charity, she said, when at last she spoke at all.
+But Arthur overruled her with that persuasive way he had of converting
+people to his views; and when at last he left the cottage it was with
+the understanding that Jerry should commence her lessons with him the
+first week in September, and that Harold should enter the High School in
+Shannondale when it opened in the autumn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE WORKING OF ARTHUR'S PLAN.
+
+
+As Arthur was wholly uncommunicative with regard to his affairs, and as
+Mrs. Crawford kept her own counsel, and bade Harold and Jerry do the
+same, the Tracys knew nothing whatever of the plan until the September
+morning when Jerry presented herself at the park house, and was met in
+the door-way by Mrs. Frank, who was just going out. Very few could have
+resisted the bright little face, so full of childish happiness, or the
+clear, assured voice, which said so cheerily:
+
+'Good-morning, Mrs. Tracy. I'm come to school.'
+
+But, prejudiced as she was against the girl, Mrs. Tracy could resist any
+thing, and she answered, haughtily;
+
+'Come to school! What do you mean? This is not a school-house, and if
+you have any errand here, go round to the other door. Only company come
+in here.'
+
+'But I'm company. I'm going to get learning; he told me to come,' Jerry
+answered, flushed and eager, and altogether sure of her right to be
+there.
+
+Before Mrs. Frank could reply, a voice, distinct and authoritative, and
+to which she always yielded, called from the top of the stairway inside:
+
+'Mrs. Tracy, if that is Jerry to whom you are talking, send her up at
+once. I am waiting for her.'
+
+Jerry did not mean the nod she gave the lady as she passed her to be
+disrespectful, but Mrs. Frank felt it as such, and went to her own room
+in a most perturbed state of mind, for which she could find no vent
+until her husband came in, when she stated the case to him, and asked if
+he knew what it meant.
+
+But Frank was as ignorant as herself, and could not enlighten her until
+that night, after he had seen his brother, and heard from him what he
+was intending to do.
+
+'God bless you, Arthur. You don't know how happy you have made me,'
+Frank said, feeling on the instant that a great burden was lifted from
+his mind.
+
+Jerry was to be educated and cared for, and would probably receive all
+that the world would naturally concede to her if the truth were known.
+He believed, or thought he did, that Gretchen had never been his
+brother's wife, though to believe so seemed an insult to the original of
+the sweet face which looked at him from the window every time he entered
+his brother's room. Jerry was a great trouble to him, and he would not
+have liked to confess to any one how constantly she was in his mind, or
+how many plans he had devised in order to atone for the wrong he knew he
+was doing her. And now his brother had taken her off his hands, and she
+was to be cared for and receive the education which would fit her to
+earn her own livelihood, and make her future life respectable. No
+particular harm was done her after all, and he might now enjoy himself,
+and cast his morbid fancies to the winds, he reflected, as he went
+whistling to his wife's apartment, and told her what he had heard.
+
+For a moment Dolly was speechless with astonishment, and when at last
+she opened her lips, her husband silenced her with that voice and manner
+of which she was beginning to be afraid.
+
+It was none of their business, he said, what Arthur did in his own
+house, provided they were not molested, and if he chose to turn
+schoolmaster, he had a right to do so. For his part, he was glad of it,
+as it saved him the expense of Jerry's education, for if Arthur had not
+taken it in hand, he should; and Dolly was to keep quiet and let the
+child come and go in peace.
+
+After delivering himself of these sentiments, Frank went away, leaving
+his wife to wonder, as she had done more than once, if he, too, were not
+a little crazy, like his brother. But, she said no mare about Jerry's
+coming there, except to suggest that she might at least come in at the
+side door instead of the front, especially on muddy days when she was
+liable to soil the costly carpets. And Jerry, who cared but little how
+she entered the house, if she only got in, came through the kitchen
+after the second day, and wiped her feet upon the mat; and once, when
+her shoes were worse than usual, took them off, lest they should leave a
+track.
+
+It is not our intention to linger over the first few months of Jerry's
+school days at Tracy Park, but rather to hasten on to the summer four
+years after her introduction to Tracy Park as Arthur's pupil. During all
+that time he had never once seemed to grow weary of the task he had
+imposed upon himself, but, on the contrary, his interest had daily
+deepened in the child who developed so rapidly under his training that
+he sometimes looked at her in astonishment, marvelling more and more who
+she was and from whom she had inherited her wonderful memory and power
+to grasp points which are usually far beyond the comprehension of a
+child of ten, or even twelve, and which Maude Tracy could no more have
+mastered than her brother, the stupid Jack. His intellect had not grown
+with his body, and when at thirteen he was asked the question, 'If there
+are five peaches on the table, and Tom eats three of them, how many will
+there be left?' he answered, promptly:
+
+'None, 'cause Tom would eat them all.'
+
+In this reply there was a shrewdness which poor Jack never intended, and
+the laugh which followed his answer confused and bewildered him. There
+was a tutor now at Tracy Park for Jack, but Maude had been transferred
+to Arthur's care. This was wholly due to Jerry, who alone could have
+induced him to let Maude share her instruction. Arthur did not care for
+Maude. She was dull, he said, and would never learn her lessons. But
+Jerry coaxed so hard that Arthur consented at last, and when Jerry had
+been with him about three years, Maude became his pupil, and that of
+Jerry as well, for nearly every day when the lessons were over the two
+little girls might have been seen sitting together under the trees in
+the park, or in some corner of the house, Maude puzzled, and perplexed,
+and worried, and Jerry anxious, decided, and peremptory, as she went
+over and over again with what was so clear to her and so hazy to her
+friend.
+
+'Oh, dear me, suz, what does ail you?' she said, one day, with a stamp
+of her foot, after she had tried in vain to make Maude see through a
+simple sum in long division. 'Can't you remember first to divide, second
+multiply, third subtract, and fourth bring down?'
+
+'No, I can't. I can't remember anything, and if I could, how do I know
+what to divide or what to bring down? I am stupid, and shall never know
+anything,' was Maude's sobbing reply, as she covered her face with her
+slate.
+
+Maude's tears always moved Jerry, who tried to reassure the weeping girl
+with the assurance that perhaps, if she tried very hard, she might some
+time know enough to teach a district school. This was the height of
+Jerry's ambition, to teach a district school and board around; but
+Maude's aspirations were different. She was rich. She was to be a belle
+and wear diamonds and satins like her mother; and so it did not matter
+so much whether she understood long division or not, though it did hurt
+her a little to be so far outstripped by Jerry, who was younger than
+herself.
+
+To Arthur, Jerry was a constant delight and surprise, and nothing
+astonished or pleased him more than the avidity with which she took up
+German. This language was like play to her, and by the time she was ten
+years old she spoke, and read, and wrote it almost as well as Arthur
+himself.
+
+'It takes me back somewhere, I can't tell where,' she said to him; 'and
+I seem to be somebody else than Jerry Crawford, and I hear music and see
+people, and a pale face is close to me, and I get all confused trying to
+remember things which come and go.'
+
+Only once after her first day at the park had she enacted the pantomime
+of the sick woman and the nurse, and then she had done it at Arthur's
+request. But it was not quite as thrilling as at first; the _him_ for
+whom the dying woman had prayed was omitted, and the whole was mixed
+with the Tramp House, and the carpet-bag, and Harold, who was now a
+youth of seventeen, and a student at the high school in Shannondale,
+where he was making as rapid progress in his studies as Jerry was at the
+park.
+
+But Harold's life was not as serene and happy as Jerry's, for it was not
+pleasant for him to hear, as he often did, that he was a charity
+student, supported by Arthur Tracy. Such remarks were very galling to
+the high-spirited boy, and he was constantly revolving all manner of
+schemes by which he could earn money and cease to be dependent. All
+through the summer vacations, which were long ones, he worked at
+whatever he could find to do, sometimes in people's gardens, sometimes
+on their lawns, but oftener in the hay-fields, where he earned the
+most. Here Jerry was not infrequently his companion. She liked to rake
+hay, she said; it came natural to her, and she had no doubt she
+inherited the taste from her mother, who had probably worked in the
+fields in Germany.
+
+One afternoon, when Jerry knew that Harold was busy in one of Mr.
+Tracy's meadows, she started to join him, for he had complained of a
+headache at home, and had expressed a fear that he might not be able to
+finish the task he had imposed upon himself. The road to the field was
+by the Tramp House, which looked so cool and quiet, with its thick
+covering of woodbine and ivy over it, that Jerry turned aside for a
+moment to look into the room which had so great a fascination for her,
+and where she spent so much time. Indeed, she seldom passed near it
+without going in for a moment and standing by the old table which had
+once held her and her dead mother. Things came back to her there, she
+said, and she could almost give a name to the pale-faced woman who
+haunted her so often.
+
+As she entered the damp, dark place now, she started, with an
+exclamation of surprise, which was echoed by another, as Frank Tracy
+sprang up and confronted her. It was not often that he entered the Tramp
+House, and he would not have confessed to any one his superstitious
+dread of it, or that, when he did visit it, he always had a feeling that
+the dead woman found there years ago would start up to accuse him of his
+deceit and hypocrisy. Could he have had his way he would have pulled the
+building down, but it was not his, and when he suggested it to Arthur,
+as he sometimes did, the latter opposed it, saying latterly, since Jerry
+had been so much to him:
+
+'No, no, Frank; let it stand. I like it, because but for it Jerry might
+have perished with her mother, and I should not have had her with me.'
+
+So the Tramp House stood, and grew damper and mustier each year, as the
+moss and ivy gathered on the walls outside, and the dust and cobwebs
+gathered on the walls within. These, however, Jerry was careful to brush
+away, for she had a play house in one corner, and a little work-bench
+and chair, and she often sat there alone and talked to herself, and the
+woman dead so long ago, and to others whose faces were dim and shadowy,
+but whom she had felt sure she had known. Very frequently she went
+through the process of cleaning up, as she called it, and her object in
+stopping there now was, in part, to see if it did not need her care
+again.
+
+'Oh, Mr. Tracy! are you here! How you scared me? I thought it was a
+tramp!' she said, as he came toward her.
+
+'Do you come here often?' he asked, as he offered her his hand.
+
+'Yes, pretty often. I like it, because mother died here, and sometimes I
+feel as if she would make it known to me here who she was. I talk to her
+and ask her to tell me, but she never has. Oh, don't you wish she
+would?'
+
+Frank shuddered involuntarily, for to have Jerry told who she really
+was, was the last thing he could desire, but as a criminal is said
+always to talk about the crime he has committed and is hiding, so Frank,
+when with Jerry, felt impelled to talk with her of the past and what she
+could remember of it. Seating himself upon the bench with her at his
+side, he said:
+
+'And you really believe the woman found here was your mother?'
+
+'Why, yes. Don't you? Who was my mother, if she wasn't?' and Jerry's
+eyes opened wide as he looked at him.
+
+'I don't know, I am sure. Does my brother talk of Gretchen now?' was the
+abrupt reply.
+
+'Yes, at times,' Jerry answered: 'and yesterday, after I sang him a
+little German song, which he taught me, he had them pretty bad--the bees
+in his head, I mean: that is what he calls it when things are mixed; and
+he says he is going to write to her, or her friends.'
+
+'Write to her! I thought he had given that up. I thought he--Did he say,
+"Write to her friends?"' Frank gasped as he felt himself grow cold and
+sick with this threatened danger.
+
+Arthur had seemed so quiet and happy with Jerry, and had said so little
+of Gretchen, that Frank had grown quite easy in his mind, and the black
+shadow of fear did not trouble him quite so much as formerly. But now it
+was over him again, and grew in intensity as he questioned the child.
+
+'Have you ever tried to find out who Gretchen is?' he asked at last.
+
+'No,' she replied, 'but I guess she is his wife.'
+
+'Yes,' Frank said, falteringly, 'his wife; and where do you think she
+lived?'
+
+'Oh, I know that. In Wiesbaden. He told me so once, and it seems as if I
+had been there, too, when he talked about it, and I hear the music and
+see the flowers, and a white-faced woman is with me, not at all like
+mother, who, they say, was ugly and dark; black as a nigger, Tom told me
+once, when he was mad. Was she black?'
+
+Mr. Tracy made no reply to this, but said, suddenly:
+
+'Jerry, do you like me well enough to do me a favor, a great favor?'
+
+'Why, yes, I guess I do. I like you very much, though not as well as I
+do Harold and Mr. Arthur. What do you want?' was Jerry's answer.
+
+After hesitating a moment, Mr. Tracy began:
+
+'There are certain reasons why I ought to know if my brother writes to
+Gretchen, or her friends, or any one in Germany, especially Wiesbaden. A
+letter of that kind might do me a great deal of harm; if he should write
+to any one in Germany, you would, perhaps, he asked to post the letter,
+as he never goes to town?'
+
+He said this interrogatively, and Jerry answered him promptly:
+
+'I think he would give it to me.'
+
+'Yes, well; Jerry, can you keep a secret, and never tell any one what I
+am saying to you?' was Frank's next remark, to which Jerry responded:
+
+'I think I should tell Harold, and, perhaps, Mr. Arthur.'
+
+'No, no, no, Jerry, never!' and Frank laid his hand half menacingly upon
+the little girl's shoulder. 'I have been kind to you, have paid your
+board to Mrs. Crawford ever since you have been there--'
+
+He felt how mean it was to say this, and do not at all resent Jerry's
+quick reply:
+
+'Yes, but Mrs. Peterkin says you do not pay enough.'
+
+'Perhaps not,' he continued, 'but if Mrs. Crawford is satisfied, it
+matters little what Mrs. Peterkin thinks. Jerry, you _must_ do this for
+me,' he went on rapidly, as his fears kept growing. 'You must never tell
+anyone of our conversation, and if my brother writes that letter soon,
+or at any time, you must bring it to me. Will you do it? Great harm
+would come if it were sent--harm to me, and harm to Maude, and--'
+
+'To Maude!' Jerry replied. 'I would do anything for Maude. Yes, I will
+bring the letter to you if he writes one. You are sure it would be right
+for me to do so?'
+
+Frank had touched the right cord when he mentioned his daughter's name,
+for during these years of close companionship the two little girls had
+learned to love each other devotedly, though naturally Jerry's was the
+stronger and less selfish attachment of the two. To her Maude was a
+queen who had a right to tyrannize over and command her if she pleased;
+and as the tyranny was never very severe, and was usually followed by
+some generous act of contrition, she did not mind it at all, and was
+always ready to make up and be friends whenever it suited the capricious
+little lady.
+
+'Yes, I will do it for Maude,' she said again; but there was a troubled
+look on her face, and a feeling in her heart as if, in some way, she was
+false to Arthur in thus consenting to his brother's wishes.
+
+But, she reflected, Arthur was crazy, so people said, and she herself
+knew better than anyone else of his many fanciful vagaries, which, at
+times, took the form of actual insanity. For weeks he would seem
+perfectly rational, and then suddenly his mood would change, and he
+would talk strange things to himself and the child, who was now so
+necessary to him, and who alone had a soothing influence over him. Only
+the day before, as Jerry had told Frank, Arthur had been unusually
+excited, after listening to a simple air which he had taught to her, and
+which, at his request, she sang to him after Maude had gone out and left
+them alone.
+
+'I could swear you were Gretchen, singing to me in the twilight, and
+across the meadow comes the tinkle of the bells where the cows and goats
+are feeding,' he said to her, as he paced up and down the room.'
+
+Then, stopping suddenly, he went up to her, and pushing her soft, wavy
+hair from her forehead, looking long and earnestly into her face.
+
+'Cherry,' he said at last, using the pet name he often gave her, 'you
+_are_ some like Gretchen as she must have been when of your age. Oh, if
+you only were hers and mine! But there was no child; and yet--and yet--'
+
+He seemed to be thinking intently for a moment, and then going to a
+drawer in his writing desk, which Jerry had never seen open before, he
+took out a worn, yellow letter, and ran his eye rapidly over it until he
+found a certain paragraph, which he bade Jerry read.
+
+The paragraph was as follows:
+
+'I have something to tell you when you come, which I am sure will make
+you as glad as I am.'
+
+Jerry read it aloud slowly, for the handwriting was cramped and
+irregular, and then looked up questioningly to Arthur, who said to her:
+
+'What do you think she meant by the something which would make me glad
+as she was?'
+
+'I don't know,' Jerry answered him. 'Who wrote it? Gretchen?'
+
+'Yes, Gretchen; it is her last letter to me, and I never went back to
+see what she meant, for the bees were bad in my head and I forgot
+everything, even Gretchen herself. Poor little Gretchen! What was the
+idea which came to me like a flash of lightning, in regard to this
+letter, when I heard you sing? It is gone, and I cannot recall it.'
+
+There was a worried, anxious look on his face as he put the letter away,
+and went on talking to himself of Gretchen, saying he was going to write
+her again, or her friends, and find out what she meant.
+
+The next day Jerry met Frank in the Tramp House, as we have described,
+and gave him the promise to bring him any letter directed to Germany
+which Arthur might entrust to her. But the promise weighed heavily upon
+her as she walked slowly on towards the field where Harold was at work,
+and where she found him resting for a moment under the shadow of a
+wide-spreading butternut. He looked tired and pale, and there were great
+drops of sweat upon his white forehead, and an expression on his face
+which Jerry did not understand.
+
+Harold was not in a very happy frame of mind. Naturally cheerful and
+hopeful, it was not often that he gave way to fits of despondency, or
+repining at his humble lot, so different from that of the boys of his
+own age, with whom he came in daily contact, both at school and in the
+town.
+
+Dick St. Claire, his most intimate friend, always treated him as if he
+were fully his equal, and often stood between him and the remarks which
+boys made thoughtlessly, and which, while they mean so little, wound to
+the quick such sensitive natures as Harold's. But not even Dick St.
+Claire could keep Tom Tracy in check. With each succeeding year he grew
+more and more supercilious and unbearable, pluming himself upon his
+position as a Tracy of Tracy Park, and this wealth he was to inherit
+from his Uncle Arthur. For the last year he had been at Andover, where
+he had formed a new set of acquaintances, one of whom was spending the
+vacation with him. This was young Fred Raymond, whose home was at Red
+Stone Hall, in Kentucky, and whose parents were in Europe. Between the
+two youths there was but little similarity of taste or disposition, for
+young Raymond represented all that was noble and true, and though proud
+of his State and proud of his name, never assumed the slightest
+superiority over those whom the world considered his inferiors. He was
+Tom's room-mate, and hence the intimacy between them which had resulted
+in Fred's accepting the invitation to Tracy Park. If anything had been
+wanting to complete Tom's estimate of his own importance this visit of
+the Kentuckian would have done it. All his former friends were cut
+except Dick St. Claire, while Harold was as much ignored as if he had
+never existed. Tom did not even see him or recognize him with so much as
+a look, but passed him by as he would any common day laborer whom he
+might chance to meet. All through the summer days, while Harold was
+working until every bone in his body ached, Tom and his friend were
+enjoying themselves in hunting, fishing, driving, or rowing, or lounging
+under the trees in the shady lawns.
+
+That afternoon when Jerry joined him in the hayfield, Tom and the
+Kentuckian had passed him in their fanciful hunting-suits with their
+dogs and guns, but though Harold was within a few yards of them, Tom
+affected not to see him, and kept his head turned the other way, as if
+intent upon some object in the distance.
+
+Leaning upon his rake, Harold watched them out of sight, with a choking
+sensation in his throat as he wondered if it would always be thus with
+him, and if the day would never come when he, too, could know what
+leisure meant, with no thought for the morrow's bread.
+
+'I am Tom's superior in everything but money, and yet he treats me like
+a dog,' he said, as he seated himself upon the grass, where he sat
+fanning himself with his straw hat.
+
+When Jerry appeared in view he brightened at once, for in all the world
+there was not anything half so sweet and lovely to him as the little
+blue-eyed girl who seated herself beside him, and, nestling close to
+him, laid her curly head upon his arm.
+
+'I've come to help you rake the hay,' she said, 'for grandma told me you
+had a headache at noon, and couldn't eat your huckleberry pie. I am
+awfully sorry, Harold, but I ate it myself, it looked so good, instead
+of saving it for your supper. It was nasty and mean in me, and I hope it
+will make me sick.'
+
+But Harold told her he did not care for the pie, and would rather that
+she would eat it if she liked it. Then he questioned her of the park
+house and of Arthur; asking if the bees were often in his head now, or
+had she driven them out.
+
+'No, I guess I haven't. They were awful yesterday and to-day,' Jerry
+replied. 'He was talking of Gretchen all the time. I wonder who she was.
+Sometimes I look at her until it seems to me I have seen her or
+something like her, a paler face with sadder eyes. How he must have
+loved her, better than you or I could ever love anybody; don't you think
+so?'
+
+Harold hesitated a moment, and then replied:
+
+'I don't know, but it seems to me I love you as much as a man could ever
+love another.'
+
+'Phoo! Of course you do; but that's boy love; that isn't like when you
+are old enough to have a beau!' and Jerry laughed merrily, as she sprang
+up, and, taking Harold's rake, began to toss the hay about rapidly,
+bidding him sit still and see how fast she could work in his place.
+
+Harold was very tired, and his head was aching badly, so for a time he
+sat still, watching the graceful movements of the beautiful child, who,
+it seemed to him, was slipping away from him. Constant intercourse with
+a polished man like Arthur Tracy had not been without its effect upon
+her, and there was about her an air which with strangers would have
+placed her at once above the ordinary level of simple country girls.
+This Harold had been the first to detect, and though he rejoiced at
+Jerry's good fortune, there was always with him a dread lest she should
+grow beyond him, and that he should lose the girl he loved so much.
+
+'What if she should think me a clown and a clodhopper, as Tom Tracy
+does?' he said to himself, as he watched her raking up the hay faster,
+and quite as well as he could have done himself. 'I believe I should
+want to die.'
+
+It was impossible that Jerry should have guessed the nature of Harold's
+thoughts, but once, as she passed near him, she dropped her rake, and
+going up to him, wiped his forehead with her apron, and, kissing him
+fondly, said to him:
+
+'Poor, tired boy, is your head awful? You look as if you wanted to
+vomit? Do you?'
+
+'No, Jerry,' Harold answered, laughingly. 'I am not as bad as that. I
+was only thinking and wishing that I were rich and could sometime give
+you and grandma a home as handsome as Tracy Park. How would you like
+it?'
+
+'First-rate, if you were there,' Jerry replied; 'but if you were not I
+shouldn't like it at all. I never mean to live anywhere without you;
+because, you know, I am your little girl, the one you found in the
+carpet-bag, and I love you more than all the world, and will love and
+stand by you forever and ever, amen!'
+
+She said the last so abruptly, and it sounded so oddly, that Harold
+burst into a laugh, and taking up the rake she had dropped, began his
+work again, declaring that the headache was gone, and that he was a
+great deal better.
+
+'Forever and ever, amen!' The words kept repeating themselves over and
+over in Harold's mind as he walked homeward in the gathering twilight
+with Jerry hip-pi-ty-hopping at his side, her hand in his, and her
+tongue running rapidly, as it usually did when with him.
+
+She would 'love and stand by him forever and ever, amen!' It was a
+singular remark for a child, and in after years, when his sky was the
+blackest, the words would come back to the man Harold like so many stabs
+as he whispered in his anguish:
+
+'She has forgotten her promise to "stand by me forever and ever, amen!"'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+MRS. TRACY'S DIAMONDS.
+
+
+Mrs. Tracy was going to have a party--not a general one, like that which
+she gave when our readers first knew her, and Harold Hastings stood at
+the head of the stairs and bade 'the ladies go this way and the
+gentlemen that.' Since Dolly had become so exclusive and a leader of
+fashion, she had ignored general parties and limited her invitations to
+a select few, which, on this occasion, numbered about sixty or seventy.
+But the entertainment was prepared as elaborately as if hundreds had
+been expected, and the hostess was radiant in satin and lace, and
+diamonds, as she received her guests and did the honors of the occasion.
+
+The September night was soft and warm, and the grounds were lighted up,
+while quite a crowd collected near the house to hear the music and watch
+the proceedings.
+
+Mrs. Tracy would have liked to have had Jerry in the upper hall, where
+Harold had once stood.
+
+'It would help to keep the child in her place,' she thought, 'for she is
+getting to feel herself of quite too much consequence, with so much
+attention from Arthur.'
+
+But her husband promptly vetoed the proposition, saying that when Jerry
+Crawford came to the park house to an entertainment it would be as a
+guest, and not as a waiter. So a colored boy stood in the upper hall,
+and a colored boy stood in the lower hall, and there were colored
+waiters everywhere, and Dolly had never been happier or prouder in her
+life: for Governor Markham and his wife, from Iowa, were there, and a
+judge's wife from Springfield--all guests of Grace Atherton, and, in
+consequence, bidden to the party.
+
+Another remarkable feature of the evening was the presence of Arthur in
+the parlors. He had known both Governor Markham and his wife, Ethelyn
+Grant, and had been present at their wedding, and it was mostly on their
+account that he had consented to join in the festivities. Jerry, it is
+true, had done a great deal toward persuading him to go down,
+repeating, in her own peculiar way, what she had heard people say with
+regard to his seclusion from society.
+
+'You just make a hermit of yourself,' she said, 'cooped up here all the
+time. I don't wonder folks say you are crazy. It is enough to make
+anybody crazy, to stay in one or two rooms and see nobody but Charles
+and me. Just dress yourself in your best clothes and go down and be
+somebody, and don't talk of Gretchen all the time! I am tired of it, and
+so is everybody. Give her a rest for one evening, and show the people
+how nice you can be if you only have a mind to.'
+
+Jerry delivered this speech with her hands on her hips, and with all the
+air of a woman of fifty; while Arthur laughed immoderately, and promised
+her to do his best not to disgrace her, and to appear as if he were not
+crazy.
+
+Jerry's anxiety was somewhat like that of a mother for a child whose
+ability she doubts; and, after her supper was over she took her way to
+the park house to see that Arthur was dressed properly for the occasion.
+
+'It would be like him to go without his neck-tie and wear his every-day
+boots,' she thought.
+
+But she found him as faultlessly gotten up as he well could be in his
+old-fashioned evening dress, which sat rather loosely upon him, for he
+had grown thinner with each succeeding year.
+
+Jerry thought him splendid, and watched him admiringly as if he left the
+room and started for the parlors, with her last injunction ringing in
+her ears:
+
+'Not a word out of your head about Gretchen, but try and act as if you
+were not crazy.'
+
+'I'll do it, Cherry. Don't you worry,' he said to her, with a little
+reassuring nod, as he descended the stairs.
+
+And he kept his promise well. There was no word out of his head about
+Gretchen, and no one ignorant of the fact would ever have suspected that
+his mind was unsettled as he moved among the guests, talking to one
+another with that pleasant, courtly manner so natural to him. A very
+close observer, however, might have seen his eyes dilate and even flash
+with some sudden emotion when his brother's wife passed him and her
+brilliant diamonds, his gift, sparkled in the bright gaslight. The
+setting was rather peculiar, but Mrs. Tracy liked it for the
+peculiarity, and had never had it changed. She was very proud of her
+diamonds, they were so large and clear, and she had the satisfaction of
+knowing that there were no finer, if as fine, in town. She seemed to
+know, too, just in what light to place herself in order to show them to
+the best advantage, and at times the gleams of fire from them were
+wonderful, and once Arthur put his hand before his eyes as she passed
+him, and muttering something to himself moved quickly to another part of
+the room. This was late in the evening, and soon after he excused
+himself to those around him, saying it was not often that he dissipated
+like this, and as he was growing tired he must say good-night.
+
+The next morning Charles found him looking very pale and worn, with a
+bad pain in his head. He had rested badly, he said, and would have his
+coffee in bed, after which Charles was to leave him alone and not come
+back until he rang for him, as he might possibly fall asleep.
+
+It was very late that morning when the family breakfasted, and as they
+lingered around the table, discussing the events of the previous night,
+it was after eleven o'clock when at last Mrs. Tracy went up to her room.
+
+As she ascended the stairs to the upper hall, she caught a glimpse of
+Harold disappearing through a door at the lower end of the hall,
+evidently with the intention of going down the back stairway and making
+his exit from the house by the rear door, rather than the front. Mrs.
+Tracy knew that he was sometimes sent by his grandmother on some errand
+to Arthur, and giving no further thought to the matter went on to her
+own room, which her maid had put in order. All the paraphernalia of last
+night's toilet were put away, diamonds and all. Contrary to her usual
+custom, for she was very careful of her diamonds, and very much afraid
+they would be stolen, she had left them in their box on her dressing
+bureau. But they were not there now. Sarah, who knew where she kept
+them, had put them away, of course, and she gave them no more thought
+until three days later, when she received an invitation to a lunch party
+at Brier Hill.
+
+'I shall wear my dark blue satin and diamonds,' she said to her maid,
+who was dressing her hair, but the diamonds, when looked for, were not
+in their usual place.
+
+Sarah had not put them away, nor in fact had she seen them at all, for
+they were not upon the bureau when she went to arrange her mistress'
+room the morning after the party. The diamonds were gone, nor could any
+amount of searching bring them to light. And they looked everywhere, in
+every box and drawer and corner, and Mrs. Tracy grew cold and sick and
+faint, and finally broke down in a fit of crying, as she explained to
+her husband that her beautiful diamonds were stolen. She called it that,
+now, and the whole household was roused and questioned as to when and
+where each had last seen the missing jewels. But no one had seen them
+since they were in the lady's ears, and she knew she had left them upon
+her bureau when she went down to breakfast. She was positive of that. No
+one had been in the room, or that part of the house, except Tom, Fred
+Raymond, Charles and Sarah. Of these the first two were not to be
+thought of for a moment, while the last two had been in the family for
+years, and were above suspicion. Clearly, then, it was some one from
+outside, who had watched his or her portunity and come in.
+
+Had any one been seen about the house at that hour? Yes, Charles
+remembered having met Harold Hastings coming out of the rear door;
+'but,' he added, 'I would sooner suspect myself than him.'
+
+And this was the verdict of all except Mrs. Tracy, who now recalled the
+fact that she, too, had seen Harold 'sneaking through the door as if he
+did not wish to be seen.'
+
+That was the way she expressed herself, and her manner had in it more
+meaning even than her words.
+
+'What was Harold doing in the house? What was his errand? Does any one
+know?' she asked, but no one volunteered any information until Charles
+suggested that he probably came on some errand to Mr. Arthur; he would
+inquire, he said, and he went at once to his master's room.
+
+Arthur was sitting by his writing-desk, busy with a letter, and did not
+turn, his head when Charles asked if he remembered whether Harold
+Hastings had been to his room the morning after the party.
+
+'No, I have not seen him for more than a week,' was the reply.
+
+'But he must have been here that morning,' Charles continued. 'Try and
+think.'
+
+'I tell you no one was here. I am not quite demented yet. Now go. Don't
+you see you are interrupting me?' was Arthur's rather savage response,
+and without having gained any satisfactory information Charles returned
+to the group anxiously awaiting him:
+
+'_Well_?' was Mrs. Tracy's sharp interrogatory, to which Charles
+responded:
+
+'He does not remember what happened that morning; but that is not
+strange. He was very tired and unusually excited after the party, and
+when he is that way he does not remember anything. Harold might have
+been there a dozen times and he would forget it.'
+
+'Bring the boy, then. He will know what he was doing here,' was Mrs.
+Tracy's next peremptory remark, and her husband said to her,
+reproachfully:
+
+'Surely you do not intend to charge him with the theft?'
+
+'I charge no one with the theft until it is proven on him; but I must
+see the boy and know what he was doing here. I never liked this free
+running in and out of those people in the lane. I always knew something
+would come of it,' Mrs. Tracy said, and Charles was despatched for
+Harold.
+
+He found him mowing the lawn for a gentleman whose premises joined Tracy
+Park, and without any explanation told him that he was wanted
+immediately at the park house.
+
+'But it is noon,' Harold said, glancing up at the sun. 'And there is
+Jerry coming to call me to dinner.'
+
+'No; better come at once. Jerry can go with you, if she likes,' Charles
+said, feeling intuitively that in the little girl Harold would find a
+champion.
+
+Harold left his lawn mower, and explaining to Jerry, who had come up to
+him, that he had been summoned to the park house, whither she could
+accompany him if she chose, he started with her and Charles, whom he
+questioned as to what was wanted with him.
+
+'Were you in the park house the morning after the party? That would be
+Wednesday,' Charles asked.
+
+'Yes, I went to see Mr. Arthur Tracy, but could get no answer to my
+knock,' Harold promptly replied, while his face flushed scarlet, and he
+seemed annoyed at something. He could not explain to Charles his motive
+in going to see Arthur, as, now that the first burst of indignation was
+over, he felt half ashamed of it himself. On the afternoon of the day of
+the party he had been at Grassy Spring, helping Mrs. St. Claire with her
+flowers, and after his work was done he had gone with Dick into the
+billiard-room, where they found Tom Tracy and his friend, young Raymond.
+They had come over for a game, and the four boys were soon busily
+engaged in the contest. Harold, who had often played with Dick and was
+something of an expert, proved himself the most skilful of them all,
+greatly to the chagrin of Tom, who had not recognized him even by a nod.
+Dick, on the contrary, had introduced him to Fred Raymond with as much
+ceremony as if he had been the Governor's son, instead of the boy who
+sometimes worked in his mother's flower garden. And the Kentuckian had
+taken him by the hand and greeted him cordially, with a familiar:
+
+'How d'ye do, Hastings? Glad to make your acquaintance'
+
+There was nothing snobbish about Fred Raymond, whose every instinct was
+gentlemanly and kind, and Harold felt at ease with him at once, and all
+through the game appeared at his best, and quite as well bred as either
+of his companions.
+
+When the play was over Dick excused himself a moment, as he wished to
+speak with his father, who was about driving to town. As he stayed away
+longer than he had intended doing, Tom grew restless and angry, too,
+that Fred should treat Harold Hastings as an equal, for the two had at
+once entered into conversation, comparing notes with regard to their
+standing in school and discussing the merits of Cicero and Virgil, the
+latter of which Harold had just commenced.
+
+'We can't wait here all day for Dick,' Tom said. 'Let us go out and look
+at the pictures.'
+
+So they went down the stairs to a long hall, in which many pictures were
+hanging--some family portraits and others, copies of the old masters
+which Mr. St. Claire had brought from abroad. Near one of the portraits
+Fred lingered a long time, commenting upon its beauty, and the
+resemblance he saw in it to little Nina St. Claire, the daughter of the
+house, and whose aunt the original had been. The portrait was not far
+from the stairway which led to the billiard-room, and Harold, who had
+remained behind, and was listlessly knocking the balls, could not help
+hearing all they said:
+
+'By the way, who is that Hastings? I don't think I have seen him before;
+he is a right clever chap,' Fred Raymond said.
+
+Tom replied, in that sneering, contemptuous tone which Harold knew so
+well, and which always made his blood boil and his fingers tingle with a
+desire to knock the speaker down:
+
+'Oh, that's Hal Hastings, a poor boy, who does chores for us and the St.
+Claires. His grandmother used to work at the park house, and so uncle
+Arthur pays for his schooling, and Hal allows it, which I think right
+small in him. I wouldn't be a charity student, anyway, if I never knew
+anything. Besides that, what's the use of education to chaps like him.
+Better stay as he was born. I don't believe in educating the masses, do
+you?'
+
+Of himself Tom could never have thought of all this, but he had heard it
+from his mother, who frequently used the expression 'not to elevate the
+masses,' forgetting that she was once herself a part of the mass which
+she would now keep down.
+
+Just what Fred said in reply Harold did not hear. There was a ringing in
+his ears, and he felt as if every drop of blood in his body was rushing
+to his head as he sat down, dizzy and bewildered, and smarting cruelly
+under the wound he had received this time. He had more than once been
+taunted with his poverty and dependence upon Mr. Tracy, but the taunts
+had never hurt him so before, and he could have cried out in his pain as
+he thought of Tom's words, and knew that in himself there was the making
+of a far nobler manhood than Tom Tracy would ever know.
+
+Was poverty, which one could not help, so terrible a disgrace, an
+insuperable barrier to elevation, and was it mean and small in him to
+accept his education from a man on whom he had no claim? Possibly; and
+if so, the state of things should not continue. He would go to Arthur
+Tracy, thank him for all he had done, and tell him he could receive no
+more from him; that if he had an education, he must get it himself by
+the work of his own hands, and thus be beholden to no one.
+
+Full of this resolution, he went down the stairs and out into the open
+air, which cooled his hot head a little, though it was still throbbing
+terribly as he went through the leafy woods toward home.
+
+In the lane he saw Jerry coming toward him, with her sun-bonnet hanging
+down her back and her soft, curly hair blowing around her forehead. The
+moment she saw him she knew something was the matter, and, hastening her
+steps to run, asked him what had happened, and why he looked so white
+and mad.
+
+Harold was sure of sympathy from Jerry, and he told her his story, which
+roused her to a high pitch of indignation.
+
+'The miserable, nasty, sneaking Tom!' she said, stopping short and
+emphasizing each adjective with a stamp of her foot as if she were
+trampling upon the offending Tom. 'I wish I had heard him. I'd have
+scratched his eyes out! talking of you as if you were dirt! I hate him,
+and I told him so the other day, and spit at him when he tried to kiss
+me.'
+
+'Kiss you! Tom Tracy kiss you!' Harold exclaimed, forgetting his own
+grief in this insult to Jerry; for it seemed to him little less than
+profanity for lips like Tom Tracy's to touch his little Jerry.
+
+'No, he didn't, but he tried, right before that boy from Kentucky; but I
+wriggled away from him, and bit him, too, and he called me a cat, and
+said he guessed I wouldn't mind if _you_ or Dick St. Claire tried to
+kiss me, and I shouldn't; but I'll fight _him_ and Bill Peterkin every
+time. I wonder why all the boys want to kiss me so much!'
+
+'I expect it is because you have just the sweetest mouth in the world,'
+Harold said, stooping down and kissing the lips which seemed made for
+that use alone.
+
+This little episode had helped somewhat to quiet Harold's state of mind,
+but did not change his resolve to speak to Mr. Tracy, and tell him that
+he could not receive any more favors from his hands. He would, however,
+wait until to-morrow, as Jerry bade him to.
+
+'You will worry him so that he will be crazier than a loon at the
+party,' she said, and so Harold waited, but started for the park the
+next morning as soon as he thought Mr. Tracy would see him.
+
+He had rung at the door of the rear hall, but as no one heard him he
+ventured in, as he had sometimes done before, when sent for Jerry if it
+rained, and ascending the stairs to the upper hall, knocked two or three
+times at Arthur's door, first gently, and then louder as there came no
+response.
+
+'He cannot be there, and I must come again,' he thought as he retraced
+his steps, reaching the door at the lower end of the hall just as Mrs.
+Tracy came up the broad staircase on her way to her room.
+
+As that day wore on, and the next, and the next, Harold began to care
+less for Tom's insult, and to think that possibly he had been hasty in
+his determination to decline Arthur's assistance, especially as he meant
+to pay back every dollar when he was a man. He would at all events wait
+a little, he thought, and so had made no further effort to see Mr.
+Tracy, when Charles found him, and told he was wanted at the park house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+SEARCHING FOR THE DIAMONDS.
+
+
+They went directly to Mrs. Tracy's room, where they found that lady in a
+much higher fever of excitement than when she first discovered her loss.
+All the household had assembled in the hall and in her room, except
+Arthur, who sat in his library, occasionally stopping to listen to the
+sound of the many voices, and to wonder why there was much noise.
+
+Tom was there with his friend, Fred Raymond, anxiously awaiting the
+arrival of Harold, whose face wore a look of wonder and perplexity which
+deepened into utter amazement as Mrs. Tracy angrily demanded of him what
+his business was in the hall on Wednesday morning when she saw him
+sneaking through the door.
+
+'Where had you been, and did you see my diamonds? Somebody has stolen
+them,' she said, while Harold gazed at her in utter astonishment.
+
+'Somebody stolen your diamonds!' he repeated, without the shadow of an
+idea that she could in any way connect him with a theft; nor would the
+idea have come to him at all, if Tom had not said to him with a sneer:
+
+'Better own up, Hal, and restore the property. It is your easiest way
+out of it.'
+
+Then he comprehended, and had Tom knocked him senseless the effect could
+not have been greater. With lips as white as ashes and fists tightly
+clenched, he stood, shaking like a leaf and staring helplessly, first at
+one and then at another, unable to speak until his eyes fell on Jerry,
+whose face was a study. She had thrown her head forward and on one side,
+and was looking intently at Tom Tracy, while her blue eyes flashed fire,
+and her whole attitude was like that of a tiger ready to pounce upon its
+prey. And when Harold said faintly, 'Ask Jerry; she knows,' she did
+pounce upon Tom, not bodily, but with her tongue, pouring out her words
+so rapidly and mingling with them so much German that it was almost
+impossible to understand all she said.
+
+'You miserable, good-for-nothing, nasty fellow,' she began. 'Do you dare
+accuse Harold of stealing! Stealing! You, who are not fit to tie his
+shoes! And do you want to know why he was here that morning? I can tell
+you; but no, I won't tell _you_! I won't speak to you! I'll never speak
+to you again; and if you try to kiss me as you did the other day,
+I'll--I'll scratch out every single one of your eyes! _You_ twit Harold
+for being poor, and call him a charity! What are you but a charity
+yourself, I'd like to know! Is this your house? No, sir! It is Mr.
+Arthur's! Everything is Mr. Arthur's, and if you don't quit being so
+mean to Harold I'll tell him every single nasty thing I know about you!
+Then see what he will do!'
+
+As Jerry warmed with her subject, every look, every gesture, and every
+tone of her voice was like Arthur's, and Frank watched with a
+fascination which made him forget everything else, until she turned
+suddenly to him, and in her own peculiar style and language told him why
+Harold had come to the park house that morning when the diamonds were
+missing.
+
+'I advised him to come,' she said, with all the air of a grown woman,
+'and I said I'd stand by him, and I will, forever and ever, amen!'
+
+The words dropped from her lips the more maturely, perhaps, because she
+had used them once before with reference to the humiliated boy, to whose
+pale, set face there came a smile as he heard them again, and stretching
+out his hand he laid it on Jerry's curly head with a caressing motion
+which told plainer than words could have done of his affection for and
+trust in her.
+
+What more Jerry might have said was prevented by the appearance of a new
+actor upon the scene in the person of Arthur himself. He had borne the
+noise and confusion as long as he could, and then had rung for Charles
+to enquire what it meant. But Charles was too much absorbed with other
+matters to heed the bell, though it rang three times sharply and loudly.
+At last, as no one came, and the bustle outside grew louder, and Jerry's
+voice was distinctly heard, excited and angry, Arthur started to see for
+himself what had happened.
+
+'Oh, Mr. Arthur,' Jerry cried, as she caught sight of him coming down
+the hall, 'I was just going after you, to come and turn Tom out of
+doors, and everybody else who says that Harold took Mrs. Tracy's
+diamonds. She has lost them, and Tom--'
+
+But here she was interrupted by Tom himself, who, always afraid of his
+uncle, and now more afraid than ever because of the fiery gleam in his
+eyes, stammered out that he had not accused Harold, nor any one; that he
+only knew the diamonds were gone and could not have gone without help.
+
+'Do you mean those stones your mother flashed in my eyes that night?
+Serves her right if she has lost them,' Arthur said, without manifesting
+the slightest interest or concern in the matter.
+
+But when Jerry began her story, which she told rapidly in German, he
+became excited at once, and his manner was that of a maniac, as he
+turned fiercely upon Tom, denouncing him as a coward and a liar, and
+threatening to turn him out of the house if he dared harbor such a
+suspicion against Harold Hastings.
+
+'I'll turn you all into the street,' he continued, 'if you are not
+careful, and bring Harold and Jerry here to live; then see if I can have
+peace. Diamonds, indeed! what has a poor man's wife to do with
+diamonds? Gretchen's diamonds, too! If they are lost, search the house,
+but never accuse Harold again.'
+
+At this paint Arthur wandered off into German, which no one could
+understand except Jerry, who stood, holding fast to his arm, her face
+flushed and triumphant at Harold's victory and Tom's defeat; but as the
+tirade in German went on, she started suddenly forward, and with clasped
+hands and staring eyes stood confronting Arthur until he had ceased
+speaking, and with a wave of his hand signified that he was through and
+his audience dismissed. Jerry, however, did not move, but stood
+regarding him with a frightened, questioning expression in her face,
+which was lost upon the spectators, who were too much interested in the
+all-absorbing topic to notice anyone particularly.
+
+Tom was the first to go away, and his example was followed by all the
+servants, except Charles, who succeeded in getting his master back to
+his room and quieting him somewhat, though he kept talking to himself of
+diamonds, and Paris, and Gretchen, who, he said, should not he wronged.
+
+'I am sorry, Harold, that this thing has happened. I have no idea that
+you know anything of the matter. I would as soon suspect my own son,'
+Frank said to Harold, as he was leaving the house.
+
+With this grain of comfort, the boy went slowly home, humiliated and cut
+to the heart with the indignity put upon him; while Jerry walked
+silently at his side, never speaking a word until they were nearly home,
+when she said, suddenly:
+
+'I know where the diamonds are, but I shan't tell now while there is
+such a fuss;' but Harold was too much absorbed in his own thoughts to
+pay much attention to the remark, although it recurred to him years
+after, when the diamonds came up to confront him again.
+
+It did not take long for the whole town to know of Mrs. Tracy's loss.
+The papers were full of it. The neighbors talked of it constantly, and
+two detectives were employed to work the matter up and discover the
+thief, if possible. A thorough search was also made at the park house.
+Every servant was examined and cross-examined, and all their trunks and
+boxes searched; every nook and corner and room was gone through in the
+most systematic order, even to Arthur's apartments. This last was
+merely done as a matter of form, and to let the indignant servant see
+that no partiality was shown, the polite officers explained to Arthur,
+who at first refused to let them in, but who finally opened the door
+himself, and bade them go where they liked.
+
+Half hidden among the cushions of the sofa from which Arthur had arisen
+when he let the officers in and to which he returned again, was Jerry,
+her face pale to her lips and her eyes like the eyes of some haunted
+animal, when she saw the policemen cross the threshold.
+
+After her return home the previous day she had been unusually taciturn
+and had taken no part in the conversation relative to the missing
+diamonds, but just before going to bed she said to Harold:
+
+'What will they do with the one who took the diamonds, if they find
+him?'
+
+'Send him to state prison,' Harold answered.
+
+'And what do they do to them in state prison?' Jerry continued.
+
+'Cut their hair off; make them eat bread and water and mush, and sleep
+on a board, and work awful hard,' was Harold's reply, given at random
+and without the least suspicion why the question had been asked.
+
+Jerry said no more, but the next morning she started for the park house,
+which she knew was to be searched, and going to Mr. Arthur's room looked
+him wistfully in the face as she asked in a whisper:
+
+'Are they found?'
+
+'Found! What found?' he said, as if all recollection of the missing
+jewels had passed entirely from his mind.
+
+'The diamonds; Mrs. Tracy's diamonds; the ones you gave her,' was
+Jerry's answer.
+
+For a moment, Arthur looked perplexed and bewildered and confused, and
+seemed trying to recall something which would not come at his bidding.
+
+'I don't know anything about it,' he said at last. 'I don't seem to
+think of anything, my head is so thick with all the noise there was here
+yesterday and the tumult this morning. Search-warrants, Charles says,
+and two strange men driving up so early. Who are they, Jerry?'
+
+'Police, come to search the house; search everybody and everything.
+Ain't you afraid?' Jerry said.
+
+'Afraid? No: why should I be afraid? Why, child, how white you are, and
+what makes you tremble so? You didn't take the diamonds,' was Arthur's
+response, as he drew the little girl close to him and looked into her
+pallid face.
+
+'Mr. Arthur,' Jerry began, very low, as if afraid of being heard, 'if I
+should give Maude something for her very own, and she should accept and
+keep it a good while, and then some day I should take it from her, when
+she did not know it, and hide it, and not give it up, would that be
+stealing?'
+
+'Certainly. Why do you ask?'
+
+Jerry did not say why she asked, but put the same question to him she
+had put to Harold:
+
+'If they find the one who took the diamonds will they send him to state
+prison?'
+
+'Undoubtedly. They ought to.'
+
+'And cut off his hair?'
+
+She was threading Arthur's luxuriant locks caressingly, and almost
+pityingly, with her fingers as she asked the last question, to which he
+replied, shortly:
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And make him eat bread and water and mush?'
+
+'Yes; I believe so.'
+
+'And sleep on a board?'
+
+'Yes, or something as bad.'
+
+'And make him work awful hard until his hands are blistered?'
+
+Now she had in hers Arthur's hands, soft and white as a woman's, and
+seemed to be calculating how much hard work it would take to blister
+hands like these.
+
+'Yes, work till his hands drop off,' Arthur said.
+
+With a shudder, she continued:
+
+'I could not bear it: could you?'
+
+'Bear it? No; I should die in a week. Why, what does ail you? You are
+shaking like a leaf. What are you afraid of?'
+
+'I don't know; only state prison seems so terrible, and they are looking
+everywhere. What if they should come in here?'
+
+'Come in here? Impossible, unless they break the door down,' Arthur
+replied; and then Jerry said to him:
+
+'If they do, suppose you lie down and let me cover you with the afghan
+and cushions?'
+
+'But I don't want to lie down and be smothered with cushions,' Arthur
+returned, puzzled, and wondering at the excitement of the child, who
+nestled close to his side and held fast to his hand, as if she were
+guarding him, or expected him to guard her, while the examination went
+on outside, and the frightened and angry servants submitted to having
+their boxes and trunks examined.
+
+At last footsteps were heard on the stairs and the sound of strange
+voices, mingled with that of Frank, who was protesting against his
+brother's rooms being entered.
+
+'You will lose every servant you have if we do not serve all alike,' was
+the answer.
+
+Then Frank knocked at his brother's door and asked admittance.
+
+'We must do it to pacify the servants,' he said, as Arthur refused,
+bidding him go about him business.
+
+After a little further expostulation Arthur arose, and, unlocking the
+door, bade them enter and look as long as they pleased and where they
+pleased.
+
+It was a mere matter of form, for not a drawer or box was disturbed; but
+Jerry's breath came in gasps, and her eyes were like saucers, as she
+watched the men moving from place to place, and then looked timidly at
+Arthur to see how he was taking it. He took it very coolly, and when it
+was over and the men were about to leave, he bade them come again as
+often as they liked; they would always find him there ready to receive
+them, but the diamonds--_nix_.
+
+This last he said in a low tone as he turned to Jerry, who, the moment
+they were alone and he had seated himself beside her, put her head on
+his arm and burst into a hysterical fit of crying.
+
+'Why, Cherry, what is it? Why are you crying so?' he asked, in much
+concern.
+
+'Oh, I don't know,' the sobbed; 'only I was so scared all the time they
+were in the room. What if they had found them! What if they should think
+that--that--_I_ took them, and should send me to prison, and cut off my
+hair: and make me eat bread and water and mush, which I hate!'
+
+Arthur looked at her a moment, and then with a view to comfort her,
+said, laughingly:
+
+'They would not send you to prison, for I would go in your stead.'
+
+'Would you? Could you? I mean could somebody go for another somebody, if
+they wanted to ever go much?' Jerry asked, eagerly, as she lifted her
+tear-stained face to Arthur's.
+
+Without clearly understanding her meaning, and with only a wish to quiet
+her, Arthur answered, at random:
+
+'Certainly. Have you never heard of people who gave life for another's?
+So, why not be a substitute, and go to prison, if necessary?'
+
+'Yes,' Jerry answered, with a long-drawn breath, and the cloud lifted a
+little from her face.
+
+After a moment, however, she asked, abruptly:
+
+'Suppose the one who took the diamonds will not give them up, and
+somebody else knows where they are, ought that somebody else tell?'
+
+'Certainly, or be an accessory to the crime,' was Arthur's reply.
+
+Jerry did not at all know what an accessory was, but it had an awful
+sound to her, and she asked:
+
+'What do they do to an accessory? Punish her--him, I mean--just the
+same?'
+
+'Yes, of course,' Arthur said, scarcely heeding what she was asking him,
+and never dreaming of the wild fancy which had taken possession of her.
+
+That one could go to prison in another's stead, and that an accessory
+would be punished equally with the criminal, were the two ideas distinct
+in her mind when she at last arose to go, saying to Arthur, as she stood
+in the door:
+
+'You are sure you are not afraid to have them come here again, if they
+take it into their heads to do so?'
+
+'Not in the least; they can search my rooms every day and welcome, if
+they like,' was Arthur's reply.
+
+'Well, that beats me!' Jerry said aloud to herself, with a nod for every
+word, as she went down the stairs and started for home, taking the Tramp
+House on her way. 'I guess I'll go in there and think about it,' she
+said, and entering the deserted building, she sat down upon the bench
+and began to wonder if she _could do it_, if worst came to worst, as it
+might.
+
+'Yes, I could for him, and I'll never tell; I'll be that thing he said,
+and a substitute, too, if I can,' she thought, 'though I guess it would
+kill me. Oh, I hope I shan't have to do it! I mean to say a prayer about
+it, anyway.'
+
+And kneeling down in the damp, dark room, Jerry prayed, first, that it
+might never be found out, and second, that if it were she might not be
+called to account as an accessory, but might have the courage to be the
+substitute, and stand by him forever and ever, amen!'
+
+'I may as well begin to practice, and see if I can bear it,' she
+thought, as she walked slowly home, where she astonished Mrs. Crawford
+by asking her to make some mush for dinner.
+
+'Mush! Why, child, I thought you hated it' Mrs. Crawford exclaimed.
+
+'I did hate it,' Jerry replied, 'but I want it now real bad. Make it for
+me, please. Harold likes it, don't you, Hally?'
+
+Harold did like it very much; and so the mush was made, and Jerry forced
+herself to swallow it in great gulps, and made up her mind that she
+could not stand that any way. She preferred bread and water. So, for
+supper she took bread and water and nothing else, and went up to bed us
+unhappy and nervous as a healthy, growing child well could be.
+
+She had tried the mush, and the bread and water, and now she meant to
+try the shorn head, which was the hardest of all, for she had a pride in
+her hair, which so many had told her was beautiful.
+
+Standing before her little glass, with the lamp beside her, she looked
+at it admiringly for a while, turning her head from side to side to see
+the bright ringlets glisten; then, with an unsteady hand the severed,
+one by one, the shining tresses, on which her tears fell like rain as
+she gathered them in a paper and put them away, wondering if the prison
+shears would cut closer or shorter, and wondering if it would make any
+difference that she was only a substitute, or at most an accessory.
+
+It was a strange idea which had taken possession of her, and a senseless
+one, but it was terribly real to her, and that little shorn head
+represented as noble and complete a sacrifice as was ever made by older
+and wiser people. There was no hard board to sleep upon, and so she took
+the floor, with a pillow under her head and a blanket over her,
+wondering the while if this were not a more luxurious couch than
+convicts, who had stolen diamonds, were accustomed to have.
+
+'Why, Jerry, what have you done?' and 'Oh, Jerry, how you look!' were
+the ejaculatory remarks which greeted her next morning, when she went
+down to her breakfast of bread and water, for she would take nothing
+else.
+
+'Why did you do it?' Mrs. Crawford asked a little angry and a good deal
+astonished; but Jerry only answered at first with her tears, as Harold
+jeered at her forlorn appearance and called her a picked chicken.
+
+'Maude's hair is short, and all the girls', and mine was always in my
+eyes and snarled awfully,' she said at last, and this was all the excuse
+she would give for what she had done; while for her persisting in a
+bread and water diet she would give no reason for three or four days.
+Then she said to Harold, suddenly:
+
+'You told me that the one who stole the diamonds would have to eat bread
+and water and have his head shaved, and I am trying to see how it would
+seem--am playing that I am the man, and in prison; but I find it very
+hard, I don't believe I can stand it. Oh, Harold, do you think they will
+ever find the diamonds? I am so tired and hungry, and the blackberry pie
+we had for dinner did look so good!'
+
+'Jerry,' Harold exclaimed, in amazement, and but dimly comprehending her
+real meaning, 'you are crazy, to be playing you are a convict! And is
+that what you have been doing?'
+
+'Ye-es,' Jerry sobbed; 'but I can't bear it, and I hope they will not
+find him,'
+
+'Him! Who?' Harold asked.
+
+'The one who took the diamonds,' she replied.
+
+'And I hope they will. He ought to be found and punished. Think what
+harm he has done to me by letting them accuse me,' Harold answered,
+indignantly.
+
+'No, no, Hally,' Jerry replied. 'No one accused you but Tom, and he is
+meaner than dirt; and if they did think you took them, and if you had to
+go, I should not let you; I should go in your place. I could do it for
+you and Mr. Arthur, but for no one else. Oh, I hope they will never find
+them.'
+
+She put her hands to her head, and looked so white and faint that
+Harold was alarmed, and took her at once to his mother, who, scarcely
+less frightened than himself, made her lie down, and brought her a piece
+of toast and a cup of milk, which revived her a little. But the strain
+upon her nerves for the last few days, and the fasting on bread and
+water proved too much for the child, who for a week or more lay up in
+her little room, burning with fever, and talking strange things at
+intervals, of diamonds, and state prison, and accessories, and
+substitutes, the last of which she said she was, assuring some one to
+whom she seemed to be talking that she would never tell, never!
+
+Every day Arthur came and sat for an hour by her bed, and held her hot
+hands in his, and listened to her talk, and marvelled at her shorn head,
+which he did not like. Whatever he said to her was spoken in German, and
+as she answered in the same tongue, no one understood what they said to
+each other, though Harold, who understood a few German words, knew that
+she was talking of the diamonds, and the prison, and the substitute.
+
+'I shall _never_ tell!' she said to Arthur, 'and I shall go! I can bear
+it better than you. It is not that which makes my headache so. It's--oh,
+Mr. Arthur, I thought you so good, and I am so sorry about the
+diamonds--Mrs. Tracy was so proud of them. Can't you contrive to get
+them back to her? I could, if you would let me. I am thinking all the
+time how to do it, and never let her know, and the back of my head aches
+so when I think.'
+
+Arthur could not guess what she really meant, except that the lost
+diamonds troubled her, and that she wished Mrs. Tracy to have them.
+Occasionally his brows would knit together, and he seemed trying to
+recall something which perplexed him, and which her words had evidently
+suggested to his mind.
+
+'Cherry,' he said to her one day when he came as usual, and her first
+eager question was, 'Have they found them?' 'Jerry, try and understand
+me. Do you know where the diamonds are?'
+
+Instantly into Jerry's eyes there came a scared look, but she answered,
+unhesitatingly:
+
+'Yes, don't you?'
+
+'No,' was the prompt reply; 'though it seems to me I did know, but there
+has been so much talk about them, and you are so sick, that everything
+has gone from my head, and the bees are stinging me frightfully. Where
+are the diamonds?'
+
+But by this time Jerry was in the prison, sleeping on a board and eating
+bread and mush, and Arthur failed to get any satisfaction from her.
+Indeed, they were two crazy ones talking together, with little or no
+meaning in what they said. Only this Arthur gathered--that Jerry would
+be happy if 'Mrs. Tracy had her diamonds again and did not know how they
+came to her. When this dawned upon him he laughed aloud, and kissing her
+hot cheek, said to her:
+
+'I see; I know, and I'll do it. Wait till I come again.
+
+It was ten o'clock in the morning when he left Mrs. Crawford's house;
+there was a train which passed the station at half-past ten, bound for
+New York, and without returning to the park, Arthur took the train,
+sending word to his brother not to expect him home until the next day,
+and not to be alarmed on his account, as he was going to New York and
+would take care of himself.
+
+Why he had gone Frank could not guess, and he waited in much anxiety for
+his return. It was evening when he came home, seeming perfectly composed
+and well, but giving no reason for his sudden journey to the city. His
+first inquiry was for Jerry, and his second, if anything had been heard
+of the diamonds. On being answered in the negative, he remarked:
+
+'Those rascally detectives are bunglers, and oftentimes would rather let
+the culprit escape than catch him. I doubt if you ever see the jewels
+again. But no matter; it will all come right. Tell your wife not to
+fret,'
+
+The next morning when Mrs. Tracy went to her room after breakfast she
+was astonished to find upon her dressing bureau a velvet box with
+Tiffany's name upon it, and inside an exquisite set of diamonds; not as
+fine as those she had lost, or quite as large, but white, and clear, and
+sparkling as she took them in her hand with a cry of delight, and ran
+with them to her husband. Both knew from whence they came, and both went
+at once to Arthur, who, to his sister-in-law's profuse expressions of
+gratitude, replied indifferently:
+
+'Don't bother me with thanks; it worries me. I bought them to please
+the little girl, who talks about them all the time. She will yet well
+now, I am going to tell her.'
+
+He found Jerry better, and perfectly sane. She was very glad to see him,
+though she seemed somewhat constrained, and shrank from him a little,
+when he sat down beside her. Her first rational question had been for
+him, and her second for the diamonds; were they found, and if not, were
+they still looking for them.
+
+'No, they have not found them,' Harold had said, 'and the officers are
+still hunting for the thief, while the papers are full of the reward
+offered to any one who will return them. Five hundred dollars now, for
+Mr. Arthur has added two hundred to the first sum. He has quite waked up
+to the matter. You know he seemed very indifferent at first.'
+
+'Mr. Arthur offered two hundred more!' Jerry exclaimed. 'Well, that
+beats me!'
+
+This was Mrs. Crawford's favorite expression, which Jerry had caught, as
+she did most of the peculiarities in speech and manner of those about
+her.
+
+'Two hundred dollars! He must be crazy.'
+
+'Of course he is. He don't know what he does or says half the time, and
+especially since you have been sick,' Harold said.
+
+'Sick!' Jerry repeated, quickly. 'Have I been sick, and is that why I am
+in bed so late? I thought you had come in to wake me up, and I was glad,
+for I have had horrid dreams.'
+
+Harold told her she had been in bed since the day of the investigation,
+when she came from the park house with a dreadful headache.
+
+'And you've been crazy, too, as a loon,' he continued, 'and talked the
+queerest things about state prison, and hard boards, and bread and
+water, and accessories, and substitutes, and so on. Seemed as if you
+thought you were a felon, and a body would have supposed that you had
+either taken the diamonds yourself or else knew who did, the way you
+went on by spells.'
+
+'Oh, Harold!' Jerry gasped, while her face grew spotted and the
+perspiration came out upon her forehead. 'Did I speak anybody's name?'
+
+'No,' Harold replied. 'I could not make you do that. I asked you ever
+so many times if you knew who took the diamonds, and you said "Yes," but
+when I asked who it was, you always answered, "Don't you wish you knew?"
+and that was all I could get out of you. Mr. Arthur was here every day,
+and sometimes twice a day, but you spoke German to him. Still I knew it
+was about the diamonds, for I understood that word. He was not here
+yesterday at all. There, hark! I do believe he is coming now. Don't you
+know who is said to be near when you are talking about him?'
+
+And, with a laugh, Harold left the room just as Arthur entered it.
+
+'Well, Cherry,' he said to her, as he drew a chair to her bedside, 'Mrs.
+Crawford tells me the bees are out of your head this morning, and I am
+glad. I have some good news for you. Mrs. Tracy has some diamonds, and
+is the happiest woman in town.'
+
+Jerry had not noticed his exact words, and only understood that Mrs.
+Tracy had found her diamonds.
+
+'Oh, Mr. Arthur, I am so glad!' the cried; and springing up in bed, she
+threw both arms around his neck and held him fast, while she sobbed
+hysterically.
+
+'There, there, child! Cherry, let go. You throttle me. You are pulling
+my neck-tie all askew, and my head spins like a top,' Arthur said, as he
+unclasped the clinging arms and put the little girl back upon her
+pillow, where she lay for a moment, pale and exhausted, with the light
+of a great joy shining in her eyes.
+
+'Did she know where they came from? how did you manage it? Are you sure
+she did not suspect!' she asked.
+
+'I put them on her dressing-bureau while she was at breakfast,' he
+replied, 'and when she came up there they were--large solitaire
+ear-rings and a bar with five stones, not quite as large or as fine as
+the ones she lost, but the best I could find at Tiffany's. Why, Jerry,
+what is the matter? You do not look glad a bit. I thought you wanted me
+to give them to her surreptitiously, and I did,' he continued, as the
+expression of Jerry's face changed to one of blank dismay and
+disappointment, and the tears gathered in her eyes.
+
+'I did--I do,' she said; 'but I meant, not new ones, but her very
+own--the ones you gave her.'
+
+For a moment Arthur sat looking at her with a perplexed and troubled
+expression, as if wondering what she could mean, and why he had so
+utterly failed to please her; then he said, slowly:
+
+'The ones I gave her? You make my head swim trying to remember, and the
+bumble-bees are black-faced, instead of white, and stinging me
+dreadfully. I wish you would say nothing more of the diamonds. It
+worries me, and makes me feel as if I were in a nightmare, and I know
+nothing of them.'
+
+Raising herself on her elbow and pointing her finger toward him in a
+half beseeching, half threatening way, Jerry said:
+
+'As true as you live and breathe, and hope not to be hung and choked to
+death, don't you know where they are?'
+
+This was the oath which Jerry's companions were in the habit of
+administering to each other in matters of doubt, and she now put it to
+Arthur as the strongest she knew.
+
+'Of course not,' he answered, with a little irritation in his tone.
+'What ails you, Cherry? Are you crazy, like myself? Struggle against it.
+Don't let the bees get into your brain and swarm and buzz until you
+forget everything. You ought to remember; you do things you ought not to
+do. It is terrible to be crazy and half conscious of it all the
+time--conscious that no one believes what you say or holds you
+responsible for what you do.'
+
+'Don't they?' Jerry asked, eagerly, for she knew the meaning of the word
+'responsible.' 'If a crazy man or woman took the diamonds, and then
+forgot, and did not tell, and it was ever found out, wouldn't they be
+punished?'
+
+'Certainly not,' was the reassuring reply, 'Don't you know how many
+murders are committed and the murderer is not hung, because they say he
+is crazy?'
+
+In a moment the cloud lifted from Jerry's face, which grew so bright
+that Arthur noticed the change, and said to her:
+
+'You are better now, I see, and I must go before I undo it all.
+Good-bye, and never say diamonds to me again; it gets me all in a--m
+a--well, a French pickle--mixed, you know.'
+
+He kissed her tenderly, and promising to take her for a drive as soon as
+she was able, went out and left her alone, wondering why it was that his
+having given the diamonds to his sister-in-law had failed in its effect
+upon her, and upon himself, too.
+
+For a long time after he was gone Jerry lay thinking with her eyes
+closed, so that if Harold or her grandmother came in they would think
+her asleep. Mr. Arthur was certainly crazy at times--very crazy. She
+could swear to that, and so could many others. And if a crazy man was
+not responsible for his acts, then he was not, and the law would not
+touch him; but with regard to the accessory, she was not sure. If that
+individual were not crazy, why, then he or she might be punished; and as
+the taste she had had of bread and water, and hard boards, in the shape
+of the floor, was not very satisfactory, and as Mrs. Tracy had other
+diamonds in the place of the lost ones, she finally determined to keep
+her own counsel and never tell what she had heard Arthur say that
+morning when the theft was discovered and he had talked so fast in
+German to her and to himself. If she had known where the diamonds were
+she might have managed to return them to their owner. But she did not
+know, and her better course was to keep quiet, hoping that in time Mr.
+Arthur himself would remember and make restitution; for that he had
+forgotten and was sincere in saying that he knew nothing of them she was
+certain, and her faith in him, which for a little time had been shaken,
+was restored.
+
+With this load lifted from her mind Jerry's recovery was rapid, and when
+the autumnal suns were just beginning to tinge the woodbine on the Tramp
+House and the maples in the park woods with scarlet, she took her
+accustomed seat in Arthur's room and commenced her lessons again with
+Maude, who had missed her sadly and who would have gone to see her every
+day during her sickness if her mother had permitted it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+ARTHUR'S LETTER.
+
+
+Two weeks had passed since Jerry's return to her lessons, and people had
+ceased to talk of the missing diamonds, although the offered reward of
+$500 was still in the weekly papers, and a detective still had the
+matter in charge, without, however, achieving the slightest success. No
+one had ever been suspected, and the thief, whoever he was, must have
+been an expert, and managed the affair with the most consummate skill.
+Now that she had another set, Mrs. Tracy was content, and peace and
+quiet reigned in the household, except so far as Arthur was concerned.
+He was restless and nervous, and given to fits of abstraction, which
+sometimes made him forget the two little girls, one of whom watched him
+narrowly; and once when they were alone and he seemed unusually absorbed
+in thought, she asked him if he were trying to think of something.
+
+'Yes,' he said, looking up quickly and eagerly; 'that is it. I am trying
+to remember something which, it seems to me, I ought to remember; but I
+cannot, and the more I try, the farther it gets from me. Do you know
+what it is?'
+
+Jerry hesitated a moment, and then she asked:
+
+'Is it the diamonds?'
+
+'Diamonds! No. What diamonds? Didn't I tell you never to say diamonds to
+me again? I am tired of it,' he said, and in his eyes there was a gleam
+which Jerry had never seen there before when they rested upon her. It
+made her afraid, and she answered, meekly:
+
+'Then I cannot help you to remember.'
+
+'Of course not. No one can,' Arthur replied, in a softened tone. 'It is
+something long ago, and has to do with Gretchen.'
+
+Then suddenly brightening, as if that name had been the key to unlock
+his misty brain, he added;
+
+'I have it; I know; it has come to me at last! Gretchen always sets me
+right. I wrote her a letter long ago--a year, it seems to me--and it has
+never been posted. Strange that I should forget that; but something came
+up--I can't tell what--and drove it from my mind.'
+
+As he talked he was opening and looking in the drawer which Jerry had
+never seen but once before, and that when he took from it the letter in
+German, a paragraph of which he had bidden her read.
+
+'Here it is!' he said, joyfully, as he took out a sealed envelope and
+held it up to Jerry. 'This is the letter which you must post to-day. I
+can trust it to you.'
+
+He gave her the letter, which she took with a beating heart and a sense
+of shame and regret as she remembered her pledge to Mr. Frank Tracy. She
+had promised to take him any letter which Mr. Arthur might intrust to
+her care, and if she took this one from Arthur she must keep her word.
+
+'Oh, I can't do it--I can't! It would be mean to Mr. Arthur,' she
+thought; and returning him the letter, she said: 'Please post it
+yourself; then you will be sure, and I might lose it, or forget. I am
+careless sometimes. Don't ask me to take it.'
+
+She was pleading with her might; but Arthur paid no heed, and only
+laughed at her fears.
+
+'I know you will not forget, and I'd rather trust you than Charles.
+Surely, you will not refuse to do so small a favor for me?'
+
+'No,' she said, at last, as she put the letter in her pocket, with the
+thought that, after all, there might be no harm in showing it to Mr.
+Frank, who, of course, merely wished to see it, and would not think of
+keeping it.
+
+But she did not know Frank Tracy or guess how great was his anxiety lest
+any message should ever reach a friend of Gretchen, if friend there were
+living. She found him in the room he called his office, where the dead
+woman had lain in her coffin, and where he often sat alone thinking of
+the day when the inquest was held, and when he took his first step in
+the downward road, which had led him so far that now it seemed
+impossible to turn back, even had he wished to do so, as he sometimes
+did.
+
+'If I had never secreted the photograph, or the book with the
+handwriting, if I had shown them to Arthur, everything would have been
+so different, and I should have been free,' he was thinking, when Jerry
+knocked timidly at the door, rousing him from his reverie, and making
+him start with a nameless tsar which was always haunting him.
+
+'Oh, Jerry, it is you,' he said, as the little girl crossed the
+threshold, and shutting the door, stood with her back against it, and
+her hands behind her. 'What is it?' he asked, as he saw her hesitating.
+
+With a quick, jerky movement of the head, which set in motion the little
+rings of hair, now growing so fast, and brought his brother to his mind,
+Jerry replied:
+
+'I came to tell you that Mr. Arthur has written the letter.'
+
+'What letter?' Frank asked, for the moment forgetting the conversation
+he had held with the child in the Tramp House.
+
+'The one I promised to bring you to show you--the one to Germany,' was
+Jerry's answer.
+
+And then Frank remembered at once what, in the excitement of the diamond
+theft, had passed from his mind.
+
+'Yes, yes, I know; give it to me,' he said, advancing rapidly toward
+her, and putting out his hand. 'When did he write it? Give it to me,
+please.'
+
+'But not to keep,' Jerry said, struck by something in his face and
+manner which, it seemed to her, meant danger to the letter.
+
+'Let me see it,' he continued.
+
+And rather reluctantly Jerry handed him a bulky letter, the direction of
+which covered nearly the whole of one side of the envelope.
+
+Very nervously Frank scanned the address, which might as well have been
+in the Fiji language for any idea it conveyed to him.
+
+'To whom is it directed? I cannot read German,' he said
+
+'I don't know,' Jerry replied. 'I have not looked at it, and would
+rather not.'
+
+'Why, what a little prude you are;' and Frank laughed uneasily. 'What
+possible harm is there in reading an address? The postmaster has to do
+it, and any one who took it to the office would do it if he could.'
+
+This sounded reasonable enough, and standing beside him, while he held
+the letter a little way from her, Jerry read the address in German
+first, then, as he said to her: 'I don't understand that lingo, put it
+into English,' she read again:
+
+'To Marguerite Heinrich, if living, and if dead to any of her friends;
+or to the postmaster at Wiesbaden, Germany. If not delivered within two
+months, return to Arthur Tracy, Tracy Park, Shannondale, Mass., U.S.A.'
+
+'Marguerite--Marguerite Heinrich!' Frank repeated, 'That is not
+Gretchen. The letter is not to her.'
+
+'I guess it is,' Jerry replied. 'He told me once that Gretchen was a pet
+name for Marguerite.'
+
+'Yes,' Frank returned, with a sigh, as this little crumb of hope was
+swept away, while to himself he added: 'At all events it is not
+Marguerite Tracy, and that makes me less a scoundrel than I should
+otherwise be. If he had written a little more it would have run over to
+the other side of the envelope. Any one would know he was crazy,' he
+continued, with a sickly attempt at a smile, while Jerry stood waiting
+to take the letter from him.
+
+He knew she was waiting, and said to her, as he put it in his pocket:
+
+'Thank you for bringing this to me. It is probably some nonsense which
+ought not to go, even if the sending it would do no harm, as it
+certainly would.'
+
+Until then Jerry had not realised that he did not mean the letter to go
+at all. She had remembered her promise to take it to him, and forgotten
+that he had said it must not be sent lest it should do harm to Maude.
+But it all came back to her now, and her tears fell like rain as she
+stood for a moment irresolute. But loyalty to Arthur conquered every
+other feeling. Surely he would not suffer any wrong to come to his own
+brother and niece. The letter was harmless, and must go.
+
+'Give it to me, please. You do not mean to keep it?' she said, at last,
+in a tone and manner she might have borrowed from Arthur himself, it was
+so like him when on his dignity.
+
+And Frank felt it, and knew that he had more than a child to deal with,
+and must use duplicity if he would succeed. So he said to her quietly
+and naturally:
+
+'Why, how excited you are! Do you think I intend to keep the letter? It
+is as safe with me as with you. It is true that when I talked with you
+in the Tramp House I thought that it must not be sent, but I have
+changed my mind since then, and do not care. I am going to the office,
+and will take it myself. John is saddling my horse now, and if I hurry I
+shall be in time for the western mail. Good-bye, and do not look so
+worried. Do you take me for a villain?'
+
+He was leaving the room as he talked, and before he had finished he was
+in the hall and near the outer door, leaving Jerry stupefied, and
+perplexed, and only half reassured.
+
+'If I had not sold myself to Satan before, I have now, for sure; and
+still I did not actually tell her that I would post it, though it
+amounted to that,' Frank thought, as he galloped through the park toward
+the highway which led to the town.
+
+Once he took the letter from his pocket and examined it again, wishing
+so much that he knew its contents.
+
+'If I could read German, I believe I am bad enough now to open it; but I
+can't, and I dare not take it to any one who can,' he said, as he put it
+again in his pocket, half resolving to post it and take the chances of
+its ever reaching Gretchen's friends, or any one who had known her.
+'I'll see how I feel when I get inside,' he thought, as he dismounted
+from his horse before the door of the post-office.
+
+The mail was just in, and the little room was full of people waiting for
+it to be distributed; and Frank waited with them, leaning against the
+wall, with his head bent down, and beating his boot with his
+riding-whip.
+
+'I must decide soon,' he thought, when a voice not far from him caught
+his ear, and glancing from under his hat, he saw Peterkin coming in,
+portly and pompous, and with him a dapper little man, who, in the days
+of the 'Liza Ann, had been a driver for the boat, but who now, like his
+former employer, was a millionaire, and wore a thousand-dollar diamond
+ring. To him Peterkin was saying:
+
+'There, that's him--that's Frank Tracy, the biggest swell in town--lives
+in that handsome place I was telling you about.'
+
+Strange that words like these from a man like old Peterkin should have
+inflated Frank's pride; but he was weak in many points; and though he
+detested Peterkin, it gratified him to be pointed out to strangers as a
+swell who lived in a fine house, and with the puff of vanity came the
+reflection that, as Frank Tracy of some other place than Tracy Park,
+with all its appliances of wealth, he would not be a swell whom
+strangers cared to see, and Jerry's chance was lost again.
+
+'Here is your mail, Mr. Tracy,' the postmistress said; and stepping
+forward, Frank took his letters from her, just as Peterkin slapped him
+on the shoulder, and, with a familiarity which made Frank want to knock
+him down, called out:
+
+'Hallo, Tracy! Just the feller I wanted to see. Let me introduce you to
+Mr. Bijah Jones, from Pennsylvany; used to drive hosses for me in the
+days I ain't ashamed of, by a long shot. He's bought him a place out
+from Philadelphy, and wants to lay it out _a la--a la_--dumbed if I
+know the word, but like them old chaps' gardens in Europe, and I told
+him of Tracy Park, which beats everything holler in this part of the
+country. Will you let us go over it and take a survey?'
+
+'Certainly; go where you like,' Frank said, struggling to reach the
+door; but Peterkin button-holed him and held him fast, while he
+continued:
+
+'I say, Tracy, heard anything from them diamonds?'
+
+'Nothing,' was the reply.
+
+'Didn't hunt in the right quarter,' Peterkin continued, 'leastwise
+didn't foller it up, or you'd a found 'em without so much advertisin'.'
+
+'What do you mean?' Frank asked.
+
+'Oh, nothin',' Peterkin replied; 'only them diamonds never went off
+without hands, and them hands ain't a thousand miles from the park.'
+
+'Perhaps not,' Frank answered, mechanically, more intent upon getting
+away than upon what Peterkin was saying.
+
+He longed to be in the open air, and as he mounted his horse, he said,
+as if speaking to some one near him:
+
+'Well, old fellow, I've done it again, and sunk myself still lower. You
+are bound to get me now some day, unless I have a death-bed repentance
+and confess everything. The thief was forgiven at the last hour, why not
+I?'
+
+The black shadow which Frank felt sure was beside him, did not answer,
+though he could have sworn that he heard a chuckle as he rode on, fast
+and far, until his horse was tired and he was tired, too. Then he began
+to retrace his steps, so slowly that it was dark when, he reached the
+village, and took the road which led by the gate through which the woman
+had passed to her death on the night of the storm. It was the shortest
+route to the park, and he intended to take it.
+
+As he drew near to the gate, it seemed to him that there was something
+on the wide post nearest the fence which had not been there in the
+afternoon when he rode by--something dark, and large, and peculiar in
+shape, and motionless as a stone. He was not by nature a coward, and
+once he had no belief in ghosts or supernatural appearances, but now he
+did not know what he believed, and this object, whose outline, seen
+against, the western sky, where a little dim light was lingering, seemed
+almost like that of a human form, made his heart beat faster than its
+wont, and he involuntarily checked his horse, just as a clear, shrill
+voice called out:
+
+'Mr. Tracy, is that you? I have waited so long, and I'm so cold sitting
+here. Did you post the letter?'
+
+It was Jerry who, after he had left her in his office, had been seized
+with an indefinable terror lest he might not post the letter after all.
+It seemed wrong to doubt him, and she did not really think that she did
+doubt him; still she would feel happier if she knew, and after supper
+was over she started along the grassy road until she reached the gate.
+Here she waited a long time, and then, as Mr. Tracy did not appear, she
+walked up and down the lane until the sun was down and the ground began
+to feel so damp and cold that she finally climbed up to the top of the
+gate-post, which was very broad, and where, on her way to town, she had
+frequently sat for a while. It was very cold and tiresome waiting there,
+and she was beginning to get impatient and to wonder if it could be
+possible that he had gone home by some other road, when she heard the
+sound of a horse's hoofs and felt sure he was coming.
+
+'Why, Jerry, how you frightened me!' Frank said, as he reined his horse
+close up to her. 'Jump down and get up behind me. I will take you home.'
+
+She obeyed, and with the agility of a little cat, got down from the
+gate-post and on to the horse's back, putting both arms around Frank's
+waist to keep herself steady, for the big horse took long steps, and she
+felt a little afraid.
+
+'Did you post the letter?' she asked again, as they left the gate behind
+them and struck into the lane.
+
+To lie now was easy enough, and Frank answered without hesitation:
+
+'Of course. Did you think I would forget it?'
+
+'No,' Jerry answered. 'I knew you would not. I only wanted to be sure,
+because he trusted it to me, and not to have sent it would have been
+mean, and a sneak, and a lie, and a steal. Don't you think so?'
+
+She emphasized the 'steal,' and the 'lie,' and the 'sneak,' and the
+'mean,' with a kick that made the horse jump a little and quicken his
+steps.
+
+'Yes,' Frank assented; it would be all she affirmed, and more too, and
+the man who could do such a thing was wholly unworthy the respect of any
+one, and ought to be punished to the full extent of the law.
+
+'That's so,' Jerry said, with another emphatic kick and a slight
+tightening of her arm around the conscience-stricken man, who wondered
+if he should ever reach the cottage and be free from the clasp of those
+arms, which seemed to him like bands of fire burning to his soul. 'I'd
+never speak to him again,' Jerry continued, 'and Mr. Arthur wouldn't
+either. He is so right-up, and hates a trick. I don't believe, either,
+that any harm will come to Maude from that letter, as you said. If there
+does, and Mr. Arthur can fix it, he will, I know, for I shall ask him,
+and he once told me he would do anything for me, because I look as he
+thinks Gretchen must have looked when she was a little girl like me.'
+
+They had reached the cottage by this time, where they found Harold in
+the yard looking up and down the lane for Jerry, whose protracted
+absence at that hour had caused them some anxiety, even though they were
+accustomed to her long rambles by herself and frequent absences from
+home. It was not an unusual thing for her to linger in the Tramp House,
+even after dark, talking to herself, and Gretchen, and Mah-nee, and her
+mother and a sick woman, whose face was far back in the past. She was
+there now, Harold supposed, and this belief was confirmed when Mr. Tracy
+said to him:
+
+'You see I have picked up your little girl and brought her home. Jump
+down, Jerry, and good-night to you.'
+
+She was on the ground in an instant, and he was soon galloping toward
+home, saying to himself:
+
+'I don't believe I can even have a death-bed repentance now. I have told
+too many lies for that, and more than all, must go on lying to the end.
+I have sold my soul for a life of luxury, which after all is very
+pleasant,' he continued, as he drew near the house, which was
+brilliantly lighted up, while through the long windows of the
+drawing-room he could see the table, with its silver and glass and
+flowers, and the cheerful blaze upon the hearth of the fire-place, which
+Dolly had persuaded Arthur to have built. There was every kind of
+bric-a-brac on the tall mantel, and Frank saw it as he passed, and saw
+the colored man moving slowly about the room after the manner of a
+well-trained servant who understands his business. There was company
+staying in the house, Mr. and Mrs. Raymond, from Kentucky, father and
+mother to Fred; and Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire, and Grace Atherton, and
+Squire Harrington had been invited to dinner, and were already in the
+dining-room when Frank entered it after a hasty toilet.
+
+He had been out in the country and ridden further than he had intended,
+he said by way of apology, as he greeted his guests, and then took Mrs.
+Raymond into dinner, which, with the exception of the soup and fish, was
+served from side tables. This was Dolly's last new kink, as Frank called
+it, and Dolly was very fine, in claret velvet, with her new diamonds,
+which were greatly admired, Grace Atherton declaring that she liked them
+quite as well as the stolen ones, whose setting was rather _passe._
+
+'That is just why I liked them so, because they were old-fashioned; it
+made them look like heir-looms, and showed that one had always had a
+family,' Dolly said.
+
+Grace Atherton shrugged her still plump shoulders just a little, and
+thought of the first call she ever made upon Dolly, when she entered
+through the kitchen and the lady entertained her in her working-apron!
+
+Dolly did not look now as if she had ever seen a working-apron, and was
+very bright and talkative, and entertaining, and all the more so because
+of her husband's silence. He was given to moods, and sometimes
+aggravated his wife to desperation when he left all the conversation to
+her.
+
+'Do talk,' she would say to him when they were alone. 'Do talk to people
+and not sit so glum, with that great wrinkle between your eyes as if you
+were mad at something; and do laugh, too, when anybody tells anything
+worth laughing at, and not leave it all to me. Why, I actually giggle at
+times until I feel like a fool, while you never smile or act as if you
+heard a word. Look at me occasionally, and when I elevate my
+eyebrows--_so_--brace up and say something, if it isn't so cunning.'
+
+This _elevating of the eyebrows_ and _bracing up_ were matters of
+frequent occurrence, as Frank grew more and more silent and abstracted,
+and now after he had sat through a funny story told by Mr. St. Claire
+and had not even smiled, or given any sign that he heard it, he suddenly
+caught Dolly's eye and saw that both eyebrows, and nose, and chin were
+up as marks of unusual disapprobation, for how could she guess of what
+he was thinking as he sat with his head bent down, and his eyes
+seemingly half shut. But they came open wide enough, and his head was
+high enough when he saw Dolly's frown; and turning to Mrs. Raymond he
+began to talk rapidly and at random. She had just returned from Germany,
+where she had left her daughter, Marion, in school, and Frank asked her
+of the country, and if she had visited Wiesbaden, and had there met or
+heard of anyone by the name of Marguerite Heinrich.
+
+Mrs. Raymond had spent some months in Wiesbaden, for it was there her
+daughter was at school, and she was very enthusiastic in her praises of
+the beautiful town. But she had never seen or heard of Marguerite
+Heinrich, or of anyone by the name of Heinrich.
+
+'Marguerite Heinrich?' Dolly repeated. 'Who in the world is she--and
+where did you know her?'
+
+'I never did know her. I have only heard of her,' Frank replied, again
+lapsing into a silence from which he did not rouse again.
+
+He was thinking of the letter hidden away with the photograph and the
+book--of the lies he had told since his deception began, and now sure it
+was that he had sinned beyond forgiveness. When he was a boy he had
+often listened, with the blood curdling in his veins, to a story his
+grandmother told him with sundry embellishments, for he was not well
+versed in German literature, of a man--Foster it seemed to him was the
+name--who sold his soul to the devil in consideration that for a certain
+number of years he was to have every pleasure the world could give. It
+had been very pleasant listening to the recital of the fine things the
+man enjoyed, for Satan kept his promise well; but the boy's hair had
+stood on end as the story neared its close, and he heard how, when the
+probation was ended, the devil came for his victim down the wide-mouthed
+chimney, scattering bricks and fire-brands over the floor, as he carried
+the trembling soul out in the blackness of the stormy night.
+
+Strangely enough this story came back to him now, and notwithstanding
+the horror of the thing he laughed aloud as he glanced up at the tall
+oak fire-place, wondering if it would be that way he would one day go
+with his master, and seeing in fancy Dolly's dismay when the tea-cups,
+and saucers, and vases, and plaques, came tumbling to the floor as he
+disappeared from sight in a blue flame, which smelled of brimstone.
+
+It was a loud, unnatural laugh, but fortunately for him it came just as
+Grace Atherton had set the guests in a roar with what she was saying of
+the Peterkin's final struggle to enter society, and so it passed
+unnoticed by most of them. But that night in the privacy of his room,
+where Dolly delivered most of her lectures, she again upbraided him with
+his taciturnity, telling him that he never laughed but once, and then it
+sounded more like a groan than a laugh.
+
+'You have hit the nail on the head this time, for it was a groan,' Frank
+said, as he plunged into bed; and Dolly, as she undressed herself
+deliberately, and this time put her diamonds carefully away, little
+dreamed what was passing in the mind of the man, who, all through the
+long hours of the night, lay awake, seldom stirring lest he should
+disturb her, but repeating over and over to himself, the words:
+
+'Lost now forever and ever, but if Maude is happy I can bear it.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+JERRIE--NINE YEARS LATER.
+
+
+She spelled her name with an _ie_ now, instead of a _y._ She was
+nineteen years old; she had been a student at Vassar for four years,
+together with Nina St. Claire and Ann Eliza Peterkin, and in July was to
+be graduated with the highest honors of her class. In her childhood,
+when we knew her as little Jerry, she had been very small, but at the
+age of twelve she suddenly shot up like an arrow, and had you first seen
+her, with her back to you, you might have said she was very tall, but
+had you waited till she turned her face toward you, or walked across
+the floor, you would have thought that if an eighth of an inch were
+taken from her height it would spoil her splendidly developed form. Her
+school companions called her the Princess, she was so tall and straight,
+and graceful in every movement, with that sweet graciousness of manner
+which won all hearts to her and made her a general favorite. Whether she
+spelled her name with an _ie_ or a _y_ and stood five feet six or four
+feet five, she was the same Jerry who had defended Harold against Tom
+Tracy, and been ready to go to prison, if need be, for Mr. Arthur.
+Frank, unselfish, truthful, and original, she had been as a child, with
+perhaps a little too much pride in her hair, which she hid once cut off
+to see how it would seem, and she was original, and truthful, and
+unselfish now, with a pardonable pride in her luxuriant tresses, which
+lay in waves upon her finely-shaped head and glistened in the sunlight
+like satin of a golden hue. But nothing could spoil Jerrie, not even the
+adulation of her friends or the looking-glass which told her she was
+beautiful, just as Nina St. Claire told her every day.
+
+'Yes; I am not blind, and I know that I am rather good-looking,' she
+once said to Nina, 'and I am glad, for, as a rule, people like pretty
+things better than ugly ones, but I am not an idiot to think that looks
+are everything, and I don't believe I am very vain. I used to be though,
+when a child, but Harold gave me so many lectures upon vanity that I
+should not do credit to his teachings were I now to be proud of what I
+did not do myself.'
+
+'But Harold thinks you are beautiful,' Nina replied.
+
+'He does? I did not know that. When did he say so?' Jerrie asked; with
+kindling eyes and a quick, sideways turn of her head, of which she had a
+habit when startled by some sudden emotion.
+
+'He said so last vacation, when we were home, and I had that little
+musicale, and you played and sang so divinely, and wore that dress of
+baby-blue which Mr. Arthur gave you, with the blush-rose, in your belt.'
+Nina said; 'I was so proud of you and so was mamma and Mrs. Atherton.
+You remember there were some New Yorkers there who were visiting Mrs.
+Grace, and I was glad for them to know that we had some talent, and some
+beauty, too, in the country; and Harold was proud, too. I don't think
+he ever took his eyes off you from the time you sat down to the piano
+until you left it, and when I said to him, "Doesn't she sing like an
+angel, and isn't the lovely?" he replied: "I think my sister Jerry has
+the loveliest face I ever saw, and that blue dress is very becoming to
+her."'
+
+'Wasn't that rather a stiff speech to make about his _sister_?' Jerry
+said, with a slight emphasis upon the last word, as she walked away,
+leaving Nina to wonder if she were displeased.
+
+Evidently not, for a few minutes later she heard her whistling softly
+the air 'He promised to buy me a knot of blue ribbon to tie up my bonny
+brown hair,' and could she have looked into Jerry's room she would have
+seen her standing before the mirror examining the face which Harold had
+said was the loveliest he had ever seen. Others had said the same, and
+their sayings had been repeated to her. Billy Peterkin, and Tom Tracy,
+and Dick St. Claire, and even Fred Raymond, from Kentucky, who was
+supposed to be devoted to Nina. But Jerry cared little for the
+compliments of either Fred or Dick, while those of Tom she scorned and
+those of Billy she ridiculed. One word of commendation from Harold was
+worth more to her than the praises of the whole world besides. But
+Harold had always been chary of his commendations, and was rather more
+given to reproof than praise, which did not altogether suit the young
+lady.
+
+As Jerry had grown older, and merged from childhood into womanhood, a
+change had come over both the girl and boy, a change which Jerry
+discovered first, awaking suddenly one day to find that the brother and
+sister delusion was ended, and Harold stood to her in an entirely new
+relation. Just when the change had commenced she could not tell. She
+only knew that it had come, and that she was not quite so happy as she
+had been in the days when she called Harold her brother, and kissed him
+whenever she felt like it, which was very often, for she was naturally
+affectionate, and showed her affection to those she loved. She was
+seventeen when the dream came--the old, old story which transformed her
+from a romping, a rather gushing child, into a woman more quiet and more
+dignified, especially with Harold, who missed and mourned in secret for
+the playful loving ways which had been so pleasant to him, even if he
+did not always make a return.
+
+Though capable of loving quite as devotedly and unselfishly as Jerry,
+he was not demonstrative, while a natural shyness and depreciation of
+himself made him afraid to tell in words just what or how much he did
+feel. He would rather show it by acts; and never was brother tenderer or
+kinder toward a sister than he was to Jerry, whose changed mood he could
+not understand. And so there gradually arose between them a little
+cloud, which both felt, and neither could exactly define.
+
+Arthur had kept his promise well with regard to Jerry, who had passed
+from him to Vassar, and he would have kept it with Harold, if the latter
+had permitted it. But the boy's pride and independence had asserted
+themselves at last. He had accepted the course at Andover, and one year
+at Harvard, on condition that he should be allowed to pay Arthur back
+all he had received as soon as he was able to do it. As he entered
+Harvard in advance, he was a junior when he decided to care for himself,
+and during the remainder of his college course, which, of course, was
+longer than usual, he struggled on, doing what he could during the
+summer vacation--teaching school for months at a time--and in the
+college reducing his expenses by acting as proctor, and compelling
+obedience to the rules of the institution. Even the few who were aware
+of his limited means, and his efforts to increase them, had to
+acknowledge, as he stood before the multitude, delivering the
+valedictory, and exciting thunders of applause by his graceful gestures
+and thrilling eloquence, that he was not only an orator, but every inch
+a gentleman.
+
+His fellow students who saw him then, and listened entranced to his
+clear, well-trained voice, thought not of Harold's threadbare coat and
+shining old-fashioned pants, which were so conspicuous as he pursued his
+studies in the class-room, but which were now concealed by the gown he
+wore over them. They saw only the large, dark eyes, the finely chiseled
+features, and the manly form. But as they listened to the burning words
+which showed so much clear, deep thought, they said to each other:
+
+'The young man has a future before him. Such eloquence as that could
+move the world, and rouse or quiet the wildest mob that ever surged
+through the streets of mad Paris.'
+
+Jerry was there, and saw and heard. And when Harold's speech was over,
+and the building was shaking with applause, and flowers were falling
+around him like rain, she, too, stood up and cheered so loudly that a
+Boston lady, who sat in front of her, and who thought any outward show
+of feeling vulgar and ill-bred, turned and looked at her wonderingly and
+reprovingly. But in her excitement Jerry did not see the disapprobation
+in the cold, proud eyes. She saw only what she mistook for enquiry, and
+she answered eagerly:
+
+'That's Harold--that's my brother! Oh, I am so proud of him!'
+
+And leaning forward so that a curl of her bright hair touched the Boston
+woman's bonnet, she threw the bunch of pond lilies which she had herself
+gathered that day on the river at home, before the sun was up, and while
+the white petals were still folded in sleep. For Jerry had come down on
+the early train to see Harold graduated, and Maude had found her in the
+crowd and sat beside her, almost as pleased and happy as herself to see
+Harold thus acquit himself.
+
+Maude's roses had been bought at a florist's in Boston at a fabulous
+price, for they were the choicest and rarest in market. Harold had seen
+both the roses and the lilies long before they fell at his feet. It was
+a fancy, perhaps, but it seemed to him that it sweet perfume from the
+latter reached him with the brightness of Jerry's eyes. He knew just
+where the lilies came from, for he had often waded out to the green bed
+when the water was low to get them for Jerry; and all the time he was
+speaking there was in his heart a thought of the old home, and the
+woods, and the river, and the tall tree on the bank, with the bench
+beneath, and on it the girl, whose upturned, eager face he saw above the
+sea of heads confronting him.
+
+Jerrie's approval was worth more to the young man than that of all the
+rest; for he knew that, though she would be very lenient toward him, she
+was a keen and discriminating critic, and would detect a weakness which
+many an older person would fail to see. But she was satisfied--he was
+sure of that; and if there had been in his mind any doubt it would have
+been swept away when, after the exercises were over, and he stood
+receiving the congratulations of his friends, she worked her way through
+the crowd and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him fondly, and
+bursting into a flood of tears as she told him how proud she was of him.
+
+The eyes of half his classmates were upon him, and though Harold felt a
+thrill of keen delight run through his veins at the touch of Jerrie's
+lips, he would a little rather she had waited until they were alone.
+
+'There, there, Jerrie, that will do!' he whispered, as he unclasped her
+arms, and put her gently from him, though he still held her hand. 'Don't
+you see they are all looking at us.'
+
+With a sudden, jerk Jerrie withdrew her hand from his and stepped back
+into the crowd, her heart beating wildly, and her cheeks burning with
+shame, as she thought what she had done and how it must have mortified
+Harold.
+
+Maude was speaking to him now--Maude with her bright black eyes and
+brilliant color. But she was neither crying nor strangling him with
+kisses. She was shaking hands with him very decorously, and telling him
+how pleased and glad she was. And in his hand he held her roses, which
+he occasionally smelled as he listened, and smiled upon her with that
+peculiar smile of his which made him so attractive. But the lilies were
+nowhere to be seen; and when, an hour later, all the baskets and
+bouquets bearing his name were piled together, the lilies were not
+there.
+
+'He has thrown them away! He did not care for them at all, and I might
+as well have staid in bed as to have gotten up at four o'clock and
+risked my neck to get them. He likes Maude and her roses better than he
+does me,' Jerrie thought, with a swelling heart and all through the
+journey home--for they returned that night--she was very quiet and
+tactiturn, letting Maude do all the talking, and saying when asked why
+she was so still, that her head was aching, and that she was too tired
+and sleepy to talk.
+
+That was the last time for years that Jerrie put her arms around
+Harold's neck, or touched her lips to his; for it had come to her like a
+blow how much he was to her, and, as she believed, how little she was to
+him.
+
+'Maude is preferred to me--I see it now so plainly; he likes me well
+enough, but he loves _her_--I saw it in the way he looked at her that
+time I mortified him so dreadfully with my _gush_,' she thought; and
+although of all her girl friends, not even excepting Nina St. Claire,
+Maude was the nearest and dearest, she was half-glad when a week or two
+later, Maude said good-bye to her, and with her mother sailed away to
+Europe, where she remained for more than a year and a half.
+
+During her absence the two girls corresponded regularly, and Jerrie
+never failed to write whatever she thought would please her friend to
+hear of Harold; and when at last Maude returned, and wrote to Jerrie of
+failing health, and wakeful nights, and lonely days, and her longing for
+the time when Jerrie would be home, and be with her, and read to her, or
+recite bits of poetry, as she had been wont to do, Jerrie trampled every
+jealous, selfish thought under her feet, and in her letters to Harold
+urged him to see Maude as often as possible, and read to her whenever
+she wished him to do so.
+
+'You have such a splendid voice, and read so well,' she wrote, 'that it
+will rest her just to listen to you, and will keep her from being so
+lonely; so offer your services if she does not ask for them--that's a
+good boy.'
+
+Then, as she remembered how weak Maude was, mentally, she thought:
+
+'He never can be happy with her as she is now. A girl who cannot do a
+sum in simple fractions, and who, when abroad, thought only of Rome as a
+good place in which to buy sashes and ribbons, and who asked me in a
+letter to tell her who all those Caesars were, and what the Forum was
+for, is not the wife for a man like Harold, and however much he might
+love her at first he would be sure to tire of her after a while, unless
+he can bring her up. Possibly he can.'
+
+Resuming her pen, she wrote:
+
+'Don't give her all sentimental poetry and love trash, but something
+solid--something historical, which she can remember and talk about with
+you.'
+
+In his third letter to Jerrie, after the receipt of her instructions,
+Harold wrote as follows:
+
+'I have offered my services as reader, and tried the solid on Maude as
+you advised--have read her fifty pages of Grote's History of Greece; but
+when I got as far as Homeric Theogony, she looked piteously at me, while
+with Hesiod and Orpheus she was hopelessly bewildered, and by the time I
+reached the extra Hellenic religion she was fast asleep! I do not
+believe her mind is strong enough to grapple with those old Greek chaps;
+at all events they worry her, and tire her more than they rest. So I
+have abandoned the gods and come down to common people, and am reading
+to her Tennyson's poems. Have read the May Queen four times, until I do
+believe she knows it by heart. She has a great liking for the last
+portion of it, especially the lines:
+
+    "I shall not forget you, mother:
+    I shall hear you when you pass,
+  With your feet above my head
+    In the long and pleasant grass."
+
+'I saw her cry one day when I read that to her. Poor little Maude! She
+is very frail, but no one seems to think her in danger, she has so
+brilliant a color, and always seems so bright.'
+
+Jerrie read this letter two or three times, and each time with an
+increased sense of comfort. No man who really loved a girl could speak
+of her mental weakness to another as Harold had spoken of Maude's to
+her, and it might be after all that he merely thought of her as a
+friend, whom he had always known. So the cloud was lifted in part, and
+she only felt a greater anxiety for Maude's health, which as the spring
+advanced, grew stronger, so that it was almost certain that she would
+come to Vassar in the summer and see her friend graduated.
+
+Such was the state of affairs when Nina repeated to Jerrie what Harold
+had said to her at the musicale the previous winter. All day long there
+was a note of gladness in Jerrie's heart which manifested itself in
+snatches of song, and low, warbling, whistled notes, which sounded more
+as if they came from a canary's than from a human throat. Jerrie did
+_not_ chew gum, but she whistled, and the teachers who reproved her most
+for what they called a boyish trick, always listened intently, when the
+clear, musical notes, now soft and low, now loud and shrill, were heard
+outside, or in the building.
+
+'Whistling Jerrie,' the girls sometimes called her, but she rather liked
+the name, and whistled on whenever she felt like it.
+
+And it was a very joyous, happy song she trilled, as she thought of
+Harold's compliment, and wished she might wear at commencement the dress
+of baby-blue which he had admired, for Harold would, of course, be there
+to see and hear, and as, when he wrote his valedictory two years before
+there had been in every line a thought of her, so in her essay, which
+was peculiarly German in its method and handling, thoughts of Harold had
+been closely interwoven. She knew she should receive a surfeit of
+applause--she always did; but if Harold's were wanting the whole thing
+would be a failure. So she wrote him twice a week, urging him to come,
+and he always replied that nothing but necessity would keep him from
+doing so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE TWO FACES IN THE MIRROR.
+
+
+Toward the last of May Arthur came to Vassar, bringing with him the
+graduating dress which he had bought in New York, with Maude as his
+adviser. He had Jerrie at the hotel to spend Saturday and Sunday with
+him, and took her to drive and to shop, and then in the evening asked
+her to put on her finery, that he might see how it looked.
+
+'I shall not come to hear you spout out your erudition,' he said, 'for I
+detest crowds, with the dreadful smell of the rooms. I have gotten the
+park house tolerably free from odors, though the cook's drain is
+terrible at times, and I shall have brimstone burned in the cellar once
+a week. But what was I saying? Oh, I know--I shall not be here at
+commencement, and I wish to see if my Cherry is likely to look as well
+as any of them.'
+
+So Jerrie left him alone while she donned the white dress, which fell in
+soft, fluffy folds around her feet, and fitted her superb figure
+perfectly. She knew how well it became her, and sure of Arthur's
+approbation, went back to the parlor, where she had left him. Arthur was
+standing with his back to the door when she came in, and going up to
+him, she said:
+
+'Here I am in all my gewgaws. Do you think I shall pass muster?'
+
+She spoke in German, as she always did to him, and when he turned
+quickly, there was a startled look on his face, as he said:
+
+'Oh, Cherry, it's you! I thought for a moment it was Gretchen speaking
+to me. Just so she used to come in with her light footstep and soft
+voice, so much like yours. Where is she, Cherry, that she never comes
+nor writes? Where is Gretchen now?'
+
+His chin quivered as he talked, and there was a moisture in his eyes,
+bent so fondly upon the young girl beside him. He was worn with the
+fatigue and excitement of his journey and the long drive he had taken,
+and Jerrie knew that whenever he was tired his mind was weaker and
+wandered more thin usual. So she tried to quiet and divert him by
+calling his attention to her dress, and asking how he liked it.
+
+'It is lovely,' he said, examining the lace and the soft flounces. 'It
+is the prettiest Maude and I could find. You know, she was with me, and
+helped me select it. Yes, it's lovely, and so are you, Cherry, with
+Gretchen's eyes and hair, and smile, and that one dimple in your cheek.
+She used to wear soft, white dresses, and in this you are enough like
+her to be her daughter.'
+
+They were standing side by side before a long mirror, she taller for a
+woman than he was for a man, so that her face was almost in a range with
+his, as he stooped a little forward.
+
+Glancing into the mirror at the two faces so near to each other, Jerrie
+saw something which for an instant made her cold and sick, and set every
+nerve to quivering as she stepped suddenly back, looking first at the
+man's face and then at her own in the mirror. It was gone now, the look
+which had so startled her, but it had certainly been there--a likeness
+between the two faces--and she had seen it plainer than she had ever
+seen any resemblance between herself and the picture. Gretchen had blue
+eyes, and fair hair, and fair complexion, and so had she, and so had
+hundreds of German girls, and all Arthur had ever said to her had never
+brought to her mind a thought like the two faces in the mirror. _What if
+it were so?_ That was the thought which had flashed like lightning
+through her brain, making her so weak that she grasped Arthur's arm to
+steady herself as she tried to speak composedly.
+
+'You are white as your dress,' he said. 'It is this confounded hot room;
+let us sit nearer the window.'
+
+They sat down together on a sofa, and taking up a newspaper, Arthur
+fanned Jerrie gently, while she said to him:
+
+'Do you really think I look like Gretchen?'
+
+'Yes; except that you are taller. You might be her daughter.'
+
+'Had she--had Gretchen a daughter?' was Jerrie's next question, put
+hesitatingly.
+
+'None that I ever heard of,' Arthur replied. 'Why do you ask that?'
+
+'And her name when a girl was Marguerite Heinrich, was it not?' Jerrie
+went on.
+
+'Yes. Who told you that?' Arthur said.
+
+'I saw it on a letter which you gave me to post years ago, when I was a
+child,' Jerrie replied. 'You never received an answer to that letter,
+did you?'
+
+'What letter did you post for me to Marguerite Heinrich? I don't know
+what you mean,' Arthur said, the old worried look settling upon his
+face, which always came there when he was trying to recall something he
+ought to remember.
+
+As he grew older he seemed to be annoyed when told of things he had
+forgotten, and as the letter had evidently gone entirely from his mind,
+Jerrie said no more of it. _She_ remembered it well; and never dreaming
+that it had not been posted, she had watched a long time for an answer,
+which never came. Gretchen was dead; that was settled in her mind. But
+who was she? With the words, 'What if it were so?' still buzzing in her
+brain, the answer to this question was of vital importance to her, and
+after a moment, she continued, as if she had all the time been talking
+of Gretchen:
+
+'She was Marguerite Heinrich when a girl in Wiesbaden, but she had
+another name afterward, when she was married.'
+
+'You are talking of something you know nothing about. Can't you let
+Gretchen alone?' Arthur said, petulantly, and springing up he began to
+pace the room in a state of great excitement, while Jerrie sat
+motionless, with a white, stony look on her face and a far off look in
+her eyes, as if she were seeing in a vision things she could not retain,
+they passed to rapidly before her, and were so hazy and indistinct.
+
+The likeness she had seen in the glass was gone now. She was not like
+Arthur at all; it was madness in her to have thought so. And she was not
+like Gretchen either. Her mother was lying under the little pine tree
+which she and Harold had planted above the lonely grave. Her mother had
+been dark, and coarse, and bony, and a peasant woman--so Ann Eliza
+Peterkin, who had heard it from her father, had told her once, when
+angry with her, and Harold, when sorely pressed, had admitted as much to
+her.
+
+'Dark, with large, hard hands,' he had said; and Jerrie with the great
+tears shining in her eyes, had answered, indignantly:
+
+'But hard and black as they were, they always touched _me_ gently and
+tenderly, and sometimes I believe I can remember just how lovingly and
+carefully they wrapped the old cloak around me to keep me warm. Dear
+mother, what do I care how black she was, and coarse. She was mine, and
+gave her life for me.'
+
+This was when Jerrie was a child, and now that she was older she was
+seeking to put away this woman with the dark face and the coarse hands,
+and substitute in her place a fairer, sweeter face, with hands like wax
+and features like a Madonna. But only for a few moments, and then the
+wild dream vanished, and the sad, pale face, the low voice, the music,
+the trees, the flowers, the sick-room, the death-bed, the woman who
+died, and the woman who served, all went out together into the darkness,
+and she was Jerrie Crawford again, wearing her commencement dress to
+please the man still pacing the floor abstractedly, and paying no heed
+to her when she went out to change her dress for the blue muslin she bud
+worn through the day.
+
+When she returned to the parlor she found him seated at the tea-table,
+which had been laid during her absence. Taking her seat opposite to him,
+she made his tea, and buttered his toast, and chatted, and laughed until
+she succeeded in bringing back a quiet expression to the face which bore
+no likeness now to her own, but looked pale and haggard as it always did
+after any excitement. He was talking of the commencement exercises, and
+regretting that he could not be present.
+
+'I may not be home,' he said. 'And if I am. I shall not come. Crowds
+kill me, and smells kill me, and we are sure to have both. I wish I had
+a different nose, but it is as it was made, and I think I detect some
+bad odor in here, don't you?'
+
+Jerrie, who knew from experience that the better way was to humor his
+fancy, said she did smell something; perhaps it was the carpet, or the
+curtains, both of which were new.
+
+'Very likely, and in that case the smell is a clean one,' he replied,
+and began again to speak of commencement.
+
+'Harold is sure to be here,' he said, 'and he is better than forty old
+coves like me. It is astonishing what a fancy I have taken to that young
+man. I don't see a fault in him, except that he is too infernally proud.
+Think of his refusing to take any more money from me unless I would
+accept his note promising to pay it all back in time--just as if he ever
+can, or will.'
+
+'Indeed he will,' Jerrie exclaimed, rousing at once in Harold's defence.
+'He will pay every dollar, and I shall help him.'
+
+'You!' and Arthur laughed, merrily, 'How will you help him, I'd like to
+know.'
+
+'I shall teach school, or give music lessons, or do both to earn
+something for grandmother,' Jerrie answered, quickly. 'And I shall help
+Harold, and shall pay Mr. Frank all he gave grandmother for my board. I
+know just how much it is. Three dollars a week from the time I was four
+years old until I was sixteen and came here to school--almost two
+thousand dollars; a big sum, I know, but I shall pay it. You will see,'
+she went on rapidly and earnestly; as she saw the amused look on
+Arthur's face, and felt that he was laughing at her.
+
+'You are going to pay my brother to the uttermost farthing, but what of
+me? Am I to be left in the cold?' he asked, as he arose from the table
+and seated himself upon the sofa near the window.
+
+'I expect to be your debtor all my life,' Jerrie said, as went over to
+him and laid her soft, white arms around his neck. 'I can never pay you
+for all you have done for me, never. I can only love you, which I do so
+dearly, as the kindest and best of men.'
+
+She was stooping over him now; and putting up his hands Arthur drew her
+close to him, so that the two faces were again plainly reflected, side
+by side in the mirror opposite--the man's gentle and tender as a
+woman's, the girl's flushed, and eager, and excited as she caught a
+second time the likeness which had made her cold and faint when she
+first saw it, and which made her faint again as she clasped her hands
+tightly together, and leaning a little forward, looked earnestly at the
+faces in the mirror, while she listened to what Arthur was saying.
+
+'You owe me nothing, Cherry; the indebtedness is all on my side, and has
+been since the day when a little white sun-bonnet showed itself at my
+window, and a clear, ringing voice, which I can hear yet, said to me,
+"Mr. Crazyman, don't you want some cherries?" You don't know how much of
+life and sunshine you brought me with the cherries. My sky was very
+black those days, and but for you I am certain that I should long ere
+this have been what you called me--a crazy man for sure, locked up
+behind bars and bolts. My little Cherry has been all the world to me;
+and though she is very grand, and tall, and stately now, I love to
+remember her as the child in the sun-bonnet, clinging to the ladder, and
+talking to the lunatic inside. That would make a fine picture, and it I
+were an artist I would paint it some day. Perhaps Maude will. Poor
+little Maude! Did I tell you that while she was absent she dabbled in
+water-colors? and now she has what she calls a studio, where she
+perpetrates the most atrocious daubs you ever saw. Poor Maude! She is
+weak in the upper story, but is, on the whole, a nice girl, and very
+pretty, too, with her black eyes, and brilliant color, and kittenish
+ways. I did not care for her once, but we are great friends now, and she
+is a comfort to me in your absence. I am afraid, though, that she is not
+long for this world. Everything tires her, and she has grown so thin
+that a breath might blow her away. I think it would kill Frank to lose
+her. His life is bound up in hers; and he once said to me, either that
+he had sold, or would sell, his soul for her. What do you suppose he
+meant?'
+
+Jerrie did not reply. The likeness in the mirror had disappeared as
+Arthur grew more in earnest, and she listened more intently to what he
+was saying of Maude, every word as he went on a blow from which she
+shrank as from some physical pain.
+
+'Yes,' Arthur continued, 'Maude is weak, mentally and physically, though
+I believe she is trying hard to improve her wind, or rather, that young
+man, Harold, is trying to improve it for her. He is at the house nearly
+everyday, or she is at the cottage. But, hold on! I wasn't to tell, and
+I haven't told--only he reads to her, sometimes outside when the weather
+will admit, but oftener in her _studio_, where she talks to him of art,
+and where I once saw him giving her a sitting while she tried to sketch
+his face. A caricature, I called it, ridiculing it so much that she put
+it away unfinished, and is now at work on some water-lilies he brought
+her, and which are really very good. Mrs. Tracy is not pleased with
+Harold's visits, and I once overheard her saying to Maude, "Why do you
+encourage the attentions of that young man? why do you run after him so,
+down there every day?" Hold on, again! What a tattler I am! Why don't I
+stick to Dolly, who said, "You certainly do not care for him. He hasn't
+a cent to his name, nor any family and has even worked in Peterkin's
+furnace." What Maude replied I do not know, I only heard Dolly bang the
+door hard as she left the room, so I suppose the answer was not a
+pleasing one. Dolly is a grand lady and would not like her daughter to
+marry an ordinary man like Harold.'
+
+'No,' Jerrie said, slowly, as if speaking were an effort. 'N-no; and you
+think Harold likes Maude very much?'
+
+'Likes her? Yes. Why shouldn't he like a girl as pretty as she is,
+especially when she meets him more than half way?' Arthur replied, and
+Jerrie continued in the same measured tone:
+
+'Ye-es, and you think he would marry her if her mother would permit it?'
+
+'He is not at all likely to do that,' Arthur answered, quickly, 'A man
+seldom marries a woman who throws herself at his head and lets him see
+how much she cares for him, and Maude is doing just that. She cannot
+conceal anything. I tell you, Cherry, if the time ever comes when you
+love somebody better than all the world beside, don't let him know until
+he speaks for himself. Don't be lightly won. Better be shy and cold,
+than demonstrative and gushing, like Maude. Gretchen was shy as a fawn,
+and after I told her I loved her she would not believe it possible. But,
+child, you look fagged and tired. It is time you were in bed. I have
+talked you nearly to death.'
+
+'I am not tired,' Jerrie said, 'and I want to know what it is about
+Maude's going to the cottage, which you must not tell me. Is she there
+very, very often, and does Harold like to have her come, and is that
+throwing herself at his head, as you call it?'
+
+She had her arm around his neck in a coaxing kind of way, and Arthur
+smoothed the soft white hand resting on his coat-collar, as he answered,
+laughingly:
+
+'Mother Eve herself. You would have eaten the apple, too, had you been
+Mrs. Adam. No, no, I shall not tell any secrets. You must wait and see
+for yourself. And now you must go, for I am tired myself.'
+
+She said good-night, and went to her room, but not to sleep at once,
+because of the tumult of emotions which had been roused by what Arthur
+had told her of Maude and Harold.
+
+'I don't believe now that I really meant him to make love to her when I
+asked him to amuse her,' she whispered to herself, as she dashed away
+two great tear-drops from her cheeks.
+
+Then, after a moment, she continued:
+
+'But they shall never know. No one shall ever know that I care, for I
+don't, or I am not going to. Harold is my brother, and I shall love
+Maude as my sister, and I will do all I can to make her more like what
+Harold's wife should be. She is beautiful, and good, and sweet, and
+true, and with money and position can do far more for him than I
+could--I, the daughter of a peasant woman, the child of the carpet bag;
+and yet--'
+
+Here Jerrie's hands beat the air excitedly as she recalled the wild
+fancy which had twice taken possession of her that night, and which had
+been born of that likeness seen in the mirror. Many times since she had
+passed from childhood to womanhood had she speculated upon the mystery
+which enshrouded her, while one recollection after another of past
+events flitted through her brain, only to bewilder her awhile and then
+to disappear into oblivion. But never before had she been affected as
+she was that night when the possibility of what might be nearly drove
+her wild.
+
+'Oh, if that were so,' she said, 'I could help Harold, and I'd give
+everything to him and make him my king, as he is worthy to be. There is
+something far back,' she continued 'something different from the woman
+who died at my side. That face which haunts me so often was a reality
+somewhere. It has kissed me and called me darling, and I saw the life
+fade out of it--saw it cold and dead. I know I did, and sometime, when I
+have paid that debt to Mr. Frank Tracy, and have helped Harold, and made
+grandmother comfortable, I'll go to Germany, to Wiesbaden and
+everywhere, and clear the mystery, if possible; and if mother was a
+peasant girl, with hands coarse and hard, and black from labor in the
+field, then, I, too, will be a peasant girl, and marry a peasant lad,
+and draw his potatoes home in a cart, while he trudges at my side.'
+
+At this picture of herself Jerrie laughed out loud, and while trying to
+think how it would seem to draw potatoes in a cart, after having dug
+them, she fell asleep and dreamed of Maude and Harold, and studios and
+lilies, and a face which was a caricature, as Arthur had said, and
+which, when at a late hour she awoke, proved to be that of the
+chambermaid, whom Arthur had sent to rouse her, as he was waiting for
+his breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+MAUDE'S LETTER.
+
+
+    TRACY PARK, June ----, 18--.
+
+    'My darling Jerrie:--I wish I could send you a whiff of the
+    delicious air I am breathing this morning from the roses under my
+    window and the pond-lilies which Harold brought me about an hour
+    ago. Don't you think he was up before the sun, and went out upon the
+    river to get them for me because he knows how fond I am of them, and
+    I told him yesterday that they always made me think of you, they are
+    an sweet, and pure, and fair. I wish you could have seen him, or,
+    rather, have heard his voice and seen the look in his eyes, as he
+    said: "Yes; Jerrie is the lily and you are the rose; you set each
+    other off admirably. I am glad you are so good friends."
+
+    'Harold thinks the world of you, Jerrie, and were you his own
+    sister, I am sure he could not love you better than he does. How
+    handsome he has grown since I went away. I always thought him
+    splendid-looking, but he is more than that now; so tall and
+    straight, with his head set on his shoulders in such an aristocratic
+    kind of way, and then his eyes, which look at you so--well, I don't
+    know how they do look at you, but they are eyes you would trust and
+    never be afraid of anything bad behind them. Uncle Arthur says his
+    mother was lovely, and that his father was one of the handsomest men
+    of his time, but I am certain that Harold looks better than either
+    of them, and has inherited the good qualities of both, without a
+    single bad one. He is so nice and gentlemanly, and has such a kind,
+    courteous way of saying and doing things. Fred Raymond--who, you
+    know, is so sweet on Nina St. Clair--says that if Harold had all the
+    blood of a hundred kings in his veins he could not be more courtly
+    or dignified in his manner than he is, and that is a great deal for
+    a Kentuckian to say. Fred is now at Grassy Spring, visiting Dick St.
+    Claire, and will stay until Nina comes home. I wish Harold was rich,
+    and if I had money of my own, I believe I'd give it to him, only he
+    wouldn't take it, he is so awfully proud, and afraid somebody will
+    help him; and yet I respect him for the pride, which has made him
+    teach school, and do everything he could find to do in order to go
+    through college the last two years and pay his own way. But I did
+    not like it a bit when I heard he had accepted a situation in
+    Peterkin's furnace. I know he had good wages, but it is dreadful to
+    think of Harold under such a man, even if Billy is there. When I
+    told Uncle Arthur he laughed, and said: "Honor and shame from no
+    condition rise." I wonder what he meant? I asked Tom, and he said I
+    was a fool.
+
+    'Weren't you proud of Harold, though, the day he graduated? What an
+    oration that was! and how the building shook with applause when he
+    came on and when he went off! And do you remember the expression of
+    his face when he picked up the bouquet of roses I threw him, and
+    looked over where we sat? I thought he touched his lips to them, but
+    was not sure. Do you remember? He is studying law now all the time
+    he can get in Judge St. Claire's office, but he comes to read to me
+    for an hour or more nearly every day. He came of his own accord,
+    too. I did not ask him, or even hint, as Tom says I do, when I want
+    anything; and sometimes I half think he is trying to drive something
+    into my head, or was, when he began to read to me about those old
+    Greeks, Hesiod, or Herod, I don't know which, and Theogony--that's
+    rather a pretty name, don't you think so? But I could not stand the
+    Greeks. My mind is too weak to be impressed by anything Grecian,
+    unless it is the Grecian bend. You tried it until you were
+    discouraged and gave it up, telling me I was the stupidest idiot you
+    ever saw! That was the time we had the a spelling-school in the
+    Tramp House, and you were the teacher, and Harold chose me first,
+    and I spelled biscuit "bisket!" Do you remember how I cried? and
+    when you told me nobody would ever like me unless I knew something,
+    Harold said. "Don't talk like that, Jerrie; those who know the least
+    are frequently liked the best."
+
+    'What a comfort those words have been to me; and especially at the
+    time when I failed so utterly in examination at Vassar and had to
+    give it up. Oh, Jerrie, you do not know how mortified I was over
+    that failure, to think I knew so little; and the worst of it is I
+    can't learn, or understand; or remember, and it makes my head ache
+    so to try. I am sorry most on father's account, he is so proud of
+    me and would like to see me take the lead in everything. Poor
+    father! he is growing old so fast. Why, his hair is white as snow,
+    and he sometimes talks to himself just as Uncle Arthur does. I
+    wonder what ails him that he never smiles or seems interested in
+    anything except when I am smoothing his hair or sitting on his knee;
+    then he brightens up and calls me his pet and darling, and talks
+    queer kind of talk, I think. He asks me if I am glad I live at Tracy
+    Park--if I like the pretty things he buys me, and if I should be as
+    happy if I were poor--not real poor, you know, but as we were at
+    Langley before I was born. I went there with him a few weeks ago for
+    the first time; and oh, my goodness gracious! such a poky little
+    house, with the stairs going right up in the room, and such a tiny,
+    stuffy bedroom! I tried to fancy mamma's scent bottles, and brushes,
+    and combs, and the box for polishing her nails, transported to that
+    room, and her in there with Rosalie dressing her hair. It made me
+    laugh till I cried, and I think papa did actually cry, for he sat
+    down upon the stairs and turned his head away, and when he looked up
+    his eyes were all wet and red, with such a sorry look in them that I
+    went straight up and kissed him, and asked him playfully if he was
+    crying for the old days when he lived in that house and sold codfish
+    in the store.
+
+    '"Yes, Maude," he said. "I believe I'd give the remainder of my life
+    if I could be put back right here as I was when your uncle Arthur's
+    letter came and turned my head. Oh, if the years and everything
+    could be blotted out!"
+
+    'What do you suppose he meant? I was frightened, and did not say a
+    word until he asked me those questions I told you about; did I like
+    pretty things? did I like to live at Tracy Park, and could I bear to
+    be poor and live in the Langley house? I just told him, 'No, I
+    should not like to live in Langley, that I did like living at Tracy
+    Park, and did like the pretty things which money bought.'
+
+    '"Then I ought to be content, if my beautiful Maude is so," he said,
+    and the tired look on his face lifted a little.
+
+    'He calls me beautiful so often. But I don't see it, do you? Of
+    course you don't. You think me too black, and small, and thin, and
+    so I am. Harold never told me I was pretty, and--I tell this in
+    confidence, and you must never breathe it to any one--I have tried
+    to wring a compliment from him so many times, but it's no use, I
+    can't do it, he never understands anything, though he does sometimes
+    say, when he brings me a bright rose: "Wear it, Maude; it will
+    become your style."
+
+    'He never says you are pretty, either, and that is strange, for I
+    think you have the loveliest and sweetest face I ever saw, except
+    Gretchen's in the picture, you look like her; I saw it so plainly
+    two years ago, when you were here one evening, and I spoke of it to
+    father. Who was she, I wonder? Uncle Arthur does not talk much of
+    her now, though I believe he kisses her every night and morning. How
+    much he thinks of you, and how much he has talked of _Cherry_ since
+    his visit to you in May. I am so glad you liked the dress, he was so
+    anxious about it. Did he say any thing to you of a trip to
+    California? He took us quite by surprise two weeks ago by telling us
+    he was going. He wanted to see the Yosemite Valley before he died,
+    he said, and June was the time to see it. So he started off with
+    Charles about ten days ago, and the house seems like a tomb without
+    him.
+
+    'If I can, I shall come and see you graduate with the other Vassars,
+    though I shall be ashamed to be seen where I failed so utterly. I
+    might have known I should, for I haven't about me a single quality
+    which would entitle me to be a Vassar, unless it is my fondness for
+    _gum_. Do you really chew an awful lot there, or is it a fib? How
+    learned you and Nina will be, and how you will cast me in the shade,
+    making me seem stupider than ever. I did try very hard to learn to
+    speak German when I was abroad with mamma, for father wished it
+    particularly; but I could not do it, and gave it up. I have not a
+    capacity for anything, except to love and suffer and sacrifice for
+    those I love. Do you know, it sometimes frightens me to think how
+    devotedly I could love some one. Not a girl, but a man--a lover--a
+    husband, who loved me. Why, I would give my life for him, and bear
+    any kind of torture if it would add to his happiness. But why write
+    this nonsense to you, who never acted as if you cared an atom for
+    any boy, not even Dick St. Claire, who used to give you sugar hearts
+    and call you his little wife. _Entre nous_ (who says I do not know
+    two French words?) mamma would like to make a match between Dick and
+    me, but she never will--never! Dick is nice, and I like him, but not
+    that way. Poor mamma! How much she thinks of money and position! I
+    tell her she ought to have a photograph of the old Langley House
+    hung up in her room to keep her in mind of her former condition.
+    Just now she has the craze to hammer brass and paint in
+    water-colors, and goes over to Mrs. Atherton's to take lessons.
+    Don't you think that Mrs. Peterkin--_May Jane_--had like aspirations
+    with mamma, and wanted to join the class; but the teacher found that
+    she had as many pupils as she could attend to, and so May Jane is
+    left out in the cold. But Mr. Peterkin says, 'By George, my wife
+    shall have 'complishments if money can buy em!' And so, I suppose,
+    she will. What strides those Peterkins have taken, to be sure, and
+    what a big house he has built with such a funny name.--"_Le
+    Batteau_", which, as he pronounces it, sounds like _Lubber-too_! It
+    is just finished, and they have moved into it. I have not been
+    there, but Tom has, and he says it fairly glitters, it is so
+    gorgeous, and looks inside like those chariots which come with
+    circuses.
+
+    'You ought to hear Peterkin talk about his '_Ann Lizy_, who, he
+    says, "is to Vassar, gettin schoolin' with the big bugs, and when
+    she comes _hum_ he is goin' to get her a hoss and cart for her own,
+    and a maid, and a vally, too, if she wants one." Well, there are
+    some bigger fools in the world than I am, and that's a comfort. As
+    for Billy, he stammers worse, if possible, than he used to when he
+    told us we were "pl-p-plaguey mean to pl-pl-plague Ann Lizy so;" but
+    I guess I will let him burst upon you in all the magnificence of his
+    summer attire--his almost white clothes, short coat, tight pants,
+    pointed shoes, and stove-pipe hat to make him look taller. He comes
+    here occasionally to see Tom, and always talks of you. I do believe
+    you might be Mrs. Billy Peterkin and live at _Lubber-too_, if you
+    wanted; but, really, Billy is very kind to Harold, who gets twice as
+    much wages in the office, when he writes there, as he would if it
+    were not for Billy.
+
+    'Tom is home, doing nothing, but taking his ease and aping an
+    English swell. You know he was with mamma and me in England, and
+    since his return has effected everything English, and looks quite
+    like the _dude_ of the period. He, too, seems interested in your
+    return; and I don't know but you might be mistress of Tracy Park, if
+    you could fancy the incumbrance. Dick St. Claire is going to Vassar
+    to see you and Nina graduate; and Harold, too, if he possibly can.
+    He is very busy just now with something he must finish, and perhaps
+    he cannot be there. Tom is going, and Fred Raymond, and Billy
+    Peterkin--quite a turn-out from Shannondale.
+
+    'I can hardly wait to see you. Only think, it is almost two years
+    since I said good-bye; for we went to Europe just after Harold was
+    graduated, and your last Christmas holidays were over before we came
+    home.
+
+    'What a long letter I have written you, and have not told you a word
+    of my health, about which you inquired so particularly. Did Uncle
+    Arthur tell you anything? I wish he had not, for it worries me to
+    have people look, and act, and talk as if I were sick, when I am
+    not. If I had not a pain in my side, and a tickling cough, which
+    keeps me awake nights and makes me sweat until my hair is wet, I
+    should be perfectly strong; and but for the pain and the weariness,
+    I feel as well as I ever did; and I go out nearly every day, and I
+    don't want to die and leave my beautiful home, and father, and
+    mother, and you, and--everybody I love. I am too young to die. I
+    cannot die.
+
+    'Oh, Jerrie, I am glad you are coming home! You will do me good,
+    just as Harold does. He is so strong every way, and so kind I can't
+    begin to tell you what he has been to me since I came home in
+    March--more than a friend--more than a brother. I do not see why you
+    never fell in love with him, thought I suppose it is living with
+    him always, as you have, and looking upon him as a brother.
+
+    'And now I must say good-bye, for I am getting tired and must rest.
+    I was at the cottage this morning, and Harold is coming here this
+    afternoon to read Tennyson's "May Queen" to me. He has read it a
+    dozen times, but I am never tired of it, although it makes me cry to
+    think of that grave in the long grass, with little Alice in it, cold
+    and dead, listening for those she loved to come and weep over her.
+    You know, she says to her mother:
+
+    '"I shall hear you when you pass,
+     With your feet above me, in the long and pleasant grass."
+
+    'Oh, Jerrie, if it should be--you know what I mean; if there should
+    come a time when people say to each other, "Maude Tracy is dead!"
+    you'll come often, won't you, and think of me always as the friend,
+    who, weak and stupid as she was, loved you dearly--dearly.
+
+    'Now, good-bye again. Harold has just come in, and says, "Remember
+    me to Jerrie, and tell her I shall hope to see her graduated, but do
+    not know, I am so busy."
+
+    'Truly and lovingly,
+
+    'MAUDE TRACY.'
+
+    'P.S.--Tom has come in, and says, "Give my love to Jerrie."
+
+    'P.S. No. 2.--Dick St. Claire and Fred Raymond are here, and both
+    send their regards.
+
+    'P.S. No. 3.--If you will believe me, Billy Peterkin is here,
+    nibbling his little cane, and says, "Present my compliments to Miss
+    Crawford."
+
+    'Just think of it. Five, or, rather, four young men--for Tom don't
+    count--for me to entertain. But I can do it, and rather like it,
+    too, though they all tire me, except Harold.'
+
+Jerrie read this letter, which was received a few days before
+commencement, two or three times, and each time she read it, the little
+ache in her heart kept growing larger, until at last it was actual pain,
+and covering her face with her hands, she cried like a child.
+
+'It is Maude I am crying for,' she kept saying to herself. 'I know she
+is worse than they have told me. She is going to die, and I am mean to
+grudge her Harold's love, if that will make her happier. Why does she go
+to the cottage so often, I wonder? Is it to see him? He would not like
+me to do that. He was chagrined when I kissed him at Harvard. But, then,
+he does not love me, and he does Maude; but he _must_ see me graduate.
+I'll write and tell him so. That, surely, will not be "throwing myself
+at his head;"' and seizing her pen, Jerrie wrote, rapidly and excitedly:
+
+    'DEAR HAROLD: I have just heard from Maude, who says there is a
+    possibility that you will not come to Vassar; but I shall be so
+    disappointed if you do not. I would rather have you here than all
+    the wise old heads in the State. So come without fail, no matter
+    what you are doing. I can't imagine anything which should keep you.
+    Tell grandma I am longing to be home, and keep thinking just how
+    cool and nice the kitchen looks, with the hop-vine over the door;
+    but she will I have to raise the roof soon, for I do believe I've
+    grown an inch since last winter and am in danger of knocking my
+    brains out in those low rooms.
+
+    'Good-bye till I see you.
+
+    'JERRIE.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+'HE COMETH NOT,' SHE SAID.
+
+
+The _she_ was Jerrie, who, the night before commencement, was shaking
+hands with Dick St. Claire, Fred Raymond, Tom Tracy, and Billy Peterkin,
+all of whom had arrived on the evening train, and after dinner had come
+to pay their respects to the young ladies from Shannondale. The _he_ way
+Harold, for whom Jerrie asked at once.
+
+'Where is Harold? Is he coming in the morning?' she said, as she stood,
+tall, and straight, and queen-like, before the four young men, who
+glanced at each other with a significance in their looks, which she did
+not understand.
+
+It was Dick St. Claire who took it upon himself to explain.
+
+'No, Hal is not coming,' he said, 'and he is awfully cut up about it. He
+thought he might manage it until yesterday when he found it impossible
+to do so. You see, he has taken a job which must be done at a certain
+time.'
+
+'Taken a job!' Jerrie repeated. 'What job? What do you mean?' and her
+blue eyes flashed upon each of the young men, falling last upon Tom
+Tracy, as if she expected him to answer, which he did in the half
+sneering, half satirical tone which made her hate him and long to box
+his ears.
+
+'Why, it's a sort of carpenter's job,' he said; 'and I heard his hammer
+going this morning before sunrise, for I was up early for once and out
+in the park. Sounded as if he were shingling a roof, and that's work,
+you know, which must be done in fair weather. It might rain and spoil
+the plastering.'
+
+'Thank you,' Jerrie answered, curtly. 'Harold is shingling a roof, and
+cannot come. But where is Maude? Is she shingling a roof, too?'
+
+'Yes, b-b-by Jove. You've h-hit it. Maude's sh-shingling a roof, too:
+the b-best joke out,' Billy Peterkin chimed in, glad of an opportunity
+to join in the conversation, and so get some attention from Jerrie.
+
+He was a little man, only four feet five with heels, and he wore the
+light clothes of which Maude had written, and a stove-pipe hat, and dove
+colored gloves, and carried a little cane, which he constantly nibbled
+at, when he was not beating his little boot with it. But he was
+good-natured and inoffensive and kind-hearted, with nothing low or mean
+in his nature; and Jerrie, who looked as if she could have picked him up
+and thrown him over the house, liked him far better than she did the
+'elegant Tom,' as she had nicknamed him, who stood six feet without
+heels, and who knew exactly what shade of color to choose, from his
+neck-tie to his hose, which were always silk of the finest quality. Tom
+was faultlessly gotten up, and he knew it, and carried himself as if he
+knew it, and knew, too, that he was Tom Tracy, the future heir of Tracy
+Park, if he were fortunate enough to outlive both his uncle and his
+father. Jerrie had disliked him when he was a boy and she disliked him
+now, and turning her back upon him pretended to be interested in 'little
+Billy,' as she was in the habit of calling him; he was so short and she
+was so tall.
+
+He was speaking of Harold, and he said:
+
+'It's a dused shame he co-couldn't come, b-but he sent some money by
+Dick to buy you a b-basket in New York, and by George, we've got you a
+st-stunner down to the h-hotel; only I'm a-a-fraid it'll be w-wilted
+some b-before to-morrow.
+
+'Yes,' Dick said, coming forward, 'I should not have told you now, if
+Billy had not let it out; Hal did give me some money to buy a basket of
+flowers for you; the very best I could find, he said, and I got a big
+one; but I'm afraid it was not very fresh, for it begins to look wilted
+now. You must blame Tom, though; he pretends to be up in flowers, and
+advised my getting this one in New York, because it was so handsome and
+cheap.'
+
+'Oh, it is all right,' Tom drawled, in that affected voice he had
+adopted since his return from Europe. 'It was the best, any way, we
+could get for the money. Hal, you know, isn't very flush in the pocket.'
+
+It was a mean speech to make, and all Tom's audience felt it to be so,
+while Jerry crimsoned with resentment and answered hotly:
+
+'Faded or not, I shall care more for Harold's flowers than for all the
+rest which may be given me.'
+
+This was not very encouraging to three at least of the young men who
+were intending to make the finest floral offering they could find, to
+the girl whom in their secret hearts they admired more than any girl
+they had ever seen, and who, had she made the slightest sign, might have
+been installed at Grassy Spring, or Tracy Park, or Le Bateau, within
+less than a month. But Jerry had never made a sign, and had laughed and
+chatted and flirted with them all, not excepting Tom, who had long ago
+dropped his supercilious air of superiority and patronage when talking
+with her, and treated her with a gentleness and consideration almost
+lover-like. Horribly jealous of Harold, whom he still felt infinitely
+above, although he did not now often openly show it, he had encouraged
+the visits of the latter to Tracy Park, and by jokes and hints and
+innuendoes had fed the flame which he knew was burning in his sister's
+heart.
+
+'There will be a jolly row when mother finds it out,' he said to Maude
+one day; 'for you know she holds her head a great deal higher than Hal
+Hastings, who isn't the chap I'd choose for a brother-in-law. But if you
+like him, all right. Stick to him, and I'll stand by you to the death.'
+
+This was to Maude; while to his mother, when, she complained that Harold
+came there quite too often, and that Maude was running after him too
+much, he said:
+
+'Nonsense, mother! let Maude alone. She knows what she is about, and
+would not wipe her shoes on Hal Hastings, much less marry him. She is
+lonely without Nina and Jerry, and not strong enough to read much
+herself, and Hal amuses her; that's all. I know. I have talked with her.
+I am keeping watch, and the moment I see any indications of love-making
+on either side I will give you warning, and together we will put my fine
+chap in his proper place in a jiffy.'
+
+Tom was a young man now of twenty-seven, tall, and finely-formed, with
+all his mother's good looks, and his Uncle Arthur's courtliness of
+manner when he felt that his companions were worthy of his notice, but
+proud, and arrogant, and self-asserting with his inferiors, or those
+whom he thought such. He had never overcome his unwarrantable dislike of
+Harold, whom he considered far beneath him; but Harold was too popular
+to be openly treated with contempt, and so there was a show of
+friendship and civility between them, without any real liking on either
+side. Tom could not tell just when he began to look upon Jerrie as the
+loveliest girl he had ever seen, and to contemplate the feasibility of
+making her Mrs. Tom Tracy. His admiration for her had been of slow
+growth, for she was worse than a nobody--a child of the Tramp House, of
+whose antecedents nothing was known, while he was a Tracy, of Tracy
+Park, whom a duchess might be proud to wed. But he had succumbed at last
+to Jerrie's beauty, and sprightliness, and originality, and now his love
+for her had become the absorbing passion of his life, and he would have
+made her his wife at any moment, in the face of all his mother's
+opposition. By some subtle intuition, he felt that Harold was his rival,
+though he could not fathom the nature of Harold's feeling for Jerrie, so
+carefully did the latter conceal it.
+
+'He must regard her as something more than a sister,' he thought; 'he
+cannot see her every day without loving her, and by-and-by he will tell
+her so, and then my cake is dough. If I can only get him committed to
+Maude while Jerrie is away, my way is clear, for I am quite sure she
+does not care for Dick, and she would be a fool not to take Tracy Park
+if she could get it. And why shouldn't Hal love Maude? She is pretty,
+and sweet, and winning, and will some day be an heiress. Hal may thank
+his stars to get her, though I hate him as I do poison.'
+
+It was Tom who had insisted that Harold's basket should be bought in New
+York, where there was a better chance, he said, and he had himself
+selected flowers which he knew were not fresh, and would be still worse
+twenty-four hours later.
+
+'Why don't you get yours here, if it is the be-best place?' Will
+Peterkin had asked him, and he replied:
+
+'Oh, we can't be bothered with more than one basket in the train. I can
+find something there.'
+
+He did not say what he intended to find, or that baskets were quite too
+common for him. But after leaving the young ladies in the evening, he
+went to a florist's and ordered for Jerrie a book of white daisies, with
+a rack of purple pansies for it to rest upon.
+
+'That will certainly be unique, and show her that I have taste,' he
+thought.
+
+For Nina a bouquet was sufficient, while for Ann Eliza Peterkin he
+ordered nothing. Tom could be lavish of his money where his own interest
+was concerned, but where he had no interest he was stingy and even mean,
+and so poor little red-haired Ann Eliza, who would have prized a leaf
+from him more than all the florist's garden from another, was to get
+nothing from him.
+
+'What business has old Peterkin's daughter to graduate with ladies, any
+way?' he thought, and he looked on with a sneer, while Billy ordered
+five baskets, one of which was to be of white roses, with a heart of
+blue forget-me-nots in the centre.
+
+'What, under heaven, are you going to do with five baskets?' he asked;
+but Billy was non committal, for he would not own that three were
+intended for Jerrie, whom he wished to carry off the palm so far as
+flowers were concerned.
+
+And she did; for of all the young ladies who the next day passed in
+review before the multitude, no one attracted so much attention or
+received so much praise as Jerrie. For clearness of reasoning, depth of
+thought, and purity of language, her essay, though a little too
+metaphysical, perhaps, was accounted the best, and listened to with rapt
+attention. And when the musical voice ceased, and the young girl, who
+had never looked more beautiful than she did then, with the sparkle in
+her eyes and the flush on her cheeks, bowed to the audience, bouquets of
+flowers fell around her like hailstones, while basket after basket was
+handed up to her, Tom Tracy's book showing conspicuously from the rest
+and attracting unusual admiration.
+
+But, alas for poor Harold's gift! Dick had watered it the last thing
+before going to bed and the first thing in the morning, but the flowers
+were limp and faded, and gave forth a sickly odor, while the leaves of
+the roses were dropping off, and only the size, which was immense,
+remained to tell what it once had been. But Jerrie singled it out from
+all the rest, and held it in her hands until the exercises were over;
+and that night, at a reception given to the graduates, she wore in her
+bosom two faded pink roses, the only ones she could make hold together,
+and which Nina told her smelled a little old. But Jerrie did not care.
+They were Harold's roses, which he had sent to her, and she prized them
+more than all the rest she had received. At little Billy's _heart_ she
+had laughed till she cried, and then had given it to a young girl, not a
+graduate, who admired it exceedingly. Tom's book she knew was exquisite,
+and placed it with others, and thanked him for it, and told him it was
+lovely, and then gave it to Ann Eliza, whose offerings had been so few.
+A bouquet from Dick St. Claire and Fred Raymond, a basket from her
+brother, and one more from _herself_, were all, and the little
+red-haired girl, who, with her heavy gold chain and locket, and diamond
+ear-rings, and three bracelets, and five finger-rings, had looked like a
+jeweller's shop, felt aggrieved and neglected, and Jerrie found her
+sobbing in her room as if her heart was broken.
+
+'Only four snipping things,' she said, 'and you had twenty-five, and
+mother will be so disappointed, and father too, when he knows just how
+few I got. I wish I was popular like you.'
+
+'Never mind,' Jerrie said, cheerfully. 'It was only a happen so--my
+getting so many. You are just as nice as I am, and I'll give you part of
+mine to take home to your mother. I can never carry them all. I should
+have to charter a car,' and in a few moments six of Jerrie's baskets
+were transferred to Ann Eliza's room, including Tom Tracy's book.
+
+'Oh, I can't take that, Ann Eliza said; he didn't mean it for me; he
+didn't give me anything, and I--I--'
+
+Here she began to sob again, and laying her hand pityingly upon the
+bowed head, Jerrie said:
+
+'Yes, I know; I understand. Something from Tom Tracy would have pleased
+you more than from anyone; but listen to me, Annie. Tom is not worth
+your tears.'
+
+'Don't you care for him?' the girl asked, lifting her head suddenly.
+
+'Not a particle, as you mean. You have nothing to fear from me,' Jerrie
+replied.
+
+This was a grain of comfort to the girl who had been weak enough to
+waste her affections upon Tom Tracy, and who, fearing Jerrie was a
+rival, was weak enough to hope that with her out of the way she might
+eventually succeed in bringing him to her feet, for she knew his
+fondness for money, and knew, too, that she should in all probability be
+one day the heiress to a million. So great was her infatuation for the
+man who had never shown her the slightest attention, that even his
+flowers, though second-hand, and not intended for her, were everything
+to her, and when she packed her trunk that night she put them carefully
+away in many wrappings of paper, to be brought out at home in the
+privacy of her own room, and kept as long as the least beauty or perfume
+remained.
+
+It was a merry party which the New York train carried to Shannondale the
+next day, and Jerrie was the merriest and gayest of them all, bandying
+jokes and jests, and coquetting pretty equally with the young men, until
+neither Tom, nor Dick, nor Billy quite knew what he was doing or saying.
+But always in her gayest moods, when her eyes were brightest and her wit
+the keenest, there was in Jerrie's heart a thought of Harold, who had so
+disappointed her, and a wonder as to the nature of the _job_ which had
+been of sufficient importance to keep him from Vassar.
+
+'Shingling a roof, and Maude is helping him,' Billy said, 'I wonder what
+he meant?' she was thinking, when she heard Ann Eliza cry out, that the
+towers of 'Le Bateau' were visible.
+
+As she had not seen that wonderful structure since its completion, she
+arose from her seat, and going to the window, looked out upon the
+massive pile in the distance, looking, with its turrets, and towers, and
+round projections, like some old castle rather than a home where people
+could live and be happy.
+
+'It is very grand,' she said to Ann Eliza; and Billy, who was leaning
+toward her, replied:
+
+'Yes, too grand for a Pe-Peterkin. It wants you, there, Jerrie, as its
+m-m-master-p-p-piece, and, by Jove, you can b-be there, too, if you
+will!'
+
+No one heard this attempt at an offer but Jerrie, who, with a saucy toss
+of the head, replied, laughingly:
+
+'Thank you, Billy. I'll think of it, and let you know when I make up my
+mind to come. Just now I prefer the cottage in the lane to any spot on
+earth. Oh, here, we are at the station,' she cried, as the train shot
+round a curve and Shannondale was reached.
+
+There was a scrambling for bundles, and flowers, and wraps. Fred Raymond
+gathering up Nina's, while Dick, and Tom, and Billy, almost fought over
+Jerrie's, and poor little Ann Eliza would have carried hers alone if
+Jerrie had not helped her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+IN SHANNONDALE.
+
+
+Nine years of change in Shannondale, and the green hill-side, which
+stretched from the common down to the river where, when our story
+opened, sheep and cows were feeding in the pasture land, is thickly
+covered with houses of every kind of architecture, from the Mansard roof
+to the Queen Anne style, just coming into fashion, while the meadow
+lands are dotted over with the small houses of the men who work in the
+large furnace, or manufactory, which Peterkin had bought and enlarged,
+as a monument, he said, and where he sometimes employed as many as four
+hundred men, and had set up a whistle which could be heard for miles and
+miles, and nearly blew off the chimney-tops when it sounded in the
+morning at six o'clock, it was so loud and shrill. A screecher, Peterkin
+called it, and he always listened with a smile of pride and satisfaction
+on his face when he heard the first indications of its blowing, and knew
+that four hundred men were quickening their stops on account of it,
+lest they should be a few minutes late and have their wages docked.
+
+Peterkin counted two millions now, and boasted the finest, or at least,
+the most expensive house in the county, not even excepting Tracy Park,
+which still held its own for solidity and old-fashioned dignity, and was
+the show place to the strangers visiting in Shannondale.
+
+When Peterkin made $20,000 in one day from some speculation in stocks,
+he said to Mr. St. Claire, who was now a judge, and with whom he
+pretended to be on terms of great familiarity:
+
+'I say, judge, I'm goin' to build a buster, and whip the crowd. I've
+lived about long enough in that little nine-by-ten hole, and I'll be
+dumbed if I don't show 'em what I can do. I'll have towers, and
+bay-windows, and piazzers, with checkered work all 'round 'em, and a
+preservatory, and all kinds of new fangled doin's. May Jane and Ann
+'Liza want that Queen Anny style, but I tell 'em no such squatty things
+for me. They can have all the little winder panes and stained glass,
+cart loads on't, if they want; but I'll have the rooms big and high, so
+a feller won't bump his head. Yes, _sir_! I'm in for a smasher!'
+
+And he built 'a smasher' on the site of the old house, behind which the
+'Liza Ann,' or what there was left of it, was lying; and when the house
+was done, and furnished with the most gaudy and expensive furniture he
+could find in Boston and New York, he said it had just as good a right
+to a name as any body. There was Tracy Park, and Grassy Springs, and
+Brier Hill, and Collingwood, and he'd be dumbed if he'd be outdone by
+any of 'em.
+
+'He'd like to call it 'Liza Ann,' he said to Arthur, whom he met one day
+in the park, and to whom he began to talk of his new house. 'He'd like
+to call it 'Liza Ann, after the old boat, for that craft was the
+beginnin' of his bein' any body; but May Jane and Ann 'Liza wouldn't
+hear to it. They wanted some new-frangled foreign name; could Mr. Tracy
+suggest something?'
+
+'How would "_Le Bateau_" do? It is the French for "the boat," and might
+cover your difficulty,' Arthur said, without a thought that his
+suggestion would be adopted.
+
+But it was, immediately.
+
+'That's jest the checker. 'Liza Ann with a new name, _Lub--lub_--what
+d'ye call her?' Peterkin said, and Arthur replied:
+
+'_Le Bateau_.'
+
+'Yes, yes--_Lubber-toe_; that'll suit May Jane tip-top. Beats all what
+high notions she's got! Why, I don't s'pose she any more remembers that
+she used to wash Miss Atherton's stun steps than you remember somethin'
+that never happened. Do you?'
+
+Arthur thought very likely that she did not, and Peterkin went on:
+
+'You say it means a boat in French; _canal_, do you s'pose?'
+
+Arthur did not think it mattered what boat, and Peterkin continued:
+
+'_Lubber-toe_! Sounds droll, but I like it, I'll see an engraver to-day
+but how do you spell the plaguy thing!'
+
+Arthur wrote it on a slip of paper, which he handed Peterkin, who began
+slowly:
+
+_L-e le, b-a-t-bat; le-bat_. Why, what in thunder! That ain't
+_Lubbertoe_. 'Tain't nothin'!'
+
+With an amused smile Arthur explained that the pronunciation of French
+words had very little to do with the way they were spelled; then, very
+carefully pronouncing the name several times, and making Peterkin repeat
+it after him, he said good-bye, and walked away, thinking to himself:
+
+'There are bigger lunatics outside the asylum than I am, but it is not
+possible the fool will adopt that name.'
+
+But the fool did. May Jane approved, and Billy did not care, provided
+his father would pronounce it right, and so in less than a week, '_Le
+Bateau_' was on Peterkin's door-plate, and on the two gate-posts of the
+entrance to his grounds, and May Jane's visiting cards bore the words:
+
+'Mrs. Peterkin. Le Bateau. Fridays.'
+
+She had her _days_ now, like Mrs. Atherton, and Mrs. St. Claire, and
+Mrs. Tracy, and had her butler, too, and her maid, and her carriage; and
+after the house was furnished, and furnished in style which reminded one
+of a theatre, it was so gorgeous and gay, Peterkin concluded to have a
+_coat of arms_ for his carriage; and remembering how Arthur had helped
+him in a former dilemma he sought him again and told him his trouble.
+
+'That _Lubber-too_ (he called it _too_ now) 'went down like hot cakes,
+and was just the thing,' he said, 'and now I want some picter for my
+carriage door to kinder mark me, and show who I am. You know what I
+mean.'
+
+Arthur thought a _puff-ball_ would represent Peterkin better than
+anything else, but he replied:
+
+'Yes, I know. You want a coat of arms, which shall suggest your early
+days--'
+
+'When I was a flounderin' to get up--jess so,' Peterkin interrupted him.
+'You've hit it, square. Now I'd like a picter of the Lizy Ann, as she
+was, but May Jane won't hear to't. What do you say, square?'
+
+Arthur tingled to his finger tips at this familiarity from a man whom he
+detested, and whom he would like to turn from his door, but the man was
+in his house and in his private room, tilting back in a delicate Swiss
+chair, which Arthur expected every moment to see broken to pieces, and
+which finally did go down with a crash as the burly figure settled
+itself a little more firmly upon the frail thing.
+
+'I'll be dumbed if I hain't, broke it all to shivers!' the terrified
+Peterkin exclaimed, as he struggled to his feet, and looked with dismay
+upon the _debris_. 'What's the damage?' he continued, taking out his
+pocket-book and ostentatiously showing a fifty-dollar bill.
+
+'Money cannot replace the chair, which once adorned the _salon_ of
+Madame De Stael,' Arthur said, 'Put up your purse, but for Heaven's
+sake, never again tip back in your chair. It is a vulgar trick, of which
+no gentleman would be guilty.'
+
+Ordinarily, Peterkin would have resented language like this, but he was
+just now too anxious to curry favor with Arthur to show any anger, and
+he answered, meekly:
+
+'That's so, square. 'Tain't good manners, and I know it, as well as the
+next one. I'm awful sorry about the chair, and think mebby I could get
+it mended. I'd like to try.'
+
+'Never mind the chair,' Arthur said, with an impatient gesture. 'Try
+another and a stronger one, and let's go back to business. You want a
+painted panel for your carriage. How will this do?' and he rapidly
+sketched a green, pleasant meadow, with a canal running through it, and
+on the canal a boat, drawn by one horse, which a barefoot,
+elfish-looking boy was driving.
+
+'I swow, square, you're a trump, you be,' Peterkin exclaimed, slapping
+him on the back, 'You've hit it to a dot. That's the 'Lizy Ann, and that
+there boy is Bije Jones, drivin the old spavin hoss. You or'to hev _me_
+somewhere in sight, cussin' the hands as I generally was, and May Jane
+on deck, hangin' her clothes to dry. Could you manage that?'
+
+Arthur thought he could, but suggested that Mrs. Peterkin might not like
+to be made so conspicuous.
+
+'Possibly she will not like this drawing at all. She may think it too
+suggestive of other days.'
+
+'That's so,' Peterkin assented, a little sadly; 'and if she don't take
+to it, the old Harry can't make her. She used to be the meekest of wives
+them days she dried her clothes on the 'Lizy Ann, but she don't knock
+under wuth a cent sense we riz in the world, and Ann Lizy is wus than
+her mother. But I'll show this to the old woman and let you know.'
+
+May Jane did not approve, neither did Billy. No use, they said, to
+flaunt the canal, horse, driver, and all in people's faces; and so the
+discomfited Peterkin went to Arthur again and told him, 'the fat was all
+in the fire, and May Jane on a rampage.'
+
+'Try again, squire; but give us some kind of water and craft.'
+
+So Arthur good-humoredly changed the canal into a gracefully flowing
+river, in a bend of which, in the distance, there was just visible a
+boat, which was a cross between a gondola and one of those little
+dangerous things so common on the lakes of Wisconsin. Standing in the
+bow of the boat, with folded arms, as if calmly contemplating the
+scenery, was the figure of a man--suppositively Peterkin--who swore
+'he'd keep this picter in spite of 'em;' and as his wife did not
+seriously object, the sketch was transferred in oil to a pannel and
+inserted in the carriage, which, when drawn by two shining bays and
+driven by a colored man in long coat and tall hat, with Peterkin sitting
+back in it with all the pride and pompousness of a two-millionaire, and
+May Jane at his side, covered with diamonds, attracted general attention
+and comment. Billy seldom patronized the carriage, but frequently rode
+beside it, talking to his mother, of whom he was very fond, and taking
+off his hat to every person he met, whether old or young, rich or poor.
+
+'Billy is an idiot, but very kind-hearted,' people said of him, and in
+truth he was popular with everybody, especially with the men in his
+father's employ, who all went to him for favors, or for an increase of
+wages; for if Billy had any business it was in his father's office,
+where he pretended to look after matters and keep the books straight.
+Such had been the growth of Peterkin during the past nine years. 'He had
+got clean to the front,' he said, 'and was hob-nobbin' with Squire
+Harrenton, and Judge St. Claire, and the Tracys,' all of whom shrugged
+their shoulders and laughed at him in secret, but treated him civilly to
+his face, for, deny it as we may, money has a mighty power, and will
+open many a door which nothing else could move.
+
+'Coarse and ignorant as a horse, but not so bad after all' was what
+people said of him now; and in fact Peterkin had improved and softened a
+good deal with the accession of wealth. Nobody gave so largely, or
+lavishly either, to everything, as he did, while to his employees he was
+always generous and considerate. Once he thought to join the church,
+thinking that would add to his respectability; but when talked with by
+his clergyman he showed himself so lamentably deficient in every
+necessary qualification that he was advised to wait a while, which he
+did; but he rented the most expensive pew he could find, and carried the
+largest prayer-book of any one, and read the loudest, stumbling over the
+words frightfully, and kept his head down the longest, so long, indeed,
+that he once went to sleep, and had quite a little nap before his wife
+nudged him and told him to get up.
+
+'Good Lord deliver us!' Was his ejaculation, as he sprang to his feet,
+and, adjusting his glasses, looked fiercely round at the amused
+congregation.
+
+So far as money and display were concerned, the St. Claires and Mrs.
+Atherton had not kept up with Peterkin. On the contrary, as he grew into
+society they gradually withdrew, until at last Dolly Tracy had it all
+her own way and looked upon herself as the lady _par excellence_ of the
+town. She had been to Europe. She had seen the queen; she had had some
+dresses made at Worth's; she had picked up a few French words which she
+used on all occasions, with but little regard to their appropriateness.
+She had decorated a tea set, and was as unlike the Dolly Tracy, who once
+did her own work and ate griddle cakes from her own kitchen stove, as a
+person well could be. Everything had gone well with her, and scarcely a
+sorrow had touched her, for though poor, stupid Jack had slept for five
+years in the Tracy lot with only the woman of the Tramp House for
+company, he was so near an imbecile when he died that his death was a
+blessing rather than otherwise. Tom, with his fine figure, his
+fastidious tastes, and aristocratic notions, was the apple of her eye,
+and _tout a fait au fait_, she said, when her French fever was at its
+height and she wished to impress her hearers with her knowledge of the
+language; while, except for her ill-health, and the bad taste she
+manifested in her liking for Harold's society, Maude was _tout a fait au
+fait_, too. She had no dread of Gretchen, now; even Arthur had ceased to
+talk of her, and was as a rule very quiet and contented.
+
+Only her husband troubled her, for with the passing years his silence
+and abstraction had increased, until now it was nothing remarkable for
+him to go days without speaking to any one unless he were first spoken
+to. His hair was white as snow, and made him look years older than he
+really was; while the habit he had of always walking with his head down,
+and a stoop in his shoulders, added to his apparent years.
+
+During the time Maude was in Europe he grew old very fast, for Maude was
+all that made life endurable. To see her in her young beauty, flitting
+about the house and grounds like a bright bird, whose nest is high up in
+some sheltered spot where the storms never come, was some compensation
+for what he had done; but when she was gone there came over him such a
+sense of loneliness and desolation that at times he feared lest he
+should become crazier than his brother, who really appeared to be
+improving, although the strange forgetfulness of past events still clung
+to and increased upon him. He did not now remember ever to have said
+that Gretchen was with him in the ship or on the train, or that he had
+sent the carriage so many times to meet her; and when be spoke of her,
+which he seldom did to any one except to Jerrie, it was as of one who
+had died years ago. Occasionally, in the winter, when a wild storm was
+raging like that which had shaken the house and bent the evergreens the
+night Jerrie came, he would tie a knot of crape upon the picture, but
+would give no reason for it when questioned except to say, 'Can't you
+see it is a badge of mourning?'
+
+For a week or more it would remain there, and then he would put it
+carefully away, to be again brought out when the night was wild and
+stormy.
+
+It was during Maude's absence that the two brothers became more intimate
+than they had been before since Arthur first came home, and it happened
+in this wise. Every day, for months after Maude and his wife went away,
+Frank spent hours alone in his private room, sometimes doing nothing,
+but oftener looking at the photograph of Gretchen, and the Bible with
+the marked passages and the handwriting around it. Then he would take
+out the letter about which Jerrie had been so anxious, and examine it
+carefully, studying the address, which he knew by heart, and beginning
+at last to arrange the letters in alphabetical order as far as he could,
+and try to imitate them. It was a difficult process, but little by
+little, with the assistance of a German text book of Maude's which he
+found, he learned the alphabet, and began to form words, then to put
+them together, and then to read. Gradually the work began to have a
+great fascination for him, and he went to Arthur one day and asked for
+some assistance.
+
+'Never too old to learn,' he said, 'and as the house is like a tomb
+without Maude, I have actually taken up German, but find it up-hill
+business without a teacher. Will you help me?'
+
+'To be sure, to be sure,' Arthur cried, brightening up at once, and
+bringing out on the instant such a pile of books as appalled Frank and
+made him wish to withdraw his proposition.
+
+But Arthur was eager, and persistent, and patient, and had never
+respected his brother one half as much as when he was stammering over
+the German pronunciation, which he could not well master. But he learned
+to read with a tolerable degree of fluency, and to speak a little, too,
+while he could understand nearly all Arthur said to him.
+
+'Do you think I could get along in Germany?' he asked his brother, one
+day.
+
+'Certainly you could,' Arthur replied. Do you think of going there? If
+you do, go to Wiesbaden, and inquire for Gretchen--how she died, and
+where she was buried. I should have gone long ago only I dreaded the
+ocean voyage so confoundedly, and then I forget so badly. When are you
+going?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know--I don't know as ever,' Frank answered quickly; and
+yet in his heart there was the firm resolve to go to Wiesbaden and hunt
+up Marguerite Heinrich's friends, if possible.
+
+'And if I find them, and find my suspicions correct, what shall I do
+then?' he asked himself over and over again; and once made answer to his
+question: 'I will either make restitution, or drown myself in the
+Rhine.'
+
+Jerrie was a constant source of misery to Frank, and yet when she was at
+home he was always managing to have her at the park house, where he
+could see her, and watch her, as she moved like a young queen though the
+handsome rooms, or frolicked with Maude upon the lawn.
+
+'She is surely Gretchen's daughter, and Arthur's, too,' he would say to
+himself, as he, too, detected in her face the likeness to his brother,
+which had so startled Jerrie in the mirror.
+
+He was always exceedingly kind to her, and almost as proud of her
+success at Vassar as Arthur himself; and on the day when she was
+expected home he went two or three times to the cottage in the lane,
+carrying fruit and flowers, and even offering things more substantial,
+which, however, were promptly declined by Mrs. Crawford, who had
+signified her intention to take nothing more for Jerrie's board.
+
+'The girl pays for herself, or will,' she said, 'and it is Harold's wish
+and mine to be independent.'
+
+But she accepted the fruit and the flowers and wondered a little to see
+Frank so excited, and nervous, and anxious that every thing should be
+done to make Jerrie's final home-coming as pleasant as possible.
+
+It was a lovely July afternoon when the young ladies from Vassar were
+expected, but the train was half an hour late, and the carriage from
+Grassy Spring and the carriage from Le Bateau had waited so long that
+both coachmen were asleep upon their respective boxes, when at last the
+whistle was heard among the hills telling that the cars were coming. The
+Tracy carriage was not there, though twenty minutes before train time
+Maude had come down in the victoria, and on learning of the delay had
+been driven rapidly to the cottage in the lane, from which she had not
+returned when at last the cars stopped before the station and the young
+people alighted upon the platform, which, with their luggage, seemed at
+once to be full.
+
+'Your checks, miss,' the coachman from Grassy Spring said to Nina, as he
+touched his hat regretfully to her, and his words were repeated to Ann
+Eliza by the servant from Le Bateau.
+
+But Jerrie held hers in her hand with a rueful look of disappointment on
+her face as she looked in vain for Harold or Maude to greet her. For a
+single moment the difference between her position and that of Nina and
+Ann Eliza struck her like a blow, and she thought to herself:
+
+'For them everything, for me nothing.'
+
+Then she rallied, and passing her checks to the baggage master, said to
+him:
+
+'If there is a boy here with a cart or a wheelbarrow, let him take my
+trunks, otherwise send them by express. I see there is no one to meet
+me.'
+
+'Yes'm, but they's comin',' the man replied, with a significant nod in
+the direction where a cloud of dust was visible, as the Tracy victoria
+came rapidly up to the station, with Maude and Harold in it.
+
+The former was standing up and waving her parasol to the party upon the
+platform, while, almost before the carriage stopped, Harold sprang out,
+and had both of Jerrie's hands in his, and held them, as he told her how
+glad he was to welcome her home again. He looked tired and flurried, and
+did not seem quite himself, but there could be no doubt that he was
+glad, for the gladness shone in his eyes and in his face, and Jerrie
+felt it in the warm clasp of his hands, which she noticed with a pang
+were brown, and calloused, and bruised in some places as if they had of
+late been used to harder toil than usual. But she had not much time for
+thought before Maude's arms were around her neck and Maude was standing
+on tiptoe and drawing down her face which she covered with kisses; and,
+between laughing and crying, exclaimed:
+
+'You darling old Jerrie, how glad I am to see you again! and how tall
+and grand you have grown! Why, I don't much more than come to your
+shoulder. See, Harold, how Jerrie outshines me,' and she lifted her
+sparkling face to Harold, who looked down at her as a brother might have
+looked at an only sister of whom he was very fond.
+
+How pretty and piquant she was with her brilliant complexion and her
+black eyes, and how stylish she looked in the Paris gown of embroidered
+linen, which fitted her perfectly, and the big hat, which turned up just
+enough on the side to give her a saucy, coquettish air, as she flitted
+from one to another, kissing Nina twice, Ann Eliza once, and shaking
+hands with all the young men except Tom, who put his in his pockets out
+of her way.
+
+He could not stand Maude's gush, he said, and he watched her with a
+half-sneering smile as she tiptoed around, for it always seemed as if
+she walked upon her toes, courtesying as she walked.
+
+'I meant to have been here before the train,' she said to Jerrie, 'and I
+was here about an hour ago; but when I found the cars were late I drove
+over to tell Harold, as time with him was everything. How we did drive,
+though, when we heard the whistle. Come, jump in,' she continued, as she
+herself stepped into the victoria. 'Jump in, and I will take you home in
+a jiffy. It won't hurt Hal to walk, although he is awful tired.'
+
+'But I would rather walk; take Harold, if he is so tired,' Jerrie said,
+in a tone she did not quite intend.
+
+'Oh, Jerrie,' Harold exclaimed, in a low, pained voice, 'I am not tired,
+let us both walk,' and going to Maude he said something to her which
+Jerrie could not hear, except the words, 'Don't you think it better so?'
+
+'Of course I do; it was stupid in me not to see it before,' was Maude's
+reply, as she laid her hand on Harold's arm where it rested a moment,
+while she said her good-byes.
+
+And Jerrie saw the little, ungloved hand touching Harold so familiarly,
+and thought how small, and white and thin it was, with the full, blue
+veins showing so distinctly upon it, and then she looked more closely at
+Maude herself, and saw with a pang how tired and sick she looked in
+spite of the bright color in her cheeks which came and went so fast.
+There was a pallor about her lips and about her nose, while her ears
+were almost transparent, and her neck was so small that Jerrie felt she
+could have clasped it with one hand.
+
+'Maude,' she cried, pressing close to the young girl, as Harold stepped
+aside, 'Maude, are you sick? You are so pale everywhere except your
+cheeks, which are like roses.'
+
+'No, no,' Maude answered quickly, as if she did not like the question.
+'Not sick a bit, only a little tired. We have been at work real hard,
+Hal and I; but he will tell you about it, and now good-bye again, for I
+must go, I shall be round in the morning. Good-bye. Oh, Tom, I forgot!
+We have company to dinner to-night--a Mr. and Mrs. Hart, who are friends
+of Mrs. Atherton, and have just returned from Germany, bringing Fred's
+sister, Marian, with them. She has been abroad at school for years, and
+is very nice. I ought to have told Fred and Nina. How stupid in me! But
+they will find their invitations when they get home. Now hop in, quick,
+and don't tear my flounces. You are so awkward.'
+
+'I suppose Hal never tears your flounces,' Tom said, as he took his seat
+beside his sister, and gave Jerrie a look which sent the blood in great
+waves to her face and neck, for it seemed to imply that he understood
+the case and supposed she did too.
+
+The St. Claire carriage had driven away with Nina and Dick, and Fred,
+and the carriage from Le Bateau had gone, too, when at last Jerrie and
+Harold started down the road and along the highway to the gate through
+which the strange woman had once passed with the baby Jerrie in her
+arms. The baby was a young woman now, tall and erect, with her head set
+high as she walked silently by Harold's side, until the gate was reached
+and they passed into the shaded lane, where they were hidden from the
+sight of anyone upon the main road leading to the park house. Then
+stopping suddenly, she faced squarely toward her companion, and said:
+
+'Why didn't you come to commencement? Tom Tracy said you were shingling
+a roof, and Billy Peterkin said Maude was helping you.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+WHY HAROLD DID NOT GO TO VASSAR.
+
+
+The cottage in the lane, as its name implied, was not very pretentious,
+and all its rooms were small and low, and mostly upon the ground floor,
+except the one which Jerrie had occupied since she had grown too large
+for the crib by Mrs. Crawford's bed. In this room, in which there was
+but one window, and where the roof slanted down on both sides, Jerrie
+kept all her possessions--her playthings and her books, and the trunk
+and carpet-bag which had been found when she was found. Here she had cut
+off her hair and slept on the floor, to see how it would seem, and here
+she had enacted many a play, in which the scenes and characters were all
+of the past. For the cold in winter she did not care at all, and when in
+summer the nights were close and hot, she drew her little bed to the
+open window and fell asleep while thinking how warm she was. That she
+ought to have a better room had never occurred to her, and never had she
+found a word of fault or repined at her humble surroundings, so
+different from those of her girl friends. Only, as she grew taller, she
+had sometimes laughingly said that if the kept on she should not much
+longer be able to stand upright in her den, as she called it.
+
+'I hit my head now everywhere except in the middle,' she once said. 'I
+wonder if we can't some time manage to raise the roof.'
+
+The words were spoken thoughtlessly, and almost immediately forgotten by
+Jerrie: but Harold treasured them up, and began at once to devise ways
+and means to raise the roof and give Jerrie a room more worthy of her.
+This was just after he had left college, and there was hanging over him
+his debt to Arthur and the support of his grandmother. The first did not
+particularly disturb him, for he knew that Arthur would wait any length
+of time, while the latter seemed but a trifle to a strong, robust young
+man. Mrs. Crawford was naturally very economical, and could make one
+dollar go further than most people could two; so that very little
+sufficed for their daily wants when Jerrie was away.
+
+'I must earn money somehow,' Harold thought, 'and must seek work where I
+can do the best, even if it is from Peterkin.'
+
+So, swallowing his pride, he went to Peterkin's office and asked for
+work. Once before, when a boy of eighteen, and sorely pressed, he had
+done the same thing, and met with a rebuff from the foreman, who said to
+him gruffly:
+
+'No, sir; we don't want no more boys; leastwise, gentlemen boys. We've
+had enough of 'em. Try t'other furnace. Mr. Warner is allus takin' all
+kinds of trash, out of pity, and if he says "No," go to his wife; she'll
+get you in.'
+
+But the Warner factory, where Harold had once worked, was full of boys,
+whom the kind-hearted employer, or his wife, or both, had taken in, and
+there was no place for Harold. So he waited awhile until Jerrie needed a
+new dress and his grandmother a bonnet, and then he tried Peterkin
+again, and this time with success.
+
+'Yes, take him,' Peterkin said to his foreman, 'take him, and put him to
+the emery wheel; that's the place for such upstarts; that'll take the
+starch out of him double quick. He's a bad egg, he is, and proud as
+Lucifer. I don't suppose he'd touch my Bill or my Ann'Lizy with a
+ten-foot pole. Put him to the wheel. Bad egg! bad egg!'
+
+For some moat unaccountable reason, old Peterkin had a bitter prejudice
+against the boy, on whose account he had once been turned from the Tracy
+house; and though he had forgiven the Tracys, and would now have voted
+for Frank for Congressman if he had the chance, he still cherished his
+animosity against Harold, designating him as an upstart and a bad egg,
+who was to be put to the wheel. So Harold was 'put to the wheel' until
+he got a bit of steel in his eye, and his hands were blistered. But he
+did not mind the latter so much, because Jerrie cried over them at night
+and kissed them in the morning, and bathed them in cosmoline, and called
+Peterkin a mean old thing, and offered to go herself to the wheel.
+
+But to this Harold only laughed. He could stand it, he said, and a
+dollar a day was not to be sneezed at. He could wear gloves and save his
+hands.
+
+But the appearance of gloves was the signal for a general hooting and
+jeering from the boys of his own age who were employed there, and who
+had from the first looked askance at Harold because they knew how
+greatly he was their superior, and fancied an affront in everything he
+did and every word he said, it was spoken so differently from their own
+dialect.
+
+'I can't stand it,' Harold said to Jerrie, after a week's trial with the
+gloves. 'I'd rather sweep the streets than be jeered at as I am. I don't
+mind the work. I am getting used to it, but the boys are awful. Why,
+they call me 'sissy,' and 'Miss Hastings,' and all that.'
+
+So Harold left the employ of Peterkin, greatly to the chagrin of that
+functionary, who had found him the most faithful boy he had ever had.
+But this was years ago, and matters had changed somewhat since then.
+Harold was a man now--a graduate from Harvard, with an air and dignity
+about him which commanded respect even from Peterkin, who was sitting
+upon his high stool when Harold came in with his application. Billy, who
+was Harold's fast friend, was now in the business with his father, and
+as he chanced to be present, the thing was soon arranged, and Harold
+received into the office at a salary of twelve dollars per week, which
+was soon increased to fifteen and twenty, and at last, as the autumn
+advanced and Harold began to talk of taking the same school in town
+which he had once before taught, he was offered $1,500 a year, if he
+would remain, as foreman of the office, where his services were
+invaluable. But Harold had chosen the law for his profession, and as
+teaching school was more congenial to him than writing in the office,
+and would give him more time for reading law, he declined the salary and
+took the school, which he kept for two successive winters, going between
+times into the office whenever his services were needed, which was very
+often, as they knew his worth, and Billy was always glad to have him
+there.
+
+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.
+
+'And I'll do it now,' she said, at last, to herself. 'I'll fight it
+down, this something which makes me hate myself. If Harold loves Maude
+he shall never know from me of that horrible pain which cuts me like a
+knife and makes me forget to be indignant at Tom for talking so much of
+his money and his position, as if they could buy me! Poor Tom! I said
+some sharp things to him, but he deserved them, the prig! Let him marry
+that governor's daughter if he can. I am sure I wish him success.'
+
+She had reached home by this time, and found their simple dinner waiting
+for her. 'Oh, grandma, why did you do it? Why didn't you wait for me?'
+she said, as she took her seat at the table where the dishes were all so
+plain, and the cloth, though white and clean, so coarse and cheap.
+
+Jerrie was as fond of luxury and elegance as any one, and Tracy Park,
+with its appurtenances, would have suited her taste better than the
+cottage.
+
+'But not with Tom, not with Tom,' she kept on repeating to herself, as
+she cleared the table and washed the dishes, and then brought in and
+folded the clothes for the morrow's ironing.
+
+By this time she was very tired, and going to her cool, pretty room, she
+threw herself upon the lounge and slept soundly for three hours or more.
+Sleep is a wonderful tonic, and Jerrie rose refreshed and quite herself
+again. Not even a thought of Maude and Harold disturbed her as she went
+whistling and singing around her room, hanging up her dresses one by
+one, and wondering which she should wear at the garden party. Deciding
+at last upon a simple white muslin, which, although two years old, was
+still in fashion, and very becoming, she arranged her wavy hair in a
+fluffy mass at the back of her head, brushed her bangs into short, soft
+curls upon her forehead, pinned a cluster of roses on the bosom of her
+dress, and was ready for the party.
+
+'Tell Harold, if he is not too tired, I want him very much to come for
+me,' she said, to Mrs. Crawford, and then about five o'clock started for
+Grassy Spring, where she found the guests all assembled in the pleasant,
+shady grounds, which surrounded the house.
+
+Tom was there in his character of a fine city dandy, and the moment he
+saw Jerry, he hastened to meet her, greeting her with perfect
+self-possession, as if nothing had happened.
+
+'You are late,' he said, going up to her. 'We are waiting for you to
+complete our eight hand croquet, and I claim you as my partner.'
+
+'I c-c call that mean, T-t-tom. I was g-g-going to ask J-jerrie to
+pl-play with m-me,' little Billy said, hopping around them, while Dick's
+face showed that he, too, would like the pleasure of playing with
+Jerrie, who was known to be an expert and seldom missed a ball.
+
+Naturally, however, Marian Raymond, as a stranger, would fall to him,
+and they were soon paired off, Dick and Marian, Tom and Jerrie, Nina and
+Billy, Fred Raymond and Ann Eliza, who wore diamonds enough for a full
+dress party, and whose red hair was piled on the top of her head so
+loosely that the ends of it stuck out here and there like the streamers
+on a boat on gala days. This careless style of dressing her hair, Ann
+Eliza affected, thinking it gave individuality to her appearance; and it
+certainly did attract general observation, her hair was so red and
+bushy. Dick had stumbled and stammered dreadfully when confessing to his
+sister that he had invited the Peterkins, while Nina had drawn a long
+breath of dismay as she thought of presenting Ann Eliza and Billy to
+Marian Raymond, with her culture and aristocratic ideas. Then she burst
+into a laugh and said, with her usual sweetness:
+
+'Never mind, Dickie. You could not do otherwise. I'll prepare Marian,
+and the Peterkins will really enjoy it.'
+
+So Marian, who, with all her accomplishments and foreign air, was a
+kind-hearted, sensible girl, was prepared, and received the Peterkins
+very graciously, and seemed really pleased with Billy, whose big, kind
+heart shone through his diminutive body and always won him friends. He
+was very happy to be there, because he liked society, and because he
+knew Jerrie was coming; and Ann Eliza was very glad because she felt it
+an honor to be at Grassy Spring, and because she knew Tom was coming,
+and when he came she fastened upon him with a tenacity which he could
+not well shake off; and when croquet was proposed she was the first to
+respond.
+
+'Oh, yes, that will be nice, and I know our side will beat,' and she
+looked at Tom as it were a settled thing that she should play with him.
+
+But Tom was not in a mood to be gracious. He had come to the
+entertainment, which he mentally called a bore, partly because he would
+not let Jerrie think he was taking her refusal to heart, and partly
+because he must see her again, even if she never could be his wife. All
+the better nature of Tom was concentrated in his love for Jerrie, and
+had she married him he would probably have made her as happy as a wholly
+selfish man can make happy the woman he loves. But she had declined his
+offer, and wounded him deeper than she supposed.
+
+A hundred times he had said to himself that afternoon, as he sat alone
+in the lovely park--of which he had once said to Harold, he was to be
+the _hare_, and of whose possession in the future he had boasted to
+Jerrie--that he did not care a _sou_, that he was glad she had refused
+him, for after all it was only an infatuation on his part; that the girl
+of the carpet-bag was not the wife for a Tracy; but the twinge of pain
+in his heart belied his words, and he knew he did love Jerrie Crawford
+better than he should ever again love any girl, whether the daughter of
+a governor or of the president.
+
+'And I go to the party, too, just to show her that I don't care, and for
+the sake of looking at her,' he said. 'She can't help that, and it is a
+pleasure to look at a woman so grandly developed and perfectly formed as
+she is. By Jove! Hal Hastings is a lucky dog; but I shall hate him
+forever.'
+
+So Tom pulled himself together, and went to Grassy Spring in a frame of
+mind not the most amiable; and when croquet was proposed, he sneered at
+it as something quite too _passe_, citing lawn tennis as the only decent
+outdoor amusement.
+
+'Why, then, don't you set it up on your grounds, where you have plenty
+of room, and ask us all over there?' Dick asked, good-humoredly, as he
+began to get out the mallets and balls.
+
+To this Tom did not reply, but said, instead:
+
+'Count me out. I don't like the game, and there are enough without me.'
+
+Just then Jerry appeared at the gate, and he added quickly:
+
+'Still, I don't wish to be ungracious; and now Jerrie has come, we can
+have an eight hand.'
+
+Hastening toward her, he met her as we have recorded, and claimed her
+for his partner.
+
+'Thank you, Tom,' Jerrie said, with a bright smile on her face, which
+made the young man's heart beat fast with both pleasure and pain, as he
+gave her the mallet and told her she was to play first.
+
+Tom was making himself master of ceremonies, and Dick kept quiet and let
+him, and watched Jerrie admiringly as she made the two arches, and the
+third, and fourth, and then sent her ball out of harm's way. It was a
+long and closely contested game, for all were skilful players, except
+poor Ann Eliza, who was always behind and required a great deal of
+attention from her partner especially when it came to croqueting a
+ball. She did not know exactly what to do, and kept her foot so long
+upon the ball that less amiable girls than Nina and Jerrie would have
+said she did it on purpose, to show how small and pretty it looked in
+her closely fitting French boot. But Jerrie's side beat, as it usually
+did. She had become a 'rover' the second round, had rescued Tom from
+many a difficulty, and taken Ann Eliza through four or five wickets,
+besides doing good service to her other friends.
+
+'I p-p-propose three ch-cheers for Jerrie,' Billy said, standing on his
+tiptoes and nearly splitting his throat with his own hurrah.
+
+After the game was over they repaired to the piazza, where the little
+tables were laid for tea, and where Jerrie found herself _vis-a-vis_
+with Marian Raymond, of whom she had thought she might stand a little in
+awe, she had heard so much of her. But the mesmeric power which Jerrie
+possessed drew the Kentucky girl to her at once, and they were soon in a
+most animated conversation.
+
+'You do not seem like a stranger to me,' Marian said, 'and I should
+almost say I had seen you before, you are so like a picture in Germany.'
+
+'Yes,' Jerrie answered, with a gasp, and a feeling such as she always
+experienced when the spell was upon her and she saw things as in a
+dream.
+
+'Was it in a gallery?'
+
+'Oh, no; it was in a house we rented in Wiesbaden. You know, perhaps,
+that I was there at school for a long time. Then, when mamma came out,
+and I was through school, we stayed there for months, it was so lovely,
+and we rented a house which an Englishman had bought and made over. Such
+a pretty house it was, too, with so many flowers and vines around it.'
+
+'And the picture--did it belong to the Englishman?' Jerrie asked.
+
+'Oh, no,' Marian replied: 'it did not seem to belong to anybody. Mr.
+Carter--that was the name of our landlord--said it was there in the wall
+when he took the house, which was then very small and low, with only two
+or three rooms. He bought it because of the situation, which, though
+very quiet and pleasant, was so near the Kursaal that we could always
+hear the music without going to the garden.
+
+'Yes,' Jerrie said again, with her head on one side, and her ear turned
+up, as if she were listening to some far-off, forgotten strains. 'Yes;
+and the picture was like me, you say--how like me?'
+
+'Every way like you,' Marian replied; 'except that the original must
+have been younger when it was taken--sixteen, perhaps--and she was
+smaller than you, and wore a peasant's dress, and was knitting on a
+bench under a tree, with the sunshine falling around her, and at a
+little distance a gentleman stood watching her. But what is the matter,
+Miss Crawford? Are you sick?' Marian asked, suddenly, as she saw the
+bright color fade for an instant from Jerrie's face, leaving it deathly
+white, while Tom and Dick knocked their heads together in their efforts
+to get her a glass of water, which they succeeded in spilling into her
+lap.
+
+'It is nothing,' Jerrie said, recovering herself quickly. 'I have been
+in the hot sun a good deal to-day, and perhaps that affected me and made
+me a little faint. 'It has passed now;' and she looked up as brightly as
+ever.
+
+'It's that confounded washing!' Tom thought; but Jerrie could have told
+him differently.
+
+As Marian had talked to her of the house in Wiesbaden and the picture on
+the wall--of the peasant girl knitting in the sunshine--she had seen, as
+by revelation, through a rift in the clouds which separated her from the
+past--the picture on the wall, in its pretty Florentine frame, and knew
+that it resembled the pale, sweet face which came to her so often and
+was so real to her. Was it her old home Marian was describing? Had she
+lived there once, when the house consisted of only two or three rooms?
+and was that a picture of her mother, left there she knew not how or
+why? These were the thoughts crowding each other so fast in her brain
+when the faintness and pallor crept over her and the objects about her
+began to seem unreal. But the cold water revived her, and she was soon
+herself again, listening while Marian talked of heat and sun-strokes,
+with an evident forgetfulness of the peasant girl knitting in the
+sunshine; but Jerrie soon recurred to the subject and asked, rather
+abruptly: 'Was there a stove in that house--a tall, white stove, in a
+corner of one of the old rooms--say the kitchen--and a high-backed
+settee?'
+
+Marian stared at her a moment in surprise, and then replied:
+
+'Oh, I know what you mean--those unwieldy things in which they sometimes
+put the wood from the hall. No; there was nothing of that kind, though
+there was an old settee by the kitchen fire-place, but not a tall stove.
+Mr. Carter had modernized the house, and set up a real Yankee
+stove--Stewart's, I think they called it.'
+
+'Was the picture in the kitchen?' Jerrie asked next.
+
+'No,' Marian replied, 'it was in a little, low apartment which must once
+have been the best room.'
+
+'And was there no theory with regard to it! It seems strange that any
+one should leave it there if he cared for it,' Jerrie said.
+
+'Yes, it does,' Marian replied; 'but all Mr. Carter knew was that the
+people of whom he bought the house said the portrait was there when they
+took possession, and that it had been left to apply on the back rent;
+also that the original was dead. He (Mr. Carter) had bought the picture
+with the house, and offered to take it down, but I would not let him. It
+was such a sweet, sunny, happy face that it did me good to look at it,
+and wonder who the young girl was, and if her life were ever linked with
+that of the stranger watching her.'
+
+Again the faintness came upon Jerrie, for she could see so plainly on
+the sombre wall the picture of the sweet-faced girl, with the long
+stocking in her lap--a very long stocking she felt sure it was, but
+dared not ask, lest they should think her question a strange one. Of the
+stranger in the back yard watching the young girl she had no
+recollection, but her heart beat wildly as she thought:
+
+'Was that Mr. Arthur, and was the young girl Gretchen?'
+
+How fast the lines touching her past had widened about her since she
+first saw the likeness in the mirror, and her confused memories of the
+past began to take shape and assume a tangible form.
+
+'I will find that house, and that picture, and that Mr. Carter, and the
+people who lived there before him,' she said to herself; and then again,
+addressing Marian, she asked:
+
+'What was the street, and the number of that house?'
+
+Marian told her the street, but could not remember the number, while Tom
+said, laughingly:
+
+'Why, Jerrie, what makes you so much interested in an old German house?
+Do you expect to go there and live in it?'
+
+'Yes,' Jerrie replied, in the same light tone. 'I am going to Germany
+sometime--going to Wiesbaden, and I mean to find that house and the
+picture which Miss Raymond says I am so much like; then I shall know how
+I look to others. You remember the couplet:
+
+  '"Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us,
+     To see ourselfs as others see us!"
+
+'Look in the glass there, the best one you can find, and you'll see
+yourself as others see you,' Dick said, gallantly.
+
+Before Jerrie could reply, a servant appeared on the piazza, saying
+there was some one at the telephone asking for Mr. Peterkin.
+
+It proved to be Billy's father, who was in the village, and had received
+a telegram from Springfield concerning a lawsuit which was pending
+between himself and a rival firm, which claimed that he had infringed
+upon their patents. Before replying to the telegram he wished to confer
+with his son, who was to come at once to the hotel, and, if necessary,
+go to Springfield that night.
+
+'B-by Jove,' Billy said, as he returned to the piazza and explained the
+matter, 'it's t-t-too bad that I must g-go, when I'm enjoying m-myself
+t-t-tip-top. I wish that lawsuit was in Gu-Guinea.'
+
+Then turning to Ann Eliza he asked how she would get home if he did nut
+return.
+
+'Oh, don't trouble about me. I can take care of myself,' Ann Eliza said,
+with a bounce up in her chair, which set every loose hair of her frowzy
+head to flying.
+
+'M-m-maybe they'll send the ca-carriage,' Billy went on, 'and if they
+do-don't, m-may be you can g-go with T-Tom as far as his house, and then
+you wo-wont be afraid.'
+
+Tom could have killed the little man for having thus made it impossible
+for him not to see his sister safely home. He had fully intended to
+forestall Dick, and go with Jerrie if Harold did not come, for though
+she had refused him, he wished to keep her as a friend, hoping that in
+time she might be led to reconsider. He liked to hear her voice--to look
+into her face--to be near her, and the walk in the moonlight, with her
+upon his arm, had been something very pleasant to contemplate, and now
+it was snatched from him by Billy's ill-advised speech, and old
+Peterkin's red-haired daughter thrust upon him. It was rather hard, and
+Tom's face was very gloomy and dark for the remainder of the evening,
+while they sat upon the piazza and laughed, and talked, and said the
+little nothings so pleasant to the young and so meaningless to the old
+who have forgotten their youth.
+
+Jerrie was the first to speak of going. She had hoped that Harold might
+possibly come for her, but as the time passed on, and he did not appear,
+she knew he was not coming, and at last arose to say good-night to Nina,
+while Dick hastened forward and announced his intention to accompany
+her.
+
+'No, Dick, no; please don't,' she said. 'I am not a bit afraid, and I
+would rather you did not go.'
+
+But Dick was persistent.
+
+'You know you accepted my services this morning,' he said, and his face,
+as he went down the steps with Jerrie on his arm, wore a very different
+expression from that of poor Tom, who, with Ann Eliza coming about to
+his elbow, stalked moodily along the road, scarcely hearing and not
+always replying to the commonplace remarks of his companion, who had
+never been so happy in her life, because never before had she been out
+alone in the evening with Tom Tracy as her escort.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+OUT IN THE STORM.
+
+
+For half an hour or more before the young people left the house a dark
+mass of clouds had been rolling up from the west, and by the time that
+they were out of the grounds and on the highway, the moonlight was
+wholly obscured and the sky was overcast as with a pall, while frequent
+groans of thunder and flashes of lightning in the distance told of the
+fast coming storm.
+
+'Oh, I am so afraid of thunder! Aren't you?' Ann Eliza cried, in terror,
+as she clung closer to Tom, who, beside her, seemed a very giant, and
+who did not reply until there came a gleam of lightning which showed him
+the white face and the loose hair blowing out from under his companion's
+hat.
+
+There was a little shriek of fear and a smothered cry. 'Oh, Tom, aren't
+you a bit afraid?'
+
+And then the giant answered the trembling little girl whom he would like
+to have shaken off, she clung so closely to him 'Thunder and lightning,
+no!' I'm not afraid of anything except getting wet; and if you are,
+you'd better run before the whole thing is upon us; the sky is blacker
+than midnight now. I never saw a storm come on so fast. Can you run?'
+
+'Yes--some,' Ann Eliza gasped out; 'only my boots are so tight and new,
+and the heels are so high. Do you think we shall be struck?'
+
+This as a peal of thunder louder than any which had preceded it rolled
+over their heads, making Ann Eliza clutch Tom's arm in nervous terror
+which was not feigned.
+
+'Struck? No. But don't screech and hang on to me so. We can never get
+along if you do,' Tom growled; and, taking her by the wrist, he dragged
+rather than led her through the woods where the great rain-drops were
+beginning to fall so fast as the two showers--one from the west and one
+from the south--approached each other, until at last they met overhead,
+and then commenced a wild and fierce battle of the elements, the
+southern storm and the western storm each seemingly trying to outdo the
+other and come off conqueror.
+
+As the thunder and lightning and rain increased, Tom went on faster and
+faster, forgetting that the slip of a girl, who scarcely came to his
+shoulders, could not take so long strides as a great, hulking fellow
+like himself.
+
+'Oh, Tom, Tom--please not so fast. I can't keep up, my heart beats so
+fast and my boots hurt me so,' came in a faint, sobbing protest more
+than once from the panting girl at his side; but he only answered:
+
+'You _must_ keep up, or we shall be soaked through and through. I never
+knew it rain so fast. Take off your boots, if they hurt you. You've no
+business to wear such small ones.'
+
+He had heard from Maude that Ann Eliza was very proud of her feet, and
+always wore boots too small for them, and he experienced a savage
+satisfaction in knowing that she was paying for her foolishness. This
+was not very kind in Tom, but he was not a kind-hearted man, and he held
+the whole Peterkin tribe, as he called them, in such contempt that he
+would scarcely have cared if the tired little feet, boots and all, had
+dropped off, provided it did not add to his discomfort. They were out of
+the woods and park by this time, and had struck into a field as a
+shorter route to Le Bateau. But the way was rough and stony, and Tom had
+stumbled himself two or three times and almost fallen, when a sharp,
+loud cry from Ann Eliza smote his ear, and he felt that she was sinking
+to the ground.
+
+His first impulse was to drag her on, but that would have been too
+brutal, and stopping short he asked what was the matter.
+
+'Oh, I don't know. I guess I've sprained my ankle. It turned right over
+on a big stone, you went so fast, and hurts me awfully. I can't walk
+another step. Oh, what shall we do, and am I going to die?'
+
+'Die? No!' Tom answered, gloomily. 'But we are in an awful muss, and I
+don't know what to do. Here it is raining great guns, and I am wet to my
+skin, and you can't walk, you say. What in thunder shall we do?'
+
+Ann Eliza was sobbing piteously, and when a glare of lightning lighted
+up the whole heavens, Tom caught a glimpse of her face which was white
+as marble, and distorted with pain, and this decided him. He had thought
+to leave her in the darkness and rain, while he went for assistance
+either to the Park House or Le Bateau; but the sight of her utter
+helplessness awoke in him a spark of pity, and bending over her he said,
+very gently for him:
+
+'Annie,'--this was the name by which he used to call her when they were
+children together, and he thought Ann Eliza too long--'Annie, I shall
+have to carry you in my arms; there is no other way. It is not very far
+to your home. Come!' and stooping low over the prostrate form he lifted
+her very carefully and holding her in a position the least painful for
+her, began again to battle with the storm, walking more carefully now
+and groping his way through the stony field lest he should stumble and
+fall and sprain him own ankle, perhaps.
+
+'This is a jolly go,' he said to himself, as he went on; and then he
+thought of Dick and Jerrie, and wondered how they were getting through
+the storm, and if she had sprained her ankle and Dick was carrying her
+in his arms.
+
+'He will sweat some, if he is, for Jerrie is twice as heavy as
+Peterkin's daughter;' and at the very idea Tom laughed out loud,
+thinking that he should greatly prefer to have Jerrie's strength and
+weight in his arms to his light, slim, little girl, who neither spoke
+nor moved until he laughed, and then there came in smothered tones from
+the region of his vest:
+
+'Oh, Tom, how can you laugh? Do you think it such fun?'
+
+'Fun! Thunder! Anything but fun!' was his gruff reply, as he went on
+more rapidly now, for they were in the grounds of Le Bateau, and the
+lights from the house were distinctly visible at no great distance away.
+'We are here at last. Thank the Lord.' he said, as he went up the steps
+and pulled sharply at the bell.
+
+'Let me down. I can stand on one foot,' Ann Eliza said; and nothing loth
+Tom put her down, a most forlorn and dilapidated piece of humanity as
+she stood leaning against him with the light of the piazza lamp falling
+full upon her.
+
+Her little French boots, which had partly done the mischief, were
+spoiled, and the heel of one of them had been nearly wrenched off when
+she stumbled over the stone. Her India muslin, with its sash, and
+ribbons, and streamers, was torn in places and bedraggled with mud. She
+had lost her hat in the woods, and the wind and the rain had held high
+carnival in her loosely-arranged hair, whose color Tom so detested, and
+which streamed down her back in many little wet tags, giving her the
+look of a drowned rat after it has been tortured in a trap.
+
+Old Peterkin was reading his evening paper when Tom's sharp summons
+sounded through the house, making him jump from the chair, as he
+exclaimed:
+
+'Jiminy hoe-cakes! Who can that be in this storm?'
+
+He had seen Billy off in the train, and had returned home just as the
+rain began to fall. Naturally both he and his wife had felt some
+anxiety on Ann Eliza's account, but had concluded that if the storm
+continued she would remain at Grassy Spring, and if it cleared in time
+they would send the carriage for her. So neither thought of her when the
+loud ring came, startling them both so much. It was Peterkin himself who
+went to the door, gorgeous in a crimson satin dressing gown which came
+to his feet, but which no amount of pulling would make meet together
+over his ponderous stomach. An oriental smoking cap was on his head, the
+big tassel hanging almost in his eyes, and a half-burned cigar between
+his fingers.
+
+'Good George of Uxbridge!' he exclaimed, as his eye fell upon Tom, from
+whose soaked hat the water was dripping, and upon Ann Eliza leaning
+against him, her pale face quivering with pain, and her eyes full of
+tears. 'George of Uxbridge! What's up? What ails the girl!'
+
+At sight of her father Ann Eliza began to cry, while Tom said:
+
+'She has sprained her ankle and I had to bring her home. She cannot
+step.'
+
+'Jerusalem hoe-cakes! Spraint her ankle! Can't step! You bring her home!
+Heavens and earth! Here, May Jane, come lively! Here's a nice how-dy-do!
+Ann Liza's broke her laig, and Tom Tracy's brung her home!'
+
+As Peterkin talked, he was taking his daughter in his arms and bringing
+her into the hall, hitting her lame foot against the door, and eliciting
+from her a cry of pain.
+
+'Oh, father; Oh-h!--it does hurt so. Put me somewhere quick, and take
+off my boot. I believe I am going to die!'
+
+She was dripping wet, and little puddles of water trailed along the
+carpet as Peterkin carried her into the sitting room, where he was about
+to lay her down upon the delicate satin couch, when his wife's
+housewifely instincts were roused, and she exclaimed:
+
+'No, father. No, not there, when she's so wet, and water spots that
+satin so dreadfully.'
+
+'What in thunder shall I do with her? Hold her all night?' Peterkin
+demanded, while Tom deliberately picked up the costly Turkey hearth rug,
+and throwing it across the couch, said:
+
+'Put her on that.' So Peterkin deposited her upon the rug, hitting her
+foot again, and sending her off in a dead faint.
+
+'Oh, she's dead! she's dead! What shall we do?' Mrs. Peterkin cried,
+wringing her hands, and walking about excitedly.
+
+'Do?' Peterkin yelled. 'Hold your yawp, and stop floppin' round like a
+hen with her head cut off! She ain't dead. She's fainted. Bring some
+camfire, or alcohol, or hartshorn, or Pond's Extract, or something for
+her to smell.'
+
+'Yes, yes; but where are they?' Mrs. Peterkin moaned, still flopping
+around, as her husband had expressed it, while Tom rang the bell and
+summoned the maid, to whom he gave directions.
+
+'Bring some camphor or hartshorn,' he said. 'Miss Peterkin has fainted,
+and get off the boot as soon as possible. Don't you see how her foot is
+swelling?'
+
+This to Peterkin, who made a dive at the boot, which resisted all his
+efforts, even after it was unbuttoned. The leather, which was soaked
+through, had shrunk so that it was impossible to remove the boot without
+cutting it away, and this they commenced to do.
+
+Ann Eliza had recovered her consciousness by this time, and although the
+pain was terrible she bore it heroically, as piece after piece of the
+boot was removed, together with the silk stocking which left her poor
+little swollen foot exposed and bare.
+
+'By Jove, she's plucky!' Tom thought, as he watched the operation and
+saw the great drops of sweat on Ann Eliza's forehead and her efforts to
+quiet her mother, pretending that it did not hurt so very much. 'Yes,
+she's plucky,' and for the first time in his life Tom was conscious of a
+feeling of something like respect for Peterkin's red-haired daughter.
+'She _has_ a small foot, too; the smallest I ever saw on a woman. I do
+believe she wears twos,' he thought, while something about the little
+white foot made him think of poor Jack's dead feet, laid under the grass
+years ago.
+
+In this softened frame of mind he at last said good-night, although
+pressed by Peterkin to stay and dry himself, or at least take a drink as
+a preventive against cold, but Tom declined both, saying a hot bath
+would set him all right. 'Good-bye, Annie. I'm awful sorry for the
+sprain,' he said, offering her his hand; and as she took it in hers,
+noticing about the wrist prints of his fingers which had grasped it so
+tightly and held it so firmly as he dragged her along over stumps, and
+bogs, and stones, until she sank at his feet, 'I guess I was a brute to
+race her like that,' he said to himself, as he went out into the
+darkness and started for home. 'But I didn't want to go with her. I
+wanted to be with Jerrie, who, I have no doubt, went straight along,
+without ever thinking of spraining her ankle, as Ann Eliza did. Poor
+little foot! How swollen, though, it was when they got that boot off;
+but she bore it like a major! Pity she has such all-fired red hair, and
+piles it up like a haystack on the top of her head, with every hair
+looking six ways for Sunday.'
+
+At this point in his soliloquy Tom reached home, and was soon
+luxuriating in a hot bath, which removed all traces of the soaking he
+had received. That night he dreamed of Ann Eliza, and how light she was
+in his arms, and how patient through it all, and that the magnificent
+rooms at Le Bateau were all frescoed with diamonds and the floors inlaid
+with gold. Then the nature of his dream changed, and it was Jerry he was
+carrying in his arms, bending under her weight until his back was nearly
+broken. But he did not heed it in the least, and when he bent to kiss
+the face lying upon his bosom, where Ann Eliza had lain, he awoke
+suddenly to find that it was morning and that the sun was shining
+brightly into his room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+UNDER THE PINES WITH DICK.
+
+
+Jerrie was soaked through, but she did not sprain her ankle as Ann Eliza
+had done. And yet, had she been given her choice, rather than inflict
+the pain she did inflict upon poor Dick, she would have chosen the
+former unhesitatingly, and felt herself happy in doing it. Like Tom and
+Ann Eliza, she and Dick had run when they saw how fast the storm was
+coming, but it was of no use, for by the time they entered the park, the
+shortest route to the cottage, the rain came down in torrents, and
+drenched them to the skin in a few moments. Jerrie's hat was wrenched
+off, as Ann Eliza's had been by the wind, which tossed her long golden
+hair in a most fantastic fashion. But Dick put his hat upon her head,
+and would have given her his coat had she allowed it.
+
+'No, Dick,' she said, laughingly, as she saw him about to divest himself
+of it. 'Keep your coat. I am wet enough without that. But what an awful
+storm, and how dark it grows. We shall break our necks stumbling along
+at this rate.'
+
+Just then a broad glare of lightning illuminated the darkness, and
+showed Dick the four pines close at hand. He knew the place well, for,
+with the Tracy children, he had often played there when a boy, and knew
+that the thick bushes would afford them some protection from the storm.
+
+'By Jove, we are in luck!' he said. 'Here's the pine room, as we used to
+call it when you played you were Marie Antoinette, and had your head cut
+off. I can remember just how I felt when your white sun-bonnet, with
+Mrs. Crawford's false hair pinned it in, dropped into the basket, and
+how awful it seemed when you played dead so long that we almost thought
+you were; and when you came to light, the way you imitated the cries of
+a French mob, I would have sworn there were a hundred voices instead of
+one yelling: "Down with the nobility!" You were a wonderful actress,
+Jerrie; and it is a marvel you have not gone upon the stage.'
+
+While he talked he was groping for the bench under the pines, where they
+sat down, Dick seating himself upon the parasol, which Jerrie had left
+there that morning after her interview with Tom.
+
+'Hallo! what's this?' he said, drawing the parasol from under him. 'An
+umbrella, as I live! We are in luck. What good fairy do you suppose left
+it here for us?'
+
+Jerrie could not tell him that she had left it there, and she said
+nothing; while he opened and held it so that every drop of rain which
+slipped from it fell upon her neck and trickled down her back. 'Great
+Caesar! that was a roarer!' Dick said, as the peal of thunder which had
+so frightened Ann Eliza burst over their heads, and, echoing through the
+woods, went bellowing off in the direction of the river, 'That's a
+stunner! but I rather like it, and like being here, too, with you, if
+you don't mind it. I've wanted a chance to speak to you alone, ever
+since--well, ever since this morning, when I saw you in that bewildering
+costume that showed your feet and your arms so--you know, with that
+thing like a napkin pinned up in front, and that jimcrack on your head,
+and the red stockings--and--and--'
+
+Dick was getting bewildered and did not quite know what he was saying,
+so he stopped and waited for Jerrie to reply. But Jerrie did not speak,
+because of the sudden alarm which possessed her. She could not see
+Dick's face, but in his voice she had recognized a tone heard in Tom's
+that morning when she sat with him under pines as she was sitting now
+with Dick and he had asked her to be his wife. Something told her that
+Dick was feeling for her hands, which she resolutely put behind her out
+of his way, and as he could not find them, he wound his arm around her
+and held her fast, while he told her how much he loved her and wanted
+her for his wife.
+
+'I believe I have loved you,' he said, 'ever since the day I first saw
+you at the inquest, and you flew so like a little cat at Peterkin when
+he attacked Harold. I used to be awfully jealous of Hal, for fear he
+would find in you more than a sister, but that was before he and Maude
+got so thick together. I guess that's a sure thing, and it makes me bold
+to tell you what I have. Why are you so silent Jerrie? Don't you love me
+a little? That is all I ask at first, for I know I can make you love me
+a great deal in time. I will be so kind and true to you. Jerrie, and
+father, and mother, and Nina will be so glad. Speak to me, Jerrie, and
+say you will try to love me, if you do not now.'
+
+As he talked he had drawn the girl closer to him, where she sat rigid as
+a stone, wholly unmindful of the little puddles of water--and they were
+puddles now--running down her back, for Dick had tilted the parasol in
+such a manner that one of the points rested upon the nape of her neck.
+But she did not know it, or think of any thing except the pain she must
+inflict upon the young man wooing her so differently from what Tom
+Tracy had done. No hint had Dick given of the honor he was conferring
+upon her, or of his own and his family's superiority to her family and
+herself. All the honor and favor to be conferred were on her side; all
+the love and humility on his, and for one brief moment the wild wish
+flashed upon her:
+
+'Oh, if I could love him as a wife ought, I might he so happy, for he is
+all that is noble and good and true.'
+
+But this was while she was smarting under the few words he had said of
+Harold and Maude. He, too, believed it a settled thing between the
+two--everybody believed it--and why should she waste her love upon one
+who did not care for her as she did for him? Why not encourage a love
+for Dick, who stood next in her heart to Harold? Questioning herself
+thus until there flushed upon her the recollection of Harold's voice as
+it had spoken to her that morning, and the look in his eyes when they
+rested upon her, as he said good-bye, lingering a moment as if loth to
+leave her, and then Dick's chance, if he had ever had any, was gone!
+
+'I do not believe it,' she said to herself, and then, turning her face
+to Dick she cried: 'Oh, Dick, I am so sorry you have said this to me;
+sorry that you love me--in this way--for I can't--I can't--. I do love
+you as a friend, a brother, next to Harold, but I cannot be your wife. I
+cannot.'
+
+For a moment there was perfect silence in the darkness, and then a lurid
+flame of lightning showed the two faces--that of the man pale as ashes,
+with a look of bitter pain upon it, and that of the woman, whiter than
+the man's and bathed in upon which fell almost as fast as the rain drops
+were falling tears, the pines.
+
+Then Dick spoke, but his voice sounded strange and unnatural and a great
+ways off:
+
+'If I wait a long, long time--say a year, or two, or three--do you think
+you could learn to love me just a little? I will not ask for much; only,
+Jerrie, I do hunger so for you that without you life would seem a
+blank.'
+
+'No, Dick; not if you waited twenty years. I must still answer no. I
+cannot love you as your wife should love you, and as some good, sweet
+girl will one day love you when you have forgotten me.'
+
+This is what Jerrie said to him, with much more, until he knew she was
+in earnest and felt as if his heart were breaking.
+
+'I shall never forget you, Jerrie,' he said, 'or cease to hope that you
+will change your mind, unless--' and here he started so suddenly that
+the wet parasol, down which streams of water were still coursing their
+way to Jerrie's back, dropped from his hand and rolled off upon the bed
+of fine needles at his feet, just where it had been in the morning when
+Tom was there instead of himself--'unless there is some one between us,
+some other man whom you love. I will not ask you the question, but I
+believe I could bear it better if I knew it was because your love was
+already given to another, and not because of anything in me.'
+
+For a moment Jerrie was silent; then suddenly facing Dick, she laid her
+hand on his and said:
+
+'I can trust you, I am sure of that; there is some one between us--some
+one whom I love. If I had never seen him, Dick, never known that he
+lived--and if I had known you just as I do, I might not have answered
+just as I have. I am very sorry.'
+
+Dick did not ask her who his rival was, nor did Harold come to his mind,
+so sure was he that an engagement existed between him and Maude.
+Probably it was some one whom she had met while away at school; and if
+so, Nina would know, and he would sound her cautiously, but never let
+her know, if he could help it, the heart-wound he had received.
+
+Poor Dick! every nerve was quivering with pain and disappointment when
+at last, as the rain began to cease, he rose at Jerrie's suggestion, and
+offering her his arm, walked silently and sadly with her to the door of
+the cottage. Here for a moment they stood side by side and hand in hand,
+until Jerrie said:
+
+'Dick, your friendship has been very dear to me. I do not want to lose
+it.'
+
+'Nor shall you,' he answered; and winding his arms around her, he kissed
+her lips, saying as he did so:
+
+'That is the seal of our eternal friendship. The man you love would not
+grudge me that one kiss, but perhaps you'd better tell him. Good-bye,
+and God bless you. When I see you again I shall try to be the same Dick
+you have always known.'
+
+For a few moments Jerrie stood listening to the sound of his footsteps
+as he went splashing through the wet grass and puddles of water; then,
+kissing her hands to him, she whispered:
+
+'Poor Dick! it would not be difficult to love you if I had never known
+Harold.'
+
+Opening the door softly, she found, as she had expected, that both her
+grandmother and Harold had retired; and taking the lamp from the table
+where it had been left for her, she stole quietly up to her room and
+crept shivering into bed, more wretched than she had ever been before in
+her life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+AT LE BATEAU.
+
+
+Harold got his own breakfast the next morning, and was off for his work
+just as the sun looked into the windows of the room where Jerrie lay in
+a deep slumber. She had been awake a long time the previous night,
+thinking over the incidents of a day which had been the most eventful
+one of her life, but had fallen asleep at last, and dreamed that she had
+found the low room far away in Wiesbaden, with the wall adorned with the
+picture of a young girl knitting in the sunshine, and the stranger
+watching her from a distance.
+
+It was late when she awoke, and Peterkin's clock was striking eight when
+she went down to the kitchen, where she found Mrs. Crawford sewing, and
+a most dainty breakfast waiting for her on a little round table near an
+open window shaded with the hop-vines. There was a fresh egg for her,
+with English buns, and strawberries and cream, and chocolate served in a
+pretty cup which she had never seen before, while near her plate was
+lying a bunch of roses, and on them a strip of paper, on which Harold
+had written:
+
+    "The top of the mornin' to ye, Jerrie. I'd like to stay and see you,
+    but if I work very hard to-day, I hope to finish the job on Monday
+    and get my fifteen dollars. That's a pile of money to earn in three
+    days, isn't it? I hope you enjoyed the garden-party. If I had not
+    been so awfully tired I should have gone for you. Grandma will tell
+    you that I went to bed and to sleep before that shower came up, so I
+    knew nothing of it. I wonder you got home; but of course Dick came
+    with you, or Billy, or possibly Tom. I hear you entertained all
+    three of them at the washtub! Pretty good for the first day home!
+    Good-bye till to-night. I only live till then, as they say in
+    novels.
+
+    "HAROLD."
+
+This note, every line of which was full of affection and thoughtfulness
+for her, was worth more to Jerrie than the chocolate, or the bun, or the
+pretty cup and saucer which Harold had bought for her the night before,
+going to the village, a mile out of his way, on purpose to get them and
+surprise her. This, Mrs. Crawford told her, as she eat eating her
+breakfast, which she had to force down because of the lump in her throat
+and the tears which came so fast as she listened.
+
+'You see,' Mrs. Crawford began, 'Mr. Allen paid Harold two or three
+dollars, and so he came home through the village, and bought the eggs,
+and the buns, and the chocolate, which he knew you liked, and the cup
+and saucer at Grady's. He has had it on his mind a long time to get it
+for you, but there were so many other things to pay for. Don't you think
+it is pretty?'
+
+'Yes, lovely!' Jerrie replied, taking up the delicate bit of china,
+through which the light shone so clearly. 'It is very pretty; but I wish
+he had not bought it for me,' and Jerrie wiped the hot tears from both
+her eyes, as Mrs. Crawford continued:
+
+'Oh, he wanted to. He is never happier than when doing something which
+he thinks pleases you or me. Harold is the most unselfish boy I ever
+knew; and I never saw him give way, or heard him complain that his lot
+was hard but once, and that was this summer, when he was building the
+room, and had to dismiss the man because he had no money to pay him.
+That left it all for him to do, and he was already so tired and
+overworked; and then Tom Tracy was always making fun of the addition,
+and saying it made the cottage look like a pig-sty with a steeple to
+it, and that you would think so too; and if it were his he'd tear the
+old hut down and start anew. Peterkin, too, made remarks about its being
+out of proportion to the rest of the house, and wondered where Harold
+got the money, and why he didn't do this and that, but supposed he
+couldn't afford it, adding that "beggars couldn't be choosers." When
+Harold heard all that, he was tired, and nervous, and sick, and
+discouraged, and his hands were blistered and bruised with hard work.
+His head was aching, and he just put it on that table, where you are
+sitting, and cried like a baby. When I tried to comfort him, he said,
+"It isn't the hard work, grandmother; I don't mind that in the least;
+neither do I care for what they say, or should not, if there was not
+some truth in it; things are out of proportion, and the new room makes
+the rest of the cottage look lower than ever, and I'd like so much to
+have everything right for Jerrie, who would not shame the Queen's
+palace. I wish, for her sake, that I had money, and could make her home
+what it ought to be. I do not want her to feel homesick, or long for
+something better, when she comes back to us."'
+
+Jerrie was crying outright now; but Mrs. Crawford, who was a little deaf
+and did not hear her, went on:
+
+'If you were a hundred times his sister he could not love you more than
+he does, or wish to make you happier. He would have gone for you last
+night, only he was so tired, and I persuaded him to go to bed. I knew
+somebody would come home with you, Dick, wasn't it? I thought I heard
+his voice.'
+
+'Yes, it was Dick,' Jerrie answered, very low, returning again to her
+breakfast, while her grandmother rambled on:
+
+'Harold slept so soundly that he never heard the storm or knew there was
+one till this morning. Lucky you didn't start home till it was over.
+You'd have been wet to the skin.'
+
+Jerrie made no answer, for she could not tell of that interview under
+the pines, or that she had been wet to the skin, and felt chilly even
+now from the effects of it. It seemed that Mrs. Crawford would never
+tire talking of Harold, for she continued:
+
+'He was up this morning about daylight, I do believe, and had his own
+breakfast eaten and that table laid for you when I came down. He wanted
+to see you before he went, and know if you were pleased; but I told him
+you were probably asleep, as it was late when you came in, and so he
+wrote something for you, and went whistling off as merrily as if he had
+been in his carriage, instead of on foot in his working-dress.'
+
+'And he shall have his carriage, too, some day, and a pair of the finest
+horses the country affords, and you shall ride beside him, in a satin
+gown and India shawl. You'll see!' Jerrie said, impetuously, as she
+arose from the table and began to clear away the dishes.
+
+The spell was upon her strongly now, and as her grandmother talked, the
+objects around her gradually faded away; the cottage, so out of
+proportion, and so humble in all its surroundings, was gone, and in its
+place a house, fair to look upon, fair as Tracy Park and much like it,
+and Harold was the master, looking a very prince, instead of the tired,
+shabbily dressed man he was now.
+
+'And I shall be there, too,' Jerrie whispered, or rather nodded to
+herself. 'I know I shall, and I do not believe one word of the Maude
+affair, and never will until he tells me himself, or she; and
+then--well, then, I will be glad for them, until I come to be really
+glad myself.'
+
+She was moving rapidly around the kitchen, for there was a great deal to
+be done--the Saturday's work and all the clothes to be ironed, and then
+she meant to get up some little surprise for Harold, to show him that
+she appreciated his thoughtfulness for her.
+
+About half-past ten a servant from Le Bateau brought her a note from Ann
+Eliza, who wrote as follows.
+
+    'Dear Jerrie:--Have pity on a poor cripple, and come as soon as you
+    can and see her. I sprained my ankle last night in that awful storm,
+    and Tom had to bring me home in his arms. Think of it, and what my
+    feelings must have been. I am hardly over it yet--the queer feelings
+    I mean--for, of course, my ankle is dreadful, and so swollen, and
+    pains me so that I cannot step, but must stay in my room all day. So
+    come as soon as possible. You have never seen the inside of our
+    house, or my rooms. Come to lunch, please. We will have it up here.
+    Good-bye.
+
+    'From your loving friend,
+
+    'ANN ELIZA.
+
+    'P.S.--I wonder if Tom will inquire for me.'
+
+'Tell her I will be there by lunch time,' Jerrie said to the man, while
+to her grandmother she continued: 'The baking and cleaning are all done,
+and I can finish the ironing when I get back; it will be cooler then,
+and I do want to see the inside of that show-house which Harold says
+cost a hundred thousand dollars. Pity somebody besides the Peterkins did
+not live there.'
+
+And so, about twelve o'clock Jerrie walked up to the grand house of gray
+stone, which, with its turrets, and towers, and immense arch over the
+carriage drive in front of a side door, looked like some old feudal
+castle, and flaunted upon its walls the money it had cost. Even the loud
+bell which echoed through the hall like a town clock told of wealth and
+show, as did the colored man who answered the summons, and bowing low to
+Jerrie, held out a silver tray for her card.
+
+'Nonsense, Leo!' Jerrie said, laughingly, for she had known the negro
+all her life and played with him, too, at times, when they both went to
+the district school. 'I have no card with me. Miss Ann Eliza has invited
+me to lunch, and I have come. Tell her I am here.'
+
+With another profound bow, Leo waved Jerrie into the reception-room, and
+then started to deliver her message.
+
+Seated upon one of the carved chairs, Jerrie looked about her curiously,
+with a feeling that the half had not been told her, everything was so
+much more gorgeous and magnificent than she had supposed. But what
+impressed and at the same time oppressed her most was the height of the
+walls from the richly inlaid floor to the gayly decorated ceiling
+overhead. It made her neck ache staring up fourteen feet and a half to
+the costly center ornament from which the heavy chandelier depended. All
+the rooms of the old house had been low, and when Peterkin built the new
+one, he made ample amends.
+
+"I mean to lick the crowd," he said; and a man was sent to Collingwood,
+and Grassy Spring, and Brier Hill, and lastly to Tracy Park, to take the
+height of the lower rooms. Those at Tracy Park were found to be the
+highest, and measured just twelve feet, so Peterkin's orders were to
+"run 'em up--run 'em up fourteen feet, for I swan I'll get ahead of
+'em."
+
+So they were run up fourteen feet, and by some mistake, half a foot
+higher, looking when finished so cold and cheerless and bare that the
+ambitious man ransacked New York and Boston and even sent to London for
+ornaments for his walls. Books were bought by the square yard, pictures
+by the wholesale, mirrors by the dozen, with bronzes and brackets and
+sconces and tapestry and banners and screens and clocks and cabinets and
+statuary, with every kind of furniture imaginable, from the costliest
+rugs and carpets to the most exquisite inlaid tables to be found in
+Florence or Venice. For Peterkin sent there for them by a gentleman to
+whom he said:
+
+'Git the best there is if it costs a fortune. I'm bound to lick the
+crowd.'
+
+This was his favorite expression; and when his house was done, and he
+stood, his broad, white shirt-front studded with diamonds and his coat
+thrown back to show them, surveying his possessions, he felt that he
+'had licked the crowd.'
+
+Jerrie felt so, too, as she followed the elegant Leo up the stairs and
+through the upper hall--handsomer, if possible than the lower one--to
+the pretty room where Ann Eliza lay, or rather reclined, with her lame
+foot on a cushion and her well one incased in a white embroidered silk
+stocking and blue satin slipper. She was dressed in a delicate blue
+satin wrapper, trimmed with swan's-down, and there were diamonds in her
+ears and on the little white hands which she stretched toward Jerrie as
+she came in.
+
+'Oh, Jerrie,' she said, 'I am so glad to see you, for it is awfully
+lonesome here; and if one can be homesick at home, I am. I miss the
+girls and the lessons and the rules at Vassar; much as I hated them when
+I was there; and just before you came in I wanted to cry. I guess my
+rooms are too big and have too much in them; any way, I have the feeling
+that I am visiting, and everything is strange and new. I do believe I
+liked the old room better, with its matting on the floor and the little
+mirror with the peacock feathers ornamenting the top, and that painted
+plaster image of Samuel on the mantel. It is very ungrateful in me, I
+know, when father has done it mostly to please me. Do you believe--he
+has hunted me up a maid; Doris is her name; and what I am ever to do
+with her, or she with me, I am sure I don't know. Do you?'
+
+Jerrie did not know either, but suggested that she might read to her
+while she was confined to her room. 'Yes, she might, perhaps, do that,
+if she can read,' Ann Eliza said. 'She certainly has pretentions enough
+about her to have written several treatises on scientific subjects. She
+was a year with Lady Augusta Hardy, in Ireland. Don't you remember the
+grand wedding father and mother attended in Allington two or three years
+ago, when Augusta Browne was married to an Irish lord, who had been
+bought by her money?--for of course he did not care much for her. Well,
+Doris went out with her as maid, and acts as if she, too, had married a
+peer. She came last night, and mamma and I are already as afraid of her
+as we can be, she is so fine and airy. She insisted upon dressing me
+this morning, and I felt all the while as if she were thinking how red
+and ugly my hair is, or counting the freckles on my face, and
+contrasting me with 'my Lady Augusta,' as she calls her. I wonder if she
+ever saw my lady's mother, Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, who told me once that I
+had a very _petty figger_, but she presumed it would _envelope_ as I
+grew older. But then people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw
+stones,' and Ann Eliza colored a little as she made this reference to
+her own father and mother, whose language was not much more correct than
+Mrs. Rossiter-Browne's.
+
+For one brought up as she had been, Ann Eliza was a rather sensible
+girl, and although she attached a great deal of importance to money, she
+knew it was not everything, and that with her father's millions there
+was still a wide difference between him and the men to whose society he
+aspired; and knew, too, that although Jerrie had not a penny in the
+world, she was greatly her superior, and so considered by the world at
+large. She was very fond of Jerrie, who had often helped her with her
+lessons, and stood between her and the ridicule of her companions, and
+was never happier than when in her society. So now she made her bring an
+ottoman close beside her, and held her hand while she narrated in detail
+the events of the previous night, dwelling at length upon the fact that
+Tom had carried her in his arms, and wondering if he would call to
+inquire after her. Jerrie thought he would; and, as if in answer to the
+thought, Doris almost immediately appeared with his card. She _was_ very
+fine and very smart, and Jerrie herself felt awed by her dignity and
+manner as she delivered her message. 'The gentleman sends his
+compliments, and would like to know how you are this morning.'
+
+'Jerrie, it's Tom! he has come!' Ann Eliza said, with joy in her voice.
+'Surely I can receive him here, for this is my parlor.'
+
+Jerrie thought she might, but the toss of the fine maid's head showed
+that she thought differently, as she left the room with her mistress'
+message.
+
+'Thunderation! I didn't want to see her. It's enough to have to call,'
+was Tom's mental comment, when Doris told him he was to walk up stairs.
+
+Indeed, he would not have come at all if Maude, to whom he related his
+adventure, had not insisted that he must.
+
+'You needn't see her, of course; but you must go and inquire how she is.
+According to your own statement you are to blame for her mishap; you
+dragged her along too fast.
+
+Tom knew there was some truth in this, and so he went the more
+willingly; and, sending up his card, stood near the open door, ready to
+leave the moment Leo came down with the message he had received from
+Doris.
+
+'I shall be cheek by jowl with these Peterkins, if I don't look out,' he
+thought, as he ascended the stairs to the hall, where Doris stood
+waiting to show him her mistress' room.
+
+'What! Jerry! You here?' he exclaimed, his face clearing, and the whole
+aspect of matters changing at once, as she arose to meet him.
+
+With Jerrie there the place seemed different, and he did not feel as if
+he were lowering himself, as he sat in the luxuriously furnished room,
+and joined in the dainty lunch which was brought up and served from
+Dresden china, and linen and cut glass, and was as delicate and dainty
+in its way as anything he had ever found at the Brunswick or
+Delmonico's. Mrs. Peterkin prided herself upon her _cuisine_, which she
+always superintended, and as Peterkin was something of an epicure and
+gourmand, the table was always supplied with every possible delicacy.
+
+Tom enjoyed it all, and praised the chocolate, and the broiled chicken,
+and the jellies, and thought Ann Eliza not so very bad-looking in her
+blue satin wrapper, with the swan's-down trimmings, and made himself
+generally agreeable. Maude was better, he said, and could talk a
+little, and he asked Jerrie to go home with him and see her. But Jerrie
+declined.
+
+'I have a great deal of work to do yet,' she said, 'I must iron all
+those clothes you saw upon the line yesterday, and so I must be going.'
+
+Tom frowned at the mention of the clothes which Jerrie had washed; while
+Ann Eliza insisted that she should stay until the dog-cart, which had
+been sent to the station for Billy, came back, when Lewis would take her
+home, as it was too warm to walk. Jerrie did not mind the walk, but she
+felt morally sure that Tom meant to accompany her, and greatly preferred
+the dog-cart and Lewis to another _tete-a-tete_ with him, for he did not
+act at all like a discarded lover, but rather as one who still hoped he
+had a chance. So she signified her intention to wait for the dog-cart,
+which soon came, with Billy in it, anxious when he heard of his sister's
+accident, delighted when he found Jerrie there, and persistent in saying
+that he and not Lewis would take her home.
+
+'Well, if you will, you will,' she said, laughingly; and bidding Ann
+Eliza good-bye, and telling Tom to give her love to Maude and say to her
+that she did not believe she should be at the park that day, she had so
+much to do, she was soon in the dog-cart with Billy, whose face was
+radiant as he gathered up the reins and started down the turnpike,
+driving at what Jerrie thought a very slow pace, as she was anxious to
+get home.
+
+Something of Billy's thoughts must have communicated itself to Jerrie,
+for she became nervous and ill at ease and talked rapidly of things in
+which she had not the slightest interest.
+
+'What of the lawsuit?' she asked. 'Are you likely to settle it?'
+
+'N-no,' Billy answered, hurriedly. 'It will h-have to co-come into
+co-court in a f-few days, and I am aw-awful sorry. I wa-wanted father to
+p-pay what they demanded, but he won't. Hal is subpoenaed on the other
+side, as he was in our office, and is supposed to know something about
+it; b-but I ho-hope he won't da-damage us m-much, as father would
+n-never forgive him if he went against us.'
+
+'But he must tell the truth, no matter who is damaged,' Jerrie said.
+'Ye-yes' Billy replied, 'of co-course he must, b-but he needn't
+volunteer information.'
+
+Jerry began to think that Billy had insisted upon coming with her for
+the sake of persuading her to caution Harold against saying too much
+when he was called to testify in the great lawsuit between Peterkin &
+Co., manufacturers in Shannondale, and Wilson & Co., manufacturers in
+Truesdale, an adjoining town; but she was undeceived when her companion
+turned suddenly off upon the river road, which would take them at least
+two miles out of their way.
+
+'Why are you coming here!' Jerrie said, in real distress. 'It is ever so
+much farther, and I must get home. I have piles of work to do.'
+
+'Co-confound the work,' Billy replied, very energetically for him, and
+reining his horse up under a wide spreading butternut tree, which grew
+upon the river bank, he sprang out and pretended to be busy with some
+part of the harness, while he astonished Jerrie by bursting out, without
+the least stammer, he was so earnest and so excited: 'I've something to
+say to you, Jerrie, and I may as well say it now as any time, and know
+the worst, or the best. I can't bear the suspense any longer, and I got
+out of the cart so as to stand where I could look you square in the face
+while I say it.'
+
+And he was looking her square in the face while she grew hot and cold
+and experienced a sensation quite different from what she had when Tom
+and Dick made love to her. She had felt no fear of them, but she was
+afraid of this little man, who stood up so resolutely, with his tongue
+loosened, and asked her to be his wife, for that was what he did, making
+his wishes known in a very few words, and then waiting for her answer
+with his eyes fixed upon her face and a firm, set look about his mouth
+which puzzled and troubled her and made her uncertain as to how she was
+to deal with this third aspirant for her hand within twenty-four hours.
+
+Billy had long had it in his mind that Jerry Crawford was the only girl
+in the world for him, but he might not have spoken quite; so soon had it
+not been for a conversation held with his father the previous night,
+when they were alone in a private room at the hotel in Shannondale,
+waiting for the train which Billy was to take, and which was half an
+hour late. Peterkin had exhausted himself in oaths and epithets with
+regard to the lawsuit and those who had brought it against him, and was
+regaling himself with a cigar and a glass of brandy and water, while
+Billy sat by the window watching for the train and wishing himself at
+Grassy Spring with Jerrie. Peterkin seldom drank to excess, but on this
+occasion he had taken a little too much. When under the influence of
+stimulants, he was either aggressive and quarrelsome, or jocose and
+talkative. The latter mood was on him now, and as he drank his brandy
+and water he held forth upon the subject of matrimony, wondering why his
+son did not marry, and saying it was quite time he did so and settled
+down.
+
+'You can have the south wing,' he said, 'and if the rooms ain't up to
+snuff now, why, I'll make 'em so. The fact is, Bill, I've got money
+enough--three millions and better; but somehow it doesn't seem to do the
+thing. It doesn't fetch us to the quality and make us fust-cut. We need
+better blood than the Peterkins or the Moshers--need boostin', and you
+must get a wife to boost us. Have you ever thought on't?'
+
+'Billy never had thought of it in that light,' he said, although he had
+thought of marrying, providing the girl would have him.
+
+'Have you! Thunderation! A girl would be a fool who wouldn't marry three
+millions, with Lubber-too thrown in! Who is she?' Peterkin asked.
+
+After a little hesitancy Billy replied:
+
+'Jerrie Crawford.'
+
+'Jerrie Crawford! I'll be dammed! Jerrie Crawford!' and Peterkin's big
+feet came down from the back of the chair on which they were resting,
+upsetting the chair and his brandy at the same time. 'Jerrie Crawford! I
+swow! A gal without a cent, or name either, though I used to have a
+sneakin' notion that I knew who she was, but I guess I didn't. 'Twould
+have come out afore now. What under heavens put her into your noddle?
+She can't _boost_! and then she's head and shoulders taller than you be!
+How you would look trottin' beside her! Jerrie Crawford! Wal, I swan!'
+and Peterkin laughed until his big stomach shook like a bowl of jelly.
+
+Billy was angry, and replied that he did not know what height had to do
+with it, or name either; and as for _boosting_, he wouldn't marry a
+king's daughter, if he did not love her; and for that matter Jerrie
+could boost, for she stood quite as high in town as any young lady.
+
+Both Nina St. Claire and Maude Tracy worshipped her, while Mrs. Atherton
+paid her a great deal of attention; and so did the Mungers and
+Crosbys--enough sight more than they did to Ann Eliza with all her
+money.
+
+'Mo-money isn't ev-everything.' Billy stammered, 'and Je-Jerrie would
+make a ve-very different pl-place of Le Bateau.'
+
+'Mebby she would--mebby she would; but I'd never thought of her for
+you,' Peterkin said. 'I'd picked out some; big bug, who perhaps wouldn't
+wipe her shoes on you. Jerrie is handsome as blazes and no mistake, with
+a kinder up and comin' way about her which takes the folks. Yes, it
+keeps growin' on me, and I presume Arthur Tracy would give her away,
+which would be a feather in your cap; but lord! you'll have to git a
+pair of the highest heels you ever seen to come within ten foot on her.'
+
+'She's only two inches t-taller than I am,' Billy said, and his father
+continued:
+
+'Wall, if your heart's set on her go it, and quick, too, I'm goin' to
+have a smasher of a party in the fall, and Jerrie'll be just the one to
+draw, I can see her now, standin' there with the diamonds we'll give her
+sparklin' on her neck, and she lookin' like a queen, and the _sinecure_
+of all eyes. But for thunder's sake don't marry the old woman and all.
+Leave her to Harold, the sneak! I never did like him, and I'll be mad
+enough to kill him if he goes agin me in the suit, and I b'lieve he
+will.'
+
+At this point Peterkin wandered off to the suit entirely and forgot
+Jerrie, who was to boost the house of Peterkin and make it 'fust-cut.'
+But not so Billy, and all the way from Shannondale to Springfield he was
+thinking of Jerrie, and wondering if it were possible that she could
+ever look upon him with favor. Like Tom and Dick, he could scarcely
+remember the time when he did not think Jerrie the loveliest girl in the
+world, and ever since he had grown to manhood he had meditated making
+her his wife, but had feared what his father might say, as he knew how
+much importance he attached to money. Now however, his father had
+signified his assent, and, resolving to lose no time, Billy, on his
+return next day to Le Bateau, seized the opportunity to take Jerrie
+home, as the occasion for declaring his love, which he did in a manly,
+straightforward manner, never hinting at any advantage it would be to
+her to be the wife of a millionaire, or offering any inducement in any
+way except to say that he loved her and would devote his life to making
+her happy. Tom Tracy Jerrie had scorned, Dick St. Claire she had pitied,
+but this little man she felt like ridiculing.
+
+'Oh, Billy,' she said, laughing merrily. 'You can't be in earnest. Why
+I'm head and shoulders taller than you are. I do believe I could pick
+you up and throw you into the river. Only think how we should look
+together; people would think you my little boy, and that I should not
+like. So, I can never be your wife.'
+
+Nothing cuts a man like ridicule, and sensitive as he was with regard to
+his size, Billy felt it to his heart's core; and as he stood nervously
+playing with the reins and looking at Jerrie sitting there so tall and
+erect in all the brightness of her wonderful beauty, it flashed upon him
+how impossible it was for that glorious creature ever to be his wife,
+and what a fool he had made of himself.
+
+'For-gi-give me, Jerrie,' he said, his chin beginning to quiver, and the
+great tears rolling down his face, 'I know you ca-can't, and I
+ou-oughtn't to have ask-asked it, bu-but I d-did love you so much, that
+I f-forgot how impossible it was f-for one like you to lo-love one
+li-like me. I am so small and insig-insignificant, and st-stutter so. I
+wish I was dead,' and laying his head upon the horse's neck, he sobbed
+aloud.
+
+In an instant Jerrie was out of the dog-cart and at his side, talking to
+and trying to soothe him as she would a child.
+
+'Oh, Billy, Billy,' she said. 'I am so sorry for you, and sorry I said
+those cruel words about your size. It was only in fun. Your size has
+nothing to do with my refusal. I know you have a big, kind heart, and
+next to Harold and Dick, and Mr. Arthur, I like you better than any man
+I ever knew; but I cannot be your wife. Don't cry, Billy; it hurts me so
+to see you and know that I have done it. Please stop, and take me home
+as quickly as possible.'
+
+With a great gulp, and a long sigh like a grieved child, Billy dried
+his tears, of which he was much ashamed, and helping Jerrie into the
+cart drove her rapidly to the door of the cottage.
+
+'I should not like Tom, nor Dick, nor Harold to know this,' he said to
+her, as he stood a moment with her at the gate.
+
+'Billy!' she exclaimed, 'do you know me so little as to think I would
+tell them, or anybody? I have more honor than that,' and she gave him
+her hand, which he held tightly in his while he looked earnestly into
+the sweet young face which could never be his, every muscle of his own
+quivering with emotion, and telling of the pain he was enduring.
+
+'Good-bye. I shall be more like a ma-man, and less a ba-baby when I see
+you again,' and springing into his cart he drove rapidly away.
+
+Jerrie found her grandmother seated at a table and trying to iron.
+
+'Grandma,' she said, 'this is too bad. I did not mean to stay so long.
+Put down that flat-iron this minute. I am coming there as soon as I lay
+off my hat.'
+
+Running up the stairs to her room, Jerrie put away her hat, and then,
+throwing herself upon the bed, cried for a moment as hard as she could
+cry. The look on Billy's face haunted her, and she pitied him now more
+than she had pitied Dick St. Claire.
+
+'Dick will get over it, and marry somebody else, but Billy never,' she
+said.
+
+Then, rising up, she bathed her eyes, and pushing back her tangled hair,
+stood for a moment before the mirror, contemplating the reflection of
+herself in it.
+
+'Jerrie Crawford,' she said, 'you must be a mean, heartless,
+good-for-nothing girl, for it certainly is not your Dutch face, nor
+yellow hair, nor great staring eyes, which make men think that you will
+marry them; so it must be your flirting, coquettish manners. I hate a
+flirt. I hate you, Jerrie Crawford.'
+
+Once when a little girl, Jerrie had said to Harold, 'Why do all the boys
+want to kiss me so much?' and now she might have asked, 'Why do these
+same boys wish to marry me?' It was a curious fact that she should have
+had three offers within twenty-four hours; and she didn't like it, and
+her face wore a troubled look all that hot afternoon as she stood at the
+ironing table, perspiring at every pore, and occasionally smiling to
+herself as she thought, 'Grassy Spring, Le Bateau, Tracy Park, I might
+take my choice, if I would, but I prefer the cottage,' and then at the
+thought of Tracy Park her thoughts went off across the sea to Germany,
+and the low room with the picture upon the wall, and her resolve to find
+it some day.
+
+'Far in the future it may be, but find it I will, and find, too, who I
+am,' she said to herself, little dreaming that the finding was close at
+hand, and that she had that day lighted the train which was so soon to
+bear her on to the end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+MAUDE.
+
+
+Harold did not finish his work at the Allen farm-house until Tuesday, so
+it was not until Wednesday afternoon that he started to pay his promised
+visit to Maude. Jerrie had seen her twice, and reported her as much
+better, although still very weak.
+
+'She is so anxious to see you. Don't you think you can go this
+afternoon?' she said to Harold, in the morning, as she helped him weed
+the garden and pick the few strawberries left upon the vines.
+
+'Ye-es, I guess I can--if you'll go with me,' he said.
+
+He was so loth to be away from Jerrie when it was not absolutely
+necessary, that even a call upon Maude without her did not seem very
+tempting. But Jerrie could not go now, for Nina and Marian Raymond came
+down to the cottage to spend the afternoon, and Harold went alone to the
+park house, where he found Maude in the room she called her studio
+trying to finish a little water-color which she had sketched of the
+cottage as it was before the roof was raised.
+
+'I mean it for Jerrie,' she had said to Harold, who stood by her when
+she sketched it, 'and I am going to put her under the tree, with her sun
+bonnet hanging down her back, as she used to wear it when she was a
+little girl, and you are to be over there by the fence, looking at me
+coming up the lane.'
+
+It was the best thing Maude had ever done, for the likeness to Jerrie
+and to herself was perfect, while the cottage, embowered in trees and
+flowers, made it a most attractive picture. Harold had praised it a
+great deal, and told her that it would make her famous. But when the
+carpenter work came in Maude put it aside until now, when she brought it
+out again, and was just beginning to retouch it in places, as Harold was
+announced.
+
+She was looking very tired, and it seemed to Harold that she had lost
+many pounds of flesh since he saw her last. Her face was pale, and
+pinched, and wan, but it flushed brightly as Harold came in, and she
+went eagerly forward to meet him.
+
+'Hally, you naughty boy!' she began, as she gave him her little, thin
+hand. 'Why didn't you come before? You don't know how I have missed you.
+You must not forget me now that Jerrie is at home.'
+
+She had led him to a seat, and then herself sank into a large cushioned
+easy chair, against which she leaned her head wearily, while she looked
+at him with eyes which ought to have told Harold how much he was to her,
+and so put him on his guard, and saved the misunderstanding which
+followed.
+
+'No, Maude, I couldn't forget you,' he said; and without really knowing
+that he was doing it, he put his hand upon the little soft white one
+lying on the arm of the chair.
+
+Every nerve in Maude's body thrilled to the touch of that hand upon
+which she involuntarily laid her other one, noticing as she did so the
+signs of toil upon it, and feeling sorry for him. One would have thought
+them lovers, sitting there thus together, but nothing could have been
+farther from Harold's mind. He was thinking only of Jerrie, and his
+resolve to confide in Maude, and get her opinion with regard to his
+chance.
+
+'Now is as good a time as any,' he thought, wondering how he should
+begin, and finding it harder than he had imagined it would he.
+
+At last after a few commonplaces, Maude told him again that he must not
+neglect her now that Jerrie was at home.
+
+'Neglect you? How can I do that?' he said, 'when I look upon you as one
+of my best friends, and in proof of it, I am going to tell you
+something, or, rather, ask you something, and I hope you will answer me
+truly. Better that I know the worst at first than learn it afterward.'
+
+Maude's face was aflame now with a great and sudden joy, and her soft
+eyes drooped beneath Harold's as he went on stammeringly, for he began
+to feel the awkwardness of telling one girl that he loved another, even
+though that other were her dearest friend.
+
+'I hardly know how to begin,' he said, 'it is such a delicate matter,
+and perhaps I'd better say nothing at all.'
+
+'Was he going to stop? Had he changed his mind--and would he not after
+all, say the words she had so longed to hear?' Maude asked herself, as
+she turned her eyes appealingly to him, while he sat silent and unmoved,
+his thoughts very, very far from her to whom he was all in all.
+
+Poor Maude! She was weak and sick, and impulsive and mistaken in the
+nature of Harold's feelings for her; so judge her not too harshly, my
+prudish reader, if she at last did what Arthur would have called
+'throwing herself at his head.'
+
+'I can guess what you mean,' she said, after a long pause, during which
+he did not speak. 'I have long suspected that you cared for me just as I
+care for you, and have wondered you did not tell me so, but supposed
+that you refrained because I was rich and you were poor; but what has
+that to do with those who love each other? I am glad you have spoken;
+and you have made me very happy; and even if we can never be more to
+each other than we are now, because I may die, as I sometimes fear I
+shall--'
+
+'Oh, Maude, Maude, you are mistaken. I--,' came from Harold like a cry
+of horror as he wrenched away his hand lying between hers, and to which
+her slender fingers hung caressingly.
+
+What could she mean? How had she understood him? he asked himself, while
+great drops of sweat gathered upon his forehead and in the palms of his
+hands, as like lightning the past came back to him, and he could see as
+in a printed page that what he had thought mere friendship for himself
+was a far different and deeper feeling, while he unwittingly had fanned
+the flame; and was now reaping the result.
+
+'What can I do?' he said aloud, unconsciously, while from the depths of
+the chair on which Maude was leaning back so wearily came a plaintive
+voice like that of a child:
+
+'Ring the bell, and give me my handkerchief.'
+
+He was at her side in a moment, bending over her, and looking anxiously
+into the pallid face from which the bright color had faded, leaving it
+gray, and pinched, and drawn, it seemed to him. Had he killed her by
+blurting out so roughly that she was mistaken; and thus filling her with
+mortification and shame? No, that could not be, for as he brought her
+handkerchief and bent still closer to her, she whispered to him:
+
+'I am not mistaken, Hally. I am going to die, but you have made the last
+days of my life very, very happy.'
+
+She thought he was referring to herself and her situation when he told
+her she was mistaken, and with a smothered groan he was starting for the
+camphor, as she bade him do, when the door opened, and Mrs. Tracy
+herself appeared.
+
+'What is it?' she asked, sharply; then, as she saw Maude's face she knew
+what it was, and going swiftly to her, said to Harold:
+
+'Why did you allow her to talk and get excited? What were you saying to
+her?'
+
+Instantly Maude's eyes went up to Harold's with an appealing look, as if
+asking him not to tell her mother then--a precaution which was needless,
+as he had no intention to tell Mrs. Tracy, or any one, of the terrible
+blunder he had made; and with a hope that the reality might dawn upon
+Maude, he answered, truthfully:
+
+'I was talking to her of Jerrie. I am very sorry.'
+
+If Maude heard she did not understand, for drops of pinkish blood were
+oozing from her lips, and she looked as if she were already dead, as in
+obedience to Mrs. Tracy's command, Harold took her in his arms and
+carried her to the couch near the open window, where he laid her down as
+tenderly as if she were indeed his affianced wife.
+
+'Thanks,' she sighed, softly, and her bright, beautiful eyes looked up
+at him with an expression which half tempted him to kiss the quivering
+lips from which he was wiping the stains so carefully, while Mrs. Tracy,
+at the door, gave some orders to a servant.
+
+'You can go now,' she said, returning to the couch, and dismissing him
+with her usual hauteur of manner; while Maude put up her hand and
+whispered:
+
+'Come soon--and Jerrie.'
+
+Had Harold been convicted of theft or murder he could scarcely have felt
+worse than he did as he walked slowly through the park, reviewing the
+situation and wondering what he ought to do.
+
+'If it almost killed her when she thought I loved her, it would surely
+kill her to know that I do not,' he thought. 'I cannot undeceive her
+now, while she is so weak; but when she is better and able to bear it, I
+will tell her the truth.'
+
+'And if she dies?' came to him like the stab of a knife, as he
+remembered how white she looked as he held her in his arms. 'If she
+does,' he said, 'no one shall ever know of the mistake she made. In this
+I will be true to Maude, even should the world believe I loved her and
+had told her so. But, oh, Heaven! spare me that, and spare Maude's life
+for many years. She is too young, too sweet, too good to die.'
+
+This was Harold's prayer as he rested for a moment in the pine-room,
+where he had often played with the little girl, and where he could now
+see her so plainly picking up the cones, or sitting on the soft bed of
+needles, with the bloom on her cheeks and the brightness in her soft
+black eyes which had looked so lovingly at him an hour ago. 'Spare
+Maude; do not let her die!' was his prayer, and that of many others
+during the week which followed, when Maude's life hung on a thread, and
+every bell at the park house was muffled, and the servants spoke only in
+whispers; while Frank Tracy sat day and night in the room where his
+daughter lay, perfectly quiet, except as she sometimes put up her hand
+to stroke his white hair or wipe away the tears constantly rolling down
+his cheeks.
+
+In Frank's heart there was a feeling worse than death itself, for keen
+remorse and bitter regret were torturing his soul as he sat beside the
+wreck of all his hopes and felt that he had sinned for naught. He knew
+Maude would die, and then what mattered it to him if he had all the
+money of the Rothschilds at his command?
+
+'Oh, Gretchen, you are avenged, and Jerrie, too! Oh, Jerrie!' he said,
+one day, unconsciously, as he sat by his daughter, who, he thought, was
+sleeping. But at the mention of Jerrie's name her eyes unclosed and
+fixed themselves upon her father with a look in which he read an earnest
+desires for something.
+
+'What is it, pet?' he asked. 'Do you want anything?'
+
+They had made her understand that, she must not speak, for the slightest
+effort to do so always brought on a fit of coughing which threatened a
+hemorrhage, of which she could not endure many more. But they had
+brought her a little slate, on which she sometimes wrote her requests,
+though that, too, was an effort. Pointing now to the slate, she wrote,
+while her father held it:
+
+'I want Jerrie.'
+
+'I thought so; and you shall have her for just as long as she will
+stay,' Frank said; and a servant was dispatched to the cottage with the
+message that Jerrie must come at once, and come prepared to pass the
+night, if possible.
+
+It had been very dreary for Maude during the time she had been shut up
+in her room, to which no one was admitted except her father and mother,
+the doctor, and the nurse. Many messages of enquiry and sympathy,
+however, had come to her from the cottage, and Grassy Spring, and Le
+Bateau, where Ann Eliza was still kept a prisoner with her sprained
+ankle; and once Jerrie had written to Maude a note full of love and
+solicitude and a desire to see her. As a postscript she added:
+
+'Harold sends his love, and hopes you will soon be better. You don't
+know how anxious he is about you. Why, I believe he has lost ten pounds
+since your attack, for which he seems to blame himself, thinking he
+excited you too much by talking to you.'
+
+Maude listened to this note, which her father read to her, with a smile
+on her face and tears on her long eyelashes; but when he came to the
+postscript she laughed aloud, as a little child laughs at the return of
+its mother, for whom it has been hungering. This was the first word she
+had had from him, except that he had called to enquire for her, and she
+had so longed for something which should assure her that he remembered
+her even as she did him. She had no distrust of him, and would as soon
+have doubted that the sun would rise again as to have doubted his
+sincerity; but she wanted to hear again that he loved her, and now she
+had heard it, and, folding her hands upon her breast, she fell into the
+most, refreshing sleep she had had since her illness. Could Maude have
+talked and seen people, or if she had been less anxious to live, she
+would probably have told Jerrie and Nina, and possibly Ann Eliza
+Peterkin, of what had passed between herself and Harold, but she had not
+seen them; while life, with Harold to love her, looked so bright and
+sweet, that if by keeping silence she could prolong it, she would do so
+for months, if necessary. To live for Harold was all she wished or
+thought about; and often when they hoped she was sleeping, she lay so
+still, with her eyes closed and her arms folded upon her breast, just as
+if she were praying in her dreams, her father thought. She _was_ praying
+for life and length of days, with strength to make Harold as happy as he
+ought to be, and was thinking of and planning all she meant to do for
+him when once they were married. First to Europe, where she would be so
+proud to show him the places she had seen, and where Jerrie would be
+with them, for in all her plans Jerrie had almost as prominent a place
+as herself.
+
+'I am nothing without Jerrie,' she thought 'She keeps me up, and Jerrie
+will live with us, and Mrs. Crawford; that makes four, just enough for a
+nice game of whist in long winter evenings, when it is so cold outside
+but warm and bright within--always bright for Harold, whose life has
+been so full of care and toil. Poor boy! how I pitied his great warm
+hand when it was holding mine so lovingly, and how I could have kissed
+every seam and scar upon it. But by and by his hands shall be white like
+Tom's, though not so soft. I hate a hand which feels like a fluff of
+cotton. He shall not live here, for Harold could never get along with
+mother and Tom; but we will build a house together, Hally and I, with
+Jerrie to help and plan--build one where the cottage stands, or near it,
+so Jerrie can still see the old Tramp House she is so fond of. Not a
+house like this, with such big rooms, but a pretty, modern Queen Ann
+house, with every room a corner room, and a bay-window in it. And Harold
+will have an office in town, and I shall drive down for him every
+afternoon and take him home to dinner and to Jerrie.'
+
+Such was the nature of Maude's thoughts, as she lay day after day upon
+the couch, too weak to do more thin lift her hands or rise her head
+when the dreadful paroxysms of coughing seized her and racked her
+fragile frame. Still she was very happy, and the happiness showed itself
+upon her, where there rested a look of perfect content and peace, which
+her father and mother had noticed and commented upon, and which Jerrie
+saw the moment she entered the room and stood by Maude's side.
+
+'Dear Maude,' she said, as she took the hot hands in hers and kissed
+them tenderly.
+
+Then she sat down beside her, and smoothed her hair, and told her how
+lovely she looked in her pretty rose-colored wrapper, and how sorry
+every one was for her, and that both she and Nina would have been there
+every day, only they knew they could not see her. Then, as the great
+black eyes fixed themselves steadily upon her, with a look of enquiry in
+them, she set her teeth hard, and began:
+
+'I don't think anyone has been more sorry than Harold. Why, for the
+first few days after you were taken so ill he just walked the floor all
+the time he was in the house, and when grandma asked what ailed him, he
+said, "I am thinking of Maude, and am afraid my call upon her was the
+cause of the attack."'
+
+'N--n--,' Maude began, but checked herself in time, and taking up her
+slate, wrote, 'Tell him it was not his call. I am glad he came.'
+
+'Yes I will,' Jerrie replied, scarcely able to keep back her tears, when
+she saw how cramped and irregular the handwriting was, so unlike
+Maude's, and realized more and more how weak and sick was the little
+girl whose eyes followed her everywhere and always grew brighter and
+softer when she was talking to her of Harold.
+
+All day and all night Jerrie sat by her, sometimes talking to her and
+answering the questions she wrote upon the slate, but oftener in perfect
+silence, when Maude seemed to be asleep. Then Jerrie's tears fell like
+rain, the face upon the pillow looked so much like death, and she kept
+repeating to herself the lines:
+
+  'We thought her dying when she slept.
+  And sleeping when she died.'
+
+When the warm July morning looked in at the windows of the sick-room,
+bringing with it the perfume of hundreds of flowers blooming on the
+lawn, and the scent of the hay cut the previous day, it found Jerrie
+still watching by Maude, her own face tired and pale, with dark rings
+about her eyes, which were heavy with tears and wakefulness. She had not
+slept at all, and her head was beginning to ache frightfully when the
+nurse came in and relieved her, telling her breakfast was ready. Maude
+was awake, and wrote eagerly upon the slate:
+
+'You'll come back? You'll stay all day? You do me so much good, and I am
+a great deal better for your being here.'
+
+Jerrie hesitated a moment; her head was aching so hard that she longed
+to get away. But selfishness was not one of Jerrie's faults, and putting
+her own wishes aside, she said:
+
+'Yes, I will stay until afternoon, and then I must go home. I did not
+tell you that Harold was going away to-night, did I?'
+
+Maude shook her head, and Jerry went on:
+
+'You know, perhaps, that some time ago a Mr. Wilson, of Truesdale, sued
+Peterkin for some infringement on a patent, or something of that sort.'
+
+Maude nodded, and Jerrie continued:
+
+'The suit comes off to-morrow, and Harold is subpoenaed as a witness, as
+he was in Peterkin's office a while and knows something about the
+arrangement between them. I am sorry he has got to swear against
+Peterkin; it will make him so angry, and he hates Harold now. The suit
+is to be called in the morning and Judge St. Claire and Harold are going
+to-night on the five o'clock train; and as he may be gone a day or two I
+must be home to see to packing his bag. But I will stay with you just as
+long as I can.'
+
+She said nothing of her head which throbbed in a most peculiar way,
+making her dizzy and half blind as she went down to breakfast, which she
+took alone with Mrs. Tracy. Frank had eaten his long before, and was now
+pacing up and down the long piazza with his head bent forward and his
+hands locked together behind him.
+
+'I shall never have rest or peace again until it is known. Oh, if it
+would only come out without my telling,' he said to himself, little
+dreaming how near it was to coming out and that before that day's sun
+had set Jerrie would know!
+
+Tom seldom appeared until after ten, and when Jerrie went for a few
+moments into the grounds, to see if the fresh air would do her good, she
+found him seated in an arm-chair under a horse chestnut tree, stretching
+himself and yawning as if he were just out of bed.
+
+'Jerrie, you here? Did you stay all night? If I'd known that, I'd have
+made an effort to come down to breakfast, though I think getting up in
+the morning a bore. Why, what's the matter? You look as if you were
+going to faint. Sit down here,' he continued, as he saw Jerrie reel
+forward as if she were about to fall.
+
+He put her into the chair and stood over her, fanning her with his hat
+and wondering what he should do, while for a moment she lost
+consciousness of the things about her, and her mind went floating off
+after the picture on the wall in Wiesbaden, which was haunting her that
+morning.
+
+When she came to herself, Tom and Dick and Billy were all three hovering
+around, and so close to her that without opening her eyes she could have
+told exactly where each one was standing, Tom by the smell of tobacco,
+with which his clothes were saturated, Billy by the powerful scent of
+white rose with which he always perfumed his handkerchief, and Dick,
+because, as she had once said to Nina when a child, he was so clean and
+looked as if he had just been scrubbed. The two young men had come to
+enquire for Maude, and had found Jerrie half swooning under the tree,
+with Tom fanning her frantically and acting like a wild man.
+
+Jerrie had seen Dick twice since her refusal of him, and both times her
+manner, exactly like what it had always been to him, had put him at his
+ease, so that a looker-on would never have dreamed of that episode under
+the pines when she nearly broke his heart. Billy, however, was more
+conscious. He had not seen Jerrie since he took her home in his
+dog-cart, and his face was scarlet and his manner nervous and
+constrained as he stood before her, longing and yet not daring to fan
+her with his hat just as Tom was doing.
+
+Of the three young men who had sought her hand, Billy's wound was the
+deepest, and Billy would remember it the longest; for, mingled with his
+defeat, was a sense of mortification and hatred of his own personal
+appearance, which he could not help thinking had influenced Jerrie's
+decision. 'And I don't blame her, by Jove!' he said to himself a
+hundred times. 'She could not marry a pigmy, and I was a fool to hope
+it; but I shall love her just the same as long as I live, and if I can
+ever help her I will.'
+
+And when at last Jerrie was better, and assured him so with her own
+sweet graciousness of manner, and put her hand upon his shoulder to
+steady herself as she stood up, he felt that paradise was opening to him
+again, and that although he had lost Jerrie as a wife, he still had her
+as a friend, which was more than he had dared expect.
+
+'Are you better now? Can you walk to the house?' Tom asked.
+
+'Oh, yes; I can walk. The giddiness is gone,' Jerrie replied. 'I don't
+quite know what ails me this morning.'
+
+Never before could she remember having felt as she did now, with that
+sharp pain in her head, that buzzing in her ears, and more than all,
+that peculiar state of mind which she called "spells," and which seemed
+to hold her now, body and soul. Even when she returned to Maude's room,
+and sat down beside her couch, her thoughts were far away, and
+everything which had ever come to her concerning her babyhood came to
+her now, crowding upon her so fast that once it seemed to her that the
+top of her head was lifting, and she put up her hand to hold it in its
+place. And still she staid on with Maude, although two or three times
+she arose to go, but something kept her there--chance, if one chooses to
+call by that name the something which at times moulds us to its will and
+influences our whole lives. Something kept her there until the morning
+was merged into noon and the noon into the middle of the afternoon, and
+then she could stay no longer. The hour had come when she must go, for
+the other force which was to be the instrument in changing all her
+future was astir, and she must go to keep her unconscious appointment
+with it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+'DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?'
+
+
+Judging from the result, this question might far better have been put to
+rather than by Peterkin, as he stood puffing, and hot, and indignant in
+the Tramp House, looking down upon Jerrie, who was sitting upon the
+wooden bench, with her aching head resting upon a corner of the old
+table standing against the wall just where it stood that stormy night
+fifteen years ago, when death claimed the woman beside her, but left her
+unharmed.
+
+After saying good-bye to Maude, Jerrie had walked very slowly through
+the park, stopping more than once to rest upon the seats scattered here
+and there, and wondering more and more at the feeling which oppressed
+her and the terrible pain in her head, which grew constantly worse as
+she went on.
+
+'I'm afraid I'm going to be sick,' she said to herself. 'I never felt
+this way before; and no wonder, with all I have gone through the last
+few weeks. The getting ready for the commencement, the coming home, and
+all the excitement which followed, with three men, one after another,
+offering themselves to me, and the drenching that night in the rain, and
+then watching by Maude without a wink of sleep, it is enough to make a
+behemoth sick, and I am so dizzy and hot--'
+
+She had reached the Tramp House by this time, and, feeling that she
+could go no farther without resting herself, she went in, and seating
+herself upon the bench, laid her tired, aching head upon the table, and
+felt again for a few moments that strange sensation as if the top of her
+head were rising up and up until she could not reach it with her hand,
+for she tried, and thought of Ann Eliza, with her hair piled so high on
+her head.
+
+'The loss of an inch or two might improve me,' she said, though I'd
+rather keep my scalp.'
+
+Then she seemed to be drifting away into the realms of sleep, and all
+around her were confusion and bewilderment. The window, across which
+the woodbine was growing, changed places with the door; the floor rose
+up and bowed to her, while the room was full of faces, beckoning to and
+smiling upon her. Faces like the one she knew so well, the pale face in
+the chair; faces like her own, as she remembered it when a child; faces
+like the dark woman dead so long ago and buried in the Tracy lot, and
+faces like Arthur's as she had seen him oftenest, when he spoke so
+lovingly, and called her little Cherry. Then the scene changed, and the
+old Tramp House was full of wondrous music, which came floating in at
+every crevice and through the open door and windows, while she listened
+intently in her dreams as the grand chorus went on. It as was if Arthur,
+from the top of the highest peak beyond the Rocky Mountains, and
+Gretchen, from her lonely grave in far-off Germany, were calling to each
+other across two continents, their voices meeting and mingling together
+in the Tramp House in a jubilistic strain, now wild and weird like the
+cry of the dying woman looking out into the stormy night, now soft and
+low as the lullaby a fond mother sings to her sleeping child, and now
+swelling louder and louder, and higher and higher, until the rafters
+rang with the joyous music, and the whole world outside was filled with
+the song of gladness.
+
+Wake up, Jerrie! Wake from the dream of rapture to a reality far more
+rapturous, for the time is at hand, the hour has come, heralded by the
+shadow which falls over the floor as Peterkin's burly figure crosses the
+threshold and enters the silent room.
+
+After Peterkin's conversation with his son concerning his future wife,
+Jerrie had grown rapidly in the old man's favor. It is true she had
+neither name nor money, the latter of which was scarcely necessary in
+this case, but he was not insensible to the fact that she possessed
+other qualities and advantages which would be a help to the house of
+Peterkin in its efforts to rise. No girl in the neighborhood was more
+popular or more sought after than Jerrie, or more intimate with the
+big-bugs, as he styled the St. Claires, and Athertons, and Tracys.
+Jerrie would _draw_; Jerry would _boost_; and he found himself forming
+many plans for the young couple, who were to occupy the south wing; and
+in fancy he saw Arthur at Le Bateau half the time at least, while the
+rest of the time the carriages from Grassy Spring, and Brier Hill, and
+Tracy Park, were standing under the stone arch in front of the door.
+How, then, was he disappointed, and enraged, too, when told by his son
+that Jerrie had refused him?
+
+Peterkin had been in Springfield nearly a week, and after his return
+home had waited a little before broaching the subject to his son; so
+that it was not until the morning before the day of the lawsuit that he
+learned the truth by closely questioning Billy, who shielded and
+defended Jerrie as far as possible.
+
+'Not have you! Refused you! Don't love you! Don't care for money!
+Thunderation! What does the girl mean? Is she crazy? Is she a fool? Is
+she in love with some other idiot?'
+
+'I th-think so, yes; th-though it did not occur to me then,' Billy
+answered, very meekly; 'and if so she ca-can't care for me any mo-more
+that I ca-can care for any other girl.'
+
+'And you are a fool, too,' was the affectionate rejoinder. 'I'll be
+dummed if you ain't a pair! Who is the lucky man? Not that dog Harold,
+who is goin' to swear agin' us to-morrow? If it is, I b'lieve I'll shoot
+him.'
+
+'Father,' Billy cried in alarm, 'be quiet; if I can st-stand it, you
+can.'
+
+But Peterkin swore he wouldn't stand it. He'd do something, he didn't
+know what; and all the morning he went about the house like a madman,
+swearing at his wife, because she wasn't _up to snuff_, and couldn't hoe
+her own with the 'ristocrats; swearing at Billy because he was a fool,
+and so small that 'twas no wonder a bean-pole like Jerrie wouldn't look
+at him, and swearing at Ann Eliza because her hair was so red, and
+because she had sprained her ankle for the sake of having Tom Tracy
+bring her home, hoping he would keep calling to see her, and thus give
+her a chance to rope him in, which she never could as long as the world
+stood.
+
+'Neither you nor Bill will ever marry, with all your money, unless you
+take up with a cobbler, and he with a washwoman,' was his farewell
+remark, as he finally left the house about three o'clock and started for
+the village, where he had some of his own witnesses to see before taking
+the train for Springfield at five.
+
+His wife had ventured to suggest that he go in a carriage, as it was so
+warm, but he had answered, savagely:
+
+'Go to thunder with your carriage and coat-of-arms! What good have they
+ever done us only to make folks laugh at us for a pack of fools? Nothing
+under heaven gives us a h'ist, and I'm just goin' to quit the folderol
+and pad it on foot, as I used to when I was cap'n of the 'Liza Ann--durn
+it!'
+
+And so, with his bag in his hand, he started rapidly down the road in
+the direction of Shannondale. But the sun was hot, and he was hot, and
+his bag was heavy, and, cursing himself for a fool that he had not taken
+the carriage, he finally struck into the park as a cooler, if a longer,
+route to the station.
+
+As he came near the Tramp House, which gave no sign of its sleeping
+occupant, something impelled him to look in at the door. And this he did
+with a thought of Jerrie in his heart, though with no suspicion that she
+was there; and when he saw her he started suddenly, and uttered an
+exclamation of surprise, which roused her from her heavy slumber.
+
+'Oh!' she exclaimed, shedding back her golden hair from her flushed face
+and lifting her eyes to him; but whatever else she might have said was
+prevented by his outburst of passion, which began with the question:
+
+'Do you know what you have done?'
+
+Jerrie looked at him wonderingly, but made no reply, and he went on:
+
+'Yes, do you know what you have done?--you, a poor, unknown girl, who,
+but for the Tracys, would have gone to the poor-house sure as guns,
+where you orter have gone! Yes, you orter. You refuse my Bill! you, who
+hain't a cent to your name; and all for that sneak of a Harold, who will
+swear agin me to-morrer. I know he's at the root on't, though Bill
+didn't say so, and I hate him wuss than pizen; he, who has been at the
+wheel in my shop and begged swill for a livin'! he to be settin' up for
+a gentleman and a cuttin' out my Bill, who will be wuth more'n a
+million,--yes, two millions, probably, and you have refused him! Do you
+hear me, gal?'
+
+He yelled this last, for something in Jerry's attitude made him think
+Jerrie was not giving him her undivided attention, for she was still
+listening to the music, which seemed to swell higher and higher, louder
+and clearer, until it almost drowned the voice of the man demanding a
+second time so fiercely:
+
+'Do you hear me, gal?'
+
+'Yes, I hear you,' she said. 'You are talking of Harold, and saying
+things you shall not repeat in my presence.'
+
+'Hoity-toity, miss! What's to hinder me repeatin' in your presence that
+Harold Hastings is a sneak and a snob, a hewer of wood, a drawer of
+water, and a--'
+
+Jerrie had risen to her feet, and stood up so tall and straight that, it
+seemed to Peterkin as if she towered even above himself, while something
+in the flash of her blue eyes made him think of Arthur when he turned
+him from the house for accusing Harold of theft, and also of the little
+child who had attacked him so fiercely on that wintry morning when the
+dead woman lay stretched upon the table at the Park House, with her dark
+face upturned to the ceiling above.
+
+'I shall hinder you,' she said, her voice ringing clear and distinct;
+'and if you breathe another word against Harold, I'll turn you from this
+room. The Tramp House is mine; Mr. Arthur gave it to me, and you cannot
+stay in it with me.'
+
+"Heavens and earth! hear the girl! One would s'pose she was the Queen of
+Sheby to hear her go on, instead of a beggar, whose father was the Lord
+only knows who, and whose mother was found in rags on this 'ere table.
+Drat the dum thing!" Peterkin roared, bringing his fist down with such
+force upon the poor old rickety table that it fell to pieces under the
+blow and went crashing to the floor.
+
+Jerrie's face was a face to fear then, and Peterkin was afraid, and
+backed himself out of the room, with Jerrie close to him, never speaking
+a word, but motioning him to the door, through which he passed swiftly,
+and picking up his bag, walked rapidly away, growling to himself:
+
+'There's the very Old Harry in that gal's eye. Bill did well to get shet
+of her; and yit, if she'd married him, how she would have rid over all
+their heads! Well, to be sure, what a dum fool she is!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+WHAT JERRIE FOUND UNDER THE FLOOR.
+
+
+Meantime Jerrie had gone back to the wreck of the table, which she tried
+to straighten up, handling it as carefully and as reverently as if it
+had been her mother's coffin she was touching. One of the legs had been
+broken off before, and she and Harold has fastened it on and turned it
+to the side of the house where it would be more out of the way of harm,
+and it was this leg which had succumbed first to the force of Peterkin's
+fist, and as the entire pressure of the table was brought to bear upon
+it in falling, it had been precipitated through a hole in the base
+board, which had been there as long as she could remember the place, not
+so large at first, but growing larger each year, as the decaying boards
+crumbled or were eaten away by rats.
+
+Jerrie called it a rat-hole, and had several times put a trap there to
+catch the marauders, who sometimes scampered across her very feet, so
+accustomed were they to her presence. But the rats would not go into the
+trap, and then she pasted a newspaper over the hole, but this had been
+torn, and hung in shreds, while the hole grew gradually larger.
+
+Taking up the top of the table, Jerrie dragged it to the centre of the
+room, and, putting three of the legs upon it, went to search for the
+fourth, one end of which was just visible at the aperture in the wall.
+As she stooped to take it out, a bit of the floor under her feet gave
+way, making the opening so large that the table leg disappeared from
+view entirely. Then Jerrie went down upon her knees, and, thrusting her
+hand under the floor, felt for the missing leg, striking against stones,
+and brushes, and bits of mortar, and finally touching something from
+which she recoiled for an instant, it was so cold and slimy.
+
+But she struck it again in her search, this time more squarely, and,
+grasping it hard in her hand, brought it out to the light, while an
+undefinable thrill, half of terror, half of joy, ran through her frame,
+as she held it up and examined it carefully.
+
+It was a small hand-bag of Russian leather, covered with mold and
+stained with the damp of its long hiding-place, while a corner of it
+showed that the rats had tested its properties, but, disliking either
+the taste or the smell had left it in quiet. And there under the floor,
+not two feet from where Jerrie had often played, it had lain ever since
+the wintry night years before when on the table a strange woman had
+struggled with death, and in her struggle the bag, which held so much
+that was important to the child beside her, had probably fallen from her
+rude bed into the hole just behind it, and which was then large enough
+to receive it. Then the rats, attracted by this novel appearance in
+their midst, had investigated and dragged it so far from the opening
+that it could not been seen unless one went down upon the floor to look
+for it.
+
+This was the conviction that flashed upon Jerrie as she stood, with
+widely dilated eyes and quivering nostrils, staring at the bag, without
+the power at first to speak or move.
+
+The music was gone now--Gretchen's voice and Arthur's--and there was
+only in her ears a roaring sound like the rushing of distant waters
+falling heavily, while the objects in the room swam around her, and she
+experienced again that ringing sensation as if the top of her head were
+leaving her. She was so sure that here at last was a message from the
+dead--that she had the mystery of her babyhood in her grasp--and yet,
+for full two minutes she hesitated and held back, until at last the
+sweet, pale face which had haunted her so often seemed about to touch
+her own with a caress which brought the hot tears to her eyes, and the
+spell which had bound her hands and feet was broken.
+
+The bag was clasped, but not locked, although there was a lock, and
+Jerrie thought involuntarily of the little key lying with the other
+articles on the dead woman's person. To unclasp the bag required a
+little strength, for the steel was covered with rust; but it yielded at
+last to Jerrie's strong fingers; and the bag came open, disclosing first
+some square object carefully wrapped in a silk handkerchief which had
+been white in its day, but which now was yellow and soiled by time. At
+this, however, Jerrie scarcely looked, for her eye had fallen upon a
+package of papers lying beneath it--papers folded with care, and
+securely tied with a bit of faded blue ribbon.
+
+Seating herself upon the bench where she had been sleeping when
+Peterkin's voice aroused her, Jerrie untied the package, and then began
+to read, first slowly, as if weighing every word and sentence, then
+faster and faster, until at last it seemed that her burning eyes, from
+which the hot tears were streaming like rain, fairly leaped from page to
+page, taking in the contents at a glance, and comprehending everything.
+
+When she had finished, she sat for a moment rigid as a corpse, and then,
+with a loud, glad cry, which made the very rafters ring, and went
+floating out upon the summer air, "Thank Heaven, I have found my
+mother!" she fell upon her face, insensible to everything.
+
+How long she lay thus she did not know, but when she came back to
+consciousness the sunlight had changed its position in the room, and she
+felt it was growing late.
+
+Starting suddenly up, and wiping from her face a drop of blood which has
+oozed from a cut in her forehead caused by her striking it against some
+hard substance when she fell, she looked about her for a moment in a
+bewildered kind of way, not realizing at first what had happened; and
+even when she remembered, she was too much stunned and astonished to
+take it all in as she would afterward when she was calmer and could
+think more clearer.
+
+Taking up the papers one by one, in the order in which she had found
+them, she tied them again with the blue ribbon, and put them into the
+bag.
+
+'There was something more,' she whispered, trying to think what it was.
+
+Then, as her eye fell upon the first package she had taken out, and
+which was wrapped in a silk handkerchief, she took it up, and removing
+the covering, started as suddenly as if a blow had been dealt her, for
+there was the tortoise-shell box, with its blue satin lining, and its
+diamonds, which seemed to her like so many sparks of fire flashing in
+her eyes and dazzling her with their brilliancy.
+
+Just such a box as this, and just such diamonds as these, Mrs. Frank
+Tracy had lost years ago, and as Jerrie held them in her hand and turned
+them to the light, till they showed all the hues of the rainbow, she
+experienced a feeling of terror as if she were a thief and had been
+convicted of the theft. Then, as she remembered what she had read, she
+burst into a hysterical fit of laughing and crying together, and
+whispered to herself:
+
+'I believe I am going mad like him.'
+
+After a time she arose, and with the bag on her arm and the diamonds in
+her hand, she started for home, with only one thought in her mind:
+
+'I must tell Harold, and ask him what to do.'
+
+She had forgotten that he was to leave that afternoon on the
+train--forgotten everything, except the one subject which affected her
+so strongly, so that in one sense she might be said to be thinking of
+nothing, when, as she was walking with her head bent down, she came
+suddenly face to face with Harold, who, with his satchel in his hand,
+was starting for the train due now in a few minutes.
+
+'Jerrie,' he exclaimed, 'how late you are! I waited until the last
+minute to say good-bye. Why, what ails you, and where have you been?' he
+continued, as she raised her head and he saw the bruise on her forehead
+and the strange pallor of her face.
+
+'In the Tramp House,' the answered, in a voice which was not hers at
+all, and made Harold look more curiously at her.
+
+As he did so he saw peeping from a fold of the silk handkerchief the
+corner of the tortoise-shell box which he remembered so well, and the
+sight of which brought back all the shame and humiliation and pain of
+that memorable morning when he had been suspected of taking it.
+
+'What is it? What have you in your hand?' he asked.
+
+Then Jerrie's face, so pale before, flushed scarlet, and her eyes had in
+them a wild look which Harold construed into fear, as, without a word,
+she laid the box in his hand, and then stood watching him is he opened
+it.
+
+Harold's face was whiter than Jerrie's had been, and his voice trembled
+as he said, in a whisper:
+
+'Mrs. Tracy's diamonds!'
+
+'Yes, Mrs. Tracy's diamonds,' Jerrie replied, with a marked emphasis on
+the _Mrs. Tracy_.
+
+'How came you by them, and where did you find them,' Harold asked next,
+shrinking a little from the glittering stones which seemed like fiery
+eyes confronting him.
+
+'I can't tell you now. Put them up quick. Don't let any one see them.
+Somebody is coming,' Jerrie said, hurriedly, as her ear caught a sound
+and her eye an object which Harold neither saw nor heard as he
+mechanically thrust the box into his side pocket and then turned just as
+Tom Tracy came up on horseback.
+
+'Hallo, Jerrie! hallo, Hal!' he cried, dismounting quickly and throwing
+the bridle-rein over his arm. 'And so you are off to that suit?' he
+continued, addressing himself to Harold. 'By George, I wish I were a
+witness. I'd swear the old man's head off; for, upon my soul, I believe
+he is an old liar?' Then turning to Jerrie, he continued: 'Are you
+better than you were this morning? Upon my word, you look worse. It's
+that infernal watching last night that ails you. I told mother you ought
+not to do it.'
+
+Just then a whistle was heard in the distance; the train was at
+Truesdale, four miles away.
+
+'You will never catch it,' Tom said, as Harold snatched up his bag and
+started to run, 'Here, jump on to Beaver, and leave him at the station.
+I can go there for him.'
+
+Harold knew it was impossible for him to make time against the train,
+and, accepting Tom's offer, he vaulted into the saddle and galloped
+rapidly away, reaching the station just in time to give his horse to the
+care of a boy and to leap upon the train as it was moving away.
+
+Meanwhile Tom walked on with Jerrie to the cottage, where he would have
+stopped if she had not said to him:
+
+'I would ask you to come in, but my head is aching so badly that I must
+go straight to bed. Good-bye, Tom,' and she offered him her hand, a most
+unusual thing for her to do on an ordinary occasion like this.
+
+What ailed her, Tom wondered, that she spoke so kindly to him and looked
+at him so curiously? Was she sorry for her decision, and did she wish to
+revoke it?
+
+'Then, by Jove, I'll give her a chance, for every time I see her I find
+myself more and more in love,' Tom thought, as he left her and started
+for the station after Beaver, whom he found hitched to a post and pawing
+the ground impatiently.
+
+Mrs. Crawford was in the garden when Jerrie entered the house, and thus
+there was no one to see her as she hurried up stairs and hid the leather
+bag away upon a shelf in her dressing-room. First, however, she took out
+two of the papers and read them again, as if to make assurance doubly
+sure; then she tried the little key to the lock, which it fitted
+perfectly.
+
+'There is no mistake,' she whispered; 'but I can't think about it now,
+for this terrible pain in my head. I must wait till Harold comes home;
+he will tell me what to do, and be so glad for me. Dear Harold; his days
+of labor are over, and grandmother's, too. Those diamonds are a fortune
+in themselves, and they are _mine_! my own! she said so! Oh, mother, I
+have found you at last, but I can't make it real; my head is so strange.
+What if I should be crazy?' and she started suddenly. 'What if that
+dreadful taint should be in my blood, or what if I should die just as I
+have found my mother! Oh, Heaven, don't let me die; don't let me lose my
+reason, and I will try to do right; only show me what right is.'
+
+She was praying now upon her knees with her throbbing head upon the side
+of the bed, into which she finally crept with her clothes on, even to
+her boots, for Jerrie was herself no longer. The fever with which for
+days she had been threatened, and which had been induced by over-study
+at Vassar, and the excitement which had followed her return home, could
+be kept at bay no longer, and when Mrs. Crawford, who had seen her enter
+the house, went up after a while to see why she did not come down to
+tea, she found her sleeping heavily, with spots of crimson upon her
+cheeks, while her hands, which moved incessantly, were burning with
+fever. Occasionally she moaned and talked in her sleep of the Tramp
+House, and rats, and Peterkin, who had struck the blow and knocked
+something or somebody down, Mrs. Crawford could not tell what, unless it
+were Jerrie herself, on whose forehead there was a bunch the size now of
+a walnut.
+
+'Jerrie, Jerrie,' Mrs. Crawford cried in alarm, as she tried to remove
+the girl's clothes. 'What is it, Jerrie? What has happened? Who hurt
+you? Who struck the blow?'
+
+'Peterkin,' was the faint response, as for an instant Jerrie opened her
+eyelids only to close them again and sink away into a heavier sleep or
+stupefaction. It seemed the latter, and as Mrs. Crawford could not
+herself go for a physician, and as no one came down the lane that
+evening, she sat all night, by Jerrie's bed, bathing the feverish hands
+and trying to lessen the lump on the forehead, which, in spite of all
+her efforts, continued to swell until it seemed to her it was as large
+as a hen's egg.
+
+'Did Peterkin strike you, and what for?' she kept asking; but Jerrie
+only moaned and muttered something she could not understand, except once
+when she said, distinctly:
+
+'Yes, Peterkin. Such a blow; it was like a blacksmith's hammer, and
+knocked the table to pieces. I am glad he did it.'
+
+What did she mean? Mrs. Crawford asked herself in vain, and when at last
+the early summer morning broke, she was almost as crazy as Jerrie, who
+was steadily growing worse, and who was saying the strangest things
+about arrests and blows, and Peterkin, and Harold, and Mr. Arthur, whose
+name she always mentioned with a sob and stretching out of her hands, as
+to some invisible presence. Help must be had from some quarter; and for
+two hours, which seemed to her years, Mrs. Crawford watched for the
+coming of someone, until at last she saw Tom Tracy galloping up on
+Beaver.
+
+'Tom, Tom,' she screamed from the window, as she saw him dismounting at
+the gate, 'don't get off, but ride for your life and fetch the doctor,
+quick. Jerrie is very sick; has been crazy all night, and has a bunch on
+her head as big as a bowl, where she says Peterkin struck her.
+
+'Peterkin struck Jerrie! I'll kill him!' Tom said as he tore down the
+lane and out upon the highway in quest of the physician, who was soon
+found and at Jerrie's side, where Tom stood with him, gazing awe struck
+upon the fever stricken girl, who was tossing and talking all the time,
+and whose bright eyes unclosed once and fixed themselves on him, as he
+spoke her name and laid his hand on one of hers.
+
+'Oh, Tom, Tom,' she said, 'you told me you'd kill her. Will you kill
+her? Will you kill her?' And a wild, hysterical laugh echoed through the
+room, as she kept repeating the words, 'Will you kill her? Will you kill
+her?' which conveyed no meaning to Tom, who had forgotten what he had
+said he would do if a claimant to Tracy Park should appear in the shape
+of a young lady.
+
+Whatever Jerrie took up she repeated rapidly until something else came
+into her mind, and when Mrs. Crawford, referring to the bunch on her
+head, said to the physician, 'Peterkin struck the blow, she says,' she
+began at once like a parrot. 'Peterkin struck the blow! Peterkin struck
+the blow!' until another idea suggested itself, and she began to ring
+changes on the sentence. 'In the rat-hole; in the Tramp House; in the
+Tramp House; in the rat-hole,' talking so fast that sometimes it was
+impossible to follow her.
+
+The blow on her head alone could not have produced this state of things;
+it was rather over-excitement, added to some great mental shock, the
+nature of which he could not divine, the doctor said to Tom, who in his
+wrath at Peterkin was ready to flay him alive, or at least to ride him
+on a rail the instant he entered town.
+
+It was a puzzling case, though not a dangerous one as yet, the physician
+said. Jerrie's strong constitution could stand an attack much more
+severe than this one; and prescribing perfect quiet, with strict orders
+that she should see no more people than was necessary, he left,
+promising to return in the afternoon, when he hoped to find her better.
+Tom lingered a while after the doctor had left, and showed himself so
+thoughtful and kind that Mrs. Crawford forgave him much which she had
+harbored against him for his treatment of Harold.
+
+All night Tom's dreams had been haunted with Jerrie's voice and Jerrie's
+look as she gave him her hand and said, 'Good-bye, Tom,' and he had
+ridden over early to see if the look and tone were still there, and if
+they were, and he had a chance, he meant to renew his offer. But words
+of love would have been sadly out of place to this restless, feverish
+girl, whose incoherent babblings puzzled and bewildered him.
+
+One fact, however, was distinct in his mind--Peterkin had struck her a
+terrible blow in the Tramp House. Of that he was sure, though why he
+should have done so he could not guess; and vowing vengeance upon the
+man, he left the cottage at last and rode down to the Tramp House, where
+he found the table in a state of ruin upon the door, three of the legs
+upon it and the other one nowhere to be seen.
+
+'He struck her with it and then threw it away, I'll bet,' he said to
+himself, as he hunted for the missing leg; 'and it was some quarrel he
+picked with her about Hal, who is going to swear against him. Jerrie
+would never hear Hal abused, and I've no doubt she aggravated the wretch
+until he forgot himself and dealt her that blow. I'll have him arrested
+for assault and battery, as sure as I am born.'
+
+Hurrying home, he told the story to his mother, who smiled incredulously
+and said she did not believe it, bidding him say nothing of it to Maude,
+who was not as well as usual that day. Then he told his father, who
+started at once for the cottage, where Mrs. Crawford refused to let him
+see Jerrie, saying that the doctor's orders were that she should be kept
+perfectly quiet. But as they stood talking together near the open door,
+Jerrie's voice was heard calling:
+
+'Let Mr. Frank come up.'
+
+So Frank went up, and, notwithstanding all he had heard from Tom, he was
+surprised at Jerrie's flushed face and the unnatural expression of her
+eyes, which turned so eagerly toward him as he came in.
+
+'Oh, Mr. Tracy,' she said, as he sat down beside her and took one of her
+burning hands in his, 'you have always been kind to me, haven't you?'
+
+'Yes,' he replied, with a keen pang of remorse, and wondering if she
+would call it kindness if she knew all that he did.
+
+'And I think you like me some,' she continued: 'don't you?'
+
+'Like you!' he repeated; 'yes, more than you can ever know. Why,
+sometimes I think I like you almost as much as I do Maude.'
+
+As if the mention of Maude had sent her thoughts backward in a very
+different channel, she said abruptly, while she held his gaze steadily
+with her bright eyes:
+
+'You posted that letter?'
+
+Frank knew perfectly well that she meant the letter which, together with
+the photograph, and the Bible, and the lock of the baby's golden hair,
+had lain for years in his private drawer--the letter whose
+superscription he had studied so many times, and which had seldom been
+absent from his thoughts an hour since that night when, from her perch
+on the gate-post, Jerrie had startled him with the question she was
+asking him now. But be affected ignorance and said, as indifferently as
+he could, with those blue eyes upon him seeming to read his inmost
+thoughts:
+
+'What letter do you mean?'
+
+'Why, the one Mr. Arthur wrote to Gretchen, or her friends, in
+Wiesbaden, and gave me to post. You took it for me to the office, and I
+sat on the gate so long in the darkness waiting for you to come and tell
+me you had posted it sure.'
+
+'Oh, yes, I remember it perfectly, and how you frightened me sitting up
+there so high like a goblin,' Frank answered, falteringly, his face as
+crimson now as Jerrie's, and his eyes dropping beneath her gaze.
+
+'Gretchen's friends never got that letter,' Jerrie continued.
+
+'No, they never got it,' Frank answered, mechanically.
+
+'If they had,' Jerrie went on, 'they would have answered it, for she had
+friends there.'
+
+Frank looked up quickly and curiously at the girl talking so strangely
+to him. What had she heard? What did she know? or was this only an
+outburst of insanity? She certainly looked crazy as she lay there
+talking to him. He was sure of it a moment after when, as if the nature
+of her thoughts had changed suddenly, she said to him:
+
+'Yes, you have been very kind to me, you and Maude--you and Maude--and I
+shan't forget it. Tell her I shan't forget it.--I shan't forget it.'
+
+She repeated this rapidly, and was growing so wild and excited that
+Frank thought it advisable to leave her. As he arose to go she looked up
+pleadingly at him, and said:
+
+'Kiss me, Mr. Tracy, please.'
+
+Had he been struck by lightning, Frank could hardly have been more
+astonished than he was at this singular request, and for a moment he
+stared blankly at the girl who had made it, not because he was at all
+averse to granting it, but because he doubted the propriety of the act,
+even if she were crazy. But something in Jerrie's face, like Arthur's,
+mastered him, and, stooping down, he kissed the parched lips through
+which the breath came so hotly, wondering as he did so what Dolly would
+say if she could see him, a white-haired man of forty-five, kissing a
+young girl of nineteen, and that girl Jerrie Crawford.
+
+'Thanks,' Jerrie said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. 'I
+think you have been chewing tobacco, haven't you? But I sha'nt forget
+it; I sha'nt forget it. I shall do right. I shall do right. Tell Maude
+so; tell Maude so.'
+
+She was certainly growing worse, Frank thought, as he went down to
+confer with Mrs. Crawford as to what ought to be done, and to offer his
+services. He would remain there that afternoon, he said, and send a
+servant over to be in the house during the night.
+
+'She is very sick,' he said; 'but it does not seem as if her sickness
+could be caused wholly by that bruise on her head. Do you think Peterkin
+struck her?'
+
+'She says so,' was Mrs. Crawford's reply, 'though why he should do it, I
+cannot guess.'
+
+Then she added that a servant would not be necessary, as Harold would be
+home by seven.
+
+'But he may not,' Frank replied. 'Squire Harrington came at two, and
+reported that the suit was not called until so late that they would not
+probably get through with the witnesses to-day, so Hal may not be here,
+and I will send Rob anyway.'
+
+On his way home Frank, too, looked in at the Tramp House, and saw the
+broken-down table, and hunted for the missing leg, and with Tom
+concluded that something unusual had taken place there, though he could
+not guess what.
+
+That evening, as Jerrie grew more and more restless and talkative, Mrs.
+Crawford listened anxiously for the train, and when it came, waited and
+watched for Harold, but watched in vain, for Harold did not come.
+Several of her neighbors, however, did come; those who had gone to the
+city out of curiosity to attend the lawsuit, and 'see old Peterkin
+squirm and hear him swear;' and could she have looked into the houses in
+the village that night, she would have heard some startling news, for
+almost before the train rolled away from the platform, everybody at or
+near the station had been told that Mrs. Tracy's diamonds, lost nine or
+ten years ago, had been found in Harold Hastings' pocket, and that he
+was under arrest.
+
+Such news travels fast, and it reached the Park House just as the family
+were finishing their late dinner.
+
+'I told you so! I always thought he was guilty, or knew something about
+them,' Mrs. Frank exclaimed, with a look of exultation on her face as
+she turned to her husband. 'What do you think now of your fine young
+man, who has been hanging around here after your daughter until she is
+half-betwaddled after him?'
+
+Frank's face was very grave as he answered, decidedly:
+
+'I do not believe it. Harold Hastings never took your diamonds.'
+
+'How came he by them, then?' she asked, in a loud, angry voice.
+
+'I don't know,' her husband replied; 'there is some mistake; it will be
+cleared in time. But keep it from Maude; I think the news would kill
+her.'
+
+Meantime Tom had sat with his brows knit together, as if intently
+thinking; and when at last he spoke he said to his father:
+
+'I shall go to Springfield on the ten o'clock train, and you'd better go
+with me.'
+
+To this Frank made no objections. If his wife's diamonds were really
+found, he ought to be there to receive them; and, besides, he might say
+a word in Harold's defence, if necessary. So ten o'clock found him and
+Tom at the station, where also was Dick St. Claire, with several other
+young men, pacing up and down the platform and excitedly discussing the
+news, of which they did not believe a word.
+
+'I almost feel as if they were hurting me when they touch Hal, he's such
+a noble fellow,' Dick said to Mr. Tracy and Tom. 'We are all as mad as
+can be, and so a lot of us fellows, who have always known him, are going
+over to speak a good word for him, and go his bail if necessary. I don't
+believe, though, they can do anything after all these years; but father
+will know. He is there with him.'
+
+And so the night train to Springfield carried fourteen men from
+Shannondale, thirteen of whom were going to stand by Harold, while the
+fourteenth hardly knew why he was going or what he believed. Arrived in
+the city, their first inquiry was for Harold, who, instead of being in
+the charge of an officer as they had feared, was quietly sleeping in his
+room at the hotel, while Judge St. Claire had the diamonds in his
+possession.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+HAROLD AND THE DIAMONDS.
+
+
+When Harold sprang upon the train as it was moving from the station and
+entered the rear car, he found old Peterkin near the door, button-holing
+Judge St. Claire, to whom he was talking loudly and angrily of that
+infernal cheat, Wilson, who had brought the suit against him.
+
+'Yes, yes, I see; I know; but all that will come out on the trial,' the
+judge said, trying to silence him.
+
+But Peterkin held on, until his eye caught Harold, when he let the judge
+go, and seating himself beside the young man began in a soft, coaxing
+tone for him:
+
+'I don't see why in thunder you are goin' agin me, who have allus been
+your friend, and gin you work when you couldn't git it any where else;
+and I can't imagine what you're goin' to say, or what you know.'
+
+Harold's face was very red, but his manner was respectful as he replied:
+
+'You cannot be more sorry than I am that I am subpoenaed as a witness
+against you. I did not seek it. I could not help it: but, being a
+witness, I must answer the questions truthfully.'
+
+'Thunder and lightning, man! Of course you must! Don't I know that?' the
+irascible Peterkin growled, getting angry at once. 'Of course you must
+answer questions, but you needn't blab out stuff they don't ask you, so
+as to lead 'em on. I know 'em, the blood-hounds; they'll squeeze you
+dry, once let 'em git an inklin' you know sunthin' more. Now, if this
+goes agin me, I'm out at least thirty thousand dollars; and between you
+and I, I don't mind givin' a cool two thousand, or three, or mebby five,
+right out of pocket, cash down, to anybody whose testimony, without
+bein' a lie--I don't want nobody to swear false, remember--but, heaven
+and earth, can't a body furgit a little, and keep back a lot if they
+want to?' 'What are you trying to say to me?' Harold asked, his face
+pale with resentment, as he suspected the man's motive.
+
+'Say to you? Nothin', only that I'll give five thousand dollars down to
+the chap whose testimony gits me off and flings old Wilson.'
+
+'Mr. Peterkin,' Harold said, looking the old wretch full in the face,
+'if you are trying to bribe me, let me tell you at once that I am not to
+be bought. I shall not volunteer information, but shall answer
+truthfully whatever is asked me.'
+
+'Go to thunder, then! I always knew you were a bad aig,' Peterkin
+roared; and as there was nothing to be made from Harold, he changed his
+seat to try his tactics elsewhere.
+
+Left to himself, Harold had time to think of the diamonds, which,
+indeed, had not been absent from his thoughts a moment, since Jerrie
+gave them to him. They were closely buttoned in his coat pocket, where
+they burned like fire, as he wondered where and how Jerrie had found
+them.
+
+'In the Tramp House it must have been,' he said to himself; 'but who put
+them there, and how did she chance to find them, and why did she look so
+wild and excited, so like a crazy person, when she gave them to me,
+bidding me let no one see them?'
+
+These questions he could not answer, and his brain was all in a whirl
+when the train reached Springfield, and, with the others, he registered
+himself at the hotel. Suddenly, like a gleam of lightning seen through a
+rift of clouds, there came back to him, with a horrible distinctness,
+the words the child Jerry had spoken to him that day years ago, when he
+had walked homeward with her through the leafy woods from the Park
+House, where he had been questioned so closely by Mrs. Tracy with regard
+to her diamonds and what he had been doing in the house on the morning
+of their disappearance.
+
+'I know where those diamonds are, but I shan't tell while there is such
+a fuss,' she had said, and in his abstraction he had scarcely noticed it
+then, but it came back to him now with fearful significance, making him
+sick, and faint, and cold, although the great drops of sweat stood
+thickly upon his lips and under his hair, as, after the gas was lighted,
+he sat alone in a little reception-room opening from one of the parlors.
+Did Jerrie know where they were, and had she known all the time and not
+spoken? And, if so, was she not guilty as an accessory, at least in
+trying to shield another? For that she took them herself he never for a
+moment dreamed. It was some one else, and she knew and did not tell. He
+was certain of it now, as every incident connected with her strange
+sickness came back to him, when she seemed to be doing penance for
+another's fault. She had called herself an accessory, and that was what
+she was, or rather what the world would call her, if it knew. To him she
+was Jerrie, the girl he loved, and he would defend her to the bitter
+end, no matter how culpable she had been in keeping silence so long.
+
+But who took them! That was the question puzzling him so much as he sat
+thinking with his head bent down, and so absorbed that he did not hear a
+step in the adjoining room, or know that Peterkin had seated himself
+just where a large mirror showed him distinctly the young man in the
+next room, whom he recognized at once, though Harold never moved for a
+few moments or lifted his head.
+
+At last, however, he unbuttoned his coat and after glancing cautiously
+around to make sure no one was near, he took the box from his pocket,
+and holding the stones to the light examined them carefully, taking in
+his hand first the ear-rings and then the pin, and holding them in such
+a way that two or three times they flashed directly in the eyes of the
+cruel man watching him.
+
+'Yes, they are Mrs. Tracy's diamonds; there can be no mistake,' he
+whispered, just as he became conscious that there was some one in the
+door looking at him.
+
+Quick as thought he put the box out of sight just as Peterkin's voice,
+exultant and hateful, cried out:
+
+'Hallo, Mr. Prayer-book! your piety won't let you keep back a darned
+thing you know agin me, but it lets you have in your possession diamonds
+which I'd eenamost sware was them stones Miss Tracy lost years ago and
+suspected you of takin. I know the box anyway, I heard it described so
+often, and I b'lieve I know them diamonds. I seen 'em in the
+lookin'-glass, settin' in t'other room, and seen you look all round like
+a thief afore you opened 'em. So, fork over, and mebby you can give me
+back May Jane's pin you stole at the party the night Mr. Arthur came
+home. Fork over, I say!'
+
+Too much astonished at first to speak, Harold stood staring at the man
+who had attacked him so brutally, while his hand closed tightly over the
+diamonds in his pocket, as if fearing they might be wrenched from him by
+force.
+
+'Will you fork over, or shall I call the perlice?' Peterkin asked.
+
+'Call the police as soon as you like,' Harold replied, 'but I shall not
+give you the diamonds.'
+
+'Then you own that you've got 'em! That's half the battle!' Peterkin
+said, coming up close to him, and looking at him with a meaning smile
+more detestable than any menace could have been. 'I know you've got 'em,
+and I can run you if I try, and then what will your doxie think of you!
+Will she refuse my Bill for a thief, and treat me as if I was dirt?'
+
+'What do you mean, sir?' Harold demanded, feeling intuitively that by
+his _doxie_ Jerrie was meant, and feeling a great horror, too, lest by
+some means Jerrie's name should be mixed up with the affair before she
+had a chance to explain.
+
+The reference to Billy was a puzzle, but Peterkin did not leave him in
+doubt.
+
+'I mean that you think yourself very fine, and always have, and that are
+girl of the carpet-bag thinks herself fine, too, and refused my Bill for
+you, who hain't a cent in the world. I seen it in her face when I
+twitted her on it, and she riz up agin me like a catamount. But I'll be
+even with you both yit. I've got you in my power, young man, but--' and
+here he came a step or two nearer to Harold, and dropping his voice to a
+whisper said: 'I sha'n't do nothin', nor say nothin' till you've gin
+your evidence, and if you hold your tongue I will. You tickle me, and
+I'll tickle you! see!'
+
+Harold was too indignant to reply, and feeling that he was degrading
+himself every moment he spent in the presence of that man, he left the
+room without a word, and went to his own apartment, but not to sleep,
+for never had he spent so wretched a night as that which followed his
+interview with Peterkin. Of what the man could do to him, he had no
+fear. His anxiety was all for Jerrie. Where did she find the diamonds,
+and for whom did she keep silence so long? and what would be said of
+the act when it was known, as it might be, though not from him?
+
+Two or three times he arose and lighted the gas, examined the diamonds
+carefully to see if there were not some mistake. But there could be
+none. He had seen them on the lady's person and had heard them described
+so accurately that he could not be mistaken; and then the box was the
+same he had once seen when Jack took him to his mother's room to show
+him what Uncle Arthur had brought. That was a tortoise shell, of an oval
+shape, lined with blue satin, and this was a tortoise shell, oval
+shaped, and lined with blue satin. Harold felt, when at last the
+daylight shone into his room, that if it had tarried a moment longer he
+must have gone mad. He was very white and haggard, and there were dark
+rings under his eyes, when he went down to the office, where the first
+person he met was Billy, who also looked pale and worn, with a different
+expression upon his face from anything Harold had ever seen before. It
+was as if all life and hope had gone, leaving him nothing now to care
+for. In his anxiety and worry about the diamonds Harold had scarcely
+given a thought to what Peterkin had said of Jerrie's refusal of Billy,
+for it seemed so improbable that the latter would presume to offer
+himself to her; but at sight of Billy's face it came back to him with a
+throb of pity for the man, and a thrill of joy for himself for whom
+Peterkin had said his son was rejected.
+
+'Does Billy know of the diamonds, I wonder?' he thought.
+
+As if to answer the question in the negative, Billy came quickly
+forward, and offering his hand, bade Harold good-morning, and then
+motioning him to a seat, took one beside him, and began:
+
+'I'm awful sorry, Hal, th-that you are mix-mixed up in th-this but I sup
+suppose you m-must t-tell the truth.'
+
+'Yes, I must tell the truth, Harold said.'
+
+'Fa-father will be so m-mad,' Billy continued. 'I wi-wish I could
+t-t-testify f-for you, bu-but I can't. You were th-there, I wa-wan't,
+and all I know fa-father told me; bu-but d don't volunteer information.'
+
+'No,' Harold said, slowly, wishing that the ocean were rolling between
+him and this detestable suit.
+
+Once he resolved to go to Judge St. Claire, deliver up the diamonds, and
+tell him all he knew about them, but this would be bringing Jerrie into
+the matter, and so he changed his mind and wondered aimlessly about the
+town until it was time for him to appear at the court-house, where a
+crowd was gathering. It was late before the suit known as _Wilson vs.
+Peterkin_ was called, and later still when Harold took the stand.
+
+White and trembling, so that both his hands and his knees were shaking
+visibly, he seemed more like a criminal than a witness, he was so
+agitated and pre-occupied, too, it would seem, for at first his answers
+were given at random, as if he hardly knew what he was saying; nor did
+he, for over and beyond the sea of long faces confronting him, Judge St.
+Claire's wondering and curious--Billy's wondering, too--Wilson's
+disappointed and surprised, and Peterkin's threatening and exultant by
+turns--he saw only Jerrie coming to him in the lane and asking him to
+keep the diamonds for her--saw her, too, away back years ago up in the
+little low room, with her fever-stained cheeks and shorn head, talking
+the strangest things of prisons, and substitutes, and accessories, and
+assuring some one that she would never tell, and was going for him, if
+necessary.
+
+Who was that man? Where was he now? and why had he imposed this terrible
+secret upon Jerrie?
+
+These were the thoughts crowding through his brain while he was being
+questioned as to what he knew of the agreement between the plaintiff and
+defendant while in the office of the latter. Once a thought of Maude
+crossed his mind with a keen pang of regret, as he remembered the lovely
+face which had smiled so fondly upon him, mistaking his meaning utterly,
+and appropriating to herself the love he was trying to tell her was
+another's. And with thoughts of Maude there came a thought of Arthur,
+the very first which Harold had given him, Arthur, the crazy man, who
+himself had hidden the diamonds and for whom Jerrie was ready to
+sacrifice so much. It was clear as daylight to him now, the anxiety and
+stain were over, and those who were watching him so intently as he gave
+his answers at random, with the sweat pouring like rain down his face,
+were electrified at the start he gave as he came to himself and realized
+for the first time where he was, and why he was there. Arthur would
+never see Jerrie wronged. _She_ was safe, and with this load lifted from
+him, he gave his whole attention to the business on hand, answering the
+questions now clearly and distinctly.
+
+When at last the lawyer said to him, 'Repeat what you can remember of
+the conversation which took place between the plaintiff and the
+defendant on the morning of ----, 18--,' he gave one sorry look at poor
+Billy, who was the picture of shame and confusion, and then, in a clear,
+distinct voice, which filled every corner of the room, told what he had
+heard said in his presence, and what he knew of the transaction, proving
+conclusively that the plaintiff was right and Peterkin a rascal, and
+this in the face of the man who had asked him not to _blab_ and who
+shook his fist at him threateningly as the narrative went on.
+
+'Would you believe the defendant under oath?' was asked at the close,
+and Harold answered, promptly:
+
+'Under oath--yes.'
+
+'Would you, if not under oath?'
+
+'If an untruth would be to his advantage, no,' and then Harold was
+through.
+
+As he stepped down from the witness stand old Peterkin arose, so angry
+that at first he could scarcely articulate his words.
+
+'You dog! you liar! you thief! he screamed; 'to stand there and lie so
+about me! I'll teach you--I'll show 'em what you are. If there's a
+perlice here, I call on 'em to arrest this feller for them diamonds of
+Miss Tracy's! They are in his pocket--or was last night. I seen 'em
+myself, and he dassent deny it.'
+
+By this time the court-house was in wild confusion, as the spectators
+arose from their seats and pressed forward to where Peterkin stood
+denouncing Harold, who was white as ashes, and looked as if he were
+going to faint, as Billy hastened to his side, whispering:
+
+'Lean on me, and I will get you out of this. Father is mad.'
+
+But order was soon restored, though not until Peterkin had yelled again,
+as Harold was leaving the room:
+
+'Search him, I tell you! Don't let him escape! He's got 'em in his
+pocket--Miss Tracy's diamonds! Lord of heavens! don't you remember the
+row there was about 'em years ago?'
+
+Of what followed during the next hour Harold knew very little. There
+was a crowd around him, and cries of 'He is going to faint!' while
+Billy's stammering voice called pleadingly, 'St-stand back, ca-can't
+you, and gi-give him air.'
+
+Then, a deluge of water in his face; then a great darkness and the
+voices sounded a long way off, and he felt so tired and sleepy, and
+thought of Jerry, and Maude, and lived over again the scene in the
+Tramp-House, when he found the former in the bag, and felt her little
+fat arms around his neck as he staggered with her through the snow,
+wondering why she was so heavy, and why her feet were dragging on the
+ground. When he came more fully to himself, he was in a little room in
+the court-house, and Billy's arm was lying protectingly across his
+shoulder, while Billy's father was bellowing like a bull:
+
+'Be you goin' to let him go! Ain't you goin' to git a writ and arrest
+him! Why don't you handcuff him, somebody? And you, Bill, be you a fool
+to stan' there a huggin' him as if he was a gal! What do you mean?'
+
+'Ha-Hal is my fr-friend, father. He never to-took the diamonds,' Billy
+answered, sadly, while Judge St. Claire, who had the box of jewels in
+his hand and was looking very anxious, turned to the angry man clamoring
+so loudly for a _writ_ and said, sternly:
+
+'Even if Harold took the diamonds--which he did not, I am certain of
+that--there is some mistake which he will explain; but if he took them,
+it is too late to arrest him. A theft commited ten years ago cannot be
+punished now.'
+
+'May the Lord give you sense,' Peterkin rejoined, with a derisive laugh.
+'Don't tell me that a body can't be punished for stealin' diamonds ef
+'twas done a hundred years ago,'
+
+'But it is true, nevertheless,' the judge replied.
+
+Turning to another lawyer who was standing near, Peterkin asked:
+
+'Is that so, square? Is it so writ? Is that the law?'
+
+'That is the law,' was the response.
+
+'Wall, I'll be condumbed, if that don't beat all!' Peterkin exclaimed.
+'Can't be sent to prison! I swow! There ain't no law or justice for
+nobody but _me_, and I must be kicked to the wall! I'll give up, and
+won't try to be nobody, I vurm!' And as he talked he walked away to
+ruminate upon the injustice of the law which could not touch Harold
+Hastings, but could throw its broad arms tightly around himself.
+
+Meanwhile the Judge had ordered a carriage and taken Harold with him to
+his private room in the hotel, where the hardest part for Hal was yet to
+come.
+
+'Now, my boy,' the judge said, after he had made Harold lie down upon
+the couch and had locked the door, 'now, tell me all about it. How came
+you by the diamond?'
+
+It was such a pitiful, pleading, agonized face which lifted itself from
+the cushion and looked at Judge St. Claire, as Harold began:
+
+'I cannot tell you now--I must not? but by and by perhaps I can. They
+were handed to me to keep by some one, just for a little while. I cannot
+tell you who it was. I think I would die sooner than do it. Certainly I
+would rather go to prison, as Peterkin wishes me to.'
+
+There was a thoughtful, perplexed look on the judge's face as he said:
+
+'This is very strange, Harold, that you cannot tell who gave them to
+you, and with some people will be construed against you.'
+
+'Yes, I know it; but I would rather bear it than have that person's name
+brought in question,' was Harold's reply.
+
+'Do you think that person took them?' the judge asked.
+
+'No, a thousand times, no!' and Harold leaped to his feet and began to
+pace the floor hurriedly. 'They never took them, never; I'd swear to
+that with my life. Don't talk any more about it, please; I can't bear
+it. I have gone through so much to-day, and last night I never slept a
+wink. Oh, I am so tired!' and with a groan he threw himself again upon
+the couch, and, closing his eyes, dropped almost instantly into a heavy
+slumber, from which the judge did not rouse him until after dinner, when
+he ordered some refreshments sent to his room, and himself awoke the
+young man, whose face looked pinched, and white, and haggard, and who
+could only swallow a cup of coffee and a part of a biscuit.
+
+'I am so tired,' he kept repeating; 'but I shall be better in the
+morning;' and long before the night train had come he was in bed
+sleeping off the effects of the day's excitement.
+
+The next morning when he went down to the office he was surprised and
+bewildered at the crowd which gathered around him--the friends who had
+came on the train to stand by and defend him, if necessary; and as the
+home faces he had known all his life looked kindly into his, and the
+familiar voices of his boyhood told him of sympathy for and faith in
+him, while hand after hand took his in a friendly clasp, that of Dick
+St. Claire clinging to his with a grasp which said plainer than words
+could have done: 'I believe in you, Hal, and am so sorry for you,' the
+tension of his nerves gave way entirely, and, sinking down in their
+midst, he cried like a child when freed from some terrible danger.
+
+He had not thought before that he cared for himself what people said,
+but he knew now that he did, and this assurance of confidence from his
+friends unnerved him for a time; then, dashing away his tears and
+lifting up his face, on which his old winning smile was breaking, he
+said:
+
+'Excuse me for this weakness; only girls should cry, but I have borne so
+much, and your coming was such a surprise. Thank you all. I cannot say
+what I feel. I should cry again if I did.'
+
+'Never mind, old boy,' Dick's cheery voice called out. 'We know what you
+would say. We came to help you, just a few of us; but if anything had
+really happened to you, why, all Shannondale would have turned out to
+the rescue.'
+
+'Thank you, Dick,' Harold said, the tears starting again; then, as his
+eye fell for the first time upon Tom, he exclaimed, with a glad ring in
+his voice, 'and you, too, Tom!'
+
+'Yes, I thought I'd come with the crowd and see the fun,' Tom answered,
+indifferently, as he walked away by himself.
+
+Tom had said very little, on the train, or after they had reached the
+hotel, but no one had listened with more eagerness to every detail of
+the matter than he had done, and all that morning he was busy gathering
+up every item of information, and listening to the guesses as to who the
+person could be who gave the diamonds to Harold.
+
+The jewels had been identified by his father and by himself, although an
+identification was scarcely necessary as Harold had distinctly said:
+
+'They are the Tracy diamonds, and the person who gave them, to me said
+so.'
+
+But who was the person? That was the question puzzling the heads of all
+the Shannondale people as the morning wore on, and each went where he
+liked. At last, toward noon, Tom found himself near Harold in front of
+the court-house, and going up to him, said:
+
+'Hal, I wan't to talk to you a little while.'
+
+'Yes,' Hal said, assentingly, and selecting out a retired corner, Tom
+began:
+
+'Hal, I've never shown any great liking for you, and I don't s'pose I
+have any, but I don't like to see a man kicked for nothing, and so I
+came over with the rest.'
+
+'Thank you, Tom,' Harold replied, 'I don't think you ever did like me,
+and I don't think I cared if you didn't, but I'm glad you came. Is that
+all you wished to say to me?'
+
+'So,' Tom answered. 'Jerrie is very sick--'
+
+'Jerrie! Jerrie sick! Oh, Tom!'
+
+It was a cry of almost despair as Harold thought, 'What if she should
+die and the people never know.'
+
+'She had an awful headache when you left her in the lane, and I walked
+home with her, and the next morning she was raving mad--kind of a brain
+fever, I guess.'
+
+Harold was stupefied, but he managed to ask:
+
+'Does she talk much? What does she say?'
+
+There was alarm in his voice, which the sagacious Tom detected at once,
+and, strengthened in his suspicion, he replied:
+
+'Nothing about the diamonds, and the Lord knows I hope she won't.'
+
+'What do you mean!' Harold asked, in a frightened tone.
+
+'Don't you worry,' Tom replied. 'I wouldn't harm Jerrie any more than
+you would, but--Well, Hal, you are a trump! Yes, you are, to hold your
+tongue and let some think you are the culprit. Hal, Jerrie gave you the
+diamonds. I saw her do it in the lane as I came up to you. I did not
+think of it at the time, but afterward it came to me that you took
+something from her and slipped it into your pocket, and that you both
+looked scared when you saw me. Jerrie was abstracted and queer all the
+way to the house, and had a bruise on her head, and she keeps talking of
+the Tramp House and Peterkin, who, she says, dealt the blow. I went to
+the Tramp House, and found the old table on the floor, with three of the
+legs on it; the fourth I couldn't find. I thought at first that the old
+wretch had quarreled with her about you on account of the suit, and she
+had squared up to him, and he had struck her; but now I believe _he_ had
+the diamonds, and she got them from him in some way, and he struck her
+with the missing table-leg. If you say so, I'll have him arrested.'
+
+Tom had told his story rapidly, while Harold listened breathlessly,
+until he suggested the arrest of Peterkin, when he exclaimed:
+
+'No, no, Tom. No; don't you see that would mix Jerrie's name up with the
+diamonds, and that must not be. She must not be mentioned in connection
+with them until she speaks for herself; and, besides, I do not believe
+it was Peterkin who took them. It might have been your Uncle Arthur.'
+
+'Uncle Arthur?' Tom said, indignantly. 'Why, he gave them to mother.'
+
+'I know he did,' Harold continued; 'but in a crazy fit he might have
+taken them away and secreted them and then forgotten it, and Jerrie
+might have known it, and not been able to find them till now. Many
+things go to prove that;' and very briefly Harold repeated some
+incidents connected with Jerrie's illness when she was a child.
+
+'That looks like it, certainly,' Tom said; 'but I am awfully loth to
+give up arresting the brute, and believe I shall do it yet for assault
+and battery. He certainly struck her. You will see for yourself the lump
+on her head.'
+
+So saying Tom arose to go away, but before he went made a remark quite
+characteristic of him and his feeling for Harold, to whom he said, with
+a laugh:
+
+'Don't for thunder's sake, think us a kind of a Damon and Pythias twins,
+because I've joined hands with you against Peterkin and for Jerrie.
+Herod and Pilate, you know, became friends, but I guess at heart they
+were Pilate and Herod still.'
+
+'No danger of my presuming at all upon your friendship for myself,
+though I thank you for your interest in Jerrie,' Harold replied.
+
+Then the two separated, Tom going his way and Harold his, until it was
+time for the afternoon train which was to take them home.
+
+The suit had gone against Peterkin, and it was in a towering rage that
+he stood in the long depot, denouncing everybody, and swearing he would
+sell out Lubbertoo and every dumbed thing he owned in Shannondale and
+take his money away, 'and then see how they'd git along without his
+capital to boost 'em.' At Harold he would not even look, for his
+testimony had been the most damaging of all, and he frowned savagely
+when on entering the car he saw his son in the same seat with him,
+talking in low, earnest tones, while Harold was evidently listening to
+him with interest. Small as he was and mean in personal appearance,
+there was more of true manhood in Billy's finger than in his father's
+whole body. The suit had been a pain and trouble to Billy, from
+beginning to end, for he knew his father was in the wrong, and he bore
+no malice toward Harold for his part in it, and when the diamonds came
+up, and his father was clamoring for a writ, he was the first to declare
+Harold's innocence and to say he would go his bail. Now, there was in
+his mind another plan by which to benefit his friend, and rival,
+too--for Billy knew he was that; and the heart of the little man ached
+with a bitter pain and sense of loss whenever he thought of Jerrie, and
+lived over again the scene under the butternut tree by the river, when
+her blue eyes had smiled so kindly upon him and her hands had touched
+his, even while she was breaking his heart. When Billy reached his
+majority his father had given him $100,000, and thus he had business of
+his own to transact, and a part of this was just now centered in
+Washington Territory, where, in Tacoma, on Puget Sound, he owned real
+estate and had dealings with several parties. To attend to this an agent
+was needed for a while, and he said to himself;
+
+'I'll offer it to Hal, with such a salary that he cannot refuse it; that
+will get him out of the way until this thing blows over.'
+
+Billy knew perfectly well that although everybody said Harold was
+innocent and that nine-tenths believed it, there would still be a few in
+Shannondale--the scum whose opinions his father's money controlled--who,
+without exactly saying they doubted him, would make it unpleasant for
+him in many ways; and from this he would save him by sending him to
+Tacoma at once, and thus getting him out of the way of any
+unpleasantness which might arise from his father's persecutions or those
+of his clan. It was this which he was proposing to Harold, who at once
+thought favorably of it--not because he wished to escape from the
+public, he said, but because of the pay offered, and which seemed to him
+far more than his services would be worth.
+
+'You are a noble fellow, Billy,' he said. 'I'll think of the plan, and
+let you know after I've seen Jerrie and Judge St. Claire.'
+
+'A-all ri-right; he'll a-advise you to go,' Billy said, as they arose to
+leave the car, followed by Peterkin, who had been engaged in a fierce
+altercation with Tom, who had accused him of having struck Jerrie, and
+threatened to have him arrested for assault and battery the moment they
+reached Shannondale.
+
+'Thunder and lightning and guns' old Peterkin exclaimed, while the
+spittle flew from his mouth like the spray from Niagara. 'I assault and
+batter Jerry Crawford!--a gal! What do you take me for, young man? I'm a
+gentleman, I be, if I ain't a Tracy; and I never salted nor battered
+nobody, and she'll tell you so herself. Heavens and earth! this is the
+way 'twas,' and Peterkin shook from his head to his feet--for, like most
+men who clamor so loudly for the law, he had a mortal terror of it for
+himself, and Tom's threatening looks and words made him afraid. 'This is
+how 'twas. I found her in the Tramp-House, and I was all-fired mad at
+her about somethin'--I shan't tell what, for Bill would kill me; but I
+pitched into her right and left; and, by gum, she pitched into me, so
+that for a spell it was nip-and-tuck betwixt us; and, by George, if she
+didn't order me out of the Tramp-House, and said it was her'n; and I'll
+be dumbed if I don't believe she'd av put me out, too, body and bones,
+if I hadn't gone. She was just like a tiger; and, I swan, I was kinder
+feared on her, and backed out with a kinder flourish of my fist on that
+darned old rotten table, which went all to smash; and that's all I know.
+You don't call that 'sault and batter, do you?'
+
+Tom could not say that he did, but he replied:
+
+'That's your version of it. Jerrie may have another, and her friends
+ain't going to have her abused by a chap like you; and my advice is that
+you hold your tongue, both about her and Harold. It will he better for
+you. Do you understand?'
+
+'You bet!' Peterkin said, with a meaning nod, breathing a little more
+freely as he caught sight of the highest tower of _Lubbertoo_, and more
+freely still when he arrived at the station, where he was met by his
+coat-of-arms carriage, instead of a writ, and was suffered to go
+peaceably home, a disappointed, if not a better man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+HAROLD AND JERRIE.
+
+
+The news which so electrified all Shannondale was slow in reaching Mrs.
+Crawford, but it did reach her at last, crushing and overwhelming her
+with a sense of shame and anguish, until as the day wore on, Grace
+Atherton, and Mrs. St. Claire, and Nina, and many others came to
+reassure her, and to say that it was all a mistake, which would be soon
+cleared up.
+
+Thus comforted and consoled, she tried to be calm, and wait patiently
+for the train. But there was a great pity for her boy in her heart as
+she sat by Jerrie's bedside and watched her in all her varying moods,
+now perfectly quiet, with her wide open eyes staring up at the ceiling
+as if she were seeing something there, now talking of Peterkin, and the
+Tramp House, and the table, and the blow, and again of the bag, which
+she said was lost, and which her grandmother must find.
+
+Thinking she meant the carpet bag, Mrs. Crawford brought that to her,
+but she tossed it aside impatiently saying:
+
+'No, no; the other one, which tells it all. Where is it! I must have
+lost it. Find it, find it. To be so near, and yet so far. What did it
+say? Why can't I think? Am I like Mr. Arthur--crazy, like him?'
+
+Mrs. Crawford thought her crazier than Arthur, and waited still more
+impatiently for Harold, until she heard his step outside, and knew that
+he had come.
+
+'Harold!'
+
+'Grandma!' was all they said for a moment while the poor old lady was
+sobbing on his neck, and then he comforted her as best he could,
+telling her that it was all over now--that no one but Peterkin had
+accused him--that everybody was ready to defend him, and that after a
+little he could explain everything.
+
+'And now I must see Jerrie,' he continued, starting for the stairs, and
+glad that his grandmother did not attempt to follow him.
+
+Jerrie had heard his voice, and had raised herself in bed, and as he
+came in, met him with the question:
+
+'Have you brought them? Has any one seen them?'
+
+The strange light in her eyes should have told Harold how utterly
+incapable she was of giving any rational answers to his questions, but
+he did not think of that, and instead of trying to quiet her, he plunged
+at once into the subject she had broached:
+
+'Do you mean the diamonds?' he asked.
+
+'Yes,' she replied, 'the diamonds! the diamonds! Where are they?'
+
+'Mrs. Tracy has them by this time,' Harold replied.
+
+'Mrs. Tracy!' Jerrie exclaimed. 'What has she to do with them? They are
+not hers. They are mine--they are mine! Bring them to me--bring them to
+me.'
+
+She was terribly excited, and for a time Harold bent all his energies to
+soothe her, and at last when from sheer exhaustion she became quiet he
+said to her:
+
+'Jerrie, where did you find the diamonds?'
+
+She looked at him curiously, but made no reply, and he continued:
+
+'You must tell me where you found them: it is necessary I should know.'
+
+Still she did not reply, but stared at him, as if not fully
+comprehending what he meant.
+
+'Jerrie,' he said again, 'do you love me?'
+
+Quickly her eyes filled with tears, and she replied:
+
+'Love you, Harold! Yes, more than you ever dreamed of; more than you
+love me.'
+
+Instantly Harold had his arms around her, for she had risen to a sitting
+posture, and pillowing her head upon his breast, he said:
+
+'No, darling, that is impossible, for I love you better than my life,'
+and his lips pressed hers passionately. He felt that this was their
+betrothal, for he did not take into consideration the state of her mind;
+but she undeceived him quickly, for although she kissed him back, she
+said, with a tinge of sarcasm in her voice:
+
+'Aren't you afraid they will see you?'
+
+'Who are they?' he asked, and she replied
+
+'The people, and the Harvard boys and Maude.'
+
+He did not know at all what she meant, but at the mention of Maude he
+groaned involuntarily, as the white face came up before him again and
+the eyes looked into his, fuller far of love and tenderness than those
+confronting him so steadily, with no consciousness of his real meaning
+in them.
+
+'Those diamonds have caused me a great deal of trouble,' he began again,
+'and will cause me more unless you tell me where you found them. Try and
+think. Was it in the Tramp House?'
+
+That started her at once, and she began to rave of the Tramp House, and
+the rat-hole, and the table, and Peterkin, who dealt the blow. The
+bruise on her head had not proved so serious as was at first feared, and
+with her tangled hair falling over her face Harold had not noticed it.
+But he looked at it now and questioned her of it, and asking if Peterkin
+had struck her there.
+
+'No,' she said, and began the senseless babbling of rat-holes, and
+table-legs and bags, and diamonds until Harold became alarmed and went
+for his grandmother.
+
+There was nothing to be learned from Jerrie in her present condition,
+and so Harold started for the Tramp House to see what that would tell
+him. The table was still upon the floor, with the three legs piled upon
+it, while the fourth one was missing. But Harold found it at last; for,
+remembering what Jerrie had said of the rat-hole, he investigated that
+spot, and from its enlarged appearance drew his own conclusion. Jerrie
+had found the diamonds there; he had no doubt of it, and he told Tom
+Tracy so; for, as if there was a fascination about the place for him,
+Tom appeared in the door-way just as Harold was leaving it. Sitting down
+upon the bench where Jerrie had sat that day when Peterkin attacked her,
+the two young men who had been enemies all their lives, but who were now
+drawn together by a common sympathy and love for the same girl, talked
+the matter over again, each arriving at the same theory as the most
+probable one they could accept.
+
+'Arthur, in a crazy fit, had secreted the diamonds, and Jerrie knew it,
+but possibly not where he had put them. This accounted for her strange
+sickness when a child, while her finding them later on, added to other
+causes, would account for her sickness now. Peterkin owns that he was
+blowing her up for something, and that he knocked the table down with
+his fist, but he swears he didn't touch her,' Tom said, repeating in
+substance all Peterkin had said to him in the train when shaking with
+fear of a _writ_.
+
+'And do you still mean to keep silent with regard to Jerrie?' Tom asked.
+
+'Yes,' Harold replied; 'her name must not be mentioned in connection
+with the diamonds. I can't have the slightest breath of suspicion
+touching Jerrie, _my sister_.'
+
+'Sister be hanged!' Tom began savagely, then checked himself, and added
+with a sneering laugh: 'Don't try to deceive me, Hal, with your sister
+business. You love Jerrie, and she loves you, and that is one reason why
+I hate you, or shall, when this miserable business is cleared up. Just
+now we must pull together and find out where she found the diamonds, and
+who put them there. To write to Uncle Arthur would do no good, though
+seeing him might; the last we heard he was thinking of taking the coast
+voyage from San Francisco to Tacoma.'
+
+'Tom,' Harold exclaimed, with great energy, as he sprang to his feet,
+'that decides me;' and then he told of the offer Billy had made him on
+the car. 'When I saw how sick Jerrie was, I made up my mind not to
+accept it, although I need the money badly. But now, if Jerrie gets no
+worse, I shall start for Tacoma in a few days and shall find your uncle
+Arthur, if he is to be found.'
+
+It was growing dark when the two young men finally emerged from the
+house and stood for a moment outside, while Harold inquired for Maude.
+
+'She is not very well, that's a fact,' Tom said, gloomily; 'and no
+wonder, when mother keeps her cooped up in one room, without enough
+fresh air, and lets nobody see her except the family and the doctor, for
+fear they will excite her. She knows nothing about the diamonds, nor
+that Jerrie is sick. I did tell her, though, that you had come home;
+and, by Jove! I pretty near forgot it. She wants to see you bad; but,
+Lord! mother won't let you in. No use to try. She's like a she-wolf
+guarding its cub. Good-night.'
+
+And Tom walked away, while Harold went back to the cottage, where he
+found Jerrie sleeping very quietly, with a look on her face so like that
+it had worn in her babyhood, when he called her his little girl, that he
+involuntarily stooped down and kissed it as one would kiss a beautiful
+baby.
+
+The next morning Jerrie was very restless, and talked wildly of the
+Tramp House and the diamonds, insisting that they were hers and must be
+brought to her.
+
+'Why did you tell her about them?' Mrs. Crawford asked, reproachfully.
+
+But Harold did not reply, his mind was so torn with distracting doubts
+as to whether he ought to take the western trip or not.
+
+If he went, he must go at once, and to leave Jerrie in her present state
+seemed impossible. He would consult the physician first, and Judge St.
+Claire next. The doctor gave it as his opinion that Jerrie was in no
+danger, if she were only kept quiet. She had taken a severe cold and
+overtaxed her strength, while most likely she had inherited from some
+one a tendency to be flighty when anything was the matter, and he
+thought Harold might venture to leave her.
+
+'Yes, I'd go if I were you,' he added, looking intently at the young
+man; for, like Billy, he too thought it might be pleasanter for him to
+be out of the way for a time, although he did not say so.
+
+And this was the view the judge took of it, after a few moments'
+conversation. His first question had been:
+
+'Well, my boy, can you tell me now who gave them to you?'
+
+'No, I can't,' was Harold's reply; and then, acting upon a sudden
+impulse, he burst out impetuously: 'Yes, I will tell you, for I can
+trust you, and I want your advice so badly.'
+
+So he repeated rapidly all he knew, and his theory with regard to
+Arthur, whom he wished so much to find, and of Billy's proposition that
+he should go on his business to Tacoma. For a few moments the judge
+seemed perplexed and undecided, for he was balancing in his mind the
+pros and cons for going from the people, or staying to face them. If he
+stayed he might have some unpleasant things to bear and hear, for there
+were those who would talk, in spite of their protestations of the young
+man's innocence; while to go might look like running away from the
+storm, with the matter unexplained. On the whole, however, he decided
+that it was better to go.
+
+'Jerrie's interests are safe with me,' he said, 'and by the time you
+return everything will be explained; but find Mr. Tracy as soon as
+possible. I am inclined to think your theory with regard to him
+correct.'
+
+So it was decided that Harold should go, and the next night was
+appointed for him to start. Had he known that Peterkin, and even Mrs.
+Tracy, were each in his or her own way insinuating that he was running
+from public opinion, nothing could have induced him to leave. But he did
+not know it, and went about his preparations with as brave a heart as he
+could command under the circumstances. Jerrie was more quiet now, though
+every effort on his part to learn anything from her concerning the
+diamonds brought on a fit of raving, when she would insist that the
+jewels were hers, and must be brought to her at once.
+
+'But you told me they were Mrs. Tracy's,' he said to her once.
+
+With a cunning gleam in her eyes, she replied:
+
+'So they are, or were; but oh, how little you know!'
+
+And this was all he could get from her.
+
+He told her he was going away, but that did not seem to affect her, and
+she only began to talk of Maude, who, she said, must not be harmed.
+
+'Have you seen her? have you seen her?' she kept saying.
+
+'Not yet,' he replied, 'but I am going to say good-bye;' and on the day
+of his departure he went to the Park House and asked if he could see
+Maude.
+
+'Of course not,' was Mrs. Tracy's prompt reply, when the request was
+taken to her. 'No one sees her, and I certainly shall not allow him to
+enter her room.'
+
+'But, Dolly,' Frank began, protestingly, but was cut short by the lady,
+who said:
+
+'You needn't "Dolly" me, or try to take his part, either. I have my
+opinion, and always shall. He cannot see Maude, and you may tell him
+so,' turning now to the servant who had brought Harold's message, and
+who softened it as much as possible.
+
+Harold had half expected a refusal, and was prepared for it. Taking a
+card from his pocket, he wrote upon it:
+
+    'DEAR MAUDE,--I am going away for a few weeks, and am very sorry
+    that I cannot see you; but your mother knows best, of course, and I
+    must not do anything to make you worse. I shall think of you very
+    often, and hope to find you much better when I return.
+
+    'HAROLD.'
+
+'Will you give this to her?' he said to the girl, who answered that she
+would, and who, of course, read every word before she took it to her
+young mistress, late in the afternoon, while the family were at dinner,
+and she was left in charge of the invalid.
+
+'Mr. Hastings sent you this,' she said, handing the card to Maude, into
+whose face the bright color rushed, but left it instantly as she read
+the few hurried lines.
+
+'Going away! Gone! and I didn't see him!' she exclaimed, regardless of
+consequences. 'And mother did it. I know she did. I _will_ talk till I
+spit blood; then see what she'll say!' she continued, as the frightened
+girl tried to stop her, and as she could not, ran for Mrs. Tracy, who
+came in much alarm, asking what was the matter.
+
+'You sent Harold away. You didn't let him see me, and he is--'
+
+Maude gasped, but could get no farther, for the paroxysm of coughing
+which came on, together with a hemorrhage which made her so weak that
+they thought her dying all night, she lay so white, and still, and
+insensible, save at times when her lips moved, and her mother, bending
+over her, heard her whisper:
+
+'Send for Harold.'
+
+But it was too late now; the train had come and gone, and taken Harold
+with it, away from the girl _he_ loved and from, the girls who loved him
+so devotedly, and both of whom, for a few days after his departure, went
+down very near to the gates of death, and whose first enquiry, when they
+at last came back to life and consciousness, was for Harold and why he
+stayed away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+JERRIE CLEARS HAROLD.
+
+
+The next day two items of news went like wildfire through the little
+town of Shannondale--the first, set afloat by Peterkin and helped on by
+Mrs. Tracy, that Harold had run away from public opinion, which was fast
+turning against him since he could not explain where he found the
+diamonds; and the second, that both Maude Tracy and Jerrie Crawford were
+at the point of death, which made Harold's sudden departure all the more
+heinous in the eyes of his enemies; for what but conscious guilt could
+have prompted him to leave his sister, who, it was said, was calling for
+him with every breath, and charging him with having taken the diamonds?
+Now, this was false; for although Jerrie's fever had increased rapidly
+during the night, and her babbling was something terrible to hear, there
+was in it no accusation of Harold, although she was constantly talking
+to him, and asking for the diamonds and the bag.
+
+'It is a pity he ever told her about them,' the doctor said, as twice
+each day, morning and night, for four successive days, he came and
+looked upon her fever-stained cheeks, and counted her rapid pulse, and
+took her temperature, and listened to her strange talk; and then, with a
+shake of his head, drove over to Tracy Park and stood by poor little
+Maude's couch, and looked into her death-white face, and counted her
+faint heartbeats, and tried in vain to find some word of encouragement
+for the stricken man, who looked about as much like death as the young
+girl so dear to him. And every morning, on his way from the cottage to
+Tracy Park, the doctor saw under the pines two young men, Tom and Dick,
+seated upon the iron bench each whittling a bit of pine, which one was
+unconsciously fashioning into a cross and the other into a grave-stone.
+
+Tom had found Dick there working at his cross, and, after a simple
+good-morning, had sat down beside him and whittled in silence upon
+another bit of wood until the doctor appeared on his way to Tracy Park.
+Then the whittling ceased, and both young men arose, and, going forward,
+asked how Jerrie was.
+
+'Pretty bad. Hal oughtn't to have gone, though I told him there was no
+danger. We must telegraph if she gets worse,' was the reply, as the
+doctor rode on.
+
+Tom and Dick separated, and saw no more of each other until the next
+morning, when they went again, and whittled in silence under the pines
+until the doctor came in sight, when the same questions were asked and
+answered as on the previous day.
+
+Billy never joined them, but sat under the butternut tree where Jerrie
+had refused him, for hours and hours watching the sluggish river, and
+wondering what the world would be to him if Jerrie were not in it. Had
+Billy been with Tom and Dick, he could not have whittled as they did,
+for all the nerve power had left his hands, which lay helplessly in his
+lap, and when he walked he looked more like a withered old man than a
+young one of twenty-seven.
+
+Maude was the first to rally--her first question for Harold, her second
+for Jerrie--and her father, who was with her, answered truthfully that
+Harold had not returned, and that Jerrie was sick and could not come to
+her. He did not say how sick, and Maude felt no alarm, but waited
+patiently until Jerrie should appear. For Maude, on her brass bedstead
+with its silken hangings, and every possible luxury around her, there
+were hired nurses and a mother's care, with many kind inquiries, while
+it would seem as if every hand in town was stretched out to Jerrie, who
+was a general favorite. Flowers and fruit and delicacies of every kind
+were sent to the cottage, carriage after carriage stopped before the
+door, offer after offer of assistance was made to Mrs. Crawford, while
+Nina and Marian Raymond were there constantly; and Billy went to
+Springfield for a chair in which to wheel his sister to the cottage, for
+she could not yet mount into the dog-cart; and Tom and Dick whittled on
+until the cross and the grave-stone were finished, and, with a sickly
+smile, Tom said to Dick:
+
+'Would you cut Jerrie's name upon it?'
+
+'No; oh, no!' Dick answered, with a gasp. 'She may be better to-morrow.'
+
+When, after a few days, the crisis was past, and Jerrie's strong
+constitution triumphed over the disease which had grappled with it, the
+whole town wore a holiday air as the people said to each other gladly:
+'Jerrie is better; Jerrie will live!'
+
+Her recovery was rapid, and within a week after the fever left her and
+she awoke to perfect consciousness, she was able to sit up a part of
+every day, and had walked across the floor and read a letter from Harold
+to his grandmother, full of solicitude for herself and enthusiasm for
+his trip over the wild mountains and across the vast plains to the
+lovely little city of Tacoma, built upon a cliff and looking seaward
+over the sound.
+
+'Dear Harold,' Jerrie whispered. 'I shall be so glad when he comes home.
+Nothing can be done till then, and I am so bewildered when I try to
+think.'
+
+In her weak state, everything seemed unreal to Jerrie, except the fact
+that she had found her mother--and such a mother!--and many times each
+day she thanked her God who had brought her this unspeakable joy, and
+asked that she might do right when the time came to act. She knew the
+bag was safe, for she had climbed to the top shelf and found it just
+where she had put it. But where were the diamonds? Had Harold taken them
+with him? Had he told any one? Did his grandmother know anything about
+them? she wondered. She tried in many ways to draw Mrs. Crawford out,
+but was unsuccessful, for there were now too much pain and bitterness
+connected with the diamonds for Mrs. Crawford to speak to her of them.
+The poisonous breath of gossip had been at work ever since Harold went
+away, quietly aided and abetted by Mrs. Tracy, who never failed to roll
+her eyes and shrug her shoulders when Harold's name was mentioned, and
+openly pushed on by Peterkin, until Tom Tracy went to him one day and
+threatened to have him tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail, if he
+ever breathed Harold's name again in connection with the diamonds.
+
+'Wall, I swow!' was all Peterkin said, as he put an enormous quid of
+tobacco in his mouth, and walked away, thinking to himself, 'Twould take
+an all-fired while to scrape them tar and feathers off of me, I'm so
+big, and I b'lieve the feller meant it. Them high bucks wouldn't like no
+better fun than to make a spectacle of me; so I guess I'll dry up a
+spell.'
+
+But the trouble did not stop with Peterkin's talk, for a neighboring
+Sunday paper, which fed its readers with all the choicest bits of
+gossip, came out with an article headed 'The Tracy Diamonds,' and after
+narrating the story in the most garbled and sensational manner, went on
+to comment upon the young man's having run away, rather than face public
+opinion, and to comment upon the law which could not touch him because
+the offence was committed so long ago.
+
+One after another, and without either knowing that the other had done
+so, Tom, and Dick, and Billy, waited upon the editor of the Sunday
+_News_, threatening to sue him for libel if he did not retract every
+word of the offensive article in his next issue, which he did. But the
+mischief was done, and the paper found its way at last to Jerrie, sent
+unwittingly by Ann Eliza, who covered it over a basket of fruit and
+flowers which was carried one afternoon to the cottage.
+
+Jerrie had been down stairs several times, but was in her room when the
+basket was brought to her. Raising the paper, she was about to throw it
+on the floor, when her eye caught the words, 'The Tracy Diamonds,' and
+with bloodless lips and wildly beating heart she read the article
+through, understanding the situation perfectly, and resolving at once
+how to act. It seemed to her that she was lifted above and out of
+herself, she felt so strong, and light, and well, as she threw on her
+bonnet and shawl, and taking the leather bag in her hand, hurried down
+stairs in quest of Mrs. Crawford.
+
+'Grandma!' she exclaimed, 'why haven't you told me about Harold, and the
+suspicion resting on him, and why did you let him go until I was better,
+and what are the people saying? Tell me everything.'
+
+Jerrie would not be put off, and Mrs. Crawford told her everything she
+knew, and that she herself had added to the mystery by the strange
+things she had said in her delirium about the diamonds, which she
+insisted were hers.
+
+'And they are mine!' Jerrie said, while Mrs. Crawford looked at her in
+alarm, for her madness had returned.
+
+'Where are you going?' she gasped, as Jerrie turned toward the door.
+
+'To Tracy Park, to claim my own and clear Harold!' was the reply. 'When
+I come back I will tell you all, but now I cannot wait.'
+
+'But, Jerrie, you are not strong enough to walk there, and besides they
+have company this afternoon, some kind of a new-fangled card party, and
+you must not go,' Mrs. Crawford said.
+
+'I have the strength of twenty horses,' Jerrie said, 'and if they have
+company, so much the better, for there will be more to hear my story.
+Good-bye.'
+
+She was off like an arrow, and went almost upon a run through the leafy
+woods until the house was reached, and then she stopped a moment to take
+breath and look about her. How very fair and beautiful it was, that home
+of the Tracys, and Jerrie's heart beat so hard that she felt for a
+moment as if she were choking to death as she sat under a maple tree and
+tried to think it all over, to make sure there was no mistake. Opening
+the box she took out two documents, and read them again as she had the
+night she was taken sick. One was a certificate of marriage, the other
+of a birth and baptism; there was no mistake.
+
+Holding the papers in one hand and the bag in the other, she went on to
+the house, from which shouts of laughter were issuing, Nina's voice, and
+Marian's, and Tom's, and Dick's, and Mrs. Tracy's. Jerrie shuddered a
+little when she heard that, for it brought back to her mind all the
+slights she had received from that woman who was so cruel to Harold, and
+the pity which had been springing up in her heart ever since she looked
+up at the windows of Maude's room and thought of the white-faced girl
+lying there, died out, and it was more a Nemesis than a gentle,
+forgiving woman who walked boldly into the hall and entered unbidden at
+the drawing-room door.
+
+Mrs. Tracy was having a progressive euchre party that afternoon. A
+friend in Boston had written her about it, and, proud to be the first to
+introduce it in Shannondale, she stood, flushed and triumphant, with the
+restored diamonds in her ears and at her throat, laughing merrily with
+the others at Judge St. Claire, who had won the booby prize--a little
+drum, as something he could beat--and who, with a perplexed look in his
+face, was staring at the thing as if he did not quite get the joke.
+
+Apart from the rest, Frank Tracy sat looking on, though with no apparent
+interest in the matter. He had joined in the game because his wife told
+him he must, and had borne meekly her sarcastic remarks when he trumped
+her ace and ordered up on nothing. His thoughts were not with the cards,
+but up stairs with Maude, who seemed to be much better, and for whom
+there was constantly a prayer in his heart.
+
+'Spare her, and I will make reparation; I will tell the truth.'
+
+He was trying to bribe the Lord to hear him, and there was some such
+thought in his mind when he saw Jerrie in the door--tall, thin, and
+white from her recent sickness, with eyes which rolled, and shone, and
+flashed as Arthur's did sometimes, and falling at last upon Mrs. Tracy,
+where they rested with an intensity which must have drawn that lady's
+notice to her, if Frank had not exclaimed, as he rose to his feet:
+
+'Jerrie! How did you get here?'
+
+Then all turned and looked at her, and crowded around her with
+exclamations of surprise and inquiries as to how she got there.
+
+For a moment Jerrie stood like one in a catalepsy, with no power to move
+or speak, but when Mrs. Tracy came forward, and in her iciest tones said
+to her: 'Good-afternoon, Miss Crawford. To what am I indebted for this
+unexpected pleasure?' her faculties came back, her tongue was loosened,
+and she replied in a clear voice, which rang through the room like a
+bell, and was, indeed, the knell to all the lady's greatness:
+
+'I am here to claim my own, and to clear Harold from the foul suspicion
+heaped upon him--by whom, at first, I do not know, but it was helped on
+by you. I have seen the paper, have heard the whole from grandma, and am
+here to defend him. It was I who gave him the diamonds! It was for me he
+kept silent, and let you think what you would.'
+
+'You gave him the diamonds?' Mrs. Tracy repeated, as one by one all the
+members of the party, even the judge and Tom, gathered close to her in
+their astonishment. 'You gave him the diamonds! You! and have come to
+confess yourself a--'
+
+She never finished the sentence, for something in Jerrie's face
+frightened her, while her husband, who had come forward, laid his hand
+warningly upon her arm.
+
+So absorbed were they all that no one saw the little white-robed girl,
+who, they supposed, was lying up stairs in her room, but who at the
+sound of Jerrie's voice had, in her eagerness to see her, crept down the
+stairs, and now stood in the door-way opposite to Jerrie, her large,
+bright eyes looking in wonder upon the scene, and her ears listening
+intently to what was as new to her as it had been to Jerrie an hour ago.
+
+'Don't give me the name you have more than once given to Harold,' Jerrie
+said, as with a gesture she silenced Mrs. Tracy. 'The diamonds are mine,
+not yours. Can one steal his own?'
+
+'Yours! Your diamonds! What do you mean?' Mrs. Tracy asked.
+
+'They were my mother's,' Jerrie replied, 'and she sent them to me.'
+
+They all thought her crazy except Frank, to whom there had come a horrid
+presentiment of the truth, and who had clutched hard his wife's arm as
+she said questioningly, in a mocking, aggravating tone:
+
+'And your mother was--?'
+
+Then Jerrie stepped into the room, and stood in their midst like a queen
+among her subjects as she answered:
+
+'My mother was Marguerite Heinrich, of Wiesbaden, better known to you as
+Gretchen; and my father is Arthur Tracy, and I am their lawful child. It
+is so written here,' and she held up the papers and the bag; 'I am
+Jerrie Tracy!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+WHAT FOLLOWED.
+
+
+'Thank God that it is out! I couldn't have borne it much longer,' leaped
+involuntarily from Frank's lips.
+
+No one heard it save Jerrie, and she scarcely heeded it then; for with
+one bound, as it seemed to the petrified spectators, who divided right
+and left to let her pass, she reached the opposite door-way, and
+stooping over the little figure lying there so still, lifted it
+tenderly, and carrying it up stairs, laid it down in the room it would
+never leave again until other hands than hers carried it out and laid
+it away in the Tracy lot, where only Jack and the dark woman were lying
+now.
+
+Maude had heard all Jerrie was saying, and understood it, too; and at
+the words, 'I am Jerrie Tracy,' she felt an electric thrill pass over
+her, like what she had experienced when watching the acting in some
+great tragedy; then all was darkness, and she knew no more until Jerrie
+was bending over her and she heard her mother saying:
+
+'Leave her to me, Miss Crawford. You have done harm enough for one day.
+You have killed my daughter!'
+
+'No!' Maude cried, exerting all her strength. 'She has not hurt me. She
+must not go, I want her; for if what she said is true, she is my own
+cousin. Oh, Jerrie, I am so glad!' and throwing her arms around Jerrie's
+neck, Maude sobbed convulsively.
+
+As yet Maude saw only the good which had come to her, if the news were
+true; the evil had not yet been presented to her, and she clung tightly
+to Jerrie, who, nearly distraught herself, did not know what to do. She
+knew that Mrs. Tracy looked upon her as an intruder, and possibly a
+liar; but she cared little for that lady's opinion. She only thought of
+Frank and what he would say.
+
+Lifting up her head at last from the pillow where she had lain it for a
+moment, while Maude's thin little hands caressed the golden hair, she
+saw him standing at the foot of the bed, taller, straighter than she had
+seen him in years, with a look on his face which she knew was not
+adverse to herself.
+
+'Jerrie,' he said, slowly and thickly, for something choked his speech,
+'I can't tell you now all I feel, only I am glad for you and Arthur, but
+gladder for myself.'
+
+What did he mean? Jerrie wondered; while Maude's eyes sought his
+questioningly, and his wife said, sharply:
+
+'You are talking like a lunatic! Do you propose to give up so easily to
+a girl's bare word! Let Jerrie prove it, before she is mistress here.'
+
+Then into Maude's eyes there crept a look of terror and pain, and she
+whispered:
+
+'Yes, Jerrie, prove it. There were papers in your hand, and a bag, and
+you said, "It is so written here." Bring the papers and read them to
+us--here in this room. I can bear it. I must hear them. I must know.'
+'Better let her have her way,' Frank said; and Dolly could have knocked
+him down, he spoke so cheerfully; while Jerrie answered:
+
+'I can't read them myself aloud. They are written in German.'
+
+'But Marian can. I saw her there. Let them all come up; they will have
+to know,' Maude persisted.
+
+After a moment, during which a powerful tonic had been given to his
+daughter, Frank went down to his guests, who were eagerly discussing the
+strange story, which not one of them doubted in the least.
+
+In her haste to reach Maude, Jerrie had dropped the bag and the two
+papers, which Judge St. Claire picked up and held for a moment in his
+hand; then passing the papers to Marian, he said:
+
+'It can be no secret now, and Jerrie will not care. What do the papers
+contain?'
+
+Running her eyes rapidly over them, Marian said:
+
+'The first is a certificate of marriage between Arthur Tracy and
+Marguerite Heinrich, who were married October 20th, 18--, in the English
+church at Wiesbaden, by the Rev. Mr. Eaton, then the officiating
+clergyman. The second is a certificate of the birth and baptism of
+Jerrine, daughter of Arthur and Marguerite Tracy, who was born at
+Wiesbaden, January 1st, 18--, and christened January 8th, 18--, by the
+Rev. Mr. Eaton.'
+
+Then a deep silence fell upon the group, while Tom stood like one
+paralyzed. He understood the situation perfectly, and knew that if
+Jerrie was mistress there, he could never hope to be master.
+
+'May as well evacuate at once,' he said at last, with an attempt to
+smile as he walked slowly out of the house, which he felt was his
+inheritance no longer.
+
+Just then Frank came down, saying that Maude insisted upon knowing what
+was in the papers which Marian was to read, while the others were to
+come up and listen. He did not seem at all like a man who had lost
+anything, but bustled about cheerily; and when the judge said to him
+apologetically, 'We know the contents of two of the papers. They are
+certificates of the marriage of Arthur with Gretchen, and of Jerrie's
+birth. I hope you don't mind if we read them,' he answered, briskly.
+
+'Not at all--not in the least. Arthur and Gretchen! I thought so. Where
+is Tom? He must hear the papers.'
+
+He found his son under the true where he had been sitting the morning
+when Jerrie came near fainting there, and in his hand was a curious bit
+of pine finished like a grave-stone--the same he had whittled under the
+pines, and on which he was now carving, 'Euchred, August --, 18--.'
+
+'This is the monument to our downfall,' he said, as his father came up
+to him with something so pitiful in his face and voice that Frank gave
+way suddenly, and, sitting down beside him, laid his hand upon his tall
+son's head and cried for a moment like a child, while Tom's chin
+quivered, and he was mortally afraid there was something like tears in
+his own eyes, and he meant to be so brave and not show that he was hurt.
+
+'I am sorry for you, my boy,' Frank said at last, 'but glad for
+Jerrie--so glad--and she will not be hard on us.'
+
+'I shall ask no favors of her. I can stand it if you can, though money
+is a good thing to have.'
+
+And then, without in the least knowing why, he thought of Ann Eliza, and
+wondered how her ankle was getting along, and if he ought not to have
+called upon her again.
+
+'Marian is going to read the papers in Maude's room, and I have come for
+you,' Frank said.
+
+'I don't care to hear them,' Tom replied. 'I am satisfied that we are
+beggars, and Jerrie the heiress.'
+
+But Frank insisted, and Tom went with him to his sister's room, followed
+by their friends, for whom the dinner was waiting and spoiling in the
+kitchen, where as yet no hint of what was transpiring had reached, save
+the fact that Maude had been down stairs and fainted. She was propped
+upon pillows scarcely whiter than her face save where two crimson spots
+burned brightly, and her eyes were fixed constantly upon Jerrie, who sat
+beside her, holding her cold, clammy hands, which she occasionally
+patted, and kissed and caressed.
+
+'Where did you find the bag?' the judge asked; and then Jerrie narrated
+the particulars of her interview with Peterkin, whose destruction of the
+table had resulted in her finding the bag with the diamonds in it.
+'They were mother's,' she said, the last words almost a sob, as she
+turned her eyes upon Mrs. Tracy, who stood like a block of stone, with
+no sympathy or credulity upon her face. 'Father bought them for her at
+the same time with Mrs. Tracy's, which they are exactly like. It is so
+written in her letter. And she sent them for me. They are mine and I
+gave them to Harold to keep untill I could think what to do. The
+diamonds are mine.'
+
+She was still looking at Mrs. Tracy, on whom all eyes were now resting
+as the precious stones flashed, and glittered, and shone in the sunlight
+in the hall in all the colors of the rainbow.
+
+For an instant the proud woman hesitated, then, quickly unclasping the
+ear-rings and the pin, she laid them in Jerrie's lap.
+
+'You are welcome to your property, if it is yours, I am sure,' she said,
+and was about to leave the room.
+
+But her husband kept her back.
+
+'No, Dolly,' he said. 'You must stay, and hear, and know. It concerns us
+all.'
+
+As he had closed the door and stood against it she had no alternative
+except to stay, but she walked to the window and stood with her back to
+them all, while Marian put into English and read, in a clear, distinct
+voice, and without the least hesitation, that message from the dead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+THE LETTERS.
+
+
+There were four of them--two in Arthur's handwriting: one directed to
+Mrs. Arthur Tracy, Wiesbaden, postmarked Liverpool; one to Margaret
+Heinrich, Wiesbaden, postmarked Shannondale; one in a strange
+handwriting to Arthur Tracy, if living; and one to Arthur Tracy's
+friends if he were dead, or incapable of understanding it. And it was
+this last which Marian read; for as Arthur was living, she felt that
+with his letters strangers had nothing to do. The letter to the friends,
+which had evidently been written at intervals, as the writer's strength
+would permit, was as follows:
+
+    'WIESBADEN, December ----, 18--,
+
+    'To the friends of Mr. Arthur Tracy, if he is dead, or incapable of
+    understanding this letter, from his wife, who was Marguerite
+    Heinrich, and whom he always called Gretchen.
+
+    'I want to tell you about it for the sake of my little Jerrie, whom,
+    if her father is dead, I give to your care, praying God to deal with
+    you as you are good and just to her. I was seventeen when I first
+    saw Mr. Tracy. My father was dead. I was an only child, and my
+    mother kept a little fancy shop in Wiesbaden. I went to school and
+    learned what other girls like me learned--to read and write, and
+    knit and sew, and fear God and keep His commandments. People called
+    me pretty. I don't know that I was, but he told me so when he came
+    to me one day as I was knitting under a tree in the park. He had a
+    picture made of me as I was then, and it is on the wall, but I have
+    pawned it for the rent, as I have almost everything.'
+
+'Oh, Jerrie!' Marian exclaimed at this point.
+
+But Jerrie's face was buried in Maude's pillow and she made no response.
+So Marian read on:
+
+    'He came many times, for I was always there waiting for him, I am
+    afraid; but when he said he loved me, and wanted me for his wife I
+    could not believe it, he was so grand, so like nobility, and I so
+    poor and plain. Then mother died suddenly--oh, so suddenly--well
+    to-day--dead to-morrow--with cholera, and I was left alone.
+
+    '"Gretchen we must he married now," he said to me, the night after
+    the funeral; and I answered him, "yes, we must be married;" and we
+    were, the next day, in the little English Church, by Mr. Eaton, the
+    pastor. You will find the certificate with the other papers. Do you
+    ever remember a beautiful moonlight night, when the air was soft,
+    and warm, and sweet with many summer flowers, and there was music in
+    the distance, and heaven seemed so near that you could almost touch
+    the blue lining which separates it from us? Well, just like that was
+    my life with Arthur for a few months. Oh, how I loved him, and how
+    he loved me! It frightened me sometimes, he was so fierce and--I
+    don't know what the word is--so something in his love. He never left
+    me a moment. He couldn't, he said, for I was his balance-wheel, and
+    without me he was lost. I think now he was crazy then. I know he was
+    afterward when he did such queer things and forgot so
+    often--sometimes the house we lived in, sometimes his own name, and
+    at last, me, his Gretchen! That was so sad, when he went away, and
+    stayed away for weeks, and said he had forgotten. But he was sorry,
+    too, and made it up, and for ten day heaven came down again so I
+    could touch it; then he went away and I have never seen him since.
+
+    'You must excuse me, his friends--if I stop a little while to cry;
+    it makes me no lonesome to think of the long years--four and
+    more--which have been buried with the yesterdays, under the flowers,
+    and under the snow, since Arthur went away and left me all alone. If
+    I had told him, he might have come back, he was so fond of children;
+    but I was not sure, and would not tell a lie, and let him go without
+    a hint. I wrote him once I had something to tell him when he came
+    which would make him glad, as it did me, and he never replied to it,
+    though he wrote two or three times more, and sent me money, but did
+    not tell me where he was, only he was being cured, he said--that was
+    all. In January my baby was born, and I had her christened Jerrine,
+    by Mr. Eaton. You will find it among the papers. Then, how I longed
+    for him, and waited, and watched; but he never came, and I knew he
+    had forgotten; but I did not doubt his love, or that he would one
+    day come back; and I tried to improve myself and learn what was in
+    books, so I could mate with him better when he came home, which he
+    never did; and the years went on, and my little Jerrine grew more
+    lovely every day. She is standing by me now, and says, "Are you
+    writing to him?"
+
+    'Darling Jerrie, you will be kind to her, won't you, for his sake,
+    and for me, too, who will be dead when you yet this?'
+
+Jerrie was sobbing now, and Maude's arm was around her neck, while Frank
+had walked to a window, and, like his wife, was looking out upon the
+lawn, which he did not see for the tears which filled his eyes.
+
+    'When the money stopped,' the letter went on, 'we grew so poor,
+    Jerrie and I and Nannine--that is the French woman who lives with me
+    and whom Jerrie calls Mah-nee. She will bring my child to you when I
+    am dead; and oh, be kind to her, for a truer, more faithful woman
+    never lived. She is such a comfort to me, except when she scolds
+    about Arthur and calls him a _bete noire_, which he is not, as you
+    will see. He was shut up, I don't know where, but think it was where
+    they put people with bad heads, and he forget everything till he was
+    out, and as far as Paris on his way to America. Then he remembered
+    and wrote me from Liverpool such a letter--full of love and sorrow
+    for the past, and sent me such lovely diamonds, just like those he
+    had bought for his sister in America, he said--and he was going home
+    at such a date on the Scotia, and he wished me to join him in
+    Liverpool. I send the letter with this to prove that I write true.
+    But it was too late, for I was too weak to travel; neither could I
+    write to him, for he gave me no address. 'That was last September,
+    and I have been dying ever since, for my heart broke when I thought
+    of what was and what might have been could I have found him. The
+    money he sent me then I am saving for Nannine and Jerrie to take
+    them to America when I am dead. All the days and nights I prayed
+    that Arthur might remember and write me again, and God heard, and he
+    did; and five days ago I received his letter. So crazy it was, but
+    just as full of love and tenderness and a desire to see me. He told
+    me of his lovely home and the Gretchen room, where my picture is in
+    the window; and in case there should be no one to meet me at the
+    station when I arrived he sent me directions how to find Tracy Park,
+    and told me just what to do when I reached New York. He would come
+    for me himself, he said, only the sea made him so sick and he was
+    afraid he should forget everything if he did. But you will see in
+    his letter what he wrote and how fond he was of me; and if he is
+    alive and too crazy to understand now, tell him, when he is better,
+    how I loved him and prayed for him every hour that God would bring
+    him, at last, where I am going so soon. Nannine will take him my
+    Bible, with passages marked by me, and a photograph which I had
+    taken a year ago, and which will tell you how I looked then. Now I
+    am so thin and pale that Arthur would hardly know me. I send, too, a
+    lock of Jerrie's hair, cut when she was three weeks old. Darling
+    Jerrie! She is such a comfort to me, and so old and womanly for her
+    years! She will remember much of our life here, for she notices
+    everything and understands it, too, and goes over, as in a play,
+    what she sees and hears.
+
+    'We have been cold and hungry sometimes; but not often; the
+    neighbors are so kind; and when I am dead they will see that Nannine
+    is made ready for America, with Jerrie; and the papers, and the
+    diamonds, which I might have pawned when our need was greatest, but
+    I could not. I must save them for Jerrie, and may she wear them some
+    day, and many days in the years to come, when her mother is dust and
+    ashes in the ground, but a glorified spirit in Paradise, where I
+    shall watch over her, and, if I can, be with her often, and keep
+    myself in her mind, so that she will never forget my face or the old
+    home in Germany.
+
+    'God bless my little daughter, and make her a true, noble woman; and
+    God bless you, Arthur's friends, who read this, and incline you to
+    be kind and just to Jerrie, and see that she has her own; for there
+    must be money at Tracy Park; and if you are poor and Jerrie comes
+    rich, tell her from her mother to be kind to you, and give as you
+    have given to her. Now I must stop, I am so tired, and it is growing
+    dark, and Nannie has opened the stove door to let the light fall on
+    the paper in my lap, and Jerrie is standing by me and says, "Are you
+    going to God pretty soon?"
+
+    'Yes, darling, very soon--to-night, perhaps, or to-morrow, or when
+    He will. The air grows cold, the night is coming on, my eyes grow
+    dim, my head is tired. I think, yes, I think it will be to-morrow.
+
+    'Good-bye.
+
+    'GRETCHEN TRACY.'
+
+As she finished reading Marian arose, and going up to Jerrie kissed her
+lovingly and said to her in German:
+
+'That was your mother's picture in our old home in Wiesbaden. I am so
+glad for you.'
+
+A low sob was Jerrie's reply, and then Judge St. Claire asked:
+
+'Is that all?'
+
+'Yes,' Marian said; 'All except Mr. Tracy's letters to Gretchen. Oh,
+no,' she added; 'there is something more;' and feeling in the bag, she
+drew out two small papers, one crumpled and worn, as if it had been
+often referred to, the other folded neatly and tied with a white ribbon.
+
+This Marian opened first, and found it to be a certificate, written in
+English, to the effect that Mrs. Arthur Tracy, _nee_ Marguerite
+Heinrich, died at such a date and was buried by the Rev. Mr. Bellows,
+the resident rector of the English church; the other was in Arthur's
+handwriting, and the directions he had written to his wife, as to what
+she was to do and how to find Tracy Park.
+
+'Yes,' Judge St. Claire said, coming forward and taking the paper from
+her hand, 'this is what the station-master saw the poor woman examining
+that night in the storm. She probably dropped it into the bag without
+stopping to fold it. There can be no doubt.'
+
+Then a deep silence reigned for a moment in the room, until Mrs. Tracy,
+who, all through the reading had stood like a block of granite by the
+window, turned and walking swiftly up to Jerrie, said, in a bitter tone:
+
+'Of course there is no mistake. I do not doubt that you are mistress
+here, and am ready to leave at once. Shall we pack up and quit
+to-night?'
+
+'Dolly!' 'Mother!' came angrily and sternly from both Tom and Frank, and
+'Oh, mamma, please,' came faintly from Maude, while Jerrie lifted up her
+head, and looking steadily at the cruel woman, said:
+
+'Why are you so hard with me? I cannot help it. I am not to blame. I
+mean to do right; only wait--a little. I am so sick now--so dizzy and
+blind. Oh, somebody lead me out where I can breathe. I am choking here.'
+
+It was Tom who reached her first, and passing his arm around her, took
+her into the open air and to a seat under the tree where once before she
+had almost fainted, as she did now, with her head upon his shoulder, for
+he put it there, and then pushed her hair back from her face as he said
+lightly:
+
+'Don't take it so hard; if we can stand it, you can!'
+
+Then Jerrie straightened up and said:
+
+'Oh, Tom, do you want to kill me now?'
+
+'What do you mean?' he asked, and she replied:
+
+'Don't you know you said under the pines that you would kill any
+claimant to Tracy Park who might appear against you?'
+
+'I remember it,' Tom said, 'but I didn't think then that the claimant
+would be Jerrie, my cousin,' and he put his arm around her as he
+continued: 'I can't say that I am not awfully cut up to be turned neck
+and heels out of what I believed would be my own, but if it must be, I
+am glad it is you who do it, for I know you'll not be hard upon us, or
+let Uncle Arthur be, even if mother is so mean. Remember, Jerrie, that I
+loved you and asked you to be my wife when I believed you poor and
+unknown.'
+
+Tom was very politic and was speaking good words for himself, but all
+the good there was in him seemed now to be on the surface and while
+inwardly rebelling at his misfortune, he felt a thrill of joy in knowing
+that Jerrie was his cousin, and would not be hard upon him.
+
+'Shall we go back to the house?' he said at last, and they went back,
+meeting the people upon the piazza, where they stopped for a moment
+while Jerrie's hands were shaken, and she was kissed and congratulated
+that at last the mystery was cleared, and her rights restored to her.
+
+'Mr. Arthur Tracy ought to be here,' Judge St. Claire said.
+
+'Yes, I'd thought of that,' Tom replied, first, 'and shall telegraph him
+to-morrow,'
+
+Then they said good night, and without going in to see either Mr. or
+Mrs. Tracy again, Tom and Jerry walked slowly toward the cottage,
+through the leafy woods, where the trees met in graceful arches
+overhead, and the moonlight fell in silver flecks upon the grass, and
+the summer air was odorous and sweet with the smell of the pines and the
+balm of Gilead trees scattered here and there. It was a lovely place,
+and Tom thought so with a keen sense of pain, as, after leaving Jerrie
+at her gate, he walked slowly back until he reached the four pines,
+where he sat down to think and wonder what he should do as a poor man,
+with neither business nor prospects.
+
+'I don't suppose the governor has laid up much,' he said, 'for since
+Uncle Arthur came home he has done very little business, and has spent
+what really was his own recklessly and without a thought of saving, he
+was so sure to have enough at last, and Uncle Arthur was so free to give
+us what we asked for. But that will end when he knows he has a daughter,
+and as he never fancied me much, I shall either have to beg, or work, or
+starve, or marry a rich wife, which is not so easy for a poor dog to do.
+I don't suppose that Governor's daughter would look at me now, nor
+anyone else who is anybody. By George, I ought to have called on Ann
+Eliza before this time. I wonder if it's too late to go there now. I
+believe I'll walk round there anyway, and if I see a light, I'll go in,
+and if old _paterfamilias_--how I'd like to kick him--is there, I'll
+tell him the news, and that I know now he did not strike Jerrie with the
+table-leg, and perhaps I'll apologize for what I said when in the car.
+Tom Tracy, you are a scoundrel, and no mistake,' he added, with energy,
+as he arose, and struck into the field, through which he had dragged Ann
+Eliza the night of the storm.
+
+There were lights at Le Bateau, and Tom was soon shaking hands with old
+_paterfamilias_, who was at home, and with Ann Eliza, who was now able
+to come down stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+ARTHUR.
+
+
+He had enjoyed himself immensely, from the moment he first caught sight
+of grand old Pike's Peak on the distant plains until he entered the city
+of the Golden Gate, and, standing on the terrace of the Cliff House,
+looked out upon the blue Pacific, with the sea lions disporting on the
+rocks below. For he went there first, and then to China-town, and
+explored every nook and corner, and opium den in it, and drank tea at
+twenty dollars a pound in a high-toned restaurant, and visited the
+theatre and the Joss House, and patronized the push-cars, as he called
+them, every day, and experienced a wonderful exhilaration of spirits, as
+he sat upon the front seat, with the fresh air blowing in his face, and
+only the broad, steep street, lined with palaces, before him.
+
+'This is heaven! this clears the cobwebs!' he would say to Charles, who
+sat beside him with chattering teeth and his coat-collar pulled high
+about his ears, for the winds of San Francisco are cold even in the
+summer.
+
+Arthur's first trip was to the Yosemite, taking the Milton route, and
+meeting with the adventure he so much desired; for in the early morning,
+between Chinese Camp and Priest's, the stage was suddenly stopped by two
+masked marauders, one of whom stood at the horses' heads, while the
+other confronted the terrified passengers with the blood-curling words:
+
+'Hands up, every soul of you!'
+
+And the hands went up from timid women and strong men, until click-dick
+came in rapid succession from the driver's box, where Arthur sat, and
+shot after shot followed each other, one bullet grazing the ear of the
+highwayman at the horses' head, and another cutting through the slouched
+hat of his comrade near the stage.
+
+'Leave, or I'll shoot you dead! I've five more shots in this one, and
+two more revolvers in my pockets, and I'm not afraid!' Arthur yelled,
+jumping about like a maniac, as for the time being he was, and so
+startling the robbers that they fled precipitately, followed for a
+little distance by Arthur, who leaped from the stage and started in
+pursuit, with a revolver in each hand, and ball after ball flying ahead
+of him as he ran.
+
+When at last he came back, the passengers flocked around him, grasping
+his hands and blessing him as the preserver of their money, if not of
+their lives. After that Arthur was a lion, whom all people in the valley
+wished to see and talk with, and with whom the landlord bore as he had
+never borne with a guest before, for Arthur found fault with the rooms,
+which he likened to bath-tubs, and fault with the smells which came from
+the river, and fault with the smoke in the parlour, but made ample
+amends by the money he spent so lavishly, the scores of photographs he
+bought, and the puffs he wrote for the San Francisco papers, extolling
+the valley as the very gate of heaven, and the hotel as second only to
+the Palace, and signing himself "Bumble Bees."
+
+He went on every trail, and started for the highest possible peak, and
+when he stood on the top of old Capitan and looked down upon the world
+below, he capered and shouted like a madman, singing at the top of his
+voice, "Mine eye have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord, glory,
+glory, hallelujah!" until the rocky gorges rang with the wild echoes
+which went floating down the valley below, where the sun was shining so
+brightly and the grass was growing so green.
+
+On his return to San Francisco after an absence of several weeks, he
+took up his abode at the Palace Hotel, which he turned topsy-turvy with
+his vagaries; but as in the valley, so here in the city, the landlord
+could afford to bear much from one who spent his money so freely and
+paid so lavishly; and so he was allowed to change rooms every day if he
+liked, and half the plumbers in the city were called in to see what
+caused the smells which he declared worse than anything he had ever met
+in his life, and which were caused in part by the disinfectants which he
+bought by the wholesale and kept in his bath room, his wash-room, and
+under his bed, until the chambermaid tied her nose in camphor when she
+went in to do her work.
+
+But his career was brought to a close suddenly one morning in August,
+when, just as he was taking his coffee and rolls in his room, Charles
+brought him the following telegram:
+
+    'Come immediately. There's the devil to pay.
+
+    'TOM TRACY.'
+
+Arthur read the message two or three times, not at all disturbed by it,
+but vastly amused at its wording; then, putting it down, he went on with
+his breakfast until it was finished, when he took a card from his pocket
+and wrote upon it:
+
+    'Pay him then, for I sha'n't come. ARTHUR TRACY.'
+
+This was handed to Charles with instructions to forward it to Tracy
+Park. This done, he gave no further thought to the message so full of
+such import to himself, but began to talk of and plan his contemplated
+trip to Tacoma by the next steamer which sailed. It was six o'clock when
+he had his dinner in his own private parlour, where he was served by
+both Charles and a waiter, and where a second telegram was brought him.
+
+'Confound it,' he said, 'have they nothing to do at home but to torment
+me with telegrams? Didn't I tell them to pay the old Harry and have done
+with it? What do they mean?' and putting the envelope down by his plate
+he went quietly on with his dinner until he was through, when he took it
+up, and, breaking the seal, read:
+
+    'Come at once. I need you. JERRIE.'
+
+That changed everything, and with a bound he was in the next room,
+gesticulating fiercely, and ordering Charles to step lively and get
+everything in readiness to start home on the first eastward bound train
+which left San Francisco.
+
+'That rascally Tom is a liar,' he said. 'It's not the old Harry to pay.
+It's Jerrie. Do you hear, it's Jerrie. Bring me some paper, quick, and
+don't stand staring at me as if I were a lunatic. It's Jerrie who needs
+me.'
+
+Charles brought the paper, on which his master wrote:
+
+    'Coming on the wings of the wind, Yours respectfully,
+
+    'ARTHUR TRACY.'
+
+In less than half an hour this singular message was flying along the
+wires across the continent, and within a few hours Arthur was following
+it as fast as the steam horse could take him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+WHAT THEY WERE DOING AND HAD DONE IN SHANNONDALE.
+
+
+If the earth had opened suddenly and swallowed up half the inhabitants
+of Shannondale the other half could not have been more astonished than
+they were at the news which Peterkin was the first to tell them, and
+which he had risen very early to do, before some one else should be
+before him. Irascible and quick-tempered as he was, he was easily
+appeased, and the fact that Jerrie was Arthur Tracy's daughter changed
+his opinion of her at once.
+
+'The biggest heiress in the county except my Ann 'Liza, and, by gum, I'm
+glad on't for her and Arthur. I allus said she was hisen, and by George,
+to think that I helped her into her fortin, for if I hadn't of knocked
+that rotten old table down she'd of never found them memoirs,' he said
+to the first person to whom he communicated the news, and then hurried
+off to buttonhole and enlighten others, until everybody knew and was
+discussing the strange story.
+
+Before noon scores of people had found it in their way to walk past the
+cottage, hoping to catch sight of Jerrie, while several went in and told
+her how glad they were for her and Mr. Arthur, and looked at her with
+wondering eyes as if she were not quite the same girl they had known as
+Jerrie Crawford.
+
+When, the previous night, Mrs. Crawford had listened to the story Jerrie
+told her after her return from the Park House, she had been for a few
+moments stupefied with amazement, and had sat motionless on her chair
+until she felt Jerrie's soft hands upon her head smoothing her silvery
+hair, and Jerrie's voice said to her:
+
+'Dear grandma, I told you your working days were over, and they are, for
+what is mine is yours and Harold's, and my home is your home always, so
+long as you live.'
+
+The poor old lady put her head upon Jerrie's arm and cried hysterically
+for a moment; then she rallied, and brushing away her tears, kissed the
+young girl who had been so much to her, and whom for a brief moment she
+feared she might have lost. Far into the night they sat, talking of the
+past and the future, and of Harold, who was in Tacoma, where he might
+have to remain for three or four weeks longer. He had written several
+times to his grandmother and once to Jerrie, but had made no mention of
+the diamonds, while in her letters to him Mrs. Crawford had refrained
+from telling him what some of the people were saying, and the
+construction they were putting upon his absence. Jerrie had not yet
+written to him, but, 'I shall to-morrow,' she said, 'and tell him to
+hurry home, for I need him now, if ever.'
+
+Jerrie was very tired when she went at last to bed, but the dreamless
+sleep which came upon her, and which lasted until a late hour in the
+morning, did her good, and probably saved her from a relapse, which
+might have proved fatal. Still she was very pale and weak when she went
+down stairs about nine o'clock and found Tom waiting for her. He had
+been up since sunrise, strolling through the park, with a troubled,
+sorry look on his face for he was extremely sorry for himself, though
+very glad for Jerrie, whose sworn ally he was and would be to the end.
+In a way he had tried to comfort his mother by telling her that neither
+his uncle nor Jerrie would be unjust to her, if she'd only behave
+herself, and treat the latter as she ought, and not keep up such a high
+and mighty and injured air, as if Jerrie had done something wrong in
+finding out who she was.
+
+But Dolly would not be comforted, and her face wore a sullen, defiant
+expression, as she moved about the handsome house where she had queened
+it so long that she really looked upon it as her own, resenting bitterly
+the thought that another was to be mistress there. She had talked with
+her husband, and made him tell her exactly how much he was worth in his
+own right, and when he told her how little it was, she had exclaimed,
+angrily:
+
+'We are beggars, and may as well go back to Langley and sell codfish
+again.'
+
+She had seen Tom that morning, and when to her question, 'Why are you up
+so early?' he replied, 'To attend to Jerrie's affairs,' she tossed her
+head scornfully, and said: 'Before I'd crawl after any girl, much less
+Jerrie Crawford! You'd better be attending to your own sister. She's
+worse this morning, and looks as if she might die any minute.'
+
+Then Tom went to Maude, who, since the shock of the night before, had
+lain as if she were dead, except for her eyes, in which there was a new
+and wondrous light, and which looked up lovingly at Tom as he came in
+and kissed her, a most unusual thing for him to do.
+
+'Dear Tom,' she whispered, 'come closer to me,' and as he bent down to
+her, she continued, 'is every thing Jerrie's?'
+
+'Yes, or will be. She is Uncle Arthur's daughter.'
+
+'Shall we be very poor?'
+
+'Yes, poor as a church mouse.'
+
+Then there was a pause, and when Maude spoke again she said slowly:
+
+'For me, no matter--sorry for you, and father and mother; but glad for
+Jerrie. Stand by her, Tom; tell mother not to be so bitter--it hurts me.
+Tell Harold, when he comes, I meant to do so much for him, but Jerrie
+will do it instead. Tell her I must see her, and send for Uncle Arthur.'
+
+There was a lump in Tom's throat as he left his sister's room, and going
+to the village, telegraphed to his uncle's head-quarters at the Palace
+Hotel, San Francisco, that he was to come at once.
+
+At least a hundred people stopped him on his way to the office, asking
+if what they had heard was true, and to all he replied:
+
+'True as the gospel; we are floored, as Peterkin would say.'
+
+And then he hurried to the cottage to see Jerrie, and tell her of the
+message sent to Arthur, though not how it was worded After a moment he
+continued, hesitatingly, as if half ashamed of it:
+
+'I called at _Lubbertoo_ last night to enquire after Ann Eliza's foot,
+and you ought to have seen Peterkin when I told him the news. At first
+he could not find any word in his vocabulary big enough to swear by, but
+after a little one came to him, and what do you think it was?'
+
+Jerrie could not guess, and Tom continued.
+
+He said, "by the great Peterkin!" and then he swowed, and vowed, and
+snummed, and vummed, and dummed, and finally said he was glad of it,
+and had always known you were a Tracy. Ann Eliza was so glad she cried,
+and I think Billy cried, too, for he left the room suddenly, with very
+suspicious-looking eyes. Why, everybody is glad for you, Jerrie, and
+nobody seems to think how mean it is for us; but I'm not going to whine.
+I'm glad it's you, and so is Maude, and she wants to see you. I believe
+she's going to die, and--and--Jerrie--'
+
+Something choked Tom for a moment, then he went on:
+
+'If Uncle Arthur should get high, and order us out at once, as father
+seems to think he will, you'll--you'll--let us stay while Maude lives,
+won't you?'
+
+'Tom,' Jerrie said, reproachfully, 'What do you take me for, and why
+does your father think his brother will order him out?'
+
+'I don't know,' Tom replied, 'but he seems awfully afraid to meet him.
+Mother says he was up all night walking the floor and talking to
+himself, and yet he says he is glad, and he is coming this morning to
+see you and talk it over. I believe I hear him now speaking to Mrs.
+Crawford. Yes, 'tis he; so I guess I'll go; and when I hear from my
+telegram I'll let you know. Good-bye.'
+
+A moment after Tom left the room his father entered it, looking haggard
+and old, and frightened, too, it seemed to Jerrie, as she went forward
+to meet him with a cheery 'good-morning, Uncle Frank.'
+
+It was the first time she had addressed him by that name, and her smile
+was so bright and her manner so cordial that for an instant the cloud
+lifted from his face, but soon came back darker than ever as he declined
+the seat she offered him and stood tremblingly before her.
+
+Frank had not slept a wink the previous night, nor had he been in bed,
+but had walked his room until his wife said to him angrily:
+
+'I thought you were glad; seems to me you don't act like it; but for
+pity's sake stop walking, or go somewhere else do it and not keep me
+awake.'
+
+Then he went into the hall outside, and there he walked the livelong
+night, trying to think what he should say to Jerrie, and wondering what
+she would say to him, for he meant to tell her everything. Nothing could
+prevent his doing that; and as soon as he thought she would see him he
+started for the cottage, taking with him the Bible, the photograph and
+the letter he had secreted so long. All the way there, he was repeating
+to himself the form of speech with which he should commence, but when
+Jerrie said to him, so graciously, 'Good morning, Uncle Frank,' the
+words left him, and he began, impetuously;
+
+'Don't call me uncle. Don't speak to me, Jerrie, until you have heard
+what I have come to confess on my knees, with my white head upon the
+floor, if you will it so, and that would not half express the shame and
+remorse with which I stand before you and tell you I am a cheat, a liar,
+a villain, and have been since that day when I first saw you and that
+dead woman we thought your mother.'
+
+Jerrie was dumb with surprise, and did not speak or move as he went on
+rapidly, telling her the whole, with no attempt at an excuse for
+himself, except so far as to report what he had done in a business point
+of view, making provision for her in case of his death and enjoining it
+upon his children to see that his wishes were carried out.
+
+'Here is the Bible,' he said, laying the book in her lap. 'Here is the
+photograph, and here the letter which you gave me to post, and which,
+had it been sent, might have cleared the mystery sooner.'
+
+He had made his confession, and he stood before her with clasped hands
+and an expression upon his face such as a criminal might wear when
+awaiting the jury's decision. But Jerrie neither looked at him nor
+spoke, for through a rain of tears she was gazing upon the sweet face,
+sadder and thinner than the face of Gretchen in the window, but so like
+it that there could be no mistaking it, and so like to the face which
+had haunted her so often, and seemed so near to her.
+
+'Mother, mother! I remember you as you are here, sick and sorry, but oh,
+so lovely!' she said, as she pressed her lips again and again to the
+picture, with no thought or care for the wretched man who had come a
+step nearer to her, and who said at last:
+
+'Will you never speak to me, Jerrie? Never tell me how much you despise
+me?'
+
+'Then she looked up at the face quivering with anguish and entreaty, and
+the sight melted her at once. Indeed, as he had talked she had scarcely
+felt any resentment toward him, for she was sure that though his error
+had been great, his contrition and remorse had been greater, and she
+thought of him only as Maude's father and the man who had always been
+kind to her. And she made him believe at last that she forgave him for
+Maude's sake, if not for his own.
+
+'Had my life been a wretched one because of your conduct,' she said, 'I
+might have found it harder to forgive you, but it has not. I have not
+been the daughter of Tracy Park, it is true, but I have been the petted
+child of the cottage, and I would rather have lived with Harold in
+poverty all these years than to have been rich without him. And do you
+know, I think it was noble in you to tell me, when you might have kept
+it to yourself.'
+
+'No, no. I couldn't have done that much longer,' he exclaimed,
+energetically, as he began to walk up and down the room. 'I could not
+bear it. And the shadow which for years has been with me night and day,
+counselling me for bad, was growing so black, and huge, and unendurable
+that I must have confessed or died. But it is gone now, or will be when
+I have told my brother.'
+
+'Told your brother! Mr. Tracy--Uncle Frank--you cannot mean to do that?'
+Jerrie exclaimed.
+
+'But I do mean to do it,' Frank replied, 'as a part of my punishment,
+and he will not forgive as you have done. He will turn me out at once,
+as he ought to do.'
+
+Jerrie thought this very likely, and with all her powers she strove to
+dissuade Frank from making a confession which could do no possible good,
+and might result in untold harm.
+
+'Remember Maude,' she said, 'and the effect this thing would have upon
+her if your brother should resort to immediate and violent means, as he
+might in his first frenzy.'
+
+'But, I mean to tell Maude, too,' Frank replied.
+
+Then Jerrie looked upon him as madder than Arthur himself, and talked so
+rapidly and argued so well that he consented at last to keep his own
+counsel, for the present at least, unless the shadow still haunted him,
+in which case he must tell as an act of contrition or penance.
+
+'He will think the photograph came with the other papers in the bag,'
+Jerrie said, as she kissed the sweet face, which looked so much like
+life that it was hard to think there was not real love and tenderness in
+the eyes which looked into hers so steadfastly.
+
+It was the hardest to forgive the letter hidden so long, and Jerrie did
+feel a pang of resentment, or something like it, as she took it in her
+hand and thought of the day when Arthur had confided it to her, saying
+he could trust her when he could not another. And she had trusted Frank,
+who had not been true to the trust, and here, after the lapse of years,
+was the letter, in her hands, with its singular superscription, covering
+its whole side, and its seal unbroken. But she would break it now.
+Surely she might do that, if Arthur was never to see it; and after a
+moment's hesitancy, she opened it, and read, first, wild, crazy
+sentences, full of love and tenderness for the little Gretchen to whom
+they were addressed, and whom the writer sometimes spoke to as living,
+and again as dead. There was the expression of a strong desire to see
+her, a wish for her to come where her husband was waiting for her, and
+her diamonds too. Here Jerrie started with an exclamation of surprise,
+and involuntarily read aloud:
+
+'The most exquisite diamonds you ever saw, and I long to see them on
+you. They are safe, too--safe from her--Mrs. Frank Tracy--who had the
+boldness to flaunt them in my face at a party the other night. How she
+came by them I can't guess; but I know how she lost them, I found them
+on her dressing-table, where she left them when she went to breakfast,
+and took possession at once. That was no theft, for they are mine, or
+rather yours, and are waiting for you in my private drawer, where no one
+has ever looked, except a young girl called Jerrie, who interests me
+greatly, she is so much like what you must have been when a child. There
+has been some trouble about the diamonds--I hardly know what, my head is
+in such a buzzing most of the time that everything goes from me but you.
+Oh, if I had remembered you years ago as I do now--'
+
+Jerrie could read no further, for the letter dropped from her hands, as
+she cried joyfully:
+
+'I knew he had them. I was sure of it, though I did not know where they
+were.'
+
+Then very briefly she explained to Frank that on the morning when the
+diamonds were missed, Arthur was so excited because Harold had been in a
+way accused, and had rambled off into German, and said many things which
+made her know that he had taken them himself and secreted them.
+
+'You remember my sickness,' she said, and how strangely I talked of
+going to prison as an accessory or a substitute? Well, it was for your
+brother I was ready to go; and when he told me, as he did one day, that
+he knew nothing of the diamonds, I was never more astonished in my life;
+but afterward, as I grew older, I came to believe that he had forgotten
+them, as he did other things, and that some time he would remember and
+make restitution, I am glad we know where they are, but we cannot get
+them until he returns. When do you think that will be?'
+
+Frank did not know. It would depend, he said, upon whether he was in San
+Francisco when Tom's telegram was received. If he were and started at
+once, travelling day and night, he would be home in a week.
+
+It seemed a long time to wait in Jerrie's state of mind, and very, very
+short to the repentant man, who shrank from his brother's return as from
+an impending evil, although it was a relief to think that he need not
+tell him what a hypocrite he had been.
+
+'Thank you, Jerrie,' he said at last, as he rose to go, 'Thank you for
+being so kind to me. I did not deserve it. I did not expect it. Heaven
+bless you. I am glad for you, and so is Maude. Oh, Jerrie, heaven is
+dealing hard with me to take her from me, and yet it is just. I sinned
+for her; sinned to see her in the place I was sure was yours, although
+the shadow was always telling me that I did not and never could know for
+sure that you were Arthur's child; but I did, and I meant to go to
+Germany some day, when I had the language a little better, and clear it
+up, and then I had promised myself to tell you. Will you lay again that
+you forgive me before I go back to Maude?'
+
+He was standing before her with his white head dropped upon his hat, the
+very picture of misery and remorse, and Jerrie laid her hand upon his
+head, and said:
+
+'I do forgive you, Uncle Frank, fully and freely, for Maude's sake if no
+other; and if she lives what is mine shall be hers. Tell her so, and
+tell her I am coming to see her as soon as I am able, I am so tired
+to-day, and everything is so strange. Oh, if Harold were here.'
+
+Jerrie was indeed so tired and exhausted that for the remainder of the
+day she lay upon the couch in her room, seeing no one but Judge St.
+Claire and Tom, both of whom came up together, the latter bringing the
+answer to his telegram, and asking what to do next.
+
+'Why, Tom,' Jerrie said, as she read Arthur's reply, 'pay him then, for
+I shan't come,' what does he mean? What did you say to him, and whom are
+you to pay?'
+
+With a half comical smile Tom replied, 'I told him the Old Nick was to
+pay, though I am afraid I used a stronger name for his Satanic majesty
+than that. I guess you'll have to try what you can do.'
+
+And so Jerrie's message, 'I need you,' went across the continent, and
+brought the ready response, 'coming on the wings of the wind.' It was
+Judge St. Claire who wrote to Harold, for Jerrie's nerveless fingers
+could not grasp the pen, and she could only dictate what she wished the
+judge to say.
+
+'Tell him everything,' she said, 'and how much I want him here; and tell
+him, too, of Maude, whose life hangs on a thread. That may bring him
+sooner.'
+
+It was three days before Jerrie went again to the Park House, and then
+Tom came for her, saying Maude was failing very fast. The shock which
+had come upon her so suddenly with regard to Jerrie's birth and the
+suspicions resting upon Harold had shortened the life nearing its close,
+and the moment Jerrie entered the room she knew the worst, and with a
+storm of sobs and tears knelt by the sick girl's couch and cried:
+
+'Oh, Maude, Maude, I can't bear it. I'd give up everything to save you.
+Oh, Maude, Maude, you don't know how much I love you!'
+
+Maude was very calm, though her lips quivered a little and the tears
+filled her eyes as she put her hand caressingly upon Jerrie's golden
+hair. A great change had come over Maude since the night when she heard
+Jerrie's strange story--a change for the better some might have thought,
+although the physician who attended her gave no hope. She neither
+coughed nor suffered pain, and could talk all she liked, although often
+in a whisper, she was so very weak. 'Yes, Jerrie,' she said, 'I know
+you love me, and it makes me very glad, and dying seems easier for it;
+for, Jerrie, oh, Jerrie! once before I knew about you, and when I feared
+I might die, I wrote something on paper for father to see when I was
+dead, and it was that he should take you in my place, you and Harold.'
+
+Maude's voice shook a little here, but she soon steadied it and went on:
+
+'I wanted him to give you what I thought would be mine had I lived, and
+what all the time was yours. Oh, Jerrie, how can you help hating me, who
+have stood so long where you ought to have stood, and enjoyed what you
+ought to have enjoyed?'
+
+'Maude,' Jerrie cried, as she kissed the little wan face, 'don't talk
+like that; as if I, or any one, could ever have hated you. Why, I
+worshiped you as some little empress when I used to see you in your
+bright sashes and yellow kid boots, with the amber beads around your
+neck; and if the contrast between your finery and my high-necked gingham
+apron and white sun-bonnet sometimes struck me painfully, I had no wish
+to take the boots and sashes from you, whom they fitted so admirably;
+and as we grew older and you did not shrink from or slight Jerrie
+Crawford, I cannot tell you how great was the love which grew in my
+heart for you, the dearest girl friend I ever had, and a thousand times
+dearer now that I know you are my cousin.'
+
+Maude was silent for a moment, and then she asked abruptly:
+
+'Jerrie, why did you never fall in love with Harold?'
+
+'Oh, Maude!' and Jerrie started as if Maude had struck her, while the
+tell-tale blood rushed to her face, and into her eyes there came a look
+which even Maude could not understand.
+
+'Jerrie,' she exclaimed, 'forgive me. I didn't know, I never guessed, I
+was go stupid; but I have been thinking so much since Harold went away.
+Does he know about you? who you are? and how long before he will come
+home?'
+
+'Judge St. Claire wrote him everything three days ago,' Jerrie replied,
+'and told him how sick you were. That will surely bring him at once, if
+it is possible for him to leave; but it will he three or four days now
+before the letter will reach him, and take a week for him to come. Would
+you like to see him very much?'
+
+'Yes,' Maude answered with a sob, 'very much, but I never shall. Jerrie,
+did Harold ever--did he--does he--love you?'
+
+'He never told me so,' Jerrie answered, frankly; 'but I have thought
+that he loved you'
+
+'N--no,' Maude answered, piteously, with the great tears in her eyes.
+'It is all a mistake, and when I am dead and Harold comes, promise to
+tell him something from me, will you?'
+
+'Yes,' Jerrie answered, and Maude continued:
+
+'Tell him the very first time you and he are alone together, and speak
+of me, that I have been thinking and thinking until it came to me clear
+as day that it was all a mistake, a stupid blunder on my part. I was
+always stupid, you know; but I believe my brain is a little clearer now.
+Will you tell him, Jerrie?'
+
+'Mistake about what?' Jerrie asked with a vague apprehension that the
+task imposed upon her might not be a pleasant one if she know all it
+involved.
+
+'Harold will tell you what,' Maude answered 'He will understand what I
+mean, and you must tell him, for I shall not be here when he comes, I am
+sure of it. I hope to live till Uncle Arthur comes, for I must see him
+and ask him not to be hard on poor father, and tell him that I am sorry
+that I have been so long in your place where you should have been. You
+will stay here when he comes, and be with me to the last. I want you
+with me--want you to hold my hand when I say good-bye for ever. You are
+so strong that I shall not be afraid with you to see and hear as long as
+I hear and see anything.'
+
+'And are you afraid?' Jerrie asked, and Maude replied:
+
+'Of the death struggle, yes; but not what lies beyond where He is, the
+Saviour, for I know I am going to Heaven; and when you think me asleep I
+am often praying silently for more faith and love, and for you all, that
+you may one day come where I soon shall be. Heaven is very, very
+beautiful, for I have seen it in my dreams--a material heaven some would
+say, for there are trees and flowers, and grass; and on a golden bench,
+beneath a tree whose leaves are like emeralds, and whose blossoms are
+like pearls, I am sitting, on the bank of a shining river, resting,
+resting, and waiting, as little Pilgrim waited for the coming of the
+Master, and for you all.'
+
+Maude was very tired now, and her voice was so low that Jerrie could
+scarcely hear it, while the eyelids drooped heavily, and in a few
+moments she fell asleep, with a rapt look on her as if she were already
+resting on the golden seat beneath the tree whose leaves were emeralds
+and whose blossoms were like pearls.
+
+That night Jerrie wrote as follows:
+
+    'Dear Harold, come home as soon as you can, for Maude is very low,
+    and, unless you come soon, you will never see her again. The judge
+    has written you of me, but I must tell you myself that nothing can
+    ever change me from the Jerrie of old; and the fact which makes me
+    the happiest is that now I can help you who have been so kind to me.
+    How I long to see you and talk it all over. We expect Mr. Arthur in
+    a few days. I cannot call him father yet, until he has given me the
+    right to do so by calling me daughter first; but to myself I am
+    calling Gretchen mother all the time--dear, sweet, darling little
+    mother! Oh, Harold, you must come home and share my happiness. Truly
+    Harold, you ought to see how stiffly Mrs. Tracy carries herself
+    toward me--stiffer, if possible, than she did when I came up the
+    front steps in my muddy shoes and she bade me go round to the back
+    door. Poor Mrs. Tracy!'
+
+During the next few days Jerrie stayed with Maude, who constantly grew
+weaker and weaker, and who asked about every hour if anything had been
+heard from her uncle since his message that he was coming.
+
+'I shall never see Harold,' she said to Jerrie; but I must live till
+uncle Arthur comes, and you are put in your right place.'
+
+And at last, one lovely September morning, a telegram was brought to
+Frank from Charles, which said the travellers would be home that
+afternoon, and that the carriage must be sent to meet them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+TELLING ARTHUR.
+
+
+Who should do the telling was the question which for some time was
+discussed by Frank and Judge St. Claire and Jerrie. Naturally the task
+fell upon the latter, who for three or four days prior to Arthur's
+arrival remained altogether at the Park House, watching by Maude, and
+going over and over again in her mind what she should say and how she
+should commence.
+
+At last the announcement came that Arthur was in Albany, and then it
+seemed to Jerrie that she had suddenly turned into stone, for every
+thought and feeling had left her, and she had no plan or action or
+speech as she moved mechanically about Arthur's rooms, making them
+bright with flowers, especially the Gretchen room, which seemed a bower
+of beauty when her skilful hands had finished it. Once, as she was
+passing through the hall with her arms full of flowers she met Mrs.
+Tracy, whose face wore a most forbidding expression as she said:
+
+'I hope you will leave a few flowers for Maude. You know she likes them
+so much.'
+
+Jerrie made no reply, but by the pang of resentment which shot through
+her heart at the smallness of the woman, she knew she was not past all
+feeling, and that there was still something human in the stone, as she
+had styled herself.
+
+Slowly the day wore on, every minute seeming an hour, and every hour a
+day, until at last Jerrie heard the carriage driving down the avenue,
+and not long after the whistle of the engine in the distance. Then,
+bending over Maude and kissing her fondly, she said:
+
+'Pray for me, darling, I am going to meet my father.'
+
+Arthur had been very quiet during the first part of the journey from San
+Francisco, and it was with difficulty that Charles could get a word from
+him.
+
+'Let me alone,' he said once, when spoken to. 'I am with Gretchen. She
+is on the train with me, and I'm trying to make out what it is she is
+telling me.'
+
+But after Chicago was left behind his mood changed, and he became as
+wild and excitable as he had before been abstracted and silent.
+Sometimes he was on the top of old Capitan, looking down into the valley
+below, and singing 'glory, hallelujah,' at the top of his voice, while
+the startled passengers kept aloof from him as from a lunatic. Again he
+was out upon the platform urging the conductor to greater speed; and
+when at last Shannondale was reached, he bounded from the car upon the
+platform before the train stopped, and was collaring Rob, the coachman,
+and demanding of him to know what was the matter with Jerrie, and why he
+had been sent for. Rob, who had received his instructions to be wholly
+non-committal answered stolidly that nothing was the matter with Jerrie,
+but that Miss Maude was very sick and probably would not live many days.
+
+'Is that all?' Arthur said, gloomily, as he entered the carriage. 'I do
+not see what the old Harry has to do with Maude's dying, and certainly
+Tom's telegram said something about that chap. I have it in my pocket.
+Yes, here it is. "Come immediately. The devil is to pay." That doesn't
+mean Maude. There is something else Rob has not told me. 'Here, you
+rascal, you are keeping something from me! What is it? Out with it!' he
+shouted to the driver, as he thrust his head from the carriage window,
+where he kept it, and in this way was driven to the door of the Park
+House, where Frank was waiting for him outside, and where, inside,
+Jerrie stood, holding fast to the banisters of the stairs, her heart
+throbbing wildly one moment, and the next seeming to lie pulseless as a
+piece of lead.
+
+She heard Arthur's voice as he came up the steps, speaking to Frank, and
+asking why he had been sent for; and the next moment she saw him
+entering the hall, tall and erect, but with the wild look in his eyes
+which she knew so well, but which changed at once to a softer expression
+as they fell upon her.
+
+'Cherry, you here!' he cried, with a joyful ring in his voice as he
+sprang to her side and kissed her forehead and lips.
+
+Then Jerrie grew calm instantly, although she could scarcely restrain
+herself from falling on his neck and sobbing out, 'Oh, my father! I am
+your daughter Jerrie!' But the time for this had not come, and when he
+questioned her eagerly as to why she had sent for him, she only
+replied:
+
+'Maude is very sick. But come with me to your rooms, and I will tell you
+everything.'
+
+'Then there is the deuce to pay; I thought so,' he said, as he followed
+her upstairs into the Gretchen room, where he stood for a moment, amazed
+at the effect produced by the flowers and vines which Jerrie had
+arranged so skilfully, 'It is like Eden,' he said, 'and Gretchen is here
+with me. Darling Gretchen!' he continued, as he walked up to the picture
+and kissed the lovely face which, it seemed to Jerrie, smiled in
+benediction upon them both, the husband and the daughter, as they stood
+there side by side, Jerrie's hands resting on his shoulder, which she
+pressed hard, as if to steady herself, while he talked to the inanimate
+face before him.
+
+'Have you been lonesome, Gretchen, and are you glad to have me back
+again! Poor little Gretchen!' And now he turned to Jerrie, who was pale
+to the lips, and said: 'It all came to me on the top of those mountains
+about Gretchen--who she was, and how I forgot her so long--that is the
+strangest of all; and, Cherry,' here his voice dropped to a whisper, 'I
+know for sure that Gretchen is dead--that came to me, too.'
+
+'Yes, Gretchen is dead,' Jerrie answered him, with the sound of a sob in
+her own voice, while her hands tightened their grasp on his shoulder, as
+she went on; 'I have had a message from Gretchen, and that is why we
+sent for you.'
+
+Jerrie's hands were not strong enough to hold him then, and, wrenching
+himself from her, he stood confronting her with a look more like that of
+a maniac than any she had ever seen in him before, and which might have
+frightened one with nerves less strong than Jerrie's. But she was not
+afraid, and a strange calmness fell upon her, now that she had actually
+reached a point where she must act, and her eyes, which looked so
+steadily into Arthur's, held them fast, even while he interrogated her
+rapidly.
+
+'A message from Gretchen! How, when, and where is it? Give it to me
+quick, or tell me about it? Where is she, and when is she coming?'
+
+'Never!' answered Jerrie sadly. 'I told you she was dead. But sit here,'
+and she motioned him to a large cushioned chair. 'Sit here and let me
+tell you what I know of Gretchen.'
+
+Something in the girl's manner mastered him and made him a child in her
+hands.
+
+Sinking into the chair, pale and panting with excitement, he leaned his
+head back wearily, and closing his eyes, said to her:
+
+'Begin. What did Gretchen write?'
+
+Jerrie felt that she could not stand all through the interview, and
+bringing a low ottoman to Arthur's side, seated herself upon it just
+where she could look into his face and detect every change in it.
+
+'Let me tell you of Gretchen as she was when you first knew her,' she
+said, 'and then you will be better able to judge of the truth of all I
+know.'
+
+He did not reply, and she went on:
+
+'Gretchen was very young--sixteen or seventeen--when you first saw her
+knitting in the sunshine under the trees in Wiesbaden, and very
+beautiful, too--so beautiful that you went again and again to look at
+her and talk to her, until you came to love her very much, and told her
+so at last; but you seemed so much above her that she could not believe
+you at first. At last, however, you made her understand, and when her
+mother died suddenly--'
+
+'Her mother was Mrs. Heinrich, and kept a kind of fancy store,' Arthur
+interposed, as if anxious that nothing should be omitted.
+
+'Yes, she kept a fancy store,' Jerrie rejoined; 'and when she died
+suddenly and left Gretchen alone, you said to her, "We must be married
+at once," and you were, in the little English chapel, by the Rev. Mr.
+Eaton, who was then rector.' Here Arthur's eyes opened wide and fixed
+themselves wonderingly upon Jerrie, as he said:
+
+'Are you the old Harry that you know all this? But go on; don't stop; it
+all comes back to me so plain when I hear you tell it. She wore a straw
+bonnet trimmed with blue, and a white dress, but took it off directly
+for a black one because her mother was dead. Did she tell you that?'
+
+'No,' Jerrie replied. 'She told me nothing of the dress, only how happy
+she was with you, whom she loved so much, and who loved her and made her
+so happy for a time that earth seemed like heaven to her, and then--'
+
+Here Jerrie faltered a little, but Arthur's sharp 'What then?' kept her
+up, and she continued:
+
+'Then something came to you, and you began to forget everything, even
+poor little Gretchen, and went away for weeks and left her very sad and
+lonely, not knowing where you were; and then, after some months, you
+went away and never came back again to the little wife who waited, and
+watched, and prayed, and wanted you so badly.'
+
+'Oh, Cherry! oh, Gretchen! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to do it; I
+surely didn't. May God forgive me for forgetting the little wife! Was it
+long? Was it months, or was it years? I can't remember, only that there
+was a Gretchen, and I left her,' Arthur said.
+
+'It was years, four or five, and--and'--Jerrie's breath came heavily now
+and her words slowly, for she was nearing the point relating to herself
+and wondering what the effect would be upon him. 'After a while there
+came into Gretchen's life the dawning of a great hope, a great joy,
+which she felt would make you glad, and wishing to keep it a secret till
+you came home, she only gave you a hint of it. She wrote: "I have
+something to tell you which will make you as happy as it does me--"'
+
+'Stop!' and Arthur put out both his hands as if groping for something
+which he could not find; then he said, 'Go on,' and Jerrie went on,
+slowly now, for every word was an effort, and spoken so low that Arthur
+bent forward to listen to her.
+
+'I don't know just where Gretchen's home was when she lived alone
+waiting for you. I only know that after a while there came to it a
+little baby--a girl baby--Gretchen's and yours--'
+
+She did not get any further, for with a bound Arthur was on his feet,
+every faculty alert, every nerve strung to its utmost pitch, and every
+muscle of his face quivering with wild excitement, as he exclaimed:
+
+'A baby! Gretchen's baby and mine! A little girl! Oh, Cherry, if you are
+deceiving me now!'
+
+Jerrie, too, had risen, and was standing before him with her hands upon
+his arm and her eyes, so like Gretchen's, looking into his, as she said:
+
+'I am not deceiving you. There was a baby born to you and Gretchen
+sometime in January, 18--, and it was christened in the little church
+where you were married by the Rev. Mr. Eaton. Oh, Mr. Arthur, how can I
+tell you; she, the baby, is living yet--grown to womanhood now, for this
+happened about twenty years ago, and the girl is almost twenty--and is
+waiting and longing so much for her father to recognize and claim her.
+Oh, don't you understand me? Look at _me_ and then at Gretchen's
+picture!'
+
+For an instant Arthur stood like one stricken with catalepsy, his eyes
+leaping from Jerry's face to Gretchen's, and from Gretchen's back to
+Jerrie's, and then, with a motion of his hands as if fanning the air
+furiously, he gasped:
+
+'Twenty years ago--twenty years ago? How old are you, Cherry?'
+
+'About twenty,' she answered, but her voice was a whisper, and her head
+fell forward a little, though she kept her eyes upon Arthur, who went
+on:
+
+'And they christened my baby and Gretchen's you say? What name did they
+give her? Speak quick, for I believe I am dying.'
+
+'They called her Jerrine, but you know her as Jerrie, for--for I am
+Gretchen's daughter,' fell from Jerrie's lips.
+
+With a wild, glad cry, 'My daughter! oh, my daughter! Thank God! thank
+God!' Arthur sank back into the chair, from which he had risen, fainting
+and insensible.
+
+For hours he lay in a state so nearly resembling death that but for the
+physician's reassurance that there was no danger, Jerrie would have
+believed the great joy given her was to be taken from her at once. But
+just as the twilight shadows began to gather in the room he came to
+himself, waking as from some quiet dream, and looking around him until
+his eyes fell upon Jerrie sitting by his side; then into his white face
+there flashed a look of ineffable joy and tenderness and love, as he
+said, with a smile the most willing and sweet Jerrie had ever seen.
+
+'My daughter, my little Cherry, who came to me up the ladder, with
+Gretchen's eyes and Gretchen's voice, and I did not know her--have not
+known her all these years, although she has so puzzled and bewildered me
+at times. My daughter! oh, my daughter!'
+
+He accepted her unquestioningly, and with a glad cry Jerrie threw
+herself into the arms he stretched toward her, and on her father's
+bosom gave free vent to the feelings she had restrained so long, sobbing
+passionately as she felt Arthur's kisses upon her face, and his
+caressing hands upon her hair, as he kept repeating:
+
+'My daughter! Gretchen's baby and mine!'
+
+'There is more to tell. I have not heard it all, or how you came by the
+information,' he said, when Jerrie was little composed and could look at
+and speak to him without a burst of tears.
+
+'Yes, there is much more. There is a letter for you, with those you
+wrote to her,' Jerrie said, 'but you must not have them to-night.
+To-morrow you will be stronger, now you must rest.'
+
+She spoke like one with authority, and he did just what she bade him
+do--took the food she brought him, went to bed when she said he must,
+and, with her hand locked in his, fell into a heavy slumber, which
+lasted all through the night, and late into the next morning. It almost
+seemed as if he would never waken, the sleep was so like death; but the
+doctor who watched him carefully quieted Jerrie's fears and told her it
+would do her father good, and that in all probability he would awake
+with a clearer mind than he had had in years, for as a great and sudden
+shock sometimes produces insanity, so, contrarywise, it sometimes
+restored a shattered mind to its equilibrium.
+
+And the doctor was partially correct, for when at last Arthur awoke he
+seemed natural and bright, with a recollection of all which had happened
+the day before, and an earnest desire for the letters and the rest of
+the story which Jerrie told him, with her arm across his neck, and her
+cheek laid occasionally against his, as she read him the letter directed
+to his friends, and then showed him the certificate of her birth and her
+mother's death.
+
+'Born January 1st, 18--, to Arthur Tracy and Marguerite, his wife, a
+daughter,' Arthur repeated, again and again, and as often as he did so
+he kissed the bright face which smiled at him through tears, for there
+was almost as much sadness as joy mingled with the reading of those
+messages from the dead.
+
+Just what Gretchen's letter to Arthur contained, Jerrie never knew,
+except that it was full of love and tenderness, with no word of
+complaint for the neglect and forgetfulness which must have hastened her
+death.
+
+'Oh, Gretchen, I can't bear it, I can't,' Arthur moaned, as he laid his
+hand upon Jerrie's shoulder and sobbed like a child. 'To think I could
+forget her, and she so sweet and good.'
+
+Everything came back to him for a time, and he repeated to Jerrie much
+which was of interest to her concerning her mother, but with which the
+reader has nothing to do; while Jerrie, in turn, told him all she could
+remember of her life in the old house where Gretchen had died. Idle
+fancies she had sometimes thought these memories of the past, but now
+she knew they were real. And Arthur hung upon her words with breathless
+interest, moaning occasionally when she told of the sweet-faced woman
+who cried so much and prayed so much, and whose death scene she had once
+enacted for him when a little child. At his own letters addressed to
+Gretchen he barely glanced, muttering, as he did so, 'how could I have
+written such crazy bosh as that?' and then suddenly recollecting
+himself, he asked for the photograph mentioned in Gretchen's letter to
+his friends, and which he seemed to think had come with the other
+papers, just as Jerrie meant he should. Taking it from the bag she
+handed it to him, while his tears fell like rain as he gazed upon the
+face which was far too young to wear the sad, wan look it did.
+
+'That is as I remember her,' Jerrie said, referring again to the strange
+ideas which had filled her brain and made her sure that not the dark
+woman found dead at her side was her mother, but another and far
+different person, whose face haunted her so continually and whose voice
+she sometimes seemed to hear speaking to her from the dim shadows of the
+far-off past when they lived in the little house in Wiesbaden, where the
+picture hung on the wall.
+
+Arthur remembered the picture well and when it was taken, though that,
+too, had faded from his mind, until Jerrie told him of it.
+
+'We will go there together, Cherry,' he said, 'you and I, and find the
+house and the picture, and Gretchen's grave, and bring them home with
+us. There is room for them at Tracy Park.
+
+He was beginning to talk wildly now, but Jerrie quieted him, and taking
+up the box of diamonds opened it suddenly and held it before his eyes.
+In reading the letters he had not seemed to pay any attention to the
+diamonds, but when Jerrie said to him; 'These were mother's. You sent
+them to her from England,' he replied, 'Yes, I remember. I bought them
+in Paris with other things--dresses, I think--for her,' while into his
+face there came a troubled look as if he were trying to think of
+something.
+
+Jerrie, who could read him so well, saw the look, and, guessing at once
+its cause, hastened to say:
+
+'Father, do you remember that you gave Mrs. Tracy some diamonds like
+these, and that some one took them from her? Try and think,' she
+continued, as she saw the troubled look deepen on his face, and the fire
+beginning to kindle in his eyes. 'It was years ago, just after a party
+Mrs. Tracy gave, and at which she wore them. You were there and thought
+they were Gretchen's, did you not?'
+
+'Ye-es,' he answered slowly. 'I believe I did. What did I do with them?
+Do you know?'
+
+'I think you put them in your private drawer. Suppose you look and see.'
+
+Obedient to her as a child, Arthur opened his private drawer, bringing
+out one thing after another, all mementoes of the old Gretchen days, and
+finally the diamonds, at which be looked with wonder and fear, as he
+said to Jerrie:
+
+'Did I take them? Will they call it a steal? I thought they were
+Gretchen's. I remember now.'
+
+Jerrie did not tell him then of the trouble the secreting of the
+diamonds had brought to her and Harold, but she said:
+
+'No one will think it a steal, and Mrs. Tracy will be glad to get her
+jewels back. May I take them to her now?'
+
+'Take them to her?--no,' Arthur said, decidedly. 'She has another set--I
+bought them for her, and she wears them all day long. Ha, ha! diamonds
+in the morning, with a cotton gown;' and he laughed immoderately at what
+be thought Dolly's bad taste. 'Take them to her? No! They are yours.'
+
+'But I have mother's,' Jerrie pleaded; 'and I cannot wear two sets.'
+
+'Yes, you can--one to-day, one to-morrow. I mean you shall have
+seven--one for everyday in the week. What has Dolly to do with
+diamonds. They are for ladies, and she is only a whitewashed one.'
+
+He was very much excited, and it took all Jerrie's tact to soothe and
+quiet him.
+
+'Father,' she began and then he stopped short, for the sound of that
+name spoken by Jerrie had a mighty power over him--'Father, listen to me
+a moment.'
+
+And then she told him of the suspicions cast upon Harold, and said:
+
+'You do not wish him to suffer any more?'
+
+'Harold? The boy who found you in the carpet-bag--Amy's boy! No, never!
+Where is he that I have not seen him yet? Does he know you are my
+daughter?'
+
+Jerrie had not mentioned Harold before, but she told her father now
+where he was, and why he had gone, and that she had written him to come
+home, on Maude's account, if on no other.
+
+'Yes--Maude--I remember; but Harold did not care for Maude. Still, he
+had better come. I want him here with you and me; and you must stay here
+now, day and night. Select any room or rooms you please; all is yours,
+my daughter.'
+
+'But I cannot leave grandma,' Jerrie said.
+
+'Let her come, too,' Arthur replied. 'There is room for her.'
+
+'No,' Jerrie persisted; 'that would not be best. Grandma could not live
+with Mrs. Tracy.'
+
+'Then let Dolly go at once, I'll give the order now;' and Arthur put out
+his hand to the bell-cord.
+
+But Jerrie stopped him instantly, saying to him:
+
+'Remember Maude. While she lives she must stay here.'
+
+'Yes, I forgot Maude. Poor little Maude, I have not seen her yet,'
+Arthur replied, subdued at once, and willing now that Jerrie should take
+the jewels to Dolly, who deserved but little forbearance from Jerrie's
+hand.
+
+Up to the very last Mrs. Tracy had, unconsciously perhaps, clung to a
+shadowy hope that Arthur might repudiate his daughter and call it a
+trumped-up affair; but when she heard how joyfully he had acknowledged
+and claimed her, she lost all hope, and her face wore a sullen, defiant
+expression as she walked about the house and through the handsome rooms,
+the very furniture of which had nearly all been bought with Arthur's
+money, and consequently was not her own. Since the coming of Jerrie,
+when the dark shadow settled upon Frank, and remorse was always
+torturing him, he had had no heart for business, and had, to all intents
+and purposes, lived upon his brother's generosity, which had never
+failed.
+
+'Get what you like; there is money enough,' was always Arthur's reply,
+when a request for anything was made to him, and thus they had literally
+been sponges, taking everything and giving nothing, until now, when all
+was lost--the luxury, the elegance, the ease, and the prestige of Tracy
+Park, which they had enjoyed so much. It was hard, and Dolly felt that
+she could not bear it, and that she hated the girl through whom this
+change had come, and in every possible way she meant to wound and annoy
+her; so when the cook came to her that day for orders for dinner, she
+answered, curtly:
+
+'Go to the heiress. She is mistress now.'
+
+In the hall, coming to seek her, Jerrie met the cook, who, with a
+comical look on her face, asked what she would have for dinner.
+
+'I don't know what you mean,' Jerrie said, and when the cook explained,
+her cheeks flushed for an instant and her eyes blazed with resentment
+But she controlled herself quickly and said, 'Tell Mrs. Tracy--but, no,
+I am going to her room and will tell her myself.'
+
+Knocking at Mrs. Tracy's door, she was admitted to the presence of the
+lady, who simply stared at her as if asking why she were there. Jerrie
+told her in a few words that her own diamonds had been found, and where
+they had been secreted, and that she had come to return them.
+
+'Then your father was the thief,' Dolly said, with that rasping,
+aggravating tone so hard to hear unmoved.
+
+'Call him what you please. A crazy man is not responsible for his acts,'
+Jerrie answered, calmly; then, more proudly and decidedly, went on, 'By
+the way, Mrs. Tracy, I was met by the cook with a singular request, and
+I wish to say that as there can be but one mistress in a house, it is my
+wish that so long as you remain here you are that mistress in your own
+department; of course I shall take charge of my father's, and see that
+his wishes are carried out. Good afternoon,' and with a proud, lofty
+bearing, Jerrie walked from the room, leaving Dolly to her own morbid
+and angry thoughts.
+
+Not even the restored diamonds had power to conciliate her, and they
+were so beautiful as she held them up, admiring their brilliancy and
+their size.
+
+'I'll never wear them, never, because she has some like them,' she said
+to herself; and then the thought flashed upon her that she could sell
+them, and thus add to the sum which her husband had invested in his own
+name.
+
+Ten thousand dollars, that was all, he had told her, and she had
+calculated the income, only six hundred dollars a year to live on--less
+than she now wasted yearly upon bric-a-brac and things of which she
+tired so soon.
+
+It was a sombre outlook, and it is not strange that her tears fell fast
+upon the costly stones, whose value she could not guess, although she
+knew it must be great, they were so superior in size and quality to any
+she had ever seen.
+
+'Yes, I will sell them,' she said, 'and invest the proceeds in my own
+name; but even that will hardly keep the wolf from the door, for Frank
+is growing more and more imbecile every day, and Tom is good for
+nothing. He'll have to scratch for himself, though, I can tell him.'
+
+Here her ladylike, but very characteristic, soliloquy was brought to an
+end by a faint call, which had the power to drive every other thought
+from her heart, for the mother-love was strong even with her, and going
+to Maude, she asked what she wanted.
+
+'Uncle Arthur,' Maude replied; 'I have not seen him yet. And Jerrie,
+too, she has scarcely been here to-day.'
+
+Maude's request was made known to Arthur, who, two or three hours later,
+went to her room, and kissing her lips, told her how sorry he was to see
+her so sick, and that he hoped she would soon be better.
+
+Frank had been alone with Maude for a long time that day, and he was
+with her now, sitting upon the side of her bed, near the head, with his
+arm across her pillow, and his eyes fixed anxiously upon her as she held
+her conference with his brother.
+
+'No, uncle,' she said; 'I shall never be any better in this world; but
+by-and-by, pretty soon, I shall be well in the other And I want to tell
+you how glad I am for you and Jerrie, and to thank you for your kindness
+to us all these years, when Jerrie should have been here in our place.'
+
+'Yes, yes,' Arthur said, with a wave of his hand. 'Only I didn't know.
+If I had--'
+
+'It would have been so different,' Maude interrupted him. 'I know that,
+but I want you to be kind to poor father still, and forgive him, he is
+sorry, and--'
+
+'Oh, Maude, Maude,' came like a groan from Frank, as he laid his hand on
+Maude's lips, while Arthur replied:
+
+'Forgive him! For what? He couldn't help being here. I sent for him. He
+did not keep Jerrie from her rightful position as my daughter. If he had
+I could never forgive him. Why, I believe I'd kill him, or any other one
+who, knowing that Jerrie was my daughter, kept it from me.'
+
+He was gesticulating now with both hands, and Jerrie, who had listened
+wonderingly to the conversation, took hold of them as they were swaying
+in the air, and said to him softly:
+
+'Father!'
+
+The word quieted him, and with a gasp his mind seemed to change at once.
+
+'Maude is very tired,' Jerrie went on; 'perhaps we'd better go now and
+come again to-morrow.'
+
+'Yes, yes, that's best, child. I'm not fond of sick rooms, though I must
+say this is very free from smells,' Arthur replied; then stooping down
+he kissed Maude again, saying to her as he rose to go:
+
+'Don't worry about your father; he is my brother, and he was kind to
+Jerry. I shan't forget that. Come, my daughter.'
+
+And putting his arm fondly around Jerrie he left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+THE FLOWER FADETH.
+
+
+It took some days after Arthur's return for the household to settle down
+into anything like order and quiet, Arthur was so restless and so happy,
+and so anxious for everyone to recognise Jerrie as his daughter--Miss
+Tracy, as he called her when presenting her to the people who had known
+her all her life--the St. Claires, and Athertons, and Crosbys, and
+Warners--who came to call upon and congratulate him. Even Peterkin came
+in his coat-of-arms carriage, with a card as big as the back of
+Webster's spelling book, and himself gotten up in a dress coat, with
+lavender kids on his burly hands, which nearly crushed Arthur's in their
+grasp as he expressed himself 'tickleder than he ever was before in his
+life.'
+
+'And to think I was the means on't,' he said, 'for if I hadn't of kicked
+that darned old table into slivers when I was givin' on't to Jerrie,
+she'd never of know'd what was in that dumbed rat-hole. I was a leetle
+too upstrupulous, I s'spose, but I'll be darned if she didn't square up
+to me like a catamount, till my hair riz right up, and I concluded the
+Tramp House was no place for me. But I respect her for it; yes, I do,
+and by George, old chap, I congratulate you with my whole soul, and so
+does May Jane, and so does Ann 'Lizy, and so does Bill, and so does the
+whole caboodle on us.'
+
+This was Peterkin's speech, which Arthur received more graciously than
+Jerrie, who, remembering Harold, could not be very polite to the man who
+had injured him so deeply. As if divining her thoughts, Peterkin turned
+to her and said:
+
+'Now, one word, Miss Tracy, about Hal. I hain't one to go halves in any
+thing, and I was meaner to him than pussly; but you'll see what I'll do.
+I've met with a change, I swow, I have,' and he laid his lavender kid on
+his stomach. 'He never took them diamonds, nor May Jane's pin, nor
+nothin', and I've blasted it all over town that he didn't, and I've got
+a kerridge hired, and some chaps, and a brass band, and a percession,
+and when Hal comes, there's to be an oblation to the depot, with the
+bugle a playin' "Hail to the Chief," and them hired chips a histen' him
+inter the kerridge, with the star-spangled banner a floatin' over it,
+and a drawin' him home without horses! What do you think of that for
+high?' and he chuckled merrily as he represented the programme he had
+prepared for Harold's reception.
+
+Jerrie shuddered, mentally hoping that Harold's coming might be at
+night, and unheralded, so as to save him from what she knew would fill
+him with disgust.
+
+That call of Peterkin's was the last of a congratulatory nature made at
+Tracy Park for weeks, for the shadow of death had entered the grand old
+house, the doors and windows of which stood wide open, one lovely
+September morning, about a week after Arthur's return. But there was no
+stir or sign of life, except in the upper hall, near the door, and in
+the room where Maude Tracy was dying. Jerrie had been with her
+constantly for two or three days, and the converse the two had held
+together would never be forgotten, Maude was so peaceful and happy, so
+sure of the home beyond, where she was going, and so lovely and sweet to
+those around her, thinking of everything and planning everything, even
+whose hands were to lower her into the grave.
+
+'Dick, and Fred, and Billy, and Harold,' she said to Jerrie, one day,
+'Something tells me Harold will be here in time for that; and if he is,
+I want those four to put me in the grave. They can lift me, for I shall
+not be very heavy,' and, with a smile, she held up her wasted arms and
+hands, not as large now as a child's. 'And, Jerrie,' she went on, 'I
+want the grave lined with boughs from our old playing place--the four
+pines, you know--and many, many flowers, for I shudder at the thought of
+the cold earth which would chill me in my coffin. So, heap the grave
+with flowers, and come often to it, and think lovingly of me, lying
+there alone. I am thinking so much of that poem Harold read me long ago
+of poor little Alice, the May queen, who said she should hear them as
+they passed, with their feet above her in the long and silent grass.
+Maybe the dead can't do that. I don't know, but if they can, I shall
+listen for you, and be glad when you are near me, and I know I shall
+wait on the golden seat by the river. Remember your promise to tell
+Harold that it was all a mistake. My mind gets clearer toward the end,
+and I see things differently from what I did once, and I know how I
+blundered. You will tell him?'
+
+Again Jerrie made the promise, with a sinking heart, not knowing to what
+it bound her; and as Maude was becoming tired, she bade her try to rest
+while she sat by and watched her.
+
+The next day, at the same hour, when the balmy September air was
+everywhere, and the mid-afternoon sun was filling the house with golden
+light, and the crickets' chirp was heard in the long grass, and the
+robins were singing in the tree-tops, another scene was presented in the
+sick room, where Frank Tracy knelt at his dying daughter's side, with
+his face bowed on his hands, while her fingers played feebly with his
+white hair as she spoke to Arthur, who had just come in. They had told
+him she was dying and had asked for him, and with his nervous horror of
+everything painful and exciting, he had shrunk from the ordeal; but
+Jerrie's will prevailed, and he went with her to the room, where Frank,
+and his wife, and Tom were waiting--Tom standing, with folded arms, at
+the foot of the bed, and looking, with hot, dry eyes, into the face on
+the pillow, where death was setting his seal; the mother, half-fainting
+upon the lounge, with the nurse beside her; and Frank, oblivious of
+everything except the fact that Maude was dying.
+
+'Kiss me good-bye, Uncle Arthur,' she said, when he came in, 'and come
+this side where father is.' Then, as he went round and stood by Frank,
+she reached her hand for his, and, putting it on her father's head, said
+to him: 'Forgive him, Uncle Arthur; he is so sorry, poor father--the
+dearest, the best man in the world. It was for me; say that you forgive
+him.'
+
+Only Frank and one other knew just what she meant, although a sudden
+suspicion darted through Jerrie's mind, and, when Arthur looked
+helplessly at her, she whispered to him:
+
+'Never mind what she means--her mind may be wandering; but say that you
+forgive him, no matter what it is.'
+
+Thus adjured, Arthur said to the grief-stricken man, who shook like an
+aspen:
+
+'I know of nothing to forgive except your old disbelief in Gretchen, and
+deceiving me about sending the carriage the night Jerrie came; but if
+there is anything else, no matter what it is, I do forgive you freely.'
+
+'Thanks,' came faintly from Maude, who whispered:
+
+'It is a vow, remember, made at my death-bed.'
+
+She had done all she could, this little girl, whose life had been so
+short, and who, as she once said, had been capable of nothing but loving
+and being loved; and now, turning her dim eyes upon Jerrie, who was
+parting the damp hair upon her brow, she went on:
+
+'Remember the promise, and the flowers, and the golden seat where you
+will find me resting by the flowing river whose shores I am now looking
+upon, for I am almost there, almost to the golden seat, and the tree
+whose leaves are like emeralds, and where the grass and flowers are like
+the flowers and grass of summer just after a rain. I am glad for you,
+Jerrie. Good-bye; and you, father dear, good-bye.'
+
+That was the last, for Maude was dead; and the servants, who had been
+standing about the door, stole noiselessly back to their work, with wet
+eyes and a sense of pain and loss in their hearts, for not one of them
+but had loved the gentle girl now gone forever from their midst.
+
+If was Jerrie who led Frank from the room to his own, where she left him
+by himself, knowing it would be better so, and it was Arthur who took
+Dolly out, for Tom had disappeared, and no one saw him again until the
+next day, when he came down to breakfast, with a worn, haggard look upon
+his face, which told that he did care, though his mother thought he did
+not, and taunted him with his indifference. Poor Tom! He had gone
+directly to his room and locked the door, and smoked and smoked, and
+thought and thought, and then, when it was dark, he had stolen out into
+the park as far as the four pines, and smoked, and looked up at the
+stars and wondered if Maude were there with Jack, sitting on the golden
+seat by the river. Then going back to the house where no one saw him, he
+went into the silent room where Maude was lying, and looked long and
+earnestly upon her white, still face, and wondered in a vague kind of
+way if she knew he was there, and why he had never thought before what a
+nice kind of girl she was, and why he had not made more of her as her
+brother.
+
+'Maude,' he whispered, with a lump in his throat, 'if you can hear me,
+I'd like to tell you I am sorry that I was ever mean to you, and I guess
+I did like you more than I supposed.'
+
+Then he kissed her pale forehead and went to his room, where he smoked
+the night through, and in the morning felt as if he had lived a hundred
+years since the previous night, and wondered how he should get through
+the day. It occurred to him that it might be the proper thing to see
+his mother; and after his breakfast he went to her room, and was
+received by her with a burst of tears and reproaches for his
+indifference and lack of feeling in keeping himself away from everybody,
+as if it were nothing to him that Maude was dead, or that there was
+nothing for him to do.
+
+'Thunderation, mother!' Tom exclaimed, 'would you have me yell and
+scream, and make a fool of myself? I sat up all night long, which was
+more than you did, and I've been meditating in the woods, and have seen
+Maude and made it square with her. What more can I do?'
+
+'You can see to things,' Mrs. Tracy replied. 'Your father is all broken
+up and has gone to bed, and it is not becoming in me to be around.
+Somebody must take the helm.'
+
+'And somebody has,' Tom answered her. 'Uncle Arthur is master of the
+ceremonies now. He is running the ranch, and running it well, to.'
+
+And Tom was right, for Arthur had taken the helm, and aided and abetted
+by Jerrie, was quietly attending to matters and arranging for the
+funeral, which Dolly said must be in the house, as she would not go to
+the church, with a gaping crowd to stare at her. So it was to take place
+at the house on Friday afternoon, and Arthur ordered a costly coffin
+from New York, with silver mountings and panels, and almost a car-load
+of flowers and floral designs, for Jerrie had explained to him Maude's
+wishes with regard to her grave, which they lined first with the
+freshest of the boughs from the four pines, filling these again with
+flowers up to the very top, so that the grave when finished seemed like
+one mass of flowers, in which it would not be hard to lie.
+
+Dolly had objected to Billy as one of the pall-bearers. He was too short
+and inferior looking, she said, and not at all in harmony with Dick, and
+Fred, and Paul Crosby, the young man who, in Harold's absence, had been
+asked to take his place. But Arthur overruled her with the words 'It was
+Maude's wish,' and Billy kept his post.
+
+The day arrived, and the hour, and the people came in greater crowds
+than they had done when poor Jack was buried, or the dark woman,
+Nannine, with only Jerrie as chief mourner, and the procession was the
+longest ever seen in Shannondale; and Dolly, even while her heart was
+aching with bitter pain, felt a thrill of pride that so many were
+following her daughter to the grave.
+
+Arrived at the cemetery, there was a halt for the mourners to alight and
+the bearers to take the coffins from the hearse and carry it to the
+grave--a halt longer than necessary, it seemed to Jerrie, who under the
+folds of her veil did not see the tall young man making his way through
+the ranks of the people crowding the road, straining every nerve to
+reach the hearse, which he did just as the four young men were taking
+the coffin from it.
+
+With a quick movement he put Paul Crosby aside, saying, apologetically:
+
+'Excuse me, Paul. I must carry Maude to her grave. She wished it so.'
+
+Then, taking the young man's place, he went slowly on to the open grave
+near which piles and piles of flowers were lying ready to cover the
+young girl who it was hard for him to believe was there beneath his
+hand, cold and dead, with no word of welcome for him who had tried so
+hard to see her, and was only in time for this, to help lay her in the
+grave and to listen to the solemn words 'ashes to ashes,' and hear the
+dreadful sound of earth to earth falling upon the box which held the
+beautiful coffin and the lovely girl within it.
+
+Even then Jerrie did not see him, but when she took a step or two
+forward to look into the grave before it was filled up, and someone put
+a hand upon her shoulder and said, 'Not too near, Jerrie,' she started
+suddenly, with a suppressed cry, and turning, saw Harold standing by
+her, tall, and erect, and self-possessed, as he faced the multitude,
+some of whom had suspected him of a crime, but all of whom were ready
+now to do him justice and bid him welcome home.
+
+'Oh, Harold,' Jerrie said, as she grasped his arm, 'I am so glad you are
+here. I wish you had come before.'
+
+Harold could not reply, for they were now leaving the spot, and many
+gathered around him; first and foremost, Peterkin, who came tramping
+through the grass, puffing like an engine, and, unmindful of the time or
+place, slapping him upon the shoulder, as he said: 'Well, my boy, glad
+to see you back, 'pon my soul, I be; but you flustrated all my plans. I
+was meanin' to give you an oblation; got it, all arranged, and you
+spiled it by takin' us onawares, like a thief in the night. I beg your
+pardon,' he continued, as he met a curious look in Harold's eyes, 'I'm a
+blunderin' cuss, I be. I didn't mean nothin', I've ever meant nothin',
+and if I hev' I'm sorry for it.'
+
+Harold did not hear the last, for he was handing Jerrie into the
+carriage with her father, who bade him enter, too; saying they would
+leave him at the cottage where he wished to go as soon as possible.
+There was no time for much conversation before the cottage was reached,
+and Harold alighted at the gate, and no allusion whatever had been made
+to Jerrie's changed relations until Harold stood looking at her as she
+kept her seat by her father and made no sign of an intention to stop.
+Then he said, as calmly as he could:
+
+'Do you stay at the Park House altogether now?'
+
+'Oh, no,' she answered quickly. 'I have been there a great deal with
+Maude, but am coming home to-night. I could not leave grandma alone, you
+know.'
+
+She acknowledged the home and the relationship still, and Harold's face
+flushed with a look of pleasure, which deepened in intensity when
+Arthur, with a wave of the hand habitual to him, said:
+
+'I must keep her now that you are here to see to the grandmother, but
+will let you have her to-night. Come up later, if you like, and walk
+home with her.'
+
+'I shall be most happy to do so,' Harold said, and then the carriage
+drove away, while he went in to his grandmother, who had not attended
+the funeral, but who knew that he had returned and was waiting for him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+UNDER THE PINES WITH HAROLD.
+
+
+It seemed to Harold that it had been a thousand years since he had left
+Shannondale, so much had come into and so much had gone out of his life
+since he said good-bye to the girl he loved and to the girl who loved
+him. One was dead, and he had only come in time to help lay her in her
+grave; while the other, the girl he loved, was, some might think,
+farther removed from him than death itself could have removed her.
+
+But Harold did not feel so. He had faith in Jerrie--that she would not
+change, though there had been a time during the first homesick weeks in
+Tacoma, when, knowing from his grandmother of her convalescence, and
+still hearing from her no explanation with regard to the diamonds, which
+he knew a few still suspected him of having taken, in his impatience and
+humiliation he had cried out, 'Jerrie has forgotten. She is not standing
+by me, forever and ever, amen, as she once promised to do.' But this
+feeling quickly passed, and there came a day when he read the judge's
+letter in the privacy of his room at the Tacoma, and rejoiced with an
+exceeding great joy for Jerrie, whose house and birthright had been so
+strangely restored. He never doubted the story for a moment, but felt
+rather as if he had known it always, and wondered how any one could have
+imagined for a moment that blue-eyed, golden-haired Jerrie was the child
+of the dark, coarse looking woman found dead beside her. 'I am so glad
+for Jerrie,' he said, without a thought that her relations to himself
+would in any way be changed.
+
+Once, when she had told him of the fancies which haunted her so often,
+he had put them from him with a fear that, were they true, Jerrie would
+be lost to him forever. But he had no such misgivings now; and when
+Jerrie's letter came, urging his return, both for her own sake and
+Maude's, he wrote a few hurried lines to her, telling her how glad he
+was for her, and of his intention to start for the East as soon as
+possible. 'To-morrow, perhaps,' he wrote, 'in which case I may be there
+before this letter reaches you, for the mails are sometimes slow, and
+the judge's communication was overdue three or four days.'
+
+Starting the second day after his letter, Harold travelled day and
+night, while something seemed beckoning him on--Maude's thin, white
+face, and Jerrie's, too; and when, between St. Paul and Chicago, there
+came a detention from a freight car off the track, he felt that he must
+fly, so sure was he that he was wanted and anxiously looked for at Tracy
+Park, where at that very time Maude was dying. The next afternoon he
+left Chicago, and with no further accident reached Shannondale just as
+the long procession was winding its way to the cemetery.
+
+He had heard from an acquaintance in Springfield that Maude was dead,
+and of her request that he should be one of the pall-bearers, together
+with Dick, and Fred, and Billy. 'And I will do it yet,' he said, with a
+throb of pain, as he thought of the little girl who had died believing
+that he loved her. Once or twice he had resolved to write and tell her
+as carefully as possible of her mistake, but as often had changed his
+mind, thinking to wait until she was better; and now she was dead, and
+the chance for explanation gone forever; but he would, if possible,
+carry out the wish she had expressed with regard to himself.
+
+Striking into the fields from the station, he reached the cemetery in
+time to take his place by Billy and carry poor little Maude to her last
+resting place; and then he looked for Jerrie, and felt an indefinable
+thrill when he saw her on her father's arm, and began to realize that
+she was Jerrie Tracy. But all that was over now; he had talked with her
+face to face, and had found her the Jerrie he had always known, and he
+was going to see her in her own home, at Tracy Park--the daughter of the
+house, the heiress of Arthur Tracy, and of more than two millions, it
+was said--for, despite Frank's extravagance, all of which Arthur had met
+without a protest, his money had accumulated rapidly, so that he was a
+much richer man now, than when he first came home from Europe.
+
+Harold found the family at dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Tracy and Tom in the
+dining-room, and Arthur and Jerrie in the Gretchen room, to which he was
+taken at once.
+
+'Come in--come in, my boy. You are just in time for dessert,' Arthur
+said, rising with alacrity and going forward to meet him; while Jerrie,
+too, arose and took his hand, and made him sit by her, and questioned
+him on his journey, and helped him to the fairest peach and the finest
+bunch of grapes, and, without seeming to do so, examined him from head
+to foot, and thought how handsome and grand he was, and felt sure that
+her father thought so too.
+
+With a part of the first money Billy had paid him, or rather had told
+him to draw in Tacoma, Harold had bought himself the clothes which he
+needed sadly; and though it was only a business suit, and had travelled
+thousands of miles, it fitted him well, and it was not at all a shabby
+Harold sitting at Arthur's table, but a young man of whom anyone might
+have been proud. And Jerrie was proud of him and of her father, too, as
+they talked together; and Harold showed no sign of any inequality, even
+if he felt it, which he did not.
+
+'A fine young man, with the best of manners, and carries himself as he
+were the lord high chancellor,' Arthur said, when, after dinner, Harold
+left there to pay his respects to the other inmates of the family, whom
+he found just leaving the dining-room.
+
+Dolly bowed to him coldly at first, and was about to pass on, when, with
+a burst of tears, she offered him her hand, and sobbed:
+
+'Oh, Harold, why didn't you come before? Maude wanted to see you so
+badly.'
+
+This was a great deal for Dolly, and Tom stared at her in amazement,
+while Harold explained that he had come as soon as he possibly could,
+and tried to say something of Maude, but could not, for the tears which
+choked him. Frank was unfeignedly glad to see him, and told him so.
+
+'Our dear little girl was fond of you, Hal. I am sure she was, and I
+shall always like you for that. Heaven bless you, my boy,' he said, as
+he wrung Harold's hand and then hurried away after his wife, leaving
+Harold alone with Tom, who, awfully afraid he should break down, said,
+indifferently:
+
+'Glad to see you, Hal. Wish you had come before Maude died. She was in
+a tearin' way to see you. Have a cigar? Got a prime lot in my room. Will
+you go there?
+
+Harold was in no mood for cigars, and, declining Tom's offer, sauntered
+awhile around the grounds, where he found himself constantly expecting
+to find the dead girl sitting under a tree wailing for him with the
+light whose meaning he now knew kindling in her beautiful eyes as she
+bade him welcome and told him how glad she was to see him. He was glad
+now that he had not written and told her of her mistake, and he felt in
+his heart a greater tenderness for the Maude dead than he ever could
+have felt for the Maude living.
+
+It was beginning to grow dark when he returned to the house where he
+found Jerrie in the hall ready to go home. Arthur was at her side, with
+his arm thrown lovingly around her, and as he passed her over to Harold,
+he said:
+
+'Make the most of her to-night, my boy, for to-morrow she comes home to
+stay. Heaven bless you, my daughter!'
+
+His words sent a thrill through both Harold and Jerrie, who walked on in
+silence until they reached the four pines, where Jerrie halted suddenly
+and said:
+
+'Let us sit down, Harold. I have a message from Maude, which I promised
+to deliver the first time we were alone together after you came home.'
+
+Jerrie's voice trembled a little, and after they were seated she was
+silent until Harold said to her:
+
+'You were going to tell me of Maude;' then she started and replied:
+
+'Yes; she wanted so much to see you and tell you herself. I don't know
+what she meant, but she said she had made a mistake, and I must tell you
+so, and that you would understand it. She had been thinking and
+thinking, she said, and knew it was a stupid blunder of hers; that was
+what she called it--a stupid blunder; and she was sorry for you that she
+had made it, and bade me say so, and tell you no one knew but herself
+and you. Dear little Maude! I wish she had not died.'
+
+Jerrie was crying now, and perhaps that was the reason she did not mind
+when Harold put his arm around her and drew her closer to him, so close
+that his brown hair touched her golden curls, for the night was warm and
+she had brought her bonnet in her hand all the way, while he had taken
+off his hat when they sat down under the pines, which moaned and sighed
+above them for a moment, and then grew still, as if listening for what
+Harold would say.
+
+'Yea,' he began slowly, 'I think I know what Maude meant by the mistake.
+Did she say I must tell you what it was?'
+
+'She said you would tell me, but perhaps you'd better not,' Jerrie
+replied,
+
+'Yes, I must tell you,' he continued, 'as a preliminary to what I have
+to say to you afterward, and what I did not mean to say quite so soon;
+but this decides me,' and Harold drew Jerrie a little closer to him as
+he went on: 'Did you ever think that I loved poor little Maude?'
+
+'Yes, I have thought so,' was Jerrie's answer.
+
+'She thought so, too,' Harold continued, 'and it was all my fault; my
+blunder, not hers. I loved her as I would a sister; as I did you in the
+olden days, Jerrie. She was so sweet and good, and so interested in you
+and all I wanted to do for you, that I regarded her as a very dear
+friend, nothing more. And because I looked upon her this way, I
+foolishly went to her once to confess my love for another; her dearest
+and most intimate friend, and ask if she thought I had a chance for
+success. I must have bungled strangely, for she mistook my meaning and
+thought I was speaking of herself and in a way she accepted me; and
+before I had time to explain, her mother came in and I have never seen
+her since; but I shall never forget the eyes which looked at me so
+gladly, smiting me so cruelly for the delusion in which I had to leave
+her. That is what Maude meant. She saw the mistake, and wished to
+rectify it by giving me the chance to tell you myself what I wanted to
+tell you then and dared not.'
+
+Jerrie trembled violently, but made no answer, and Harold went on:
+
+'It may seem strange that I, who used to be so much afraid of Jerrie
+Crawford that I dared not tell her of my love, have the courage to do it
+now that she is Jerrie Tracy, and I do not understand it myself. Once
+when you told me your fancies concerning your birth, a great fear took
+possession of me, lest I should lose you, if they were true; but when I
+heard that they were true, I felt so sure of you that I could scarcely
+wait for the time when I could ask you, as I now do, to be my wife, poor
+as I am, with nothing but love to give you. Will you, Jerrie?'
+
+His face was so close to hers now that her hot cheeks touched his as she
+bent her head lower and lower, but she made no reply for a moment, and
+then she cried:
+
+'Oh, Harold, it seems so soon, with Maude only buried to-day. What shall
+I say? What ought I to say?'
+
+'Shall I tell you?' he answered, taking her hand in his. 'Say the first
+English word you ever spoke, and which I taught you. Do you remember
+it?'
+
+'_Iss_' came involuntarily from Jerrie, in the quick, lisping accent of
+her babyhood, when that was all the English she could master; and almost
+before it had escaped her, Harold smothered it with the kisses he
+pressed upon her lips as he claimed her for his own.
+
+'But, Harold,' she tried to explain between his kisses, 'I meant that I
+_did_ remember. You must not--you must not kiss me so fast. You take my
+breath away. There! I won't stand it any longer. I'm going straight home
+to tell grandma how you act!'
+
+'And so am I,' Harold said, rising as she did, but keeping his arm
+around her as they went slowly along in the soft September night, with
+the stars, which were shining for the first time on Maude's grave,
+looking down upon then, and a thought of Maude in their hearts, and her
+dear name often upon their lips, as they talked of the past as lovers
+will, trying to recall just when it was that friendship ceased and love
+began, and deciding finally that neither knew nor cared when it was, so
+great was their present joy and anticipation of the future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+'FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE.'
+
+
+'Grandma, Jerrie has promised to be my wife!' Harold said to his
+grandmother that night when he took Jerrie in to her about ten o'clock,
+during which time they had walked to the Tramp House, and sitting down
+upon the chair which would hold but one, had talked the whole matter
+over, from the morning Harold first saw the sweet little face in the
+carpet-bag to the present moment when the same sweet face was pressed
+lovingly against his, and the same arms which had clung to him in the
+snow were around his neck in the darkness, as they went over with the
+old, old story, newest always and best to the last one who listens to it
+and believes that it is true.
+
+'Father, I have promised to marry Harold,' Jerrie said to Arthur the
+next morning as she stood before him in the Gretchen room, with Harold's
+hand in hers, and a look in her face something like what Gretchen's had
+worn when Arthur first called her his wife.
+
+'Lord bless you, I knew it was coming, but did not think it would be
+quite so soon. You shock my nerves dreadfully,' Arthur exclaimed,
+springing up and walking two or three times across the room. Then,
+confronting the young couple, he said, 'Going to marry Harold? I knew
+you would all this time. Well, he will do as well as any one to look
+after the business. Frank is no good, and Colvin is too old. So, get
+married at once, within a week if you like. I'm off for Germany next
+month, to find Gretchen's grave, and the house, and the picture, and
+everything, and as I shall take you with me I shall need some one with
+brains to look after things while I am gone.'
+
+'But father,' Jerrie began, 'if I go to Germany, Harold will go, too,
+and if he stops here, I shall stay.'
+
+Arthur looked at her inquiringly a moment, and then, as he begun to
+understand, replied: 'Ah, yes, I see; "where thou goest, I go, and
+where thou--" and so forth, and so forth. Well, all right; only you must
+come here directly; it will never do to stay there, now you are engaged;
+and you must be married in this room, with Gretchen looking on, and
+soon, too. No wedding, of course, Maude's death is too recent for that;
+but soon, very soon, so we can get off. I'll engage passage at once in
+the Germanic, which sails the 15th of October, and you shall be married
+the 10th. That's three weeks from to-day, and will give you a few days
+in New York. I'll leave Frank here till we return, and then he must go,
+of course, and the new mistress step in with Mrs. Crawford to
+superintend. We will get some nice man and woman to stay with her while
+we are gone.'
+
+He had settled everything rapidly, but Jerrie had something to say upon
+the subject. She did not wish to come to Tracy Park altogether while
+Mrs. Tracy was there; she would rather enjoy the lovely room which
+Harold had built for her, she said, and preferred to be married in the
+cottage, the only home she had ever known.
+
+'I shall stay with you all day,' she continued, 'but go home at night.'
+
+'And so have a long walk with Harold. Yes, I see,' Arthur said,
+laughingly, but assenting finally to her proposal.
+
+It was Jerrie now who planned everything, with Harold's assistance, and
+who broached the subject of Frank's future to her father, asking what
+provision he intended to make for him when he left Tracy Park.
+
+'What provision?' Arthur said. 'I guess he has made provision for
+himself all these years, when my purse has been as free to him as
+myself. Colvin tells me there has been an awful lot of money spent
+somewhere.'
+
+'Yes,' Jerrie replied, 'but you gave him permission to spend it, and it
+would hardly be fair now to leave him with little or nothing, and he so
+broken down. When Maude feared she was going to die, and before she knew
+who I was, she wrote a letter for her father and you, asking him to give
+me what he would have given her, and you to do the same. So now, I want
+you to give Maude's father what you would have given me for Maude's
+sake.'
+
+'Bless my soul, Jerrie!' Arthur said. 'What a beggar you are! I don't
+know what I should have given you; all I am worth, perhaps. How much
+will satisfy you for Frank? Tell me, and it is done.'
+
+Jerrie thought one hundred thousand dollars would not be any too much,
+nor did it seem so to Arthur, who placed but little value upon his
+money, and Jerrie was deputed to tell her uncle what provision was to be
+made for him, and that, if he wished, he was to remain at the park until
+his brother's return from Europe.
+
+Frank was not in his own room, but Mrs. Tracy was, and to her Jerrie
+first communicated the intelligence that she was to be married and go
+with her father to Germany. The look which the highly scandalized lady
+gave her was wonderful, as she said:
+
+'Married! almost before the crape is off the door, or the flowers wilted
+on Maude's grave! Well, that shows how little we are missed; and I am
+not surprised, though I think Maude would be, at Harold, certainly. I
+suppose you know there was something between them; but a man will do any
+thing for money. I wish you joy of your husband.'
+
+Jerrie was too indignant to explain any thing, and hurried off in quest
+of her uncle, whom she found in Maude's room, where he spent the most of
+his time, walking up and down and examining the different articles which
+had belonged to his daughter, and which, at his request, remained
+untouched as she had left them. Her brushes, her comb, her bottled
+perfumery, her work-box, her Bible, a little half-finished sketch, and
+her soft bed-slippers she had worn when she died, and one of which he
+held in his hand when Jerrie went in to him.
+
+'It is so like Maude,' he said, with quivering lips, as she went to his
+side, 'and when I hold it in my hand I can almost hear the dear little
+feet, which I know are cold and dead, coming along the hall as she used
+to come, and will never come again. I think I should like to die here in
+this room and go where Maude has gone, and I believe I should go there.
+I am sure God has forgiven me, and Maude forgave me, too, for I told
+her.'
+
+'You did! I thought so,' Jerrie said.
+
+'Yes, I had to tell her,' he continued, 'and I am glad I did, and she
+loved me just the same. You saw her die. You heard what she said to me.
+She must have believed in me, and that keeps me from going mad. I told
+Dolly, too; the shadow was so black I had to; and she said she'd never
+speak to me again as long as she lived, and she didn't either until last
+night, when I was alone in here, crying on Maude's bed; then she came to
+me and called me Frank, and said she was sorry she had been so hard, and
+asked me what we were going to do, and where we were going. I'm sure I
+don't know; do you?'
+
+He was so broken, so like a child in his appeal to her, that Jerrie's
+tears came fast as she told him of her approaching marriage and what her
+father intended doing for him. Then Frank broke down entirely, and cried
+like a child.
+
+'I don't deserve it, and I know I owe it to you, whom I have injured so
+much,' he said, while Jerrie tried to comfort him.
+
+'I must go back now to father,' she said at last; and, with a kiss upon
+his worn face, she went out into the hall, where she encountered Tom
+just coming from his mother's room.
+
+'Hallo!' Tom cried, with an attempt at a smile, 'and so you are going to
+marry Harold?'
+
+'Yes, Tom; I'm going to marry Harold,' Jerrie replied, unhesitatingly,
+as she laid her hand on Tom's arm and walked with him down the stairs.
+
+It seemed to her the most natural thing in the world that she should
+marry Harold, and she was not at all abashed in speaking of it to Tom;
+but when outside they saw Harold coming up the walk, the color rushed to
+her cheeks, and her eyes grew wondrously bright with the love-light
+which shown in them, as she dropped Tom's arm and hurried to Harold's
+side.
+
+'By George, I b'lieve I'll go and hang myself!' Tom said, under his
+breath, as he stalked moodily away; but instead of that he went across
+the fields to Le Bateau, where he sat for an hour, talking with old
+Peterkin and waiting for Ann Eliza, who had gone to Springfield, her
+father said, after a new gown, for which he was to pay two hundred
+dollars.
+
+'Think on't!' he continued. 'When we was fust married and run the 'Liza
+Ann, the best gown May Jane had to her back was a mereener or
+balzarine--dummed if I know what you call it--at one and ninepence a
+yard; but now, lord land, what's two hundred dollar gownd to me! Ann
+Eliza can have forty on 'em, if she wants to. There she is; there's the
+kerridge! By gosh, though, ain't she a neat little filly!' and the
+father's face glowed with pride as he watched his daughter alighting
+from the carriage, to which Tom had hastened in order to assist her, for
+she was still a little lame and limped as she walked.
+
+He saw the two hundred dollar gown, for Peterkin would have it
+displayed, and admired it, of course, and wished thut he had half the
+sum it cost in his own right, and wondered if he could stand it, as he
+walked slowly home, where he heard from his mother that they were still
+to remain at Tracy Park for a while, and that his father was to have one
+hundred thousand dollars settled upon him.
+
+'I guess now I'll wait a spell, and let old Peterkin go to thunder,' he
+decided, and for two weeks and more Ann Eliza watched in vain for his
+coming, while Peterkin remarked to his wife that if Tom Tracy was goin'
+to play fast and loose with his gal, he'd find himself brought up
+standin' mighty lively.
+
+The news that Harold and Jerrie were soon to be married, and go with
+Arthur to Germany, created some surprise, and some talk, too, in town,
+where many of the people had believed that there had been an
+understanding, if not an engagement, between Harold and Maude. But Tom
+put that right with a few decided words. There had never been an
+engagement, he said. Maude had liked Harold very much, and he had liked
+her, but had always preferred Jerrie; in short, matters had been as good
+as settled between them, long ago.
+
+This last was a little fiction of Tom's brain, but the people accepted
+it as true, and began to look eagerly forward to the approaching
+marriage, wondering, as people will, who would be invited, and who would
+not. It took place the 10th of October, in Mrs. Crawford's little
+parlor, with only a few intimate friends present--Grace Atherton, the
+St. Claires, Ann Eliza Peterkin, and the Tracys, with the exception of
+Dolly, who could not do so great violence to her feeling, as to attend a
+wedding. Billy was not there, but he sent a magnificent emerald ring to
+Jerrie, with the following note:
+
+    DEAR JERRIE,--I can't see you married, although I am glad for you,
+    and glad for Hal. God bless you both. I shall never forget you as
+    long as I live; and when you come back, maybe I can bear to see you
+    as Hal's wife, but now it would kill me. Good-bye.
+
+Jerrie read this note with wet eyes up in her room, and then passed it
+to Harold, to whom she told of that episode under the butternut tree,
+when Billy asked her to be his wife.
+
+'Poor Billy! I am awful sorry for him, but I can't let him have you,
+Jerrie,' Harold said, passing the note back to her, and kissing her
+tenderly, as he added: 'That is my last kiss for Jerrie Tracy, my little
+girl of the carpet-bag. When I kiss you again, you will be my wife.'
+
+'Come, children, we are waiting,' came with startling distinctness from
+Arthur at the foot of the stairs, and then Harold and Jerrie went down
+to the parlor, where they were soon made one, Arthur giving the bride
+away, and behaving pretty well under the circumstances.
+
+He had been very flighty the day before, insisting that Jerrie should be
+married in white, with a blue ribbon on her bonnet, just as Gretchen had
+been, and when she reminded him of Maude's recent death, he replied:
+
+'Well, Gretchen will wear colors if you do not.'
+
+And again he brought out and laid upon his bed the dress bought in Paris
+years before, and which had been waiting for Gretchen on that stormy
+night when he heard the wild cry of the dying woman above the wintery
+gale. She was with him again in fancy, and when he went out to the
+carriage which was to carry him to the cottage, he stepped back and
+stood a moment by the door as if to let some one enter before him, and
+all during the ceremony those nearest to him heard him whispering to
+himself, 'I, Arthur, take thee, Gretchen,' and so forth; but when it was
+over he came to himself and seemed perfectly rational, as he kissed his
+daughter and shook hands with his son-in-law, to whom he gave a check
+for ten thousand dollars, saying as he did so, that young men must have
+a little spending money.
+
+It was a very pleasant wedding, and every one seemed happy, even to
+Dick, whose spirits, however, were rather too gay to be quite natural,
+and whose voice shook just a little as he called Jerrie Mrs. Hasting,
+and told her he hoped to see her in Paris in the spring as he thought of
+going over there with Nina to join the Raymonds.
+
+'Oh, I hope you will! Nothing could make me so happy as to meet you
+there,' Jerrie said, looking at him with an expression which told him
+she was thinking of the pines and was sorry for him.
+
+The newly married pair were going directly to New York, where Arthur was
+to join them on the 4th, as the _Germanic_ sailed the 15th.
+
+All the wedding guests accompanied them to the station, Tom accepting a
+seat in the coupe with Ann Eliza, who wore her two hundred dollar gown,
+and was, of course, overdressed. But Tom did not think much about that.
+He was ill at ease that morning, though trying to seem natural; and when
+the train which took Jerrie away disappeared from view, he felt as if
+everything which had made life desirable had left him forever, and he
+cared but little now what he did, or with whom his lot was cast.
+
+So when Ann Eliza, who had cried at parting with Jerrie, dried her eyes
+and said to him, 'It is such a fine day; suppose we drive along the
+river; it may dispel the blues,' he assented, and soon found himself
+bowling along the smooth turnpike with Ann Eliza, whom he thought rather
+interesting, with the tears shed for Jerrie on her long, light
+eyelashes.
+
+'I shall miss her so much, and be so lonely without her. I hope you'll
+call often,' she said to him, when at last the drive was over, and Tom
+promised that he would, and kept his promise, too; for after Arthur
+left, he found Tracy Park so insupportably dull, with his father always
+in Maude's room and his mother always in tears, that it was a relief to
+go to Le Bateau and be made much of as if he were a prince and treated
+to nice little lunches and suppers, even if old Peterkin did make one of
+the party and disgust him so at times that he felt as if he must snatch
+up his hat and fly.
+
+And one night, when the old man had been more than usually disagreeable
+and pompous, he did start up abruptly and leave the house, mentally
+vowing never to enter it again.
+
+'I'd rather saw wood and gather swill, as Hal used to, than listen to
+that infernal old brag,' he was saying to himself, when he heard a
+wheezy sound behind him, and looking round saw the old brag in full
+pursuit and beckoning him to stop.
+
+'I'm goin' to walk a spell with you,' he said, locking his arm in Tom's
+as he came up. 'I want to have a little talk.'
+
+'Yes,' Tom faltered, with a dreadful sinking of the heart, while
+Peterkin went on:
+
+'You see you've been a comin' to Lubbertoo off and on for mighty nigh a
+month, and as the parents of a family it's time I as't your intentions.'
+
+'Intentions!' Tom stammered, trying to draw his arm from Peterkin's.
+
+But he might as well have tried to wrench it from a vise, for Peterkin
+held it fast and went on:
+
+'Yes, intentions! Thunderation, hain't a chap 'sposed to have intentions
+when he hangs round a gal who has money like my Ann 'Liza! I tell you
+what, Thomas,' and his manner became very insinuating and frank, 'as
+nigh as I can kalkerlate I'm worth three millions, fair and square, and
+there's three on 'em to divide it amongst--May Jane, Bill, and Ann
+'Liza. Now, s'posin' we say three into three million, don't it leave a
+million?'
+
+Tom acknowledged that it did, and Peterkin continued:
+
+'Jess so. Now I ain't one of them mean skunks that wants his folks to
+wait till he's dead afore they enjoys themselves; and the day my Ann
+'Liza is married, I plank down a million in hard cash for her and her
+husband to do what they darned please with; cut a dash in Europe as Hal
+is doin', if they like, or cut a splurge to hum, it's all one to me. I
+call that square, don't you?'
+
+Tom admitted that he did, and Peterkin went on:
+
+'Now, then, I ain't goin't to have Ann 'Liza's affections trifled with,
+and if I catch a feller a doin' on't, d'ye know what I'll do?'
+
+Tom could not guess, and Peterkin continued:
+
+'I'll lick him within an inch of his life, and then set the dogs on him,
+and heave him inter the river! See?'
+
+It was not a warm day, but Tom was perspiring at every pore as he saw
+presented to him the choice between a million or to be 'licked within an
+inch of his life and then dogged into the river.' Naturally he chose the
+first as the lesser evil of the two, and began to lie as he had never
+lied in his life before. He was very glad, he said, that Peterkin had
+broached the subject, as it made matters easier for him by showing him
+that his suit might not be rejected, as he had feared it might be.
+
+'You know, of course, Mr. Peterkin,' he said, 'that I am a poor young
+man, with no expectations whatever, for though Uncle Arthur has settled
+something upon father, I cannot depend upon that, and how could I dare
+to look as high as your daughter without some encouragement?'
+
+'Encouragement, boy? Great Scott!' and releasing Tom's arm, Peterkin hit
+him a friendly slap, which nearly knocked him down. 'Great Scott! What
+do you call encouragement? When a gal is so flustified at seeing you,
+and so tickled that she tetters right up and down, while her mother
+hunts heaven and earth for tit-bits to tickle your palate with--quail on
+toast, mushrooms, sweet-breads, and the Lord knows what--ain't that a
+sign they are willin'? Thunder and guns! what would you have? Ann 'Liza
+can't up and say "Marry me, Tom;" nor I can't up and say, "Thomas, marry
+my daughter," can I? But if you want to marry her, say so like a man,
+and I swan I'll meet you like a man, and a father!'
+
+Alas for Tom! he had nothing left him to do except to say that he wished
+to marry Ann Eliza, and that he would come the next evening and tell her
+so.
+
+It was Peterkin who answered his ring when he presented himself at the
+door of Le Bateau, Peterkin more inflated and pompous than ever as he
+shook the young man's hand, calling him Thomas--a name which aggravated
+him beyond all description--and telling him to go right into the parlor,
+where he would find Ann 'Liza waitin' for him, and where they could bill
+and coo as much as they liked, for he and May Jane would keep out of the
+way and give 'em a chance.
+
+Even then Tom cast one despairing glance toward the door, with a half
+resolve to bolt; but Peterkin was behind him, pushing him on to his
+fate, which, after all, was not so very bad when he came to face it.
+There was nothing low, or mean, or coarse about Ann Eliza, who, but for
+her very bright red hair, would have been called pretty by some, and who
+was by no means ill-looking, even with her red hair, as she stood up to
+receive her lover, with a droop in her eyes, and a flush on her cheeks;
+for she knew the object of his visit, into which he plunged at once. He
+did not say that he loved her, but he asked her in a straightforward
+way to be his wife, and then waited for her answer, which was not long
+in coming, for Ann Eliza was no dissembler. She loved Tom Tracy with her
+whole soul, and felt herself honored in being sought by him.
+
+'Oh, Tom!' she said, while the tears shone in her eyes, which Tom
+noticed for the first time were large and clear and very blue. 'It does
+not seem possible for you to love me, but, if you really do, I will be
+your wife and try to make you happy, and--and--'
+
+She hesitated a moment and then went on:
+
+'Save you as much as possible from father. We cannot live here; you and
+he would not get on; he means well and is the kindest of fathers to me,
+but he is not like you, and we must go away.'
+
+She was really a very sensible girl, Tom thought, and in his joy at
+finding her so sensible he stooped and kissed her forehead as the proper
+thing for him to do, while she, the poor little mistaken girl, threw
+herself into his arms and began to cry, she was so glad and happy.
+
+Tom did not know exactly what he ought to do. It was a novel situation
+for him to be in, with a girl sobbing on his bosom, and his first
+impulse was to push her off; but when he remembered that she represented
+a million of dollars, he did what half the men in the world would have
+done in his place: he held her close and tried to quiet her, and told
+her he was not half good enough for her, and knew in his heart he was
+telling the truth, and felt within him that stirring of a resolve that
+she should never know he did not love her, and that he would make her
+happy, if he could.
+
+And so they were betrothed without much billing and cooing, and Peterkin
+came in with Mary Jane and made a speech half-an-hour long to his future
+son-in-law, and settled just when they were to be married and what they
+were to do.
+
+Christmas week was the time, and he vowed he'd give 'em a wedding which
+should take the starch entirely out of Gusty Browne, whose mother, Mrs.
+Rossiter Browne, would think Gusty was never married at all when she saw
+what he could do. Greatly he lamented that Harold and Jerry could not be
+present. 'But they'll see it in the papers,' he said, 'for I'll have a
+four column notice, if I write it myself, and pay for it too! And when
+you meet 'em in Europe you can tell 'em what they missed.'
+
+To all this Tom listened, with great drops of cold sweat running down
+his back as he thought of the ridicule he should incur if Peterkin
+should carry out his intentions to 'take the rag off the bush,' as he
+expressed it. The trip to Europe pleased him, but the party filled him
+with a horror from which he saw no escape, until he consulted his
+mother, to whom he at once announced his engagement, but did not tell
+her of the check on a Springfield bank for $2,000 which Peterkin had
+slipped into his hand at parting with him, saying, when he protested
+against taking it:
+
+'Don't be a fool, Thomas. I'm to be your dad, so take it; you'll need
+it. I know your circumstances; they ain't what they was, and I don't
+s'pose you've got enough to buy the engagement ring, I want a big one. A
+solitary--no cluster for me. I know what 'tis to be poor. Take it,
+Thomas.'
+
+So Tom took it with a sense of shame which prompted him several times to
+tear it in shreds and throw them to the winds. But this he did not do,
+for he knew he should need money, as he had none of his own; and when, a
+few days before, he had asked Colvin for some, that worthy man, who had
+never taken kindly to him, had bidden him go to a very warm place for
+money, as he had no orders to give him any.
+
+'Your uncle,' he said, 'settled one hundred thousand dollars on your
+father--the more fool he--and expects him to live on it. So my advice to
+you is that you go to work.'
+
+Now, Tom couldn't work, and after a little Peterkin's gift did not seem
+so very humiliating to him, although he could not bring himself to tell
+his mother of it when he announced his engagement to her, which he did
+bluntly and with nothing apologetic in his manner or speech.
+
+'I am going to marry Ann Eliza Peterkin some time during the holidays,
+and start at once for Europe,' he said, and then brought some water and
+dashed it in her face, for she immediately went into hysterics and
+declared herself dying.
+
+When she grew calm, Tom swore a little, and talked a good deal, and told
+her about the million, which he said was not to be sneezed at, and told
+her what Colvin had said to him, and asked what the old Harry he was to
+do if he didn't marry Ann Eliza, and told her of the proposed party,
+asking her to save him from it if she could.
+
+When she found she could not help herself, Dolly rose to the situation,
+and said she would see her daughter-in-law elect, whom Tom was to bring
+to her, as she could not think of calling at Le Bateau in her present
+state of affliction. So Ann Eliza came over in the coat-of-arms
+carriage, and her mother came with her. But her Dolly declined to see.
+She could not endure everything, she said to Tom, and was only equal to
+Ann Eliza, whom she met with a bow and the tips of her fingers, without
+rising from her chair. Still, as the representative of a million, Ann
+Eliza was entitled to some consideration, and Dolly motioned her to a
+seat beside her, and, with her black-bordered handkerchief to her eyes,
+said to her:
+
+'Tom tells me you are going to marry him, and I trust you will try to
+make him happy. He is a most estimable young man now, and if he should
+develop any bad habits, I shall think it owing to some new and bad
+influence brought to bear upon him.'
+
+'Yes'm,' Ann Eliza answered, timidly; and the great lady went on to talk
+of family, and blood, and position, as something for which money could
+not make amends, and to impress upon her a sense of the great honor it
+was to be a member of the Tracy family.
+
+Then she spoke of the wedding party, which she trusted Ann Eliza would
+prevent, as nothing could be in worse taste when they were in such
+affliction, adding that neither herself nor Mr. Tracy could think of
+being present.
+
+'Be married quietly, without any display, if you wish to please me,' she
+said; and with a wave of her cobweb handkerchief she signified that the
+conference was ended.
+
+'Well, Annie, how did you and my lady hit it?' Tom asked, meeting Ann
+Eliza in the hall as she came out, flushed and hot from the interview.
+
+'We didn't hit it at all,' Ann Eliza replied, with a sound of tears in
+her voice, and a gleam in her eye which Tom had never seen before. 'She
+just talked as if I were dirt, and that you were only marrying me for
+money. She don't like me and I don't like her, there!' and the indignant
+little girl began to cry.
+
+Tom laughed immoderately, and, passing his arm around her as they went
+down the stairs, he said:
+
+'Of course you don't like her. Who ever did like her mother-in-law? But
+you are marrying me, not my mother, so don't cry, _petite_.'
+
+Tom was making an effort to be very kind, and even lover-like to his
+_fiancee_, who was easily comforted, and who, on her return to Le Bateau
+told her father plainly that the party must be given up, as it would be
+sadly out of place and deeply offend the Tracys. Very unwillingly
+Peterkin gave it up, and sent word to that effect to Mrs.
+Rossiter-Browne, who had already been apprised of the coming event and
+was having a wonderful gown made for the occasion.
+
+'I find,' he wrote, 'that it wouldn't be at all _rachelshay_ to have a
+blow out whilst the family is in deep black; but when they git into
+lavender, and the young folks is home from their tower, I'll have a
+tearer.'
+
+Peterkin tried two or three times to see Mrs. Tracy, but she put him off
+with one excuse after another, until Tom took the matter in hand and
+told her she was acting like a fool and putting on quite too many airs.
+Then she appointed an interview, and, bracing herself with a tonic, went
+down to the darkened, cheerless room, and by her manner so managed to
+impress him with her superiority over him and his that he forgot
+entirely the speech he had prepared with infinite pains, and which had
+in it a good deal about family _bonds_, and family _units_, and _Aaron's
+beard_, and brotherly love. This he had rehearsed many times to May
+Jane, with wonderful gestures and flourishes; 'but, I'll be bumped' he
+said to her on his return from the Park House, 'if I didn't forget every
+blessed word, she was so high and mighty. Lord! as if I didn't know what
+she sprung from; but that's the way with them as was born to nothin'.
+May Jane, if I ever catch you puttin' on airs 'cause you're a Peterkin,
+I b'lieve I'll kill you!'
+
+After this, anything like familiar intercourse ceased between the heads
+of the two families until the morning after Christmas day, when Frank
+and Dolly drove over to Le Bateau, where were assembled the same people
+who had been present at Jerrie's wedding, and where Peterkin insisted
+upon darkening the rooms and lighting the gas, as something a little out
+of the usual order of things in Shannondale. Peterkin was very happy,
+and very proud of this alliance with the Tracy, and his pride and
+happiness shone in his face all through the ceremony; and when the
+clergyman asked, 'Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?' his
+manner was something grand to see as he stepped forward and responded,
+'I do, sir,' in a voice so loud and full of importance that Dolly
+involuntarily groaned, while Tom found it hard to refrain from laughing.
+
+Tom behaved very well, and kissed his bride before any one else had a
+chance to do so, and called May Jane mother and Peterkin father, after
+he saw the papers which made Ann Eliza own in her own right a million
+dollars; and when, an hour later, she handed over to him as his own, a
+deed of property valued at one hundred thousand dollars, he took her in
+his arms and kissed her again, telling her what was very true, that she
+was worth her weight in gold. Tom had felt his poverty keenly, and all
+the more so that Ann Eliza's engagement-ring, a superb solitaire, had
+actually been bought with her father's gift, as had their passage
+tickets to Europe. But now he was a rich man, made so by his wife's
+thoughtful generosity, and he was conscious of a new set of feelings and
+emotions with regard to her, and inwardly vowed that, so far as in him
+lay, he would make her happy.
+
+They took the train for New York that afternoon, accompanied by
+Peterkin, who, when the ship sailed away next day, stood upon the wharf
+waving his hands and calling out as long as they could hear him, 'God
+bless you, my children! God bless you, my children!' Then he went back
+to Shannondale and called at Tracy Park, and reported to Frank, the only
+one he saw, that the youngsters had gone, and that Mrs. Thomas Tracy
+looked as well as the best on 'em in the ship, and a darned sight better
+than some!
+
+After this the great houses of Le Bateau and Tracy Park settled down
+into perfect quiet, especially that of Tracy Park, where Dolly shut
+herself up in her mourning and crape, and Frank spent most of his time
+in Maude's room, with her photograph in his hand, and his thoughts busy
+with memories of the dear little girl lying in her grave of flowers
+under the winter snow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+AFTER TWO YEARS.
+
+
+Two years since Harold and Jerrie went away, and it was October again,
+and the doors and windows of the Park House were all open to the warm
+sunshine which filled the rooms, where the servants were flitting in and
+out with an air of importance and pleased expectancy, for that afternoon
+the master was coming home, with Harold and Jerrie; and what was more
+wonderful and exciting still, there was in the party a little boy, born
+in Wiesbaden six months before, and christened Frank Tracy. They had
+gone directly to Germany--Arthur, Harold, and Jerrie--for the former
+would not stop a day until Wiesbaden was reached; and there, overcome
+with fatigue and the recollections of the past which crowded upon him so
+fast, Arthur fell sick and was confined to his room in the hotel for a
+week, during which time Jerrie explored the city with Harold and a
+guide, finding every spot connected with Gretchen and her life, even to
+the shop were Frau Heinrich had sold her small wares.
+
+As soon as her father was able, she took him to them one by one. Hand in
+hand, for he seemed weak as a little child, they went to the bench under
+the trees where he had first seen Gretchen knitting in the sunshine,
+with the halo on her hair, and here Arthur took off his hat as if on
+consecrated ground, and whispered, 'May God forgive me!' then to the
+little shop once kept by Frau Heinrich, where Arthur astonished the
+woman by buying out half her stock, which he ordered sent to his hotel,
+and afterward gave away; then to the English church, where he knelt
+before the altar and seemed to be praying, though the words he said were
+spoken more to Gretchen than to God; then to the house where he had
+lived with his bride, when heaven came down so close that she could
+touch it, or rather, to the site of the house, for fire had done its
+work there and they could only stand before the ruins, while Arthur said
+again and again, 'May God forgive me!' then to the house where Jerrie
+had lived and Gretchen had died, and where the picture still hung upon
+the wall, a wonder and delight to all who had rented the place since
+Marian's parents parents lived there. Jerrie recognized it in a moment,
+and so did Arthur, but he could only wring his hands before it and sob,
+'Oh, Gretchen, my darling, my darling!' Changed as the house was, Jerrie
+found the room she remembered so well, where she had played and her
+mother had died.
+
+'The big stove stood here,' she said, indicating the spot, 'and mother
+sat there writing to you, when Nannine opened the door and let the
+firelight shine upon the paper. I can see it all so distinctly, and over
+there in the corner was the bed where she died.'
+
+Then Arthur knelt down upon the spot, and as if the oft-repeated
+ejaculation, 'May God forgive me!' were wholly inadequate now, he said
+the Lord's Prayer, with folded hands and streaming eyes, while Jerrie
+stood over him, with her arm around his neck.
+
+'Oh, Gretchen,' he cried; 'do you know I am here after so many
+years?--Arthur, your husband, who loved you through all? Come back to
+me, Gretchen, and I'll be so tender and true--tender and true! My heart
+is breaking, Gretchen, and only for Cherry, our dear little girl baby, I
+should wish I were dead, like you. Oh, Gretchen! Gretchen! sweetest wife
+a man ever called his! and yet I forgot you, darling--forgot that you
+had ever lived! May heaven forgive me for I could not help it; I forgot
+everything. Where are you, Cherry? It's getting so dark and cold, and
+Gretchen is not here--I think you must take me home.
+
+Jerrie took him back to the hotel, where he kept his room for three
+days, and then they went to Gretchen's grave beside her mother, which
+Jerrie had found after some little search and enquiry. Here Arthur stood
+like a statue, holding fast to Jerrie, and gazing down upon the
+neglected grave, on which clumps of withered grass were growing and
+blowing in the November wind.
+
+'Gretchen is not here in this place,' he said mournfully, with a shake
+of his head. 'She couldn't rest there a moment, for she liked everything
+beautiful and bright, and this is like the Potter's field. But we'll put
+up a monument for her, and make the place attractive; and by and by,
+when she is tired of wandering about, she may come back and rest when
+she sees what we have done, and knows that we have been here. We will
+buy that house too, he said, as he walked away from the lonely grave;
+and the next day Harold found the owner of the place and commenced
+negotiations for the house, which soon changed hands and became the
+property of Arthur.
+
+Just what he meant to do with it he did not know, until Jerrie suggested
+that he should make it an asylum for homeless children, who should
+receive the kindest and tenderest care from competent and trustworthy
+nurses, hired for the purpose.
+
+'Yes, I'll do it,' Arthur said, 'and will call it "The Gretchen Home."
+Maybe she will come there some time, and know what I have done.'
+
+This idea once in his mind, Arthur never let go of it until the house
+was fitted up with school-rooms and dormitories, with the little white
+beds and chairs suggestive of the little ones rescued from want and
+misery and placed in the Gretchen home until it would hold no more. The
+general supervision of this home was placed in the hands of the English
+rector, the Rev. James Dennis, whose many acts of kindness and humanity
+among the poor had won for him the sobriquet of St. James, and with whom
+the interests of the children were safe as with a loving father.
+
+'There is money enough--money enough,' said Arthur, when giving his
+instructions to the matron, a good-natured woman, who, he knew, would
+never abuse a child. 'Money enough; to give them something besides bread
+and water for breakfast, and mush and molasses for supper. Children like
+cookies and custard pie, and if there comes a circus to town let them go
+once in a while; it won't hurt them to see a little of the world.'
+
+Frau Hirch looked at him in some surprise, but promised compliance with
+his wishes; and when in the middle of December he left Wiesbaden for
+Italy he had the satisfaction of knowing that the inmates of the
+Gretchen home were enjoying a bill of fare not common in institutions of
+the kind.
+
+Another odd fancy had entered his brain, upon which he acted with his
+usual promptness. Every child not known to have been baptized, was to be
+christened with a new name, either Gretchen, or Jerrie, or Maude or
+Arthur, or Harold, or Frank.
+
+'Suppose you have Tom, and Ann Eliza, and Hilly,' Jerrie suggested, and
+after a little demur Arthur consented, and the names of Tom, and Ann
+Eliza, and Billy were added to the list, which, in the course of time,
+created some little confusion in the Gretchen home, where Jerries, and
+Maudes, and Harolds, and Arthurs abounded in great profusion, these
+being the favorites of the children, who in most instances were allowed
+to choose for themselves.
+
+It was not difficult to find in Wiesbaden people who had remembered
+Gretchen and the grand marriage she had made with the rich American, who
+afterward abandoned her. That was the way they worded it, and they
+remembered too, the little girl, Jerrine, whom, after her mother's
+death, the nurse, Nannine, took to her father's friends, since which
+nothing had been heard from her. Thus, had there been in Arthur's mind
+any doubt as to Jerrie's identity, it would have been swept away; but
+there was none. He had accepted her from the first as his daughter, and
+he always looked up to her as a child to its mother whom it fears to
+lose sight of.
+
+The winter was mostly spent in Rome, where Harold and Jerrie explored
+every part of the city, while Arthur staid in his room talking to an
+unseen Gretchen, who afforded him almost as much satisfaction as the
+real one might have done. In May they visited the lakes and in June
+drifted to Paris, where Jerrie was overjoyed to meet Nina and Dick, who
+were staying with the Raymonds at a charming chateau just outside the
+city. Here she and Harold passed a most enjoyable week, and before she
+left she was made happy by something which she saw and which told her
+that Dick was forgetting that night under the pines, and that some day
+not far in the future he would find in Marian all he had once hoped to
+find in her. In Paris, too, she came one day upon Ann Eliza at the Bon
+Marche, with silks and satins piled high around her, and two or three
+obsequious clerks in attendance, for La Petite Americaine, who bought so
+lavishly everything she saw and fancied, was well known to the
+tradespeople, who eagerly sought her patronage and that of my lord
+monsieur, who inspired them greatly with his air of importance and
+dignity. Tom was enjoying himself immensely, and was really a good deal
+improved and a good deal in love with his little wife, whom he always
+addressed as Petite or Madame, and who was quite a belle and a general
+favorite in the American colony. Following a fashion, which Tom was sure
+had been made for his benefit, she had cut off her obnoxious red hair
+and substituted in its place a wig of reddish brown, which for
+naturalness and beauty was a marvel of art and skill, and became her so
+well that Tom really thought her handsome, or at least very stylish and
+stunning, which was better than mere beauty. They had a suite of rooms
+at the Continental, and there Harold and Jerrie dined with them in their
+private parlor, for Tom was quite too fine a gentleman to go to _table
+d'hote_ with the common herd. Ann Eliza's grand maid, Doris, was with
+her still, and had come to look upon her young mistress as quite as
+great a personage as the Lady Augusta Hardy, whom she had ceased to
+quote, and who, with her mother, Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, was now in the
+city, attended, it was said, by a Polish count, who had an eye upon her
+money. Once, when they were alone, Jerrie asked Tom when he was going
+home, and, with a comical twinkle in his eye, he replied, 'When I hear
+that my respected father-in-law has gone off with apoplexy, and not
+before.' Jerrie thought this a shocking speech, but she was glad to see
+him so happy, and, as she told Harold, 'so much more of a man than she
+had ever supposed he could be.'
+
+That summer Harold and Jerrie spent in Switzerland, with the Raymonds
+and St. Claires and Tracys, while Arthur went to Wiesbaden to see to the
+Gretchen Home, which he found so much to his taste that he remained
+there until Harold and Jerrie, after a trip through Austria and Germany,
+joined him in November, when they went again for the winter to Italy,
+coming back in the spring to Wiesbaden, and because Arthur would have it
+so, taking up their abode for a while in the Gretchen Home, which had
+been greatly enlarged and improved, and now held thirty deserted and
+homeless children. Here, in April, Jerrie's little boy was born, in the
+same room and corner where Gretchen had died, and where Arthur again
+went down upon his knees and said the Lord's Prayer, to which he added a
+fervent thanksgiving for Jerrie spared and a baby given to him.
+
+'I hoped it would be a girl,' he said, 'for then we should have called
+it Gretchen; but as it is a boy, suppose we name it Heinrich?'
+
+'No, father,' Jerrie said decidedly, 'Baby is not to be Heinrich, or
+Arthur, or Harold, although I think the last the dearest name in the
+world,' and she put up her hand caressingly to the brown beard of the
+tall young man bending over to kiss her pale face and look at his son.
+'We will call the baby Frank Tracy.'
+
+And so Frank Tracy was the name given to the child, who was more like
+its father than its mother, and whom Arthur called Tracy, which he liked
+better, he said, than he did Frank.
+
+They remained in Wiesbaden until June, then went to Switzerland and
+Paris, and in October sailed for home, where the Park House was ready
+for them, with no mistress to dispute Jerrie's rights and no master
+except the lawful one. Just out of town on a grassy ridge overlooking
+the river, a gentleman from New York had built a pretty little cottage,
+which, as his wife died suddenly, he never occupied, but offered for
+sale, with all its furniture and appointments.
+
+'Let's buy it,' Dolly said to her husband. 'We must go somewhere before
+Arthur comes home, and we can live there very respectably and
+economically, too.'
+
+She was beginning to count the cost of everything now, and was almost
+penurious in her efforts to make their income go as far as possible. So
+they bought the pretty place, which she called Ridge Cottage, but Frank
+did not live to occupy it. After Tom went away and left him alone with
+his wife, who was not the most agreeable of companions, he failed
+rapidly, both in body and mind, and those who saw him walking about the
+house, with his white hair and bent form, would have said he was seventy
+rather than fifty years old. Every day, when the weather permitted, he
+visited Maude's grave, where he sometime stayed for hours looking down
+upon the mound talking to the insensible clay beneath.
+
+'I am coming soon, Maude, very soon, to be here beside you,' he would
+say. 'Everybody has gone, even to Tom, and your mother is sometimes hard
+upon me because of what I did. And I am tired, and cold, and old, and
+the world is dark and dreary, and I am coming very soon.'
+
+Then he would walk slowly back, taking the post office on his way, to
+inquire for letters from the folks, as he designated the absent ones.
+These letters were a great comfort to him, especially those from Jerrie,
+who wrote him very often and told him all they were doing and seeing,
+and tried to make him understand how much she loved and sympathised with
+him. Not a hint had been given him of the baby; and when, in June, he
+received a letter from her containing a photograph of the little boy
+named for him, he seemed childish in his joy, and started with the
+picture at once for Maude's grave. Kneeling down, with his face in the
+long grass, he whispered:
+
+'Look, Maude!--Jerrie's baby boy, named for me--Frank Tracy! Do you hear
+me, Maude? Frank Tracy, for me--who wronged her so. God bless Jerrie,
+and give her many years of happiness when I am dead and gone, which will
+not now be long. I am coming very soon, Maude; sooner than you think,
+and shall never see Jerrie's little boy, God bless him!'
+
+That night Frank seemed brighter than usual, and talked a great deal
+with his wife, who, to the last day of her life, was glad that she was
+kind to him and humored all his fancies; and once, when he lay upon the
+couch, with the baby's picture in his hand, she went and sat by him and
+ran her fingers caressingly through his white hair, and asked if he were
+not better.
+
+'Yes, Dolly,' he said, taking her fingers in his hand and holding them
+fast. 'A great deal better. Jerrie's baby has done me good, and you,
+too, Dolly. You don't knew how nice it seems to have you smooth my hair;
+it is like the old days at Langley, when we sang in the choir together,
+and you were fond of me.'
+
+'I am fond of you now, Frank,' Dolly replied, as she stooped to kiss the
+face in which there was a look she had never seen before, and which
+haunted her long after he had said good-night and gone to Maude's room,
+where he said he would sleep, as he was likely to be restless and might
+keep her awake.
+
+The next morning Dolly took her breakfast alone, for Frank did not join
+her.
+
+'Let him sleep,' she said to the servant, who suggested calling him; but
+when some time later, he did not appear, she went herself to Maude's
+room, into which the noonday sun was shining, for every blind and window
+was open and the light was so dazzling that for a moment she did not see
+the still figure stretched upon the bed, where with Maude's picture in
+one hand and Jerrie's baby's in the other, her husband lay, calmly
+sleeping the sleep which knows no waking.
+
+On his face there was a look of rapturous joy, and on his lips a smile
+as if they were framing the loved name of Maude when death came and
+sealed them forever. Around him was no sign of struggle or pain, for the
+covering was not disturbed; and the physician when he came said he must
+have died quietly and possibly instantly without a note of warning. They
+buried him beside his daughter and then Dolly was alone in the great
+house, which became so intolerable to her that she left it early in
+August and took possession of the cottage on the Ridge, which, though
+scarcely less lovely, was not as large as the Park House and did not
+seem haunted with the ghosts of the dead.
+
+And so it happened that Mrs. Crawford alone stood in the door-way to
+welcome the travellers when, late in the bright October afternoon they
+came, tired and dusty, but oh, so glad to be home once more and to feel
+that now it really was home to all intents and purposes.
+
+'I never was so glad in my life, and if Uncle Frank were here I should
+be perfectly happy,' Jerrie cried, as she threw herself upon Mrs.
+Crawford's neck, hugging and kissing her awhile, and then taking her
+baby from the nurse she put it into the old lady's arms, saying as she
+did so:
+
+'Another grandson for you--Harold's baby. Isn't he a beauty?'
+
+And little Tracy was a most beautiful child, with his father's features
+and complexion, but Jerrie's expression and ways, and Mrs. Crawford
+felt, as she folded him to her bosom and cried over him, that he would
+be the crowning joy of her old age. At first Harold puzzled and
+perplexed her, he was so changed from the Harold who had shingled roofs
+and painted barns and worked in Peterkin's furnace. Foreign travel and
+prosperity set well upon him, and one could scarcely have found a more
+refined or polished young man than Harold as he moved about the
+premises, every inch a gentleman and every inch the master, with a
+bright smile and pleasant word for everyone, whether of high or low
+degree. He had known what poverty meant, with slights on account of it,
+and had risen above it all, and remembering the days when he worked in
+the Tracy fields and envied his companions their leisure and freedom
+from toil, he had resolved that, if possible, some portion of mankind
+should be happier because of him. He knew he was very fine-looking, for
+his tailor told him so, and his mirror told him so, and Jerrie told him
+so twenty times a day as she kissed his handsome face, and his
+grandmother frequently took off her spectacles to wipe away her glad
+tears as she looked at her boy and felt so proud of him.
+
+All Shannondale hastened to call upon the travellers, and no one was
+louder or more demonstrative in his welcome than Peterkin, who called
+himself their _kin_, and was very proud of the connection and of his son
+_Thomas_, for whom he made many inquiries. It did not take long for the
+family to settle down into every-day quiet, Jerrie proving herself a
+competent and thorough housekeeper, while Harold was to all intents and
+purposes the head to whom everyone deferred and went for directions.
+Arthur, who had half died from seasickness, had at once taken to his
+rooms and his old mode of life, telling Harold and Jerrie to do what
+they liked and not bother him. One change, however, he made; he put
+Harold into the office in the place of Colvin, who had done his business
+for so many years, and who was glad to give it up, while Harold was glad
+to take it, as it gave him something to do and did not greatly interfere
+with his law studies, which he immediately resumed, applying himself so
+closely that he was admitted to practice within the year, and in time
+became one of the ablest lawyers in the State.
+
+And now there remains but little to do except to gather up the few
+tangled threads of our story and bring it to a close. For another year
+the Raymonds and St. Claires remained abroad, and then, just before they
+sailed for home, there was a double wedding one morning in London, when
+Fred and Dick were the bridegrooms, and Marian and Nina were the brides.
+Dick had not forgotten the night under the pines, but he had ceased to
+remember it with pain; and when he asked Marian to be his wife he told
+her of it, and of his old love for Jerrie, while she in turn told him of
+a grave among the Alps by which she had stood with an aching heart,
+while strangers buried from her sight forever a young artist from
+Boston, who, had he lived, would have made it impossible for her to be
+the wife of Dick St. Claire. But Allan was dead, and Jerrie was a wife
+and mother, and so across the graves of a living and a dead love the two
+grasped hands, and, forgetting the past as far as possible, were content
+with the new happiness offered to them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is five years now since Harold and Jerrie came home, and toddling
+about the house is a little girl two years old, whom they call Gretchen,
+and who has all the soft beauty of the Gretchen in the picture, together
+with Jerrie's stronger and more marked features. This little girl is
+Arthur's idol, and has succeeded in luring him from his den, in which,
+until she came, he was staying closer than ever. Now, however, he is
+with her constantly, either in the house or in the grounds, or sitting
+under a tree holding her in his lap, while he talks his strange talk to
+the other Gretchen, and the child listens wonderingly, with her great
+blue eyes fixed upon him.
+
+'This is our grandchild,' he will say, nodding to the space beside him,
+while little Gretchen nods too, as if she also saw a figure sitting
+there. 'Our grandchild and Jerrie's baby, and you are its grandmother.
+Grandma Gretchen! That's funny;' and then he laughs, and baby laughs,
+and says after him, lispingly, 'Danma Detchen, that's funny.'
+
+Then Tracy comes up with his whip and his cart, and his straw hat
+hanging down his back, and Arthur points him out to the spirit Gretchen
+as her grandson, who, he says, is all Hastings, with a very little Tracy
+and not a grain of German in him, 'but very nice, very nice; and you are
+his grandmother, too, and I am his grandfather, whom he once called an
+old crazy man because I wouldn't let him play in my room with a little
+alligator which his Aunt Dolly sent him from Florida.'
+
+'Well, you be crazy, ain't you?' the boy says, seating himself upon the
+bench and nestling his brown head against the arm of the man, who
+replies:
+
+'I don't know whether I am or not, but if to be very happy in the
+companionship of the living and of the dead, and to have one as real as
+the other is craziness, then I am crazy.'
+
+And then, for the hundredth time, he tells to the boy, and to the baby,
+too, who seems to understand the story of the carpet-bag and the little
+girl, their mother, whom the boy, their father, found in the Tramp House
+one wintry morning years ago, and carried through the snow. And Tracy
+starts to his feet with dilating eyes, and says:
+
+'I just wish I'd been there. I'd carried mamma, and wouldn't let her
+drop in the snow as papa did. Where was I then, grandpa?'
+
+But grandpa does not answer, and begins the story of the cherries and
+the ladder, which Tracy likes even better than that of the carpet bag,
+particularly the part where the white sun-bonnet appears in the window,
+and the shrill voice calls out: 'Mr. Crazyman, Mr. Crazyman, don't you
+want some cherries?'
+
+This Arthur makes very dramatic and real, and Tracy holds his breath;
+and sometimes when the question is more real than usual, little Gretchen
+puts out her hand, and says:
+
+'_Iss_, div me some.'
+
+Then the boy and the old man laugh, and Tracy runs off after a passing
+butterfly, and Arthur goes on with talk to the baby and the other
+Gretchen beside him, until the former falls asleep, and he takes her to
+the crib he has had put in the bay window under the picture which smiles
+down upon the sleeping infant, whose guardian angel it seems to be.
+
+The Tramp House has been repaired and renovated, the table mended, and
+the rat hole stopped up; and the trio frequently go there together, for
+it is the children's play-house, where Arthur is sometimes a horse,
+sometimes a bear, and sometimes a whole menagerie of animals. Once or
+twice he has been the dead woman on the table, with little Gretchen
+beside him in the carpet-bag, and Tracy tugging with all his might to
+lift her out; but after the day when he let her fall, and gave her a big
+bump upon the forehead, that kind of play ceased, and the boy was
+compelled to try some other make believe than that of the tragedy on the
+wintry night many years before.
+
+Billy Peterkin has never married, and never will. His heart-wound was
+too deep to heal without a scar to tell where it had been; but he and
+Jerrie are the best of friends, and he is very fond of her children.
+
+Tom is still abroad, waiting for that fit of apoplexy which is to be the
+signal for his return; but the probabilities are that he will wait a
+long time, for Peterkin, who is himself afraid of apoplexy, has gone
+through the Banting process, which has reduced his weight from fifty to
+seventy-five pounds, and as he is very careful in his diet Tom may stay
+abroad longer than he cares to do, unless Ann Eliza's persuasions bring
+him home to his dreaded father-in-law. There was a little girl born to
+them in Rome, whom they called Maude, but she only lived a few weeks,
+and then they buried her under the daisies in the Protestant burying
+ground, where so many English and Americans are lying. Ann Eliza sent a
+lock of the little one's hair to her father, who had it framed and hung
+in his bedroom, and wore on his hat a band of crape which nearly covered
+it.
+
+Dolly still calls the Ridge Cottage her home, but she is not often
+there, for a mania for travelling has seized her, and she is always upon
+the move, searching for some new place, where she hopes to find rest and
+quiet. She still dresses in black, relieved at times with something
+white, but she has laid aside crape and sports her diamonds, which she
+did not find it necessary to sell, and which attract a great deal of
+attention, they are so clear and large. One year she spent in Europe
+with Tom and Ann Eliza, the latter of whom she made so uncomfortable
+with her constant dictation and assumption of superiority that Tom at
+last came to the rescue, and told her either to mind her business and
+let his wife alone or go home. As she could not do the former she came
+home, and joined a Raymond party to California, but soon separated
+herself from it, as the members were not to her taste. Every summer she
+goes either to Saratoga or the sea-side or the mountains, and every
+winter she drifts southward to Florida, where, at certain hotels, she is
+as well known as the oldest _habituee_. We saw her recently at Winter
+Park, where, at the Seminole, she has a maid and a suit of rooms, and as
+far as possible keeps herself aloof from the common herd, consorting
+only with the noted ones of the place, those she knows who have money
+and position at home. Poor foolish Dolly, who has forgotten Langley and
+its humble surroundings. There are many like her in real life, but only
+one in our story, to which we now write
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
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