‘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.