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.