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.