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?’