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.