‘Indeed he will,’ Jerrie exclaimed, rousing at once in Harold’s defence.  ‘He will pay every dollar, and I shall help him.’

‘You!’ and Arthur laughed, merrily, ’How will you help him, I’d like to know.’

’I shall teach school, or give music lessons, or do both to earn something for grandmother,’ Jerrie answered, quickly.  ’And I shall help Harold, and shall pay Mr. Frank all he gave grandmother for my board.  I know just how much it is.  Three dollars a week from the time I was four years old until I was sixteen and came here to school—­almost two thousand dollars; a big sum, I know, but I shall pay it.  You will see,’ she went on rapidly and earnestly; as she saw the amused look on Arthur’s face, and felt that he was laughing at her.

’You are going to pay my brother to the uttermost farthing, but what of me?  Am I to be left in the cold?’ he asked, as he arose from the table and seated himself upon the sofa near the window.

‘I expect to be your debtor all my life,’ Jerrie said, as went over to him and laid her soft, white arms around his neck.  ’I can never pay you for all you have done for me, never.  I can only love you, which I do so dearly, as the kindest and best of men.’

She was stooping over him now; and putting up his hands Arthur drew her close to him, so that the two faces were again plainly reflected, side by side in the mirror opposite—­the man’s gentle and tender as a woman’s, the girl’s flushed, and eager, and excited as she caught a second time the likeness which had made her cold and faint when she first saw it, and which made her faint again as she clasped her hands tightly together, and leaning a little forward, looked earnestly at the faces in the mirror, while she listened to what Arthur was saying.

’You owe me nothing, Cherry; the indebtedness is all on my side, and has been since the day when a little white sun-bonnet showed itself at my window, and a clear, ringing voice, which I can hear yet, said to me, “Mr. Crazyman, don’t you want some cherries?” You don’t know how much of life and sunshine you brought me with the cherries.  My sky was very black those days, and but for you I am certain that I should long ere this have been what you called me—­a crazy man for sure, locked up behind bars and bolts.  My little Cherry has been all the world to me; and though she is very grand, and tall, and stately now, I love to remember her as the child in the sun-bonnet, clinging to the ladder, and talking to the lunatic inside.  That would make a fine picture, and it I were an artist I would paint it some day.  Perhaps Maude will.  Poor little Maude!  Did I tell you that while she was absent she dabbled in water-colors? and now she has what she calls a studio, where she perpetrates the most atrocious daubs you ever saw.  Poor Maude!  She is weak in the upper story, but is, on the whole, a nice girl, and very pretty, too, with her black eyes, and brilliant color, and kittenish ways.