CHAPTER XXVI.

MAUDE’S LETTER.

    TRACY PARK, June ——­, 18—.

’My darling Jerrie:—­I wish I could send you a whiff of the delicious air I am breathing this morning from the roses under my window and the pond-lilies which Harold brought me about an hour ago.  Don’t you think he was up before the sun, and went out upon the river to get them for me because he knows how fond I am of them, and I told him yesterday that they always made me think of you, they are an sweet, and pure, and fair.  I wish you could have seen him, or, rather, have heard his voice and seen the look in his eyes, as he said:  “Yes; Jerrie is the lily and you are the rose; you set each other off admirably.  I am glad you are so good friends.”

’Harold thinks the world of you, Jerrie, and were you his own sister, I am sure he could not love you better than he does.  How handsome he has grown since I went away.  I always thought him splendid-looking, but he is more than that now; so tall and straight, with his head set on his shoulders in such an aristocratic kind of way, and then his eyes, which look at you so—­well, I don’t know how they do look at you, but they are eyes you would trust and never be afraid of anything bad behind them.  Uncle Arthur says his mother was lovely, and that his father was one of the handsomest men of his time, but I am certain that Harold looks better than either of them, and has inherited the good qualities of both, without a single bad one.  He is so nice and gentlemanly, and has such a kind, courteous way of saying and doing things.  Fred Raymond—­who, you know, is so sweet on Nina St. Clair—­says that if Harold had all the blood of a hundred kings in his veins he could not be more courtly or dignified in his manner than he is, and that is a great deal for a Kentuckian to say.  Fred is now at Grassy Spring, visiting Dick St. Claire, and will stay until Nina comes home.  I wish Harold was rich, and if I had money of my own, I believe I’d give it to him, only he wouldn’t take it, he is so awfully proud, and afraid somebody will help him; and yet I respect him for the pride, which has made him teach school, and do everything he could find to do in order to go through college the last two years and pay his own way.  But I did not like it a bit when I heard he had accepted a situation in Peterkin’s furnace.  I know he had good wages, but it is dreadful to think of Harold under such a man, even if Billy is there.  When I told Uncle Arthur he laughed, and said:  “Honor and shame from no condition rise.”  I wonder what he meant?  I asked Tom, and he said I was a fool.

’Weren’t you proud of Harold, though, the day he graduated?  What an oration that was! and how the building shook with applause when he came on and when he went off!  And do you remember the expression of his face when he picked up the bouquet of roses I threw him, and