CHAPTER XXIX.

WHY HAROLD DID NOT GO TO VASSAR.

The cottage in the lane, as its name implied, was not very pretentious, and all its rooms were small and low, and mostly upon the ground floor, except the one which Jerrie had occupied since she had grown too large for the crib by Mrs. Crawford’s bed.  In this room, in which there was but one window, and where the roof slanted down on both sides, Jerrie kept all her possessions—­her playthings and her books, and the trunk and carpet-bag which had been found when she was found.  Here she had cut off her hair and slept on the floor, to see how it would seem, and here she had enacted many a play, in which the scenes and characters were all of the past.  For the cold in winter she did not care at all, and when in summer the nights were close and hot, she drew her little bed to the open window and fell asleep while thinking how warm she was.  That she ought to have a better room had never occurred to her, and never had she found a word of fault or repined at her humble surroundings, so different from those of her girl friends.  Only, as she grew taller, she had sometimes laughingly said that if the kept on she should not much longer be able to stand upright in her den, as she called it.

‘I hit my head now everywhere except in the middle,’ she once said.  ’I wonder if we can’t some time manage to raise the roof.’

The words were spoken thoughtlessly, and almost immediately forgotten by Jerrie:  but Harold treasured them up, and began at once to devise ways and means to raise the roof and give Jerrie a room more worthy of her.  This was just after he had left college, and there was hanging over him his debt to Arthur and the support of his grandmother.  The first did not particularly disturb him, for he knew that Arthur would wait any length of time, while the latter seemed but a trifle to a strong, robust young man.  Mrs. Crawford was naturally very economical, and could make one dollar go further than most people could two; so that very little sufficed for their daily wants when Jerrie was away.

‘I must earn money somehow,’ Harold thought, ’and must seek work where I can do the best, even if it is from Peterkin.’

So, swallowing his pride, he went to Peterkin’s office and asked for work.  Once before, when a boy of eighteen, and sorely pressed, he had done the same thing, and met with a rebuff from the foreman, who said to him gruffly: 

’No, sir; we don’t want no more boys; leastwise, gentlemen boys.  We’ve had enough of ’em.  Try t’other furnace.  Mr. Warner is allus takin’ all kinds of trash, out of pity, and if he says “No,” go to his wife; she’ll get you in.’

But the Warner factory, where Harold had once worked, was full of boys, whom the kind-hearted employer, or his wife, or both, had taken in, and there was no place for Harold.  So he waited awhile until Jerrie needed a new dress and his grandmother a bonnet, and then he tried Peterkin again, and this time with success.