In this way he managed to lay aside quite a little sum of money, besides paying his interest to Arthur, and when Maude came home from Europe in March he felt himself warranted in beginning to raise the roof.  He was naturally a mechanic, and would have made a splendid carpenter; he was also something of an architect, and sketched upon paper the changes he proposed making.  The roof was to be raised over Jerrie’s room; there was to be a pretty bay-window at the south, commanding a view of the Collingwood grounds and the river.  There was to be another window on a side, but whether to the east or the west he could not quite decide.  There was to be a dressing-room and large closet, while the main room was to be carried up in the centre, after the fashion of a church, and to be ceiled with narrow strips of wood painted alternately with a pale blue and gray.  He showed the sketch to his grandmother, who approved it, just as she approved everything he did, but suggested that he submit it to Maude Tracy, who she heard, had become an artist and had a studio; so he took the plan to Maude, explaining it to her, and saying it was to be a surprise to Jerrie, when she came home for good in the summer.  Maude was interested and enthusiastic at once, and entered heart and soul into the matter, making some suggestions which Harold adopted, and deciding for him where the extra window was to be placed.

‘Put it to the east,’ she said, ’for Jerrie is always looking toward the rising sun, because, she says her old home is that way.  And, besides, she can see the Tramp House she is so fond of.  For my part, I think it a poky place, and never like to pass it after dark, lest I should see the dark woman standing in the door, with the candle in her hand, crying for help.  Where was Jerry then, I wonder!  In the carpet-bag, asleep, perhaps.  Wouldn’t that make a very effective picture!  The storm, the open door, the frantic woman in it, with the candle held high over her head, and Jerrie clutching her dress behind, with her great blue eyes staring out in the darkness.  That is the way I have always seen it since you told me about it, and the light you saw.  I mean to paint the picture, and hang it in the new room as another surprise to Jerrie.’

‘Oh, don’t!’ Harold said, with a shudder.  ’Jerrie would not like it.  It almost killed her when she first knew of the cry which Mr. Arthur heard, and the light I saw that night.  She insisted upon knowing everything there was to know; and when I told her all the color left her face, and for a moment she sat rigid as a stone, with a look I shall never forget, and then she cried as I never saw anybody cry before.  This was three years ago, and she has never spoken to me of it since.’

Harold’s voice trembled as he talked, while Maude cried outright.  The idea of the picture was given up, and she went back to the subject of the new room in which she seemed quite as much interested as Harold himself.  When the roof was raised, and the floor laid, and the frame-work of the bay-window up, she went nearly every day to the cottage to watch the progress of the work, and to keep Harold’s one hired man up to the mark, if he showed the least sign of lagging.