‘Not if I can help it,’ was his reply, although, as the reader knows, he came near letting it out twice, but held on in time, so that the raised roof was still a secret from Jerrie when she reached the station and was met by Maude and Harold.

The room, was all ready, and a most inviting looking room it was, with its pretty carpet of blue and drab, and a delicate shading of pink in it; its cottage furniture, simple, but suitable; its muslin curtains and chintz covered lounge, and the willow chair and round table, which Maude had insisted upon furnishing.  She would have some part in furnishing the room, she said, and Harold allowed her to get the chair, which she put by the window looking toward the Tramp House, and the round table, which stood in the bay-window, with a Japanese bowl upon it filled with the lilies Harold had gathered in the early morning.  He had found it impossible to go to Vassar there were so many last things to be done, and so little money left in his purse with which to make the journey, and as Maude had more confidence in her own taste for the arrangement of furniture than in his, she too decided to remain at home and see it through.  The carpet was not put down until the morning of the day when the young men started for Vassar, and it was the noise of the tack-hammer which Tom had heard and likened to the shingling of a roof.

‘There must be flowers everywhere, Jerrie is so fond of them,’ Maude said; and she brought great baskets full from the park gardens, and a costly Dresden vase, which Arthur had left for Jerrie when he went away, together with his card and his photograph, and a note in which he had written as follows: 

’MY DEAR CHILD:—­Welcome, welcome home again.  I wish I could see you when your blue eyes first look upon the room I came so near telling you about.  Maude would have killed me if I had.  You have no idea how Harold has worked to get it done, and where he got the money is more than I know.  Pinched himself, in every way, of course.  He is a noble fellow, Jerrie.  But you know that.  I saw it in your face at Vassar, and saw something else, too, which you may think is a secret.  Will talk with you about it when I come home.  I am off to-morrow for California.  Would like to take you with me.  Maybe I shall meet with robbers in the Yosemite.  I’d rather like to.  God bless you!

    ‘ARTHUR TRACY.’

‘Uncle Arthur was very queer the day he went away,’ Maude said to Harold, as she put the note, and the photograph, and the card upon the dressing-bureau.  ’I heard him talking to Gretchen, and saying, “Gretchen, Gretchen, Jerrie will be here by-and-by, to keep you company while I am gone—­little Jerrie, when I first knew her, but a great tall Jerrie now, with the air of a duchess.  Yes, Jerrie is coming, Gretchen.”  How he loves her—­Jerrie, I mean; and I do not wonder, do you?’

Harold’s mouth was full of tacks and he did not reply, but went steadily on with his work until everything was done.