On the old brass ring the key to the trunk and carpet-bag were still fastened, together with the small straight key, for which no use had ever been found.  Jerrie had never thought much about this key before, but now she held it in her hand a long, long time, while the conviction grew that this was the key to the mystery; that could she find the article which this unlocked, she would know what she so longed to know—­something definite with regard to herself.  But where to look she could not guess; and with her brain in a whirl which threatened a violent headache, she closed the chest at last, and crept wearily to bed just as the clock, which Peterkin had set up in one of his towers, struck for half-past ten, and Grace Atherton’s carriage was rolling down the avenue from the big dinner at the Park House.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE NEXT DAY.

Jerrie was astir the next morning almost as soon as the first robin begin to sing under her window.  She had left a blind open, and the red beams of the rising sun fell upon her face and roused her from a dream of Germany and what she meant to do there.  Once fairly awake, Germany seemed far away, as did the fancies of the previous night.  The spell, mesmeric, or clairvoyant, or whatever one chooses to call it, was broken, and she was only Jerrie Crawford again, dressing herself rapidly and noiselessly so as not to awaken her grandmother, who slept in the room beneath hers.

‘I shall get the start of her,’ she said, as she donned a simple working dress which had done her service during the summer vacations for three successive years.  ’I heard her telling Harold last night to have the tubs and water ready early, for she had put off the Monday’s washing until I came home, as I was sure to bring a pile of soiled clothes.  And I have; but, my dear grandmother, your poor old twisted hands will not touch them.  What is a great strapping girl like me for, I’d like to know, if it is not to wash her own clothes, and yours, too?’ and Jerrie nodded resolutely at the fresh young face in the mirror, which nodded back with a smile of approbation of the tout ensemble of the figure reflected in the glass.

And truly it was a very pretty and piquant picture which she, made in her neat calico dress, which, as it was three years old at least, was a little too short for her, and showed plainly her red stockings and high-heeled slippers, with the strap around her instep.  Her sleeves were short, for she had cut them off and arranged them in a puff above her elbows to save rolling them up, and her white bib-apron was fastened on each shoulder with a knot of blue ribbon, Harold’s favorite color.  She had thoroughly brushed her beautiful wavy hair, and then twisting it into a mass of curls had tucked it under a coquettish muslin cap, whose narrow frill just shaded her lovely face.  ’You look like a peasant girl, and I believe you are a peasant girl, and ought to be working in the fields of Germany this minute,’ she said to herself with a mocking courtesy, as she left the mirror and descended to the kitchen, where, early as it was, she found Harold warming some coffee over a fire of chips, and cutting a slice of dry bread.