’Why, Jerrie, what made you get up till I called you?  Why didn’t you lie and rest?’

‘Lie and rest,’ Jerrie answered laughingly.  ’It is you who are to lie and rest, and not a great overgrown girl like me.  I have given Harold his breakfast and seen him off.  I cooked him half the steak,’ she added as she took out the remaining half and put it on the gridiron.  ’I don’t care for steak,’ she continued, as she saw Mrs. Crawford about to protest.  ’I would rather any time have bread and milk and strawberries.  I shall never tire of them;’ and the big bowl full which she ate with a keen relish, proved that she spoke the truth.

‘Now, grandma,’ she said, when breakfast was over.  ’I am going to do the work, washing and all.  I must do something to work off my superfluous health, and strength, and muscle.  Look at that arm, will you?’ and she threw out her bare arm, which for whiteness and roundness and symmetry of proportion, might have been coveted by the most fashionable lady in the land.  ’Go back to your rocking-chair and rest your dear, old lame foot on your softest cushion, and see how soon I will have everything done.  It is just seven now, and by ten we shall be all slicked up, as Ann Eliza Peterkin says.’

It was of no use to try to resist Jerrie.  She would have her own way; and so Mrs. Crawford, after skimming her milk and attending to the cream, went to her rocking-chair and her cushion, and sat there quietly, while Jerrie in the woodshed pounded and rubbed, and boiled and rinsed, and wrung and starched and blued, and hung upon the line article after article, until there remained only a few towels and aprons and stockings and socks, and a pair of colored overalls which Harold had worn at his work.  As these last were rather soiled and had no them patches of paint, Jerrie was attacking them with a will, when her grandmother called out in great trepidation: 

’Jerrie, Jerrie, do wipe your hands and come quick!  Here’s Tom Tracy hitching his horse at the gate.’

Jerrie’s first impulse was to do as her grandmother bade her, and her second to stay where she was.

‘If Tom chooses to call so early he must take me as he finds me,’ she thought, while to her grandmother she said:  ’Nonsense!  Who cares for Tom Tracy?  If he asks for me send him to the woodshed.  I can’t stop my work.’

In a moment the elegant Tom, fresh from his perfumed bath, the odor of which still lingered about him, and faultlessly attired in a cool summer suit, was bending his tall figure in the door-way of the woodshed where Jerrie, who was rubbing away on Harold’s overalls, received him with a nod and a smile, as she said: 

’Good-morning, Tom.  You are up early, and so was I. Business before pleasure, you know; so I hope you will excuse me if I keep right on.  I have stinted myself to get through, mopping and all, by ten, and it is now nine by Peterkin’s bell.  Pray be seated.  How is Maude?’