’I will find that house, and that picture, and that Mr. Carter, and the people who lived there before him,’ she said to herself; and then again, addressing Marian, she asked: 

‘What was the street, and the number of that house?’

Marian told her the street, but could not remember the number, while Tom said, laughingly: 

’Why, Jerrie, what makes you so much interested in an old German house?  Do you expect to go there and live in it?’

‘Yes,’ Jerrie replied, in the same light tone.  ’I am going to Germany sometime—­going to Wiesbaden, and I mean to find that house and the picture which Miss Raymond says I am so much like; then I shall know how I look to others.  You remember the couplet: 

  ’"Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us,
     To see ourselfs as others see us!”

’Look in the glass there, the best one you can find, and you’ll see yourself as others see you,’ Dick said, gallantly.

Before Jerrie could reply, a servant appeared on the piazza, saying there was some one at the telephone asking for Mr. Peterkin.

It proved to be Billy’s father, who was in the village, and had received a telegram from Springfield concerning a lawsuit which was pending between himself and a rival firm, which claimed that he had infringed upon their patents.  Before replying to the telegram he wished to confer with his son, who was to come at once to the hotel, and, if necessary, go to Springfield that night.

‘B-by Jove,’ Billy said, as he returned to the piazza and explained the matter, ’it’s t-t-too bad that I must g-go, when I’m enjoying m-myself t-t-tip-top.  I wish that lawsuit was in Gu-Guinea.’

Then turning to Ann Eliza he asked how she would get home if he did nut return.

‘Oh, don’t trouble about me.  I can take care of myself,’ Ann Eliza said, with a bounce up in her chair, which set every loose hair of her frowzy head to flying.

‘M-m-maybe they’ll send the ca-carriage,’ Billy went on, ’and if they do-don’t, m-may be you can g-go with T-Tom as far as his house, and then you wo-wont be afraid.’

Tom could have killed the little man for having thus made it impossible for him not to see his sister safely home.  He had fully intended to forestall Dick, and go with Jerrie if Harold did not come, for though she had refused him, he wished to keep her as a friend, hoping that in time she might be led to reconsider.  He liked to hear her voice—­to look into her face—­to be near her, and the walk in the moonlight, with her upon his arm, had been something very pleasant to contemplate, and now it was snatched from him by Billy’s ill-advised speech, and old Peterkin’s red-haired daughter thrust upon him.  It was rather hard, and Tom’s face was very gloomy and dark for the remainder of the evening, while they sat upon the piazza and laughed, and talked, and said the little nothings so pleasant to the young and so meaningless to the old who have forgotten their youth.