were his he’d tear the old hut down and start anew.  Peterkin, too, made remarks about its being out of proportion to the rest of the house, and wondered where Harold got the money, and why he didn’t do this and that, but supposed he couldn’t afford it, adding that “beggars couldn’t be choosers.”  When Harold heard all that, he was tired, and nervous, and sick, and discouraged, and his hands were blistered and bruised with hard work.  His head was aching, and he just put it on that table, where you are sitting, and cried like a baby.  When I tried to comfort him, he said, “It isn’t the hard work, grandmother; I don’t mind that in the least; neither do I care for what they say, or should not, if there was not some truth in it; things are out of proportion, and the new room makes the rest of the cottage look lower than ever, and I’d like so much to have everything right for Jerrie, who would not shame the Queen’s palace.  I wish, for her sake, that I had money, and could make her home what it ought to be.  I do not want her to feel homesick, or long for something better, when she comes back to us."’

Jerrie was crying outright now; but Mrs. Crawford, who was a little deaf and did not hear her, went on: 

’If you were a hundred times his sister he could not love you more than he does, or wish to make you happier.  He would have gone for you last night, only he was so tired, and I persuaded him to go to bed.  I knew somebody would come home with you, Dick, wasn’t it?  I thought I heard his voice.’

‘Yes, it was Dick,’ Jerrie answered, very low, returning again to her breakfast, while her grandmother rambled on: 

’Harold slept so soundly that he never heard the storm or knew there was one till this morning.  Lucky you didn’t start home till it was over.  You’d have been wet to the skin.’

Jerrie made no answer, for she could not tell of that interview under the pines, or that she had been wet to the skin, and felt chilly even now from the effects of it.  It seemed that Mrs. Crawford would never tire talking of Harold, for she continued: 

’He was up this morning about daylight, I do believe, and had his own breakfast eaten and that table laid for you when I came down.  He wanted to see you before he went, and know if you were pleased; but I told him you were probably asleep, as it was late when you came in, and so he wrote something for you, and went whistling off as merrily as if he had been in his carriage, instead of on foot in his working-dress.’

’And he shall have his carriage, too, some day, and a pair of the finest horses the country affords, and you shall ride beside him, in a satin gown and India shawl.  You’ll see!’ Jerrie said, impetuously, as she arose from the table and began to clear away the dishes.

The spell was upon her strongly now, and as her grandmother talked, the objects around her gradually faded away; the cottage, so out of proportion, and so humble in all its surroundings, was gone, and in its place a house, fair to look upon, fair as Tracy Park and much like it, and Harold was the master, looking a very prince, instead of the tired, shabbily dressed man he was now.