His wife had ventured to suggest that he go in a carriage, as it was so warm, but he had answered, savagely: 

’Go to thunder with your carriage and coat-of-arms!  What good have they ever done us only to make folks laugh at us for a pack of fools?  Nothing under heaven gives us a h’ist, and I’m just goin’ to quit the folderol and pad it on foot, as I used to when I was cap’n of the ’Liza Ann—­durn it!’

And so, with his bag in his hand, he started rapidly down the road in the direction of Shannondale.  But the sun was hot, and he was hot, and his bag was heavy, and, cursing himself for a fool that he had not taken the carriage, he finally struck into the park as a cooler, if a longer, route to the station.

As he came near the Tramp House, which gave no sign of its sleeping occupant, something impelled him to look in at the door.  And this he did with a thought of Jerrie in his heart, though with no suspicion that she was there; and when he saw her he started suddenly, and uttered an exclamation of surprise, which roused her from her heavy slumber.

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, shedding back her golden hair from her flushed face and lifting her eyes to him; but whatever else she might have said was prevented by his outburst of passion, which began with the question: 

‘Do you know what you have done?’

Jerrie looked at him wonderingly, but made no reply, and he went on: 

’Yes, do you know what you have done?—­you, a poor, unknown girl, who, but for the Tracys, would have gone to the poor-house sure as guns, where you orter have gone!  Yes, you orter.  You refuse my Bill! you, who hain’t a cent to your name; and all for that sneak of a Harold, who will swear agin me to-morrer.  I know he’s at the root on’t, though Bill didn’t say so, and I hate him wuss than pizen; he, who has been at the wheel in my shop and begged swill for a livin’! he to be settin’ up for a gentleman and a cuttin’ out my Bill, who will be wuth more’n a million,—­yes, two millions, probably, and you have refused him!  Do you hear me, gal?’

He yelled this last, for something in Jerry’s attitude made him think Jerrie was not giving him her undivided attention, for she was still listening to the music, which seemed to swell higher and higher, louder and clearer, until it almost drowned the voice of the man demanding a second time so fiercely: 

‘Do you hear me, gal?’

‘Yes, I hear you,’ she said.  ’You are talking of Harold, and saying things you shall not repeat in my presence.’

‘Hoity-toity, miss!  What’s to hinder me repeatin’ in your presence that Harold Hastings is a sneak and a snob, a hewer of wood, a drawer of water, and a—­’

Jerrie had risen to her feet, and stood up so tall and straight that, it seemed to Peterkin as if she towered even above himself, while something in the flash of her blue eyes made him think of Arthur when he turned him from the house for accusing Harold of theft, and also of the little child who had attacked him so fiercely on that wintry morning when the dead woman lay stretched upon the table at the Park House, with her dark face upturned to the ceiling above.