‘Yes, yes,’ Arthur said, with a wave of his hand.  ’Only I didn’t know.  If I had—­’

‘It would have been so different,’ Maude interrupted him.  ’I know that, but I want you to be kind to poor father still, and forgive him, he is sorry, and—­’

‘Oh, Maude, Maude,’ came like a groan from Frank, as he laid his hand on Maude’s lips, while Arthur replied: 

’Forgive him!  For what?  He couldn’t help being here.  I sent for him.  He did not keep Jerrie from her rightful position as my daughter.  If he had I could never forgive him.  Why, I believe I’d kill him, or any other one who, knowing that Jerrie was my daughter, kept it from me.’

He was gesticulating now with both hands, and Jerrie, who had listened wonderingly to the conversation, took hold of them as they were swaying in the air, and said to him softly: 

‘Father!’

The word quieted him, and with a gasp his mind seemed to change at once.

‘Maude is very tired,’ Jerrie went on; ’perhaps we’d better go now and come again to-morrow.’

’Yes, yes, that’s best, child.  I’m not fond of sick rooms, though I must say this is very free from smells,’ Arthur replied; then stooping down he kissed Maude again, saying to her as he rose to go: 

’Don’t worry about your father; he is my brother, and he was kind to Jerry.  I shan’t forget that.  Come, my daughter.’

And putting his arm fondly around Jerrie he left the room.

CHAPTER L.

THE FLOWER FADETH.

It took some days after Arthur’s return for the household to settle down into anything like order and quiet, Arthur was so restless and so happy, and so anxious for everyone to recognise Jerrie as his daughter—­Miss Tracy, as he called her when presenting her to the people who had known her all her life—­the St. Claires, and Athertons, and Crosbys, and Warners—­who came to call upon and congratulate him.  Even Peterkin came in his coat-of-arms carriage, with a card as big as the back of Webster’s spelling book, and himself gotten up in a dress coat, with lavender kids on his burly hands, which nearly crushed Arthur’s in their grasp as he expressed himself ’tickleder than he ever was before in his life.’

‘And to think I was the means on’t,’ he said, ’for if I hadn’t of kicked that darned old table into slivers when I was givin’ on’t to Jerrie, she’d never of know’d what was in that dumbed rat-hole.  I was a leetle too upstrupulous, I s’spose, but I’ll be darned if she didn’t square up to me like a catamount, till my hair riz right up, and I concluded the Tramp House was no place for me.  But I respect her for it; yes, I do, and by George, old chap, I congratulate you with my whole soul, and so does May Jane, and so does Ann ’Lizy, and so does Bill, and so does the whole caboodle on us.’

This was Peterkin’s speech, which Arthur received more graciously than Jerrie, who, remembering Harold, could not be very polite to the man who had injured him so deeply.  As if divining her thoughts, Peterkin turned to her and said: